Podcasts about Mad Mimi

Show Notes for Episode 27 of “The 2 View” – Brain abscesses, torsion, and delirium. Brain Abscesses Accorsi EK, Hall M, Hersh AL, Shah SS, Schrag SJ, Cohen AL. Notes from the Field: Update on Pediatric Intracranial Infections - 19 States and the District of Columbia, January 2016-March 2023. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. CDC, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/72/wr/mm7222a5.htm Brook I. Clinical Case. Brain Abscess Clinical Presentation. Medscape.com. https://reference.medscape.com/article/212946-clinical Goodman B. Doctors watching for more cases after mysterious cluster of brain infections strikes kids in southern Nevada. CNN. CNN Health. https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/28/health/brain-abscess-cluster-nevada/index.html The Center for Medical Education. 23 - Dear Doctor, Skin Closures, and Wound Management. 2 View: Emergency Medicine PAs & NPs. https://2view.fireside.fm/23 What's “ordinary negligence”? //Missed brain abscess//Special offer. Mad Mimi. Medical Malpractice Insights: Learning from Lawsuits. https://madmimi.com/s/3fc5711 Testicular Torsion Lukosiute-Urboniene A, Nekrosius D, Dekeryte I, Kilda A, Malcius D. Clinical risk factors for testicular torsion and a warning against falsely reassuring ultrasound scans: a 10-year single-centre experience. Emerg Med J. BMJ Journals. https://emj.bmj.com/content/40/2/134.info Mellick LB, Watters BC. The Torsed Testicle Traction Technique and 2 Case Reports. Pediatr Emerg Care. https://journals.lww.com/pec-online/Citation/2023/05000/TheTorsedTesticleTractionTechniqueand2_Case.14.aspx Sessions AE, Rabinowitz R, Hulbert WC, Goldstein MM, Mevorach RA. Testicular torsion: direction, degree, duration and disinformation. J Urol. PubMed. NIH: National Library of Medicine. National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12544339/ Ovarian Torsion Long B, Koyfman A, Gottlieb M. Dispelling 5 Ovarian Torsion Myths. ACEP Now. https://www.acepnow.com/article/dispelling-5-ovarian-torsion-myths/ Ovarian Torsion. Acep.org. ACEP Emergency Ultrasound Section. https://www.acep.org/emultrasound/newsroom/sept2020/ovarian-torsion Spinelli C, Piscioneri J, Strambi S. Adnexal Torsion in Adolescents: Update and review of the literature. https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/committee-opinion/articles/2019/08/adnexal-torsion-in-adolescents Swenson DW, Lourenco AP, Beaudoin FL, Grand DJ, Killelea AG, McGregor AJ. Ovarian torsion: Case-control study comparing the sensitivity and specificity of ultrasonography and computed tomography for diagnosis in the emergency department. European Journal of Radiology. ScienceDirect. https://edus.ucsf.edu/sites/edus.ucsf.edu/files/wysiwyg/1-s2.0-S0720048X14000023-main.pdf Delirium ACEP's Position on Hyperactive Delirium. American College of Emergency Physicians. https://www.acep.org/news/acep-newsroom-articles/aceps-position-on-hyperactive-delirium Hatten BW, Bonney C, Dunne RB, et al. ACEP Task Force Report on Hyperactive Delirium with Severe Agitation in Emergency Settings, Approved by the ACEP Board of Directors, June 23, 202. American College of Emergency Physicians. https://www.acep.org/siteassets/new-pdfs/education/acep-task-force-report-on-hyperactive-delirium-final.pdf Hayes BD, O'Brien M. Should Diphenhydramine be included in an Acute Agitation Regimen? AliEM: Academic Life in Emergency Meedicine. https://www.aliem.com/diphenhydramine-acute-agitation-regimen/ Psychiatric Patient. American College of Emergency Physicians. https://www.acep.org/patient-care/clinical-policies/Psychiatric-Patient Reuben. Emergency Department Agitated Patient Treatment Map. Emergency Medicine Updates. https://emupdates.com/danger/ Veraart JKE, Smith-Apeldoorn SY, Bakker IM, et al. Pharmacodynamic Interactions Between Ketamine and Psychiatric Medications Used in the Treatment of Depression: A Systematic Review. Int J Neuropsychopharmacol. Oxford Academic. https://academic.oup.com/ijnp/article/24/10/808/6309481?login=false Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs D'Souza RS, Lang M, Eldrige JS. Prescription Drug Monitoring Program. StatPearls Publishing. NIH: National Library of Medicine. National Center for Biotechnology Information. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK532299/ Something Sweet Brito C. Bobi, the world's oldest dog, turns 31 years old. CBS News. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/bobi-the-worlds-oldest-dog-turns-31-years-old/ Recurring Sources Center for Medical Education. http://ccme.org The Proceduralist. http://www.theproceduralist.org The Procedural Pause. Emergency Medicine News. Lww.com. https://journals.lww.com/em-news/blog/theproceduralpause/pages/default.aspx The Skeptics Guide to Emergency Medicine. Thesgem.com. http://www.thesgem.com Trivia Question: Send answers to 2viewcast@gmail.com

Do people really understand what a vaccine passport is a gateway into?  We dive into some of the conversations that are being had around the world as many countries race to develop electronic proof systems for showing vaccination status.  What else is there to know around these systems and will they really help anything? To expand the conversation, join us on telegram: https://t.me/tcrpodcast Resources from this episode....   Ilana Rachel Daniel interviewed on Blackbox.tv - Outcry From Israel: https://youtu.be/WMsn0bj_P6o Nick Hudson Interview from BizNews Conference: https://youtu.be/_2XxEkQAScU Dr Naomi Wolf - Are Vaccine Passports the End of America? - The Highwire: https://thehighwire.com/videos/are-vaccine-passports-the-end-of-america/ CDC Study on Mask Mandate Effectiveness: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/70/wr/mm7010e3.htm One of the Lockdowns' Greatest Casualties Could Be Science: https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/18/one-of-the-lockdowns-greatest-casualties-could-be-science/ Masks Don't Work to Prevent Viral Transmission: https://www.americasfrontlinedoctors.com/masks-dont-work-to-prevent-viral-transmission-a-review-of-science/?utm_source=MadMimi&utm_medium=email&utm_content=Doctors+Uncensored%3A+Bringing+You+The+Truth&utm_campaign=20210323_m162547596_Week+of+3+19+22+Mask+Lawsuit&utm_term=Read+full+article+here UK Prime Minister Ditches Plan to Show Vaccine Passports in Pubs: https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/coronavirus-covid-vaccine-passport-boris-johnson-b927788.html My Dinner with Andre (1981 movie clip): https://youtu.be/j8v_XqFO8Bc    

Episode 25: Interview with Indie Author Ann Charles   Interview: Indie Author Ann Charles Ann Charles website: http://anncharles.com/ Scene and Sequel example: https://awritingguide.com/2014/09/18/scene-sequel-structure/ Mad Mimi: https://madmimi.com/ South Dakota Festival of Books: http://sdhumanities.org/festival-of-books/ Music "Never Surrender" by Chasing Noise, off their album, Everything http://chasingnoise.wixsite.com/chasingnoise

Dean Levitt is probably one of the most fun people to talk to. His friendly smile is almost as big as his beard but neither can compete with his love of people. It is that love for humanity that has driven his incredibly successful customer-focused career as a co-founder of Mad Mimi, the email platform that GoDaddy acquired in 2014… and now as a resident of the Start-Up nation here in Israel where he is working on a very exciting new project which you’ll hear about… towards the end of the episode… enjoy Dean Levitt's Bio: Raised on a farm in South Africa, Dean moved to the United States to pursue a career in music, eventually finding his way to the tech world. What began as a booking tool for musicians became an email marketing tool that grew to over 200,000 users and an exit to GoDaddy. While growing his previous company, Mad Mimi, Dean realized he had a passion for helping small businesses grow online. Dean is a mentor at 500 Startups, a co-founder of ThymeBase, and an avid surfer. https://www.linkedin.com/in/deanlevitt/ https://thymebase.com/ https://madmimi.com/

Hello everyone and welcome back to The Business of Dance Podcast! I am super excited to bring you this episode today because a big part of my coaching programs centres around today’s topic, so you know I’m passionate about it. Today I want to discuss a huge factor in successfully run businesses in this day in age which is automation. I think all of us at one time or another has thought to ourselves, when it comes to sending out emails, posting social media content, or even running a business “I wish this would just do it by itself” I think we all wish we had more free time to either spend with our friends and family, grow and scale our business, as well as create more opportunities for ourselves, our team and students. I'm sure there are aspects we love about running our business but at the end of the day, wouldn’t it be great to have all those tedious and time consuming tasks taking care of, all the while growing your business and providing more time for doing what we love most, which is providing amazing dance experiences for our students. Think it’s impossible? Well let’s dive into this episode and I’ll let you in on my top tips on how to grow your studio on autopilot! Plan ahead: Planning ahead may seem may seem like you are taking the same amount of time to do a task in a larger chunk of time, but trust me in saying that thinking or planning ahead for the future can make a world of difference. When you are thinking about future tasks or even social media posts for your studio you can prepare for any little hiccup and gauge how something may turn out. Having a plan all sorted out for you and your team will give you more free time to adjust as you go if needed, rather then doing things one at the time all of the time. This is the first step when it comes to automation, because how can you automate something that hasn't been pre-planned?   Systemise Don’t be surprised that this is on the list. I am a huge fan of systemisation within any business, but especially passionate for dance studios, as it has helped me run and grow my personal studio practically on autopilot, giving me the time to scale my business. With systemisation you put forth the description, and elements for when planning and completing a task within your studio that can be replicated, adjusted and delegated over time. When you have systems in place, you can have an overview of exactly what needs to be accomplished and how to do it right at your fingertips.   Delegate Once you have put these plans into place, and created systems, you can then delegate or outsource to others within your team, admin or even freelancers who have skills outside your expertise. Now that you know how you want things done, and run at your studio, you can pass on tasks that you trust others to complete, which will give you more free time to focus on bigger things at hand, be more present with your studio family or even grow your studio! It may seem strange at first, and you may think “well, I know how to do this, so why get someone else, or even pay someone else to do it?” The simple answer is Time. Delegating is not always about getting others to complete a task or project you are not capable of doing yourself, but rather asking yourself where you want to spend your time. We all get the same 24 hours in a day, and if you want to work on expanding your studio with advertisements, getting involved with your community in order to have more of a presence in your area, or simply to spend more time at home with your family knowing things are running smoothly without you there all the time, then it is worth delegating to others. Automation tools and programs This is my last and favourite tip which is about finding the right tools, apps, and programs for you to use which automate your social media posts, emails, enquiries and more! There is a number to choose from but when it comes to social media planning I personally use Coschedule, and with email automation we use MailChimp. Other popular social media automation tools are: Planoly, Later, Buffer, or sprout social. And automated email services which are well known are: Get Response, Constant Contact, and Madmimi. Having these programs are amazing when to comes to automation, as the tasks which can take up a good amount of time, such as answering emails, can sometimes require the same information repeated over and over again. So by creating an email sequence for your studio answering similar questions right away to the receiver, installs a sense of professionalism while still remaining personal.  The same goes for social media post on your Instagram, facebook page, and facebook groups as well. When you plan and post regularly, you create consistency, as well as credibility, attracting others to your studio who are a fan of your social posts, or values, getting them interesting in enquiring. In correlation with point 1 about pre-planning, you can schedule a time each week or even month to plan social posts, add them to your programs, schedule and boom! You have the ability to be set for a week, 2 weeks, a month or more! Same with emails. You can set up an enquiry or enrollment automated email sequence for new students, so you can take the time focus on creating a beautiful atmosphere within your studio for when those new students roll in.   So those are my top 4 steps you can take to grow your studio on autopilot. Implementing automation strategies such as these have helped me to grow and scale my studio immensely, with this podcast, blogs as well as my coaching programs! I understand that everyone has a different goal or vision for their studio or business of dance, but I believe that no matter how big or small your goals are, implementing automation will save you more time while generating more income in the long run! I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you don’t know already my Studio Systems School is launching applications next Monday, the 9th of April! This is an 8-week program designed specifically for Dance Studio Owners to systemise & implement automation strategies for those who are wanting to grow their dance studios and create more impact within their community. In this program, you learn how to systemise for success without the stress so that you have more time to grow your business into your dream empire and run the show. Without having to do every little task! If you would like to learn more, please head to www.claireosheacoaching.com/programs and be sure to check out my 1:1 coaching program as well. I want to wish you all a fabulous day wherever you are in the world, and I will speak to you soon. Bye for now.   For more Business Of Dance please, like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram @claireosheacoaching. If you have any questions, topic suggestions or wish to be a guest on the podcast please contact us at podcast@businessofdance.net. Hosted By: Claire O'Shea

