Andrew: Hey, everyone. My name is Andrew Warner. I’m the founder of Mixergy.com. It’s the place where I’ve interviewed entrepreneurs about how they’ve built their businesses, done over actually 1,300 interviews here on Mixergy.
My goal is to understand how these entrepreneurs built their business so that you and I could learn from them and go build better businesses because of it. And my other goal is to have you not just build your business, but come back here and say, “Andrew, here’s what I learned from Mixergy, how I ended up building my company and I’m ready to,” not give back because you didn’t take, but, “I’m ready to pass on what I know and do an interview here on Mixergy.” That’s my goal here for this interview, for all of them.
And I have to be honest with you that today’s guest was someone that was scheduled to do an interview before but I backed out. I backed out because I was a little nervous. I said info marketing or selling education is really tough. Kimra, I can see you’re a little bit. . . You’re a little nervous about what I’m about to say, aren’t you?
Kimra: We’ll see.
Andrew: Why don’t I just say this is Kimra Luna? Do you remember when I said I think we shouldn’t do this interview?
Kimra: Yeah.
Andrew: Did that come across as a jerky thing for me to have said?
Kimra: No. I totally understood. If you didn’t feel it was going to be optimal for your audience at that time, I totally got that. But it was kind of weird because it’s very rare that I’ve been turned down for an interview.
Andrew: Yeah. We were talking internally and we said, “You know what? We’re about tech, we’re about software. We should stay focused on that.” And then there was some multi-level marketing stuff in your background and we said this probably is not the topic that our audience is after.
And then, Kimra, a few people who have really solid, respectable companies, the kinds of companies that I aspire to have in my audience and people who I’ve interviewed said, “You’ve got to check out what Kimra is doing.” And I finally said, “What do you want me to see?” One of them said, “Look, go check out her Facebook group. She’s really good at creating groups, really good at creating communities.”
I went to look at it and I didn’t have access. So, I said, “You do a screen share. Show me what you’re talking about.” So he shared his screen and he showed me something from 4:51 p.m. the day before where Kimra said, “Hey, I’m just curious. I’m thinking of creating this thing that’s going to cost $100 to $300. What do you think?” And she had–you, I should say, Kimra–you had 631 people like it in your Facebook group and 837 people comment. I scrolled to see what are they saying or asked him to scroll to see what are they saying. People were saying, “Yes, I want to buy it. I would do it.”
I said, “That’s pretty badass that you actually had all those people comment and that they want to buy from you.” So, I thought, “That’s pretty interesting. How did she do that?” And then I went and I looked into you further and I got curious about your brand. I got curious about your personality. I’m looking at you and you’ve got different color hair than you have on any other profile photo that I saw. And every time I look you up I see a different look.
Your background, I love the spray paint. I love the tattoos. I just feel like there’s something here, but I’m also afraid of it because I don’t want to do an interview with someone whose business is getting rich by telling you how you should get rich. So, there it is. That’s a whole like therapy session here in an intro.
What I should be saying instead is Kimra Luna is my guest for today. She is the founder of Be True, Brand You. She teaches Facebook marketing, how to grow a personal brand, how to create your first webpage, etc. Her whole goal is to help people build businesses and brands around the things they care about and she goes into the details about how to do that.
This interview is sponsored by two companies. I’ll tell you more about them later. The first is HostGator. The second is Leadpages. Kimra, how are you doing?
Kimra: Doing pretty good. That was a long intro.
Andrew: It was, actually. I’m looking down, four minutes and 13 seconds. I usually go two minutes. I think I was struggling to explain this. How are you feeling being here on Mixergy?
Kimra: Feeling pretty good.
Andrew: Do you feel like–do you get rich by teaching other people how to get rich?
Kimra: Kind of. I teach people who are very passionate and want to help and serve others. Most of the people that I teach how to do this to are service-based entrepreneurs or people who are wanting to leave their jobs or have skill sets that they want to be able to sell online. Online courses is one of the main things that I teach people how to create and how to launch them and how to put them together from scratch and I’ve had a lot of students who have had great success doing that that there are tons of people in the world–
Andrew: For example, who’s one person who’s gone through your course and as a result of doing it created a successful course?
Kimra: My friend now, Zach Spuckler, he was one of my first students in my program and Zach Spuckler has grown a very, very great business. His website is HeartSoulHustle.com and he’s done very, very well. There are tons, unless you want me to list them all off.
Andrew: That’s a good one. I can see his site. I get a sense of what he’s doing. I just Googled him and the first result was HeartHustle.com. It says, “I’m Zach Spuckler and I’m an online business strategist. In under a year I built a six-figure business that allowed me to leave school, quit my job and I’m guessing the next word is like an entrepreneur or something.”
Kimra: Yeah.
Andrew: So, there is kind of this circular process then. You teach them how to build a business that makes six figures. They go and teach other people how to do it and so on. Is that it?
Kimra: Sometimes, yeah. A lot of my students are copywriters. Are a lot of them are spiritual-based people. So, they don’t really teach that. They’re more helping people in a different sense. I even have some people who are like massage therapists growing local-based businesses who are just learning how to get their website up and learning how to use Facebook ads to attract people to become clients. A lot of people are corporate consultants.
So, it kind of varies. I have people all the way from artists and musicians. One of my students is a DJ. So, she’s used my content to get herself DJ gigs. So, it varies across the board. A lot of these people have been able to grow businesses in varying degrees. Some are life coaches or health coaches. Actually I have a lot of health coaches in my programs. I tend to attract them because I’m vegan, I guess. So, I tend to attract a lot of them.
But I do attract primarily more people on the spiritual end of things that want to grow their spiritual-based businesses, either teaching people spiritual things or maybe doing intuitive readings and that sort of thing.
Andrew: Okay. That Facebook group–how many people in that group?
Kimra: The group now has 31,000. I think we just hit 31,000 a few days ago and I’ve been growing that since May of 2014, which is when I started growing my current business teaching people how to grow their businesses.
Andrew: What percentage of your customers come from that group?
Kimra: Huh?
Andrew: What percentage of your customers come from that group?
Kimra: At least 99% of them.
Andrew: Really? So that’s a big part of your funnel, your community building is?
Kimra: Yeah. I spend a lot of time just giving value and helping people in the community. It’s a community where people are asking questions about growing their businesses and they’d be like, “What sort of tools do you use for this?” I’ll tell them about the tools and give them resources on how to use those particular tools. I’ve been doing that for quite a while now.
Even before that, I was growing Facebook groups, some just for pure fun, others that revolved around my previous blog that I had, which was in the health and wellness space. It seems like all the people in that community, it’s just they all like help each other out and then I help them out and it’s all just like everybody just supporting each other and wanting to see each other be successful.
I love community. That’s my favorite thing, even when I was 18 years old booking concerts for a living, that was my thing. I build community around the concerts so that it was fun experiences for everybody so people would want to keep coming back, so everybody knew each other’s names. I think it’s just part of me to build communities. It’s like part of who I am.
Andrew: Let me ask one more question about today and then we’ll go back to figure out how you got to today. The question is your revenues–what are you doing with this business?
Kimra: Primarily selling my digital courses–
Andrew: Oh, sorry. I meant how much revenue are you doing?
Kimra: Oh, how much revenue am I doing? So, the last–I know for sure my most recent launch in February did $1.2 million in sales. I spent about $40,000 total to promote that and launch that and then, of course, there’s some from like–I have my team members. I have about 13 team members now. So, that’s like big business expenses. But I don’t have the exact numbers in front of me.
Andrew: But that one launch in February did $1.3 million?
Kimra: $1.2 million.
Andrew: $1.2 million and what did you sell then?
Kimra: It was called Be True, Brand You, my signature program, which was $2,200.
Andrew: Okay.
Kimra: It’s a pretty extensive program. It has like 50 hours of video content of me training and teaching a lot of technical things–how to literally build a website from scratch, how to build landing pages, how to even screen record and edit and things like that, things that people need.
Andrew: Before you did all this, I read you were on welfare. At what point in your life were you on welfare?
Kimra: From 2008–well, about the end of 2008 to 2014, I was on welfare. I was also on welfare my entire childhood.
Andrew: Really?
