“Not one of my clients in the last five years had said, “Hey, I saw you on Facebook, or on this product on Facebook,” and it was being honest with that and saying like, “Okay, all this advice coming in about Facebook, I’m just going to tune all that out.”
Today’s guest is Julianne Smith of The Garter Girl, a company with a singular mission to design and hand-create a wedding heirloom that is so stylish and so special that brides couldn’t wait to save it for their daughters.
Sometime during her journey building The Garter Girl, she also founded a popular D.C. wedding blog called United With Love, which she eventually sold. This episode was inspired by a blog post that Juli recently published titled Life Without Swipe Up, which essentially reflects on the obsession with getting 10,000 Instagram followers and the Swipe Up feature, and it explores why more followers doesn’t necessarily mean more success, the importance of knowing your niche and showing up consistently where your potential customers are. We chat all that and more throughout this episode, and we also learn how Juli used her background in PR and politics to vault The Garter Girl forward.
Julianne’s Biography:
In 2004, Julianne Smith founded The Garter Girl with one simple mission: to design and hand create a wedding heirloom that was so stylish and so special that brides couldn’t wait to save it for your daughter.
Before garters and babies, Julianne worked on Capitol Hill and in the White House’s administration as a crisis communicator and public relations strategist. In 2010, she combine her love of Washington, DC and weddings to found and then sell the area’s top wedding blog, United With Love.
The Garter Girl | Instagram | Pinterest | Facebook
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The Transcript
“JS: Not one of my clients in the last five years had said, “Hey, I saw you on Facebook, or on this product on Facebook,” and it was being honest with that and saying like, “Okay, all these advice coming in about Facebook, I’m just going to tune all that out.”
[INTRODUCTION]
[00:00:24] DJ: Welcome to the Brands that Book Show, where we help creative service-based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I’m your host, Davey Jones.
Today’s guest is Julianne Smith of The Garter Girl, a company with a singular mission to design and hand-create a weeding heirloom that is so stylish and so special that bride’s couldn’t wait to save it for their daughters.
Sometime during her journey building The Garter Girl, she also founded a popular D.C. wedding blog called United With Love, which she eventually sold. This episode was inspired by a blog post that Juli recently published titled Live Without Swipe Up, which essentially reflects on the obsession with getting 10,000 Instagram followers and the Swipe Up feature, and it explores why more followers doesn’t necessarily mean more success, the importance of knowing your niche and showing up consistently where your potential customers are. We chat all that and more throughout this episode, and we also learn how Juli used her background in PR and politics to vault The Garter Girl forward.
Be sure to check out the show notes at daveyandkrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode, and I’d like to hear from you about what kind of content you’d like to see on the Brands that Book podcast as we move forward. I’d also like to know what episodes you’ve enjoyed the most so far and why. To leave your feedback, head on over to the Davey & Krista Facebook page and send us a message.
Now, on to the episode.
[INTERVIEW]
[00:01:54] DJ: We have Juli Smith from The Garter Girl. Some of you who are listening might be familiar with a blog that she used to run called United With Love. I want to dive in to all of that today as well. But I’m excited to have Juli here on the show, because I think she might be the first maker we’ve had on the show so far. So there’s a lot to talk about, and we were just having a fascinating conversation before this podcast episode even started about that line between being a service-based business and an ecommerce business. So I’m excited to dive into all of that. But welcome, Juli.
[00:02:24] JS: Thank you so much. I’m so excited to be here. I’ve listened to, I think, almost all of your episodes and I was really excited to see you guys had started a podcast. It seems like a natural fit for your business. So I’m so excited.
[00:02:36] DJ: Yeah, thank you. Well, it’s been something that I’ve really enjoyed doing, because I get to talk to a lot of people that are doing really awesome things with their business, including yourself. So, today, we’re going to dive really into The Garter Girl side of your business. So real quick, can you tell us what The Garter Girl is?
[00:02:55] JS: Yes, it’s my alter ego. No, I’m just kidding. So I started The Garter Girl back in 2004, and I design and hand-make wedding garters for brides. My first wedding garter in 2004, but it wasn’t until about 2007, 2008 that I said, “Okay, I’m going to give it one more year. I’m going to do this business or I’m going to give it up,” because it was kind of a side hustle prior to that. I would say within sort of three months of me saying I’m going to do this thing or I’m going to give it up, I had a ton of success. Kathie Lee was flinging my garter on The Today’s Show, and it’s been a wild ride ever since. I thought once I get bored of this or once I’ve done everything I can do, I’m going to give it up. That was in 2008. So I’m so rocking it.
[00:03:49] DJ: Yeah, 10 years ago.
[00:03:50] JS: Still not bored!
[00:03:51] DJ: That’s awesome. I guess the reason that we’re talking today is we’re talking about running a success business, being an effective marketer even without a large audience on – Specifically, we’re going to be talking about Instagram here, but on social media platforms. So can you give us an idea before we dive in, because I want to hear more of the history of The Garter Girl and talk about your blog; United With Love, which you sold two years ago now. But before we do that, can you just give us a sense of your social media followings?
[00:04:20] JS: Sure. Oh, it’s funny. I find it entertaining when people talk about being in a niche business, because I make wedding garters. It does not get any more niche than what I do. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone who can drill down farther than I have. So, yes, that is all I do. It’s all I make. I really don’t focus on anything else. I think it’s the curse of a creative person.
As you probably know, there’s a lot of pressure and you have all these ideas that are blowing up in your mind. I mean, within a week I have like 10 other businesses I could have started. So from day, I thought I am just going to stick to the wedding garter thing and I’m not going to get distracted. Now, the blog was a whole other story. But I don’t make ring pillows, and I don’t do all kinds of other things even though there’s a lot of pressure to do that, and I really kind of stay hardcore into my niche.
Now, with staying laser-focused on your niche, that becomes – You have a very, very small following, right? I don’t have repeat clients. I mean, it’s rare, unless they’re buying for a friend.
[00:05:31] DJ: And maybe kind of sad.
[00:05:33] JS: Yeah, buying for a friend or buying for a daughter or something. That pretty much my clients are one and done. Then I have a very niche, very specific product. So, yeah, I really have a small following in that sense, because there’s a lot other businesses out there and they may have repeat clients. But that’s not me. That’s not what I do. Then there’s only a very small subset of people that are even interested in the service that I am providing. So I do feel like I have a small following in that sense.
[00:06:10] DJ: Sure. I’ve probably phrased that poorly, because I think – And I’m glad you brought all of these concepts up about being laser-focused in your niche. We’re going to get to kind of the blog post about Instagram that brought all of these up.
