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Ep. 304: Search Engine Optimization Secrets with Erica Glessing

Shannon Mattern: Erica. Thank you so much for joining me on pep talks for side hustlers today. Can you share a little bit more with our listeners about you and what you do?

Erica Glessing: Well, first of all, I just want to say that as a mom of three kids and teenagers now, but when I started my site hustle, they were really little. And I just remember thinking about like how I didn’t want to leave them. I was like, I don’t want to leave them every day. I finally had kids I’m like, I want to, I want to do something from home that gets paid. And some of the advertisements out there were so misleading and people were trying to make me do all kinds of things that weren’t going to make me money. I just remember that so well. So I basically fast forward have built a successful entrepreneur career for myself. Um, right now I do a search engine optimization for companies and I’ve also built podcasts for companies and people and entrepreneurs. So basically helping others to, uh, also support my fam.

Shannon Mattern: I love it. So I want to go back to those early days that you mentioned, um, you know, you had kids, you wanted to stay home with them. Tell me kind of the culmination of you starting your own business and what that looked like for you back then.

Erica Glessing: Well, I can remember, I had a friend who tried, who tried to get me into her MLM business.

Shannon Mattern: We ha we all have friends like that. Yes, I’ve been in them myself.

Erica Glessing: So I remember I, I had, when the way she positioned it was you’ll be able to leave your nine to five. So I remember I was working in Oakland, living in San Jose. So I was leaving at 6:00 AM to get there by nine. Like this is not even showing up to work. There was so much traffic in the businesses, my area. It was a great job though. I mean, it was a beautiful, beautiful job, helping a company with their giving and their online presence and their branding that’s stitching. It was like beautiful, beautiful job, beautiful view. But I would get home. I’d leave at four 30 and pray. I got back before daycare closed and I remember paying daycare and then paying for a nanny for my baby. And then just cause I thought when I had my, I was always going to be work from home mom.

Erica Glessing: I was never going to be a stay at home mom. Like that just wasn’t my identity for me. I like working. So I remember this one day I was driving home and I was like trying to figure out how to start the MLM thing. And I thought I could like talk to people in the car while I was driving and I didn’t end up being good at that. So I couldn’t find more hours in the day. Cause I’m driving, I’m at work, I’m trying to leave work. And then I’m like, okay, I have, and then I remember I just sat there and I said, you know what? There is something better than this. I just said to myself in my head, there is something better from this. And then the first decision I made is I will work from home. And of course now it’s like not that big of a thing, but it was such a big thing that like to have a good job from home.

Erica Glessing: So then I started looking for good jobs that I could do from home because I wasn’t really thinking about starting my own business and then fast forward 2014. So this is about five years later. I’m still like working for other people. And I remember just thinking to myself, no, this is not what I’m going to do. This is still working from home for others, right? Like I’m still being owned by everyone else. And even though I could work out of my house, which I liked doing, and it wasn’t enough for me. So then I just said, okay. And I started, I made a radical demand that my business would make at least 10,000 a month. And I just said, then what do I have to do to get there?

Shannon Mattern: Ooh, tell me more about that. What do you mean by radical demand?

Speaker 4: Well,

Erica Glessing: You know, it’s funny like people I didn’t ever actually hit bottom or anything per se, I didn’t have to go through some sort of like bottoming out, but I remember, um, so I was working for a company that wouldn’t, I’d gone back to. Oh, I know what I did. I forgot about this story. This isn’t very nice. I actually, I wanted to rent a house. I’d been owning a house and I got divorced. I needed a new house and I needed to rent. I hadn’t rented in years like 20, you know, since nineties. So I wanted to have a W2. I wanted to have something that said I make more than the rent is. Right. So I sorry. So I got a job at a nonprofit doing their SEO and marketing. And I had a W2 that was more than rent and I got the, I got their house.

Erica Glessing: And so I was perfect as a really nice house in the right schools and everything, but I wasn’t happy. Cause again, I was doing the traffic thing. So then, um, I was driving home one day and it was just horrible. And I was so unhappy. I was so unhappy and I said, okay, this is it. I’m going to start my own business this time. It’s going to make $10,000 a month or more. And I just, I just knew that that would be what it would require. And at that time I had written books. I’ve, I’ve been a writer my whole life. So as a journalist, this is one of my math skills. And so I decided to do books and I decided to do one per month group books and I just chose it and I did it and everybody paid me to be in books.

Erica Glessing: So I built 33 group books and over two years, what are group books? That’s when everybody pays to be in a book and they’re all talking about a topic. So create a self love journey. I did luxury real estate mastery. Uh, I did a home buying mastery. I did, um, uh, the energy of magic, the energy of happiness, the energy of expansion. And I got experts to, I would put them all in a book together and then I would publish the book, have the book design and I charged them between 500 and $1,500 to be in the book. And I promote it to number one.

Shannon Mattern: So, okay. I’ve never heard of this concept before. It says something

Erica Glessing: You want to write in one I’ll I’ll do it for you. [inaudible] selling author.

Shannon Mattern: Just curious as to like, is this a concept that you came up with? Is it something that you saw other people doing? Like what, in, what in your mind was like, Oh, I could do this too. Or how did you even come up with this?