Kimra: So, I was raised on welfare, wasn’t on it for my first few adulthood years, but then when I was 22, I became pregnant. Me and my husband ended up living at my in-laws house and I ended up on welfare for about four years. I had two kids in that time and when my second son was born, I was like, “We really have to figure this out.” Finally my husband was able to get a job working for FedEx, which helped get us off of welfare.
We paid the bills, but we got off of welfare like, “Okay, now we’re moving up in the world.” That’s when I became a bit of a bored housewife and was like, “I want to start this mommy blog.” So, I say to my husband, “I think I want to get an iMac.” And he’s like, “An iMac? Why do you want to get an iMac for?” Because we didn’t even own a computer at all.
I was like, “I want to start a blog and do something for a hobby.” It started growing and built lots of traction. Then I decided I could teach all the stuff I know about building this blog and building community around this blog. So, I decided to go for that and start teaching.
Andrew: Okay. Growing up on welfare–what was that like?
Kimra: It was a very interesting thing. I was definitely raised in kind of this victim mindset, like the whole world was against you kind of thing. When I was 15, my youth pastor at my church growing up, he gave me this book called “The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teenagers.” I remember reading the book and it was all about setting your priorities. My number on priority was to not be anything like my family because they’re not very nice people.
And then number two was to help people. I was like, “I just want to help people. I’m going to grow up and help people.” I didn’t know how I was going to help people, but that was what I was going to do. It was a pretty rough childhood. There was definitely a lot of abuse, particularly mental and physical abuse. So, there were a lot of things that I had to overcome in order to believe in myself that I could actually do this.
Andrew: What kind of abuse? You were saying you didn’t want to be anything like your parents. What was it about them you didn’t want to emulate?
Kimra: Just all the fighting and screaming and yelling and hurting each other.
Andrew: Physically?
Kimra: Yes. My family is very violent. So, I was like, “Umm. . . I don’t want to be like that when I grow up.”
Andrew: And they hurt you too?
Kimra: Especially once I became pregnant with my son, I read every parenting book there was because I was like, “I can’t end up like that.” So, there were kind of like these circles that I’ve had to really break in order to be able to have results that I wanted in my life and in business. Now I live in a beautiful high rise in Manhattan and my kids have private tutors and we’re able to do the things that we want to do as a family. I have a third son now, so I’ve got three kids. I’ve got nannies, the whole nine yards.
Andrew: So, this spray painted room I’m seeing you in is in a high rise in Manhattan?
Kimra: Yeah. This is my office, actually.
Andrew: I love your backdrop. Can you give me a quick visual tour? I know most people are listening. So, they won’t be able to see it.
Kimra: Yeah. This is the outside. As you can see, there are buildings out there.
Andrew: That’s Midtown, isn’t it?
Kimra: That’s Hell’s Kitchen. I’m in Hell’s Kitchen, so yeah. Then I got flowers. My husband got me some roses yesterday. I’ve got some cool records on the wall. This, actually, one of my students sent to me. She’s from Australia. Everyone knows I love skulls. So they send me everything skulls.
Andrew: It’s a pink skull and crossbones.
Kimra: This is my TARDIS because I love “Dr. Who.” I even have a “Dr. Who” back piece. Then I have my cool backdrop.
Andrew: Who did that? Who spray painted that?
Kimra: It’s actually a canvas. It’s spray painted on a canvas and I purchased it online and I pinned it up to my wall flat so it looks like somebody tagged up my wall. I don’t want the apartment building to get mad at me. And then I have a freedom hackers neon sign, which actually isn’t turned on. Then I’ve got “I Love Lucy” back there, Marilyn Monroe.
Andrew: Can we see your work environment?
Kimra: Ramones, Blondie. . . Huh?
Andrew: Can we see your work environment where your desk is?
Kimra: This is my desk right here.
Andrew: Got it. I see all the computer equipment there.
Kimra: Yeah. It’s all crystals and like little “Dr. Who” and “Harry Potter” characters and my Chipotle, of course. Can’t live without chipotle. Then my husband’s desk is over there. He has a–we have like a virtual reality set because we’re early adopters.
Andrew: I’m looking at an old image from MisfitMama.com. It’s you holding onto a can of something doing squats with the can in your arms and your daughter next to you barefoot doing the same thing.
Kimra: It’s my son, actually.
Andrew: Oh, it’s your son with longer hair.
Kimra: They just have longer hair.
Andrew: Sorry?
Kimra: Everyone thinks they’re daughters. But yeah, so, he was mimicking me. So, I thought it was a cute picture because I was pretty heavy into working art back then. I had like four-pack abs. I was pretty ripped back then. Then I got pregnant with my third son and I’m trying to get back into that again.
Andrew: I told you I saw an old post of yours on VeganBodybuildingAndFitness.com or–there it is, VeganBodyBuilding.com where you said, “I just give birth. I want my body to be back. I know I haven’t done what I should. What do you guys recommend?” You got some feedback there. I can see that you’re really into this stuff. But there was more to that site than you just trying to get fit. You were trying to build a business. This was the beginning of it, right?
Kimra: It was a hobby, to be honest. My intention wasn’t to build it as a business. I was just like I can share all this stuff I have in my head. I had tons of recipes. I have like piles of notebooks of recipes I’ve created myself.
Andrew: Vegan recipes?
Kimra: Yes. I wanted to share them online and share this is what my kids are eating and this is what I’m eating and this is how much I eat when I’m working out and what I eat on non-workout days. I just wanted to share.
It was really from a place of helping because I had a Facebook group that was a vegan moms Facebook group and I spent hours and hours in that group. This was when I was on welfare. I spent hours and hours in this group helping people. I had no intention of making money doing that. I just wanted to serve and do the best I could to help and support other mothers.
Then I decided, “I’ll make a website to show them all my recipes.” To me it was more fun, but then I started building a lot of traction. All my friends were like, “Oh my gosh, Kimra.” All these people in the vegan communities were asking to interview me. I was like–it wasn’t my intention and then it built up, then eventually I started doing training on how to use Pinterest to grow your online brand.
Andrew: Because that’s what worked for you with that site?
Kimra: Yes. That was the biggest thing that worked for me. I started teaching that. Then people didn’t actually–people that followed me on there didn’t actually buy the course that I created on Pinterest because they were all people that wanted recipes. They weren’t people that wanted what I was offering. So, I decided to scrap that and start teaching people that actually want that sort of content.
Andrew: I see.
Kimra: That was a shift, big shift.
Andrew: Yeah. Next to the recipes, I don’t see a tweet button. I don’t see a Facebook like button or anything like that. I just see a pin it. There would be a big image of a recipe and then a button to pin it.
Kimra: Yeah, recipe and then pin it. That was really the strategy back then. I did have a Facebook business page and I did have a group, but I didn’t use it heavily. It was mostly like my community was all Pinteresters. Even if there were days I didn’t have as many pins out, people would be emailing me like, “You weren’t pinning today.” I was like, “We were busy today.” Like they noticed when I didn’t pin.
Andrew: Why didn’t you start selling things related to health and fitness instead of Pinterest?
Kimra: I did sell some things. I sold essential oils.
Andrew: Right. That’s where the multi-level marketing part came in.
Kimra: Yeah. That wasn’t really my product. I think the reason why was because I felt a little uncomfortable because I wasn’t like a certified health coach. I wasn’t like a certified fitness person. I was like, “I don’t really have a lot of time to get it certified.” My husband was working ten hours a day and I was with the kids, so I was just like–I don’t know, it didn’t feel like the right thing to do.
I did sell some recipes like meal plans and things like that, but none of it really got a ton of traction. I was just a community builder. So, I was like, “Well, if I can build a big community, other people want to build big communities too. So, I can start teaching people how to do this.”
Andrew: And then you needed an audience that would buy that. I am looking at one more thing about this site before we move on from that site.
Kimra: Okay.
Andrew: I see an old Constant Contact email that went out from The Great Green Event Recap. I’m scrolling through this thing. This looks–
Kimra: That was with the network marketing company I was with.
Andrew: You were number one. You were gold executive. You won first prize, 37 points earned and free airline and hotel stay at Summer Momentum for the Summer Momentum contest. So, you were doing well?