[00:06:24] JS: Yeah.
[00:06:24] DJ: But even that – I want to say you have 5,000 or so followers on Instagram, which is not small. If you book 5,000 people in a house, they’d pour on to the front yard, right? But I think it’s important that how you phrase that around having or being in a niche, because the truth is, is for many of us, for most of us, maybe for all of us, we don’t need everybody to buy from us in order to run a successful business.
Anyways, I’ve jumped ahead.
[00:06:52] JS: No. That’s okay.
[00:06:53] DJ: I want to go back and I want to talk about –
[00:06:54] JS: I love the free flow convo.
[00:06:57] DJ: Yeah. I want to talk about building The Garter Girl. So you started as a side hustle. What were you doing primarily where The Garter Girl was sort of the side hustle?
[00:07:05] JS: Yeah. Okay. So this is career number two for me. I worked in politics, in media, in PR. If anyone watches the West Wing, I was like convinced that I was going to be the next C.J. Cregg, and I worked on Capitol Hill for a while and I worked in the Whitehouse administration for a while. Then I had my daughter. Got unexpectedly pregnant, and I just knew I couldn’t do that and be the kind of mom that I wanted to be.
So I left politics and I stayed home doing nothing for about a year that didn’t last long. It lasted about a year, because I like to work. My mind is always raising. Like I said, I stayed home for about a year doing nothing. Then that’s when I was like, “All right. I’m going to either give up this garter thing or I’m going to do it.” This is me just doing it.
[00:08:04] DJ: So how did you get into making garters in the first place? Like how did that even come about? Was it just a creative outlet while you were in politics? Because, obviously, the two aren’t very related.
[00:08:14] JS: I know. It’s so bizarre, and when people meet me, I’m like, “Trust me. Once you get to know me, it’s not weird.” But at first, yeah, it’s kind of awkward. I’m like, “I make wedding garters. But don’t worry, once you get to know me, it’s not that weird.”
So I had a friend, a very good friend, and she was getting married and there was a bunch of bridesmaids and everybody got a doodie, and she really wanted – My friend, the bride, really wanted a garter for her wedding. I was always that annoying, like I still am, that crafty one, when I would just make it when I couldn’t find it. My mom is a sewer and she still sews.
So she wanted this garter. It was this thing and she wanted it and it was like my only job. My friend owned a bridal salon at that time and I said, “You need to help me find a garter,” and she said, “Yeah, we don’t have them.” I said, “Well, I guess I’m just going to make it. I don’t know. I’m going to figure it out.” Then she said, “What do you mean make it? Show me what you make.” So I did, and I showed her. She said, “If you make me more, I’ll sell them.” So I did. Like I said, it was always this sort of thing I did on the side when I had time, which was rare, because I was working a billion hours.
[00:09:32] DJ: So as you got this thing started, when you decided, how intentional were you in getting started? Did you have social media accounts for The Garter Girl up to that point? I’m sure not before you made your first garter, you didn’t. What was your plan of action when you decided, “Hey, I’m going to see if this can be a thing.”
[00:09:50] JS: I wish I had a plan of action. No. I kind of jumped right in, because I used to work in media and PR. That was all that I knew. So when I jumped in and said, “Okay, I’m going to do this.” I just was like, “I’m going to get –” I thought, “Oh, I’m going to get my products into all these bridal salons.” Well, you go to the first one and the second one and the third one, they’re like, “Uh … No. Mm-mm. Who are you?” You’re a nobody.
Then I took a step back and said, “Okay. Well, I need to get all these media attention, then all these bridal salons will carry my stuff,” right? Because that all these third-parties will validate me and say, “Oh, this is a legitimate business. Then these bridal salons will have to carry my stuff.”
So I went out and got a ton of media attention. I mean, like I said, I was in Today‘s Show, and Martha Stewart, I was on her show. I was in magazines. I was on the blog. I was – Brides, The Knot, all of it. I brought like the same intensity working in politics to the wedding business and it was like, “[explosion sound],” like just this explosion and people were like, “Where is this girl coming from?” I just thought, “I’m just doing kind of what I know.” It was like this very sort of intense first couple of years.
Social media really wasn’t around back then. I think it was – I have to look it up. I want to see if it was either 2009 or 2010. The only reason that my business name is even The Garter Girl today is because I was signing up for a Twitter account and I was always Julianne Smith. I thought, “That’s kind of like Julianne Smith Wedding Garters,” and I was signing up for a Twitter account. Of course, every version of J Smith, Lee Smith, Leanne Smith, ever version of that was taken even at that point. I was still pretty early on Twitter.
I think I was watching a lot of Gossip Girl, if you know that show.
[00:11:54] DJ: Not particularly familiar, but I think Krista is.
[00:11:56] JS: Yeah. Okay. I love that show, and I was watching it and I literally think that it was about a second or two where I’m just like typing in different versions on Twitter trying to see if they’re taken, and I just did Garter Girl, and it was sort of a play on Gossip Girl, that’s how that name started.
Again, I remember it was several years later, I was sitting – This is a really long story. I was sitting at a bar in Chicago with a bunch of other wedding professionals and they were all looking at me, like, “What do you mean your business name isn’t Garter Girl? You’re The Garter Girl. Everybody knows that.” I think it was the next day I officially applied for a trademark and changed my name and officially changed my business name to The Garter Girl.
[00:12:41] DJ: That’s fascinating. I love that story and I think anybody with a last name like Smith or Jones has dealt with that same struggle of finding –
[00:12:49] JS: Yeah, you’re Jones.
[00:12:50] DJ: Yeah, finding that Instagram handle or a Twitter handle or whatever it is. That’s actually their name. But going back, I felt like you went from zero to 60 when it came to the getting the media promotion. It wasn’t like, “Oh! I got as much as media exposure as possible, and I went to this niche blog, and I went to this regional publication.” You went to The Today’s Show.
[00:13:15] JS: Just jumped right in.
[00:13:16] DJ: Yeah. So can you give some insight into how you’re able to do that? Did you just cold pitch them? What did that look like?
[00:13:23] JS: Sure did.
[00:13:24] DJ: So what’s the secret.
[00:13:26] JS: There’s no secret. That’s the thing. You just have to be super creative and super unwilling to just kind of keep asking questions and keep kind of pushing on. I literally called up – I’m looking over here, because I still I have the book. It was a book of news media that – Again, this was like before the internet was like amazing, and I stole it from our old office. It was even like an old version, because they made them every year. I looked at The Today’s Show, the main number. Not even in Today‘s Show. It was like NBC. I looked up the main number. You just – With a straight face, I was like, “I’d like to speak to the producer of Today’s Show throws a wedding.”
