Episode 61: Growing your Business without a Large Audience with Ellen Yin

Welcome to So, Here’s the Thing! Does having a small social media following make you feel like you can’t run a successful business? We’ve got great news for you—YOU CAN.

Ellen Yin joins us to discuss a few unpopular opinions when it comes to how your audience size relates to your success, even going as far as calling the swipe-up overrated. Listen in as she shares how you can organically sell to your existing audience without being salesy in the DMs!

Ellen Yin is the founder of Cubicle to CEO, an online membership teaching service providers how to monetize their skills and use a step by step client attraction system to create their first $10K month – without a large audience or complicated marketing strategies. Through her social media agency, Ellen Yin Media LLC, Ellen has worked with multi-million dollar brands, Fortune 500 executives, and best-selling authors. She has been featured on MTV and in publications like Glamour magazine, The Penny Hoarder, Women’s Health, and Her Campus. Ellen is also the host of the award-winning Cubicle to CEO Podcast, which features weekly interviews with top business leaders and successful entrepreneurs.

Meet Ellen (2:09)

Scaling & Diversifying in Business (6:18)

The Swipe Up is Overrated (9:34)

Clarifying Your Messaging & Optimizing Your Bio (13:57)

Sell Organically without Being Salesy in the DMs (19:34)

Unpopular Opinion (22:15)

Links:

ellenyin.com

ellenyin.com/getclients

instagram.com/missellenyin

REVIEW THE TRANSCRIPT BELOW!

Laylee Emadi 0:05
Welcome to so here’s the thing where we share candid conversations that lift the veil on what it takes to find success, even if that means sharing a few unpopular opinions. I’m your host, Laylee Emadi, grab some coffee or cocktail. And let’s get real. Oh, I am so excited to have you on the show, Ellen. Okay. So you are incredible. I adore you, we have already had a really great conversation about this similar topic. For my conference, the creative entrepreneur conference. It’s a free virtual conference that you were kind enough to partake in. And I’m so excited to get that into the hands of our community members. But we’re really excited to have even more of a candid conversation with you here on the podcast. But tell us all about yourself. And, you know, like your history and tell us about your podcast and your program, because you’re freaking awesome. And I want everybody to get to know you a little bit better.

Ellen 1:01
Oh, my gosh, you are the best like cheerleader ever. Thank you, Laylee.

I’m so excited to be on your show, honor to be part of the conference. So my name is Ellen. And I am the host of The Cubicle the CEO podcast. I’m also the creator of Cubicle to CEO in annual membership, helping service space entrepreneurs make their first $10,000 month without a large audience or posting every day. And my business started over three years ago at the beginning of 2018. Well, actually, let me backtrack two months, at the end of 2017, I left my corporate job without a backup plan, just quit, don’t worry. I mean, I gave my notice. So I was. So like, I literally left everyone hanging, but I didn’t have anything lined up after and at the time, when I quit, I totally thought I was just going to apply for another marketing job, maybe move to a bigger city. I had no intention of being an entrepreneur. But what happened was during that job search process, I actually got reconnected to a co worker at the job that I had left. And him and his wife owned these local coffee businesses. And they heard through the grapevine that I knew a thing or two about Instagram, and were wondering if I could help get their accounts off the ground. So I said yes, because it sounded like a fun project. I liked them, I wanted to help them. And you know, it was it was a small project was $300. And I think what was so profound about that opportunity, though, was it opened my eyes to Oh, I have a skill set that I can monetize, that people are actually willing to pay me for. And if I can get them as a client, I know I can do this, again, I can I can get another client and another client and bigger accounts and you know, greater scope. And so that’s kind of how it built. And within the first 12 months being in business, we had scaled that to a six figure Social Media Marketing Agency. And for the first couple years, we were really focused on high ticket done for you Client Services. And then in 2020, we made a huge pivot in our business, where we really scaled back our client services, we now only have a handful and we’re not taking on any new clients. And we put all of our energy and focus into digital products, courses, and my my online membership and scaling that. And so that’s what we’ve been doing for the last year. And we’ve now had the opportunity to serve over 6000 entrepreneurs, and really help people sell with small audiences online. So that’s my passion. I’m super, super excited to be be a voice in this space and tell you guys you don’t have to do everything. You don’t have to stress yourself out being on the content hamster wheel, there is a way to to market like a minimalists. That’s, that’s my thing.