Kimra: Yes. I did well, but the company’s compensation plan was so horrible that I didn’t make very much money. I think the most I ever made in a month was like $500. So, I was like blogging consistently and making tons of YouTube videos. So, I did have a pretty big YouTube following. I had about 25,000 followers on YouTube.
I just didn’t want to continue doing that. It was just, I don’t know, I just felt I don’t want to do this. So, I was like, “Okay, bye,” and then moved on to the next thing. I don’t know. I’m a person that’s not really afraid to move on to new things. So, I went with it and it turned out for the best.
Andrew: And that was a big move for you and that’s what helped you get to where you are today. Before we go on to that, I want to tell everyone about the Leadpages conference. It’s called Conversion 2016. You know about Leadpages, right?
Kimra: Yes. I am a huge obsessive lover of Leadpages.
Andrew: What do you use Leadpages for?
Kimra: I use it for everything. I even host my webinars on it. So, I use it for–
Andrew: That’s right. I saw a Facebook Live video with you today where people said, “What do you use to host your webinar?” And you said, “I use Leadpages. And here’s the way I let people chat with me.” I actually wrote down whatever that software was so I could find it. I put it in Evernote. You said, “I just embed a video from Google Hangouts, which is now Google whatever they call it.
Kimra: Yeah, YouTube Live or whatever.
Andrew: YouTube Live. So, it’s YouTube Live video of you talking and that’s your webinar with the chat box underneath. You use Leadpages for it?
Kimra: Yeah. So, I love Leadpages. I use it for just about everything.
Andrew: That’s the thing. I know how to create a website. I could do it using straight html, using WordPress. But when I need to create a quick page that looks good, I just get a quick template off of Leadpages. I put my stuff in there and I know that everything is going to work and I’ll collect my email addresses or my sales or whatever. A lot of us use Leadpages and we love it.
Well, what Leadpages decided to do is put together a conference of all their best people, some will be on stage, some in the audience, all to get to know each other and know what’s working for everybody so we can all become better at conversions. So, they got me. They got Ryan Deiss. They got tons of people who are going to be speaking on stage. And as I said, the audience will be full of people who are obsessed, who light up just like Kimra did when I said, “Do you know Leadpages?”
Kimra: Yes.
Andrew: Because we care about this stuff. This is the way we grow our businesses.
Kimra: Yes.
Andrew: Well, I’m going to speaking there. So they gave everyone who’s listening to me a 25% discount. Here’s the special URL. If you want to come, I’m going to give it to you. You’re going to get a big discount, 25% off. Go to Leadpages.net/Mixergy.
I’ve also said in the past that if you’re coming, email me to let me know you’re coming so we can text each other and meet up. I want to introduce you to the other speakers. I want to get to know you and I also want to introduce you to other people who are at this event. I’ve actually been getting a lot of emails from people and exchanging txt messages and Facebook messages so that we can coordinate once we’re there.
I will say the same thing to you if you’re listening to me and to you, Kimra, if you’re there–email me. I’ll send you my phone number so we can text each other and meetup when we’re there. That’s what Converted 2016 is about for me. It’s about learning how to increase our conversions and meeting other people who are obsessive about it too so we can continue to improve. Come see me–Leadpages.net/Mixergy.
The one thing, Kimra, that as a brander–what do you call yourself? What do you call someone who’s good at creating brands?
Kimra: Most people call me a brand strategist.
Andrew: Okay. So, as a brand strategist, you’ve got to say Leadpages’ URL sucks. Leadpages.net?
Kimra: Yeah. I think someone had Leadpages.com, though or something and probably wouldn’t sell it to them.
Andrew: No, they wouldn’t. They fought them.
Kimra: That’s not nice.
Andrew: That’s so unfortunate. I know I’m saying Leadpages.net/Mixergy and people are forgetting all of it and going to Leadpages.com, which is a big mistake. Frankly, I probably shouldn’t even be calling attention to it because they paid me to talk about the other URL, but how can I not? How can I not talk about the elephant in the room?
All right. You knew that you were good at building community. You knew that you were good at using Pinterest to get traffic to your site. How did you put all this together to actually create something?
Kimra: Yeah. So, what I did is I started researching. I started figuring out what do people actually want to learn. I didn’t want to go based off of, “Oh, this is just all the stuff that’s out there.” What I discovered was a lot of people don’t teach how to actually use tools. They don’t show you where to actually point and click.
There’s a free tool that I use called PicMonkey. It’s still free, PicMonkey.com and you can use it to edit graphics. That’s what I use to edit my graphics when I had like all my Pinterest stuff going on. That’s what I used. It was this free tool.
So, when I started my current brand, the first webinar presentation I did was teaching people how to use PicMonkey. I didn’t know people were like going to be obsessed with this training. I ended up having over–I ended up doing three webinars on it over a two-week period of time and I got a thousand people signed up. I was just like, “A thousand people on my list because I want to learn how use PicMonkey?” It’s a free tool, right? But the thing is there are people not teaching this stuff.
Andrew: Because what they want to do is use PicMonkey to create images that will look good on Pinterest and Facebook, etc.
Kimra: Good on social media, even on their website and yes, they want to be able to create good graphics. I found this out because I was follow SocialMediaExaminer.com. Every year they send out this big old giant report where they interview all these online entrepreneurs. So, I’m like reading this whole thing. It was like 40 pages. I’m like, “I’m going to read this whole thing and I’m going to know everything in this.” So, close to the bottom, like a third page from the bottom it said something like 75% of entrepreneurs want to learn how to make better graphics.
I was like, “Well, I know how to use Pinterest. So I can teach people how to do that, right?” So that’s kind of like where it began. After I did that presentation, I wasn’t even pitching anything on it. I was like, “Hey, I’m just doing this to grow a community. I just want to share and teach you guys stuff.” So I told everybody, “Join my Facebook group.”
So that was kind of pitch was to join my Facebook group. Then I asked everybody, “After you’ve joined the group, add some of your friends to the group. If you have friends that are entrepreneurs, add them to the group.” And it just kept going and then every single week I would do a webinar presentation and I would put in the group–I’d have them vote on a topic.
So I would just out like, “Okay, I’m good at this, this and this. I can teach three things. Pick a topic.” And everyone would vote and it was a lot of fun. Then every Saturday I did webinar presentations because my husband was still working at the time, so Saturdays were really the only days I could do a presentation. So, on Saturdays I started doing them.
I taught everything from like list building–I even taught how to use Leadpages. There was like a lot of things I showed people how to do stuff. People just really loved how I was doing it. I get a lot of people that tell me they love my teaching style because I tell them, “Don’t click on those things. You’ll get lost and confused. Just do this part.” They’re like, “You simplify it and that’s what people need.” Sometimes these tools are kind of scary for people that aren’t very tech-savvy.
I had a few people say, “It was just I’ve bought a ton of other online courses, but nobody showed me how to setup a freaking lead page. You’re the first person to do that, Kimra.” I’m like, “Oh, okay.” I didn’t know it was like something that was going to be such a high need. I was like, “Maybe I’ll make like a few thousand dollars a month.” My goal was to make like $5,000 a month. I didn’t have these huge, giant goals. I was like, “Wow, I was really thinking small.”
But it just blew up really, really fast. Immediately people started emailing me saying, “Can you show me how to do this privately?” I’m like, “Well, you can watch the replay.” They’re like, “I want you to show me how to do it for my brand.” I was like, “Oh, okay.” I started coaching a few people. I wasn’t necessarily a business coach, per search engine. I was more like I was going to show you how to use the tools to grow your business coach.
Andrew: “I’m not going to teach you how to grow your business. I’ll teach you the tools that you can use to grow your business.”
Kimra: Yes. So, that’s kind of how it started. Then as I grew, it started making more sense for me to teach a bit more of the strategy into it because I know what strategies were working for me and then I could teach it to other people, like teaching different types of launches, teaching how to do webinar presentations because a majority of my sales were from webinars or follow-up emails after webinars. That’s where a majority of my sales come in.
Andrew: So, the model is join the community. I’ll help you. You’ll all get to talk to each other and help each other out and you’ll have other people in your life doing what you’re doing. From time to time I’ll do a webinar on a topic that you care about and through that webinar I’ll also sell you something.
Kimra: Yes.
Andrew: That’s the model.
Kimra: That’s pretty much it. Yeah.