Sarah started Southern Caramel in 2013 as a way to stay home with her newborn daughter. And as her daughter grew, so did the business. Southern Caramels’ quality comes from the fact that they’re made from scratch using pure ingredients. They’re hand-crafted, hand-cut and hand wrapped too. Additionally, production is done in small batches which maintains a level of consistency and results in a product that makes people say, “Oh, my goodness!” Sarah’s company also aligns with her passion to share. She considers it a joy to give back to many causes with her time, talents, and financial support through the Southern Caramel. When she’s not working, she spends her time with various ministry opportunities that are focused on leading and teaching women and children. She loves to host events, which stems from the same foundation of giving that Southern Caramel is founded on. Business Building InsightsDifferentiate yourself for maximum impact. Fine tune a recipe or add a unique element to draw attention. Think of a problem or failure as an opportunity to create something even better. When determining the investment to participate in a show, include not only the cost of your product but also your time or expense of hiring someone to work the show. Allow people to taste your product through sampling. This is what makes them receptive to paying a premium price. Collect emails as a way to stay in touch with people after the show. In this way, you’ll increase sales from that show through follow-up sales and repeat customers. It’s not just individual consumers who go to these local shows. The person you’re talking to may be the marketing director with a big company. Resources Mentioned Mail Chimp (https://mailchimp.com/) Mad Mimi (https://madmimi.com/) Contact Links Website (http://www.southerncaramel.com) Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/Southern-Caramel-343804439118770/) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/southern.caramel/) Twitter (https://twitter.com/handmadecaramel) LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-smith-1a7b78a/) Past Guest Spotlight – Nina Nsilo-Swai of rahababy Episode #105 – A Pee-Kaboo into New Product Development (http://giftbizunwrapped.com/rahababy) Parents Magazine – 30 Best Every Potty Training Tips (https://www.parents.com/toddlers-preschoolers/potty-training/tips/30-best-ever-potty-training-tips/?slide=slide_e2bc4ad2-8991-4a46-8b2d-94ad2551d2de#slide_e2bc4ad2-8991-4a46-8b2d-94ad2551d2de) Free 20 Minute Consult – Email nina@rahababy.com and reference the podcast Gift Biz ResourcesJoin our (https://www facebook.com/groups/GiftBizBreeze) If you found value in this podcast, make sure to subscribe and leave a review in Google Podcasts (http://www.giftbizunwrapped.com/GooglePodcasts) . That helps us spread the word to more makers just like you. Thanks! Sue

Maxwell Ivey is a master of many, having been involved with carnivals in his earlier years, where he both operated and sold equipment. Later, he started a blog in carnival operations before eventually starting his incredibly successful blog The Blind Blogger, Since that, he has gone on to become a speaker and author. To read more about Max, visit The Blind Blogger.  Books by Max: Leading You Out of Darkness Into the Light The Blind Blogger’s NYC Adventures It’s Not the Cookie, It’s the Bag Top recommendations by Max: MarsEdit by Red Sweater – Tool to edit blogs  Mad Mimi – Email sender, tracker, and newsletter tool  Max’s Podcast: What’s Your Excuse? Find Max on the following socials: Twitter:  @maxwellivey Youtube: Maxwellivey If you liked this episode, please let me know on Twitter.  Thank you for listening to the Traction Growth & Income podcast. If you haven’t done so already, I would sincerely appreciate a quick rating and review on the iTunes! It really helps grow awareness for the show.  If you’re a creative wanting to make money from your craft, be sure to check out Stagepass today in order to let your audience support you by creating experiences for auction.

This post comes after the news that Mailchimp is making some big changes in 2019. I'll break down what these changes mean for YOU and whether or not you should switch. Spoiler alert: YES. I'd recommend changing.  When I very first got started with email in 2013, I used Mailchimp. I heard a speaker talk about the importance of an email list and that's what she recommended. They had a free plan for up to 2000 emails and were a trustworthy company. I stayed with them until 2015, when my goals were different and Convertkit won me over with their fabulous features. I haven't looked back. I've still recommended Mailchimp to readers as an okay place to start, though they aren't my favorite. But coming on the heels of their announcement in May 2019, I'm changing my tune. Here's why and what YOU need to know. WHAT'S CHANGING IN MAILCHIMP Mailchimp has been providing a service: allowing businesses big and small to send emails to their customers. (LEGAL emails. Read more about being legal HERE.)  Now Mailchimp is moving to become a "marketing platform." They are adding features that allow them to be more of a CRM (customer relationship management) tool. That tells us a lot. The keyword being: CUSTOMERS.  In simplest terms, Mailchimp is moving its focus toward bigger businesses and business as a whole. Not mom-and-pop blogs or authors (as much as we really are running businesses). Most of the email services I've recommended handle that ONE thing: email. Other big companies like Infusionsoft call themselves a CRM rather than an email service provider. The difference is a different features and a heckuva lot more money. For most of us, Mailchimp is not focused on providing our needs. But they'll still provide email, right? Yeah. But I wanted to look at the big picture FIRST--they aren't here to serve YOU, the author or blogger or creative with a starting-out to average income and business. Now let's break down some of the specific changes. WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? If you are still using Mailchimp and don't have more than 2000 subscribers, you're probably thinking that you're find and can just stay. You CAN. But there are current and coming changes that will affect you.  What's changing: (as noted) the focus is now on bigger businesses as a CRM free subscriber count now includes unsubscribes as well as active users limited audiences for free plan members pricing/credits for month-to-month users changes to automation (looks like you can't add new ones now on the free plan) More things WILL change, but we simply don't know yet. My guess would be that they lower the free plan to 1000 or less. There is no need for them to keep people on who are just using them for the free plan. Plus, if you've been cleaning your list regularly to stay under 2000, those emails you cleaned will now still count. Under that, my old list wouldn't be a free plan anymore. If you've been on the legacy PAID plan, you're grandfathered into their pricing. If you are on the FREE plan, when you hit paying levels, you'll be getting the new pricing. And the month-to-month users' credits will stop being active. In short, you're getting less bang for your buck. SO, SHOULD YOU LEAVE MAILCHIMP? You don't HAVE to. I mean, if you have 200 subscribers, you're probably thinking, why waste my time moving? Here's the thing: before this, I was barely recommending Mailchimp. Their features are clunky and should be way better and easier to use for as long as they've been around. They are a powerhouse and should have had features where you could click a link in an email to add a tag or move you to a group. That kind of thing is so hard in Mailchimp that even after watching tutorials on merge tags, I didn't get it. They kind of try to hide this by calling some of their features automations and tagging, but where other companies have sophisticated features called the same things, Mailchimps features just don't do the job. The best thing about Mailchimp has been the giant free plan. That will likely change, and fundamentally does now that they are counting unsubscribes. With average features, they are trustworthy in terms of a reputable company, but their goal isn't to serve YOU. They don't even have customer service AT ALL for the free plan. If you have considered a move, I think this is the kick in the pants that you should use to just do it.  WHAT EMAIL SERVICE PROVIDER SHOULD YOU USE? I've tried all the biggies. Well, almost. I haven't tried Send in Blue or Active Campaign or Infusionsoft. But I've tried Mailchimp, Mad Mimi, Tiny Letter, Aweber, ConvertKit, and Mailerlite. That's a lot. I've paid for plans to test things SO YOU DON'T HAVE TO. Here are my top two recommendations and who should try each one. I'm an affiliate for each and will share my link, which won't cost you extra. (And NO, I'm not promoting them because I'm an affiliate. I became an affiliate because I USE and LOVE them.) Cheapest and Simplest: Mailerlite This email provider gives you 1000 free emails. They also have features that Mailchimp doesn't. Their automations are much more powerful and do more. Much more. Once you start paying, it's not that much AND you have customer service on the free plan. I use Mailerlite for my Emma St. Clair list, where I essentially have an easy entryway onto my list and sell books. The end. TRY MAILERLITE!  Most Powerful and Amazing: ConvertKit I've long been an advocate of Convertkit and still am. Their features are fantastic and streamlined. Easy to use and powerful. If you are simply selling books, this is more than you'll need. But if you have other things going on like sales funnels and lots of lead magnets and things like that, Convertkit's features beat Mailerlite's. I use Convertkit for my Create If Writing List, where I've run webinars and hosted live summits and set up sales funnels. TRY CONVERTKIT! If you're still unsure, you can check out my post where I go more in depth on which email service provider you should use. READ IT HERE. You can also read more about Mailchimp: David Gaughran-  Big Changes at Mailchimp Written Word Media- Mailchimp Changes: Everything Authors Need to Know For now, you CAN stay with Mailchimp if you're way under the limit. But you might not want to. Eventually, you WILL want to move and it's much easier to move now than move later. Trust me.

Show Notes & Links Elite Edupreneurs: Empowering Educators to Become Entrepreneurs 2/5/19 Episode 81: Lori Vines - Conversations in Literacy   Today I chat with Lori from Conversations in Literacy. Lori shares how her mindset shifted her hobby to a business, how she uses sticky notes to make her to-do list more manageable, and how she uses an accountability partner for goal setting. We also discuss the importance of building an email list and helpful Wordpress plugins.   30 Day Social Media Challenge   The Elite Planner   Erin Condren Planner   Wordpress   Bloggr   Mad Mimi   UTM Codes   Convertkit   Jumping Jax Designs   Monster Insights Wordpress Plug-in   iMark Interactive Wordpress Course   Connect with Lori on social media: TpT Store Website / Blog Facebook Instagram Pinterest   Connect with Rachel on social media: Elite Edupreneurs Website / Blog Elite Edupreneurs Instagram Elite Eduprenerus Facebook Elite Edupreneurs Facebook Group TpT Store Bright Futures Counseling Website / Blog Bright Futures Counseling Facebook Bright Futures Counseling Instagram Bright Futures Counseling Pinterest Bright Futures Counseling Twitter Bright Futures Counseling YouTube   If you are enjoying Elite Edupreneurs please subscribe and leave us a review on iTunes!  

