¶ Online Entrepreneur's Journey
Welcome back to another episode of the Art of Online Business , and this segment is the how she Built it segment , where you get to learn about another online entrepreneur and all their journeys , the ups and downs , as we get to know each other .
And this episode leads into the upcoming episode where , if you can't see her right now , her name is Heather Ferris and she is on screen , which means if you have not yet watched or subscribed to the YouTube channel the Art of Online Business , please click in the show notes to do that if you want to see us chit-chat , but if you're driving in your car , of
course , just listen to the audio version . Now .
Heather is a Pinterest-among-others and she's been managing client accounts for over eight years , and she jokes that she's used the platform so long that she remembers when there wasn't much to see and you actually could find the end of the Pinterest feed , and before she got into Pinterest marketing , she was an accountant , and I'll just pause right there .
Heather , mad respect that you were an accountant .
It was so horrible I had to quit my job .
Oh , okay , bad experience . We're going to talk about that in a moment . But , like when I was in university , my roommate was an accountant and I just remember his capacity for the numbers and to tell if something was going well by the numbers .
And now , as an online business owner , I just I love my accountant because they're very matter of fact and they kind of cut through all the noise and they're like your business is failing Well , not failing , but if you continue along this route , things will need to change . So that's cool that you you made it into that industry .
My degree does allow me to see my business from a different perspective than a lot of online business owners that are just getting started for sure . So , to credit that part of my college education , I do really appreciate it , but I hated working in accounting .
Okay , all right , so you don't seem like the typical accountant . We're going to talk more about that . You also facilitate a membership where you help content creators , coaches and service providers with strategy to grow their traffic and sales , right .
I do . What's that called Pinprofit Academy . It's three years old , now actually Just turned three .
Congratulations , happy birthday to your membership . And so , before we start this episode , I just want to let you know , the listener , that the next episode is where Heather and I will talk about how Pinterest is the thing to try in 2024 , but is it right for your business and what is the best way to use it ?
Or the best way that Heather uses it for her clients , because it can be a great way to diversify traffic sources ? We're going to get into that and a little more in the upcoming episode , and you can click down in the show notes below to click through to that episode to watch it . And now Heather , hi , hi .
Joe , thank you .
Thanks for being a guest on the podcast . We were all over the place right before we hit record , but one thing that struck me is is we met on well . I think we met in the emails , right .
Yeah , my , my assistant pitched you guys for me to be on the show .
Okay , well , kudos to your assistant , because one I looked at the email and I look at lots of emails and yours stuck out to me . And then I looked online and looked at the email , and I look at lots of emails and yours stuck out to me .
And then I looked online and I saw that you and I have at least one mutual person in common , jordan Gill , and you said you're going to her live event in the fall . Huh .
Yeah , I get to actually meet her for the first time in person . We've kind of circled , you know ecosystems for years . I actually came across her for the first time in 2020 at the peak of COVID and I was just in the midst of like rebuilding my business at that point and , yeah , I came across her doing VIP stuff and got into her ecosystem .
Nice . No , she's great . I was able to collaborate with her , and I guess the reason I really wanted to bring this up on air , so to speak , is because I feel like one of the biggest things we can do is just collaborate each other with each other . I saw that there's competition at the bottom , but at the top , everyone just collaborates .
I love collaboration . I send people to other Pinterest managers and Pinterest teachers all the time because I'm not a fit for everybody and I don't want to be so . There are others that you can learn from , and I'm always collaborating with Pinterest people . Actually , I have a weekly show on YouTube with another Pinterest pro .
We get together once a week and do a live , almost like a podcast situation . And yeah , she's also a Pinterest pro .
Wow , okay , that is how long has that show been going on for .
Oh well , we started out on Clubhouse long ago and then , we migrated it last fall to YouTube , so it's been years now that we've been doing something together .
Yeah , and her and I are actually going to be at Jordan's event in September , which is like a month and a half from now , two months from now , it's crazy , don't say that we need more time . I know , but yeah , the year's going by way too quick , so I'm going to pull the trigger .