Andrew: How did you get people–
Kimra: And lots of Facebook ads too.
Andrew: So, I heard rumors that your Facebook ads weren’t doing that well, that you were spending money on them–I saw that look. That was the look of an indignant person that knows that she’s right. So, your ads were working for you?
Kimra: My ads have been working since they day I’ve started doing ads.
Andrew: The ads are to send people into your Facebook group?
Kimra: No. My ads are to send people into webinars or like free video trainings that I have. I have free mini-courses. Yeah. My ads have always done awesome. In fact, a lot of people that are top leaders in the industry have sent me Facebook messages asking me, “What are you doing with your Facebook ads? I can’t believe the results you’re getting.”
Andrew: What are you doing that’s working for you they don’t know?
Kimra: They know it now because I told them, but a lot of things I was doing in the very beginning was the way I did campaigns. I would do it where it was a campaign as an ad, but I wouldn’t add anymore ads into the ad set. I would just do it all like linear, just like no extra ones in there so that the way the ads wouldn’t be competing with each other. They would be separate so I could test and see which things were really working.
I actually learned that from my friend Joey. He’s more of affiliate marketer. He doesn’t really have like a personal brand. He just sells all sorts of different products and stuff. He’s the one that said, “Do it that way.” This was like years and years ago. I was like, “Okay,” and I just happened to remember when I was doing ads. From the very beginning, my ads have done very well. I’m usually getting less than $2 or $3 a lead, which does very great for me because my signature program is going to be $2,400 this next time. So, I’m able to make a very, very good return on what I’ve spent on my ads.
Andrew: What do you pay per customer then?
Kimra: Per customer I believe–like what do you mean by that?
Andrew: You’re paying per email address.
Kimra: I pay a couple bucks per email address.
Andrew: Of those, how many become customers? Are we talking about 1 out of 1,000? So, you’ve got $400 profit on each one of these courses?
Kimra: Well, the profit margin has been pretty significant. I’ve spent $100,000 on ads and I’ve made over $2 million in sales. So, what is that, like a 200 return or something? I don’t even know. I’d have to get a calculator. But yeah, it’s been significant return on investment.
Andrew: $100,000 to get $2 million, 20x return.
Kimra: Yeah. So, pretty good, I’d say pretty decent return on the investment of my ads.
Andrew: You know what I saw you do on Facebook once that caught my attention? You and I roughly at the same time interviewed Gary Vaynerchuk. This was because he had his book coming out. I forget the name of the book, “Ask Gary V.,” my favorite of all his books.
Kimra: Yes.
Andrew: Really good. I just interviewed him and I published the interview and it got a lot of listens. You said, “I’m going to be interviewing him.” You bought ads. You created a Leadpages landing page for it. So, people who were into Gary Vaynerchuk could give you their email address so they could watch the interview. I think it was live, right?
Kimra: Uh-huh.
Andrew: That was something I thought was really interesting. I always wanted to do it and I never got around to it.
Kimra: Yeah. I do a lot of interviews. Recently I just started a show called The Seller Leader Show and I’ve been interviewing people. It’s been really good at me saying like, “Hey, this is coming up,” that way I can notify everybody when it goes live and they can ask questions to the person also when it’s live, which kind of creates a little bit of a different dynamic than an interview without other people asking questions.
But yeah, even after that, after the interview was over, what I did was I create a landing page and I pushed that out to his audience. I typically only target females of his audience. They tend to resonate with me a bit more. Anybody that lands on that page, I retarget them with ads later. So, even if they don’t necessarily opt-in, if they’ve ever clicked on it, I keep retargeting those people so I have less expensive cost per leads.
Andrew: Are you doing all your ad buys yourself?
Kimra: Yeah. My husband does most of it now, but all of the strategy I’ve ever been done has always been me. I’ve never hired a person so do my ad strategy or any of that sort of stuff.
Andrew: What about your look? You’re sitting here in a t-shirt. I can see the upper part–
Kimra: It’s a “Star Wars” t-shirt.
Andrew: There it is.
Kimra: Yeah. My son was wearing a Chewbacca t-shirt, so he wanted me to wear my “Star Wars” t-shirt.
Andrew: I can see the tattoo on the top part of your chest and shoulders.
Kimra: Yes. I’ve got a bunch on my back.
Andrew: I can see on your arm. What’s the one on your back?
Kimra: “Dr. Who.”
Andrew: That’s a big one. And then on your arm you have something. You also have a pierced–
Kimra: Septum. So, on my septum and then this one right here.
Andrew: On your lip in the center.
Kimra: That’s called a Medusa.
Andrew: What is it called?
Kimra: Medusa.
Andrew: Medusa?
Kimra: That’s the name of that piercing. So, if you went into a tattoo shop or piercing shop and you said, “I want to get a Medusa piercing,” that’s what they would do.”
Andrew: You didn’t have this look at first. I’m looking at old photos of you. You look like the girl next door. Maybe your hair is darker than the girl next door. Sometimes the side of your head is a little bit shaved. I feel like at some point you decided–
Kimra: Yeah. I had a shaved side of my head. I was living in Virginia at the time. There just wasn’t somebody that could help me color my hair. That was the only reason why my hair wasn’t colored. I’ve had colored hair since I was 14.
Andrew: Did you have any hesitation, did you say, “I’m about to sell business tools, business education. I should probably hide this part of myself and maybe wear a collared shirt so people can’t see any of my tattoos?”
Kimra: It just goes against who I am. I’ve always been just like be myself. That’s how I am. I had a Mohawk when I was 15 years old and I’m from a little town in Idaho. That was just me. My senior pictures I have a giant pink Mohawk that was like 12 inches tall.
Andrew: They must have loved it in school, didn’t they?
Kimra: No. They did not love it in school.
Andrew: Your friends didn’t love it in school?
Kimra: Some of my close friends, but the other people didn’t like it.
Andrew: You were just a weirdo.
Kimra: Yeah. I was a total weirdo. A lot of the other kids’ parents wouldn’t let them be friends with me. They thought I was a druggie, which I’ve never done drugs in my entire life.
Andrew: How do you know they thought you were a weirdo?
Kimra: They’d tell me I was a weirdo. They would tell me.
Andrew: But what attracted you to that in a time in your life when you’re almost programmed to want other people to like you by being like other people?
Kimra: I tried to be like other people. I tried. I just wasn’t. I used to be like, “Oh, mom I need to buy the Abercrombie & Fitch clothes and all this stuff,” in like seventh and eighth grade and then by the end of ninth grade, I was like this is not me. I am not that.
And that’s when I started going to punk rock shows and then eventually in my sophomore year, that’s when I got a Mohawk. I had like dyed leopard print on the side. My grandma used to buy me my hairspray. It was really just me wanting to just be myself. I just wanted to express myself and be who I am. I didn’t feel like I needed to fit the norm. I tried so hard to fit the norm. But nobody liked me even when I was trying that, so I figured I’ll just do whatever I want to do.
Andrew: Tell me about how you figured out how to express this style online because I think that’s one of the most impressive parts about you. You could be teaching the exact same thing as anyone else, you could have the same webinar as anyone else, but because you have that photo of you with pink hair and you’re having ice cream, it feels like something worth paying attention to.
Kimra: I didn’t really do it on purpose, so to speak. I guess I just was like I want to teach people things and I had really wanted to do my hair blue. So, I was like, “I’m going to chop it all off, do it blue.” It was just me having fun. I’d already had the tattoos. It’s like, “What am I going to do, cover up my tattoos?” No. In fact, I’m going to get a ton more tattoos.
Andrew: Who does your design and what’s your process with them? I saw earlier versions of your site and it didn’t look like this. You clearly have figured out your design, your style.
Kimra: Yeah. My first original website I made myself for like a $100 theme I had purchased. Then I’ve kind of gradually moved up since then. Mainly it was just having money to be able to move up. My current website, I really wanted to do like a Jetsons theme and have it be like an interactive video game sort of experience. It took me a while to find a designer that could execute that.
But I think we did a really, really great job and I now have a full-time designer on my team who creates my landing pages for me. She actually creates them on Leadpages. She does the custom drag and drop things they have now and creates them on there, which I’m super-excited because now the drag and drop pages work with Ontraport now, so now I can do all sorts of cool stuff because I’m an Ontraport user.