[00:14:08] DJ: And you got on the phone with him or her?
[00:14:11] JS: And it was like, “Oh! So and so –” I forgot her name. So and so, or the guy, or whatever, wasn’t in or whatever, and I left them a voicemail. That’s kind of how it started.
[00:14:21] DJ: That’s incredible. So when you got media exposure like that, I assume it was a little bit easier to get other media outlets to cover you as well.
[00:14:29] JS: Well, yeah. It gives you this instant credibility, right? I had been at the blog shall remain nameless, but I had been pitching them for a while, and no response, no response. It wasn’t even 24 hours after The Today’s Show had come out. I not only got an email back. I got a phone call saying, “We would love to work with you.”
So that kind of stuff gives you instant credibility and instant respect. But some of it – I think the world is totally different now. I would say though, so while I was – I always thought that I would get my products in these bridal salons, because if you were spending thousands of dollars on a dress to buy this handmade item would be kind of no big deal.
Well, while I was getting turned down by bridal salons, I started my blog for my business, and it was a very – You were asking about PR and stuff. My blog, I would say the number one PR tool that I used, I really approached it as like a magazine for my business, because nobody said no on my blog, right? Nobody turned me down. There’s no algorithm on your blog either. So I just really used kind of that media and PR background and I really just wrote about my business and wrote about problems that my potential clients would have even before they knew they were having them. I really used my blog.
Well, as I was going out and building my blog and building my press portfolio, I started to get more and more sales online. Then it got to the point where bridal salons would call and then I would look at the numbers and go, “Wait a minute, I have to cut my price in half to sell to these bridal salons when I’m actually doing a lot that are on my own through my website.” Then that’s when the shift changed. But I do much better on my own.
[00:16:24] DJ: Sure. Did you decide at that point not to work with bridal salons, or do you work with some bridal salons?
[00:16:29] JS: I do have a handful that I work with, but not many. Like the wholesaling products is a whole other business. Not the whole and whole, but like the pun there. Yeah, wholesaling, it’s another business. It’s quite different. I realized just as a singular person doing my thing, and because of the blog that really kind of propelled my business and it became much more profitable for me to sell one-on-one than it was to kind of sell 10, but having to cut my price in half.
[00:17:02] DJ: Yeah. I think this story is so fascinating for a number of reasons. One, because I think it differs so much from a lot of the people that we’ve had on the show so far where is a certain social media channel or this, that. I think this is just the going the PR media route in getting that initial visibility, especially with even though selling garters is a niche business. Your potential audience is not just in D.C. It’s not like you’re running a local photography business where, really, you’re trying to market people in the D.C. area. You’re trying to market to people nationally. So getting on The Today’s Show, especially a wedding segment, is huge and incredible. That’s awesome.
[00:17:40] JS: Yeah. I mean, I love my local D.C. wedding community, and they’ve been amazing to me. Obviously, I started a blog for weddings in D.C. But when I first started out, I really didn’t – I wasn’t in like the D.C. wedding scene. Because I ship my product all over the world.
So it was always this like push-pull between service business, local business, but I’m ecommerce, but I’m online. It’s always been this challenge between being a service-based business who has a product or a product business that provides a service. I don’t know. I’ve always lived in that gray area.
[00:18:18] DJ: Yeah, and I want to talk to you about that shift here in a second. But first, I have to ask, if you were to go back – Or, rather, if you were starting again today, would you take the same approach with the same media PR approach as you did back in 2004 or 2008?
[00:18:35] JS: Gosh! That’s such a good question. Probably, because that’s what I know.
[00:18:38] DJ: Yeah, and I think it’s just as valuable today. People still watch The Today’s Show, or comparable shows.
[00:18:46] JS: PR and media is about – For me, it was about these third-party validators that said, “Hey, this is a legitimate business.” So it’s like I could tell potential clients or bridal salons that, “Listen, I’m not going to make you a piece of junk. I’m actually going to make you something that’s beautiful and amazing.”
But when you have a third-party, a.k.a some media or press that does that for you, it’s like you say without having to say it. Then it becomes – I think that there’s – I want to just make one caveat here. I think that there’s a bit of a misunderstanding when it comes to PR and media is that people think, “Oh, I’m just going to get my wedding in The Knot Magazine, and then it’s all going to be fine.” That is, because of my background, I knew that that wasn’t the case.
The starting point, getting that publication or getting that feature is simply the starting point. It’s what you do with it afterwards that that becomes the key, right? So it’s like you get that little badge on your website, right? So from now on, the life of my business, it’s like I’ve seen on Today’s Show, I’ve seen on Martha Stewart. Then it’s like getting that out to your audience and your followers, like, “Hey, this person, or this media person saw me and they validated me,” and it’s like pushing that and pushing it out and really using it as a way to promote your business as supposed to just getting the publication and sitting back and waiting for the referrals to come in, because it doesn’t work like that. It’s not you have to then go out and almost like promote the promotion.
[00:20:32] DJ: Yeah. No. I think that’s an important advice, because it’s not like it’s providing perpetual traffic. It’s not like people are going and watching all the episodes of The Today’s Show. So you have to get that information in front of your audience, and the same thing with a feature on The Knot or Style Me Pretty or whatever it is. When that blog post goes live or when they feature you on social media that day, sure, you’re probably getting in a little bit of traffic, but you’re probably not getting as much traffic a year later or two years later with that said. I know that you spend a lot of time on SEO.
[00:21:03] JS: Well, you get that residual buzz.
[00:21:04] DJ: Yeah, for sure, and it’s a good SEO value for sure as well.
[00:21:07] JS: Oh my gosh! Of course. For me, I always knew like – Again, hey, I could be in Martha Stewart. No bride is going to say, “Look at the bottom credits of a real wedding and go, “Oh! Yeah. I’m going to buy that product.” No. Or, “I’m going to book that photographer.” It has to have all these other meanings for your business. You have to kind of look at it as a total. Like, “Okay, it’s this validator for me, and I’m going to use it and I’m going to promote it. I’m going to use it to help me in these other ways,” as supposed to saying like, “Oh! That blog or that publication was – I didn’t book anybody from that.” It’s like, “Well, that’s kind of not really the point.” If you’re looking for bookings, then PR is sort of the long game and maybe not totally where you should be putting your focus.
[00:22:00] DJ: Sure. Yeah. No, I think that makes sense. But I think that like that validation, it’s similar to having customer reviews on your website, or people visiting a review aggregator, like Wedding Wire or something like that. I mean, people just simply – They want to read reviews before they buy something.