Erica Glessing: Well, I love books and I love writing books and it took me like two years to write my first book. And it took me like not two years, but it took me like another four years before I came up with the next book. So 2006, I had a book 10, seven, and then 2011, I had a book that I got like Jack Canfield testimonial, like it did really well. And now it was like, I was, I wanted a new book, but I didn’t want to take two years to write it. So I was like, I really want to have a book about this topic that I’m very passionate about, but I don’t want to do the whole book myself. And so if I bring in others, they can do each, write a chapter or write a chapter. And now if you Google me on Amazon, you’ll see 33 group books I built because I love getting books done.

Erica Glessing: I get given the topics I think from source. And then I just go out and find experts to write their own pieces. And what people like about that? Like what is it for somebody isn’t showing up as the power of releasing judgment as a really interesting book, but how to get rid of self criticism, fascinating book. And it was so interesting to look at how everyone teaches you something a little different because no one learns something exactly the same way. So if you put a book with all these experts in it, it’s just a phenomenal tool. It’s been done a lot. Now at that point, when I first started, it was very fresh. I’m now seven years, six years later, it’s been done more, but that, that year that’s what took my company in 2015, uh, from me being unhappy in an office to being, um, happily at home, doing what I love, helping my kids thrive.

Shannon Mattern: Oh my gosh, I love that so much. And there are a few things that I just want to point out for, uh, for my listeners here is that like you didn’t, um, try to just like go at completely alone and like create all this stuff in a vacuum. Like you really saw the power of collaboration to, to really see, to see these projects through and looking at like the value of bringing like so many smart people together to create this, this value together. One to maximize your time to, to get a bunch of different perspectives, um, to get a bunch of different people promoting and selling, um, selling this book. I think it’s just, it’s really, really a smart concept. But I think what I pull out of that is like, you know, personally me when I was first starting out, I was just trying to like do everything on my own, reinvent the wheel, create everything from scratch, from my, you know, from my whole mind and like so much farther, so much faster if you bring people together in different creative ways. So,

Erica Glessing: Um, recommend that if you have a business expertise that is kind of interesting, you can also make a summit. Um, what a summit does is it builds your email list with the people who are in your summits, email lists and the people who are in your summit, social media coverage. So if you wanted to do, I’m doing a summit, uh, called the SEO summit and I’ll give that link to you for your audience, listen to the interviews I’ve done because they’re fascinating. These people have such big expertise in one area of, of it’s work that I do, but I’m finding these people that are so smart and then I’d put them all. I put them all together on a, uh, you know, a photograph of the summit, which is you can do it on zoom. You don’t even have to make a book and then you could put it on a website and you’re just posting the interviews.

Erica Glessing: And it’s fascinating how easy it is. Well, if you can build a podcast, you can build a summit. I can, I can understand like, some people might be overwhelmed by that. So, I mean, I don’t think if you’re just trying to grow your business, but I do think reaching out to others and it’s hard. Cause like in zoom, you can’t just say let’s network is really likes to just, I mean, there are networking groups that encourage you to network, but I don’t think it’s like, um, it’s just not like first nature to want to have people. Cause you feel like if you’re always being pitched to. Right. Yeah. And so how do you have a networking meeting? That’s not a pitch Fest, this is another topic, but um, I like very purposeful connections with people. So I reached out to people and say, would you like to be on my summit? Or would you like to be on my podcast? And both of those have grown my businesses.

Shannon Mattern: Oh, I do the same thing with the podcast. The summit thing is something that I’m like, Oh, I really want to do this. Um, and then I just keep putting it off and putting it off. So it’s interesting that you bring it up. But one of the things that I, one of the things that I know, um, a lot of my listeners, or even my students, they, they get, um, I can’t think of a better way to say it than weird, but weird about reaching out to people who do the same or similar things they do and, and collaborating with them. Cause they feel like, Oh, I don’t want people to think that I’m, I’m trying to take their audience or you know, that I’m, that they, that they think of it as like their competition. So can you share like your perspective on you do SEO, you’re bringing together all these other people who do SEO, are you not afraid that they’re going to like come and take all of your clients?

Erica Glessing: Well, so first of all, um, it’s really interesting what happens when you, when you’re not afraid of that. And when you understand there really is no competition because everyone chooses who they need. So I’m featuring a guy on Pinterest and this man crushes it on Pinterest. I will be okay if you hire him to give you a Pinterest philosophy, because I don’t do Pinterest philosophy. Like I teach how to use words to get, you know, how to use the right words, to attract you people, to you, how to write articles that get traction and stay hot, hot for longer than a week, you know? And so I teach that kind of thing. And then I just interviewed someone who’s really crushing it on YouTube. And she used to work like in a job or her whole job was YouTube rising. Her company is really interesting.

Erica Glessing: So she has like 10 years of YouTube experience. Like I’m okay. If you want to hire her to help you. If all you want to do is crush it on YouTube, then you should hire someone that can help you crush it on YouTube. You know, if you want someone, my skills really helping people get started with their wording, especially if they’re already doing the work, but Google doesn’t find you. So, especially if you’re already like doing the work, but when you type in the words that you do, like you’re an ocean. Like it’s not, you’re not even, you know, in the beginning of it. And the interesting thing about this work, I think when you lower the barrier of that, what you said of it being competitive world. Now, if you’ve, if you feel like someone’s like an exact match for you, then I wouldn’t put them on my summit right now.