Welcome to episode 52 of The Blogger Genius Podcast. Today I'm interviewing Andrew Wilder from the site NerdPress, previously known as The Blog Tutor. In this episode we discuss the simple technical mistakes bloggers make and how they can easily fix them. We talk about how Andrew started as a food blogger, then when other food bloggers kept asking him for technical help, he found his new career. We talk about techy stuff like site speed, recipe markups, and what he thinks of the new WordPress editor called Gutenberg. Make sure you're covered on the technical aspects of blogging, so definitely listen to this episode! Resources: Blogger Genius on iTunes Blogger Genius on Stitcher Blogger Genius on Google Play The Blog Tutor (NerdPress) Eating Rules International Food Blogger Conference Metorik Woocommerce ManageWP 1Password Dashlane First Contentful Paint WP Recipe Maker Google Search Console ShortPixel Imagify Gutenberg TinyMCE Food Blogger Central Facebook Group   Transcript - What Are Simple Technical Mistakes Bloggers Make with Andrew Wilder Host 0:03 Welcome to The Blogger Genius Podcast, brought to you by MiloTree. Here's your host, Jillian Leslie. Jillian Leslie 0:13 Hey everyone, welcome back to The Blogger Genius. I have to tell you, I'm incredibly excited for this year. We've got some really cool things in the hopper. If you have not subscribed yet to the podcast, please do so. You can subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play -- really anywhere you get your podcasts. And that way, you won't miss an episode. Today, I am interviewing a guy named Andrew Wilder. Andrew started as a food blogger and then what happened was he was really good at the technical side of blogging. So when people kept asking him questions, he decided to create a new business called The Blog Tutor where he helps people with the technical side of blogging. In this episode, we are going to be talking about how to get traffic to your blog, easy wins for SEO, what you need for 2019 to keep your blog up-to-date. Andrew is not only delightful, but he shares so much that will be useful. So if the technology gives you a headache, like it does me, please listen to this episode because I know you're going to really enjoy it. So without further ado, here is Andrew Wilder. Andrew, welcome to the show. Andrew Wilder 1:40 Thanks. Happy to be here. Jillian Leslie 1:42 Okay. So I have to just say how we met which is you not only are a food blogger but you also run it, you you have a service where you help bloggers with the technical side of blogging, and we'll get into that. But you had recommended MiloTree to a customer, the customer reached out to me and said, "Oh, I'm excited about MiloTree. Andrew recommended this..." you know, our pop-up tool. And so I emailed you and said, "I just wanted to say thank you," and then I said, "Hey, would you come on the show?" Andrew Wilder 2:14 And I said I'd love to. How did your food blogger journey start? Jillian Leslie 2:15 I love that. Okay, so we have to discuss how your blogging journey started and also then how you also have this whole other business. So, tell me. Andrew Wilder 2:26 Sure. So I'm in the middle of my second and third career simultaneously. So I originally started-- Jillian Leslie 2:33 Wait. What was your first and second? Andrew Wilder 2:35 Well, my first career was as a theatrical lighting designer, so I did lighting for live events and theater. And I actually worked for a while designing shows for Princess Cruises and so I was I was traveling the world on cruise ships for a while, and it was awesome in my 20s. Then by the time I got to my 30s, not so much. And I kind of burned out on that, decided to move on. And around the same time, this was in the late 2000s, I was out of a long-term relationship and I wasn't feeling great, I wasn't taking great care of my body and I realized something needed to change. I kind of had an aha moment after reading Michael Pollan's work and I sort of had a year of transformation where I got healthy and started exercising pretty much for the first time in my life. Jillian Leslie 3:21 Wow! What kind of exercise? Andrew Wilder 3:25 I started with yoga, that's a great way to get into it. Jillian Leslie 3:28 Yoga works? Wait. YogaWorks? Andrew Wilder 3:29 Actually, I was doing yoga at home. I found a video podcast called YOGAmazing. And they were, like, 20 minute yoga sessions, so it was super great for beginners. I could, you know, do it in my living room and fall over and nobody would be looking, which is really nice. So, it's great If you're really just starting out. And I really liked it, my body really responded well to it. I actually started running after that. And I was the kid who would throw up after running a cross country in PE. It was horrible. And I went to a very sports-focused school and I was the kid in the theater who was puking. So I got over that and I actually started running and enjoying it. I realized as I was transitioning out of my writing career, I'm like, "Okay, I don't know what to do next." And everybody always says follow your passion and the money will come, right. I'm like, "Okay, well, what am I passionate about?" I'm really focused on all of this and I want to help other people. And so I decided to start my own blog about healthy eating and diet and nutrition. So I actually started my blog, which is called Eating Rules. The double entendre is intended, right? So I started that in April of 2010. Jillian Leslie 4:37 Wow. So a while ago. Andrew Wilder 4:40 Yeah. Well, what's funny is, I thought I was late to the blogging party at that point. I went to the International Food Blogger Conference that summer and I was meeting people like Elise Bauer and David Lebovitz who started in like 2004-2005. And I thought I was, like, late. And turns out, there is an attrition to blogging, right, and now I'm, like, old guard. So there is that. Yeah, it feels like I've been blogging forever. I mean, it's what, almost nine years now. So yeah, when I started I was, like, nonstop. I was writing six posts a week. I wasn't doing anything else other than working out, so I had time. That quickly went to 5 times a week and then 4 times a week because, you know, it's hard to maintain that. Jillian Leslie 5:31 And now where is it? Andrew Wilder 5:34 Once every six months. Jillian Leslie 5:35 Ooh! Okay. Got it. Andrew Wilder 5:38 But yeah, we're not going to talk about that so much. So that's because I'm busy with the third career really. Ever since I was a kid, I was always interested in computers. And in the '90s I had started building websites, and actually, throughout the 2000s, I had a one e-commerce client that I just kind of had as a client on the side while I was doing all the travel. So when I started my blog, I had an advantage because I knew the tech already, and so that definitely helps. I was sort of inherently focused on SEO and speed and various things like that, so it made it a lot easier for me to get started. But then when I got into the food blogging community, which is amazing, I got involved with the Food Bloggers Los Angeles group. And I went to the Camp Blogaway conference, which was up in the mountains, about three hours east of LA. That conference isn't running anymore but it was awesome. It was about 100 bloggers in a mountain retreat for a weekend. And most of those folks were LA-based because it was hard to get to otherwise. From there, they asked me to speak at a Food Bloggers LA meeting and I put together this presentation on Google Analytics. I didn't know what I was getting into, so like, I did a deep dive. I printed out 14 pages of stuff for everybody because I didn't have a projector. It was, like, three hours and people just hammering me with questions about Analytics. Afterwards, people swarmed me. They're like, "Hey, can I hire you to fix my blog?" And I was like, "No, no, no. Don't pay me. I'll be happy to help you out." And people were like, "No, no, I'm going to pay you. What's your rate?" and they insisted on paying me. That's kind of when the light bulb went off and I'm like, "Hmm, wait a minute. Maybe there's something to this." And from there, Blog Tutor was born. Jillian Leslie 7:24 Which is your third business. Andrew Wilder 7:26 Which is my third business. I was just doing, like, hourly fixing stuff. I was doing blog redesigns and just helping people out with the stuff that came up. Over a couple of years of that and working on, I don't know, dozens or maybe a hundred sites, I started to see patterns of what everybody kind of needs to be doing but isn't. And I'm like, "Oh, I'm setting this up on every site," you know. Why you need to make backups of your site or blog And like backups is a perfect example. Like so many people don't make backups of their site. And so I would set up backups and I found the backup systems that worked reliably and were also easy to restore if something happened, because that's also really important. So out of that, I kind of started to standardize what I was installing and setting up, and I turned that into a maintenance and support subscription. So instead of working hourly for folks, which is very unpredictable for me and for my clients, instead, it's a fixed monthly rate. We include various services with it. And that's really been a game changer for everybody. It allows me to help more people because it's consistent and I can optimize what I'm doing on my end and I can hire people to help me with some things, so I can help more people that way. It's also made my income more regular and predictable, which is I've never had that in my life. Jillian Leslie 8:47 Nice, nice. Andrew Wilder 8:49 I can run a report on Metorik, I'm not sure how he pronounces it, which is a WooCommerce website. M-E-T-O-R-I-K dot com. A game changer. Bryce (the guy behind that) is brilliant, so I'm going to give him a shout-out on that. Jillian Leslie 9:04 Great. And I'll link to it in the show notes. Andrew Wilder 9:07 Excellent. So yeah, I can go to Metorik and see exactly, you know, if nobody signs up for my plans and nobody leaves, I know exactly how much money I'm going to earn in the next 12 months. Jillian Leslie 9:15 That's amazing. How many blogs would you say you manage? Andrew Wilder 9:19 We are managing a little over 200 sites right now. Jillian Leslie 9:24 That's amazing. Andrew Wilder 9:26 That's also why I'm spending 12 or 13 hours a day, every day in front of my computer. Jillian Leslie 9:30 I get it. Why it's important to hire help when you're a blogger Andrew Wilder 9:31 So I'm tired. But I've actually hired help. I have two guys working with me who are awesome. I brought Sergio on about a year ago in October of 2017. He and I met at WordCamp LA, which is a WordPress conference. We ended up sitting next to each other at a session on the WordPress command line interface and he showed me some tricks. And I'm like, "Hey, you're cool and you're generous, and let's talk." We just totally hit it off and became friends. And he's awesome. Then my more recent hire is Ben Meyer who is also a food blogger. He found me through Food Blogger Pro. He's active in the forums there and I'm one of their resident experts. I had been planning on like working on hiring somebody in October and he reached out in September, just sent me a cold email. I had seen him around, but his email was excellent. You know, so he wrote a really good cover letter and I'm like, "Wait a minute, let's talk." So both Sergio and Ben kind of fell into my lap, so to speak, and they've been great. And, you know, I could not be managing this many sites on my own at this point. Why solving a problem for others can turn into a business Jillian Leslie 10:42 I bet. A couple things that you said that I really resonate with. One, people came up to you and said, "Hey, help me with my blog." And boom, there's the problem, you're the solution. Like, there was your business. So again, I always say this to people, which is, look for what people are responding to you about your... you know, it could be something, you know, here you are this food blogger wanting to talk about health and healthy eating and then who knew that people would want this other service from you. So that was terrific that you saw that opportunity and seized upon it or seized it. Andrew Wilder 11:16 I mean, it's just kind of the path. You know what, you have to be out there doing stuff, right? Jillian Leslie 11:20 Yes. Andrew Wilder 11:21 And if you're doing that, then paths will appear and then you get to choose which path you want to take. Jillian Leslie 11:25 And people will appear because as you just said, "Wow, I met this guy at this conference, or this guy reached out to me." So just my piece of advice is: be open. Andrew Wilder 11:35 One thing, one piece of advice I like to give about going to food blog conferences. So I love going to conferences and, at this point, I tend to like going for the social aspect because I get to see a bunch of people I don't see very often. Right? How to meet people at a conference But when I started, when I went to that first IFBC conference, I didn't know anybody, literally. Like I started using Twitter a week before and through Twitter, actually, I found I was sitting on the same exact train going into the city with another blogger from LA and we happen to have been on the same plane. So we connected and walked to the hotel together. But so, you know, finding ways to reach out and connect with people is amazing. But what I started doing at the conference was we have these, like, 15- or 20-minute breaks between sessions and I would give myself the assignment of go and meet three new people. Jillian Leslie 12:19 Oh, I like that. Oh, it's so uncomfortable. Andrew Wilder 12:22 Totally uncomfortable. But you know, people are really friendly. Jillian Leslie 12:24 They are. Andrew Wilder 12:26 And, you know, as long as you're nice, people are going to be nice to you, I think, or I believe. And so, what I would do though is I go introduce myself politely. I wouldn't like burst in and interrupt a conversation or something. But after a couple of minutes, we'd exchange cards. I'd say, I'd literally tell people, "I've got to go meet two more people. It was nice meeting you. Let's talk soon." And I go meet two more people. And people actually got a kick out of it. So like, you know, so I also didn't get stuck talking to one person and as opposed to, you know. And from that, I met some very dear friends who, you know, I consider my closest friends now. Jillian Leslie 12:59 Right. And what I find... and again, I've talked about this on the podcast. I also like going to conferences and meeting people that I may know virtually, but all of a sudden, you meet them in real life and it just takes everything to a whole different level. And bloggers do share. Like, they're kind and they they will help. I have found that there isn't this feeling of like, "Oh, I have to keep all my secrets to myself." The people are very generous, like, "Oh, I've been doing this on Facebook and it's been working," or, "You should try this with your email," or whatever. And I have always found that so helpful and generous. Andrew Wilder 13:40 I completely agree. And it's amazing because food blogging is incredibly competitive. You know, like, I like to say there's room for all of us, but realistically, there's only 10 search results on the first page. And there's only so many pins and so many eyeballs. And so, you know, clearly it's a huge market and there is room for anybody who's really dedicated. But it's amazing to me how supportive bloggers are of each other when you're supporting your competition. And I can't think of any other industry that's like that. Jillian Leslie 14:10 And there are ways that if you work together, you can help each other grow. Andrew Wilder 14:14 Absolutely. And what's really special. I mean, I love working with food bloggers, like, they're nice people and they're nice clients. When I started working, when I was working for the cruise ships, they would take six months to pay us and it was like an ordeal, we'd have to helm that. And like, food bloggers pay me in advance, and I solve a problem and then I get, you know, a huge thank you. It's nice. I'm not, like, banging my head against the keyboard, you know, and it makes me want to keep helping people. Jillian Leslie 14:41 Totally. Now, back to what you had mentioned. Okay, so people came to you and you kept seeing certain problems over and over again. One was backups. But what other... So again, we all need to be backing up our sites. Andrew Wilder 14:55 Yes. Jillian Leslie 14:56 And can you talk a minute about that? But also, what were these other problems or mistakes or things that people were struggling with? Technical mistakes bloggers make Andrew Wilder 15:04 It sort of falls into, I don't know, three or four buckets. So backups is one of them. The key with backups is, well, first of all, you have to back up files and your database because you need both of those things for WordPress to be complete. And then you have to back them up off-site and it should be on schedule. Like if you just had a calendar reminder to do it once a week, that's not sufficient really because you're going to forget. And the last piece of that is you have to know how to restore your site if something goes wrong. So backups are a little tricky to do. The other thing is, don't ever trust your host to do backups. Some hosts do backups and especially the Manage WordPress posts. But unless you are absolutely sure that they're doing backups and you can access them, and it's not just like the whole server disaster recovery kind of backup, that's not usually sufficient. I had one friend who had a hosting company. Her hosting company disappeared overnight. It was a smaller company, obviously, and she didn't have any backups and her site was gone. Emails started bouncing. Like, nothing. She totally lost her entire site. Jillian Leslie 16:06 Wow. The need to backup your site Andrew Wilder 16:06 That's like the extreme horror story, right? So I can't emphasize backups enough. The other reason I start with backups is you can screw anything else up, your site can get hacked. It doesn't matter if you have a backup you can restore from, you can get back in business. So it's this massive safety net. Jillian Leslie 16:23 I think we back up our sites every day. Andrew Wilder 16:26 I hope so. On my services I take backups so seriously that I actually am doing three different backups nightly. We're using ManageWP now to do incremental backups through a plugin. We're also using CodeGuard, which is a third-party service that doesn't require a plugin or Wordpress's system. It's blogs directly into the server against the backup. And we're also using UpdraftPlus to make a local backup nightly, which that one's more for convenience than security. But that way, you can just make a really quick backup before making any changes or anything. So that's that's how seriously I take backup. Jillian Leslie 16:59 Okay. So everybody, take that seriously. Okay. And then what are the other mistakes or problems that people are facing or were facing when they reached out to you? Making sure your site is secure Andrew Wilder 17:11 Security is a big one. WordPress is not inherently insecure, right? It's an active product that's being developed, but vulnerabilities are discovered. Vulnerabilities and plugins are discovered. Basic stuff like not sharing passwords through email. It's a big one. Email is not secure and that password will sit in both people's archives forever. Reusing passwords is a bad practice, right? Like, what was it, Target that got hacked? If your email address and password were hacked in the Target breach and you use the same email address and password on other services, it's not hard for hackers to make that connection. So using strong passwords and unique passwords on every platform, it's important Jillian Leslie 17:52 My husband who is a technologist forced me to start using 1Password which is a password service and it's not an easy system to use, but it makes everything that much more secure. Andrew Wilder 18:14 Are you on Mac or PC? Jillian Leslie 18:15 Mac. Andrew Wilder 18:17 I'm on PC and I don't love 1Password on PC. I've heard its really good on Mac, but maybe not. Another good one is Dashlane. I also found a free one called Buttercup recently and I started playing with it. And it looks like it might actually be good. So that's another one people could check out. Jillian Leslie 18:32 Yeah. At least with 1Password, and I think 1Password has like kind of a subscription plan that makes it easier, but I will say it's a little bit of a learning curve to use it. But once you do, then you don't know how you'd ever live without it. Andrew Wilder 18:48 Exactly. It's once you get it set up, it makes your life not only more secure but it actually makes your life easier. Jillian Leslie 18:54 It does. So I would recommend investing the time in some sort of password plugin or program or something like that. Andrew Wilder 19:04 Absolutely. And then security scanning is also important, having a good firewall. There's all this technical stuff you can do to help protect your site. Update your site often to fix security vulnerabilities Then the next big, big thing that people aren't doing and should is updating their sites. There's all these plugins and updates are released regularly for a lot of them. Sometimes updates are just new features. Sometimes though, they're fixing security holes. As soon as there's an update to fix a security vulnerability, that becomes a known vulnerability. So hackers actually know this and they can start testing that for sites that haven't updated yet. So one of our tiers of our support plans, we take care of the updates. The other part of it is if something breaks during an update, we'll fix it. That's part of the the peace of mind aspect. Because what happens when you hit update and there's a bug in the new update and you get a white screen of death, if you don't know how to fix it, you're going to be stuck and your site's going to be down. So we're able to take that burden off of people. One of the other advantages of working on so many sites is we see patterns emerge very quickly. So for example, there was a vulnerability in a GDPR plugin, the WP GDPR compliance plugin recently. It was a very bad one, actually. And we were able to find that very quickly. Then we just found all of our sites that were running that plugin and updated them immediately so that they wouldn't get hacked. Jillian Leslie 20:32 Can we talk about plugins in general? Andrew Wilder 20:34 Sure. Jillian Leslie 20:34 Okay. So I know as we just talked about previously, for MiloTree, we built MiloTree so that it was incredibly light and incredibly fast. And the big, I guess, criticism of plugins is they slow down your site and you don't want too many. So can you speak to that and what that means? And how many plugins you'd recommend? Andrew Wilder 20:55 Sure. With plugins, it's not about quantity, it's about quality. You know, most people don't realize how complicated WordPress itself is. I've actually been wanting to do a search and figure out how many millions of lines of code there is on WordPress. And a plugin could be literally two lines of active code, or it could be... so it could be a very lightweight plugin that doesn't do much. And that will be, you know, assuming it doesn't, like, have some problem with it, that won't slow things down at all, you know. But it could be a very large bug. Like, Woocommerce is a huge plugin, right? It's a good plugin but it's huge because it does a lot of stuff and it takes a lot more work for your server to process that. Pick WordPress plugins based on their quality and speed So really focus on quality and size and scope of plugin, you know, if it's well coded and fast. You know, MiloTree has been designed from the ground up to be fast, right? Jillian Leslie 21:49 Right. Andrew Wilder 21:50 So that makes a big difference. I've seen a lot of pop-up plugins that really bog things down, or sometimes they'll keep track of their stats, and I'll log in and check the database and their stats database will be like 200 megabytes, and it's slowing everything down because of that. I can't give you a number of like "Oh, it's okay, to have this many plugins." You know, in general, less is more; and fewer plugins, it's going to be faster because it's less for your site to do. But you really want to focus on on the quality and the speed and the weight. The other thing to consider is, what does the plugin do? Does it add a feature in the dashboard? Or does it add a feature on the front end? Or both? Adding stuff to the front end will add, you know, maybe JavaScript and stylesheets and other stuff. Some plugins are very greedy. The EasyRecipe plugin, for example, I think it added four stylesheets and four Javascripts to every page load, whether there's a recipe on it or not. And in this age where Google and everybody's pushing for more speed, you don't want to bog your site down with that. Does site speed matter? Jillian Leslie 22:53 Can we talk about that? Because my husband is like a speed freak, okay. All he cares about is site speed. He will get mad at me if our photos are not resized, that kind of thing. Could we talk about why speed... like, is he right that speed is so important? Andrew Wilder 23:15 Yes, to a point. So, speed is critical. It is a ranking factor for Google. But it's also good for users. If you click through on a search result to a chocolate chip cookie recipe and you see a white screen for five seconds and then you see an ad pop-up before anything else, you're going to click away before you even get to the recipe, so it needs to load fast. People are on their phones which don't have as fast a connection to the internet and a slower processor. So part of it is just thinking of the user and making sure the site loads quickly because people don't have time, you know, in this millennial age. If it's not there, almost instantly forget. They're going to hit the back button and try a different search result. At the same time, you don't have to be obsessive about speed. In terms of SEO and ranking, actually you don't get a boost in the rankings for being faster inherently. You actually can be penalized for being slow though. And that's also relative to your vertical. So you want to be faster than other food blogs. Jillian Leslie 24:23 Got it, okay. Andrew Wilder 24:26 If you're running a food blog. Jillian Leslie 24:27 Okay, okay. Andrew Wilder 24:29 But faster is better. The other places with a lot of confusion is people are like, "Oh, my page took 20 seconds to load." The total page load time is not really a useful metric. Because what happens during those 20 seconds? What you want to have happen is your page starts showing something very quickly. Within two seconds, the visitor has to see something happening. Within three seconds, they should be starting to read your content. So you want to be looking at, like, First Contentful Paint. It's like basically the first time the browser paints anything or draws anything. Because if your header image and your post title and your first picture, and some of your actual blog post content starts showing up within three seconds, your site's going to be crazy fast to the visitor. Then if other stuff around it kind of loads while the person is reading, they may not even notice. So it's not so much the total time, but it's more about the perception of speed. Jillian Leslie 25:22 Oh, interesting. Andrew Wilder 25:24 And starting to really break down what's important on the page. Jillian Leslie 25:27 Interesting. Okay, so we've touched on, wow, okay, so we've touched on security, we've touched on site speed, we've touched on backups. Anything else that bloggers struggle with? Why you need recipe markups if you're a food blogger Andrew Wilder 25:45 Recipes and recipe markup -- that's a challenge. Jillian Leslie 25:49 Can we talk about what that is? Andrew Wilder 25:51 Yes. Most people, I think, are aware of this now, where you want to use a modern recipe plugin that basically lets you format your recipe on the page. And it looks good, like you have your recipe card, as it's usually called. But it also in the code has markup to tell Google, "Hey, this is the ingredient, this is the description, this is the cook time, the prep time. This is the number of ratings it has." All that stuff is actually in the code and it gives that information to Google. And if you have enough of that information in, Google will reward that by showing what's called a rich snippet in the search results. The little thumbnail image and the rating and, you know, the cook time and stuff. And the more of that information you have in the search results, the more likely somebody has to click on it because it looks much more appealing. So the trick is, you need to fill out all the information or as much of it as possible. If you consistently don't fill out the cook time, you're missing out on opportunity. So it's real tedious to go through and make sure everything is, you know, filled out completely or as completely as possible. But it really does pay dividends on that. Jillian Leslie 27:01 What is your favorite recipe plugin, card plugin? Andrew Wilder 27:05 So there's a few good ones. The one I currently include with my support plans is WP Recipe Maker. The other one I'd recommend is Tasty Recipes. That's from the the same folks who do Food Blogger Pro. Jillian Leslie 27:17 Yeah, I know them. Andrew Wilder 27:18 I know them, I like them a lot. Jillian Leslie 27:20 Me too. Andrew Wilder 27:21 When I started doing WP RM, it was the only plug-in at the time that was fully Google compliant So I started including that as a service for my client. You know, I see that sort of as a value add with my services. It's not sort of as much as of a core component. But it's really helpful. For folks who have ZipList Recipe still or EasyRecipe Plus, you're going to see a big improvement by converting over to WP Recipe Maker or Tasty Recipes. What I always recommend is when somebody's doing a conversion, they do them one at a time; they test for accuracy and completeness. That's the same time you go through and say, "Oh, wait, this is missing the prep time," and you add that or it's missing keywords, or whatever information it is. Jillian Leslie 28:05 Interesting. So, keep going. Andrew Wilder 28:08 I was going to say, then you can also... if you have your site configured in Google Search Console, it'll show you a report of which recipes are missing information. It does take a week or two to update sometimes, so you have to be patient, it's not an instant thing. But as you're working through stuff, you know, once a week check on your Google Search Console and you'll start seeing, "Oh, these recipes are all complete now." Why MiloTree is such a powerful plugin to grow your social media followers Jillian Leslie 28:31 "I wanted to take a short break to talk about how powerful MiloTree is. And why is it so powerful? Because MiloTree is taking your traffic -- people who have been on your site and converting those people into followers and subscribers. And what happens when you take people who love you, who know your content, who then become followers, what happens is those people become engaged. Those people interact with your content on social. And what that does is it signals to the social networks the your accounts matter and will show your content to more people. So these aren't just any followers and subscribers. These are the cream of the crop. And that's what MiloTree does. So I invite you to head on over to MiloTree.com to sign up for your 30-day free trial to see how it works for you. And it also will work on WordPress, we have a WordPress plugin. But there's also a simple line of code that you can install on your Shopify store or any platform where you own your site." And now back to the show." Now, here's the thing. The name of the game -- I was just having this conversation with David, my husband and partner -- and what we were saying is, it doesn't matter how great your site is. What really, at the end of the day, matters for you to make money is traffic. So when you think about that for Google so that you can get traffic, what are your strategies? What are your tips for how to use your blog technology to drive traffic to your site? Andrew Wilder 30:24 It's a lot of what we just talked about from a technical perspective. You know, the site has to be fast, it has to be up and working. And it has to be mobile-friendly. Beyond that, you have to have great content. That is still the number one thing, is great content. When you're optimizing for SEO or any traffic, the most important thing is, think of your visitor. Are they having a good experience? Is it immediately obvious what your site's about, who you are, I can't believe how many people still don't have a smiling picture of themselves at the top of the site. People want to know who they're reading. Why it's important to show Google you are an authority in your niche And Google is also focused on expertise, authority and trustworthiness (the E.A.T). So when Google is looking at your site and humans from Google look at your site too, they want to see that you are an authority and you're trustworthy and you're an expert. So you have to kind of drop those clues. Having a nice picture of you smiling at the top. "Hi, I'm Andrew. Welcome to Eating Rules." It doesn't have to be much. In fact, it shouldn't be much. But rather than some random chocolate chip recipe, it's, "Oh, hey, this is my daughter in my food blog," or whatever your hook is, right? You got to hook people and draw them in and then you have to give them some good stuff. Edit out your redundant blog photos -- show the steps One other thing I've been paying attention to a lot is your photos. You know, everybody knows you have to have great photos, right? But when you take 12 pictures of that cake, with the perfect slice cut out of it, and all the pictures are almost identical and you put all of them in the blog post, you're not really adding value for the reader. Instead, you have one beautiful shot at the top of that cake, right. And it's like, "Oh, want to make that." And you start scrolling, scrolling, you know, reading through the blog and you talk a little bit about how you make the cake, and maybe the process shots of, you know, step-by-step photos of how to make the cake. So like, if you're layering, you know, raspberry filling or whatever in the middle, show a picture of that so people can see how it's done because then you're providing value. And make sure that picture looks nice and it's compelling. That way, you're kind of holding people's hand through this experience of making the cake and they're going to get better results because you're showing them how to do it better and they're going to trust you more. Jillian Leslie 32:29 Right. And especially because people consume content on their phones. So to have photo after photo after photo that's just a slightly different angle, you know, I'm on my phone so I don't want to be scrolling through those photos. Andrew Wilder 32:44 And I know it's hard for people to edit. You know, you get the cake to look beautiful, you set up your light. You've got the camera, you've got all the gear. And, you know, you shoot 200 pictures of this. Show three. Jillian Leslie 32:59 Yes. In fact, I was given that piece of advice for SEO, which is to take out really, like be hypercritical taking out photos in your posts. You know, back in the day it was like throwing in the kitchen sink. And it reminds me, I was a writer in Hollywood and there's always that thing about you need to be able to kill your babies, which means you have a joke or a piece of something and you love it so much. And to become a better writer, you need to learn to delete stuff even if it's good. Andrew Wilder 33:33 Exactly. So, from a user perspective, it's good to get rid of those photos. You know, I don't want to scroll through 12 of the same picture. As I'm scrolling on my phone, those pictures all start to look the same anyway. But from a speed perspective, it's huge too. You know, images compared to anything else are enormous. You know, you might have a 200 kilobyte image. And if you have 12 of those, just the images in your page are over a megabyte, which is slow anywhere. And all the Javascripts and all the HTML probably won't even add up to that much. Jillian Leslie 34:03 Right, yes. Aren't there plugins that resize photos and things like that? Andrew Wilder 34:09 Yes. Jillian Leslie 34:10 And you recommend the? Use an image optimizer to reduce the size of your photos Andrew Wilder 34:11 I do. Actually, I include image optimization on my Inner Peace support plan because it's such an important thing. So not only will we compress the photos, we will actually scale them down, if needed, as well. Because, you know, if you upload right out of your camera, you might be uploading a 4000 by 3000 pixel image that's four megabytes. There are some ways to mitigate that with image source set, which usually only works on mobile. But still, you're better off scaling the image to the size it's going to be displayed. Optimizing it or compressing it with the JPEG compression before you even export out of Photoshop or Lightroom or wherever you're editing. And then when you upload to have an image compression plugin, like ShortPixel or Imagify, that will squeeze out a few more kilobytes and optimize the image. The other reason it's really good to have an image optimization plugin is when you upload an image to WordPress, it generates thumbnail images. So it will basically take your, let's say, your 700 pixel wide image that you upload. It might also create a 500 by 500, and it might create a 300 by 300, and a 150 by 150. So it creates these little thumbnails that are used in various ways. Which images it creates basically depend on your plugins and your theme. But those images will also be optimized by the plugins. So it runs in the background automatically. So once you have it set up and configured, you don't have to do anything, which is really nice. It doesn't add any burden to your workflow. It doesn't make life harder. Jillian Leslie 35:39 Right. Andrew Wilder 35:41 So, ShortPixel is my favorite one. Jillian Leslie 35:42 Okay. And we'll have all these in the show notes. Okay, so here is my next question. So it seems like every so often, pretty often, there are new technical things that come out. Like Google doesn't want you to show intrusive pop-ups on mobile or GDPR. Like, I feel like people's heads exploded. What do you see coming down the pike? What do I need to know about Gutenberg, the new editor is WordPress? Andrew Wilder 36:04 Well, the big, big, big one is Gutenberg. So Gutenberg is the new editor in WordPress. It's been under under development for well over a year. It was originally going to come out this past spring and then it was going to come out the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and then it was going to come out the Monday after Thanksgiving. And it is still not out yet. I'm very glad they didn't release it right before Thanksgiving. It is a beautiful way to create content. It's sort of similar to Medium, if you've ever seen their editor. And it thinks in terms of blocks. So paragraph is a block, and image is a block. Jillian Leslie 36:41 Isn't it very similar also to say like MailChimp or any of those email services where you're constantly adding the blocks? Andrew Wilder 36:49 Yes. Mad Mimi works kind of the same way. So, I think Gutenberg is a great thing for the future. It's, you know, the old editor, the TinyMCE, that's what it's called, is kind of clunky. You can't really do much but write paragraphs and dropping some pictures. It's hard to extend and do things like tables or, you know, three columns or something like that. So, Gutenberg is going to add a lot of that functionality and really modernize things. The trick is, any plugin that works in the editor has to become Gutenberg compatible. They're catching up but Gutenberg has been changing so rapidly that it's been very difficult for plugin authors to keep up. So what my recommendation is, is basically I'm bullish on Gutenberg long term, but I'm bearish in the short term. If you've got an existing site, it may not be worth changing to Gutenberg just yet. So what's going to happen is right now, if you want to use Gutenberg, you have to install it as a separate plugin. When WordPress 5.0 comes out, it will be built in and it'll be the default editor. If you want to stick with what you've got, you can install the classic editor. It's a plugin to the repository that basically as soon as you install it, it just keeps things as is. You can install that now before 5.0 is released. Then when 5.0 comes out, you can update and you'll still have the classic editor. So what I recommend is doing that now, you know, especially in Q4 when everybody's got crazy traffic from the holidays, like don't break anything right now. Then in January or February, we can revisit this and then maybe time it to test out Gutenberg. Okay, so don't rush. Don't rush into it. There's there's going to be benefits but at the moment, you could really kind of shoot yourself in the foot. I had one client who installed Gutenberg and it seemed to be working. and then they had their VAs going through and editing lots of recipes for two weeks and then they discovered problems where things weren't saving properly. They had to go back and fix a lot of stuff. Especially if you don't catch a problem right away, it's really hard to restore from a backup and they had to fix all of this manually and it was a lot of work. So, tread lightly. Gutenberg is going to be great but it might not be there yet. Jillian Leslie 38:58 Right. My husband has a similar philosophy like when iOS comes out with new versions, he waits like a month or two or three or I don't know how long because everybody gets excited and downloads it, but then typically, they kind of fix stuff in the beginning. So patience a little bit kind of can get you further. Andrew Wilder 39:22 I actually set up a playground for my clients where they could log into just a fresh WordPress installation that has Gutenberg installed so they can tinker with it and get a feel for it without having to risk breaking their own sites. Then I installed common plugins like I installed Tasty Recipes and WP Recipe Maker which we both now... yep. So both of those plugins are Gutenberg compatible now officially. Jillian Leslie 39:44 Okay, got it. Andrew Wilder 39:46 But, you know, that's only until Gutenberg changes something and it breaks something in the plugin, and plugin authors have to fix it. So, it's going to be a little rough for a little while. Jillian Leslie 39:54 I get that. Now, here's a question. I know of a blogger who recently changed their theme and their Google traffic like halved. Is that a common thing? Andrew Wilder 40:09 It shouldn't happen. But I wouldn't say it's not common. You know, it's hard to say. It depends what changed. And I'm not a forensic SEO expert, I could refer that person to some great people who might be able to pinpoint what happened and what went wrong. It could be a number of things. It could be that their speed suddenly tanked and the new theme was actually much slower. Or it could be that there was a technical problem or maybe they changed their URLs by accident and didn't realize it. There's so many variables here that it can happen for sure. If you do it "right", it shouldn't happen. If anything, Google, should... you know, you should be making things better, not worse. So, you should long-term at least be rewarded. You know, sometimes when there are big changes, Google will kind of drop things until it gets a chance to re-index. So it might just be like a dip for a couple of weeks. That can happen too, so don't panic necessarily. It could also be bad timing. It could be that there was a Google algorithm change around the same time and, you know, you think it's because of your theme but it's not; it's because of something else. Jillian Leslie 41:19 Interesting. Okay. What's interesting is you're technical and you're a food blogger. So how do you think about social media from a blogger perspective, a technical perspective, or however you want to answer that question? Andrew Wilder 41:34 So I burned out on social media, to be honest. I may not be the best person to ask because I'm kind of down on social media. Jillian Leslie 41:42 As are a lot of people, yes. Andrew Wilder 41:45 I know Instagram exploded and I found it wasn't doing anything for traffic, so I kind of lost interest. You know, Twitter doesn't drive traffic for the most part, so it's really all Pinterest. You know, Facebook drives very little traffic. If you make videos, Facebook is great, but otherwise, forget it. Jillian Leslie 42:03 But I would say that Facebook is good at rewarding your Facebook page, but not necessarily driving traffic even with videos. Andrew Wilder 42:13 Yeah. You know, because they want to keep people on Facebook to get their advertising dollars. Right? Jillian Leslie 42:18 Exactly. Andrew Wilder 42:20 So, you know, on my own food blog, I did okay on Pinterest but I never quite cracked the Pinterest code, to be honest, you know. I was kind of phasing out of Eating Rules and more focused on Blog Tutor. And for Blog Tutor, I'm not really doing a lot of social media because I don't need to. My business is growing organically through referrals. You know, because food bloggers all talk to each other. So I'm blessed that I don't have to do a ton of marketing right now. You know, where I do use social media is Facebook for support groups like Food Bloggers Central is a great place for folks to get advice. Jillian Leslie 42:58 Is that a Facebook group? Big Facebook groups for food bloggers to check out Andrew Wilder 42:59 Yes. There's a few really big Facebook groups of 2000 or 3000 or 4000 people in them, but they're very active. So if you have a question you could ask there and get an answer very quickly. I often answer questions in there to help people out which is of course, great marketing for me. So Facebook groups are really, really useful. I mean, that's sort of replaced other forums. But yeah, if you can tell me Pinterest secrets. I will be listening to that podcast. Jillian Leslie 43:27 We do. Well, actually, Pinterest is very, very important for Catch My Party. In fact, we're approaching a million followers. Andrew Wilder 43:34 Oh, Mazel Tov. Jillian Leslie 43:36 Thank you. And again, we take what Pinterest says very seriously. When Pinterest talks, we listen. That drives millions of page views for us and that's how we ended up building MiloTree was to support, to keep our Pinterest followers growing. So I was curious, especially since you're a food blogger and, you know, Pinterest is I think such an important platform for food bloggers. Andrew Wilder 44:04 I think for me, some of it is it's the the cobbler's kids' shoes. Jillian Leslie 44:08 Yes. I so get that, the manicurist's nails. Yes. Andrew Wilder 44:13 I'm so busy working on other people's sites that it's hard at the end of the day, you know, to spend any time on my own. Jillian Leslie 44:18 I get it. Andrew Wilder 44:20 And that's okay. I've made peace with that. Jillian Leslie 44:22 I get that. Okay, so what is one, just randomly, one piece of food advice that has helped you that you think has really helped your health? Andrew Wilder 44:33 Recently, I've cut out carbs. I don't want to say I jumped on the keto bandwagon. But I feel much better. I think it's because I'm eating more vegetables instead of bread and cheese when I'm working all day and I have to go grab something out of the fridge real quick. When I grab carrots instead of crackers, that makes a difference. Jillian Leslie 44:55 And have you lost weight? Andrew Wilder 44:56 I have. Jillian Leslie 44:57 Naturally without trying? Andrew Wilder 44:59 Yeah. I'm using a meal delivery service for lunches called Territory. It's expensive but it's really good. It's great because I get my five lunches a week delivered and the food's excellent. It's basically lots of vegetables and various proteins, and they have keto-friendly ones, or low-carb ones ready. Because I've been so swamped with work that it's sort of an indulgence, you know, to not have to cook for myself, but it's actually kind of necessary because I don't have the time right now. Which leads me to one big point actually that, like, I'm hiring help. And right now, the help I need is for somebody else to make me lunch. Jillian Leslie 45:47 I like that, I like that. I'm a big believer in that. Advice: Learn to hire people for your business Andrew Wilder 45:54 Inherently, everybody I'm working with, they've learned or they started to learn to hire help because I'm the help they're hiring. And it's something that I've been trying to learn in my own business. It's like, "you know what? Just because I can do this doesn't mean I should." Jillian Leslie 46:05 Right. And there is a process of letting go and that somebody might not make your lunch the exact same way you would and that's okay. Andrew Wilder 46:15 Although, at the same time, I'm often pleasantly surprised that, like, they might make the lunch better than I would. Jillian Leslie 46:22 Exactly. Andrew Wilder 46:25 That's something I've been working really hard on leaving the door open to like because I'm kind of a control freak and I'm, I'm pretty good at a lot of stuff. I like to say I'm good at a lot of things. I'm not excellent at everything. You know, like, I'm not super niche down. So it's hard for me to find people who can do the breadth of stuff, but I'm finding people who can do certain things much better than me. And that has been so liberating, and to take that kind of stuff off my plate which frees me up to do other stuff. And so, you know, it takes time and and leaps faith sometimes to find that but when you do, it's so great Jillian Leslie 47:04 It is. And if you can find the one thing that I am very careful of, intentional about is the people I hired to help me and if they are people that I like and that do great work, and they make my life so much more pleasant, and so I would say take the time to really find those gems because they're out there. Andrew Wilder 47:31 What's the phrase? Hire slowly but fire quickly. Jillian Leslie 47:34 Yes, I believe in that. Andrew Wilder 47:36 Easy to say but hard to do. If it's not working, cut it off. Jillian Leslie 47:40 Immediately, because it's not going to work. No matter how much you try to make it work, you will know, I believe, and it's just, you know, I believe that in so many areas of my business, try something. If it's not working, pull up, pull up, pull up. So well, I have to say, this has been such a treat and I'm sure that a lot of my audience is going to go "How do I reach out to this guy? How do I learn more of what he's talking about, what he's doing? How do I hire him?" So could you share how people can find out about you? Andrew Wilder 48:12 Sure, you can go to BlogTutor.com. That's B-L-O-G-T-U-T-O-R dot com. Then there's some information on the homepage. But then if you need WordPress help, there's a big old button that says "Get WordPress help" and that will show you all the information about our support plans and our pricing and the various plans that are available. Then you can sign up from there or reach out to us. You can also reach us at support@blogtutor.com. So you can just shoot us an email with some questions. So, Ben, Sergio, and I all check that inbox, so we're all we're all working on that. I will drop a little hint. I'm actually about to change the name of the company. It's a long time coming. But you know, when I started, I was originally going to write courses for food bloggers, actually very similar to Food Blogger Pro. They did it better than I ever would have. But that's why I called it Blog Tutor and, you know, it's kind of a descriptive name. We do do sort of a lot of tutoring in our emails back and forth with our clients. You know, I believe in explaining what we're doing to our clients so that they're empowered to know what's going on with their sites. We don't just fix something and then say, "okay, it's fixed." We tell you what we did so you can learn from it. But we've kind of outgrown the Blog Tutor name. So I'm in the trademarking process right now so I can't tell you yet what the name is, but it's so much better than Blog Tutor. So I don't know when this is going to air. Jillian Leslie 49:29 Probably in maybe four weeks or so. Andrew Wilder 49:33 Okay, great. I am hoping to have changed the name by then. Jillian Leslie 49:35 Okay. Well, you know what, if you reach out to me with the new name, I'll add it so that people can read the show notes and see. Andrew Wilder 49:44 Excellent, and I'll set up a redirect from Blog Tutor, so you'll be able to find us through BlogTutor.com either way. But I'm super excited about the name and I can't wait. That waslike my last big project for 2018, so I'm coming down to the deadline and we'll get there. Jillian Leslie 49:59 Nice. Well, Andrew, thank you so much for being on the show. Andrew Wilder 50:03 Well, thank you for having me. This was a pleasure. Please spread the word about The Blogger Genius Podcast Jillian Leslie 50:06 "If you're liking the Blogger Genius Podcast, there are many ways to support the show. The first way would be to share about it. If you have a friend who you think would really benefit from it, please share it. Also, if you haven't subscribed yet, head on over to iTunes, Stitcher. Google Play, anywhere you get your podcasts, and please subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Also, you can review us on iTunes. Just log into iTunes and tell people what you think, tell me what you think. I'm always open to idea. And I'll see you back here next week for a new episode." Why you need to sign up for MiloTree I invite you to head to milotree.com and start growing your business faster. If you're trying to grow your social media followers and your email list, MiloTree will do it on steroids. It will grow your followers 24/7 and your email list, and it does it while you sleep. Watch your followers on Instagram or Pinterest or Facebook or YouTube or your email list explode! Sign up for MiloTree now, get your first 30 DAYS FREE, and set it up in under 3 minutes!

