 Hey y'all. Hey y'all. Hey y'all. Super excited. We have a special guest for y'all today. If we haven't met, my name is Dustin Schaefer. If we have met, good to see you again. But I'm bringing out a special guest, Miss Kate Higdon, and it's really cool. We're going to talk about something that her and I've gotten to know each other pretty well over the last five years. And it's been a really cool journey. But when I first met Kate, you wouldn't believe this, but she had under 3,500 followers on social media. Under 3,500. Now she has over 200,000. I'm going to say that again. Under 3,500, over 200,000 followers on social media and since the last five years when I met her. Now, majority of that 200,000 followers have came over the last maybe 18 months, I'm guessing. I'll let her answer that question. But I want you to think about something for a second. I want you to think about something. 10 years to get 3,500 followers. It took 10 years to get 3,500 followers. And in 18 months-ish, she's now gotten over 200,000 followers. And what's cool about it is now she has the recipe for success. She knows how to maximize that. So it's going to go to 200,000 to 500,000 to a million to 2 million faster. Because the same way it took her to get to where she is is the same things that she's going to show you and she's going to do again. So I'm super excited to introduce you, but that's not the only introduction I'm going to give her. So this is a young lady that the first time, and I always tell this story when I talk about Kate, is the first time I met Kate. I was in Florida. And normally when my associate, Michael Rutherford and I come somewhere and we get ready to speak, typically everybody just kind of gets quiet and they shut their mouth and Michael and I go do our thing. But not this interesting day. It was a warm day in South Florida. And I go over to meet Ryan and Ethan and Julia and there's this new girl they want us to meet. And they're excited about this new girl. So Michael and I stroll in and we are like on cloud nine ready to go, yeah, let's go change the world. And we hear this young lady speaking and she's just going and going and going. I mean, it's like she is just on fire. And I'm texting Ryan and I go, who is that? They're like, that's the girl I've been wanting you to meet. I go, guess what? I go, there's two things. There's the two situations that can happen here. There's two things that can happen. This girl is either going to just sink a ship, meaning she's just going to drive the whole barge off the edge of the edge of the earth. Or she is going to build a flippant empire is exactly what I said to him. I go, he's either going to sink the ship or she's going to build an empire. And the reason why is when you meet people, certain people, you know that they don't know what they know that's inside them, but you know there's greatness inside of them. And I think that's all of us. And Kate Higdon has absolutely demonstrated that over the last five years that I've gotten to know her. I think she's been pretty amazing probably her whole life. But since I've known her, not only have I've seen how amazing she really is, but also I've seen her step into something that's extraordinary and talk about being a leader, talk about being somebody that I will absolutely go to war with and somebody that I appreciate more than she probably even knows. But I'm going to have her share her a little bit of her story today on how she went from less than 3,500 followers on social media to over 200,000. And I hope you guys want to learn a little bit from her because she's amazing. So Kate, welcome. Thank you. I love that introduction. And I will never forget that day it was in Orlando, Florida. I didn't know what city it was. I'm like, it's Bovertown, Tampa, Orlando. I should have been in Orlando. It was in Orlando. It was my first event in Orlando. I can actually visualize exactly where we were. I mean, to the T, I remember so much details meeting you that day. And it's been a fun whirlwind of five years now. That event was pivotal in my life. It was a pivotal moment. So I always remember that too. Why was it so pivotal? That was my first company event. And I think before that I didn't have a vision of where my life was. Where my life could be, what could happen. Before that, my husband wasn't really involved either. And he came to that event with me and he was fired up. And we, like you said, you were like, let's go change the world. Like it was the first time. I've always wanted to have a life that created impact. That I grew up that way. My grandfather was a missionary. He was all about leaving impact. He used to pull me out of school when I was in the elementary school to go volunteer and hand out food at the food pantry. It was all about impact and doing that. And I didn't really know where my impact was going to come. And I think that that event was like where I just realized, wow, I'm going to be able to have impact with this vehicle. I'm going to be able to create like residual impact. And that was really exciting. And I think that's when like my life just really shifted. It wasn't like a huge shift because like he said, like I was always going to do something. I just didn't know what it was going to be. And this was like, boom, it was like, I found, it's like I found my true North. That's really good. That's really good. And just so you know, the more impact, the residual impact you made, you made some residual income to go along with that, which just, hey, that's great. Now, is that the event that Jason drove to? Yeah. So yeah, so we live in Kentucky and he didn't want to go. He did not want to go to the event. He wasn't on board really. And then last minute he's really into science. And he thought, you know, I think I want to go to the science part of that event. And I didn't, I already had a plane ticket. He didn't, he didn't have one. There wasn't enough time. So at the time we had a little minivan and he drove to Orlando from Owensboro, Kentucky, to that event, drove home. He came back a totally different person. That's awesome. Well, it's been great. The last five years spending time with you and watching your kids grow up. I mean, it's kind of neat to see them step into their greatness and maybe at the end, if you guys won't want, if you're new, if you're just listening in and you're just catching this, this is Ms. Kate Higley. We're going to talk about how she went from less than 3,500 followers to over 200,000 followers and then also build a business utilizing this one of the strategies. She has a lot of strategies on the business side, but also maybe at the end we can do a little added bonus of her pursuing her dreams at this time of her life and what it's done for her children and then watching mama step into her badassery and her greatness and watching daddy and mama work together and do a new phase of their life. So maybe we can add that at the end if we have time, but Kate, I want to know, I think everybody wants to know, how did you do, how did you go, what was the shift? What took place for you to go from a small amount of followers to a big amount of followers? Well, first off, was there, when you first started doing social media, were you intending to build followers or were you just trying to post a post, I guess, maybe? I didn't know what I was doing when I first started and when I first started my business, I didn't really even know that social media was going to become such a big part of my business. I do a lot of face to face. I do a lot of belly to belly. I enjoy people. Like I said, I love impact and so I enjoy being around people person to person. I did not know that social media was going to really be