Like I was saying , I have the credit card points just sitting there and I need to go . It's in Dallas , right ?
Come . Yeah , it's in Dallas . I don't think she was able to get the full hotel block or whatever secured for some reason , Like something happened . But off air I can find out where we're staying where Jana and I are staying If you need a hotel , it's like right across the street .
Oh cool , I mean it should be easy , right , if it's not just Uber or walk . I'm a walker , I like to walk a lot , so yeah .
Yeah , so I'm super curious , I'm like as we get to know each other , and so as a listener since this is all about how you built your business , like when did you get started and why did you get started- yeah , so the story actually starts with my husband getting deployed with five weeks notice and I was working in an accounting firm and it was miserable .
I was making like $12 an hour and I went to school for this .
Wait what .
And , yeah , I went to school for accounting . Four and a half years $45,000 in student loan debt and I was making 12 bucks an hour and my entire salary was going to daycare and my car and my student loan . Like , I made no money outside of that .
So I started on Pinterest actually searching for like ways to work at home , and I had previously in college done work at home gigs with AT&T doing customer service , so I knew it was possible .
I just didn't want to do phone work anymore and I started Googling like how to make money working at home , and I run across the topic of blogging and I was intrigued . All these people were talking about how to make six figures blogging and I was like man , I can do that . That's me . No , it was not me .
And I quickly learned , though , because I had been using Pinterest for six years prior to this , every day as a mom . I knew exactly how people like me were using the platform and I was able to really pivot that into marketing . I took no marketing classes in college none and I started doing Pinterest VA work for somebody .
She was going to be traveling for 12 weeks . She needed someone to help fill her Pinterest queue , so I was like you know what , let me add it I did amazing things . And then , yeah , I came home one day and I told my husband you know what , I quit my job today .
My last day is on Friday and he's like well , I'm , I'm leaving the country in five weeks to go to the middle East , so it looks like you'll have lots of time on your hands . And I was like , okay , I guess here's where it starts . And that's really where it started .
Like prior to that , I was working full time , 40 hours , had a less than two year old child and a five to six-year-old child that I was mothering and he was doing the military things . I was very busy .
You were extremely busy .
Yeah .
Four years , Are they ? So that means you had two under four , two kids under four .
Oh no , they're five years apart .
Yeah , you barely missed the fun .
Yeah , five years .
I might have a five-year-old now and an eight-year-old and yours . That would make yours what Seven .
They're nine . She'll be nine tomorrow and 13 next month , or no , 14 next month .
Oh , does it get easier .
No .
No , okay , all right .
Slightly in some . No , okay , all right .
Slightly in some ways . Okay , well , at least they're not in diapers anymore , but maybe there's bigger problems than diapers .
Yeah , lots of fights , but we'll leave that .
So you were working full-time in your accounting job . What branch does your husband serve in ?
He's in the Air Force .
Okay that I mean they're all tough . I'm just not a tough guy . So , like anytime I hear somebody that's in the military or married to somebody in the military , I'm like respect . So he gets the news that he's going to be deployed and you're already not liking the accounting job and looking how to make money from working at home .
Yeah .
Okay .
Yeah , this was in . So I started my first blog in 2016 , in July .
Okay .
And this was in May of 2017 that he got deployment orders and I quit my job . I was actually fully unemployed by Memorial day of 2017 . So I was kind of side hustling . 16 to 17 , and then 17 and beyond . I've just been fully on my own .
Okay , all right , that's funny . I'm thinking like back in the years .
I know it seems like so long ago , but it's truly like eight years ago . I started my business and I've never done anything for this long ever .
So right now you manage Pinterest accounts for clients and you have the membership .
Yeah , I do both yeah . And I do some consulting work and then I have the YouTube channel . So the YouTube channel like fills the coffers for everything . That's pretty much how everyone finds me , wow .
Intriguing . But before you talk about that , because I'm going to ask because I love some of my best and hardest clients . Best because they usually have a built-up business . If they're getting their main organic lead source , it's YouTube .
But hardest , then , because when they come to me for Facebook ads , it's usually quite hard to match the performance of a YouTube-fueled organic funnel , because the platform is just great and those leads are so warm , hot even , because they consumed a lot of your content on YouTube .