But yeah, it was just like over time as I started making money, I started hiring people that could execute my ideas. I’ve always been into like sci-fi stuff and things like that. So, we kind of just went with it. I finally was able to get the photographer of my dreams to do my photos for my most recent website.
Andrew: What did that cost you?
Kimra: The photoshoot? $12,000.
Andrew: $12,000, and how many photos did you get out of it?
Kimra: About 100-something plus tons of cool behind the scenes photos and things like that. It was a lot of photos.
Andrew: That’s a good price, actually.
Kimra: It was two days of full shooting.
Andrew: You also hired someone to do your makeup for the day?
Kimra: Yeah. My makeup artist is actually one of my best friends from Idaho and I grew up with her. She was the girl that would get kicked out of school when we were like 12 years old for doing makeup. She actually ended up getting her GED when she was 17 and went straight to beauty school. So, she’s my makeup artist and I fly her out to do things like photo shoots or big events with me or things like that.
Andrew: And it’s your clothes. You didn’t buy or rent special clothes for this?
Kimra: No. I bought those clothes for–
Andrew: You bought it just for the shoot.
Kimra: Just for the shoot, yeah, I bought them on Etsy. Etsy is where all the cool creative stuff is.
Andrew: Yeah. One of the things I learned early on doing these interviews is if you’re selling a product, you have to have really good shots of it, really clear, clear backdrop. I forget who interviewed. I didn’t get to include it in the interview, but in the early days, they would take photos and then they would crop them out using Photoshop and they had crappy cropping skills. It was so bad. They lost sales because of it. As they started hiring really good photographers, their stuff got better looking online and more people bought it.
Kimra: Yeah.
Andrew: But what I am picking up on here is that we are the product too and we need to spend money to take photos of ourselves. I suck at that .I have no interest in it. But I should. I should actually be more interested, shouldn’t I?
Kimra: You can do a fashion shoot, like find a fashion photographer to help you do like a lifestyle shoot. It really does make a different. Some people, they can have the same picture on their website for 15 years and still do well in business. It really just depends on what you want out of the personal brand side of it. So, some people, you don’t necessarily need that.
Andrew: You’re saying I, Andrew Warner, don’t need that.
Kimra: Maybe not, unless you were having like your speakers reel or something like that on your site, but I wouldn’t say you necessarily need a $12,000 photo shoot.
Andrew: It was worth though spending–I don’t know what I spent, maybe $1,500, to have somebody come setup the lighting in this office. That thing is really good. I used to just be horrible on camera.
Kimra: It’s a good investment. For me, I actually went to film school. So, I was able to kind of figure out lighting and stuff. Now the sun is going down so my lighting is going to be all–
Andrew: Yeah. That’s why I can’t have outdoor lighting.
Kimra: That’s happens with me. It’s like, “The sun’s going down, no.”
Andrew: I’ll tell you what I did. I went to SmartShoot.com, where you can hire photographers for the day. I said, “I want to hire a photographer for the day but keep your camera at home. Just show me how to setup my lighting here.” The guy said, “I think that’s a little bit weird, but okay, let’s try it.”
Kimra: I love it. You’ve got to do what you’ve got to do to make things look nicer or more professional. Even if it’s just simple things, if you don’t have the knowledge with it, hire someone to help you with it. I’m a really big advocate of hiring. The bigger my business grew, the more people I have hired. So, now I do have a videographer who comes and films me. It’s typically in my own office because my own office is cool. So, it’s typically in my office, plus my office is relatively quiet for New York City.
Andrew: What are they shooting it for? What are they shooting?
Kimra: Video series, sometimes just me ranting about stuff.
Andrew: So, you’re talking about for your courses they do it.
Kimra: No, not for my courses. For my courses, I record all that myself. Usually it’s the same Logitech camera that I’m starting at right now. I’ll talk into the camera or it’s screen sharing. So, for most of my programs, it’s mostly screen sharing.
Andrew: But it’s the videos that you post up on Facebook and on your site.
Kimra: Yeah, the videos on Facebook and my site the videographer helps me out with, except for on my live streams, of course because I just hold up my phone to do those.
Andrew: You look good on camera now and I think one of the reasons is even though your computer has a webcam in it, when you showed me your office I picked up on this and I’ve got to learn that too–you’re not talking into the webcam in your computer. You actually have a separate webcam, an external one that’s sitting in the center of the screen, right”
Kimra: Yes. So, it’s on this little tripod. The tripod is like maybe 12 inches and everybody keeps asking me where to get this tripod. They discontinued it. I can’t even tell people.
Andrew: Really? On Amazon you can buy that stuff.
Kimra: No. This one is not there.
Andrew: What’s the different? What do you have, the Gorilla Grip?
Kimra: The brand is called–it doesn’t do the same thing. It’s not the same type of height. It fits perfectly because I’m short. So, on my desktop camera, it’s up high and if I’m looking at it, it makes me looks way smaller than I really am.
Andrew: I spend time training people–here’s what I do with my guests because they don’t care about this stuff. The problem is they make my video really big on their screen. So, when they’re looking at me, my eyes are on the middle of their screen, which means–
Kimra: Your eyes–when I look at that camera, your eyes are right above it.
Andrew: That’s the way to do it.
Kimra: It looks like I’m looking at you rather than looking at the corner of the screen or something like that.
Andrew: Here’s the technique I tell people. Anyone listening to me, if you’re ever on a webcam, this is what you need to do–take the video of the person you’re talking to, make it as small as possible and then put it up in the top center of your screen right under your webcam, that way when you’re looking at your guest or your friend or whoever it is, it will seem like you’re looking them right in the eye.
That makes a tremendous impact on your credibility. When you don’t do that, it looks like you’re looking away and people don’t know why, but they don’t trust you.
Kimra: Yeah. I totally don’t agree with that and anybody’s that’s studied body language and things like that, it’s really important to look people in the eye. People notice it. It’s just a different vibe.
Andrew: I’ve been talking to you so much I forgot about my second sponsor. My second sponsor is a company called HostGator. Do you know HostGator?
Kimra: Yes, I do know HostGator.
Andrew: All right. HostGator offers hosting that works and is inexpensive. Let me ask you this–let me bring you into this spot, if you don’t mind–if someone’s listening to us and says, “I like what Kimra’s doing. I want to do the same thing. Maybe it won’t turn into a huge business, but I want to actually do it.” What would you suggest that they put up on their HostGator website?
Kimra: I would say–there are a lot of things they’d have to figure out first, like who they actually want to serve, who their ideal customer is. If they’re building a personal brand, of course things about themselves, they’d have to have an about me page, a page that has their services and products they’re going to be offering, possibly a blog.
A lot of people start off their businesses with a blog or maybe a podcast they put on their blog. I’m currently starting to grow my blog with this brand. I actually didn’t blog a lot since I started this brand, which is really weird because my previous brand I was blogging consistently. I had actually used HostGator with my previous blog, actually. Yeah, a lot of stuff was really more–you have to know who your audience is for me to really answer the question.
Andrew: I like what you did with just finding a passion and saying, “I really care about all these recipes I’m saving and I’m just going to start publishing and see what happens.”
Kimra: Yeah.
Andrew: I think there’s a lot to be said for that kind of just taking time to explore a passion and see where it goes and if it doesn’t go anywhere, so what.
Kimra: Yeah. I have a student who she’s a knitter. She just teaches knitting stuff. She now makes six figures selling knitting courses online.
Andrew: You know what? There’s some knitting community. I don’t know the name of knitting community, but I can’t get the freaking founder to do an interview with me. It’s so successful. It’s too big. I can’t get through to the founder and the founder has no connection to me. So, I’ve been trying for a long time. Knitting is huge.
Kimra: Yeah. Great niche.
Andrew: All these little things we have that are our own personal passions–toy trains, knitting, exercising, whatever it is, get your website up, start playing around with it. Don’t even think about money with it. Just think about it as a way of playing and experimenting and allowing the site to crash and allowing yourself to just learn. By doing that, either it will turn into something big or you’ll pull back some of your best ideas to your sites.