like that vehicle for me. However, I've owned my own business for over 18 years. A brick and mortar, my husband and I have owned a very large photography studio in our area. So I had a social media account. I had a Facebook profile. I had a Facebook page for my photography business and I had an Instagram and it took me, like I said, I've been in business for 18 years. It took me 10 years to build 3,500 followers and I was laughing or I was telling Dustin, he's like, well, how many followers did you have? And I told him, well, on Instagram I have like 1,200, but they were all middle school and high school kids because I'm a photographer and I specialize in high school senior photographers. So it was all these kids that were following me because I was the cool photographer. They weren't really going to buy my product or service other than photography. So that wasn't really my target market, right? It wasn't like my avatar, so to speak, which we're going to talk about. Let's be honest though. They were probably following you because they were hoping you'd post a picture of them on your social media. Yeah, that's what they love. So I learned, you know, I'm like to the social media game too, you know, being in business as long as I have and wanting to grow a business and want to make more money and want to make a bigger impact in more lives. Somebody said to me, and it hit me kind of between the eyes, basically if you're not thinking and using social media as a tool to build your business, then you're wrong. There was no debate. It's like, you're just wrong. You're wrong. So true story, this happened yesterday. I was parked my car at the Tesla charger. I'm sitting there and if you guys know my car, it's pretty loud. And the guy pulls up and parks right next to me. He gets out and he says, you and I got to talk. And I'm like, well, okay. I'm kind of nervous a little bit. And he hands me his business card and I'm like, oh, this is great. He goes, you have a business card? I go, I don't. I go, my car. I go, my social media is my business card. He goes, what do you mean? I go, well, come here. Give me your phone. And I get him connected on social media. I send him a message. Now we've talked two or three times. I've messaged him two or three times. And I go, I go, Mitch, I got to ask you a question. Mitch, if you're watching this, hey, this is for you, not our Mitch, a different Mitch. And I go, what are you doing to talk to the next generation? I go, I know you can talk to the old folk, the wine drinker. The wine maker, right? He's talking to all the old people. I go, what are you doing talking to me? I go, I'm not listening to your emails. I'm not getting on your website. I go, but you're not talking to me. And he goes, I'm not. And I'm like, so if you're not, you're not in the game then. I go, your wine business is going to run out if you're only talking to people in their 70s because eventually they're not buying ketones. They're not buying wine anymore. I go, get in the game, dude. Let's get in the game. So anyway, I think this is really important topic. If you're looking at me and building a business, you got to be in the game. And you got to be thinking it as a business, not as I'm posting or sharing. So I had to say that. And I think that's super important too, because old school, I'm from some old school, right? Like I've been in business for a while, was you got a business card, but think about what a business card does. It ends up in a wallet in the bottom of a purse somewhere. There's no relationship built. There's nothing. And in today's economic world, it's relationship building. And so for me, social media is the no life in the truck. They get to know us, they get to like us, and they get to trust us. And it's all about creating content that attracts them to us. Right? Like I have content philosophies and strategies that I've built, especially like Dustin said over the last 18 months. Some of my content is specifically designed just to attract. That's the no. Like I need to like get in front of eyeballs, get in front of eyeballs, as many eyeballs as I can get in front of. And so that's the attract part. But once I've attracted them, I got to get them to like me and I got to get them to trust me. And so that's been the philosophy. But as far as like how I built, and do you want me to like talk about like what blew it up? Like what changed? Well, let's do this. I think you hit something on the head that no like and trust. I think that's really important. I think the, I think the first decision people have to make is that are you, you know, are you a consumer? Let me talk about this, Kate. You know, when what was the distinction that you're going to say, I'm going to use social media as a tool to build a business versus I'm going to be on social media. What was that? What was that distinction for you? I mean, because I know you're ambitious. You want to win. Was it just true? Like I need to help more people. I need to make more money. Is that the distinction? Or was it like me? COVID basically forced me into, I knew I should. It's just, I had an excuse not to, and COVID forced me to do it. Same, like I was, I was, I'll say, I was social media lazy. I was kind of leaning on the influence that I had built in the past through my photography business, but I wasn't growing social media. And a mentor of mine told me one time, he was like, your business is about one thing. It's about conversation and not having a different conversation with the same people, but having the same conversation with as many people as possible. So I knew. You got it. I want to really catch what she just said. And this is for any business. If you're in our business, if you're in any other business, it's like the wine maker. It's not saying it's not selling to the same people. It's selling the same thing to new people. I want you to say that again for everybody to be here. And if you're in, if you're following this, you're in the chats, if you can comment this down below, I want you to give me a, aha, this sinks into you because this is super, super important. Probably one of the most important things that Kate says today, everything else will figure it out. You can figure out the rest, but know this to be true. A hundred percent. So our business is not about having the same conversation. Oh, no, no, no, no. Now you've got me flustered. It's not about having a different conversation with the same people. It's about having the same conversation with as many people as possible. And that was the switch for me because I realized I was trying to have a different, I was trying to have a different conversation with the same people. I wasn't growing my network. I was talking to the same people over and over. And I was, and I was kind of being lazy and I'll, and I'll tell you like my business kind of plateaued because of it. Like it really did. I was, I was being lazy. I was talking to the same people over and over. And much like everyone, especially people like Dustin and I, who we do really, truly love working with people face to face. Like I get an energy from being in a room of people that I will never get from social media. And I love it. However, the world intervened, the world intervened, and we were no longer able to get together and do those kind of things. And I thought, how am I going to get in front of more people? How am I going to do that? And so I think it was like February or March of 2020. And my daughter, who is 20 now introduced me to TikTok. And I thought it was so ridiculous. I'm like, this is nuts. I am not doing that. And she put her TikTok up on our TV. She's like, mom, just watch it. Just watch it. And it was her staff. It was her