In episode #14 I sit down with Yosef "Gary" Levitt, former CEO & Founder of MadMimi which was acquired by GoDaddy for $45M. The road to success was anything but easy as Yosef's journey started on a farm in South Africa to becoming a pro-skateboarder and bass player, getting a scholarship to a music college in the US, working as a Busboy in SOHO, playing at wedding, getting married, moving to Jerusalem and building MadMimi into one of the best email platforms for artists and small businesses. This interview with Gary Levitt is one of the most incredible and inspiring I have ever heard. W/o any formal education Gary was able to produce music for The Oprah Winfrey Show, teaching himself HTML from a book, and so much more. This interview will make you realize that you too can start a company and the only one holding you back is yourslef. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So far in this series, I've shared a simple book launch formula, how to get other people to share your work, how to utilize paid promotions, and in this post, I'm tackling how to grow your email list. This WILL have applications outside of book launching! If you're new around here, you may have missed that I'm a little nerdy about email lists. I've got under 10,000 people on my combined three lists (for fiction, nonfiction, and my lifestyle blog). Not huge! But size is NOT the only thing that matters when it comes to your list. The goal should be a group of active, interested, and perhaps even RABID fans. First of all, let's talk about a few email basics. When I say "email list," what I mean is the group of people who have actively signed up to receive emails that you send through an email service provider like ConvertKit, MailerLite, Mailchimp, Mad Mimi, or any other trusted provider. I do NOT mean you sending emails to all your contacts in gmail. HOW TO GROW YOUR EMAIL LIST Growing an email list really breaks down into two main pieces: Content Strategy Traffic Strategy Without great content, no one will want to sign up for your list. Without traffic, no one will know about your great content. These go hand-in-hand. There are also tools and ways to optimize your website for email growth, but I'll tackle that in another post.   Note for People Who Hate Email:  It's all about your MINDSET. If you're frustrated about email or not really "into" it, you need to reframe the conversation. Consider email your direct connection with your superfans! It's not a chore and it's not THAT complicated. You CAN do it and I hope that if you think of it as connecting with your fans. If you are JUST getting started, check out my FREE EMAIL COURSE! CREATING YOUR CONTENT STRATEGY I'm all about the two parts in this post. There are two parts to your email content strategy that you need to consider. The first is the kind of content that you are creating openly on the internet, whether on a social media platform like Instagram, a blog, a YouTube channel, or even in books you sell on Amazon. The second part of your content strategy is what you'll send people through your email. PUBLIC CONTENT (blog, social media) -> EMAIL SIGNUP -> EMAIL CONTENT To get subscribers, you need to have fabulous content that they can interact with BEFORE they sign up. If you have great blog posts, they may be motivated to sign up to get more. If you have Instagram posts that they just love, they might want to go deeper and get updates via email. You must have some great public-facing content that they can engage with before you ask them to sign up. You also need to have a compelling reason that people want to sign up. No one wants to "sign up for my newsletter." Nope. You need to clearly and specifically let people know WHY they should sign up for your email list. That looks like creating an email content strategy. It doesn't have to be complicated! For my fiction list, I tell people that they'll hear about new books first and get my Weekly Clean Reads email with great book deals. For Create If Writing, you'll get the weekly Quick Fix where I share news, tools, and resources for your authentic-platform building. Do you see how both of those are clear and specific? They may not speak to EVERYONE, but I don't want everyone on my list. I want superfans! A freebie (aka: lead magnet or reader magnet) is another type of content that may get people to sign up. This usually looks like a free book, checklist, form, resource, guide, etc that people will get for signing up for your email list. Freebies can still work really well, but they also need to be specific and targeted to the right people. Read more: How to Create the Perfect Freebie If you are trying to figure out how to grow your content or develop a content strategy, I'd recommend Meera Kothand's book the One Hour Content Plan. It's focused toward blogging, but will be helpful in thinking about a framework for content strategy.   GETTING TRAFFIC TO YOUR CONTENT A lot of people stop after working on content. They think the issue is really all about creating a great freebie and having a nice website, perhaps with a snazzy opt-in form or pop-up. Those things are great! But if you have no traffic coming your way, then you won't have any people who see your content to sign up. Ways to get traffic to your website: SEO - Search engine optimization as with Google Social Media - Sharing on Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest (which is more like search engine traffic) Use email - but this is a chicken and egg problem- you can email people when you have a new blog post, but this doesn't help if you don't an email list Guest posting - not all created equal (check out my post over at Jane Friedman) Ways to get traffic to your email list directly: Ask others to share - in email or in guest post Use paid/free services - My Book Cave, Bookfunnel Use a giveaway - Booksweeps, Kingsumo Opt-in in the back of books You can use a variety of ways to build traffic to your website or even just a landing page for your freebie. A combination is often best, but you could have several different kinds of Read more: How to Get Traffic to Your Site   Are you feeling a little better about email? Just a LITTLE? I hope you are!! Remember: you need to think about the kind of content you're going to provide and then get that content in front of people.  Yeah...it's a little more complicated in practice. But break it down into those two pieces to start. You can do it!  MORE EMAIL RESOURCES AND LINKS Blog Elevated Conference  Laura Fuentes is the one I mentioned who got me into email! GDPR INFO More email resources!