[00:22:17] JS: Yeah.
[00:22:17] DJ: Something like a badge saying that, or as in The Today’s Show. That’s something that it’s like a review on steroids. It’s just a high-powered testimonial.
[00:22:30] JS: Even though if you go back and look at the actual video of like Hoda and Kathie Lee slinging it and it was like this whole thing. It’s horrifying. I mean, some of my early features on Brides Magazine or brides.com are like – I’m like, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” You’re like embarrassed by them, because your business has grown so much. It’s great. It’s been a wild ride. But yeah, some of them – I mean, God bless if somebody goes back and finds that video from The Today’s Show.
[00:23:02] DJ: I think that’s how everybody feels about early stuff though, or even there’s stuff that we’ve done a year or two years ago that I’m thinking, “Okay, that’s not really a representative of the kind of work that we can do now, or the kind of business we run now.”
[00:23:17] JS: That’s why keeping your website and your blog and everything up-to-date is so important, because your business evolves and changes and it’s really important to get your new stuff out there.
[00:23:29] DJ: Yeah. So I could talk about this for a lot longer, but I do want to shift into this blog post article that you kind of spurred on, this episode.
[00:23:39] JS: Sure.
[00:23:39] DJ: I’m going to revisit at the end of the episode though, United With Love, because you did start a successful D.C. based wedding blog that you eventually sold. So that’s also fascinating. I want to come back to that. But let’s talk about Life Without Swipe Up. So can you tell us about article and some of the responses that you got after writing that article?
[00:23:59] JS: Yeah. So I wrote a blog post about life without the swipe up, and that just means what it’s like to be on Instagram. What it’s like to have a business when you don’t have a lot of followers. On Instagram, when you have more than 10,000 followers, you get that fancy little function in your stories where the user can swipe up to see your blog post, or to see whatever you’ve linked there. You get that fancy little K behind your name as supposed to the actual follower account total number.
So I was feeling really frustrated and down on myself and kind of sorry for myself for a long time about the size of my follower account. It’s so pathetic to say out loud, because it sounds like, “Wa-wa,” like so whinny and it bothered me for a very, very long time. I felt like every time I would look at that follower account, I just kept saying, “This is just not reflective of my business. My business is so much more, so much better, so much bigger, so much more productive than this number,” and I was like totally obsessed with it for the longest time.
[00:25:23] DJ: I think so many people though can resonate with that. Just trying to find that validation in a follower account, especially Instagram, where –
[00:25:31] JS: It’s right there, like haunting you and teasing you.
[00:25:34] DJ: Yup, exactly.
[00:25:36] JS: Then you wake up in the morning and like 10 are gone, right? Then you get two more and you’re scraping and clamoring for one more, and then you wake up the next morning and five them are gone. It was like an obsession for a really longer than I care to admit. I had a – I’m just coming off of actually Saturday will be my last day. I’m just coming off a nine-week sabbatical in my business. What led to it was I just was so stressed and so just ready to break. A friend of mine, she’s like, “It was a either a break or a breakdown.” I chose the break. That’s a whole other conversation. Happy to talk about it anytime about how I kind of took a nine-week break but I still made quite a bit of money, because I kind of prepared for it. It was like a personal break, but the business was still running.
Anyway, in that break, I really started to kind of look back on my business over the last year and realized that I had one of the most, if not the most profitable year I have ever had. I thought, “Why am I so – I’m so obsessed with this number, this follower account, yet I’m still profitable and busy as anything. Why am I so obsessed with it? I kind of started to peel back the layers of that and that’s what led to me writing this – I don’t know. It started out as a ramp, then I like edited it, and it actually has like a lot of advice about how I use Instagram, but it’s just like one thing that I do and how I try not to be so obsessed with the follower account, because when I look at the reality of my business, it’s not judged or made profitable by that number of the account.
[00:27:39] DJ: And I’ve said this I think a number of times on even this podcast, but we speak a lot about SEO, but especially when we’re talking about different metrics. What metrics actually indicate or indicators of a successful business? I would throw out there that while social media followings can be, they’re often not directly correlated with the amount of revenue a business brings in or how successful they are. I just don’t think that they’re good indicators, really, for success.
[00:28:12] JS: Listen, people told me that I know that, but in my mind I would still go and be like, “This is so embarrassing, or I’ve been in business since 2004, 7, 8, whatever you want to talk. Why am I still at this small number? This other person’s been around for a hot minute and they have the swipe up and I don’t. They must be doing better than me. They must be –” And it just became this like – For me, this like sick version of comparisonitis.
Of course, I know on paper that it’s not reflective of my business. Of course, I know that, but like that is easier said than done, and I know that. But I really – But if I’m being honest and true with myself, I really was kind of obsessed with the number. That was part of me writing this article on my blog about life without the swipe up was just like almost like my own therapy of how I just was like, “Okay, there, I said it. I’m obsessed with the number. There you go. I’m saying it and I know it’s not true, but I’m just going to say it out loud.” Actually, it helps. I was like, “Okay! I feel good! I got it out there.” Because I stood on it for like a month or two before I even posted it.
But then the response was like, I mean, insane. I mean, I had businesses all over just, “Oh my gosh! Thank you so much for writing this. I feel the same way. How do you do it?” In the article, I really like to use my blog to help other people. So I try not to just write a blog post saying something. I like to try to give some tips. So there were a lot of tips in there. I was like, “Oh, this is so helpful.” It was like my highest engaged post and I only just did like one.
So people just went like bananas for in such a good way. It made me feel so much better. It was like this little community around all of us little people, I guess.
[00:30:15] DJ: I think so many people, including ourselves, like and Krista and I have definitely got into a funk like that, where we are perspective. We put a lot of focus on maybe the wrong thing. Whether it’d be Instagram or something else in our business that has no real correlation with moving forward or success, but for whatever reason we stress about it.
I think it’s especially true of those of us who run businesses ourselves, with small teams or by ourselves, because there’s no one really there to say, “Hey, stop focusing on that. That’s not important. Focus on this.” I think often times it takes an outside perspective or sitting down and getting those thoughts out on paper to, I guess, to reframe your perspective.
But where did that post end? So you had mentioned that there are some tips in there. Kind of what was the conclusion you came to about Instagram? Like you’re still on Instagram, of course. It’s not like I said, “Oh, this is a worthless platform and it does nothing for me and I’m just going to delete the account.”