algorithm. So like at first I was like, this is crazy. Because if you understand TikTok, each person kind of has their own algorithm. But for whatever reason, I believe the universe spoke. All of a sudden I saw a low carb recipe. Someone came up and they were doing a low carb cooking. And I thought, what is this? Like, this is my jam. Like, I want to make that. What is that? And that's when I just had this, like this light just went on that I'm like, there are people like me on that platform. And if they're like me, they have the same needs, wants, desires, pain points, joys just like I do. And I thought I can find that avatar on that platform. And so that's when everything switched. And I started trying to like, I definitely tell you I had a lot of trial and error. My first videos were horrible. I've never deleted any of them. So they're still there. Hey, go check her. How can we find you on TikTok so they can go look at those first videos? Because that's important. Like my first videos were really bad too. I mean, I even do some now that are really bad, but I've gotten better, right? But let everybody know where they can find you. Yeah, it's at Tate underscore Higdon. That's my name on pretty much all my social media platforms. And so yeah, that's what I kind of started doing. But here's the really interesting thing about, and Dustin laughs at me for this too. Actually, everyone who knows me knows me laughs at this, especially my family. This is really important by the way, everybody listen in. Before TikTok, I didn't even cook. I didn't even cook. Like there is a plaque that used to hang behind my stove that said, I am the trophy wife. I don't have to cook. Because I'm actually the second wife. You're reading and everything. But I started thinking, of course it was COVID, so we weren't really going to the grocery store. We weren't going to restaurants as much. I had more time. And so I was like, well, maybe I do like to cook. I don't know. I've never really tried. My husband and I had been married 18 years at the time. He's like, what is happening? Finally. But then I thought to myself, OK, there's probably people. And actually my husband told me this, because I didn't like to cook. I don't like to take the time to cook. And he said, Kate, don't you think there's probably a lot of other women out there who also don't like to cook and don't want recipes where they have to go to some crazy store to find some mysterious ingredient and herb? Like my cooking is like five ingredients done in 20 minutes. Boom. And I thought if that's what I'm looking for, there's probably other people out there that are looking for that same thing. So that's where I really honed in. I am not like a baked stuff from scratch. I'm literally like, here's my packet. I bought it Walmart. But I'm going to pour into this hamburger. That is my kind of cooking, right? So that's kind of how I started. That was my attract. That's how I started attracting people to me. And then we just, I started building a strategy from that. All right, let me, let me pause you there for a second. So you have a saying, I'm going to let you say that same. You already know what I'm asking you to say. No. So what she found is even though it wasn't even a, wasn't even a direct passion. If I was to ask Kate, what is your direct passion? She's going to say things like photography. She's going to say things like, you know, you know, you know, you know, like inspiring women and developing women. Those are like kind of her two passions, but she found a niche and I want you to be kind of open about this because some people are like, I, my passion has to be my niche. And often they do go together because it's easy to do, but it doesn't have to be that way. How important was it for you to develop a niche? And how much easier was it for you to post once you've done it? Oh, I see what you are. Yeah. Okay. You're going to slap at me for that. So, um, yeah, I, like I said, I was not a cook. And the majority of my Tik Tok and, and my Instagram reels is cooking. And I would say probably 75 to 80% of it. Now here's what I found and, and I was talking to Defton. And if you think about the no like trust that I was talking about, I still, like, I have a family. We're in a home. We have to eat. So food is a part of our life. And the low carb keto lifestyle is a huge part of my husband and I's transformation. We've lost 160 pounds together. So it is part of our life. Right. It's not like I just randomly decided, you know what? I'm going to make a Tik Tok about gemstones. And, and I've never picked up a gemstone in my life. Right. Like I'm not doing that. It is something, but like Defton said, it wasn't something that I was like passionate about it. Cooking wasn't like something that just stirred my soul, but it was something that, you know, I can do this. I can do this in my home. I can add value to people's lives, specifically people like me. And then I'm adding the spice. Like that's like some meat and potatoes. Let's say meat and cauliflower. Low carb. Low carb. That's like the meat and cauliflower of my social media. And all the spices mean all the spice of like my dog. That I have a teenager and a 20 year old and that my husband and I work together from home. And we have not the whole another niche I could get into. You know, all of those things I collect pigs and I love rhinos and I love personal growth. And I love inspiring women and watching women step into their greatness. But even more, my favorite part is when I can see the spark in someone's eye when they realize they deserve that greatness and they're worthy of it. Like that's the spice of me. The cooking and that niche is just what gets eyeballs in front of me. So they get to like me. That's how they get to know me, but then how they get to like me is all through the spice. Like think about a like a soup. You don't typically like the soup based on the main ingredients. You typically like the soup based on the spice. I like that. Yeah. That kind of made that up. That makes sense. It was good. Yeah. It was good. I just put on the bottom there. No, no, like and trust. Right. And so no matter what path that you're going to choose to make social media your business, you got to find an avenue. You got to find what you have to have something to sell. Right. You got to have something to promote to them, which we probably should have talked about a little bit. But if you're watching this, most likely you have something to sell. If not reach out to us and we'll make sure you have something to sell. But, but you got to find an avenue to approach. Now once you decided that, you know, food, because that was kind of the beginning, was it easier to post when you knew what you were going to be posted about? Or if you're just like, what do I post today? Is that is that more stressful or less stressful? If you kind of know your avenue that you're going to focus on. It's way easier. And, and I'll tell you, like at first, I mean, y'all, like I said, my videos were so bad. Like one of my, I could pull one up right now and play it. I might just, I might just. So embarrassing. One of my first videos, I literally took slices of ham. I put cream cheese on it, put a pickle in it and rolled it up and showed people this is my low carb snack. And I mean, that is so ridiculous. But it went nuts. And I think when that video blew up, I realized, okay, there's value here. I do have something that people are looking for. And they're looking for easy, simple things to improve their, their health. And if I could add that, that's great. Oh gosh. I'm going to find one. And honestly, if I, if I'm being real though, my videos now, it's not that they're that much