Virtual Work Mastery & Sustainability for Moms & Dads Series #2-Types of Businesses to Start

Welcome to episode 259 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento. I am very excited to bring you the second in the Virtual Work Mastery and Sustainability for Moms and Dads Series, which are the types of businesses to start. There are so many business ideas that I was able to come up with that you can start in 2023.

I compiled a list of over 120 different things that you can do online to make money. It is incredible the amount of things that I came up with. And honestly, there are some things on here that I didn’t know even existed or didn’t know there was a thing. 

I am very excited to bring these things to you so you can start a successful business. See what they are, and make your own decisions. Some of them are interesting, and some of them are boring. Everybody’s going to like something different. But all of them are ways to make money online.

That’s the name of the game. That’s what we’re trying to do. We’re trying to find it. The type of business that works the best for our personality. And that we’re not going to get tired of them. This may be the only thing on this list. There may be ten things on this list for you. You may want to start with one thing or add another every month. 

With this list, you can start a profitable business and do whatever you want, but I want to ensure you have it. I only have some of the how-to to get started in each business for this list. But whatever it is, go to YouTube. And type in how to, and then whatever, the job or whatever it is on this list. And you will find dozens of videos and start studying. You can do so many things to start a business with no money.

I will go ahead and start talking about what’s on this list. I will not go through all 120 plus of them, but I will give you the top. We’ll see how far I get and how long it takes. And then, you can grab the rest on the download. 

Freelancing

The first online business idea that we’re going to talk about is freelancing. There are many different ways you can do things that fall into the category of freelancing. 

• Content writing
• Graphic design
• Web development,
• Social Media Management
• Virtual assistant
• Video editing

If you remember the list, I gave you last week of different places you can go to earn money to get started. Many of those were virtual assistance agencies; you can do that and start your own. If you know any business owners, they need a little help online. 

We are trying to make money online. So, whatever way you can do that, go right ahead. I want you to ensure that whatever you choose, you build your life the way you want. You’re not building your life around this thing, that whatever you do, you’re going to build this thing around your life, make it work for you.

 Make sure you can spend as much time with your family as possible. Make sure that you’re able to do the things that you want and have the flexibility that you want. And make the money that you want. If you go into something like social media management, you should start with one specific platform. You either become an expert in Pinterest, LinkedIn, TikTok or Instagram, or whatever that platform is. 

Just dive into that one platform and become an expert. You’re going to be able to help so many more people by becoming an expert in one thing. Then, I helped a few people with everything. And you’re also going to find. It’s more satisfying, and you’ll be able to help people further rather than wider.

Online Market Places.

The next category is going to be online marketplaces.

• eBay
• Amazon
•  Etsy
• Dropshipping on Amazon
• Print-on-demand products

Let’s say you have a t-shirt that you create, and you have a Shopify store. Do you have it hooked up to print a full or print a fire? Any of those million-one print-on-demand services. And somebody goes to your website and orders a T-shirt.

And says, “I want this T-shirt and green and a large one.” Then, the company ships and prints that product to them on demand. You don’t have to have inventory lying around; it saves you a lot of time, money, and space in your home because you don’t have to have a printer.

First, you don’t have to iron the T decals on the T-shirts. You don’t have to do any of that stuff. It’s automatically done for you. The hardest thing that you have to do is design the t-shirts. Or whatever it is, upload and monitor all of the items.

There’s a lot that goes into creating an e-commerce store. You have to have email sequences. You have to have follow-ups, you have to have receipts. You got to have. There’s just a lot that goes into it. I won’t say it’s easy. However, it is a very lucrative business. 

Content Creation

The next category is going to be content creation. And these three things are more of a long game there, something that I would add to something else, not necessarily have this be your standalone, because it will take a while for these to get off the ground.

You are creating a YouTube channel to earn from ads and sponsorships. Podcasting was sponsorships and donations and writing and selling eBooks or online courses. All of these things are going to take a while. They’re not going to be overnight. And again, these are things that you’re going to use to build your authority. Build your online presence and your reputation. 

Affiliate Marketing

The next category that you may want to consider is going to be affiliate marketing.  Affiliate marketing is just promoting products or services and earning a commission on sales from those products and services. Any online service gives you 20% off to refer their product, so if you were a further product, somebody clicks on your link, and then you get 20% off that sale. 

Affiliate Programs

• Amazon Associates
• ClickBank
• Online Surveys
• Market Research

You can join affiliate programs like Amazon Associates Share a Sale or ClickBank. To access a ton of different. Products and things to promote. You can also get affiliate sales through online surveys and market research.

You can participate in paid surveys on platforms like Swagbucks or Survey Junkie. You can also join market research panels. There were a couple, at least one. Two different platforms that I mentioned last week in Episode 258. 

They are more like survey platforms and little task platforms. You can go back and look at those. Online tutoring or coaching, you can offer tutoring in subjects that you Excel in. You can provide life coaching or career guidance in whatever career you’re coming from and help people to advance in that career.

Stock photography

You can sell your photos on stock photography, websites like Shutterstock or Adobe Stock, or my favorite, Envato Elements. If you like photography and have great pictures, sell your photos. 

Apps software in development

You can create and sell mobile apps or software. You can also freelance as a software developer. If this is a skill you have, or if it’s a skill you want to learn, there are so many different places that you can understand. These types of skills are online.

Of course, the era is one of them, But there are also Universities. Many Ivy League universities offer free courses and things like this. If you want to get a particular skill, look into the free courses Harvard and Yale offer and those types of places. Because they are college-level and they are amazing. 

Online Gaming

This one will be my least favorite of everything on this list: online gaming. You can stream your gameplay on platforms like Twitch and earn money from ads and donations. And you can also compete in different tournaments. So their sports tournaments and more tournaments whatever. Online gaming is a ridiculous industry, but that’s just me. It’s probably my generation, and I don’t see the point of it.

Real Estate Crowdfunding

You can invest in real estate through crowdfunding platforms like FunRise or Realty Mogul. These are, again, a long game. You’re going to get rich after a while, and also. I would consider them something that you should be doing anyway. A side thing that everybody should be doing. So this isn’t a standalone one, but. Take one off of the whole total for that one. 

Remote Consulting

You can offer consulting services in your area of expertise, whatever that is. Whenever you were doing this before, you have some expertise in it. Somebody out there is looking to learn it, so you can offer consulting services to help them achieve that. 

Virtual Real Estate

You can purchase virtual real estate in virtual worlds, like de-central land. I had no idea that this was a thing. I’m going to tell you right now. When researching, I’m trying to find everything I can possibly find for you to earn money online. This one is new to me.

I have no idea anything about it, but it’s intriguing. So if you go out there and you start. A virtual real estate business, please email me and let me know. What it’s like, what you’re doing, and how much money you make from buying and selling virtual real estate. I can’t wait to hear it.

Here are some additional work ideas to start in 2023.

• Translation and Language Services – Provides translation or language tutoring services. 
• Online stock trading and investing remote data entry. 
• Domain flipping, which is buying and selling domain names. 
• Design and sell printable templates for various purposes, 
• Subscription services: you can create a subscription box service.
• Write reviews and sponsored content – There are a lot of people that get paid to write reviews. You will get emails from soliciting reviews, and they pay like $10 a review or something like that.
• Crowdfunding- you can launch a crowdfunding campaign like Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Help you to get funds for your business. And to start that up.
• Remote IT Support –  you can offer technical support services.
• Niche Members Ship sites – if you are amazing, let’s say, crochet and want to teach people your patterns. How to crochet. You can create a membership site that is very specific to those people. And make money every single month.
• Proofreading and editing.
• SEO and digital marketing
• Online trading – That would be like Forex and cryptocurrency.
• You can do online auctions and sell things on eBay.
• Voiceover and Narration – You can do that for video, you can do that for audiobooks, and so much more.
• Online advertising – Google, YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Tiktok. There are so many different places to see. You can learn this and help people to get their business noticed.
• Subscription box services. You can also do beauty products. You can do snacks, you can do books, you can do anything that you are interested in. As a subscription box. 
• Online event planning 
• Dating consulting
• Data analysis
• Domain name parking is when you park domains with high traffic potential and earn from ad revenue. Which is an interesting concept. So you’re basically. Just pick the best name for SEO. Slapping a little website up there and putting a Google AdSense on there. So then that way people get, or you get money for when people visit that website.
• You can offer online legal services – Obviously, don’t do this unless you’re an attorney and can do that.
• Mobile app testing
• Podcast production
• Online fitness coaching
• Webinars and Workshops – you can learn how to host webinar workshops on a subject you know about, or you could offer that as a service. If you learn how to host a webinar or a workshop, That could be your entire business. Helping people to host webinars and workshops. You have to think out of the box with these things.
• Remote event photography – Offering virtual events and conference photography for those because they will need those things. To have their event next year and have photos and stuff like that. That way, they can promote their next event.
• Yoga Classes
• Wellness Coaching
• Nutrition Coaching
• Music instruction
• Online Art Sales
• Social Media Influencer is one of those things that is interesting
• 3D Printing Service – Where you print 3D objects like somebody has something that they want to print in 3D, then you have a 3D printer, and you can print things for them. I like that idea. I also like the idea of laser and grading services.
• Travel Planning
• Social Clubs – Your social club and charge a membership fee.
• Fundraising Consulting
• Genealogy Research

This is something that I’ve seen on Facebook, and they do something other than this actually by Males or something. They get mail. It’s undeliverable. And they purchase it, and they unbox them. 

I’ve seen that happen, and I’m sure they make money from the things they sell when they unbox, but they also get a whole bunch of viewers on YouTube when they’re unboxing these things. Oh, an interesting one. Way to do things. There’s a whole sector for accounting. So you could do forensic accounting and bookkeeping—financial planning. There are a million different things in that financial industry. That you can do. 

This is something that I’ve never heard of a virtual escape room so that you can design and host an online escape room for a fee. I did not know that was even a thing interesting. And if it’s not a thing, then. The internet needs to be corrected, but it’s exciting.

I want to go to a virtual escape room and see what it’s like compared to an actual escape room. But again, if you go to a virtual escape room or create one. Let me know how it goes. There are so many things that people need help with.

There are so many different ways that you can go with your business. There are so many other things that you can do to start a business. You can always go and work for someone else. That’s always an option for you. There’s never any reason why you can’t do that. If you want to start your business, do that. If you’re going to work for someone else, do whatever you need to do.

There’s no reason that you have to go back to the office and punch the clock and all of those things. I want you to have the confidence after you go through this series. To start your business. To understand that you have the power.

To shape your life:’ You can make it whatever you want. And there are going to be ups, and there are going to be downs, and you have to be able to—roll with those. Get through them, realize that there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and go for it.

To grab a complete copy of this list. You can go ahead and go to patrion.com forward slash the determined mom. And you will find all of the different downloads for this series. There, you can Grab it. You can grab all of them at once if you want to subscribe to the monthly membership. I hope you have a great week, and I can’t wait to see you on the next episode, where we’ll talk about what you need to start a business online.

Virtual Work Mastery & Sustainability for Moms & Dads Series #1-Resources to Start Earning Money Online Today

Welcome to episode 258 of The Determined Moms Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento. Today, we will be talking about resources to start earning money online. And this is for the virtual work mastery and sustainability for moms and dads series.  You’re going to be wondering why in the world we will start by making money. Don’t we need to build a business first? The answer to that is yes. And the answer to that is also no. I want you to be able to start out making money.

There are three basic reasons why we will start with this episode

Reason 1:  It is to earn money

It is going to cost money to start your business. You’re going to need to do your registration. Suppose you want to start an LLC. You will need your hosting platform for many different things: website and domain. All of these things do cost money. I want you to have that money going in. And not have to pull out of your family budget or anything like that. I want you to be able to have the resources available.

To start your business from the beginning and start it the right way and not cut corners, trying to. Just set it up with a strong foundation from the beginning. The whole point of this series is to help you avoid it. The things that I’ve fallen into. And the things that I’ve seen others fall into.

Reason 2: Is to help you build a portfolio

If you will be doing any services or providing any services. You need to have proof of your work proof. You know how to do X, Y, or Z. You can also start gathering testimonials from people you work with. This is why you will be starting with this instead of just going ahead and starting to build your business. You can do this simultaneously. However, I want you to have this as your foundation.

Reason 3: Find what you love to d

The only way you’re going to find what you love to do. It is to do a variety of different things. You may want to start an e-commerce store. That’s fine. Why don’t you go ahead and try to learn how to do some SEO for an e-commerce store? Why don’t you know how to upload products? I come first to see if you enjoy doing all those things. This is a way for you to delve into whatever you think you are interested in dabbling in.

And then go from there. What if you feel like you need to gain more skills? What you’ll be able to do is go and fine. Whatever it is you want to try to do. Go to YouTube, watch a crap ton of tutorials. Go set up your accounts and try it. And then, go from there. That’s all you have to do. It’s free. Teach yourself how to do things. Experiment, do all of those things. And then that way. You’re going to have an idea of what you want to do. This aims to earn money, build a portfolio, and gather testimonials. And figure out what you love to do. 

I have created a huge list of 12 different resources you can use to start earning money today. This list is available in the Patreon account. And you can download it if you want just to be able to click on it. And take you there. Or you can listen to this episode and write it down completely up to you. But this is the first available lesson in this series. And if you want to download it, you can go and click here.

Resources to Start Earning Money Online Today

Remotask

We are going to talk about the first Remotask. Now, most of these are task-oriented or skill-based or some energy exchange. You can also do other things we will discuss in the next episode. There are a million different kinds of businesses you can start. This will focus on getting you out there and some money. And start earning an income. So the first one, again, is remote tasks. This is virtual, and you actually do some AI training. It’s very easy. The tasks are very simple, and you get paid weekly for this. It’s not a huge paycheck, but it’s going to be something, and it’s going to allow you to save for all of your other expenses. 