Erica Glessing: I wouldn’t I’d feel, I like to bring people, people that will enrich. I look at what was the, what does the audience need? How can I give them what they need? How can I help fulfill their needs? Then they’re going to trust me as someone who brings them, the resources they are required. Even if it means bringing them someone else who’s in my same, like genre, but who’s better at something than me. They still might hire me to do it actually, because actually they’re going to trust. Like they might actually want me to help them with their Pinterest strategy, even though I don’t do that full time because I interviewed this guy is fascinating. It actually works. I think it works the opposite. Doesn’t it, it works completely. Counter-intuitively I

Shannon Mattern: Love that. You said that because it is, it’s about, you know, you’re the one curating, this you’re the one, um, you know, basically making the introduction to people that does, that does like raise your credibility and authority, but also the beautiful thing about it is that like, you don’t have to be the expert in everything to run a successful business. You just have to be willing to, like you said, like bring together the experts for your audience. And that does that, that there’s like some alchemy that happens there. Um, when you do that.

Erica Glessing: Yeah, I know it’s funny. Cause, um, I just, as an example, I, you know how much I’m into podcasting, I’ve actually built podcasts and I just interviewed John Lee Dumas for my podcast. So he’s like the master King of the planet of building podcasts. And he just got interviewed by me to be on my podcast. So if you look at like the, I find that the people, the more, the more high level the people are, the more gracious they’re. Well, I feel like the people that are at the highest level are so gracious and so willing to have everyone it’s an abundant, it’s like a, it’s like an abundant universe. And so when you approach it, as though it were abundant, people are going to be attracted to that. And so they have to be careful if you’re being stingy and I’ve certainly got raised in a stingy household, like I get stingy. If you’re being that, then you’re going to attract that. And then you’re going to be like, why aren’t my clients more abundant? You know, why aren’t they more this, well, then you have to look in the mirror, which is really not very fun. So

Shannon Mattern: I love this conversation so much because I too was, you know, raised in a scarcity mindset environment. I didn’t know that there was this whole world of like, you know, think that there’s the world of like, there is enough to go around and there’s more where that came from. And the more you give the more be like, I didn’t know that this was out there. So even in the beginning of my business, I was operating from scarcity and I was doing abundant things, not on purpose, but that, you know, that worked for me that once I started paying attention, like, Oh,

Erica Glessing: I love what you do. It’s so cool. It’s so cool that you do the website building. And then he made a podcast. Like, I love that. It’s like, it’s so cool. It’s like, you know, you do the website thing and you help people get over their fear of having a website and then you help teach people how to make websites. And then you make a podcast about it. Most people would be like, I mean, podcast about side hustle, but it’s like, most people would be like, Oh, how do I make a podcast from that? Like how do I make a Pinterest identity? It’s like counterintuitive again. And yet you’re gonna, right now, podcasts are trending so high that really everyone, every business, there’s no business that wouldn’t benefit from our podcast, unless you didn’t, unless you didn’t make it compelling enough, you know?

Shannon Mattern: Well, let’s talk about that because you have a couple of podcasts and you’re really into search optimization and different things. And I know you’re, you have so many different topics that you, that you cover. And you’re like, basically I can build a podcast and get it to rank. Number one, out of anything. That’s like what you said to me when we, when I was on your show and I was like, this is fascinating. We need to talk about this more. My people need to hear about like what you do and how you do this. So let’s talk about it.

Erica Glessing: You did say that really fast. So I can, I have helped people rank Google number one for many different terms. However, I can’t just automatically get a podcast. Right? Number one,

Shannon Mattern: Why not?

Erica Glessing: Number one, I have a screenshot of it. I took, I took so many screenshots when I hit number one, it was only going to be give us one. It was like part of my launch activities that I drove. It drove, it drove and drove and drove and went crazy. I did, I interviewed the first month of my podcast. I did 30 interviews in 30 days and I just, it was January of 2017 and we got 10,000 downloads, which is that, that time to me, so crazy, like so crazy. Like now I have podcasts that just do really easily downloads. But at that point it was like, it wasn’t quite as done. You know what I mean? Like it was harder. Um, so taking those into different things to rank on Google for something, um, basically, and I know, you know this, cause you do this with your websites, but you’re basically have to study.

Erica Glessing: Not only people that are always thinking about what they put out. Like they’re always looking at their content, like the words coming out of their mouth. They’re always focusing so hard on what they say. And when you want to do is pause, have the concept and then look at what’s ranking. So my second book, so my first book, I didn’t SEO it at all. My second book, I found out the term happiness quotations had a hundred thousand monthly clicks or something. And I named my book, happiness quotations. And I wrote quotations. I wrote little quotations about happiness and the book was called happiness quotations. And it was my own, um, my own like source given guidance of how to, uh, one of my favorites was, um, what lie did you, what lie were you told or something? What lie did you believe when you were growing?