different. Like I don't make videos using fancy cameras or flights or any of that. It's literally all right from my phone. Because here is my thing. My goal is to run my business from the beach. And so this is all I ever want to have to have with me is my phone. So yeah, I don't, they're not fancy. I've just learned to film, cut, film, cut, film, cut, add some music and do a voiceover. And I'm good to go. Well, let me ask you this question. I do have some videos here. I'm scrolling through to show some of the Kate's early on videos. But the, the beginning, right? When I, when I first started on social media, I felt awkward. I felt uncomfortable. And then I felt like I was finally stepping into me. Right. I was able to start to show myself. So give people an expectation. I kind of early on of maybe how comfortable uncomfortable it will be. But what I, what I tell people a lot, but I think, and it's also what made tiktok so easy. I think for people is they go like, nobody knows me and tiktok yet. So I didn't, I wasn't worried about judgment as much, but kind of help people overcome that initial step because of just worrying about what other people think. So at the end of the day, if you, if you, if you have to win and you have to be successful, you'll do what you need to do, but it doesn't make it easy. So Kevin, can you get people an idea of like, how would you start to build that momentum for yourself? Absolutely. And I think that was a big transition going from Facebook because Facebook is typically people that we know already in our regular life and transitioning to tiktok and now even Instagram for me, tiktok and Instagram. And I also utilize Pinterest. They're people that don't know me as much. Instagram kind of has a blend, but it's mostly people who don't know me in the regular life. And for people who are a little nervous, they're like, I don't, I'm uncomfortable showing myself. There are niches, there are things out there that you don't even have to show your face. Like the majority of my videos, you don't even see me. Now I will say the more you show yourself, remember it's the no like trust. If all you do is have videos or photos that never show you, you won't get to the like and the trust as much. But just getting started, you can shoot videos of other things, put music on it, do voiceover. But Dustin's right. At a certain point, you do have to realize that in order to be great, at anything, you do have to let go of that fear of rejection. And it's not that I don't have that fear. I think we all do to some degree, but the definition of courage isn't to not have fear, to be fearless. It's to feel it and do it anyway. And we have a mutual friend, Alex, Alexander Gonzalez, and he was coaching on this the other day and he was like, you know, there's, you have fear and you have abundance and there are two opposite ends of the spectrum. And the only way to get from fear to abundance, which is what we want, especially if you're watching this and you're wanting to build a business and use online social media platforms, this is what you want. What you've got to do is get into action. That is the bridge between fear and abundance and just get into action. If you don't want to have that fear of rejection from people that you know, then buying platforms like Pinterest or TikTok or Instagram Reels where they are people that you don't typically know. So I'm going to get to the meat here in a second. It's a whole type, but I told Kate this when she was, I had this epiphany and I have a couple of gifts and one of them is listening to the other people and then realizing, or just listening, that's my gift. I don't know what I realized, but just listening and I told Kate this and I don't know if she remembers this or not, I go, but if she did the same thing she did on TikTok with the people she didn't know on Facebook when she started, she would have had the same success on Facebook because at the end of the day, she's putting out good shit. She's putting out awesome video. She's bringing value to people, but because she was restricted by this, this, I know them and this, they don't know me as this and they know I don't like to cook and this judgment thing. She didn't do it on Facebook, but, but TikTok gave her permission to go do it and then she stepped into it. Now, I'm wondering, do you actually share some of that stuff on Facebook now? All the time. I don't even, I don't even, I can guess it now. It's funny because we have one person that she's crushing Facebook. Like, that's where she's, I mean, Facebook has halted for me part-time right now, but I'm going, other ways are going and so it's funny how it ebbs and flows and if I dictated my success off of one thing, then I would feel like I'm failing, but I'm having success somewhere else, so I don't worry about that one. I just don't worry about my success being dictated by that. So, right now, we haven't actually, we have answered, actually underlying of everything, we've answered how she went from 30 plus and 3500 followers to over 200,000 followers. We've answered the whole question, but I'm guessing if you're kind of new to social media or you're not feeling confident in social media, you're like, but what did she actually do? What did she actually do? So I'm going to do something really quick and I'm going to have Kate give some, because I'm sure she has a lot more things she wants to talk about, is what I heard was you have to find, you have to have a reason of why you're doing this. So basically there was a point where we couldn't get out and talk to the world. COVID basically gave us an opportunity. I'm going to say that again. COVID gave us an opportunity to expand our ability to do what we already love to do. COVID gave us an opportunity. A lot of people look at COVID as, oh, it's so bad for me, all these other things going on. I've been trying for a lot of people and I try to have empathy for that, but yet it gave us an opportunity to expand what we already love to do in a better way. And it put Kate in a situation where she's like, I have to do it differently than before. She likes to work, talk to talk to face to face and give her an opportunity to expand. So she went on TikTok and it's not nothing special about TikTok. If you're not on TikTok, that's probably a problem, but it's not TikTok versus anything else. It works on all platforms. She went on TikTok. She found a niche. She stayed consistent. She didn't quit because she was uncomfortable and she basically let people know who she was, what she had to offer, what she was doing. It wasn't about selling a product. We haven't talked about selling anything yet, y'all, just so you know. Not one thing is about selling. So this is about building a business. This is the foundation. Before you sell anything, you have to do the no-like trust. And I like that. I'm going to be using it. I'm going to be stealing it and I'll say Kate Higdon said this. I don't know where she got it from, but I love it. Made it up. It's hers. Give her a shout-out. They know like trust Kate Higdon. I'm going to do this. So she found a niche. She followed that. It didn't mean that defined who she was. It just meant that this is a great way to let people know her and get to know her because she's going to add the spice later. And then she did that across many platforms and in there somewhere she was consistently did it daily or weekly at least, but preferably daily. So once you do that Kate and that's the recipe. That's all the ingredients for success. Can you give people how often should you post? How do you ask for a sale? When does that come? And what's the time frame of expectations of gaining a larger following? Because I know I did it