Time Etc Assistants 

This is a virtual assistant service, and it is based in the UK. You do need to have some experience in some field or another. And they also require a skills test in order to pass. I will also note that remote tasks. It also requires identity verification. So you have to upload your driver’s license, and you do have to be US-based. So keep those things in mind as you’re going through this.

Not everybody is going to be able to use all of these services. Time, et cetera, is higher in the United States. However, again, you have to pass that test. Interestingly enough, when I started as a VA, I could pass the Time etc test. However, I was not able to pass the fancy hands test, which is another BA service. It’s only based in the U.S., I don’t know what happened. Apparently, the UK likes me better. 

Fiverr

It is actually a marketplace for skilled labor. And it’s more like online technology-based labor. So it is gig-based, and you get to set the pay. Let’s say you are great at designing podcasts and art covers.

You’re going to design some cover samples. Put them up there and say, pay me this for designing your podcast cover. That’s pretty much how it works. That’s all you do. You are competing with a global market here. So keep that in mind: there are a lot of skills that people will only really want to pay people in the U.S. to do, especially when their language passes.

 Keep that in mind you could do. Voiceover work you could do. Editing proofreading. Web design. There are so many things you can do on there. So go on and browse around. You can even write down the skills that you have from any of your past jobs or your current job. And figure out what are my skills and what I can do on fiverr. That’s a great way to start. 

Upwork

Here you can actually use your skills again, it is also guilt gig based, but in this instance, The people that are looking to hire are the ones posting the jobs. So there are a variety of gigs. But it’s more of a project base instead of an ongoing basis or instead of a gig.

Deciding this podcast cover for me, there might be some of those, but it’s more of can you update my website or do something more project-based. This is a great  place.

Again, I do believe you’re competing with people from all around the world, but there is definitely a lot of things on there that you can find. And the great thing is that they actually rate the people that hire. People they’ve hired in the past what their average higher. You can also sort by highest pay to lowest pay. So definitely keep that in mind as you’re searching. 

FreeUp

The next one is my favorite platform for hiring. It is called FreeUp and a lot of my team comes from here. Because they pay pretty well for international people. So a lot of my team is from all over the world. We have Pakistan and Dubai and Philippines and India. We’ve just got a huge variety of people on my team.

And most of them come from this platform. And they actually get paid very well on this platform. They also do weekly pay and so you actually do need to have some experience in something. So if you’re going on there and saying, Oh, I do podcast editing. Then you need to know how to do podcast editing and etc. 

Course Hero

The other one is called course hero. This is more for online tutoring. So if you have any experience in tutoring or helping people answering questions, if you have expertise in a certain educational area, you can earn up to $1,500 per month here. A cool way to put your skillset to work. 

Fancy Hands

This is the one that I said I failed the test for way back when. And it is again, virtual assistant tasks, but it is, US-based only. And they do require experience. So if you had any type of administration, Any type of bookkeeping, anything like  that, they will probably hire you.

But again, you have to go ahead and pass that challenging test. I don’t know what I did wrong, but I did something wrong and I did not pass. So hopefully you have better luck than me. 

Microworkers

This is micro tasks so you’re going to be doing like super tiny things, like maybe taking a screenshot of something and uploading it. And you might get paid like a dollar or two for that.

There is no experience required. And you can do as many tasks as you want and just get paid out for those tasks. It’s an interesting platform because if you have five extra minutes you can just go on and earn a couple dollars.

Remote.Co

This is a virtual assistant platform. They also do a lot of accounting positions. So if you’re in bookkeeping, accounting, anything like that, any kind of experience like that, this might be a great one for you. They do have a large variety of jobs, which is great. 

Belay

This is a virtual assistant bookkeeping and social media management hiring platform. People will go on and search for different types of people that are experienced in these three things were toasting bookkeeping and social media management. And they will get matched with someone that is looking for that type of employment. It’s a great platform. 

Zirtual

This is virtual assistant positions and they do also require experience. And again, it is US-based only. So if you are international and you’re listening to this, not all of these are going to be able to apply to you. However, you can go ahead and check them all out. I did try to note the ones that were only accepting US-based. People, but definitely go on and check them out yourself just in case I was wrong.

VOT

The last one is called VOT. This is one has pretty high pay. There are many different fields and I get an email digest still. I don’t know how I signed up for this accidentally, but I’m glad that I did because I can share it with you.

But there is an email digest that goes through and I’ve seen positions coming through there that are, in the $30 an hour range, something like that. Definitely get on their email list and figure out what they’re hiring for and those types of things. I hope that you found this lesson.

Very helpful because I just want you to get out there and remember you have three goals. One is to earn money so you can save or starting your business. Two is to build your portfolio and gather testimonials. And then three is to find what you love to do. So go out there. Experiment try new things.

There is no way that you’re going to figure out what you’re looking for, what you love, what your passion is until you actually start. And I’m going to tell you a little anecdote here. I started out as a virtual assistant doing exactly the same thing. I just told you. I worked for time, etc. I found different gigs. 

How I got into Google business profile management. Is because one of my first clients was a marketing agency. And he asked me, what are you interested in learning? And I said, SEO. And he said, great. Here are some courses, go take these courses. He paid for me to do a couple of courses in SEO. And then he said, can you please post once a week on these Google Business Profiles for my clients? And I said, sure.

I started doing that and then I started seeing there ranking skyrocket. Like they would get to number one in no time. And this is of course, six years ago. So it’s a little different now, but it’s not that easy now.

So you have to do a little bit more than that, but. I absolutely fell in love with the platform. And I realized that people are not using this, but if I can get someone to number one and get them a ton more business, why would I not want to do that?

So that’s what made me fall in love with Google Business Profile. Had I not been open. If I had not been influenced by someone who wanted to help me along the way, I would not be where I am. I am here to also help you to encourage you. And if you have any questions at all about this process, please. Email me

And again, you can go to our Exclusive Content for Mom Business Owners to get the downloads for this. There is a fee for the downloads. However, what you can do is you can either subscribe to the Patrion monthly and get all of the downloads, or you can buy them one by one.

And this is, again, series number one, which is resources to start earning money online today. Next week, we’re going to be talking about the types of businesses to start. So there’s. Literally like hundreds of different things that you can do online to earn money. So we’re going to talk about those next week. And get started in really building our business. I hope you have a great week and thank you so much for listening.

Virtual Work Mastery & Sustainability for Moms & Dads Series Introduction

Welcome to episode 257 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I am very excited to talk to you today. About the new series that we have coming up. To help you or anyone to get started on working virtually. I know a lot of getting back to the office is going on. 

There is a lot of turmoil in the economy, so many different things. We’re going to talk about. Virtual work mastery and sustainability for moms and dads. What this series is all about. I’m going to start from the very beginning. When I first started my business. The reason that I started it is because I was pregnant with our third daughter at the time. 

Which we thought was going to be our last child. I did not want to go back to my job. I was managing a Credit Union. I worked Five days a week. However, I typically worked from. From 8:30 to 7:30, generally, I was the manager. I had to leave for lunch usually. If it was my assistant managers, days off, there were two days a week that I was guaranteed not to be able to leave the branch. 

 It was just not very fun. And I didn’t get to attend many of my children’s school activities. Especially if they were scheduled last minute and the school, for some reason at that time, had a habit of scheduling things very last minute. And I couldn’t work into my schedule. 

I was able to make the schedule for the branch. However, I could not change it at the last minute. I could make the schedule about a month and a half in advance. And if I knew what was happening, I could schedule it, but those last-minute things still need to happen. What I was looking for at the time was flexibility. I wanted something that I could make a full-time income. 

Replace my income from the Credit Union, which was a great salary. There were just so many things to consider. And I figured it all out over the last six years.  I want to start this series because friends and family often reach out to me. That is either unhappy in their jobs. They might be losing their job for reasons out of their control. They might want to change, but they all reach out to me to seek advice.

Try to figure out how they can go ahead and start working online because they want to be home with their family, too. They like the flexibility. Maybe they have young kids. Maybe they have ailing family members. Maybe they want to be able to work from wherever they want. And not be tied down to an office. These are some of the reasons that people have come to me.

And said, I want to figure this out. Can you help me? I know you’ve done it. I decided that instead of helping everyone individually. I am not being able to capture that. I would capture it to help more than just the people coming to me directly. 

I want to be able to help every single person that’s out there that is looking for this answer. And I’m going to make this a very in-depth series. Hope. There are currently 13 episodes planned out for this series. This is going to be extremely in-depth, and it’s going to go through every single thing that you need to know. 

To start working virtually and create a sustainable business. Now you’re going to say, okay? How do you know what kind of business that I want to create? I don’t, however. I’m going to go through some of the options that you have, and I’m also going to be sharing with you. The mistakes that I’ve made over the years.  And the mistakes I’ve seen others make in the last six years. Before that, I’d been in Business Management for about 17 years.

I’m going to share with you all of those mistakes in these episodes. That way, you can avoid them and learn from your mistakes. And then create that sustainable business. And help you, whether you’re a mom or a dad. You’re not a mom. You’re not a dad but gearing this more towards moms and dads. Who is looking to create that virtual business? And income from home. 

This series is not for the faint of heart if you need a full-time income and are risk averse. You prefer to avoid taking risks. This is not for you. Suppose you have a backup, a safety where you want to stay at your job and to build up your income. That’s always a great idea if you are risk-averse. 

This is something to consider. There are very many ups and downs in entrepreneurship. If you follow the series About to Become an Entrepreneur, you are literally. You’re going to be making your schedule. You’re going to be able to Watch TV whenever you want. Can you handle the choice between watching TV and doing what you must do to provide for your family?

Can you handle that pressure? Can you prioritize? There are so many different things to consider. When you think about that, please ensure this is serious for you. But if you want to create that kind of life, This is it. It’s going to walk you through everything. 

Recently, I’ve gotten away from helping mom entrepreneurs and gotten more into helping small, medium-sized, and large businesses through my agency. I’ve realized that I have a passion for helping moms. I’m currently going through the NASDAQ Milestone Circle Program. If you have yet to hear of that, it’s a mentorship. 

And educational series. Minority entrepreneurs, and they’re pretty much all women. It’s a very cool program. I just started. Last week, I did believe. One of the things we went through was an exercise to figure out our vision for our business. And I realized that I still absolutely adore it. 

I am working with mom business owners and helping them create—a better life for themselves and their families. I’m refocusing my vision for my life and my business. And as I’ve had a near-death experience in the last nine months. And that has shaped how I think about my life going forward. And I want to help as many women, Moms, Dads, and whoever as possible. For the most affordable way possible. For you, this is going into the last quarter of 2023. 

Please take this last quarter to learn, plan, and build your business. That way, you can go into the first quarter of 2024. You are energized with a solid business foundation. What is going to happen with this series? Is there going to be a podcast episode? That’s going to be released, and it’s going to be completely free to you. 

It’s going to explain everything that you need to know. However, if you would like a detailed tutorial on how to do whatever’s in that podcast episode. Suppose you’d like a list of resources if you’d download anything that goes along with that. There is going to be a Course for each episode. 

And it will be available on our Patreon. You will be able to go there and purchase it. It is going to be highly affordable. You can purchase the lessons, the Allah cart. Or you can subscribe monthly and get access to all of them. This is a 14-week series.

You are starting with—episode 258, which will be coming out next week. I will go through all the lessons you will learn right now. That way, you understand how this series will work because it’s important to see if you want to do it if this is the right thing for you. 

Again, this series is called Virtual Work Mastery and Sustainability for moms and dads. It is a series of 13 courses. And each course is standalone. Let’s say that you only need to know. One thing, then you can take that. A portion of the course, or you can listen to that episode and go from there, try to find the resources on your own. 

By trying to find tutorials. However, like I said, I’m creating this. That way, you can access detailed tutorials on our Patreon Account. You can subscribe to one. You can subscribe to all of them. It’s completely up to you—next week. On the. 5th of October, we will start with series number one. 

And these are resources to start earning money online today. I wanted to start with this because. There are some costs to starting your own business. Suppose you want to incorporate, instead of just being a sole proprietor contractor, a 10 99. You’re going to want to. Could you file that and make it official? 

You’re going to. Need different software. You’re going to need different tools. You’re going to need some money to build your website. I want to give you resources that will enable you from day one. To have the option of starting to make money. Okay. I don’t want to put into the course because. 

That’s not going to help you. My goal is to provide you with all the necessary resources. To start the right way, start making money. And build your business slowly, but build it the correct way. This is why I’m going to tell you this. This is how I wish I had done things when I started my business. However, I didn’t know. 

I didn’t have anyone to help me. And I have just pieced it all together over the last six years and hoped I was doing it right. And I could have saved a lot of time and money. Had I done it in the order I will share with you? I was starting next week with resources to start earning money online today. 

Then, episode number two will be about the types of businesses to start. We will detail all the different types of businesses you can start online to make money. Episode three will be what you really need to start a business online. This is going to detail all of the things that you need. 

What you don’t need. And then we’re going to go into some of the things that would be nice to have it would be nice to pay for accounting software, but do you really need to pay for accounting software? Probably not. We’ll go through all of those things. That way, you get all of the details. 

And you know what you do and don’t need. Episode number four is how to purchase a [website domain. It is very important that you know how to do this. We’re also going to go through best practices for naming your website. Where to get it. The best. Pricing, all of the things, how much it should cost you. To purchase a domain. And all of those things, we’re going to go through all of that. 