What did your first email sequence look like? What tips do you have?  April has been using email for quite some time now, while Angie is just getting started. With April's guidance, Angie is setting up her first email sequence. You get an inside look at what she included and how it is set up. Disclaimer: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. You don't have to purchase them through our links, but if you do, it helps us pay for the costs of the podcast and blog!  Switching from Mailchimp Angie has been collecting subscribers with Mailchimp for free but recently passed into being charged. She wanted to get things set up and going but wanted to decide first on which company she would go with. She ultimately decided to go with ConvertKit after hearing from so many people how easy it was. She found it super easy to move her list over and it took less than 5 minutes! Now, she is ready to get moving on making it worth the cost. April started on Mailchimp, as well.  Then once she reached 2,000 subscribers, she switched to ConvertKit and didn't like it. She then went over to Mad Mimi and was happy there for awhile but it was not very user friendly. It was cheaper but she wasn't seeing it convert to sales. She had about 6 sequences set up. She began getting frustrated with Mad Mimi because she couldn't see the data that she wanted to see. (You know how we love data!) She decided she wanted to improve her sequences and change up her site. She went back to ConvertKit. She reworked her site with a new theme that integrated her opt ins and resources how she wanted.  April is very happy with how things are going so far with ConvertKit. Reasons We Love ConvertKit Ease of use. We find it user friendly and could set up our first opt ins quickly. Data. We love the additional data given that was missing before. We can see all the conversions for each opt in to easily see which ones are working for us. Deliver-ability. With a more simple email, it tends to get into more inboxes instead of junk folders. Rules. You can create almost any kind of rule we could think of. Sequences. So easy to set up, get going, and track. Automated. Once set up, it can run itself! Love this...the more we can automate, the happier we are. If you'd like to try it out for yourself, you can get one month FREE by clicking here. We'd be happy to help get it set up for you. April is currently making 4 times what she is spending on her list! Opt-In Angie decided that her first sequence was going to be for her huge holiday close reading bundle. She already had a freebie for it. She decided to use the same freebie as on TpT except she beefed up the freebie to include even more enticing goodies to get people to opt-in! It was helpful that Angie was able to re-purpose something she already had so she could get righ