Erica Glessing: Because parents always lied to us. They didn’t need to, but like, you know, saying you’ll always be poor. You’ll never make anything of yourself. You’ll never had kind of husband, whatever. They said that wasn’t true. And so, um, I actually took the term and 2011 and I asked that before I wrote the book I had, the book was already coming in. I knew I was writing about happy. I knew what I wanted to write about, but I, I didn’t know what I’d call it. And so what you want to do is pause in between the inspiration and naming of something and then look and see what gets searches. What, what are the monthly searches? And you can find Uber suggest has a tool. I use H refs is a tool AHRE F S um, there’s something called keyword surfer, which is a free Chrome extension.

Erica Glessing: And you can put it in your Chrome and can just start keeping an eye on keywords and what people type in when they want to find something. And then you just spend a little time matching Euro content with things that get searches and you look at the titles and then you just do a little matching. It’s not being fake. You’re already wanting to be known for that content. You’re not like making fake content. You like, like if someone’s cooking, I hope someone from who did a cookbook and there are all these spaces she’s cause it was from, she liked stuff from Nepal and it turned out there were monthly searches for how to cook with certain spices. And so we changed some of the titles on our blog that, and they already were cooked. They were already recipes. You know, they were authentic, but they weren’t getting found because we hadn’t tagged and keyword and the spice names. So we just made tags and categories for all the spices. And then she started getting worked out.

Shannon Mattern: I love that. You say that you explain it that way, because I think what I see, one thing I see my people struggle with, you know, I teach you guys all know I teach web design. I also teach like marketing and I see them so focused on like what they do and how they want to teach it and how they want to talk about it. That they don’t stop to think about their ideal client and what they think about it and what their questions are that they’re asking about it and how they are describing it. And so there’s this like gap, there’s this big disconnect. And what I try to get my clients to do is like, get inside the head of that person. That’s struggling with this before they even come to you. And like you said, it’s like, you know, you could talk with all these recipes and all the things, but if you’re missing the words, like how do I cook with cumin or whatever in your whole thing, because you just, weren’t sitting in the mind of your ideal client for five seconds.

Shannon Mattern: Like you miss that opportunity. So I see that on one hand where they’re just like, not even in the realm of thinking about the person creating the content for it, but then on the flip side, I see like I’m going to be a robot and write content, like just for Google that nobody wants to even read because it’s so robotic. And then they’re like, I don’t want to do that because I don’t want to sound like a robot. And it’s like, you just said it perfectly like, there’s this happy medium of like, of making sure that like, you know, what people are searching for and saying things in a way, and that’s not in authentic, that’s being very focused on like, I am committed to helping someone find this content because I know it’s going to help them. And that’s why I’m going to say it this way. That means something to them rather than this really clever, funny way that I want to say it, but no one’s ever going to find it.

Erica Glessing: You know, I think Google is getting smarter, but it’s still, it’s still camp Percy. He do need to use some of the tools. You know, some of the geeky tools like Yoast is good for WordPress and I, there’s a plugin called squirrely that I really like, but my clients tend to like Yoast better, but you want to use something that talks to Google for your website. So you definitely want to look at your side hustle and then like, you might want to name it like 10 ways to, um, 10 ways to make money in 10 hours or less a week or something like you might want to look at things that people might be thinking about. That aren’t necessarily like, whatever words you use. Look at some other words. And then the other thing I do, this is you’re going to crack up. So I have this book on energy series, a series of books on that.

Erica Glessing: Is it the energy of happiness, the energy of magic, the energy of the really creative books about getting your energy up. And, um, when you type in energy though, you get things like Pacific gas and electric, like you get things like solar, you get like, you get like wind tunnels. Like it doesn’t Google well at all. So I had to, it was so funny we named it, but then we had to go in and put metadata in that showed what it was, because it wasn’t when you just, cause I was when he type in the words like energy healing isn’t is something, but it’s like so little known. It’s so funny, the way, the way, um, the way all of that works. So you have to kind of, not only like you want to, you might do home decorating tips on a shoestring. If you sell like, um, inexpensive photographs or something, you know, like you, you might, you might not put how to frame your photo for cheaper. You might put that in, but you also much might just say creative decorating tips for bedrooms or something. So it’s like thinking not only of your own specific little thing, but then what categories that in, in a bigger way. So people can find it. It’s it’s interesting. I think, I think librarians probably would do well at this kind of thing. Don’t you?

Shannon Mattern: Oh, I, I think that’s fascinating that you say that because I was just thinking like, sometimes we’re so close to our own content that we can’t even think outside the box. And so when you’re thinking about like, why is this so hard? It makes sense to work with someone who does this because they understand like they’ve had so much experience doing this for other people that they can like really quickly, like look at your stuff and think outside of the box, because they’ve done it for so many other people that they can think of ways that like, it would never even occur to you to do things that way.

Erica Glessing: And we’re building her SEO. And it’s funny because almost no one really wants to read articles about accounting. So I was like, okay, how can we do this? And so we came up with tax deductions cause everybody loves tax deductions. And so I’m like, that’s what you post on social. Just give, give some free and then say, if you want more call me and I’ll find you 500 tax deductions cause who doesn’t want tax deductions. Right. It’s like, um, so it’s funny. Cause I think people do type in accounting when they want to hire an accountant maybe, but maybe they’ll just ask their friends. I mean, you don’t really know how they’re going to get to that person. But I think if you, if you certainly you’d want your accountant to be great at tax deductions, so it’s like finding the one thing people would be happy to look for. Um, and it’s not always easy. Like it, it is, it is fun though. Like you make contests of yourself, like how many, how many clicks can I get on this article?