So my question , though , before we talk about that , is why did you go toward Pinterest and not toward any of the other social medias that you could have ended up specializing in ? Like , what kind of sent you that way ?
I just was slightly obsessed with the platform because I had been using it like every single day as my main search engine for six years . So when I started my blog , I had found out that you could blog on Pinterest . That's kind of where I had found the entire community . I didn't know . We talk now about like sides of TikTok or whatever .
There are sides of Pinterest , and there always have been , and if you've never engaged with certain aspects of the algorithm , it won't show you content there . So until you search for it , you're not going to see it . And I searched for it and I started seeing it , so it was just a natural place for me to go Now .
I also just hate social media in general , even though I'm absolutely addicted to it . I don't like having to keep up with the constant algorithms and the changes and I do not want to shake my booty . For reals , it's not happening .
I also want to keep an aspect of my life private and I don't want to have to live in order to show up online , and that's actually how I started my mom blog . I started a mom blog .
You started a mom blog . That's an interesting blog to start if you don't want to share your personal life .
I know ,
¶ Balancing Social Media and Family Privacy
okay . So I started this mom blog and I I realized very quickly when I was blogging on this blog that I was going to have to live my life and share the inner workings of what was going on in order to create blog content . I didn't want to do that .
So picking up this Pinterest VA work from a friend of mine that said , hey , can you do this for me Was like a godsend .
Honestly , I just I was like , yes , please , I don't want to blog about my life anymore , and that's another reason why I just didn't want to do any other channels , because I don't want to have to share my family and my private life and the daily happenings to create content .
Yeah , when you ? How do you strike that balance right now on social media , Creating content but not sharing all the private stuff ?
I just don't create a ton of content in general on social media . I'll create content about Pinterest when I need to . For Instagram , I use stories . I just shared on stories earlier that spilled water on my laptop , which I told you about , and that's about it Like . Occasionally I'll share a picture of us in the pool or a picture of us camping or whatever .
But I really just don't share them . I get it . I've seen pretty varying opinions , like some people don't share their kids at all . Some people share their kids in picture form with , like heart emojis over their faces and other people , like , just share their kids on social media Like where do you , where do you lie on that ?
I share my kids occasionally on their faces on our travel Instagram account , where we'll all share , like our camping stuff . It's very rare and I always ask for their permission before I post and if they ask me to take a photo down or video down , I will always remove it .
But they're getting to that age now where it's important for them to have their autonomy and I want them to understand consent . So I am modeling this for them and I'm also showing them through my social media usage that you don't need to share your life online in order to be liked or even loved . So , yeah , that's kind of where I fall .
I will if I share a photo of them , like a couple of weeks ago , I shared a photo of my daughter in the pediatric orthopedic surgeon's office and I put a big face over her and it was just her arm , because my friends were asking for updates of like how you know her broken arm or whatever . So I shared that .
But oftentimes , yeah , I will always ask what do they want ?
I think that's good To teach them , I guess , healthy social media habits . My kids aren't old enough to be there yet , but I could see myself needing to take a few pages from your book and approach social media .
And you know , we all have children that we want to keep . We want to keep them safe . But I also have daughters , and it's just . The internet is a scary place .
Amen to that , like right now my daughter's not online and I'm like , honestly , do I ever want to let you ?
go online .
But yeah , random , random , random . Have you seen , cause people think we can just post ? But have you seen on tiktok that guy jose monkey ? So it's I don't know that name though people will be like find me , jose monkey , and they post like this video .
They like spin around 360 and like the most obscure places and he basically uses the things available , the tools available to one on the internet , to locate wherever they are at in the world , like where they took that video from .
That's actually . I've seen those . Yes , and that's frightening to me , and I also keep that in mind when I'm posting pictures around my house .
Absolutely .
I'm a stalker myself and I think everyone online should know that Like if I'm interested in learning more about you . I will Google you and I will find out where your business is located , what name you have it registered in ? Do you have speeding tickets ? I will find out .