 In episode five, we will talk about the best platform to build your website on and how you can do that. Then we’re going to talk. Episode number six is about how to purchase the best website hosting. There are many website hosts out there, and I’ve used at least four or five of the most popular ones. And I’ve settled on one. And that’s taken four years to figure out. And a lot of phone calls. A lot of headaches, a lot of chatting, crying.

 When Blue Host accidentally deleted my website one time. I’ve been through all of it. Anyway, we’re going to. Go through all of that. I will show you exactly how to do it in the tutorial. Exactly how to install your website on there.

We’ll go through all of that. In episode seven, we will go through how to build your website quickly and efficiently. There is a way. That you can get a website up in a couple of days, right? You can build your website quickly and get it done. Beautifully. 

Episode eight will be the final step to ensure your website is complete. If you were to pay someone to do your website, what happens is. Nine times out of 10, they will not have SEO experience in addition to website-building experience. They’ll hand you your website and here. A couple of years later, you realize that you haven’t been tracking who’s going to your website. 

You don’t know where your traffic is coming from. You have no idea how many people are visiting your website. Isn’t working. Is it not working? Is your website even being picked up on Google? All of these things are the final steps. We will go through what those steps are—episode number nine. 

We’re going to go through pricing methods for your services. And talk about value-based pricing versus hourly—all of those things. In episode number 10, we will talk about choosing the right social network for your business. Should you start out on all of them? Should you pick one? Should you pick two? Should you pick three? Let’s go ahead and figure out from the beginning what you should be putting your time into as far as marketing. And where. 

In episode number 11, we will talk about SEO best practices to keep your website healthy. We want you to be. You were following best practices from the very beginning of having your website—that way. You were building your SEO instead of tearing it down over time. 

Number 12. It is going to be how to avoid scams and red flag clients. This is an industry-wide problem. No matter what industry you’re in. You’re going to come across scammers. You’re going to come across clients that will drive you up a wall, but there are certain things that you can do to avoid them. 

And there are certain red flags to look out for in both of these types of categories— episode number 13. We will go over all of my favorite tools for online marketing. This is going to help you to really understand. Which tools work better for certain things? And there are literally dozens of tools for everything out there. 

But I’ve always gone through all of them, tried them all. And I really. Narrowed down the ones that I think are the best. I really hope that you’re going to join us. On this journey, it will take us through the end of the year. The last episode is going to air on December 28th. 

And I’m super excited. I want to take you on this journey to share my knowledge with you and help you build your business. Looking forward to it, and if you. I want to subscribe to our patriarch now in support of this effort. You can go ahead and do that in Patreon The Determined Mom.

And you will see. When you go there, there are two options. One is to support and help us get the podcast out to as many moms and dads as possible. And then the second one is to have access to all of the content. That is going to be produced. There are two different options there. Those are subscriptions. 

And they are monthly subscriptions. And you can also purchase each course as it’s released in the shop area. These will coincide with the episodes. I am airing on the podcast. I’m definitely looking forward to sharing this series with you. Please go ahead and leave us a review on iTunes. I am now going to read a review from one of our latest reviewers. 

“Amanda provides such great insight and tips for small businesses. And mom entrepreneurs. I appreciate the variety of topics and her authenticity. Thank you so much” for your review. I appreciate it. And if you would like me to read your review, go ahead and leave us one. On iTunes. Looking forward to sharing the series.  Thank you so much. Have a great week. 

3 Keys to Creating Financial Stability in Your Business with Krista McLellan

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I have the amazing Krista McClellan here with me. She is the owner of E&M Bookkeeping and a published author, QuickBooks, an online geek who built her bookkeeping business as a single mom after her husband lost his battle with cancer.

We will be talking about something very important to us business owners. Thank you for having me. It’s great to be here, share some information, and spread the word that we can do it as business owners. So before we get into the actual topic, I would love for you to share your story and how you got into bookkeeping and figured out all of this enlightening stuff you will share with us.  I started, it was an accident. I was pregnant with my first child and didn’t want to leave her.

I wanted to stay home, so I started a home daycare business. To stay home gave her great socialization and was good money. However, I was good at doing the books for it. And my tax professional asked me if I could help his other daycare moms do their books. And my husband became a firefighter, and firefighters always have part-time jobs or side hustles.

And so I helped them. And then it just got so busy I had to shut down the daycare. It was a total accident that I should have known I’d go this way because everyone in my family is a bookkeeper or an accountant.

It is what we do. So I just shouldn’t have fought it.  I’m good at it. I love empowering business owners to understand their numbers. I loved being a full-time mom and making money because I could work around my kids. It was a blessing when Scott got sick because computers would travel, and we worked in doctor’s offices and treatment centers.

And I worked when my kids were at dance or soccer, and I could be flexible because of what I built. What a blessing that is. And that’s really what this show is all about. It’s about having that determination as a mom, which you had. And making it work, like whatever you need to do to build your business, whatever you need to do to be there for your kids, that’s what we want to do.

And I love that you are a determined mom as well. The proverbial crap hit the fan after Scott passed away, and I realized how badly off we were. Firefighters, you don’t get life insurance, and in our tiny town, there’s no disability, and firefighters don’t pay into social security, so you don’t get that either.

Here we were without his income, and I was on my own, and I had to figure it out, and I remember. On some dark days, do I get oil or buy food? And then there was a, my kids were always, they were young, they were six and nine when he got sick. And so they were part of figuring out our finances because I was honest with them.

And I said it’s not that I don’t want to give you what your friends have. But here’s the reality of our life, and we decided together to fight for our home, not give it up, and move back in with my mom. We decided to give up Christmas presents and cable and work on our finances together.

One Christmas, I was trying to figure out how to get new tires, but I needed to get oil so the pipes didn’t freeze, and my children, who were nine and 12, my oldest, slid the Christmas gift cards she got. She slid them across the table to me and said, Mommy, we want new tires for Christmas. Oh, my goodness. That touches your heart.

And it’s like the note also. You’ve raised them in a way that they want to give back to the family, and they’ve realized what contributing to a family means, too. It was a pivotal moment for me because of The guilt and the shame I felt over being put in that position. It was brutal.

I was proud of her. I was proud of my children for wanting to do that. But at the same time, I was in this position of feeling like Star-Lord O’Hara, right? I will never be poor again. At that point, I just started devouring any information I could about understanding cash flow and making a profit and dealing with debt and all these things that my Children, then we gamified it as a family on how to put us in a better position.

And I shared that information with my clients so that they could put themselves in a better position. It was. It’s us working together and not being afraid to say, you know what, that’s not the best use of our funds right now and looking at our priorities and understanding that we have a lot of say in our cash flow.

That’s awesome. And I’m sure that was a valuable lesson for your kids at that point too. And what. What does that look like for them now, as they’re a little older? So now it’s been 11 years since Scott passed away. They are now 20 and 23. Wow. My oldest did her bachelor’s degree in three years and her master’s in one.

She has her master’s in accounting. She is now studying for her CPA. My youngest went to college on a full scholarship as well. They both got full academic scholarships. They were both very motivated students. But my youngest realized that college wasn’t for her. There needs to be a degree that is going to serve her.

She is more interested in some blue-collar skills and doing very well at them. They moved out together two months ago into their apartment. They both support themselves. They pay for their cars, they pay for their insurance, they do not, they don’t put their hand out and ask me for money.

You’re a very independent young woman doing very well on their own. That’s awesome. They’re thinking about buying a house together as an investment. A duplex to look at. They could live in one half and rent out the other. That’s awesome. That’s so smart. And I love that it gives me goosebumps because I have three girls, and we have that vision of like them always, sticking together and being together and having each other’s back.

So to hear that they do that’s awesome. It is. It’s, I’m very proud of the relationship they have with each other. And with me, it was like three of us against the world for a long time, and we still are very close and that adversity and refusing to give up, we refused to give up.

We were not going to be victims. We were not. We refused to lay down and let the world beat us. And there’s been a lot of joy and, when you have no money, you do many things to be creative, to entertain children. They and their friends will come around and laugh over memories about what we did to entertain ourselves for no money.

And it’s beautiful memories of just being fierce and not. Not wanting to be a victim because we aren’t that’s great. And that’s that alone. That one experience gives them tools for the rest of their life that will allow them to, no matter what happens to them. Bounce right back.

I love it. Teaching children at a young age how to understand cash flow is huge. Still, I find that the first thing I have to do is teach the adults because a lot of adults need to understand whether they’re in business and are good at making a sale and making money, but then they need to know where it goes.

And that’s what I love to do. I’m not a gatekeeper of information. I love to share it. I recently got fired by a client because I trained the client so well that they don’t need me anymore. Oh, that’s great. I knew it was coming because I saw as they were learning. I saw them need me less and less.

And for me, it’s more like a graduation. And when they said, I don’t, we think we can do this independently from here. And I said, yes, you can. That’s awesome. That also brings a little tear to your eye. It’s like your client’s baby is moving on. It’s exciting, and many people like, why would you train yourself out of a job?

It’s not training myself out of a job. They’ll come back to me for other questions and information, and they’ll know that I’m here to support them in Their profitability and their success, that I’m not here trying to bill for every phone call and email that I’m here to support them for their success.

But it’s understanding your numbers. I call it getting comfy with the F word. It also opens you up to help someone else who needs your help. Wherever that client was at the beginning, they’ve graduated, and somebody else is starting over at the beginning.

Three keys to creating financial stability

 I call it getting comfy with the F-word finances. Money is not a thing that we easily talk about in this society. It’s Facing our debt; there’s a lot of shame and blame. I was working with a woman yesterday and showing her how to use  QuickBooks and how to do it herself again. So she doesn’t have to hire me to do her books. She can hire me to do it herself. And so, as she was going through, I could feel her getting upset with herself. And I said, we don’t should on ourselves.

This is what your past was. You’re seeing it now because you’re tracking, and you can be more intentional. So the big thing, the three keys to getting financial freedom, is, first and foremost, doing your tracking. Understanding that you have to track where your money comes from and where it goes, you can take tax deductions if you’re in business.

If you don’t track it, you can’t. Deduct it. So, you maximize those deductions by tracking your expenses and talking with someone who understands what you can and can’t deduct. And that’s one of the big things is just tracking it to maximize those deductions. And by doing that, you also make yourself audit-proof.

The IRS is auditing one of the biggest fears most people have. I will tell you, anybody I work with brings the audit on. We win. Anytime I had a client, we went back and forth. She bought a yacht. She was a real estate agent, and she bought a yacht. I disagreed with writing it off. I said you are going to get audited.

This is a red flag. And she’s okay. So we took a bet, a little wager, and said if you win, I’ll give you three months of free bookkeeping. You can take me out on the yacht with my family if I win. So she’s, and cause she did, she got audited. She won. She’s a real estate agent who was showing her client, potential clients, the real estate on the water.

Wow. The IRS allowed the deduction, but we got to take more deductions because everything was right. Everything was there for the IRS to see. We had her eyes dotted, her T’s crossed. We had the source documents. We had everything the IRS could tell. She was serious with her books. She was not trying to shove stuff under the rug.

So they granted it to her. That’s awesome. I was floored, happy for her. But, I’m like, that’s a red flag, and it was a red flag, but we won the audit. It’s okay to audit. We can get audit-proof, which means it’s not that you’re not going to get audited, but you’re going to sail through and potentially get even more deductions.

And once you get audited once and don’t lose, the chances of being audited again are small.  Because they know you’re like you, you said she was serious. So they know that you’re serious if you haven’t haven’t done anything wrong. So when you can pull those documents, they look for the, it’s the proof of what you did.

It’s the receipts. It’s all those things we need to do that  I say you need to track your income and those receipts to prove what you spent. And when it all matches up, the IRS sees That you’re doing what you’re supposed to do legally. When you’re in business, you are legally obligated by the IRS to do your bookkeeping.

It’s mandated. So when they see that you’re doing it and doing it right, they don’t come back and bother you again. They’re looking for the people that are messing around. So that leads to cash flow. When you track your income and track your expenses, you can be more strategic with when you pay things.

You can be strategic when you bill things, meaning you can make the most of your cash flow and keep more cash in your pocket. And what do I mean by that? Cashflow is the lifeblood of business. It’s all of the inflows and outflows and that’s all accounting is tracking. Where did it come from?

And where did it go to? When you break it down to being that simple, it’s okay. Why do I need an accountant? You can do a lot of it yourself because it’s that simple. And when you see, Hey, okay, so I only have income coming in this date, then you know, not to pay a bill that will bounce.

Then, you can stretch out that payment. And so you have the money that will cover it, or you can get better terms and negotiate with your vendors for better times to keep more money in your bank account for a longer period. And it also means maybe it’s at the end of the year, and you don’t want to invoice because you’re saying, okay, here’s my profitability right now.

This is what I’m going to get taxed on. So I’m not sending out that invoice to get paid until January 1st, or I may have all this profit because, again, we’ve done your numbers. To reduce your taxes, we’re going to make a purchase that you’re going to make in January or February anyway; make that purchase now in December.

So again, it’s still going to be expensive no matter what you were going to spend the money, but now we’re going to make it work for you and make it so that you have less taxable income this year and keep more money. In your bank account, I love that I love playing games with numbers. It’s fun.

And it’s one of, for me, at least this is historically, I’ve never thought that far ahead of a purchase. Oh, I’m going to need a new computer soon. I think it is something other than September, January, or whatever. It doesn’t occur to me. I need it when I need it.

A lot of business owners are like that. But if we can get that strategic hat that you’re putting, you’re talking about and put that on ahead of time, or have someone in our pocket like you, that’s going to peek out and say, Nope, do that this time. That’s even better.  I have a lot of clients that used to be weekly, then they went to monthly, quarterly, and now they’ll touch base.