Shannon Mattern: I love that. And it’s also, it’s just, yeah, it’s like, what’s in it for them. You know? It’s like I do this, what’s in it for them. You know, I’m an accountant, what’s in it for them like tax deduction, not like hiring me to prevent the IRS from coming after. Like nobody’s thinking about that and unless like they have problems, you know, how can you get them on a good day? I kinda like that. Cause you know, you think about solutions, right? We talk about like creative talking about the solutions that you have for people. But like that’s like a whole, that’s an extra layer of like, not only your solutions, but your incentives, um,

Erica Glessing: What search engine optimization. I I’m still, I’ve been doing it like for 20 years, but I’m still, I mean, cause I did it in the nineties. Like I was the webmaster for a nonprofit, but the thing is that I haven’t really had to put words on it that much. So I have been actually in my own business, working on how do I, I’m on teaching search engine optimization to a group of women and they have little businesses and little websites and they just haven’t really even gone there. Like when you say back link, but that’s just cool people linking to you like Shannon and I will link to each other for this podcast. It’s like, we just think of who would like to link to my site and then, you know, find groups of people and make little link circles. And it’s like, it’s so much easier. It’s so much. Um, I don’t know. I think you’re always kind of looking, try to get outside of yourself to what keeps your client up at night and how you can solve it. And if you do that, then you always have work.

Shannon Mattern: Oh, I love it. I love it. So let’s shift gears and talk about why you love podcasts so much. Why do you love podcasts so much?

Erica Glessing: Oh, that’s a good question. Um, well I think really when so, so funny, I was listening to this uh, self-help guy and Carl Harvey and he was saying what really changed my businesses when I went on entrepreneur on fire. So 2016, I said, okay, I want to do that. So I went on entrepreneur, I got on. So it was really easy. Actually I went and followed his exact steps of how to apply and I did everything exactly like he said to do to apply, to be on his show. Cause at that point he was getting like 300 applications a month. And so I made it and like the day after I was on his show, I got like 93 opt-ins and I was like, yeah, that’s something that I want to do. Like I want to create that kind of as like, I want to have that kind of podcast.

Erica Glessing: So I basically created the Eric Lessing show from that. And then what I found out, like you said, when I invited people that year, my 2017, the first year of the show, a lot of those people ended up hiring me. And so it was this perfectly magnet because I’m interviewing people, I’m helping them. They’re up there. The guy I interviewed this morning is so interesting for the summit SEO seminar. I’m building on Pinterest. He’s like I followed your podcast and I love it. And he was so excited to be on my show. Like he’s so excited. He’s like I listened to it. I love it. And so then when you meet people after, so first of all, it brings you for me, it’s a direct lead Madeline. So it absolutely brings me clients like direct. Like I invite them to be on the show and then they say, Hey, can you help me with my SEO or whatever? So now absolute direct line to that second people who listen to the show, get to know my voice and they get to know my personality and you know, I’m very silly. Like I laugh at everything says I’m not for everybody.

Erica Glessing: There is nothing. That’s not fair game for me to laugh at. So people like my lap, but choose the boat. So then they listened to it and then they want to work with me. So I just find podcasts to be a great way of building your authority. Um, within I did a new show just for the sake of SEO last summer within, I don’t know, a month I was ranking for the term for the title of the show. It was like, I it’s so easy to rank for Google is just put in this whole thing of now, you know how they first, they got really into videos, but then that last may, they brought in a whole team to start putting podcasts up on Google too. So now there’s a audio team that goes in and pulls words out of your podcasts and helps you rank for those terms. So podcasts are, that’s what, that’s why there was this huge change from 500,000. Now we have over a million podcasts in just one year because Google started paying attention to it. So people started getting organic ranking just by having a show about their topic. And uh, it was a really great way to show your 30. So it’s really, to me, and it’s not very expensive to run a podcast. So it’s kind of win, win, win, win, win.

Shannon Mattern: Yeah, exactly. And, and the one thing, the thing that I love too is like, you, can’t just, well, you can, you can reach out to people and be like, Hey, can I pick your brain for an hour? And they’re going to be like, no, but if you’re like, Hey, what’d you like to come on my podcast? They’re like, uh, yeah, I’d love to like,

Erica Glessing: I like, I can’t wait. Like I’m excited about it. Like I was so excited to come

Shannon Mattern: Be on your show too. And, and you know, I had the opportunity to be on your show and then, you know, you have these conversations, like I got to be on your show. And then we were talking, I was like, wait, I need to know more about that. I need you to be on my show. And so it was, it’s just this opportunity to learn. I’m so curious and I love to learn and I just love the chance to be able to just pick the brains of people about things that I know I want to know about, but I know my audience wants to know about,

Erica Glessing: I’m always turning it back to my audience too. I’m always trying to really think about like what keeps people up at night? Like what, what, how can we solve some things for them? So they get something actionable out of it that they can walk away with and feel like they learned something. And I’d say like, whatever, whatever you’re doing, you probably in social media and PR and marketing, he probably needed to 10 exit you, whatever you’re doing, the universe has changed so much in the last five months. You PR you need to 10 exit. There are more people in line, but there’s people making a lot of different choices than they normally make. So every pattern has been disrupted and anyone who was the King or queen of any search engine thing, it could now be disrupted. Like every, everything got subject to change because people went from zero to like 60% going to news.