Do I have speeding ?
tickets . I don't know , I haven't looked you up , but yeah , people are really good at about doing that and the internet has made it possible . So that's kind of the reason why I've stuck with Pinterest in general , but also why I haven't done other platforms in general . I just don't want to deal with it okay .
So tell me about , like the thrilling , the first time that you acquired a bunch of clients , and it was like this is working for me , like . Take me to that moment .
Oh , my goodness , okay . So August of 2018 , I think I signed like eight clients in a few weeks and I was charging way too little money , and this was the very first time that I actually raised my rates from $450 a month to $800 .
No , $450 ? Yeah .
Yeah , I was charging $450 a month for Pinterest in 2018 . And that week I gained a whole bunch of clients . Now I don't remember exactly what happened in that month to gain all those clients , but fast forward one year after that , august of 2019 , I lost half my business in a week , so kind of like 360 .
Yeah , half of your business in one week , mm-hmm yeah . How related do you think that is to the price point ?
I don't know . Well , I don't think it's actually . I do know it's not related to the price point . It was related to big Pinterest changes that actually happened between August 18 to August 19 . The platform just shifted , the algorithm shifted , things happened really rapidly and a lot of clients just started seeing declines in traffic and reach .
And a lot of my clients at that point in time were actually bloggers and they were solely reliant on AdSense and sponsored income .
Kind of like bloggers right now . I have one client who's in the travel blogging niche and bloggers right now , since all of the Google , what's that called ? Hi ?
oh geez , the HPU updates .
Yeah , yeah , the helpful content updates . I was like high quality , no queue , doesn't work . What has it been like three of them since ? Like that first major one in September of 2023 ? Either way , like some of them are really struggling to redo their traffic .
So that happened to you and , of course , as the Pinterest manager , you had to take the fall , or at least clients looked at you and said we got it yeah , yeah , I mean from a business perspective .
I've done this too like it's just business . It doesn't have anything to do with , you know , emotions and being tied to me in any way . But personally , like it really sucked and it put me on a path for years to actually end up in therapy and dealing with a lot of issues that we don't talk about as business owners online .
I understand . I had a similar event happen to me and I was scared to look at emails from clients . Like during about a week , week and a half time or I think , I lost seven clients .
And it's just like , oh my gosh , if I open the email and you can kind of tell too with that preview text , you know , regretfully , unfortunately , dot dot dot and you're like , oh no , please Lord .
It goes again yeah .
So when that happened to you , was your husband deployed somewhere , or was he at least in the state .
Interesting story . So my husband deployed 2017 , came home 18 in 2018 . We decided he was going to get out of the military because we just didn't like the uncertainty of that like five week you know , you're out of here , like go to the middle east . We didn't like that aspect of the military and that had really never happened to us before .
He'd'd been on plenty of what we call TDYs , which are short , usually domestic trips for training or whatever . We'd done plenty of those , but never a deployment for six and a half months with five weeks notice . Most people get a lot more notice for deployments upwards of even a year oftentimes , but not him . And he came back in 2018 .
We decided you know what he's going to get out of the military . So we bought an RV . We sold 90% of all of our belongings , packed the kids in the RV , with the remaining 10% that we own , which is mostly clothing . We sold all of our vehicles and everything and we set off in March of 2019 in our RV full-time . And we set off in March of 2019
¶ RV Life and Business Diversification
in our RV full time . So then in August of 2019 , when I lost all those clients , we were in a beautiful campground in northern Wisconsin , right off Lake Michigan or whatever .
Oh , my wife is from Michigan .
I just kept getting email after email after email and we ended up being stranded there for a couple of weeks because the income just wasn't there for us to move . Wow yeah , which is also part of the PTSD from losing half my clients in one week of like , okay , I have to diversify my income . Now , like this is no .
I can no longer just rely on services and clients . I have to do something else , and that's where my first course was born . Teaching for me was born out of that .
Wow . It's been a ride , literally a ride in an RV . Wait , do you still live in an RV ? No , okay , no , you launched out You're going to travel the US , maybe Canada , and you get stuck in an RV park . Yep , until you figure out the online equation and bring in enough income to keep traveling .