I talked to this founder. I shouldn’t say who he was who basically had hundreds of websites because what he wanted to do was test lots of different ideas. Specifically he cared about SEO. What could he get away with? So, he’s play around with these little sites and it gave him room to be creative and the ideas that worked, he would bring back to his main business. The ones that didn’t, who cares? It’s one of these little tiny sites that no one is going to care about.
If you’re listening to me and you want to try something new, please, try it on HostGator and if you already have a hosting company and already have a website that’s up and running, try HostGator. Just call them up, say what can you guys do for me because my bet is that they’re going to give you better up time than you have right now at a lower price and much, much better service.
I was paying hundreds of dollars a month for a service that when I wanted to talk to them, they would say, “Sorry, this is the sales line. Please fill out a support ticket.” They always have phone numbers on their websites but they’re for sales. Once you buy, screw you. Go email us. Not with HostGator. They actually have a phone number you can call.
And finally, one last thing about HostGator, they’re offering us the best price they have available anywhere–50% off and the reason that they’re doing this Kimra is because our salesman, the guy who runs the company that sells our ads, Sachit Gupta, said, “Look, HostGator, you guys like us, but I bet if you knew how well we were doing, you’d pay us more.”
They said, “Well, you’re tracking with code. Andrew is saying go to HostGator.com/Mixergy. What else do we need?” He said, “Look, a lot of people forget the /Mixergy. They don’t care about 30% off. So they just go to HostGator or they go somewhere else and use someone else’s code. So you guys don’t know how effective we are.” They said, “Give me the best price you have and no one will forget to add the /Mixergy at the end because you’re going to want the best price.
Here it is. If you want 50% off, go to HostGator.com/Mixergy. I know you’re not going to forget that URL because it is 50% off and it’s their best price ever–HostGator.com/Mixergy. That ran a little bit long, huh, Kimra?
Kimra: Yes.
Andrew: What’s a good length for an ad? I’m not sure. I think actually it’s not about length. I’m throwing a bunch of words right now because I’m too excited, instead of talking.
Kimra: Yeah, even with ads, it really depends on if what you’re saying is keeping the people’s attention because that’s really what it is. It’s like once people kind of dip off, then it’s like you didn’t get to the call to the action part. But I think you did that pretty quickly by letting people know, “It’s 50% off. You’ve got to get in it.”
Andrew: And I did do a lot. I asked you what you would build, then I jumped in there with an idea of mine, then I said you also get 50% off but I also told the Sachit Gupta story–that’s like way too much for one message, right? Tide would never do it. Tide would never say, “This is going to clean blood stains and here’s the story about a blood stain and it will also clean grass stains and here’s a story about that.” They pick one and they say, “And it will do the rest too.”
Kimra: Pick one and stick with it. Then the next time you do it, have a different story.
Andrew: Right, so people aren’t hearing me say the same five things over and over. I think that’s a mistake.
Kimra: It’s all right.
Andrew: I love doing these deconstructions. I used to when I did interviews, I would talk to our producer after each interview and I’d say, “What do you think about this transcript? How did I do here?” I love doing that. I should do that in every part of my life. Imagine if I did that with my wife. So, “Hang on a second, now that kiss is over, let’s break it down. How did I do on that kiss?” Maybe not to that degree.
Kimra: That would be awesome.
Andrew: You feel pretty good about your relationship?
Kimra: Yeah. My husband is so freaking supportive of me. It was more than I even ever expected, really. I know a lot of women who create these online businesses, their husbands kind of see it as a hobby and I even have some students who actually one of them she actually makes significantly more than her husband makes at his job, but he refuses to quit the job even though she’s been doing it for like two years consistently making really great money because he’s like, “What if it fails?”
And my husband has never had that, “What if it fails?” I guess maybe in a positive way he had that, “If it fails, so what? We get jobs. We’re not going to starve to death. It will be okay.” He was always like, “I believe in you and your mission and your passion, so let’s go for it.”
Andrew: Does he ever feel like you’re upstaging him?
Kimra: No. He doesn’t want to be on the stage. He’s an introvert. So, he’s a little bit opposite personalities of me. So, he just wants me to shine. He’s like, “I want you to shine, you to be your best.”
Even when I first was starting and doing webinar presentations, he did not watch any of the webinars. He would just take the kids in the other room so they could be quiet so I can do the webinar. And he’s like, “The whole time I would visualize you doing an amazing job and visualize everybody loving everything you’re saying and everything you’re teaching.” That was what he wanted to do. That was how he wanted to contribute to my webinar presentations.
Then eventually he started being the person who was managing a lot of the money and bills and paying my team members. Now he has started doing the Facebook ads because I kind of like to keep that in house, so to speak, because it’s the thing that makes us a lot of the income and brings in the leads, so I like to keep my hands in it.
Andrew: How much are you guys netting?
Kimra: I am actually not sure. I do not–
Andrew: You don’t know bottom line how much you guys brought in last year?
Kimra: Last year, I don’t know for sure. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the money. I rarely login to the bank account because my husband handles all that sort of stuff. I’m not money motivated. That’s not a motivation for me. My motivation is like waking up and checking my Facebook group and like talking to people and helping people. So, I don’t pay a ton of attention to that.
We definitely make a lot more than we put out, that’s for sure because we wouldn’t be able to afford to live in Manhattan because Manhattan is very expensive to live. But I don’t know the exact numbers on it. The only numbers I really know is how many sales I made. So, last year, my program was $2,200 and I had–this was just for February launch. I had 613 students sign up. So, that’s how I know that it was $1.2 million in sales. So, that’s typically how I do the math in my head, kind of. So, the CPA handles all the rest of the stuff.
Andrew: What have you learned about closing sales in a webinar? What works?
Kimra: For me, I do close a bit differently than other people. So, I’m sure if you watch other people’s webinars, there’s a lot of this kind of like, “Oh, you showed up because of this, this and this,” and at the end they’re kind of like poking people a little bit more, poking those pain points a lot. I typically don’t do that.
I’m typically just like, “Hey, did you get value on this presentation? Tell me yes in the chat box.” They’re like, “Yes, yes, yes.” “Awesome. Did you learn something you can apply right away to your life or to your business?” “Yes, yes, yes.” “Awesome. Well, if you think this was cool, my program is even cooler. It’s way more in depth and you’ve got to get in.” So, I’m kind of a soft pitch, so to speak.
I think part of the reason why people join my programs is because I just explain the benefits. I’m like, “Here, these are what the benefits are. This is what you’re going to learn. By the end of this, you’re going to know how to do this, this and this,” or your business is going to have this, this and this setup.” They’re like, “All right. Cool.” And they buy. I don’t really–I’ve never taken like sales training or anything like that, which maybe I should, I guess.
Andrew: Is there anything that’s especially effective for you? I know one of the other people I talk to who does webinars says that when someone buys, he tries to bring them on the call right away. So, they just bought. He brings them on so everyone sees that a real human being bought. And that person feels good for having bought.
Kimra: Yeah. I usually shout people out. If people are buying during the presentation, my husband will be in the other room and he’ll like text me what their names are.
Andrew: So, you say, “Hey.”
Kimra: Yeah, I say, “When the sales start rolling in, text the names to me.” Then I say, “Hey, great that you signed up, John. I really appreciate it.” And I kind of just like call people’s names out.
Andrew: What else?
Kimra: Then I usually share a lot of testimonials from like people that have already purchased my programs before. I like to do that at the end of the presentations too. Last year during some of the my presentations, I actually brought some of my past students onto the presentation and called them out and asked them a few questions like what they thought about my program, what their experience was with it, what results they’ve been able to have. So, they got to see people live sharing that.
Even on my sales page, I have a lot of case studies and testimonials on it, which you won’t see that right now because we’re not into the launch, but on my Be True, Brand You sales page, it’s pretty testimonial heavy. I like to allow that to do the selling for me because I don’t know.
I don’t like to be a convincer. I don’t want to have to convince people into something. I’m just like, “This is what it is. Check it out. If you like it, you like it. If you don’t, you don’t. Here are people that have done it and love it. Here are their stories.” A lot of them are different backgrounds. Some are from health and wellness, spiritual, whatever different types of backgrounds. Some of them are YouTubers. They get to see different stories from different people and that’s what sells my products, testimonials.