Hello everyone and welcome back to The Business of Dance Podcast! I am super excited to bring you this episode today because a big part of my coaching programs centres around today’s topic, so you know I’m passionate about it. Today I want to discuss a huge factor in successfully run businesses in this day in age which is automation. I think all of us at one time or another has thought to ourselves, when it comes to sending out emails, posting social media content, or even running a business “I wish this would just do it by itself” I think we all wish we had more free time to either spend with our friends and family, grow and scale our business, as well as create more opportunities for ourselves, our team and students. I'm sure there are aspects we love about running our business but at the end of the day, wouldn’t it be great to have all those tedious and time consuming tasks taking care of, all the while growing your business and providing more time for doing what we love most, which is providing amazing dance experiences for our students. Think it’s impossible? Well let’s dive into this episode and I’ll let you in on my top tips on how to grow your studio on autopilot! Plan ahead:   Planning ahead may seem may seem like you are taking the same amount of time to do a task in a larger chunk of time, but trust me in saying that thinking or planning ahead for the future can make a world of difference. When you are thinking about future tasks or even social media posts for your studio you can prepare for any little hiccup and gauge how something may turn out. Having a plan all sorted out for you and your team will give you more free time to adjust as you go if needed, rather then doing things one at the time all of the time. This is the first step when it comes to automation, because how can you automate something that hasn't been pre-planned?   Systemise   Don’t be surprised that this is on the list. I am a huge fan of systemisation within any business, but especially passionate for dance studios, as it has helped me run and grow my personal studio practically on autopilot, giving me the time to scale my business. With systemisation you put forth the description, and elements for when planning and completing a task within your studio that can be replicated, adjusted and delegated over time. When you have systems in place, you can have an overview of exactly what needs to be accomplished and how to do it right at your fingertips.   Delegate   Once you have put these plans into place, and created systems, you can then delegate or outsource to others within your team, admin or even freelancers who have skills outside your expertise. Now that you know how you want things done, and run at your studio, you can pass on tasks that you trust others to complete, which will give you more free time to focus on bigger things at hand, be more present with your studio family or even grow your studio! It may seem strange at first, and you may think “well, I know how to do this, so why get someone else, or even pay someone else to do it?” The simple answer is Time. Delegating is not always about getting others to complete a task or project you are not capable of doing yourself, but rather asking yourself where you want to spend your time. We all get the same 24 hours in a day, and if you want to work on expanding your studio with advertisements, getting involved with your community in order to have more of a presence in your area, or simply to spend more time at home with your family knowing things are running smoothly without you there all the time, then it is worth delegating to others. Automation tools and programs   This is my last and favourite tip which is about finding the right tools, apps, and programs for you to use which automate your social media posts, emails, enquiries and more! There is a number to choose from but when it comes to social media planning I personally use Coschedule, and with email automation we use MailChimp. Other popular social media automation tools are: Planoly, Later, Buffer, or sprout social. And automated email services which are well known are: Get Response, Constant Contact, and Madmimi. Having these programs are amazing when to comes to automation, as the tasks which can take up a good amount of time, such as answering emails, can sometimes require the same information repeated over and over again. So by creating an email sequence for your studio answering similar questions right away to the receiver, installs a sense of professionalism while still remaining personal.  The same goes for social media post on your Instagram, facebook page, and facebook groups as well. When you plan and post regularly, you create consistency, as well as credibility, attracting others to your studio who are a fan of your social posts, or values, getting them interesting in enquiring. In correlation with point 1 about pre-planning, you can schedule a time each week or even month to plan social posts, add them to your programs, schedule and boom! You have the ability to be set for a week, 2 weeks, a month or more! Same with emails. You can set up an enquiry or enrollment automated email sequence for new students, so you can take the time focus on creating a beautiful atmosphere within your studio for when those new students roll in. So those are my top 4 steps you can take to grow your studio on autopilot. Implementing automation strategies such as these have helped me to grow and scale my studio immensely, with this podcast, blogs as well as my coaching programs! I understand that everyone has a different goal or vision for their studio or business of dance, but I believe that no matter how big or small your goals are, implementing automation will save you more time while generating more income in the long run! I hope you enjoyed this episode and if you don’t know already my Studio Systems School is launching applications next Monday, the 9th of April! This is an 8-week program designed specifically for Dance Studio Owners to systemise & implement automation strategies for those who are wanting to grow their dance studios and create more impact within their community. In this program, you learn how to systemise for success without the stress so that you have more time to grow your business into your dream empire and run the show. Without having to do every little task! If you would like to learn more, please head to www.claireosheacoaching.com/programs and be sure to check out my 1:1 coaching program as well. I want to wish you all a fabulous day wherever you are in the world, and I will speak to you soon. Bye for now.   For more Business Of Dance please, like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram @claireosheacoaching. If you have any questions, topic suggestions or wish to be a guest on the podcast please contact us at podcast@businessofdance.net. Hosted By: Claire O'Shea

What’s it like to start a company for $50… and sell it for $42 million? For many people, this might sound like a dream. But for Gary Levitt, it was reality. Learn how Gary had his email marketing company Mad Mimi acquired by GoDaddy, his recommendations on email marketing best practices, and tons more. Full show notes at http://okdork.com/podcast/41