Yeah , we actually , for those two weeks we were there , we just amended our trip plans . For those two weeks we were there , we just amended our trip plans , like we completely ditched them and just changed them slightly in order to get to where we wanted to go . To finish our trip off . We moved finance you know financial stuff around and we made it work .
And I continued to seek out clients and opportunities , emailing you know former clients asking if they needed help . Again , I made it work . But yeah , we were there for two weeks just trying to figure it out .
I was going to ask how you found those clients , Cause a lot of people want to rely on , maybe people who , because of their reputation or referrals let's call it like passive lead generation , but like actively what did you do that kind of turned the tide ?
And I just started emailing all my friends and letting them know like , hey , I have some availability , because up to that point I was pretty booked out . I mean , I had 14 clients at that point and I was doing it all on my own . Just a lot of work , yeah .
So I started emailing , you know , friends and client , like past clients , and letting people know like I have availability , and then , at the same time , I was solely reliant on Facebook groups to find clients and a lot of the big groups were shutting down , so that was that made it extra hard to then fill those gaps .
So it really was a matter of just finding referrals . I think I got on Upwork at that point too , and yeah , I did . I got on Upwork and I started looking for clients there and I actually landed quite a lot of clients on Upwork , but mainly just reaching out to friends that I had built connections through and asking them like , hey , do you have any ?
Like I will do anything at this point any sort of social media work , any Pinterest work . I did some blog work , you know , group management , email management . I was doing all sorts of things just to fill those gaps .
Yeah , wow , but that probably made you even more a well-rounded Pinterest manager .
Yeah , yeah , I'm pretty scrappy .
That's good , that's good . So tell me about the upswing in business from that point after you put in this work to find more clients and you started landing more clients , I'm guessing you charged more . And what was that like and where would that fit into the RV trip ?
Yeah , so that kind of took me through the winter . We ended up back home in Missouri for all of Thanksgiving , like all of November , we were at his dad's house . We just stayed in the driveway in our RV because it was 37 feet . We have a whole apartment to ourselves .
So through that timeframe it allowed me to , because I had extra time as well I didn't have as many clients but I had some income replacement coming in I started building a course for Pinterest marketing and I started offering some coaching for other Pinterest VAs .
That backfilled some of the income and some of my time and it allowed me to start building my email list and my funnels and finally get things in place that I wanted to do but I'd never had time to do because I was completely booked out with clients from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed .
So , yeah , managing that and travel is really , really tough . I wouldn't suggest it for anyone that's not prepared or doesn't have a team and to really like , if your brain is not prepared for that , to really take a second look at it .
But yeah , it allowed me to really start looking at other opportunities and diversifying my income , which is was selling digital products .
Okay , 14 is a lot of people to help . I remember one time it was me by myself and just my executive assistant helping 15 clients and it was a lot of work .
Actually , no , I had a at that point I had a junior ad manager who more was like just I guess kind of operations , like I would look at all the client accounts and make the decisions and she would set things up according to like my looms , but still it was quite a bit of work , so I can relate .
Yeah , so that took us into late 2019 , right , we went through Thanksgiving , we got back on the road and we started heading South and we eventually made our way to Arizona , which is where we're at now .
We landed here January 1st of 2020 , not knowing what was coming , and by the end of January , we had walked through this house , we had looked at this house and 14 others because we knew COVID was on the horizon . Hold on .
One does not easily say we knew covid was on the horizon yeah , well , it was the end of january and there was like states started like shutting down , so like washington yeah like you knew gotcha yeah , the news .
So I'm thinking you're like we had inside intel .
You know that it was coming we just watched the news and , like airports for like closing or quarantining airlines off , the big one that we noticed was Washington and Seattle . There was something that happened there . Cases started popping up and we were like , okay , maybe it's time .
If this COVID thing becomes a big deal , we don't want to be stuck in an RV Plus . I don't know if anyone listening knows anything about Tucson , arizona , but in January to May if you're under the age of 55 , you're not getting an RV spot . They do not rent anyone under the age of 55 in winter here .