sometimes. One platform went fast. The other one's been a crawl slow. But interesting enough, I get about the same sales off of both of them, even though one's like seven times bigger than the other. So that's interesting. It's not the number of followers that actually dictates your success in business. It's probably the value that they're getting from you in there somewhere. And never assume that just because someone has millions of followers that they are monetizing that in any way. Most are not monetizing it. And most are just star-struck because they're like, I'm famous and yet they can't even pay for groceries. They're just at home. They're miserable. I mean, this is the conversation I'm on often. All the time, they think, oh, I'm going to set up an Amazon store and I'm going to get rich. It's like, no one's clicking on your Amazon store, dude. It's not happening. So, you know, and I don't want you to think that just because followers means dollars because it doesn't. It comes down to quality. And so, yeah, I'm going to talk a little bit about like how often you should post. And I remember and I'm going to mention something, Dustin, a conversation we had because my Instagram was probably my slowest growing. Like that was my snail growth. I just could not figure out the platform. Why is it so hard? And all of a sudden my Instagram just started growing. Like it's tripled, maybe quadrupled in the last couple of years. Oh, there you go. We're good. I remember messaging Dustin and being like, I don't know what's happening. It's like, and I know exactly what's happening. You've been consistent as hell and it's paying off. And he was exactly right. I don't think about the result. I don't think about how many views I'm going to get or how much money I'm going to make off of this. I just decided I'm going to commit to these activities. I'm going to commit, commit, commit. And my goal is to do a TikTok or Reel every day. That is my goal. Are there days when I don't? Yes. That happens, right? But very rarely do I go more than two days because remember we're going back to the no like trust. The trust part is actually consistency. Your followers will trust you if you are consistent. They will. That makes them feel safe. That makes them feel like you are someone that they want to align themselves with. Does that make sense? It does. I have just a question on that. Consistency, does that mean posting all the time? Or does that mean posting consistently and a consistent message? Okay. So again, because I'm in a niche, I'm in a niche, right? But that doesn't mean that I 100% post about my niche. My message isn't always the same thing in all of my content, right? But I would say 75% to 80% of it is pretty consistent. But what is very consistent is all of my videos are speaking to one person. And that is the avatar that I have created and we've gone through a lot of training on this. We're in the midst of like digging even deeper into this because I think the more clear you can get onto who you're talking to, like I literally have a picture in my mind of the person that I'm talking to and all of my content speaks right to her. Right to her. You're not my person, Dustin. You're not my person. Oh man. I'm going to have her say that again. Because once again, a lot of times people think it's about hashtags and those things are all valuable and knowing your data, those are all tools that you can use. But without this part those other things won't ever matter. And that's why I get in these conversations I'm in lots of trainings and lots of events and stuff and I'm listening to people talking. The smartest person in the room on the topic, the one with the most followers is often the one the most confused guy at all because they forget what they did that got them where they were going and they got caught up into the hashtag of it instead of making sure that they're doing what Kate just said. Is that her niche and people go, well how do I find my avatar? An avatar is a person that you make up in your own mind of who you want to attract. It's the, like who's that perfect person and typically they're very similar to you. Just so you know, they should be similar to you. Not always. Not always though, but in general usually, you know, because you could be Oprah talking, to want to talk to men I don't know if that's the case, but there might be some situations where that's not true, but for the most part it is. But this is how I always tell people when you found the right avatar or the right person you want to attract, it's the person that, it's kind of like when you were a kid and you met a new friend and you could stay up for days just talking about nothing. That is your avatar. It shouldn't be necessarily the product you're selling that might be part of the conversation but it shouldn't be you could talk about cooking you could talk about shoes, you could talk about hand purses, you could talk about the hair you use the shampoo you use, the kids that you raise the grandkids, the places you've been to when you find your avatar especially if you want them to join your business with you, you won't want the only thing that you have in common is the product you sell. You want to have other things in common because it makes the conversation natural. It makes it just fun and then now you're going to love what you do more so if you can reiterate that one more time for people, kind of like maybe some tips of how to find their avatar, I would love for you to do that. Yeah and just to double down on what you just said so I talked about this is all about building relationships. Relationships, actually my degree is in communications and our personal organizational communications and relationships are formed when you have those commonalities. When you have those common experiences that's when relationships are formed and so my avatar is very similar to me not always the me now but maybe the me a few years ago the me that because I look at this I look at it like this I literally have a solution to help the me five years ago and so I am creating content that is speaking to that person their needs joys desires wants pain points that's a word people use a lot there pain point but I also think joy point because I have teenagers my avatar is a mom who has teenagers okay but there's a lot of joys in having teenagers not just pain point so I'm creating content that is specifically speaking to that person like that person who's wanting to eat low carb but is completely confused and overwhelmed and has no idea what to do they think all they can eat is bacon and eggs and hamburgers with no bun because I was there that was me before that's the person I'm speaking to but I'm also adding all these other things in because my avatar the more clear I get on my avatar my specific avatar is women over 40s because I am going through changes in my life and I can speak to those people and guess what they can speak to me too because it is a two way communication especially if you're utilizing tiktok especially once you get them off tiktok onto other platforms which is where when the magic happens funneling them to other platforms and you literally start creating community in relationships you want those commonalities. Awesome I appreciate you sharing that I think it's really important because I do this a lot I meet people that have all these different things and we happen to promote a product that's very health driven and does these amazing things and I watch people that's all they want to post about what they should or shouldn't how to do it and you can tell they're inconsistent and yet they love crocheting or they love horses and I'm like I'm on your page and I haven't seen you post