Erica Glessing: And so everyone’s clicking pattern changes. And you know that if you like, you don’t have a bike for six months and then someone puts a bike back in your garage, like your patterns are changed. Like, will you still go on the same bike ride? Will you change your bike ride? Your, your everyone’s patterns have been disrupted. So right now, uh, depending on when this airs, it’s really beautiful time to 10 X, whatever you’re doing with all of your communications. And, um, and then the other thing too, I think hashtags are getting popular. Aren’t they really popular?

Shannon Mattern: I think they are. I don’t really know how to use them very effectively. I don’t think

Erica Glessing: [inaudible]

Shannon Mattern: Have someone on your summit that you could,

Erica Glessing: I didn’t, you know what, I, I’m going to go do that. I think I need to add that mastery. Yeah. Because, um, I know like on YouTube they give you three now and you can dominate, Y you can dominate a hashtag. If you, if you use the, if you use hashtags on YouTube, now you can dominate it because it’s still pretty new to being so hashtag ish, but Instagram has been using them for a long time. Yeah.

Shannon Mattern: And, and it’s, it’s interesting. The reason that I don’t know much about it is, cause I don’t, I’m not on social media a whole lot. Like I create a lot of content for my podcast. Um, but you know, I know there’s so many other opportunities out there for me to amplify the content that I create on these different platforms. And, um, yeah. And I’m just like scratching the surface of, of what’s.

Erica Glessing: Yeah. Almost all of us, all of us are almost no matter what we do. Like, but I think like you want to be smart about it. I put mine into a, um, I put my name to a program I use called deliberate and I use another one called later. And, um, I program them on Sundays. So, um, I have, I have 5,000 Pinterest followers. I’ve never been there to set it up. And then I went once to check on it.

Shannon Mattern: So I had a question pop into my head while you were talking about where we’re talking about podcasts and it came up the other day and one of my Facebook groups, and I was talking to my students, my website, marketing lab, students about, um, you know, just getting exposure, organic ways to get exposure and how being a guest on podcasts is a fantastic way to get in front of your ideal client. When you can find podcasts that serve, serve that audience, or at least peripherally serve that audience. And one of them said to me, um, I don’t feel like I’m enough of an expert to pitch myself to be a guest on a podcast. So I wanted to know what your thoughts are, how many PhDs you need, right. How many pages do you need to pitch yourself as a podcast guest?

Erica Glessing: You know, that’s a really interesting question. Um, I don’t know if I’d look at it that way. I’d look at it. I think the way that I would try to approach it is, okay, what is my business? What am I selling? So what is my, what is my entrepreneur? What is my side hustle? What is my main hustle? How do I want to bring people to me for that? So if I’m already having clients paying me to do something, then I’m going to assume like I have SEO clients. So I’m going to assume I’m enough of an expert to help them. Right? So now if I have two clients, who’ve hired me to do something and they’re paying me money, which is an energetic exchange and I’m helping their websites get seen and get traffic. Then I kick lesson can now go and say, Hey, Shannon, would you like to interview me about SEO?

Erica Glessing: I’m already doing it. I’m already helping people. If a lot of people help people and then don’t get paid for it when they start. So they might always go help show their friend how to trim their dog’s ears or something. Right. I wouldn’t want to do that or nails. Oh my gosh. How do you trim a puppy’s toenails? Like, that’s just not, I mean, I still have four memories of meat could be my baby’s toenails and how scared I was. I was going to get through the quick or hit blood. Right? So once someone finds themselves say, Oh, let’s just say talking to animals, let’s say that are good horse whisper. Well, if they can go and help someone figure out something with the horse, like my horse, I had one horse, um, who didn’t like to get his feet trimmed or his hopes. He didn’t like lift up his feet.

Erica Glessing: And so I would just, it wasn’t really the best way of doing it, but I taught him how not to do that. I taught him out. So if someone could take the time and become expert at something, which really means they’re a little bit better than other people and people want them to be that expert. So people want them to have that expertise. If you have an expertise, then it’s almost like your job to go on podcasts. Like, think about it as your job to your business is to get seen and heard. You know, if you don’t like being on record, talking into a microphone that then choose something else, you know, Mark it with articles or, you know, if you’d love videos, flipping YouTube is your, is your go to source, but podcasts are trending up right now, really high. So if you’re, if you, and then listen to the other experts, some people say to themselves, they look at my guest list and they’re like, I can’t play with that.