Do you feel overwhelmed with the plethora of technology needed to support and grow your business? Today on Financial Fluency, Terra Milo is here to explain how she helps small business owners in their first years feel confident and empowered with the tools they’re using. On top of being a tech-savvy consultant (also known as ‘Your Computer Girl’), Terra is a certified health coach. She got into the consulting business after seeing fellow health coaches get frustrated. She'd hear them say ‘I can’t do this’ or ‘I give up’ when attempting to use and manage their online tools for marketing. That’s when the lightbulb clicked and the idea came to Terra. She could help business owners learn how to use online tools. Terra notes that as a small business owner, you’ll find yourself working with online tools at some point or another. Even if you're not in the tech industry, you need to know some tech to run your business online. But, what happens when those tools become laborious and you can’t seem to make it work? Instead of pulling your hair out, this is where Terra steps in. She shows you how to use the website you already have, co-create a website together, set up emails—and much, much more.   Terra doesn’t specialize in one online platform over the other. She has a breadth of knowledge in the tech industry that allows her to go into any system and learn. Her self-proclaimed talent is learning the system and then helping others. And her approach is simple—working one-on-one to understand the tools you’re using and what’s needed for the business. She offers many services. One package includes a personal webinar where you can see her screen while she’s signed into your systems. During this time, you’ll go through the tool together, and she’ll teach you the ins and outs of how to use it. It's also worth noting Terra records this hour-long call so you can reference after. Terra shares some insight to get you from feeling stuck to successful: Your business and needs are unique. A canned YouTube video won’t get you personalized results or make it easier to understand online tools since they change so frequently. You’re going to be more effective if you target niche, specific people instead of a mass group of people. If your budget allows—run testing. Once you test and get results, you’ll know where the good audience is. Figure out the best systems and tools for you, just because a tool works for someone else doesn’t mean it’s best for your business. You don’t need all the bells and whistles when starting out. Keep it simple and inexpensive, so you can scale when you need to. There’s nothing wrong with using a free account in the first few years.   Wise Words from Terra “The exchange of time of money is important to weigh and to be aware of. If it’s not worth it for you to do that, hire somebody.”   Terra’s Mission “My mission is to empower entrepreneurs around technology. When you know how technology works for online marketing, you feel more confident and in control of your business. You also save money because you don't have to pay someone every time you want to make a move in your business. Eventually, you'll grow a team, but in the first few years, it's super helpful to know how things work.”   You can learn more about Terra and how to work with here on her website: http://terramilo.com/, or follow her on social media. Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/CoachTerraMilo/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terramilo/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/terramilo YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC53x0MfyXCKS-REEou1_W0Q   Resources Amy Porterfield’s Podcast “Marketing Made Easy”: http://www.amyporterfield.com/amy-porterfield-podcast/ Being Boss Podcast: https://beingboss.club/ MailChimp: https://mailchimp.com/ ConvertKit: https://convertkit.com/ Mad Mimi: https://madmimi.com/ Active Campaign: http://www.activecampaign.com/ B-School: https://www.marieforleo.com/bschool/ Zero to Launch: http://growthlab.com/ztl/about-the-course/ Lastpass: https://www.lastpass.com/   Bio Terra Milo teaches coaches and entrepreneurs all the computer skills they need to launch their business and spread their mission in the world. From websites to newsletters to social media, she will empower you with skills and confidence so you can infuse your messages with inspiration. Terra believes that technology runs on energy, so when you’re creating websites and emails, you’re literally sending energy to your potential clients. Make sure that energy is confident, positive, and enlightening!  To read more about how to grow your business online with marketing tools—get Terra’s free guide video: http://terramilo.com/freetools.

Joanna Wiebe, co-founder of Copy Hackers and Airstory, joins us on the podcast this week to discuss conversion copywriting. Joanna has helped businesses like Invision, Shopify, Crazy Egg, Rainmaker/Copyblogger, BT, AVG, and Tesco optimize their copy. She also works with research partners like Buffer, Wistia, and MadMimi to test some […] The post appeared first on .

Welcome to Episode 302 of Hit The Mic with the Stacey Harris. Hello, hello, Episode 302, and today we are talking about email marketing. There are a ton of email marketing tools to choose from, everything from MailChimp to ActiveCampaign to Infusionsoft and Ontraport and Mad Mimi and Constant Contact and all sorts of options. It can be a little overwhelming, how do you choose a tool and how do you know when it's time to change tools. That's what we're going to talk about today. Changing email marketing tools is something I have done a few times, more than I would like. If I had to do it all over again, I would have probably done it a tiny bit differently. That's the lessons I'm sharing with you today, so aren't we glad that I made those mistakes, right? Oh, they weren't really mistakes. They were just not the right tool for me long-term. Let's talk about what you need to consider when you are choosing an email marketing tool. Yes, budget's a factor, a small factor, but I want you to remember that cost alone should not make this decision. You also want to consider some other things. With that said, you need to get the best tool you can afford. I do not encourage you, in fact I actively discourage you from day 1 thinking Infusionsoft is the best option. Infusionsoft is not a bad option but it's not the best option ever. There are a lot of businesses, mine included, that function perfectly well without a tool like Infusionsoft or Ontraport where you have this whole collection of tools because for example, for me, I would use probably 5% of Infusionsoft because my business model doesn't need the other 95%. It's just the way it is. However, I know a lot of people who use and love and are obsessed with Infusionsoft and what it can do for their business. Here's the thing is there's not one right tool for everybody, but factor in your budget and then factor in a few other things we're going to talk about. The first thing besides budget and this is something that I really, really encourage you to look at is, what are your long-term goals? What do you want to be able to do with your email list? Meaning, do you want to have things like multiple lists and be able to send them different follow-up emails depending on which list they signed up to? By the way, the correct answer to that is "yes." Not all tools can do that. For example, Constant Contact only gives you 1 welcome email option, meaning when someone new signs up for your list, they get the same welcome email no matter what list they sign up for. That's a problem. If you want to have multiple welcome emails or multiple followup sequences, for example, depending on what you sign up for when you sign up for the VIP list which is my email list, you get a different follow-up sequence. If you sign up for the social media challenge, I'm delivering you something that if you sign up for a webinar or the Facebook ads campaign, you get something different in each of those cases. It doesn't make sense for there to be 1 follow-up option. If you want to have things like that down the road, you need to consider that. Do you prefer lists or tags? If you don't know what that means, then this might be worth having this conversation with somebody who does, whether that's a email marketing expert or a business coach or an email marketing virtual assistant or an online business manager, whatever, whoever the person is in your life. Honestly, maybe it's about talking to your accountability buddies or your mastermind and figuring out what tools they're using and why they love them. You got to think about what your goals are long-term. For me, I had always worked in lists. Okay, so I started with ... The first thing I ever used in any of my businesses was Constant Contact 5 years ago. I don't recommend Constant Contact for most people. I do have a client who still uses it, but I'm working on that, guys. Then I moved to AWeber which I enjoyed a lot until it wasn't doing what I needed it to do. Then I moved to Simplero which is a more robust system. It's got affiliates in it and things like that. Then I realized I could do what I needed to do in my business without a lot of those pieces. I didn't need the extra stuff. Like Infusionsoft, I just didn't need the extra pieces. Also, there is incredible automation and follow-up stuff in the tool I use now, which is ActiveCampaign. That automation and that follow-up sequence stuff really exceeded what Simplero could do at the time. I know Simplero has done a lot to update their ability with tags and automation sequences and things like that, so that's maybe not the case now. For me, ActiveCampaign is still where I call home. I've talked to the guys over at Infusionsoft a couple of times about whether I needed to move and everyone I've talked to there has been like, "You're not going to use 95% of our tool. Do you really want to go through changing?" The answer to that is, "No. No, I don't." ActiveCampaign is where I call home and will continue to call home for some time, I suspect. Again, those are based off my goals. Back in my Constant Contact and my AWeber days, I functioned very much so in lists, but because I do a lot more automation now and follow-up sequence and things like that, I like having a tool like ActiveCampaign where I do have some lists, for example, Hit The Mic Backstage members are not on the same list as my regular email list. Within my regular email list, everybody is tagged based on how they've engaged with my list and also how they got on my list. That's right. I can actually look at any person on my email list and tell you exactly how they got there. That's a really awesome part of tags. Again, you need to know how you're going to function best for the goals of your business. Again, automation, I come back to this. Are you going to need something like if-then situations and follow-up sequences? I've got automation sequences that go out to new Hit The Mic Backstage members, when you sign up that you get 4 emails over the course of your first 4 weeks in the membership talking about the different parts of the membership and where you could get the help that you need and where you can find the different tools that you're looking for and the opportunity to book one-on-one time with me if that's what you need. All of that's automated. I don't have to send an email to each new member. Whenever I'm looking for a tool, I know that that's got to be there. On the flip side, a lot of my sales happen via automation, so when you sign up for the VIP list, whether that's through the social media challenge or through the Facebook ads checklist, you get an opportunity to do a $1 7-day trial inside of Hit The Mic Backstage. There's now a follow-up sequence based on which response you choose. If you choose "yes," then you go down 1 path, and if you choose "no," then you go down another path. That automation piece is really important and really valuable from a sales perspective because if you don't say "Yes" when you initially get that offer, you sometimes say, "Yes" in the follow-up email or in a subsequent follow-up email because now I'm using automation to nurture that lead, grow trust, give you more value and really build that relationship. Again, that's possible because I have an automation set up. When you're talking about picking an email marketing tool, you want to make sure you're able to do things like that. You're also going to want to make sure that your deliverability is going to be solid. You want to make sure that you're using a tool that is well-respected, that is doing what it can to make sure that there's not any sort of foul play or black hat tricks that people are using. Sometimes it's frustrating to go through some of the hoops we have to go through as far as confirming our addresses and maybe getting another confirmation for emails we upload, depending on the tool you're using. A lot of that is because they want to protect the integrity of their system. They want to protect the integrity of the emails going out by their users. You want to make sure that you're using a tool that's really protecting that integrity and making sure that their deliverability is on par and really going to work for you because no email tool is going to be valuable if you're not getting in anybody's inbox. From there, you want to make sure that you're continuing to use that tool really well. The thing that I want to wrap up on in choosing an email marketing tool because I get a question, I get the question a lot from people about, "Oh, I think it's time I'm upgrading tools." Sometimes, it's not about changing tools. Sometimes, it's a lot more about making sure you're using the tool. Are you sending regular emails out? Are you nurturing those leads? Are you giving them value, and in that follow-up sequence? Are you getting your email opt-in out there? Are you sharing it via social? Are you funneling people into places where they can subscribe because if you're not, a new email marketing tool isn't going to change that. What's going to change that is a new email marketing strategy and then some new email marketing action. Don't jump on to the bandwagon of changing your tool first thing. Sometimes it's got to first be about making sure you're using the tool. Then the last thing I want to say is, if you're somebody who has listened to this whole episode and you're sitting there and you're thinking, "I will just keep sending emails through Gmail and I'll just put them all in Send or the BCC" or whatever, don't do that. Just stop. If you never, ever listen to another episode of this show, please listen to this next 5 seconds. You have to, I repeat, you have to be using an email marketing tool like AWeber or ActiveCampaign or MailChimp or whatever it is you want to use to be sending those emails. There's just no other choice, okay. Otherwise, it's unprofessional, it's spammy and it's not building credibility, okay. Use an email marketing tool. You can start with MailChimp for free. You can start with ActiveCampaign for as little as $9 and it will grow with you in the long-term. My recommendation for most business owners, not everybody because I don't think there's one tool that fits everybody, I would highly recommend skipping free at MailChimp and going right to the $9 level at ActiveCampaign. It's absolutely worth the value and it's absolutely going to grow with you over time. You're going to have an ability to do a lot more with automation, with follow-up sequences, and that's going to be incredibly valuable to you as you grow. Just start there because trust me, moving your list, not fun. Not fun the first time, not fun the second time, less fun the third time. Make sure that you're using a tool that's really going to serve your business and serve your growth in the long-term. Again, for me, that's ActiveCampaign. I highly recommend you check it out. ActiveCampaign let you have a free trial so it allows you to go in and see the interface and get used to it. Then, if you need some help, if you need help figuring out this tool or whatever tool you're using, reach out to your community. Reach out in your Facebook groups. I guarantee there's somebody who has used the tool or who's an expert in the tool, somebody that can help you get clear on the buttons to click and the best way to set it up. I know there's a lot of VAs who have an expertise in email marketing and all of these tools. Find somebody to help you. Outsource it. It doesn't have to be forever, but you can hire a little bit of consulting time to help get you there. We have a active campaign training, for example, inside of Hit The Mic Backstage. We also have some list building trainings inside of Hit The Mic Backstage in case it's not so much a tool issue, but a "getting people into the funnel" issue. Check those out at hitthemicbackstage.com, the place to be, and I will see you on Friday. Resources Join us inside Hit the Mic Backstage ActiveCampaign Connect with Me Connect with me on Facebook Tweet with me and include #HittheMic Be sure to leave your review on iTunes or Stitcher for a shoutout on a future show  

  Did you know that email marketing is still the most effective way to grow your business? In this episode I pick the brains of Teacup Analytics (https://www.teacupanalytics.com) , which provides powerful tools that helps you gain clarity with your Google Analytics Data. What you will learn: Why giving away things for free will help you earn more money How to grow your business with no marketing Why email marketing is still the most effective form of marketing The easiest way to stay out of the dreaded spam box Why you should NEVER buy an email list Why your email list is your most valuable asset How to get more people to open your emails How to get the highest click through rates How many links should you have in an email Why you should offer only one option as opposed to many How often should you send out emails Why Email is way more powerful than Social Media How to understand your website audience using Google Analytics Why it’s absolutely crucial to get legal advice when starting a business Should you focus on an exit strategy Interesting highlights: Dean grew up on a farm in a place I can’t pronounce! Dean spent 3 years living in Hawaii Dean started his business out of a coffee shop Dean’s company reached  his first $5 million without spending any money on marketing Find out what Dean did the day after he sold his company for $42 Million!   Dean’s #1 practical advice:  “If you make other people successful you will become successful”Tweet This Resources & Links: Dean Levitt (https://il.linkedin.com/in/deanlevitt) Jeff Walker (http://jeffwalker.com/) Mad Mimi (https://madmimi.com/) Go Daddy (www.godaddy.com) Teacup Analytics (https://www.teacupanalytics.com/) Google Analytics (https://analytics.google.com/analytics/web/) Get in touch with Dean: Dean@teacupanalytics.com Thank You for Listening! I would like to personally thank you for listening to my podcast.  If you enjoyed today’s show, please share it with others. Just click on the social buttons below. Also, if you podcast on iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/can-i-pick-your-brain/id1076916148?mt=2) , you would be joining me on my mission to help as many people as I can become really successful. And finally if you haven’t already subscribed podcast on iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/can-i-pick-your-brain/id1076916148?mt=2) , so you can get automatic updates whenever another episode goes live!