one time about those things I go do you think there's anybody that likes horses that wants energy focus fat loss and mood and sleep that you could talk to you on a regular basis they're like yeah I go post about that like it's easy and it's fun you'll actually like those posting so I think it's really important to kind of recognize that and if you're starting a business from right now right down take a notepad right down who do you want to attract like what is that person look like if you could visualize who is that person and then what's your consistent niche and now your niche can maybe have a couple different variations but it should be very specific and that you can be consistently posting towards me once you have that figured out it goes to know they'll get to know you they're gonna then like you and then or trust and like so therefore then now they can take some action so how do we actually take them from this no trust like to actually moving them towards a sale of buying any kind of product that you might be promoting I love that so you're gonna ask questions you're gonna ask questions and you're going to funnel and if they're like what is funnel does that mean I have to get click funnels what is that no that's not what we mean it's for me social media is all of it is just funneling people into places where they have more access to me and I have more access to them so that's one of the challenges with tiktok is yeah you can create huge millions of followers someone who just signs up for tiktok today could make a tiktok and wait that tomorrow and have a million followers it that can happen but then they have no idea how to communicate with those people right so funneling them to other areas I've done a lot of trial and error on this I have ways for them to text my business number I have ways for them to find me on other social media platforms I have messaged them with tiktok it's a little difficult they have to follow you you have to follow them but I have a strategy for that as well right now what is working best for me and Dustin can attest to this he knows my numbers what's working best for me right now is funneling all of my platforms except for maybe facebook all of my other platforms to my instagram and here's why because they are getting to know me through the content that I'm creating and by the way just going back a minute to that avatar once you have identified the person that you're looking for for me it's women over 40 mothers of teenagers women who want more out of life women who want to start a business then it is going deeper into that and saying what problems are they facing like women my age hello hormones right like you know and it's talking about those pain points talking about you got teenagers great go in my pantry and you'll find three boxes of cereal completely empty why I have no idea like there's all these things that pain points that that avatar when they read your post or watch your video they're like oh my gosh is she in here like how does she know me that's how they should that's how they should interact with you so the content I'm creating is getting them to know me is getting their eyeballs on me right then I'm funneling them right now mostly to my instagram I'm going to give you my current credibility this is what I'm doing right here in this moment and this could change in six months so this is social you're ready to take side steps I am always I am always tweaking and pivoting and running trials and testing things and seeing how they work but I think that's what most what successful people do right so once I've got them in the instagram what I love about this is now if I want to post I've got stories I've got my stories and I've got my post my posts are still mostly the content that they know me for most of it okay my stories is how they're going to fall in love with me my stories is the like they're going to get to see like today I was in getting at the hair salon and I have these weird lights I look like I was in an alien spaceship and I'm posting about that I'm posting me snuggling with my dog every morning or me with my favorite coffee mug or my daughter a picture of her as she's going out to her spring formal like that's how they're getting to like me right is through the stories and what's great is in stories is where I mostly talk about my product in my business because that is part of my life is part of my everyday life that is who I am right is my product it's not it's not everything of who I am I don't make my videos all about my product my product is me and my product is also part of my daily life so I'm posting about it and in there I'm posting polls I'm asking questions and that my friends is where I have conversations that's where the majority of my conversations turn into conversions is through Instagram stories and and some reals but that's where the conversations turn into conversions so even if I have a long conversation with them in TikTok I'm still funneling them into Instagram and that's where the magic happens because on TikTok they can see my videos but they don't really see me as well on TikTok where on Instagram they see my life that's where they get to like and trust me and so that's where that magic happens but a lot in stories using polls using questions creating conversations if we're not creating conversations we're not having conversions I see people like I'm just going to put my link out there and you know tossing your link up on your page is not a relationship you might get a sale here and there but you're probably not going to talk to them again it maybe ends in one shot and then you get this hope that that's why you're supposed to do it but to have a great success you have to put the great work into it and that's where it just to make sure everybody heard this so if you're on multiple platforms which a lot of people are just so you know you don't have to be on multiple platforms and you can blow this thing up and have great success on one you can double down on one although I do believe with the way the world's changing is get in the game but maybe focus on one but get in the game but but really clear the content on your TikTok is still very similar to your content on Facebook so that they still know it's the same person meaning that you don't do political stuff on Instagram and recipes on TikTok we'll hear and then they get to the next patient and it's like there's an incongruency so you make sure that you stay congruent in your overall message but in the stories function when you do a story they get to meet your dog you get to meet your family they get to meet you they get to see things that they just your life that they wouldn't normally get to see on a regular basis on your other platforms right yeah 100% and I made that was a huge transition for me that shifted and we talked about that that was a huge shift for me because my Instagram before I got very focused on my avatar and who I was speaking to my Instagram was just like random whatever like oh here's my feet out by the pool right you know like it and so my TikTok people are following me on TikTok for a specific reason and then they would try and find me on Instagram and be like is this the same person and again it goes back to that no like trust trust happens when there's consistency congruency when they know that you are who you say you are and you don't change that is when that trust happens and people do business with people they trust I just got a message on one of the chats is my mom loves Kate because she sees you and your daughter we think about that right it's like my wife seeing somebody that she's following that has a kid and seeing how they're interacting with their their