So we were driveway surfing at his uncle's house and we needed out . So we were like we better just buy a house . Because he was military , he hadn't been out for more than a year , like we could just really quickly just plug back in . So he rejoined , we bought a house in four or five weeks with the VA loan .
It was so fast and that's where we've been since .
Okay , okay , hold on a moment .
At the beginning of COVID I can relate , because while you were , let's just say , stuck in an RV scrambling to get into a home because who knows what's going to happen with this virus thing that nobody gets I was in Mexico , had just taken a vacation there to study Spanish for like what was supposed to be like four to five weeks , and then got stranded in
Mexico because it broke out while we were in school . And then people started looking at us sideways like , hey , what country did you say you were visiting from ?
And we're like , we've been out more than 14 days , because that's all anybody knew , right , like 14 days , and you were okay , you know , so to speak , not contagious , and so that was kind of just a glimpse into our story . I'm still in Mexico .
We got stranded , we never could go back to China , so we were living in China for 12 years and then took a vacation . Yeah , and here we are , in Mexico still .
Do you love it there ? I've heard a lot of expats really like Mexico .
Yeah , it's pretty cool . China will always be in my heart . Yeah , it's pretty cool , it's . China will always be in my heart . Mexico is becoming a much more closer second home .
I mean now like mentally , this is , this is where we're at it's , it's good weather yeah it's like you guys in arizona , actually just without the extremes , but definitely desert cacti , bugs , if we just don't get the extreme high and lows . Because I'm inland , yeah , yeah inland , in the middle of almost equidistant between the Pacific and Gulf of Mexico .
Shoot , my geography is falling apart . But that is the bodies of water , right , like Pacific Ocean and Gulf of Mexico there , yeah , cool . So I think , before we go , my next question is what's the snapshot of your business now ?
And , leading into the next episode , I want to know the hint , the teaser , why somebody should maybe look at trying Pinterest , because that is largely off my map , so to speak , of marketing . So where's your business at now ? And then , why should somebody think about trying Pinterest ? And then we'll jump into the next episode .
Well , one of the clients that saved my rear end when I was in the midst of finding new ones in 2019 is actually the reason why I got started with Pinterest ads Like , truly like . I was running some ads prior to that .
I had really some great successes with them , but only for digital products , and that client really allowed me to open up for e-commerce businesses and run some e-com ads Not my favorite and , we'll admit full transparency , not my favorite type of ads to run but it did give me a new education and new ways to market myself and clients on this platform .
Currently , about 70% of my income for my business is from the agency . So it's me and I have a couple of team members . I work on all the strategy , I see everything that happens with all the clients , but I don't do it all anymore . I have someone that helps schedule . I have someone that helps make images . You know those sorts of tasks Well .
The other 30% is from the membership and YouTube revenue , so multiple revenue streams these days , which is really great . The membership has completely surpassed my wildest dreams . I mean , we've just nearly surpassed 10,000 a month in monthly recurring revenue which is amazing , three years in .
I never could have imagined it would take that long , but it has and I'm okay with it .
Right , we're okay with it . Now I mean yeah .
Yeah , but you know how that leads us into the next episode of using Pinterest ads . Truly was that one client who was like you know what ? I believe in you , I think you can do it . Just here's the money , here's the assets . Go do it . And I did it , and ads are really successful .
So we're going to talk about why Pinterest ads in the next episode talk about why Pinterest ads in the next episode .
Yeah , and I can't wait to hear why Pinterest ads and your main go-to Pinterest ad strategy , because you also had mentioned that plenty , did you say these words , that plenty of people will use Pinterest ads in conjunction with Facebook ads ? Yeah , or did you say , for retargeting is what people would use Pinterest ads for , or did ?
you say , for retargeting is what people would use Pinterest ads for . Well , I always start people off with retargeting , so you know we can tease it there .
Okay , cool , we're going to jump into that next episode and you , the listener , again , reminder in the show notes . Below is where you can click on the link to go listen or watch the next episode , if you will , on YouTube . And until the next time we see each other , take care and be blessed . See you in .