Erica Glessing: Like, I’m not good enough for that. And I’m like, that’s so interesting. Like they’ve self selected them out of my shell. And I think you don’t want to be your own worst enemy. And then also the worst thing they say is we’re too busy. Or, you know, you can’t interview with us. We’ve got our guests book til January, which is a nice way of saying F you and you have to be able to take some of the nos, like you’re going to have to it’s the media is a gatekeeper. So podcast is a media, that’s a gatekeeper. So you’re trying to get through the side of the Gates while someone’s there. The reason that it’s a good medium is because there is a gatekeeper. So we want the gatekeepers to make sure we have quality guests. And I’d say, listen to the other show guests. And then you can’t really tell, I mean, if you’re expert enough to be doing it, you’re expert enough to be interviewed about it.

Shannon Mattern: Oh my gosh. I could not agree with that more. And, and it’s just like, if you, if you ha, if you’ve solved the problem for yourself, if you’re helping other people, you know, it’s a conversation. It’s not like an interrogation and yeah. And like, yes, it’s just, I couldn’t agree with that more so.

Erica Glessing: Yeah. I really, I really, so Gary Vaynerchuk, when he, before he became who he is now, he did, I think he did one year of yessing. Every podcast. He like got on podcasts every day. So he just committed to himself. He was going to do podcast interviews every day and he put himself out there and he said, yes. And he just gone on all these little shows. And now imagine having that recording, wouldn’t that be the coolest thing of having him on your show? Because that’s how he got to his, where he is now is through the podcast medium. I mean, obviously he does a million other things. Well, but, um, the, he chose the podcast medium as a big leap. Leaping board.

Shannon Mattern: Yeah. So good. So I have a couple more questions for you cause I could talk to you for three more hours.

Erica Glessing: Yeah.

Shannon Mattern: Um, I asked these questions to everybody that comes on the show. And my first one is, what advice do you have for someone who is listening to this podcast who is just struggling to get traction growing their visibility in their business?

Erica Glessing: Well, choose the medium that you’d like to, to amplify yourself on. So if you like words, Facebook might be good. Um, LinkedIn would be great if you like images. Pinterest is excellent. We can use words. So too. And then if you like videos, show, choose, just choose sort of like, see if you can’t crush it in one place or two places first, like don’t try to have your things go all over the place, unless you can automate it with someone like calling Shannon someone to help them get that set up because some things can go on lots of places, but really focus on one thing. Then when don’t forget to ask. So when, if you are in a communication with someone, let people know what you do, let people know because you know, there are people that have these gigs that they don’t tell anybody about that they’re an expert in or that they can provide.

Erica Glessing: So you want to tell people and then really think about, you know, solving something. So with your messaging, start having it be more about solving things either it’s okay to be really cute or have a really cute dog or get seen because of being adorable. And that’s fine, but that’s may not lead you. It may or may not lead you to have people opt into your business. So what is your business do to help people? And then how can you frame that in ways that are really Clickworthy, you know, how, and if you do that now also, um, I’m not very good at images. So I need help with that. Like, I don’t have some, I need someone to help me do that, but also come up with some catchy image type things, some fun, putting some fun, see if you can put a little fun into it.

Shannon Mattern: I love it. That’s such good advice. You know, I think when I was just starting out, I was like, Oh my gosh, I have to be everywhere. And I have to be good at everything. And that is exhausting. And it results in, um, no traction. So learn from my mistakes. Um, the last question I wanted to ask you is when I also ask everyone that comes on the show, and that is what beliefs about yourself. Did you have to change to get where you are today?

Erica Glessing: Oh my goodness. Like more than one. Um, well I think the, are you good enough? I think that one’s plagued me too, you know? Um, I think that one’s always kind of haunted me is, and I people say, how did you get so confident? But I didn’t start as confident. You know, I started out much more like trial and error, you know, and that self confidence. I really think having the confidence that, because you’ve kind of throwing people, things telepathically all the time. So if you really feel unconfident, you actually, people are perceiving that. So you have to work on that from a self place because people are perceiving you telepathically all the time. Just like I tell people, like if a waiter walks in, take your order, you know, if she’s had a bad day or if she’s kicking ass and she walks up, hi, Hey, she walks up and I take her and you can feel it like it’s on her face.

Erica Glessing: And we have so much communication. That’s telepathic. We’re not aware of. So we have to work on that. Being, seeing ourselves. I don’t even charge enough yet for what I do. I already know that like I’m already not charging enough for the level of search and sophistication I have. I’m still disconnected from the market value of what I do. Like I know I still have to work on that even though I don’t, I don’t charge nothing. I’m not the bottom anymore. I won’t do stuff for free, you know, but in fact, I just changed it up because a group asked me to do like three more presentations and I was like such a compliment, but I was like, huh, that feels like a free class. I’m going to go. So I sent them all a link to my class. They can buy. Cause I’m like, I love the, the, the, you know, the wanting you for free. But I think it’s really important that we start charging. And I think having that self confidence I’m first of all, I’m better at it now. And secondly, it’s still an area that needs work so

Shannon Mattern: I can relate to that so much, so much. And I’m glad you brought that up because you know, I do think it is an area. It is, we can, we can change it. You know, we can think like I’m going to put some intentional effort in looking at like, what do I believe about myself? What do I believe is really possible for me? Um, what do I want to be possible for me? And like, how do I need to change how I’m thinking to get from where I’m at now to where I want to be. And it, isn’t just, you wake up one day and it’s different. Like you really do have to do uncomfortable things. Like, you know, someone asks you to do something for free and while you’re very flattered, now you have to be uncomfortable and say, here’s a link to my payment button and, and feel that discomfort and, and get the outcome of like, okay, I didn’t die and they didn’t burn my business to the ground and it’s fine. And it just like those little acts of courage all along the way, just like build our confidence up. I mean, you know, I’m, I’m turning something that I used to do for free into a paid workshop and I don’t know how it’s going to go. And I’m kind of scared, you know, if people are gonna be like, but wait, used to give that to us for free. And I’m just going to meet, it’s an act of courage for me to just take the risk. Yeah.