[00:31:11] JS: I love Instagram. Personally, I love Instagram professionally. But really it became for me about, “Okay, if I’m going to put as much time and energy into Instagram, whether that energy is just like obsessing or actually like doing, then I need to be like a whole lot better on it,” and I wasn’t. So then I was like, “Why am I so obsessed?” I have all these other things that are working, and this is just one small part of kind of what I do.”
For me – And I think every business has to decide, but fortunately or unfortunately, depending on how you want to look at it, for my business, my clients are on Instagram. They’re not on Facebook. So that’s where I need to be and be visible and accessible, and it’s a struggle, because I don’t – Again, I’m such a niche product. Why do even 5,000 people follow me? It’s not like –
[00:32:13] DJ: You probably have people who follow you who’ve bought from you, but they are well past their wedding and they still follow along. As far as like – So how do you approach Instagram now? I want to talk about some of the other marketing channels that you use in your business as well. So you had this kind of moment with Instagram where you’re focused on maybe the wrong things. Maybe that follower account instead of how you show up. So how did you decide that you’re going to show up on Instagram? If I remember correctly from that article too, there are a couple of other channels that your clients do show up on. Pinterest I think was one of them. I know on your websites too you collect emails. So what was that kind of perspective change for Instagram?
[00:33:01] JS: Yeah. So when I took a step back about kind of what Instagram is and wasn’t for my business, because what I’ve noticed over the years, and mostly in the last a year or two, is my clients would send me screenshots of things on Instagram and they’d say, “I want that one. That’s the one I want,” and it would be like 62 weeks ago, and boy they found it, or it would be something very recent, like, “Oh! I want this one.” More and more they would send me screenshots from Instagram whether they followed me or not.
So then I kind of started how to look strategically about my purpose on Instagram. So I have a couple of goals, and what I try to do is I try to use Instagram not to sell, but more to network. If I’m on – It’s more kind of like – A friend of mine who’s a planner here in D.C., she was like, “You need to be the girl of The Garter Girl. I don’t get you. I just see product.” So I’m trying, I’m trying to be more personal and show not so many pretty pictures all the time and not just product, but it’s hard, because as we’ve talked about, I have three kids that I really don’t – I’m not a mommy blogger. So I really don’t – That’s a decision my husband and I have made. I really don’t show very much.
But I do try to like network on there and be personal and be that girl of The Garter Girl. Then I do try to show product, because people do take those screenshots and send it to me. I kind of use it as like a gallery a little bit. Then I also use it as like an opportunity to expose my brand to new or engaged people that wouldn’t have otherwise even considered a garter. I know that much like the PR, they’re not going to be like, “Oh, yes, absolutely. Let’s buy right now.” But it’s more just that exposure to like, “Hmm.” You go from like a cold lead to like a lukewarm maybe, and that kind of stuff doesn’t really payoff for months on end.
But to that sort of third piece is I use like hashtags, and I’ll go in and there’s a couple that I know, and I’m always finding out more, that newly engaged brides will use. One that I’ve been using lately is I Said Yes to the Dress, or dress shopping or something like that, and I will go on and I try to do it once a week and check out the hashtag and what are they doing and who’s shopping with them and what’s the experience like. Was it good? Was it bad? I usually leave a comment, like a genuine comment, “I’m happy for you. You look so happy. Congratulations.” It’s never, “Oh, if you’re thinking about buying a garter, check out my page.” I see that stuff all the time and it makes me cringe every time. It’s just more like, “Oh, it’s so pretty. Congratulations,” or “That’s so exciting. Congratulations.” Really, that’s all it is.
[00:36:14] DJ: Yeah. If I’m hearing you correctly, you use it more as maybe at of funnel, middle of the funnel tool. Sort of the handshake in the relationship, like, “Hey, this is who I am.” It’s not a place where you go on and you’re making a direct sales necessarily.
[00:36:30] JS: No.
[00:36:30] DJ: But it does sound like an effective tool in getting your name out there in introducing yourself to the people in a genuine way, not using some tool or robot to go on and randomly comment on hashtags and things like that.
[00:36:45] JS: Yeah. I mean, I think as business owners, we have to respect the fact that it’s social media and it’s meant to be social. It’s meant to be fun. I think businesses are like, “Yes! All these people on one spot. Let me just sell to them,” and then it kind of ruins the platform. Once you step back and you’re saying, “Well, I am here to be social. Let’s be social.”
Once you step back from – Because there are other platforms to sell, right? I mean, I can sell all day long on my website and nobody judges me, nobody questions me. No one throws an algorithm at me, and that’s the perfect spot to do that, right? That’s what it’s meant to be.
[00:37:26] DJ: When people go there, that’s what they expect. When people go to a company’s website, they expect, “Oh, that person may try to sell their product or service.” That’s just the expectation.
[00:37:36] JS: One thing I wanted to point out, that was a such a good description where you – I use Instagram as like a very sort of top of the funnel. I’m really just trying to introduce people to not just The Garter Girl, the brand, but also Garter Girl the person. But also just the idea and the concept of a wedding garter in general. Because let’s be honest, it’s not the first thing when you get engaged, you’re like, “I’m going to get my garter.” No. It is like a million on the list.
So I am really just trying to open people’s minds to just the idea or the possibility or that just change their perception of what it is, what it means, what it looks like, how it fits, all that kind of stuff. Like you said, I love that description. It is so like so top of the funnel. So top. Very big funnel.
[00:38:32] DJ: So what other marketing channels have been successful for your business as well? So it’s not just Instagram. I know even in that blog post you mentioned spending time on search engine optimization, music to my ears, which is I feel like everybody wants to – Like I consider myself an expert in SEO, but it’s funny because I always joke with Krista and others about how I wish I was the expert on Instagram, because Instagram is such – It’s just a cooler – It’s like the trendy, whereas everybody is like, “Oh, yeah. Eye roll.”
[00:39:01] JS: Everybody can see it. You can feel it. With SEO, first of all, it gets a bad rep, because it’s like smarmy and whatever. But there’s like shady companies and stuff out there, and you can’t see it. You can’t touch it. They’re little robots and they’re little bots. Listen, I hear you.
So SEO from day one has always been a huge focus of mine, and if you’re out there listening to this podcast, the single best freest thing you can do for your business is get smart on SEO.
I see it time and time again. Business owners turn a blind eye to it. They think that it’s something that they can understand or that they can’t do and it’s simply not true. The business owner needs to be – You don’t necessarily have to do the work, but you have to be smart on SEO. You have to understand it a little bit. You have to know what you’re doing just a little bit, not a lot. You don’t need to be an expert, but it is the single greatest, bestest, most amazing thing that you ever can do for your business is learn just enough about SEO to make sure it’s being done properly and well, and it is not as hard as everybody makes it out to be. I think it’s because they can’t see it.