Andrew: I think I saw you when you were on Facebook Live today. I was checking out your stuff in preparation for this interview. I think as you were teaching and giving people the answers to their questions, you also at time said, “The answer is this, but what you should really do is sign up for my course.” You’re pretty clear about that.
Kimra: Yeah. Some of the stuff I can’t teach it all just right then and there. I would have to be screen sharing and showing them where to click and things like that. I’m like, “I can’t show you where to click right this minute. Go get the course or go get the free smaller version of the course on my website or go get this download or whatever.” I like to give a lot of call to actions, especially in the middle of livestreams because people fall in and out of livestreams. People aren’t going to watch the whole thing.
So, I like to always make sure I mention, “We actually cover this inside of my program. Go check it out.” A lot of times I ask someone, “Post the link in the chat box.” Someone else is posting the link for me. People like to help out when they’re on live streams. So I love livestreaming. I love livestreaming. It’s one of my favorite things. I used to use Periscope like four or five times a day. I was an obsessive Periscoper.
Andrew: Really? Because of what?
Kimra: It was just fun. It was really a way for me to give more value to my current audience. I didn’t really use it a lot for growing, per se but I did use it a lot to give value and to let people know about different courses or different free trainings I had coming up or free webinars I had coming up. I used it a lot for that.
I don’t use it much anymore though because I got really sick of all the trolls on there. A lot of times my kids are with me and there’s like guys saying like, “Hey, show me your boobs.” My kids read. My four year old has been reading since he was two. So, he reads and he’s like, “Mom, why are they asking you that?” So, that’s why I stopped using Periscope as much. Now I use Facebook Live and I use that probably about once a week or twice a week.
Andrew: Facebook limits who–well, I guess with Facebook you have real identities, unlike Twitter and Periscope.
Kimra: Yes. People don’t want to be like that because they know if someone’s saying something like that, everyone is going to be hounding them and being like, “What the hell is your problem?” So, I haven’t had any like haters or any people saying nasty or troll-like things to me on my Facebook Live streams. I had one guy say I was ugly once, which I was like, “According to your profile picture, you don’t look that good either.” That was the only negative thing I’ve ever had on Facebook and I have over 50,000 followers on my Facebook business page.
Andrew: What else has worked for you for getting people into your group?
Kimra: For getting people into my group, I’ve always got them in by my list building. So, I would have some sort of free offer, maybe it was like a free mini-course or free five day challenge. I love doing these five-day challenge things. But anyways, I would have something for free and then when they opt in, the thank you page says like, “Hey, thanks for signing up. Go check your email inbox. Your freebie will be there,” and then it says, “Oh, also, check on my group if you’re not part of it already.” That’s the primary way that people have joined my groups.
So, same thing with webinar presentations–the thank you page after they register will say hey, join my community because that’s where we’re all hanging out. That’s where we’re chatting at. When I was first starting my group especially, if there was like some really great juicy threads in the group, like some really great discussion going on, I would email my list about it to get them to come into the group, like people that didn’t see the post to come in and have them get in on the conversation.
And that was really helpful with getting my group to really have that vibe of like, “We communicate. This is where we connect. This is where the freedom hackers hang out.” I feel like that really helped with that whole vibe of that. I did that a lot pretty heavily in the beginning.
Andrew: I learned a lot about Facebook groups from a guy named Mark Bowness. Do you know him?
Kimra: I don’t know him personally. No.
Andrew: I interviewed him a while back years ago about how his business failed. It was a very tough interview. I think he might have regretted in the middle of the interview having done it. But a few years after that, he emailed me and said, “Andrew, I actually found something that’s working. It’s Facebook groups.”
“Everyone cares about Facebook pages, but Facebook groups are where it’s at. If you get people in a group, they’re more engaged, you can bring them back.” Anyway, he ended up teaching me how to do it and then he taught a course on Mixergy about how to do it. It’s really an under-utilized thing.
Kimra: Yeah. I agree.
Andrew: Yeah. The power is they’re there. They’re helping each other. You don’t have to create all the content. But here’s the downside of it. You have to keep coming up with stuff to do in that group. Frankly, I saw that when you write, there are a lot of comments, but that’s not necessarily true of other people.
Kimra: I think it’s–
Andrew: I’m seeing Molly Segal wrote something here. Oh no, Molly got a lot of responses. But not everyone does.
Kimra: Not everyone. I think a bit part of it too, it depends on how many people they end up becoming actual Facebook friends with because if you’re Facebook friends with somebody and they post something in a group, it puts it in the notifications, like, “So and so posted in Freedom Hackers.”
Andrew: I see.
Kimra: So, then their friends will all come in and they’ll start commenting. The more active you get in the group and the more people you connect with outside the group as personal Facebook friends, then you get more comments and things like that. It also depends on the day and the time of the day.
I noticed during dinner time, there tends to not be a lot of comments. It seems to be more like mid-day time. Sometimes the group is crazy amounts of comments. Sundays tend to be really slow days in the group, but then most of the week it’s pretty bumping. Friday evenings, the group is very slow because everyone is out partying or hanging out with their family.
Andrew: Is there anything that you do to encourage conversation, to get people to come back?
Kimra: Yeah. I do ask interesting questions in the group. Sometimes I put posts that are only exclusive to the group, like ones I don’t put on my public page. Sometimes they’ll my like, “I really want to share that.” I say, “This is exclusive to this group. I didn’t want it to be shared publicly. I only want it for the Freedom Hackers.”
People are like, “Oh wow, there’s some exclusivity here.” Same thing with like the live stream I did today, inside of the group, that’s not public. That’s not outside of that. People can’t be sharing that around. So, I want sometimes there to be that exclusivity. So, they feel like, “This is our community. Kimra cares about us.” That’s a bit part of it.
I think one thing too is people are like, “Join my VIP email list.” It’s not a VIP if you’ve got 100,000 people on your list. What’s VIP about this? But the group is like the VIP place. That’s where there’s exclusive content. That’s where I’m notifying them when there’s like trainings coming up. Sometimes I do stuff like maybe I’m testing out a new tool and I ask people in the group, “Can someone hop on Skype with me real fast?” I want to get your opinion on this particular tool or I want to get your opinion on this course I’m coming up with. They’re like, “Okay.”
It gives them a chance to connect with me more. I think because I’m so active with that, I think that’s the reason why my group tends to be very active, very helpful with each other.” We also have a thread called The Friday Mixer. That thread is for people who are looking for other people to work with. Say people are looking to collaborate on something or looking for guest blog posters or podcast interviewees and things like that and they use that.
A lot of people in the community are working with each other. So, then when they see their friend who they happen to get on Skype with one time to ask for some help with something. They see them in the group commenting, they’re going to go back and reciprocate that help and keep working with each other. It’s really a collaborative thing. I love collaboration. That’s a big thing for me. Even in my own program, I bring in like guest experts to do trainings all the time. I’m all about the collab.
Andrew: I can see that. I’m going through your group now.
Kimra: Yeah. Search for the Friday Mixer thread. You will see everybody be like, “I’m looking for this person. I know a person good for that. I’m looking for a designer.” They’re all helping each other out on that thread. I love it. It’s my favorite thread. I’m always scoping that one out like every Friday to see what people are up to.
Andrew: There is one thing I forgot to ask about. There is a Ripoff Report.
Kimra: Yeah.
Andrew: I don’t know what to make of this. I know the founder of Ripoff Report has a peculiar way of running his site.
Kimra: Yeah. Well, the person who wrote it wasn’t like–I didn’t read the whole thing, but I did read part of it. I don’t think they were a customer of mine. I think they were a person that didn’t like me or something. They went around and looked around my interviews and was like, “This doesn’t add up.” That’s because every interview is different. Some people are coming from different perspectives, even when they’re asking me questions or sometimes maybe the title of the interview is not exactly what was being explained.
Andrew: They definitely were watching you very carefully.
Kimra: They were kind of stalking me a little.
Andrew: They said, “She said she made $750,000 in a launch in February, 2015 but the only problem is she didn’t make $750,000. With the exception of perhaps three to four people, every single person. . .” This person says, “She made roughly $75,000 on the launch and then the rest of it was from affiliate products that she old for other people’s stuff.”
Kimra: No. That wasn’t the case at all.
Andrew: Affiliate products weren’t a big part of your revenue?