children it creates another bond that I feel left out as a dude right now because I feel like hormones and this I mean I'm like I'm none of those people try I got my own tribe that I'm going for right um the okay so we we we kind of wrap this thing and we're not done yet we we've got a kind of bow on this where you find your niche you got to be consistent right you find your avatar and then you consistently post on all the platforms that you're currently on I'm not in Pinterest I do I personally and primarily doing tiktok Instagram and Facebook those are my three mains um I do a little on YouTube and haven't really really had success there yet but I haven't really committed to the channel um Kate I'm gonna ask you this question um you stay consistent on your on your message so that people know who you are and then you use stories the story feature is to to basically show them your life and to sell them their product right meaning by asking really valuable questions that the product potentially could solve that answer for right is you know enter can you give me a maybe a poll example of what that would look like that could lead to a question just curious oh god you know I'm getting some feedback here um so it really depends like um I was talking to uh uh new team member earlier and she's like in her early 20s and she was just talking about she was getting up she worked at three o'clock in the morning and she was before just throwing her hair in a ponytail running out the door and to work and now she gets that before alarm goes off and she's feeling great and so I'm like coaching her on how to take that and turn it into a story and I'm like take a picture of you that you have before before you started this and one after and just ask people like do you see a difference in my energy by these two pictures yes or no right just an energy it's not like a fat loss or anything but it's literally her eyes are lit up she's more engaged and so it's asking polls it's asking questions it's when there's um maybe your product or your service comes out and they've got a new variation is asking them this or that questions to just to engage conversations engage conversations or it's great questions great questions write these down is to post something great that has happened that the product has done for you or someone that you know and just say ask me how ask me how that is powerful put that at the end of your reels put that I'm sending that right now I gotta take that one down really I have reels right now that have like 20 comments of just how that's all they're saying because at the end I said ask me how and you can do that in your stories as well ask me how and then that starts a conversation right and so I don't go into now the pro tip I don't start the conversation go to them in a private message and say here's how I don't do that I go to the conversation and I say let's say it's a fat lot because I get a lot of questions about that I start the conversation hey Sally I saw you reached out about my story or my video are you currently trying to lose some inches how is that going for you right now right because let me tell you something and that's another thing you might want to write down nobody cares what you know until they know that you care no like trust no like trust they do not care what you know until they know that you care so when you start a conversation you don't just come right out of the gate throw in your product at them that's not what they are looking for they're looking for you to care about why they need your product and it allows continuous conversation so you can move them through the journey that's a residual business right there that's what it is and I think that's the part between the sale and a business you don't want just a sale you want a business that could be a training in itself maybe we'll do a communication training at one point let's get to this last question is if we grow a few hundred thousand or even ten thousand followers when you start to gain momentum at the beginning of my social media journey when somebody said a hashtag I'm like what does that mean and they had to go like the number sign I go the number sign is a hashtag what does that mean like I didn't understand it but here's the thing I didn't understand it and at that time I didn't need to understand it because I still hadn't developed my niche I still hadn't developed my avatar I still haven't been consistent on my posting I really keep that in mind but at some point in utilize I like to call them accelerators like what time of the day you post versus what hashtags you use versus should I do all the filters and some of the trends these are some things that can help you expand your following can you give a few tips on those although I truly believe in general most people don't need to know that and if you're at the place that you need to know that you're already doing it just a moment can you give us some tips a couple of tips that I personally noticed made a big difference for me was on tiktok and instagram is checking my insights and seeing when are the people that follow me online the most because the way those algorithms work is your content goes up and they're going to test it they do a test so the social media platforms test it to see how much it's liked so you want to post when the majority of your followers are online on almost all of my platforms fortunately for me they're all on around the same time it's usually seven to eight p.m. my time and so that's when I am posting my content and that has really helped me now keep in mind those algorithms change everything changes this is for right now today February 25th 2022 that's the way it is right now hash tag the best advice I can give you on hash tag is to find other people who are crushing it in your niche and see what hash tags they're using and use their hash tag I find that really important and follow hash tags that are not ginormous like I do use things like low carb diet but y'all like I am a tiny little fish in a huge pond of low carb diet niche but if I do low carb family meals that's a much smaller pond if I do low carb for busy mamas much smaller pond does that make sense so I do use some of those big pond hash tags but I would say probably the ones that get me the most interactions are the smaller pond because I'm a big fish in a small pond in those if that makes sense so those are two tips that like first of all like Dustin said you don't need to know any of that you need to know when to do first you got to just do the stuff and then you're tweaking and y'all that never ends that never ends you're never going to master any of this which is kind of to me the fun of it because just like life it's a journey and we're always trying to figure things out and we're always tweaking things first you got to just I think most importantly is to start creating content and then hone in on that niche you kind of figure out your niche you identify that avatar and identifying the avatar isn't enough you've got to understand what that avatar needs what can you say that that person on the other side of this phone is like oh my gosh she is in my house this is so weird like she knows my life she's speaking right to me once you've done that that no light trust is there so it's important when we talk about these advanced techniques like the hashtags in the time of the day it's like don't become the best frosting don't learn how to frost a gourmet cake if you don't know how to make the cake right you're doing that at home at least so learn how to bake the cake and baking the cake of course keto cake it is is going to be the consistency of whatever we've been talking about and then once you've