[00:40:28] DJ: Sure, they can’t see, especially even immediate results. If I’m teaching about Instagram, I can say, “Hey, go do X, Y and Z, and that’s going to result – And if you do X, Y, Z, maybe that results in 10 followers or 20 followers or 100 followers or something like that,” and maybe that happens pretty immediately. With search engine optimization, this stuff that you put in place might not pay off for months.
[00:40:48] JS: You can’t see it. Like you’re saying, “Oh, take this beautiful photograph. Post it on Instagram.” Maybe make followers, like you said, but you see the photo.
[00:40:57] DJ: Yeah.
[00:40:58] JS: You see it. The thing with SEO as you know, like they’re little robots. They don’t see pictures. They don’t know that this is a photo of a wedding garter. They don’t know that this is a photo of an invitation. You have to tell them. So that’s the difference. It’s not something that – As creative people were visual. So it can be a lot of the focus is on the visual and the design and what we can see and touch.
Unfortunately for SEO, we can’t see or touch it. So, yes, to your point, SEO always has been, always will be a huge, huge focus. On that point, yes, there’s SEO for Google, but learning about SEO then helps you in other areas, because for me, another focus of mine is Pinterest. I’ve been on Pinterest since the days where you had to be invited. I, again, don’t have a huge following on Pinterest, but I see the traffic coming in and it’s insane. All the SEO tools that I use on Google are directly applicable on Pinterest, all of them. It wasn’t like I went in and said, “I’m going to –” – I have made an effort to learn more about Pinterest, but it’s all the same as SEO, on search engine optimizations and I just went in and was kind of doing what I was doing on my blog or on my website and then it kind of started to pay off on Pinterest, because it’s – Somebody said, “Oh, you know what? What Google does, Pinterest does.” Even though they’re not owned by each other, but it’s true. I mean, a lot of the same SEO concepts such as keywords and naming things properly and telling the user, because, again, they’re bots. So they don’t see photos. You have to tell it. You have to tell the search engine. The photos are for the user, not for the little bots.
[00:42:57] DJ: I would argue that even beyond Pinterest, I know it’s helped me in other areas of our business, because I think when it comes down to SEOs about creating great content, Google said that’s the number one creating compelling content that engages and answers the user’s search intent is the most valuable ranking factor.
So if you can learn to create content, and then second thing, user experience, on your website, doing things that makes sense, putting in information in the places that people would intuitively think define that information. Then lastly, link building, which to me shares a lot of the same characteristics as relationship building does. It might be a little bit more of a slow going process, like relationship building, but ultimately I think pays dividends down the line. I think just in general, SEO has helped me as a business owner no matter what platform or, or just in marketing in general even with things like PR and media and things like that.
[00:43:55] JS: Yeah. It’s so funny. So I don’t know if your users know this, but back when I had United With Love and then Krista and Natalie started Bayside Bride, and we were kind of both doing the blogging thing. Then when I sold United With Love, I would do these like blogging conferences where I would teach people how to do blogging and always came back to SEO. That was kind of like the foundation of all of it.
I mean, I know you know this, but like it’s something like 300 factors that Google uses to rank just one webpage, right? So but that’s impossible. We can’t go down this rabbit hole or trying to like – Whether it’s link building or photo naming or all these different factors that go into it. So I literally just pick like the five or six that I know I can do and I’m just like a laser on those.
So when I would teach these blogging courses and workshops and stuff, I would go around and I would look at other local creatives. I would look at their websites and be like, “I can help you or I cannot help you.” But every time I got to one of your websites, I would be like, “Oh! This person is rocking it. They’re doing a good job,” and then there at the bottom, it would be like design by you two. I’m like, “Boom! They’re good. They don’t need me. They got it. They’re rocking it.” It happened a handful of time. Actually, more, more times than – It happened a lot. I know it wasn’t supposed to be about SEO, but it’s really – It matters. It’s important and I think a lot of business really just don’t focus on it because they can’t see it or touch it.
[00:45:45] DJ: Well, I appreciate hearing that for sure.
[00:45:48] JS: I would go through and I’m like, “Eh! They’re good,” or “Wow, this website, this photographer or this planner is doing a good job. They don’t even need me,” and then there at the bottom, there’d be your name.
[00:46:00] DJ: Yeah, we love hearing that for sure. So as far as your business goes, what do you think has been the most effective marketing channel for you? Do you think it’s been Pinterest?
[00:46:09] JS: Ooh, that’s a tough one. Most effective? Yeah, Pinterest has been good to me. It’s been really good to me. Pinterest doesn’t like mess with you. It’s super straightforward. They’re a search and discovery platform. They’re not a social media platform. To your point about content, they want to just answer the customer. If you answer the customer, if the customer types in chicken recipe and you have a chicken recipe and you give them the chicken recipe that they’re looking for, everybody’s happy, and they love that. That works for me, because that’s how I am. I work better on things that personally just like boom, boom, check, check, check, and it’s like if you tell the robot or the SEO that it’s a wedding garter and you come to my website, you’re going to find a wedding garter and then I’m going to make you one and it kinds of works for me.
Yeah, Pinterest has been awesome for me, but really like Google SEO has been amazing. The blog has been really good for me. But the other thing I think that we all underestimate in this age and age of social media stuff is like the importance of networking, and you guys know, you started Rising Tide Society, but when I started United With Love, this single bestest, most amazing thing I did was I would have these monthly happy hours, like wedding professionals would come, and it wasn’t like a sales thing. It was just like – This was before Rising Tide Society, but it’s the same concept. People were just like craving that in-person connection.
Same with your own blog, there’s no algorithms in networking, right? Nobody says, “Oh, you can’t talk to this person, because your photo hasn’t been liked by these many people.” I think the networking is such a huge, huge thing.
[00:48:11] DJ: Specifically, I would say that it might be the most important thing especially for service-based businesses. I mean, I guess it depends a little bit on what industry you’re in. But that’s something that when we’re talking to people who are just getting started, we say, “Hey, get out there and meet other people in your industry.” I know not every industry, not every service-based industry is going to be like this, but the wedding industry for sure. If you’re a photographer, you can only shoot one wedding on that Saturday in August, right?
So if you’re booked, they’re going to send a list. I know we do. We’re going to send a list of five other photographer’s name to that potential client saying, “Hey, we’re booked, but you should try one of these people.”