Kimra: No. I did make some good revenue from that, but no. In February, 2015, I made $750,000 just in Be True, Brand You sales.
Andrew: Just selling your own products?
Kimra: Yes, my own product. Then I made over $100,000 from the year before selling other people’s products from things like Leadpages. I make a lot of money with Leadpages every month.
Andrew: But you also have an affiliate deal with them? So, when you recommend it, you get a commission.
Kimra: Yeah. I have my affiliate link. I make recurring income from them.
Andrew: What percentage of your revenue comes from stuff like that?
Kimra: I would say at least 15% of my revenue.
Andrew: 15?
Kimra: Yeah. It comes from promoting other people’s things. So last year I promoted Derek Halpern’s Zippy Courses. I did very well with that. I think I made like $20,000 or $30,000, other people’s smaller courses I promoted. Some of them it’s like $20,000 from doing like one webinar presentation. So, I do make little bits of chunks of money from selling other people’s things as well. Leadpages is one of my biggest ones that I actually make a lot of recurring revenue from.
Andrew: They said, “A lot of people stop paying after the first, second or third payment on their plan.”
Kimra: How would they know that? That doesn’t make any sense.
Andrew: Could this be your husband who wrote this?
Kimra: My husband?
Andrew: Could he be in the other room while you’re doing a webinar?
Kimra: Yeah, my husband wrote a Ripoff Report.
Andrew: No. So, is that true that you have a large number of people who can’t make the rest of the payments or don’t because it doesn’t work out for them?
Kimra: There are some people who fall off, but that’s with any program. Last year, actually that particular year, I had less than 3% of people fall off or ask for refunds. So that was very, very small. Then this year it’s been about 4%, and most of the payments are almost done now. So I thought that was a pretty small amount. I don’t know what the industry standard is, but there are always people that fall off.
But as you can see, the person who wrote the Ripoff Report, I think they kind of just started making stuff up and started saying things. I had no clue where they were getting any information from. That doesn’t even make sense.
Andrew: I’ve got to get the founder of Ripoff Report on Mixergy. Don’t you think that would be a great guest?
Kimra: Yeah. There are Ripoff Reports on just about everybody. And then sometimes I see them and the person wasn’t even an actual customer of the person. So I’m like, “How do you know their product was a ripoff if you never bought it?”
Andrew: From what I understand–I don’t know him well–but from what I understand, he has a very–I don’t even know the right word for it–but he will not take a report down, even if it turns out that it’s false, from what I understand, he will not take it down because his belief is we need to keep this stuff out there.
Kimra: Like free speech or something.
Andrew: And if you’re wrong and if it’s wrong, then you should go back in and correct it. I think it’s something like that. He has a very peculiar way of running his business.
Kimra: Yeah. I tend to just not pay attention to that. There are people that say bad things about Oprah. Who cares. If I’m going to out and help the world, I’m going to help the world. It doesn’t matter what people say about me while I’m in the process of doing it because I know me. I know what I’m doing. My students who have had great results from what I’ve done, they know me and they’re grateful for me being in their life. So, it really doesn’t matter.
Andrew: All right. I can see that. What’s next for you?
Kimra: So, I have a lot of things actually coming up. I have my Be True, Brand You launch. That’s kind of the first thing coming up. I have a retreat I’m hosting in Barcelona in October and we’re just finishing filling up the spots for that. Next year I do have a book coming out, going to be sharing a lot of my life. It’s actually going to be more in the spiritual/personal development side of books. So, that will coming out.
Also I have a course coming out with a friend. We’re going to have a course about helping people find their life purpose and their passions. And then next year is a lot of traveling. So, a lot of traveling next year. I have a speaking event in the Philippines. I’ve never been to the Philippines. So, that’s going to be pretty fun.
Andrew: What speaking event?
Kimra: Chris Ducker’s.
Andrew: I figured. It was his mastermind. He seems to pull in a lot of people there. Before I close this out, I think this is the last interview I’m recording before I take time off for my paternity leave. I’m going to take time off when my wife gives birth.
Kimra: Awesome.
Andrew: I’m recording this to publish for that period. I’ve got a box here from someone in the audience. I try to open these on camera because otherwise I never will and I also want to thank them on camera. So, let me open it up right now to close this out.
Kimra: I hope it’s something cool. What is it?
Andrew: I know what this is. Oh, actually I didn’t know. Look, first of all, Macallan 12, I love scotch. Look at that.
Kimra: Ooh, love it.
Andrew: Secondly. . .
Kimra: They must listen to all your shows.
Andrew: Oh, and glasses to drink it with. Who is this from? Who would send me that? It’s not my birthday or anything? Do you drink scotch?
Kimra: I do sometimes from time to time. Yeah. I have a few friends that are really into scotch. They go around New York City like, “Oh, this is the place that has the best scotch.” I’m like, “Okay.”
Andrew: I do love it. I’m that kind of person. I’m the person that would be like, “This is the place that has the best scotch and talk endlessly about it.” This is, “Andrew, thank you so much for taking the time for our mastermind group. We all loved your bot tutorial.” He has a mastermind. This is Mark Podolsky, the Land Geek. He has a mastermind and he said, “Would you come and talk to them about bots?” So, I did. He sent me the scotch and I’m really grateful to him. Thanks, Mark.
Kimra: Awesome. I appreciate that too. I like it when I get fun gifts from my audience. I get a lot of journals. I think they must think I journal a lot. I get a lot of journals, a lot of crystals. I’m really into crystals and stuff like that.
Andrew: Are you into it? Do you believe there’s magic power to it or any strength in it?
Kimra: Yes. There is. There’s energy to it. My kids believe it. Everybody believes in it in my group of people. They send me all sorts of skulls. Actually one person sent me a whole box of the glittery skull candles. One of my students, she’s from Australia and she came here from New York and she got me this cute little koala bear.
They even buy stuff for my kids. My kids get a lot of onesies. The baby gets lots of onesies. The kids get all sorts of toys. So every time I go to the PO box, it’s like a pile of stuff. I do tend to open usually on a livestream and I open them live to thank people and let them know how much I appreciate all their cool stuff. But yeah, I like getting gifts.
Andrew: I like all these different ways of knowing that the people we’re reaching are real people. It sometimes feels like they’re just numbers and you want to increase the numbers, but when I have somebody to the office for a drink or I talk to them on the phone or they send me a gift or I send them something, it feels like we’re real people and it re-orients the way I talk to them.
Kimra: Yeah. And I agree. I’m really like–even during my launches and things, I don’t focus so heavily on growing numbers and growing numbers. It’s all about helping my current audience. I keep re-giving back to them over and over. That’s something that yes, it naturally just grows because people share me and tell all their friends about me and things like that. So, yes, I love my students.
I recently had a live event here. So, we had 60 of my students here in New York City and it was just incredibly to be able to like hug them because I don’t know, you see their whole journey online and then to be able to like be like, “Oh my gosh, you’re in person,” and take all the pictures with them and it was just really incredible. I did this big VIP rooftop party on my roof and it was just loads of fun. I think it’s really great to finally meet some of my students in person. So, that was a lot of fun.
Next year I’m definitely doing a big event because I really enjoyed the personal touch and being able to help people and congratulate people on their success in person rather than just commenting on a thread, much different experience. I love it.
Andrew: All right. The website for you–is the best one to send people to BeTrueBrandYou.com?
Kimra: Well, right now that’s just a waitlist for my program. So the best one would be FreedomHackers.com. That’s where they can check out my blog, check out my new freebies on there. That’s where they can choose a spaceship to fly around if you’re on desktop. There’s like a cool spaceship thing we’ve got going on. That’s where you can learn more about my free training and things that are coming up.
Andrew: I like that spaceship. I get to pick the character that I am as I go through your site. It’s definitely very creativity.
Kimra: I try.
Andrew: It’s FreedomHackers.com. I like that name too. And, of course, my two sponsors for this interview are Leadpages, where I’m going to be at the conference. Come see me at Conversion 2016. Get your ticket at Leadpages.net–I won’t say anything about that–Leadpages.net/Mixergy. And, of course, if you need a better hosting company, go to HostGator.com/Mixergy.
Kimra, thanks so much.
Kimra: All right. Thanks for having me.
Andrew: You bet. Bye, everyone.