And what we do is we’ll do a mock close in October. So it’s starting now. We’re starting to book our mock closes to see what they look like. A, and make sure they have all the documents ready. B, it gets to see, okay, where are we at for profitability? And now let’s be strategic with where we’re at to decide when we will buy a necessary item, equipment, new computer, whatever it might be.

I had one client, who just gave herself. She, her husband, and her children are on the payroll. She gave them all bonuses. Because now, yes, you’re paying payroll taxes, but it’s going to your family. And now it’s a business deduction instead of just an owner’s draw that you will pay taxes on. I love that.

I love it, and we had talked about this a little bit on the pre-call, it is about making your family members on the payroll. And this is, I don’t know if I’m jumping the gun here, maybe I’m jumping the gun. But I love that you mentioned that because that’s something that it didn’t even occur to me to do.

So, can you chat about that?  I put my kids on my payroll. First, you cannot put yourself on the payroll if you’re a single-member LLC. The IRS doesn’t like it. You can, but then your accountant has to do a reverse and treat it to your taxes. So why pay them to do that? It’s your money.

You get to take it. However, I put my children on a payroll at a young age, and I did that for two reasons. First of all, because I needed to take money out of the account out of my business account to pay my bills, right? It’s my money, and I’m earning it to pay my bills. Some of my bills included their They’re clothing.

My youngest did dance. My oldest was more into sports. So what I did is I put my children on the payroll. Yes, they did work in the business. At first, my youngest was, there were more social media pictures than anything else, but you get to pay them for being that. My oldest quickly learned she loved accounting and started helping me at 12.

She started helping me in bookkeeping. My youngest was good at social media. She helped me with my website and things. I paid them for that. Then, we started with weekly because they were younger. They then paid for their wants and their needs. I gave them a paycheck based on what I would have paid for them for their dance, soccer, clothes, and all these things, and they then paid for those things themselves.

So, instead of being an owner’s draw, which is not a tax deduction, It was now a business expense because I paid them payroll that went into their business and their personal banking accounts, which have my name on it, too. After all, they were too young to have their own, and they paid their bills and they learned how to handle their money. We moved it from weekly to every other week to once a month so that they learned how to stretch their money better.

And they started 401k. Wow. I then contributed to their 401k, now a business deduction, but it’s paying for my children’s future.  And is there a minimum age that you can do that? Can you, like, what about work permits and things like that? You don’t need work permits when they’re your children.

However, I had to have my children on workers comp in some states. Okay. What are they going to get? A paper cut? Who are they going to sue me?  I strained from looking at the computer. I did have to have them on workers comp, which I thought was crazy.

I’m paying their health insurance and doctor’s bills, but that’s New Hampshire. Other States have other laws I could have. And I know there are some of my clients, including a photographer. She has her six-month-old because she uses her baby all the time. She has her six-month-old on the payroll.

That’s great. I love it. I have an eight-month-old, so I don’t know if I would use him for anything in my business, but I have to think about that. Social media posts. Maybe something. And when I didn’t pay them more. So there’s each year, there’s a threshold. And this year, it’s 12, 600.

And again, I’m not a tax expert, so I don’t always keep—my tabs on those things. But I believe it’s 12,600 this year. I never paid them more than that because they didn’t get all their taxes back up to that point. So I didn’t pay them more than that. It sounds like a win-win for the business, for you, for your kids, and their cell phones. Because they’re in the business now when they got cell phones, and I put them on my business plan, and they do work in the business. I was able to make the most of being a business owner. There are all sorts of things you can do. There are hacks written for business owners.

And when we realize that, the government rewards us for being in business. That’s where the magic is. Awesome. It gets super exciting. That’s great. I love it. And did we go over the third key? So, three keys were doing your tracking. So that you can maximize your deductions, that was number one.

 You want to ensure that you are, and I love making sure that people are audit-proof so that it doesn’t mean you’re not going to get audited, especially with the, what was it? 11, 000 or 11. I don’t even know how many. Many new IRS agents are auditing small businesses because they know that we don’t do our books well.

So we want to become audit-proof, which means still tracking your stuff and making sure your paperwork is aligned to support what your books say. You have to have a piece of paper to support those expenses, and you have to have, if you look at your balance sheet, you have to have a document that will support each number on that balance sheet.

That’s what they’re going to look for. They will look at your credit card, and you must ensure you have proof of your expenses. You can’t just say it’s a business expense just because you bought it. From your home office, which could be your bed or your couch, doesn’t mean it’s a business expense, right?

You can now be strategic with your cash flow to grow it because when you grow your cash flow, and you can keep more money, now we can survive when there’s a shutdown, right? Many businesses that worked with me and followed my suggestions, had the cash flow set up to survive the three and six months shutdown.

They could go through it and sail through it without a problem because they had listened to some of my advice about having that emergency fund that you bill from having a good cash flow. That’s awesome. Negative cash flow, sales, it’s not all about sales, right? You can have a million dollars in sales, but if it took you 2  million to make those sales, you now have a negative cash flow, and you could have gone to the beach and done nothing and made more money.

 That’s a really good point. Unfortunately, we should have gone to the beach at that point. And I love those three keys because it sounds really simple the way you put it, and it doesn’t sound like it could be any simpler for us. But if we need help with this, can you help?

I am available in multiple ways, so you can always hire me. You can go to E and M bookkeeping. E and M are my children’s initials and backward. It’s me. I am not the most creative person, so it came from this. But I also have what’s called moneymaking mamas, and it is on Facebook and Instagram with a private group for women-empowered moneymaking mamas, where I give a lot.

Free content to help you do all these things. I also have courses available at Krista McLellan where you can sign up for a membership and access the courses, or you can work with me in A group setting where we go through every month I go live. We talk about one of the parts of the course and answer questions.

I’ll teach for one week, and then a couple of weeks later, I’ll answer questions so you can implement it. Or you can always set up a one-on-one with me, and we can say, okay, where are your pain points? Where are you at? And how can We make the most of this for you for what you need? I have a DIY membership for women who are doing it themselves.

And so instead of having to pay me all the time to help them, we have a monthly meeting where, okay, we answer questions. I want to give you examples of next steps of what you need to do. I usually give homework. We record the session so you have it to review later every month. I’m your accountability accountant, is what it comes down to.

I ensure that you’re staying on track and doing what you need to do so that every month end, you will be year-end ready. You won’t worry about tax season. I love it. Those are so many valuable ways. It sounds like there’s no way that. Anybody cannot work with you if they need help.

You’ve covered every single last little objection I don’t have time. If I don’t have money, could you do this? I don’t have, like, resources or both or whatever. It sounds like you’ve covered all of the bases. That might be your accounting side, but I’m not sure.

I think it comes from. It’s everything I wish I had when I started. I learned some very hard, humbling, expensive. Lessons, and I don’t want someone else to be in that position. So, whether you need some free content, I try to throw it up on Instagram. I have both E&M Bookkeeping on Instagram and money-making mamas.

I have the private group is just for women because women do things a little differently than men’s business. So, I like to cater to women. And when I say money-making mama, it doesn’t mean you have to have human children. Sometimes, you’re a money-making mama with fur babies. Sometimes, you’re just the mama of the business because you’re taking care of everybody else.

And you’re the mama, and they come to you, look to you, and you’re nurturing and putting everyone together. So it’s any woman. It’s being a woman in business, whether it’s your husband’s business that you’re running your own business or a side hustle that you’re doing part-time while working full-time.

It’s a very broad range, so I give all the information I wish I had, whether it’s little bite-sized chunks on social media or in the courses, which, again, I don’t want to sell each course individually because. With a membership, you can now access all the information, and it’s all recorded.

You don’t get access to me directly, but if you want access to me and the group setting, I can answer questions and teach you. We can have those discussions. I like the group program because we meet once a month, and we get to interact where here’s my teaching in-depth, sharing a screen.

And then let’s do some Q and A. Where did you get stuck? What was hard? What are you stumbling on? Some people want the 1 on 1, and that’s okay too. Those are all extremely valuable, and I’m excited that you’ve been here to share this wisdom with us. Where is the best place for people to reach out to you?

I would say on Facebook, Money Making Mamas, or E& M bookkeeping, and I will share the links with you so you can share them with your audience. And if you’re a female, you can join the Empowered Money Making Mamas if you want, if, which I assume with The Determined Mom show, we’re all women.

Check me on social media to see if you connect with me and if I speak your language. And if you want more, you can always reach out through social media. All right. That sounds great to me. Thank you so much, Krista, for being here with us and sharing your amazing expertise, knowledge, and experience through all of the things you’ve been through.

Thank you for having me because women need to know we can do it. We can, we’ve got this. And it’s not that you’re not good with money. It’s that no one showed you how. That’s very powerful and very true. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.

Picking together a marketing plan with what you hear, watch, or read online while tempting is never a good idea. The truth is people don’t search on social media for your services; even if they do, they will still go to Google to check your ratings. You need a cohesive, proven marketing system to avoid leaking clients and customers through giant holes in your customer acquisition bucket.

Let’s talk about what else isn’t working: posting tirelessly on social media, tracking followers as a business metric for success, paying for ineffective marketing, buying glossy ads and coupon magazines, spending time replying to comments, paying others to manage your social media with no actual sales coming in.

Do you know what is going to work? A proven marketing system will plug every hole in your pocket. It allows you to fill up with new customers and retain and nurture your current ones. Go to TDM marketing and download our free guide to six marketing musts guaranteed to get you more customers. 

The 3 AI Tools You Can’t Afford To Miss

Welcome to episode 255 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tinto. And today, I want to talk about. The three podcasting tools that you cannot afford to mess. As all podcasters know. These tools can make or break your podcast editing process. And also your content process. So, the three tools that I’m going to share with you. 

Our pod status. Which tracks your. Rankings in the podcast industry. Castmagic, which is an AI content creation tool for podcast videos. It can help. Pretty much anyone. That creates content video. Audio, you could even throw a meeting in there. It will turn some content into magic. 

The other one is Descript, which is where I’m recording this. And as I’m recording, it is picking up. My audio. Audio. And I am going to share with you what that looks like. In the screen, if I can.  I am recording this simultaneously on my screen.  I will be sharing this video on YouTube for you to see. 

So you can see how it works. It’s amazing. So the first thing that we’re going to talk about. It is not going to be Descript. We are going to talk about. Castmagic. And I got to get descript off of here now. 

The reason for it is because. It allows you to upload. File. Or you can connect your RSS feed or your YouTube channel. We’re Descript, and I still need to do this, but. It allows you to connect to any of these things. Or upload your file, which I have my team upload files individually as we go. 

I should probably connect one of these three cause I have all three. I still need to do it, but anyway, what happens is. It will. You can grab all the assets you need for that particular episode. So let’s go ahead and go to 2 54, which is our last episode. It is. Freaking. Freaking amazing. 

It has an AI content. So it does the transcript, which descript does transcript to which, It’s straightforward.  But if you want AI content, this is where it’s at. So you can get up to 15. 50 different. Pieces of content. Just from uploading one piece of audio. More video. For example, this gives you different title options. These are some different title options. We had already decided on the title option when we. 

I recorded this. Some keywords give you what you want to do. Keywords for LinkedIn or Instagram. Ma’am. The hashtags. This would be great. To use for hashtags. 

It also gives you an. Introduction. If you wanted to. You can do an introduction. I do that. And you can copy. I see that. Please feel free to modify it. So if you don’t like what it says, click Modify. And it will be rejected. Regenerate another. Another version of that. This I love for YouTube. So, it gives you a time-stamped overview. And if you ever optimize any of your YouTube videos, this is one of the things that. 

You do love, so it’s going to. You can boost your content up there. It allows you to copy that content on the start-timestamped overview and paste it into your YouTube description. There are questions. How did Carlucci get started in business consulting and networking? So if you wanted to. 

You could do a. Let’s say, a training video. It will generate questions for you. Ask the people who watch the training videos engaging questions. Very interesting stuff. It gives key topics and bullet points. So the primary topic is Carlucci’s background and networking experience. However, it’s like that, but not really. 

And I want also to stress that anything AI is a starting point. Okay. You don’t want to copy and paste this—word for word. Obviously, you want to review it, so you’ll copy whatever you want and then paste it. And make sure you edit and review all of those things. It also gives you a real script. So, if I wanted to do a reel, then this is what it would look like. It gives you four different tips that are taken away from this amazing. 

It also gives you another voiceover. Very cool. And then it also gives you a LinkedIn post, which I’m assuming you can use on Facebook, Instagram, or wherever you want. But I love that it provides you with LinkedIn because I focus on LinkedIn primarily for my content. And it also gives you a newsletter, which. 

You can use it for me; I send an email so we can use this to send an email to you. The listener. Gives you a tweet thread. So it gives you, let’s see how many tweets are in here. I think 12 different tweets. Too. Tweet about. All while adding different hashtags and things. I really should start using all of these things, but. 

It gives you very new threads. There are very few social media platforms that already have. Integration for threads, but threads, it gives you different threads that you can post on threads. I am not on threads again. Some of this stuff isn’t for me to use, but it might be for you. I wanted to share this with you if you need help extracting content from your podcast, as I do. 

This is such an amazing tool—magic chat. We’ll also generate things for you if you say. If there’s something that you want from your podcast that you still need to actually. You haven’t gotten it yet from that AI content button. You can type it in. So this is an example of summarizing this transcript in Spanish, ten words, max. 

Which is awesome. You can do it in different languages. It has many different languages you can translate things into, which is awesome. It also does—a clip finder. So you can do quotes, hooks, timestamps, all of those things. 