[00:48:55] JS: Again, with years ago, I would do these monthly happy hours, and a lot of it came down to – That’s how the blog started. So back in the day when I had Garter Girl and then I started getting all these press attention, all these wedding people were like, “Oh, she lives in D.C. Let’s meet.” I’ll get these requests for like coffee. I had like a two-year-old. First of all, I don’t drink coffee, and so I couldn’t like meet up with all these people for coffee. So I was like, “Okay, this is it. I’m going to meet once a month. I’m going to go to a bar and every person who has emailed me that week about coffee, you can come and like that’s how that goes.”
Then when we started the blog – Well, it was actually at one of those happy hours that I was like, “You know what? This area really needs a wedding blog.” Then like all the eyes went to me. But my point is, it was that in-person, that networking thing that’s been so amazing. I look around at the local wedding scene, and the amount of like businesses, connections, styled shoots, people that are in business together, that we’re just connected. Just by coming to one of my happy hours, people that are like have these mega huge business now, they would like come to my happy hour and be like, “I just moved here and I want to become a wedding planner. This is the only thing that I could find and you’re so amazing for like just letting anybody come.”
Now I look at these people and it’s awesome to see all the growth and the connections, like best friends, like people in other people’s weddings just because they met at one of our happy hours. As you know, that’s like you started Rising Tide Society, people are so craving for that connection. In your industry, not in your industry.
What I loved the most about Rising Tide Society, and I used to go to meetings around here a lot, is not just wedding people. It was just like creatives in general, all kinds of stuff. Like I said, there’s no algorithms when it comes to networking. So it’s like the sky is the limit. I mean, I wish I could do more than I can. I’ve got three little kids and I can’t be out all the time, but I love it. I think it’s so, so, so effective. It’s for the referrals, but then it’s also just like bounce ideas off. For somebody to tell you, “Hey, you’re crazy for obsessing over your Instagram follower account,” or that kind of – It’s so good.
[00:51:29] DJ: Yeah, even too, like meeting somebody who is outside of your industry. I mean, I know, even some of my favorite podcasts aren’t related to what Krista and I do, and when you connect with somebody else who’s operating in a different space, it’s interesting to hear their ideas and how those ideas can be appropriated for your own space and from an inspiration standpoint stand point for sure.
Yeah. I mean, definitely. I’m a big fan of networking and just getting out there. So I’m glad to hear you chat about it. Because I think that does get lost when it’s all about – I feel like a lot of people make it all out to be all about Instagram or Facebook or these social media platforms or what you’re doing on YouTube, and are you incorporating video into your marketing. I’m not saying any of that’s bad, or that we shouldn’t focus on some of those things. I think those kind of – The point of your article about Instagram as well. It’s just a matter of focusing on the right things.
[00:52:24] JS: And being honest with yourself about what those are. It’s so easy to say, “Oh, Instagram, Instagram,” but then when you take a step back and I’m like, “Actually, no.” Where are my clients coming from? What did they say that they used? What has been the most effective for them? For me, it’s been the total of all of them. I think they use my website, and I think they use Pinterest. I think they use Instagram, and they do refer those a little bit.
One point I wanted to make with the networking, it’s so funny. So I will meet people or maintain my relationships that I’ve made. Then you hop on Instagram and it’s like my friends, or people that I’ve networked with. So it’s like just underscores that importance of like getting off the social media and getting into those personal connections, because when you meet somebody in person and they’re a new follower, or a new liker and then you’re just like chatting back and forth on Instagram and it’s like – it becomes more of a friend than like a sales channel type of thing.
[00:53:37] DJ: And I want to highlight what you’re saying too about finding the channels that people are coming from. I mean, there’s some double movement there for sure, like you need to on one hand figure out what platforms people are on. But also having some sort of measurement of who’s coming from where. Are a lot of people coming from Pinterest and do they end up as customers, or do a lot of people come from Pinterest and they never buy? Figuring out what those channels are.
How do you keep track of where people are coming from?
[00:54:08] JS: Well, Google Analytics for my website.
[00:54:11] DJ: I was hoping you would say that, because I try to push – Like SEO, one of those things that people are like, “Oh my gosh! How do I –” But it’s not as complicated as it sounds.
[00:54:23] JS: Yeah, they give you too much –
[00:54:25] DJ: Sure.
[00:54:25] JS: I have this little thing, when I used to teach the blogging workshops. It was just like this one-pager and it was literally like the three things that you need to know about Google Analytics. It was like, “Go hear.” I think it’s like acquisitions all traffic and then referrals or something like that, and like that’s it. Boom! That’s all you need to know.
Yeah, I use Google Analytics for sure. Then that’s when like has led to another discovery. We were talking actually before we started recording, it was about like I always thought that I was this wedding business that happened to have a product, and then it was only in the last year or so where I’ve discovered, “Actually, I’m an ecommerce product.” Sorry, “I’m an ecommerce business who happens to be in the wedding industry.” Just that shift has been amazing, and actually how I figure that out was, I was looking at my Google Analytics and I get – I mean, I have pretty crazy traffic for being such a niche product, and there’s a common blog post. There’s this one called what’s the purpose of a wedding garter? I want to say I get like – I don’t even know, probably like 8 to 10,000 hits a month on it, which is crazy.
I can tell you right now, I’m not selling 8 to 10,000 products a month. If I was, there’d be a whole different story. Then I kind of started to do the numbers here and started to dig more into like the buzz term of like conversion rate and like, “Oh! If 8,000 people a month are coming on just this blog post alone, why are these people not buying from me?” Then you start like digging more and I started reading more about like conversion rate and this whole thing, and I’m like very close, like days away from switching my website from WordPress to Shopify.
So just that little change, like shifting more towards being an ecommerce company as supposed to like a service-based who happens to have a product. I think it’s like paying attention to those little – The original question I think you were asking was about what kind of things do I use. Yeah, I use Google Analytics, but then it’s also just kind of paying attention to the things that are coming at me. I just noticed over the last year, Brides were screenshoting my Instagram, or they would screenshot something they saw from Pinterest, and they weren’t necessarily a follower, like maybe they had a hashtag and stumbled upon me or something like that. But it’s just paying attention, like always having your antenas up to say like, “Hey, I’ve noticed that the last two people, they came to me, screenshoted something from Instagram. Maybe there’s something there. Maybe I should paying attention to that.
I talk a little bit about this in the article, the Life Without the Swipe Up is that like over the past year, the pressure has been on Facebook, like beyond Facebook, have a Facebook group, do your Facebook pixels, learn about Facebook ads, and everyone’s doing Facebook ads, and Facebook, Facebook. Well, not one of my clients in the last five years had said, “Hey, I saw you on Facebook, or on this product on Facebook.” It was being honest with that and saying like, “Okay, all these advice coming in about Facebook, I’m just going to tune all that out.”