Erica Glessing: And I, I think for some reason it seems like men entrepreneurs don’t seem to have, it seems like, like if you look at the higher paid ones that are really crushing it, you see it’s such a male dominated. Like if you look at the two comma club on, um, on ClickFunnels, it shows everyone who’s made more than a million for their funnel. It’s going to be so male dominated. Um, I actually have a million dollar, I have a podcast I’m just starting on focusing on seven figure businesses. And, uh, I could listen to that one and it’s, but I think, yeah, having that, having that, um, ability to, to look at the market pricing sometimes, but sometimes you actually have to charge over market too, because if you’re not being making enough to live, so you might have to charge more than the market because you’re doing a unique, customized thing. Whereas the market is paying this, I think for web design, that’s one of the most unregulated and you can find quality for so low and horrible for so much. It’s like, Oh my gosh, it’s such a, what? That’s one of the skills. I think that’s more challenging to price, isn’t it?

Shannon Mattern: It is. It’s interesting that you say that because that is, that’s what, that’s why my web designer Academy students get so weird about like, you know, about charging and pricing and how to position themselves in the marketplace. And so, you know, it all goes back to everything we were talking about earlier. It’s like, you’re not selling web design, you’re selling a solution to a problem. So figure out what problem it is that you’re solving and for who and how you’re solving it and sell that. And there’s value in clients. You’re helping them get clients and you’re selling the longterm value of that solution beyond just the time that you did to build the thing for them. So that’s how we have to shift our mindset around what that costs. It’s not what, it’s not a website. It’s not web design. It’s not any of that. It’s now you have. Yeah.

Erica Glessing: Yeah. But it’s like it because all you have to do is hire a bad person to do that for you. And it wrecks everything that you’ve,

Shannon Mattern: That doesn’t know how to build the kind of site that you need to run your business. And now you have this thing that looks pretty, but it doesn’t do anything on the backend. And you’re, you’re worse off than before you had any.

Erica Glessing: I actually go into websites that were built for beauty, that where there’s no organic traffic at all. And I say, you know what? This is a beautiful website. Would you like it to also give you traffic? That is so good. Cause some of them go looking at so sad, it’s like the most gorgeous pieces of artwork you’ve ever seen. And then the, if they haven’t told Google what’s on there, then it’s like, they’re missing opportunities. Right. And left. So, yeah. And I think putting value on that, um, one of the things that I do is, uh, for search engine optimization is I look at okay, how many clients do they have? And if we get them to page one in Google, odds are that they’ll have more clients. And then let’s say they only have eight clients a month or something. So, and then I’ll find out what they get per client.

Erica Glessing: And then I’ll actually it based on getting, like, if let’s say we are projecting, they’re gonna get 16 from eight or something. Like I help the title company, B C get to number one, Morgan Hill title, old Republic title. I helped them get to number one. So the way I priced it monthly was based on what we believed would happen when they hit number one, of course we didn’t know COVID would happen when they’ve kit number one, which we can’t control. Right. But the way I priced it for them was monthly based on what would happen if they were a number. If they got to number, you know, page one, instead of being where they were before, which like page four or something, cause page four, you’re going to get no traffic, right. The page. And then we look at what is the traffic. There’s only so many possible houses that go for sale, but need to have title open on them. Right. So it’s very interesting, but now they’re sitting in number one position, we’re going to go into the summer. They’re going to be number one this summer and whatever I charge them will not be enough because right now they’re number one and they’re done. I stopped work. I’ve worked for them for eight months and, uh, the contract ended. But the interesting thing is that’s going to help them so much when the housing market changes.

Shannon Mattern: Yeah. It’s the same concept. It’s like, it’s the value of the thing beyond just the work that you did. And I think that that’s like the key piece of, of pricing or charging or whatever that, that I missed out on for a long time. I didn’t have that concept, um, in my mind. And now I’m like determined to help my students, um, you know, really, really internalize, you know, that the value of, of that and that it’s okay to charge, um, charge X. So Erica, I cannot thank you enough for being here. We could talk about this, all this stuff to do this again or in some other capacity. Um, so can you share with everyone where they can learn more about you and all the things, all the amazing things that you’re doing and get connected with you?

Erica Glessing: Yeah. Well, um, if you go to SEO for lead gen.com, that’s my brand new baby website. So it’s be kind. And then, um, I’m going to be posting the summit on their SEO for lead gen.com.

Shannon Mattern: Oh, that is awesome. And I will link up all the great resources that we talked about in this podcast, that site, your podcasts, all the things. So thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate.

Erica Glessing: Thank you.

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