Cast magic is worth its weight in gold. It saves so much time. It will save your team time. It will save you money in the long run. The following tool I will talk about is pod status, which is very cool. It gives you reviews and rankings of your podcast. So it’ll give you How many reviews you have. It’ll give you. 

It’ll give you how many reviews you have. It’ll give you everything that you need to see what the current status of your podcast is. So you’re just going to add your podcast and click on it. And you can actually see how many reviews you have, and these are all going to be on iTunes. 

And you can see what the people are saying about your podcast. So if you’re looking for a particular review, you can actually search. If you’re looking for a particular country. You can do that. It looks like I have reviews from the United States, Australia, and Canada, which is great. It also gives you daily ranks. 

And 30 days Top ranks and then report. So if you go into reports, you can actually do last year, you can do 180 days, 90 days, 30 days. The last 24 hours, unfortunately. I am not ranking in any country in the last 24 hours because it’s been. A while since I released an episode, probably a few days, 

not going to be ranking, but it’s awesome. And it is $5 a month. You can’t beat that. So that is the second tool. Amazing. The third tool. It is the one that I’m using to record this. And it’s called Descript. It is absolutely amazing because, as I showed you before, It is. 

Transcribing this podcast as I speak. And. Maybe not as I speak. It looks like it’s a little bit delayed, but. It is doing it for me. And you see these little underlined ums. So, all of these ums can be removed with a click of one button. And it will actually cut it at the exact right time. I used to spend hours or have my team spending hours on it. 

Audacity. Removing all of those ums and AHS and S like and sows and all of those things I say so a lot. So you’ll see that in here. On this video, but you’re not going to see it. As much in the actual In the actual. Final recording. Very cool. It will. Just take everything out that you don’t want. It actually also. 

Removes word gaps, and it will automatically transcribe any audio you put in. So you can see here that I had put in my introduction. And I can just click on a button and transcribe that. It also has a studio audio editor. That allows you just to click. And it will allow you to edit the audio and make it studio-quality. It is amazing. 

If you are interested in. Trying any of these tools, the links to them. Are in the show notes to this episode. They are. As I said, they are amazing tools. I think Descript is 144 a month. Pod status is $5 a month. And then I do believe. The Castmagic is somewhere between 20 and $30 a month. I can’t remember exactly how much, but definitely check them out there again. You spend 20 or $30 on a tool that will save your team hours of time. Totally worth it. And it will also save you hours of time, especially when you’re creating content. 

Major Mistakes to Avoid When Networking to Grow Your Business with Carl Lucchi

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and I have the amazing Carl Lucci with me. He is a business consultant with Success Builders, and the founder of a networking organization called I Refuse to Fail. Welcome Carl. Hey, thanks, Amanda. I’m very excited to have you here because I’ve known you.

At least a couple of years now, which is amazing. And we met on Alignable, which is like another version of LinkedIn. And I am very excited to have you here because I’ve done business networking with you. And I’ve learned a lot of really unique things about business networking from you.

And that’s why I wanted to have you here to share that with our audience. So tell us a little bit about how you got started and what you’re doing, business consulting and networking, and all of the things. I’ll give you some background and keep this as short as possible. In about 2009, I was doing some business consulting.

And Amanda, you’re not going to believe this, but I found out that I didn’t know everything, and I know it’s hard to believe. I was networking and helping people, but there were many things they needed that I needed to be an expert at, and I learned something different from you with the Google business profiles.

I want to avoid learning it. I don’t know it, so I need somebody like you. And, of course, you’re under my umbrella of things, of people that I referred to help them. And so I thought, I went to one of these things called the networking meeting, which I’d never been to before.

And I did things the same way they did it. You go there, you pass out business cards, you do an elevator pitch, you set up a one-on-one, you do all the same things, right? So this was good.  I was talking to the gentleman the one I was going to. He was trying to understand more about networking and said he had many members, but he was getting out of it and having a history of being a business developer.

I bought a Tampa Bay Networkers domain name and was still determining what I would do with it. But I thought I would return this to him and see if he. We wanted to utilize that and would do what all the platforms do today. I was just too far ahead of my time.

Like a line on Facebook, all this was new, but he didn’t want to do anything with it. And I thought I’d developed this thing. I could do something with it because networking would be an excellent way to meet people I could get to know and trust enough with my clients.

Of course, I thought that’s what everybody did with networking. So that was wrong. The mindset was, so I started Tampa Bay Networkers and kept telling people that this was a place I could go, and they could go online and see different people’s profiles, just like you do on some of these other platforms.

But nobody got it. They said, where are your meetings, Carl? So you’ll have to hit me over the head about ten times for me to start paying attention. I had to start my meetings. So, I cloned my meetings, just like I had learned from other meetings. And I did that. I started it in 2010, and it’s still there, but I was there to meet people, which I thought everybody else was to help them.

Help the people they meet. In other words, to build an umbrella of people, they know, like, and trust. And then, I was sitting in this chair in 2017 and realized this only works for some people. It worked for some people, but for most people, they quit networking, and I’ve met hundreds, if not thousands, of people over the set for seven years.

And so, as a business consultant, I tend not to do something anymore when something’s not working. I stopped. Personal networking. I left the organization there. I put it there for other people’s meetings, and they did what they wanted. I stopped networking and started tearing it apart from when I got in your car to when you got home when everybody primarily did face-to-face networking.

And I found some significant reasons it wasn’t networking because I did polls. I did surveys. I asked other people. I went to other groups and just watched. Then, I developed a formula that works better for networking because there are some significant areas of networking where people are making a mistake, and the groups are making a mistake.

But it’s not their fault. The reason why it’s that way is because that’s all they knew to do. They went, this is the way it was done. They copied that they do what everybody else does. So they follow the sheep, sometimes taking them off a cliff if it’s not working. And that’s not to say it doesn’t work for some people, but I found it was not working for most people.

I created a formula that worked better for networking. My philosophy is that you can only fix something if you know what they don’t know. You can only fix something if you know why it’s not working.  I looked at those aspects and tried to flip them around to where they would work. And that created this formula. I started doing live events in 2019, trying to test this to see if my formula worked.

I was getting terrific feedback. People said, Carl, I’m not networking as much, but I’m getting better results, and it’s working. So I thought, okay, I’m onto something. So I’ll continue to do that. COVID hit, and I couldn’t do that anymore. And so I found Alignable. Online, which is like LinkedIn Light for anybody who needs to learn what it is.

It’s not LinkedIn. It’s not Facebook. It’s somewhere in between. And I didn’t care for their platform, but I figured I would hang in for a while. And then they asked me to help them form groups and events and things like that. And I did that for about 2. 5 years and agreed to disagree with them on some things.

 I decided to go out independently and formed a group called. I refuse to fail. And through that group, I want you to know this is not about you. This was about helping other people. And once they get that concept, they can qualify. It’s not about selling people.

It’s about assisting people. So that’s how I got to where I am today with this. I utilize the same formula that I had, but I do it through osmosis because when people get into the organization, they have to follow the guidelines to do it. And there are just some major areas.

Would you like me to cover some of those areas? I would love to hear those areas because I’ve attended some of your networking meetings, and I know that they are drastically different than a typical you go around the room and give a minute.

Elevator pitch and all of that stuff. So please go ahead and tell us what’s different from everything you discussed. I liked what you said when driving in the car there. There’s a mindset about it. Preparation goes into attending a networking event, whether live or virtual; talking about those things will help us prepare whether we are doing it live.

I know more and more of those live ones are coming back, but I love to hear all that. This formula works no matter where you’re at. It’ll work at any event you go to, no matter what they tell you have to do. Because it’s pretty close to what they’re doing, but it’s just tweaking it a little to make it work better.

And yes, you should have a purpose when you’re driving to an event or online, getting ready to go to an event. There should be a reason why you’re doing it, and it should not be to go there to sell people. That’s different from what you’re networking for. Suppose you’re going there to sell people. Go to a trade show.

That’s where you sell people. Put up a booth, advertise, and hopefully, somebody comes by and says, I want one. But I’ve asked hundreds of people why you attended networking meetings.  I went there to build relationships. Why didn’t you go to a bar? You can go there and drink and have fun, and somebody will get drunk, and they may even buy what you have, or you might get a date.

What the heck? I don’t know how you’re going to build relationships. Let’s be honest. You’re going there because you have a product or a service that you want to promote yourself. Nothing wrong with that. That’s what everybody does in business networking. It’s how you handle it when you get there. I also asked the same people, did you go there to buy anything?

And this date has yet to raise an answer. I went there looking to buy something. I’ve never had it happen. So if you’ve got a hundred people going to an after-hours event, okay, live or online, going there to sell stuff, and a hundred people, those same people will not go there to buy anything.

 I thought there’s got to be a better way. So you go there with the idea. In my mind, I was building a team of unpaid salespeople. You’re going there to find somebody like Amanda that I get to know over time; it only happens in one meeting, and I will not give you a referral.

I’ll talk about referrals in a minute. I have to get to know her because my name is on it. If I connect you with someone, I get to know Amanda and then put Amanda. Under my umbrella. So that when I’m talking to somebody, Amanda is at the top of my mind. Amanda is somebody, my goodness.

This person could avail herself of Amanda’s service. And then I make that connection.  So if you go there with the intent of building a team of unpaid salespeople and you do that over time, it’s not; hey, this is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. It’s not something you do every time you go to do that. You take the time to do that. You’ll find you’re going to get a lot more success.

Number one. So that’s the first thing. So, what is your intent? And then everybody, the holy grail of networking is the elevator pitch. Okay. I don’t allow those in my meetings. I don’t particularly care for them because they’ve turned elevator pitches into mini seminars or elevator sales pitches, and nobody gives a damn what Carl does.

So why do I need to give you a pitch? I’ve simplified that, and the people who come to my meetings regularly get 15 seconds to introduce their name, business name, and business category. Hey, I’m a business consultant. And then say, I can’t wait to meet you to learn what you do.

So that’s really what you do. You get that out of the way. So you get your name, your business name. Okay. And they can put that in the chat. And then, I don’t know how many times you’ve heard it, but somebody will get up and say, I have a solution for you that will cure your ills, and this is what you need to do.

And I can’t wait to show you this because it will fix your problems. That’s what people do. And that’s an elevator sales page versus an elevator pitch. Okay. An elevator pitch should be no more than an introduction and an offer to meet people. When you’re doing live meetings, people go around also in the handout.

Business cards. Okay. Business cards have about three major purposes. Okay. If you’re in a contest to see who can collect the most, they’re really good because I had boxes of them that I couldn’t take with me everywhere. I had enough. I could have wallpapered three houses. Okay. I couldn’t carry them with me, but I collected them because everybody passed them out, and you got them, right?

Suppose you’re in the business of a competition to see who can collect the most, maybe. They’re great for getting spinach out of your teeth because you can get the end here. They’re really good for that. And the other one is I have business cards when I do live events, but if somebody says, Carl, do you have a business card?

I’ll say, yes, I do. What would you like it for? I want to know why they want it. I can refer somebody to I don’t do referrals. I’m sorry. What do you mean? You don’t do referrals. That’s why I only make connections. I get probably 50 to 100 referrals a year.

The people that Oh, Carl, I told somebody about you. They know you’re not going to sell them. You gave me your phone number, and I gave you your card. I got to call you. They don’t call because everybody thinks you’ll sell them anyway when you call. I don’t do that. The way I do it, Amanda, is if I meet someone I think Amanda can help, I’ll tell that person I’ve got a connection.

Her name is Amanda.  And she handles Google business profiles. She works with my clients. So I’m doing that. When would be a good time for me to have Amanda contact you? Now, number one, I find out they’re interested. Then, I assured them that Amanda was not going to call them. To sell them, she will contact them to educate them or explain what she does.

And then, if it works, that’s a wonderful thing because I would instead get ten solid referrals a year, or excuse me, ten solid connections a year versus a hundred referrals that have yet to contact me. Okay, so you need to train the people you’re talking to to make connections versus just giving out referrals.

 I don’t care whether it’s online, email, whatever. They don’t work. So that’s another aspect that is a big mistake. Setting up at least one with someone doesn’t have to be relevant to your business.

It doesn’t have to be the thought that someone will send you business. It should be. How can you help that person? Not how they can help you, and you should set it up.  I say I have a one versus a one-on-one. I say that because when I used to go to live events to test this out, you’d go into, and there might be 100 people there.

If you go to a meeting with 100 people, it doesn’t matter whether 6 or 100, you will only meet about 6. So I go up to someone. I never wore a name badge or anything. I advise people not to do that. That’s like putting a billboard on to get people to walk away from you when you’re at an event.

You want to go up and say, ” Amanda, I’m Carl. What do you do? And Amanda tells me what she does. And then she’ll say, Carl, what do you do? I’m a business consultant, but really, I want to find out a little bit more about what you do. And you keep gearing it back to Amanda, and then at some point, you say, what?”

We can’t do this all night. I’ve got a lot of people to meet. Let’s sit down and have some coffee, or can we do it on a Zoom call? Some people might utilize your service, but I would like to get to know you better. Would that be okay?  But Carl, what do you do?

We’ll talk about me again now that those two things, number one, show that you’re interested versus trying to be interesting, okay? And that you truly were there to help someone else. That is a good start for someone to say, you know what, this person was interested in me and what I do because that’s why they were doing anyway, so you’d be interested in what they do.

You can just take yourself out of the equation. And I hear people right now pulling their hair out. But how are they going to know what I do? Trust me, you get to know them. They’ll want to know what you do, and now you do it. And so you take that time to develop that relationship, right? The typical one-on-one is, Okay, Amanda, what do you do?