If setting up (or enhancing) an email list for your business is on your list of New Year’s Resolutions, listen to this episode. In this episode, I talk about why you should start an email list, how to get started, the different approaches you can take to an email list, and how to grow your subscriber base. Why should you have an email list? Here are just a few reasons why having an email list by benefit your business. It provides you with a direct connection to your fanbase without another platform as an intermediary. People check their email regularly throughout the day, so you can connect with them on their schedule. Your subscribers will have a direct, individual connection to your emails (rather than the feeling of being "broadcasted at" that comes with social media posting). Business report seeing boosts in sales after sending out emails to their subscribers. When your business faces another disruption (e.g., your website goes down), it's a great way of letting your audience know what is happening. How should you set up an email list? The most important thing is to get started, not to develop the most masterful email strategy that ever existed. You can always improve and update over time. I recommend starting with MadMimi or MailChimp, both of which have permanently free accounts for small subscriber lists. Both offer affordable plans for people with smaller lists, as well, so you can grow your list before spending a lot of time researching different companies and features. MadMimi is a bit easier (more "low tech") to use, while MailChimp offers more features in its free plan. How should you approach your email list? There are several simple options to consider for your email list. RSS feed: If you have a website or blog that you update with some regularity, you can set up an RSS feed so that your subscribers are alerted via email to any new posts on your site. Newsletter: You may want to write an email to your list on a regular basis (e.g., weekly, biweekly, monthly, quarterly). This can include links to your latest posts, original content for subscribers, roundups of relevant information you’ve found online, and more. Updates: You may choose to send sporadic emails to your list when something new happens in your business (e.g., a new product is released, you’re teaching a new class, or there’s a sale). Autoresponders: You may choose to set up a sequence of replies that are automatically delivered to your subscribers on a schedule based on when they subscribed. For example, the first email can be sent one day after they subscribe and the second email can be sent two weeks after they subscribe. Listen to the episode for more details about each approach. How do you get subscribers? Once you understand your approach, you can start recruiting subscribers. Consider letting potential subscribers know more about your approach wherever they can opt-in to subscribe. Here are some other ways to grow your email list. Update your website: Include subscription opt-ins in a sidebar, your About and Contact pages, and even in posts on your site. Update your social media profiles: Use the “sign up” option on your Facebook page, and include a link to your email list on your Ravelry, Etsy, G+, and other social profiles. Update your “thank you” message: Change the automatic reply sent to your customers on Etsy and Ravelry (or other marketplaces) to include a link to your mailing list. Giveaways: Some companies offer giveaways to their subscribers as an incentive to encourage people to sign up. Lead magnet: Offer a free ebook, checklist, or other desirable product “in exchange” for a subscription. Tip: Do not get stuck on this. If you don’t have a lead magnet, you can still start an email list. Resources mentioned in this episode Listen to Episode 27: Connecting with Your Mailing List and More with Vashti Braha to learn more about Vashti's approach to her email list and how it impacts her business. Read 10 Reasons To Use Email Marketing (As Told By Small Businesses) on Forbes Check out the Useletter by Amy Lynn Andrews as an example of a curated/roundup approach to an email list Read more about (or sign up for) a free MadMimi or MailChimp account   If you enjoyed this episode The Creative Yarn Entrepreneur Show is no longer broadcasting. Episodes are available as a service to the yarn community. This episode originally aired in December, 2015. Be aware that content may be outdated. If you'd like to chat with other yarn-related business owners, join the Creative Yarn Entrepreneurs Facebook group. Support Marie's work by buying one of her books, Make Money Teaching Crochet: Launch Your Business, Increase Your Side Income, Reach More Students (Amazon | Gumroad) or Design It, Promote It, Sell It: Online Marketing for Your Crochet and Knit Patterns (Amazon | Gumroad).

Listen to The Top if you want to hear from the worlds TOP entrepreneurs on how much they sold last month, how they are selling it, and what they are selling - 7 days a week in 20 minute interviews! Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop The Top is FOR YOU if you are: A STUDENT who wants to become the CEO of a $10m company in under 24 months (episode #4) STUCK in the CORPORATE grind and looking to create a $10k/mo side business so you can quit (episode #7) An influencer or BLOGGER who wants to make $27k/mo in monthly RECURRING revenue to have the life you want and full CONTROL (episode #1) The Software as a Service (SaaS) entrepreneur who wants to grow to a $100m+ valuation (episode #14). Your host, Nathan Latka is a 25 year old software entrepreneur who has driven over $4.5 million in revenue and built a 25 person team as he dropped out of school, raised $2.5million from a Forbes Billionaire, and attracted over 10,000 paying customers from 160+ different countries.   Oprah gets 60 minutes or more to make her guests comfortable to then ask tough questions. Nathan does it all in less than 15 minutes in this daily podcast that's like an audio version of Pat Flynn's monthly income report. Join the Top Tribe at http://NathanLatka.com/TheTop

Jeff Patton, author of User Story Mapping, teaches us how to map user stories by focusing on the user's journey to an outcome. He shares his opinion on the notorious "MVP" and how he helped Gary Levitt build his MVP with Mad Mimi.

Awesome interview with Yonatan Caras, Co-Founder & CTO of Glide. Glide is a live video messaging app founded in 2012 that has raised more than $30,000,000, has over 15,000,000 users just in the USA and as of now has had more than 1.2 billion videos messages sent. In this great story we take you through Yonatan's beginnings from learning at Machon Lev, walking out of class after getting an email from Apple,  to starting App Studio in Jerusalem to Co-Founding Glide. Name: Yonatan Caras Website: http://glide.me (www.glide.me) LinkedIn: https://il.linkedin.com/in/jonathancaras (Yonatan on LinkedIn) Twitter: https://twitter.com/madcapslaugh (@madcapslaugh) From: Columbia, Maryland Lives: In Yerushalayim  https://frumentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/yonatan-caras.png () Quote: “The Power of Video with the Convenience of SMS” http://www.americardpayment.com/frumentrepreneur/ (This Episode is Sponsored By:) http://www.americardpayment.com/frumentrepreneur/ () http://www.americardpayment.com/frumentrepreneur/ (CLICK THIS LINK FOR A SPECIAL OFFER JUST FOR OUR LISTENERS!) People, Companies, Products & Books Mentioned in this Podcast http://www.apple.com/watch/ (Apple Watch) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Dick_Tracy (Dick Tracy) http://skype.com/ (SKYPE) Facebook Messenger https://www.whatsapp.com/ (What’s App) https://www.snapchat.com/ (SnapChat) http://www.idf.il/english/ (Israeli Military ) http://www.idf.il/1514-en/Dover.aspx (Israeli Navy) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Internet_Relay_Chat (IRC) AOL Messenger http://www.rca.edu/ (Chabad of Morristown) http://www.jct.ac.il/en (Machon Lev) http://www.crystalplaza.com/ (Crystal Plaza) (Where Yonatan Got Married) Dos to Windows 3.1 on the 286 IBM Clone http://apple.com (Apple) http://www.wikiwand.com/en/Palm_Treo (Palm TREO) https://il.linkedin.com/in/aroisman (Ari Roisman) https://www.linkedin.com/pub/adam-korbl/4a/2a9/316 (Adam Korbl) http://www.rami-levy.co.il/ (Rami Levi) (Hey, got to buy milk from somewhere, even though they still come in bags) https://il.linkedin.com/in/garylevitt (Gary Levitt) http://madmimi.com (Mad Mimi) https://www.linkedin.com/in/chaimhaas (Chaim Hass)   Books http://amzn.to/1GhA6y0 (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers By: Ben Horowitz) http://amzn.to/1cIJpLo (The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything By: Guy Kawasaki) http://amzn.to/1dbudaI (The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything (Revised Edition 2015))     https://frumentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/dick-tracy-Glide.png ()   http://www.americardpayment.com/frumentrepreneur/ () http://www.americardpayment.com/frumentrepreneur/ (Remember to check out our sponsor’s special offer!)   ——— https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-frum-entrepreneur/id975678776 (Are you enjoying this podcast? Please take 30 seconds and rate it on iTunes! Every 5 Stars helps us get more noticed!) To learn more about me, please check out http://nachum.co (Nachum.co) Thank you for listening!!

From 14 hour shifts as a Busboy in SOHO to selling his company Mad Mimi for $45,000,000 to Godaddy, this interview with Gary Levitt is one of the most inspirational I have ever heard. Hear his story and ignite your passion! From working on the music for The Oprah Winfrey Show to his love for Jazz and how he taught himself HTML from a book, this interview will keep you on the edge of your seat and waiting for more! Learn about his belief in remote working, always going to the top and his being anti-establishment and why that matters. You will learn something from this episode and be inspired. Name: Gary Levitt Website: http://madmimi.com (www.MadMimi.com) New Co: https://pinecone.com/ (Pinecone.com) LinkedIn: https://il.linkedin.com/in/garylevitt (Gary Levitt on LinkedIn) Twitter: https://twitter.com/garyjoe (@garyjoe) https://frumentrepreneur.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Gary.png () People, Companies and Books Mentioned in this Episode http://madmimi.com (MadMimi) http://godaddy.com (GoDaddy.com) http://fourhourworkweek.com/ (Tim Ferris & the 4 Hour Work Week) (Gary Did not read it) https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_ferriss_smash_fear_learn_anything?language=en (But he did watch this Ted Talk with Tim) http://amzn.to/1PyM9rs (Getting Real By Jason Fried from 37 Signals) Oprah Winfrey http://www.sonicbids.com/ (Sonic Bids) http://amzn.to/1JYeucc (Head First HTML & CSS By: Elisabeth Robson) http://mediatemple.net/ (Media Temple) http://rubyonrails.org (Ruby on Rails) http://david.heinemeierhansson.com/ (David Heinemeier Hansson) http://jpattonassociates.com/ (Jeff Patton) http://amzn.to/1zU4ei5 (User Story Mapping by: Jeff Patton (Gary calls this on of the greatest books ever written)) Jet Blue http://mashable.com/2008/07/07/mad-mimi-email-marketing/ (Original Mad Mimi Launch Article on Mashable) http://ajaxian.com/archives/mad-mimi-wysiwyg-email-marketing (Original Mad Mimi Launch Article on Ajaxian) Starbucks https://www.linkedin.com/in/redsquirrel (Dave Hoover) https://www.linkedin.com/in/tobielangel (Tobie Langel) http://www.constantcontact.com/index.jsp (Constant Contact) http://mailchimp.com (MailChimp) Bob Parsons http://www.kkr.com/ (KKR) http://www.silverlake.com/ (SilverLake) http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/02/us-godaddy-idUSTRE76066E20110702 (GoDaddy is Acquired for $2.25 Billion) https://dribbble.com/ (Dribbble.com) http://pinecone.com (Pinecone) Bibi Netanyahu Naftali Bennett   ——— https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-frum-entrepreneur/id975678776 (Are you enjoying this podcast? Please take 30 seconds and rate it on iTunes! Every 5 Stars helps us get more noticed!) To learn more about me, please check out http://nachum.co (Nachum.co) Thank you for listening!!                              

Joining us today is Dean Levitt from Mad Mimi to tell us what's new with contact management. Then we have Darrell Kim from Pacific New Media to tell us about his upcoming class on Wordpress. Finally, we'll talk to our friends from Cultur app and Happy Hour Pal about Bluetooth Low Energy and proximity services.