gotten that down you can start to frost the cake and learn all the other cool little strategies and they'll come easy for you and they're actually easy to find to learn that stuff but if you don't do the foundation the cake will never be made you're frosting a cardboard box which means that nobody's going to eat the cake and you don't want that so that was my analogy of the day but I do want to say something that you just said that I think is really important and I decided to go on my analogy and I forgot what you just said or what I was going to reiterate I apologize to that but this whole process is it takes time it's a process to build this following up selling the product is about relationships it's about connecting I know what it was people will say to me all the time well everybody needs our product unfortunately not everybody wants to listen to you so we have to change that around your husband your wife your kids may not want to listen to you so even though equity needs our product doesn't mean they're going to listen to you for so finding that avatar and speaking to them in their head is going to make your job more fun and more easy so the more you can hone that down it makes it rewardable for you to do your job if you love what you do you're going to do it more often if Kate's trying to sell me key tones or trying to sell me a product it's not going to come across very well in a sense we're talking about females and hormones we're talking about middle aged stuff and daughters and my phase in my life we're not going to come across an entrepreneur package because she's an entrepreneur also and that was her niche and that was her focus she would be posting very differently her conversation would be very different and then I would be interested in what Kate has to offer so I want to keep in mind that that is really important I can't express it more Kate is there anything else following from 3500 all the way to 200,000 and building anything else that you want to share with people out there well I'll tell you that it starts to get really fun and I want to just it's kind of a cool phrase because it's a big part of our business but it's called exponential growth and what happens with our business with exponential growth is the same thing that happens with social media you just you feel like you're growing at this slow snail pace and you're like when's it going to happen and it's very easy to start looking at what other people are doing and then feeling like kind of jealous well how come it's happening for them and it's not happening for me and I would just say stay in your lane don't worry about other you can be inspired by other people you can it's not that you don't notice them but don't let that get you off your course because you are a very specific person that's going to speak to very unique specific people that are just for you remember I said relationships happen where there are common interests and experiences and that's the person that you're looking for but once you start picking up and that growth starts to happen with social media following as long as you stay consistent you start getting this exponential growth and it just goes like my Instagram was like why do I even post here I've had this conversation I'm like don't sleep on it don't sleep on it you're amazing you're about to ask this is a conversation that we had and we're good amount of time because I had the same conversation about a year before Kate on Instagram I was like why don't you bother it's just a waste of my time I thought Instagram was for the influencer, for the pretty girls their outfit of the day and you know their Instagram was all like it was all white or it was all pink and I'm like I am not this person like and I didn't really even want to become them I didn't even want to become that right so but what I found is I just hadn't found my avatar yet I wasn't and I didn't I didn't have my niche I didn't have my avatar and I wasn't speaking to the people that were looking for me like I have this note it's been here for five years on my computer it says you're looking for the people that are looking for you I wasn't I wasn't speaking to the people that were looking for me and once I got very honed in and focused and started speaking to those people that exponential grow and then what's cool is people start sharing stuff like they think you have value and you're like oh my gosh they like me right like this no life trust thing is actually working and it gets really really fun well I appreciate you I know we're going to maybe talk about your kids for a second we'll do that another day what I can say for Kate is that because Kate stepped up into her greatness she didn't step out of her shadow she stepped into how great she really is she's inspiring not only people all around the world if you're watching this and you locate you've probably been inspired by her not only her work ethic her determination and her willingness to learn and her willingness to participate and give back to other people to share her wisdom and knowledge I thank you for that but I think the best gift she's given to anybody is the people that are closest to her showing them that mama is a badass mama can do it you can do it you can create your life and to me that's the best gift you can give your kids more than anything else we know you love them but to be able to show them and there's so many stories in that that Kate can share with you and I think that is truly the biggest blessing that you and Jason have given to your family is you set them on a path that they were not on before and it's going to create a ripple effect for generations to come and I just got to commend you for that because I truly believe that we create our future we all start creating a better one for the next 10 generations our world's in a hurt and we're doing it now we do a whole series on the entrepreneurial parent like that would be good because that's a whole mother yeah we have a shared mentor that tells the story about being a parent is really about teaching your children to live without you and being an entrepreneurial parent it really is a lot about that it's them picking themselves up by their bootstraps and learning how to get to work and create their future not just be a victim of their present in their past Leather, thank you for having me on here this was fun a little different style than we're used to Kate and I are used to just going at it and we're like this is more of a conversation so I hope you guys all appreciate it we've had people watching this entire time it's been really cool give Kate some love give her a big shout out, give her heart if you're not following her already definitely just go follow and I'll be the first to tell you steal some of her content if you like it make it your own though make it your own because it's amazing what she's doing and she's changing lives around the world and creating the business for herself in so many ways stay tuned Samantha Rose you're coming up here soon I'm going to do some fun people coming I'm going to do my wife that just came out the wrong way when we interviewed my wife she literally I was going through some paperwork and I mean she destroyed me and I was like I got to interview you like you have such a different perspective we have Lisa and Jeff Skinner coming on a power couple out of Utah of course Samantha Rose and so many more to come Alexander Gonzalez who talked about he'll be coming on and we're going to be talking to him too and about stepping into your greatness and watching him grow has been really a blessing to see that too so y'all have a great day Kate you're amazing I appreciate you so much and y'all cheers bye everyone