I can’t wait till she shuts up so I can talk about what I do because I don’t care what Amanda does. Okay. And about eight out of 10, that’s what it is. Some people know how to do it correctly and don’t get me wrong, but most do not. Okay. And you don’t want to waste your time with people who will waste your time.

And there’s a lot of them because they don’t know any better. It’s not their fault. It’s the way they were taught.  And then, once again, it goes back to the connections instead of referrals. You don’t want to say, I got somebody I’ll refer to you. I’m going to, once you give John a call, I know this guy, John, or I’ll tell John to call you.

Don’t do that. Could you take the time to connect that triangle and keep yourself in the loop? And then you get back. Amanda, did you get with Fred? Oh, geez, Carl. I forgot. Guess what? Amanda only gets connections.  Or I got with Fred. It’s great. Thanks for the connection, Carl, and then, hey, that’s great.

Guess what? Amanda now thinks more of Carl. So Carl’s more likely to get a connection. This is not brain surgery. This is pretty simple, but it’s just tweaking what people have been doing. Your goal is to do this. It is to build a team of unpaid salespeople, but it’s your methodology.

And that’s what we do in the I refuse to fail partnership. I only allow some people into the partnership to ensure they’re there for the right reasons. My name is on it. And the reason why I call it, I refuse to fail. I get some feedback on that, too. It’s okay to fail. Carl. No, I think failure is like death.

It’s pretty final. Okay. It’s okay to stumble. It’s okay to fall. So, could you get a pivot? It’s okay to get back up. Keep going. Just refuse to fail, refuse to die. Don’t allow anybody to tell you that’s going to happen. Keep doing it and ask for help. Everybody needs, that’s putting on my.

My consulting hat, but it’s okay to ask. I do it all the time. I’m older than water. I’m still asking questions. I’m still getting it.  So anyway, between that and you don’t have to be the head of an organization to do it. I happen to be the head of the organization demanding other people do it this way, but you can do that with your own business.

I think of it like competition. I think of people like trying to take the ball from each other. I love what you said. I was like, oh, my goodness. That makes so much sense. Carl. Just that. So go ahead and give it to him. 

That’s what they want. So go ahead and give it to them. They’re going to like you for that and trying to battle them. That’s a good analogy. Do you mind? No. You can go ahead and go ahead. I remember years ago, I was a credit union manager, and I would have to go to As a credit union representative, I would be forced to go to these chamber events.

And, of course, there are ten other credit unions. There are 20 other banks. There are credit card processors. There’s everyone, and their mother is like. It’s just a fight to talk to the most people. As you said, collect and give the most business cards; my area supervisor would want to know how many business cards.

Did you collect? I had to know she had to know that. And I was like. All right. Please give me your business card, everyone. I don’t. I’m not even talking to them. I need to form quality. No connections. I’m just literally, oh my gosh, my supervisor wants all of these business cards. So I’m just going to go collect them.

Like it doesn’t make sense, I love this methodology. Networking and I love that it works virtually and in person. So there’s no excuse for people after they’ve heard this episode to use that traditional networking, and you have to remember there’s really.

There are three types of networkers. There’s the uninformed, not their fault. They need to be made aware. They’re just, oh, that’s what you do. It’s not anybody’s fault. It’s not even the fault of the groups. They’re just cloning their group after other groups. It’s the same thing.

And then there’s the, what I call the nomad. That’s the person who jumps from networking meeting to networking meeting in hopes that somebody will buy what they have. That’s like throwing mud against the wall. Maybe every once in a while, even a blind squirrel gets a nut occasionally, but it won’t happen.

You’re not going to develop relationships. And then there’s a professional networker who understands why they should be there. Okay. Those are the only three types. And the idea is that what I’m trying to do is one person at a time, or in small groups, retrain people’s brains about it.

Networking and how it should be done. It takes work. It is a marathon. Okay. It does take time. And the other thing is if you’ve got a favorite event you go to, for heaven’s sake, invite people to go to it. If you feel it’s a quality event. The last thing I tell people at every event is if you like what we’re doing, please invite somebody like me here so we can get to know them, and possibly they can help us, or we can help them.

If you prefer to avoid the meeting, don’t tell anybody. And, of course, it gets a chuckle, but almost everybody that is not a nomad jumping from meeting to meeting, they come back, and now we’re developing a strong group. And these events we have every Wednesday are free at this taping time.

They’re every Wednesday, and they’re on Zoom. We don’t do any live events, but we do that. And then the partnership is something separate. And I, what I do is I use the live events to find those. You have to walk through the weeds to find the flowers. I find those right people who use the big Ziegler philosophy that we follow: if you help enough other people in life, get what they want, you’ll get what you want.

And that’s our philosophy. And then when I get those people under my umbrella, now I’ve got, I’ve got people out there doing it the right way with other people. So we can spread the word and get networking. On a straight and narrow, it needs to be done.

I do free consult consulting. I don’t charge people.  I give everybody a year free to consult. I’m not a coach. I won’t coach, but I will consult them on their business or any part of it. And they can contact me through iRefuse2Fail.

Have a one-on-one or whatever they want to do. That’s awesome. Thank you so much. And I truly appreciate you and everything that we do together. But this has been a lot of fun, and I’m very happy that we, you, were here to share your knowledge. I appreciate it, Amanda. Thank you, Carl.

Everything You Need to Know about Apple Business Connect

Welcome to episode 253 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and if you are wondering why my voice sounds like this, please go back and listen to episode 243. 

Looking forward to sharing this with you today, it is a huge deal, and so much information needs to be gone over with this. The good thing is that we have not only this to go over with you, but we also have a download that you can use to make it easy to follow a step-by-step process.

So we will be talking about everything you need to know about Apple Business Connect. If you know about it, you’re probably wondering why she is waiting six months to talk about this. I am waiting six months to talk about it because I was recovering from being on life support in January.

So I was totally out of the loop, and I was out of the loop until about April, and I’m just starting to catch up back on things in my business. So definitely need to make sure that as I uncover these things and get around to thinking about them and talking about them, I share them with you.

So what is Apple Business Connect? In January, Apple upgraded its Apple Maps listing to Apple Business Connect. And it’s basically like Apple’s answer to Google Business Profile.

Apple Maps was like that before, but this has got a lot of upgrades. Let’s go ahead and talk about Apple Maps and why it would be important for you to focus on that now and get your listing to be taken care of.

There are over 1 million users who are currently choosing Apple Maps every single day. They’re using Apple Maps versus Google Maps. Google Business is my number one favorite place for you to focus on your business. There are other people out there that use Apple products.

I’m an Android user, but we want to capture the other end of the market. They’re using Apple products. And I’m sure that a lot of our listeners are using Apple. That is a great thing. If you like Apple, good for you. And here’s how you can capture all of your fellow Apple lovers.

So the first thing you’re going to do is claim your listing. You need an Apple ID to do this if you are an Android user. Could you make sure that you get an Apple ID? That’s going to be your first step. One thing that I want to go back to is, literally a couple of decades ago, we would have laughed at someone if they said, if you’re not on the internet, do you exist?

We would have been like. Nobody needs to be on the internet, right? 30 years ago, 20 years ago, that is not the case now because the internet is in every single person’s pocket, nearly every single person. Most of us need the internet to make a living.

So it is absolutely, positively necessary to be discoverable on the internet. And Google Maps is no longer the only way to do this now that Apple Maps has upgraded this Apple Business Connect profile.

We want to ensure that after you have your Apple ID, you will want to claim or create your listing. So if you have a brick-and-mortar store, your listing will most likely be there. Or you made an Apple Maps listing a long time ago. You will want to go in and upgrade all of that information.

 You’ll see that your business will now appear on Apple Maps. You’re going to be able to display limited one-time offers. And you’re going to be able to make announcements to Apple users as well. Users will be able to look for your business through Siri.

So they’re going to be able to say, Hey Siri, show me the best ice cream shop around me. You’re also going to benefit from the ever-growing iOS user base. So those Apple lovers, if you are one, You know that you guys are like diehard Apple-loving fans. You have an Apple MacBook, you’ve got the iPad, you’ve got the phone.

You love it. All those people expanding into that market will also be your users, and you can capture them as well. And the cool thing about this is that Apple Maps users, For example, can also use Google Maps, but Google Maps users typically can’t also use Apple Maps because if you have an Android, you can only get Google Maps there.

The Apple version, Apple Maps, is going to fail to work. Here is an insight there for you. And you’ll see your business’s performance and engagement on Apple Maps. So they have some metrics that you can track, and you’re going to be able to see how much people are engaging, much like Google Business Profile.

That is amazing. There is a simple and quick method to getting your business on Apple Maps. You’re going to claim your listing, and one of the benefits of doing this, much like Google Business Profile, is that you need help to make changes to your app listing. Someone can go on if you still need to claim your listing, just like on Google, and claim your business.

You want to ensure you’re the first to do it. You get your business claimed and start updating, ensuring the information is accurate and getting found by your ideal customers. You’re also going to be able to customize your listing, so then that way, you can get clients and customers To know exactly why they need to hire you, buy your service, and buy your product.

 You can also post photos from the business if you like. Just like Google Business Profile, you can post photos of the inside of your business, your products, and your services.  

 Even if you don’t sell necessarily like a product, you can use it for your service-based business as well. You are also going to be able to share your business within iMessaging. So it’s going to make it easier for people to say, Hey, want to go to wherever and it’s going to be able to, you’re going to be able to share it a little easier in text messages on iPhone.

The other cool thing is that there is a business chat, and it also helps you to leverage Apple Pay so you can integrate your Apple Pay. Payments are easier with the Apple Business Connect connectivity, whatever you call it. So these are all reasons you should make sure you go and claim your Apple Business Connect today.

And if you would like to, go ahead and download our free guide. And this guide is the Apple Business Listing Blueprint. It’s a step-by-step guide to getting your business promoted in Apple Maps on Siri, and even more so, you can go to her website, which is TDM, and you’re going to go to Apple Business Listing Blueprint, and the link will be in the show notes to this episode too.

So you can click there. Wherever you’re listening to it, and you’re going to be able to find that, go and collect your listing, spruce it up, give it all the information that it needs, your hours, your details, anything that you can give it because you literally can’t afford to be on there, so definitely go and do that.

If you need help with that, please don’t hesitate to contact us. It’s at TD Marketing. We are more than willing to help you with that. And we do have Apple business connect to set up services available, but for now, you can go ahead and follow our step-by-step guide. It will guide you through every single step of what you need to do to claim or create your Apple business connect listing.

If you enjoyed The Determined Mom show, please leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Consider sharing with your friends and family you know would be interested in any of our episodes. We greatly appreciate it; that is how we can help more moms like you grow and prosper. Thank you, and have a great week.

How to Drive Targeted Buyers to Your Website with Tim Zhang

Welcome to this episode of The Determined Mom Show. I have the amazing Tim Zhang here, and we will talk today about how to drive targeted buyers to your website. Before we start, Tim, I would love to hear a little about you and how you got into the world. Into the online space and how you got into helping people to drive traffic.

That’s a good question right off the bat. I was starting strong. Let’s load the question. Years ago. So I used to be an actor for most of my life. I started acting when I was still in high school, got myself an agent, and went to acting school, yada yada. I was 1920. I started booking acting jobs.

I’m like; I’m going to be an actor forever. It’s great. And then, I reached my mid-twenties.  I had a quarter-life crisis. I’m just like, do I want to do this forever? Because I, when you’re an actor, it’s yes, you’re working on shows and stuff like that, but it’s not as consistent.

You may book a couple of gigs a year and still like waiting tables and doing all this other stuff. It’s because I know I can do more with my life. I know I was smart enough to do more, but I have yet to gain experience in anything else. So with experience or knowledge in anything, what do you do?

You become a realtor. Yay. And so I became a realtor. It took me a little while to get my real estate license, about half a year where it’s ground down. I started getting into real estate, and my first year in real estate was so difficult because I got into real estate being young and an artist.

Most people that get into real estate in their thirties, forties, or whatever they have, like a network, are looking to buy homes and are moving. I had no one in my circle looking to buy a house, and I live in Vancouver, a very expensive city. And all of my friends are young, broke artists.

It’s its high-ticket closing sales program. I got my shit together, and I joined the program, and it was. Life changing, and anybody who has never invested in a coach or bought any programs for me, I don’t know if I want to work with you. Cause you have; there are so many limiting beliefs to break.

And literally, the first two weeks of that program were breaking false beliefs about money, about, about business, about everything. And that just completely changed my life. And having learned sales and closing and mindset and all this other stuff, I’m like, okay, that’s cool. Real estate is not that interesting anymore because when I first got into real estate and started reading real estate books and, being a realtor, like you first get your license gun, I’m going to build like a kick-ass team.

I won’t be a millionaire, just selling houses left and right. And then once I got into the online space and saw how he was doing his business and learning about marketing and copywriting, how to get leads and stuff like that. And it’s okay; this is way more interesting. But I stuck around real estate for a couple more years just because I got a license, which was still my first year.

I didn’t want to throw that away. And so I kept real estate but knew that. I wasn’t going to be around forever. To short story long, I left and started my marketing agency after three years. And then that, that also had a lot of like education for me. I learned a lot during that time.

At least for me. It’s especially if you know how once it clicks in for you once you understand the process of creating offers generating customers, building lists, and all this, like business marketing. And it’s okay, you know how to do it. Why would you stop? You get to a point, and it’s you get it, and it’s easy.

So you have to take action. I love it. So for everybody listening, the thing that you’re going to do after this episode is take action. So what you’re going to learn, you’re going to go, and you’re going to take action.

Could you tell us how to drive targeted buyers to your website?

If you already understand this, ah, I get it, that thing, you have to implement it. Cause if you’re not in, if you, if this isn’t making you a ton of money, you’re not implementing it properly. And if you haven’t heard this before, this will change your life.