[00:58:06] DJ: Sure.
[00:58:06] JS: Because, I’m sorry, that’s not where my clients are. That’s okay, it’s like having a confidence to say like, “I’m going to tune in on this and tune out on that and I don’t need to do all the things. Just because like everyone’s buzzing about Facebook, I just have always known that that’s not where my clients are.
[00:58:30] DJ: Yeah.
[00:58:31] JS: And there’s nothing wrong with that. People ask me questions all the time. I’m like, “IT sounds to me like your clients are on Facebook. I would start learning about Facebook.”
[00:58:40] DJ: Yeah, for sure. I think that filter that you have is important, because a lot of people who are pushing all that information about Facebook because they’re probably trying to sell you something that’s Facebook related, right? Then it’s how it works. So you’re going to hear, “Oh, this is the marketing tool. These are the opportunities. Buy my course so I can teach you about it.” So having that filter and saying, “Okay, let me look in Google Analytics or however I’m keeping track of these inquiries coming in and these sales and saying, “One person’s come from Facebook, or no people comes from Facebook. However, Pinterest is killing it. These networking events that I’m going to are bringing in clients or whatever.”
But you have systems in place to keep track of those kind of things and you’re intentional about being aware of those things, because I think what happens is people say they don’t really know where people are coming from, because maybe they’re not keeping track of it either through Google Analytics or their own tools. Then they get kind of overwhelmed, like, “Okay. So, YouTube, do I have to – Or Instagram stories, or most recently, Instagram TV.” It’s like, “Oh, there’s this new thing. I have to be there because everybody is saying I have to be there and it’s the future and this and that,” and there’s this sort of mad rush there, when at the end of the day, that might not be best for your business or it might not make sense for your business or it might not be the best use of your time right now even if it is a channel that could be used for your business. It might not be the best you see your time right now. Especially as solopreneurs or working as a small team, like you have limited time and resources and you definitely want to make sure that you’re putting time and energy into things that work for sure.
[01:00:18] JS: Yeah. I mean, I get a lot of referrals from wedding planners, right? It’s like, “Where do my last client come from? Oh, she was a referral from a wedding planner.” So I am like not just doubling, I’m like tripling down on that, right? Sometimes it’s just like, “Where did you find me? How did you find me?” “Oh, I asked a friend,” and I’m like, “Okay.” Triple down on making sure that whatever my past clients know that they can buy from me again or whatever.
It’s like where did your last client come from? Ask them going and doing that, doing more of that and really – But it’s also, like you said, it’s just having that antenna up, that like, “Hey, this could be a thing. I should probably pay attention to this.”
To your point, I don’t have – I don’t like track stuff. I don’t really use Excel. I don’t say, “Oh –” Other than Google Analytics, I don’t really like keep track of things, but I do like pay attention and kind of like follow stuff. So I don’t really have a list of how many clients that sent me a screenshot from Instagram, but it was like the first person did it and I was like, “Oh! Okay. That’s cool. Maybe I should start putting better stuff on Instagram.” Same with Pinterest, it was like, “Oh, I really need to get a little better about that.” That’s really how it grew.
[01:01:48] DJ: We are nearing time here. If people want to – And we didn’t even get to the United With Love stuff, which is a bummer. I feel like we’ll have to –
[01:01:56] JS: What did you want to know about – I mean, it’s such a different business, the blog.
[01:02:01] DJ: Yeah. We’ll have to have you come back and talk about that business, because we had a conversation, for those of you listening, before the podcast even began just about how selling blogs, especially lately, it’s just not something that you hear about. I think most recently, people are probably familiar, if you’re in the wedding industry, with the whole style me pretty saga. It was sold and then now it’s back to the original owners from what I understand. But you just don’t hear about blogs being bought and sold, I think, in today‘s world. So I’d love to have you back sometimes to chat about that.
If people want to learn more about you and The Garter Girl and what you have going on, it sounds like you have a website launching in the next couple of days, which is exciting.
[01:02:46] JS: I am not trying to push pressure on myself, because I am just coming off of this break and I really tried to make it a break and not like a working break, where I come back stressed out. So it will be launching soon, but my website is just thegartergirl.com, or you can fine me on Instagram @gartergirl.
Yeah, I love connecting with people, I love networking. I love finding other businesses out there and talking about this kind of stuff, because – Yeah. I mean, we’re all in it together. I didn’t go to school for owning your own business.
[01:03:21] DJ: But that’s one of the interesting things I think just across the board with different guesses, how they’ve leveraged their background in what they’re doing today. Whether it would be PR and politics, or we had an another D.C. based vendor, Jamie Kutchman from Marigold on a couple episodes ago and she had a background in sales. She leverages that for –
[01:03:45] JS: And she’s good at that them.
[01:03:47] DJ: Yeah. She leverages that for her current business.
[01:03:50] JS: Yeah. I mean, my background is like in crisis communication. So when I came over to the wedding industry, it was like I applied that same effort and energy and it was like, “Woof!” Because everything is so pretty. Nobody says no in the wedding industry. Everything is so like lovely and it’s easy to sell, right?
[01:04:09] DJ: But it’s a background in crisis communication I feel like for weddings. You could be very valuable being that for some people, at least, it ends up being one of the more stressful days.
[01:04:19] JS: Oh, the actual wedding day, yeah. I mean, what you guys — with the wedding, actually photographing it, I just kind of send my product and [inaudible 01:04:28]. But I do think there’s like tons of cross and overlap, and it’s like, again, having your antennas up and saying like, “Oh, what I do here and how we can apply it there?”
Yeah, I do find, even though they’re totally different, a lot of overlap and using kind of what you know. Like Jamie at Marigold & Grey, like what she knows is the sales and she’s really good at it and she brings that perspective, because that’s what she knows.
[01:05:01] DJ: Yeah, for sure. Well, I want to thank you for joining me this morning. Like I said, we have a bunch more that we could talk about. So hopefully we can get you back on the show to talk about some of those other things, but I’m really excited for people to listen to especially the media aspect of getting your business started, because I think that kind of stuff, it’s not talked a lot about today, but is still useful today.
[01:05:23] JS: It’s free.
[01:05:24] DJ: And free, that’s right. So thank you.
[01:05:27] JS: All right. Thank you so much.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[01:05:31] DJ: Thanks for tuning in to the Brands that Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to daveyandkrista.com.
[END]
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