I promise to be with you. The. On the internet and in real life, it doesn’t matter, but I’m only talking about the internet. There are only three forms of traffic. That is it. Three forms of traffic that you borrow, traffic that you buy or slash rent, traffic that you pay money for, or there’s traffic that you own.

The traffic you borrow, you render by, and traffic that you own. That is it, then, and let me break this down for you. So if you are new to the internet marketing game, I can translate this into something you already understand. So let’s say you’re promoting a movie. I’m Tom Cruise, right?

And I’m coming out with a movie, and oh my God, this is amazing. And the new mission is impossible, which is great. I’m promoting it. What do I do? I. Work. I borrow other people’s audience. I go on. Let’s say, Jimmy Kimmel. I go on entertainment weekly. I go on. These people already have where your dream audience is.

We talk about the movie and stuff, your insane stunts, and stunts that I’ve done. And everybody’s watching Jimmy Kimmel. Oh, I’m going to go check out mission impossible, dead reckoning part one in theaters and watch Tom Cruz try to kill himself to entertain the rest of us.

And that is Tom Cruise, boring traffic to get people into theaters. Now, a way that you can. How can you leverage this in your day-to-day business? The people are ready. People were your dream audience, your dream buyers. They already exist somewhere. They are either on the internet or in real life.

Suppose everybody goes to your coffee shop every single morning. Talk to the coffee shop owners like, Hey, can we put can we do a collaboration and, put a sign here right at your front thing saying, Hey, if you use a discount code, coffee being 25, get a pro, get 25% off of buying my thing.

That’s it. That’s your tedious traffic in day-to-day life now on the internet space, which is so much easier. There’s a lot more potential, right? We do collaborations. We do joint ventures. We do JVs, right? So where on the internet are your dream buyers already congregating, right? Working your way in means adding value.

You are not paying money for it. So what does that mean? So on Twitter, you are building a Twitter audience, right? You’re adding value to that network. And so you are, you’re creating high-quality content and interacting with people, talking to people that have your dream audience and like making comments, making engagements, and then they’ll eventually start following you.

Local mom groups add value, right? And start networking with the moms out there. Do collaborate with a group. Lead it to do like a Facebook live or something like that, where they already have an audience, right? And you can get into podcasts, get into Amanda’s podcast and have all of their entrepreneurs listening to you and be like, ah, all of a sudden; you now have an audience you can tap your message into.

So that’s borrowing traffic now. There’s another example. People, a lot of people, don’t understand this. SEO is just borrowing traffic. SEO is you’re boring. Google’s, you’re borrowing traffic from Google. Google’s keywords that they’re already people are already searching for. And you’re just going in there working your way up now.

Pay traffic, paid traffic is when you rent or borrow or rent or buy other people’s traffic. So instead of going into, let’s say, Jimmy Kimmel and getting on the show, you are doing influencer collaborations, right? So instead of me coming in here and telling Amanda, Hey, I’d love to give your audience some content and stuff they find valuable.

So many people can say, Hey, come on to my website. I’m doing a show. If I’m not capturing if I’m not capturing the audience that is coming into my traffic source, I have nothing. Suppose I have a pizza shop. I have a pizza shop and say, ” Oh, come in and try Luigi’s pizza. And then you come in. Oh, Hey, get a; if you put it, give me your email and then give me your email, and I’ll give you a 15% off your next order or something like that.

Is now traffic that you own because with an email, you can build your list, and you can retarget that list for a lot cheaper money, right? If you go on, you go on a shoe site, right? You opt-in, and it is a, Hey, give us your email, and we’ll give you a 10% off coupon for buying your first pair of shoes at the shoe store.

You didn’t know it. You didn’t know it. That’s right. And right. And now they’re making threads because they’re tapping into an audience already on Twitter. Like people already use Twitter. But they’re not going to buy Twitter because Elon is crazy. And they don’t want to spend the money. And they know that there’s an audience of Twitter users that want to leave Twitter.

And get into six figures. And once you’re at six figures, you can work on your second one and start automating your first one. I love that advice. And you’re talking about only working on LinkedIn, for example, or only working on Twitter or wherever your ideal audience is. You’re only going to focus on that one.

I love that idea of just doing one at a time. Again, it’s just having coaching, a blueprint, and guidance from people. And this is all stuff that I’ve learned from. Guidance and people having that is important because a good example is, I’m starting a business.

So, I need a website. But it depends on your business, right? There’s a lot of, I think. Natural inklings that people end up falling into. They assume that’s the right way to go. They believe that’s, Oh, I better have a social media page. I better be on Twitter and like Instagram and all of these things.

No, that’s not the case. I have a client where I just went through their analytics with him the other day. And they got two sales from social media last year, and they called 184 from organic search right from SEO and I’m like? You don’t need to do social anymore. Just focus on other things.

Like you can reallocate that. Person to be doing something other than social posting because it costs money. It’s not making you money. And that’s, that part is more into just making data-driven decisions, like everything in business, it should be based on data and not how, Oh, it’ll be like this no, test and look at results and measure.

Your customers have a problem that they need to solve. Can you solve it? And do they believe that you can solve it? That’s it. So let’s say if you are if you have. So let’s say that’s why the bribe has to be something worthwhile and valuable to this customer right now, this minute. And so if you are doing e-commerce first purchase 15% off, 20% off, whatever it is, you can, that’s immediate.

Like value, right? So if they’re interested in your stuff, they’re going to enter that email and they’re going to buy, if they’re going to buy anyway, might as well just, here’s the 25, 20% off, whatever. If you’re selling anything else, it could be a book. It could be a; it could be a checklist.

It could be speaking directly to your audience, your dream audience. My dream audience is somebody who already knows what a funnel is. They already know who a funnel is and what a funnel is. So I could offer a bribe of Hey, here’s a funnel template, right? Here is a funnel checklist, right?

Before you launch your next funnel, before you create your next offer, it could be someone that already understands an avatar, right? Oh, here’s a high-ticket avatar worksheet for you. If you don’t know what that is right now, then this person would not want to buy it. Your bribe has to be something that speaks directly to the avatar that you’re targeting.

And also, it has to have enough value because this is a bribe. I’m bribing you for your email for me to market to you in the future. You can do that with any email marketing software now, right? As long as you, there are tons out there.

That’s awesome. That was my, that’s what I like to do. That’s my preferred method of bribery or data collection if you will. But I wanted to see if you preferred any other method. So that’s great. Just an ethical bribe. Yes, that’s all it is. I was going to ask you about the Dream 100.

So let’s talk about the Dream 100. The Dream 100 is a concept popularized by Lord, forgive me. I can’t, I love giving credit because I know I’m the inventor of nothing. None of this is, has come up to me. I don’t remember the guy’s name. I like everything that I’ve learned. Like I, I. I have a hard time coming up where it’s from, but if you look it up, you’ll figure out where it’s from.

I didn’t invent it. So the Dream 100, the idea is you’re making a list of the Dream 100 groups, people, keywords, wherever it is, wherever your dream audience is looking at right now. So if you are, let’s say if you are a, let’s say, a local business, if you’re a local business, if you’re a plumber, whatever, what is your dream?

You can talk to one hundred other local businesses, your dream, 100, pardon me. You dream 100 keywords that you can be a part of your dream. One hundred local blogs that you can be a part of. What is your dream? 100 Facebook groups that you can be a part of, right? Just make a list of the dream 100 places that your ideal customers are hanging out at right.

Now, your job is to get in there; you could work your way by offering a ton of value. Or buying your way in, right? So if your audience is more locally targeted, there are tons of local blogs if you’re doing B2B, right? Local, like local news things, right?

Local news stories, journalists, right? You could do press releases. And collaborate with a lifestyle columnist or local news bloggers; they’re all blogs now. Newspapers are doing that.

Cause you can either work your way in or you can buy your way in, buy your way in as faster, but doesn’t, but you don’t need to have money to start getting your way in. And sometimes, even ads get overlooked. Like I know, I don’t even look at the ads on Google. I look at the organic, and it could be; I don’t know if it’s just me because that’s what I do, but I always just.

Overlook the ads, and I go to the organic, right? It’s definitely like I’ve done Google ads as well. And so it’s a thing for me to where it depends on what I’m looking for. Like I can always tell when people run Google ads on broad keywords or phrases.

Or just a messy phrase? And it’s, Oh, this is what I’m looking for. But, like your ad copy is less relevant. I might click on a to see but for me, I think it’s in a perfect world; you’re doing both.

So you or your primary area of focus is on Google, right? You’re doing SEO and you’re doing ads, right? If your main Facebook. You’re working your way and building your organic audience, and building your organic group plus your running ads. So in a perfect world, you’re doing both.

Or even more, as you said, you can do many different things once you reach a certain level. Methods of traffic, but I would do both paid and free on one platform until you’re past six figures, then look at a second platform as you scale your first platform.

Cause once, cause money is just speed, right? Once you start running ads and once your offer is proven, it will be so fast. That’s very true. It is. And that’s one thing that many, at least, my clients struggle with. I want to pay you to do this, but at the same time, I need clients right now.

And it’s like SEO is a little slower. Google business is a little faster. Google ads are more instant, but they cost a lot. So it’s like always explaining those methods to them and how we can work all three of them to get a path to—all of the traffic they want. 

Google is pricey. Google. Especially depending on the industry, like attorneys and refers, you’re talking 40 per click. An attorney is the one targeting class action lawsuits that they’re willing to spend hundreds of dollars for one click for a very specific class action.

So they’re hiring other people to do more things. But if you have the time, go slow and work your way in, right? Send out emails, right? There’s tons of training out there on organic outreach, right? Strategies, cold email strategies, right? And be like, Hey, you’re not selling them anything, right?

Reach out to a blog post that asks if you can do a guest blog, especially if they’re local. And they need, they want more content like. If they’re getting even a couple hundred hits, a couple of hundred hits a month, and you’re giving them more free content for them to use, it’s a win for everybody.

And of course, in your article, you’re going to link back into Oh, this is my business, this is my offer, and that’s an essential part of, as far as that particular person, their content creation, sometimes it’s hard, to continuously come up with content, especially for a local blog or something like that.

Please stop it. If you’re selling like a jam, right? You’re not knocking on doors to sell your spot. If you’re selling a jam, you’re knocking on doors at grocery stores to see if they’re willing to carry this through inventory for their audience.

It makes so much sense. And that’s a great analogy. Stop trying to sell your shit. Oh, I have; I have a gadget here. Do you want to buy this gadget? No, fuck you. Go to the grocery store next door and ask, Hey, are you willing to carry my fidget spinner at your front desk? Yes. Way better.

That reminds me of the purses. What is that? 31 or something—the bag. I don’t know. I never bought one, but one of that purses, like multi-level marketing things. Okay. So you have the purse lady, and she’s just selling it to her friends like one on one. But then she gets the idea to host a purse bingo.

And that’s where it all happens. It’s like bingo but multi, like multi-level marketing. If you have a good product, the problem is that if you think about what we just talked about and applied, how can you apply it to multi-level marketing? You can; that’s the thing that multi-level marketing does, they target people.

Get a free digital edition of my book, which answers it’s really; I wrote this book mainly for coaches who are, again, finding winners and helping them win more coaches that already have a super busy coaching business. Still, it’s more offline, and they still need to build a scalable online profitable model.

And they could be more tech-savvy. And I simplify everything. That coach, because it’s, it can be daunting if you’re not tech-savvy and Oh my God, what is all this other stuff that I have to learn now? I want to coach people, make an impact, make them lose weight, quit smoking, midlife crisis, careers, and all that.

Mumbo jumbo is there’s an easy way. That’s awesome. I must get this book, even though I’m not a coach. But I love that concept of an easy way. Your book is the easy button for coaches. Is that right? For easy control for the nontechie coach struggling to get on the internet.

Awesome. So if that’s you, go and download the book right now. Thank you so much, Tim, for being here and sharing your wisdom with us. We appreciate it. And we’re all going to download your book right now. Sweet. I’m looking forward to it. Awesome Thank you so much.

How Google Business Profile Management Will Grow Your Business

Welcome to episode 251 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and today we will talk about how Google Business Profile Management will help you grow your business. Now, my voice is a bit off from what it used to be in some of the older episodes.

If you want to know what happened, you can listen to episode 243. Today we will talk about Google, my favorite subject, as you can tell from previous episodes. But I realized I may have never talked about how exactly will Google Business Profile Management grow your business.

It will grow your business exponentially. But first, I would like to give you some background on why. So what Google business profile does is give buyers info about your business right on Google. They don’t have to go anywhere. They don’t have to do any more searching. All the information that they need is right in front of them.

There are pictures; there’s your phone number; there’s your link to your website; there are services; there are products; there are testimonials. So they don’t need to go anywhere else to decide whether or not they want to call you, right? So that’s why Google Business Profile is amazing. The other amazing thing about it is you can now get messages.

You can get messages sent directly to your phone, like a notification. And those messages can bring you money and answer people’s questions. I see many of my clients, and I still have access to their listings, or if they’re current clients, I still have access to them.

And I see these messages coming through all the time, and the people that get a lot of business and a lot of messages are the people that are replying to them right away. If you turn on the messaging service, could you ensure you have… Your maps log in to whatever account that you have your Google Business profile on, and make sure that you’re checking and make sure that you have it set up to push to a text message for you automatically. A game changer there, and make sure you keep updating and posting and all those things. 

How can you use Google Business Profile Management to grow your business?

Let’s get an example, and an example of this would be a hair salon. I always use hair salons because it’s super easy and relatable, and it’s one of the brick and mortars that many people go to regularly. Let’s say you own a hair salon. And you have a Google business listing. How can you use that to grow your business? You’re able to use that.

By A, make sure that Google has all of your information. So every single thing on this profile listing needs to be filled out. It would be best if you had great pictures. Like any other social media platform, it’s visual and informational. So you’re going to have great pictures, you’re going to have accurate information, you’re going to have your hours listed accurately.

You’re going to ensure that everything you’re telling Google is accurate. You’re going to make sure that you have a great description. That’s using great keywords people are searching for to find you, such as best hair salon, best coloring, hair dyeing, processing, or whatever extensions you do.

So you want to ensure that you have those services that you specialize in and have those in your description and some location keywords. The next thing you will do is make sure that you reply to every review, whether positive or negative. And if you want more information on this, you can listen to episode 250 with Sylvia Ho.

And you’ll be able to find exactly what you need to say to those negative and positive reviews, if you don’t mind. Could you reply to every review because that is an opportunity? Your customer to put keywords in there, and if they don’t put those keywords, you can add them in. So this works for some industries but not as well for others because of confidentiality issues.

Sylvia brought that up on our episode, and she’s an attorney, so she can’t say, Oh, it was great helping you with X, Y, and Z, if the client still needs to reveal that. So with a haircut, It’s not as confidential, so that’s a different industry. So keep that in mind as you do this for your industry.

The other thing is that getting more reviews gives you more user signals, right? It gives Google more user signals, not you. And so the more reviews you have, the more popular your listing is, the more popular your location. The more people you have coming through the door helps you as well because, guess what?

Google tracks everybody. We already know that. They can tell you how busy any business is right now if you go to that business and it will give you Is it busier than usual? Not as busy? Busy as normal? All of those things, so that’s because Google tracks everyone. So the more users that are in your business, the better.

The more users leave reviews for your business, the better. Your reputation will be a huge part of it because Google reviews are the second-ranking factor for Google SEO. Number one is Google Business Profile, number two is Google Reviews, and then number three is your website.

The other thing that it’s going to allow you to do is show up in more searches, and the more searches you show up in, the more you’re going to rank, right? The higher you’re going to rank, the more customers you’re going to get. It’s just like a circle that leads back. It’s just an ecological circle just feeding into itself.

So the more you work on your Google business profile, the better. The other thing it’s going to do is it is going to give you opportunities every single day, even multiple times a day, if you want to share about your business. And when I say share about your business, I’m not talking about social media posts; I’m talking about what people are searching for.

So you’re going to wanna create posts that give information about your services, specifically things that people will be searching for on Google. So again, going back to the example of a hair salon, if I’m searching for the best hair extensions in Portland, Oregon. I am going to want to make a post about that.

If you want to find out what people are searching for to find you, you can go to your Google search console and see what searches I showed up for. What are people searching for to be able to come to my website? Those will be some of the searches you’re going to target.

You’re also going to target some of your services. For example, if you do a Brazilian blowout, You want to ensure that you have that as a post periodically. I just wanted to let you know that you want to provide a great picture. You’d like to provide a link to the book. You want to make sure that all of those keywords are in there. You want to make sure your location keywords are in there.

So Google is pulling data from every single thing that you put into Google, right? So it pulls it from your description. It pulls it from your products. It pulls it from your services. It pulls it from your reviews. It pulls it from your review responses, and it also pulls from your posts, your updates. So ensure you’re updating your profile regularly, ensuring all your information is accurate, and posting regularly.

That is what Google Business Profile Management is all about. Managing that profile so you get the maximum benefit for your business from Google. If you enjoyed this episode, please let me know. You can reach out atamanda@tdm-marketing.com. If you have any questions, feel free to contact me there.

And I usually hang out on LinkedIn. So if you want to connect, please send me a connection request. I am looking forward to connecting with you. And I thank you for listening. I hope you have a great week.

How to Respond to Negative Google Reviews with Sylvia Ho

Welcome to this episode 250 of The Determined Mom Show. I am your host, Amanda Tento, and in this episode, you’re going to hear an interview from one of my clients, Sylvia Ho, an attorney, and she is going to interview me about how to respond to negative reviews. 

Sylvia is a past optimization client, and she’s had huge success with her optimization, and she reached out to me and asked me if I would talk to her about negative reviews and how to respond because she had listened to a previous podcast episode. So it’s a little longer than normal, but I hope you enjoy it.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to my office today. We have a very special guest Amanda Tento, who is a Google business profile expert I know she’s an expert because I was directed to Amanda by a lot of Marketing social media marketing people as a person, so you did you don’t know Amanda your names have been spread among social media and Google professionals when they’re looking for somebody in the area of Google Business Profile. 

Did you know that? No, I didn’t know that. That’s great. That’s what I heard. That’s how I contacted you because they referred to you as the guru of Google Business Profile. So kudos to you. Thank you. It’s exciting. Why don’t you tell us a little about your background, how you got into your Google business profile, or what it used to be, Google my business? A world because I understand that you understand that world well. And right now, Google reviews are generating lots of business for people. And then, from our attorney’s perspective, it’s also hurting some people. 

Could you tell us about your background?

So years ago, I was a credit union manager and was pregnant with our third child and what we thought was our last child. And it turned out to be not, but that’s another long story. So I decided that I didn’t want to go back to the credit union after I had the baby and decided that I wanted to work from home.

I decided to be a VA I started out as a VA virtual assistant, and I ended up working for a marketing agency in Tacoma, Washington, and I still do some work for him to this day. He put me in charge of his customers, Google Business Profiles. And at that time, it was called Google, My Business. And I started posting to them and doing some updates and changing some things like updating pictures and just descriptions and things like that.

And I saw this huge immediate jump in their views in so many different metrics. And I was like, what is going on here? So then I thought this is getting them to the top of the maps, and this is about six years ago, but This is like shooting them directly to the top of the maps.

And I was like, what is going on? I’m onto something here, so I just started delving into that world and focusing on that as my primary focus of learning, experimenting, and creating, and it has been an amazing journey since then.

 I’ve dealt with hundreds of businesses like yours over the years. And it has just been an absolute joy to help people. It is my passion. It’s what I love to talk about. If you have ever listened to my podcast, all my solo episodes are almost all about Google My Business.

You, Amanda, have a podcast called the determined mom. And so it’s wonderful because it weaves your personal story along with great tips, just great tips.

And 1 of the podcasts I downloaded, because I picked out, was how to deal with Google reviews. Now, 1st, how to get good. Google reviews, but then that particular podcast talked about negative Google reviews. So from my perspective and my audience, they’re interested in both. 

How do I get good Google reviews?

How do I get moved up on Google? My. Google business profile is going to say Google my business. I wonder why they did this. And then what do I do with bad reviews? Because often my clients are not as concerned about the single bad review, but the vicious reviewer that. Defames them, so we’ll talk about that in a little while, but let’s talk about generally how Google works.

And you talked about Google Maps and I do know about that. And many people who have businesses don’t know that they might know that, but they might delegate it to someone to take care of, and some people are great. They have hundreds of. Great reviews and they shoot up to the top of the list and other people are not so good.

They might have one review. So why don’t you talk about that? So gathering reviews is incredibly important because Google business profile or Google my business is the number one ranking factor on Google. So if you’re a business, Google looks there first. Would you happen to have a listing? If you don’t have a listing, you must do it today.

First, you have to claim it or create it. If you have a brick-and-mortar store, you likely already have a listing. You need to claim it. You can claim a service area business if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar. And you can create it. So you’re going to create it from scratch.

But Do that today if you don’t have one. That’s the first thing because that’s again the number one ranking factor. The next thing is gathering those reviews. Google takes a little snippet of that review and serves it to people that are looking. So I’m looking for a business startup attorney, or, someone to help with business certain business documents.

I searched for that. And a snippet of your review comes up, right? A review of whatever that service is that I’m looking for. That is how people are going to find you. The more reviews you get now, let’s say someone leaves just a star review. They leave a five-star review, no commenting, no nothing. But you know that person, it’s a client of yours.

You will want to reply to that review because the text you leave as a reply also counts towards those keywords that Google will be pulling up in your profile. So you’re going to say, Hey, thank you so much for working with me. It was great to help you with blah, blah, blah, whatever that service was.

I am looking forward to working with you in the future. Could you make it personal but also informative for Google and also informative for anyone else that’s looking for that service? So they are really. The SEO is proper in the review itself. So the thoughts you have, the more reviewers you have to talk about your business, the higher the ranking.

Suppose you say if you. If you make if you’re a donut shop and you make this fantastic donut and every 1 of your reviewers talks about that fantastic donut, the word fantastic donut will show up in the Google search and then. People will come to you because of your fantastic donut because they’ll show up at your bakery and ask you for that fantastic donut.

Is that how it works? That’s exactly how it works. Okay. How do people go about doing that? First, they claim their profile. And then I understand you did an inventory, you have an inventory and a checklist, and you check people’s Google reviews. Is that right? So you’re going to want to for collecting reviews.

I suggest a couple of methods to our clients, and I gave you one of these, a QR code. I don’t know if you’ve used that or not. But a QR code. Especially for in-person businesses is a great way to gather more reviews. So you’re going to want to put in place a strategy to gather more reviews, and then you’re going to want to make sure you reply to every review.

And replying to every review means positive, negative, and even the ones that are like three stars, four stars. Those are like the in-betweens, but every review needs to be replied to. And the quicker you reply to it, the better in that customer’s eyes. You’re going to look just for that individual customer but also for people that are looking to work with you in the future.

They can see that you’ve taken the time as a business owner. Could you reply to the people you’ve worked with and give them feedback about how it was to work with them too? And that kind of thing. It was great working with you. You always want to leave positive feedback for those clients, but give a glimpse into what it’s like to work with you.

Someone unhappy is probably unhappy for a reason or in their mind, a reason. And one thing that we as business owners need to make sure we don’t do, which is very difficult is to not take it personally, right? That’s the first step. And when you’re also responding to reviews, please think about it from the perspective of I’m not responding necessarily to this person.

I’m just getting back to all of my future potential clients and customers to see if they’re looking at how you handle your review reaction and your view response. If I see a business owner, that is I rate back at, the client or the customer, I’m not going to go there because I know that if anything goes wrong with that product or service, that is most likely.

They’re going to give me that same attitude, and I don’t want things to be resolved with professionalism, great customer service, and care for the customer. So that’s a choice. You’re making that choice for everyone to see when you respond negatively to a negative review.

So what you’re saying is, it’s an opportunity because when you respond to a review in a good sense, when I respond to reviews, it’s interesting. After all, I read myself. I have someone take care of my Google, my business. Still, I get messages and respond to them, especially with clients I know.

If you have an opportunity at that point, what you’re saying is you have an opportunity to show off your customer service. So I’ll give you a good example. I was looking for balsamic vinegar. And I always look at the worst reviews because the best reviews come out, right? So this is on Amazon, and in the best in the worst reviews, it was not a killer because everybody complained about a broken bottle.

And this is how we do things and we don’t have a return like this is our return policy this is the service that we provided, and there are no refunds or there’s You know just, yes, that’s are very harsh language. And in my experience with representing business owners that deal with the general public in terms of consumer situations, a lot of it has.

So if you reply to it emotionally at first and then go back and change it. There’s still the chance that screenshot is out there and That it’s just forever. The internet is forever, as we know, even though there are many lawsuits with deleted texts or yes, or screenshots.

People are still going to see them. It’s not buried, but what that does. Adding more reviews statistically lowers the chance that they will see it, but it also improves your overall rating score. So if you have four reviews and two of them are bad, then you are going to have two and a half stars.

We don’t have you in our records as a customer. But we look forward to servicing you or working with you in the future, something like that. To deflect whatever they’re saying, it’s, that’s interesting because it seems like the briefer you are with those people, the better it is.

And I’m like, no, go on. There are enough other things that you can do to get good reviews from customers who come to you and for you to increase the Google search. And I’ve just noticed that Google’s business profile is the number 1 search because they’re searching themselves.

It’s a pretty interesting search process that they have. And another thing that I want to bring to light as far as reviews go is going back to that. Step of having a review process in place or asking for reviews. You must build that into your onboarding and follow-up process, and send an email and say, hey, it was great meeting with you, even if it’s just a consultation and they don’t end up being a client.

Oh, and Google gives you one. They do. What are the issues with lawyers? , so much of what we do is confidential, so we can only do it if our client chooses to come and disclose that. Otherwise, we can’t disclose it. We can’t ask them to disclose it. So they have to voluntarily. And that’s also another example.

A lot of lawyers say. You will only see a few reviews for family law lawyers, but real estate lawyers and state planners will get tons of them because no one cares if you buy or sell a house. But so much of what lawyers do is confidential. And you don’t see a lot of doctors with tons of reviews either because no one wants to say that’s my doctor. So certain professions are not going to have a ton of reviews.

Different from the donut shop. No one cares about that. Or a hotel or stuff like that. Thank you very much, Amanda. That was fantastic. This is one of the most valuable interviews I’ve done. And I’m sure a few interviews on the internet deal with bad Google reviews.

So I really much appreciate it. So Amanda, how can people get in touch with you? What is your business’s and website’s name, and where are you located? So I’m located in York, PA, but I work with people all over the world. Most of my clients are in the United States, but we deal with clients of all types and sizes.

We’ve switched focus recently to dealing with businesses with lots of locations. Large companies with many locations because we found that it’s almost impossible for them to find someone to work with. The company is called TDM marketing and stands for the determined mom.

LinkedIn is the best place to contact me. I love being on there, sharing, and seeing what everybody else is doing.

It’s a great place to connect. Thank you, Amanda. Amanda Tento, TDM Marketing. Thank you very much. Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Yes. Thank you for having me.