Laylee Emadi 3:52
Oh my gosh, I love that market like a minimalist. Oh, speaking to my heart. And I love hearing. This is why I love hearing people’s stories. Like, honestly, the whole accidental entrepreneur thing happens all the time. But I love what you said about Finally, like seeing that there is something that you can charge for that you’re good at. That’s just an like I want to say almost like a natural skill set that you didn’t necessarily think to monetize on before. I think that happens a lot. There’s this huge conversation right now about diversifying your revenue streams and how important that is and how 2020 really taught us that that is so important to not put all of your eggs in one basket. And so a lot of service providers, I think are like really grasping at like, Oh my gosh, well what else can I do? Like I don’t even know I have no idea what what additional revenue stream or what additional offering I could create or share about and I love that you kind of organically found yours. Do you have any advice for people who maybe like that opportunity won’t come up for them to be shown something They can monetize? Like, what would you tell to one of your membership students who is a service provider who wants to scale or diversify?

Ellen 5:10
I always ask people, what are you the go to person for and your circle of friends and your personal network and your professional network? Because I think the questions that you get the most often are very illuminating to tell you how people view you in terms of an expert in a specific area. And so sometimes, we’re so good at things or things come so second nature to us that we just feel like it’s it’s normal, like everyone, everyone can, you know, so their own clothes, everyone can train a dog with no problem. Everyone just has all the best outfit ideas for date night, you know, those things come really natural to some people. And so for them, they’re like, there’s no way someone would ever pay me for this knowledge or the skill set? Because? Because it seems so second nature, but you have to understand that that’s because that’s your gift. That’s your talent. And there’s so many people like me, if you asked me to help style you for a date night, like, Oh, good luck. Don’t take any pictures. I don’t know. Or like, if you asked me to train your dog or to so use something, oh, gosh, like homak, I need a refresher. So just realize that skills are so unique to you. And if you don’t know how to diversify your income, just start paying attention, start listening, and really look at what are the people in my audience in my community? In my network? What are they asking me? What have I done recently to help someone with an existing skill set? Or the knowledge in my head? And how do I take that one example, and actually build an offer out of it that can impact more people? Oh, my gosh,

Laylee Emadi 7:01
I love that. I hope y’all if you were not paying attention, you guys, like go rewind, what is this 1994 go back, get back and listen to what Ellen just said. That is the most bomb advice. And actually, that’s how I created the creative educator Academy. It was not my idea. It was someone else’s idea of this one of my industry peers who I love to death, we’re such good friends. And she told me, I am wanting to create a course. But I have no idea how to teach and like, I wish I had your background like you can create curriculum, can you help me create the curriculum for my course. And as I was helping her, she was like, you need to give this to everybody in the industry. People don’t know how to teach. And to me, I was like, This isn’t? This isn’t a thing. Like it’s not that hard. But it is I mean paint by paying attention to what other people are asking from you. We just all have such differing areas of expertise and such different, different upbringings and backgrounds that we just don’t think about what somebody else needs. So that is just golden advice. I’m obsessed with it. Okay, so you know, we’ve listened to what people have told us, we have ideas. Now, how do we get to 10 k months without a large audience on Instagram, everybody wants to swipe up. Everybody wants 10 K, you and I had a good conversation off the air. A couple weeks back when we recorded for the conference. And we were like we should have hit record. And you were telling me about the swipe up and how it’s overrated. Tell me all about that.

Ellen 8:26
Oh, yeah, the swipe is so overrated guys. I, I know a lot of you want to get to 10 K, because you really covet that swipe up. And it makes you feel more official. And everybody wants to be able to say, you know, swipe up for the link or whatever. And yeah, sure, it’s fun, and it’s a novelty. But at the same time, when you really look at the data. And this is and I’m speaking on, you know, my personal experience, but also the experience of a lot of my friends in this industry. If you have really great content that calls people to action, and your and your profile, your bio is optimized, I’m willing to bet you’re going to get so many more click throughs in the link in your bio than any swipe up, you put in your stories. And so don’t feel like if you can’t add a swipe up link that for some reason, that is what’s hindering you from growing in your business, because it’s not that that’s just a lie. So the way that I like to approach Instagram is different for most people, because and I always like to provide context for the advice that I’m giving these, I want to make it clear that I am specifically speaking to service providers who work one on one with clients. If you are, I don’t know, an e commerce shop owner, this may not apply to you. So just be aware. But the way I look at Instagram is if you view Instagram as someone where your objective is to have a massive following and get a ton of engagement. You’re going to approach that platform very differently than someone who looks at it and says I want to use Instagram as a traffic generator to get sales. Okay, two totally different end goals and the approaches are different. So I fall in the latter camp, I really could care less what the algorithm does, how many likes I get how many followers I have, I just literally don’t care. So I’m like the worst Instagram educator in that aspect. But also maybe might change your life to think about it that way. So how I approach Instagram is that, I really believe that you don’t need a large audience because your ideal clients already exist. On Instagram, it’s not like you have to create them from scratch. These people exist, they’re using the platform every single day, they are just conveniently congregated, in communities built by other people, which is so helpful like you, like if you think about who you want to reach. Think about the key influencers, those types of people already follow. Think about what hashtags communities they already exist in. This is like, you know, all the traffic that you want, just pushed into one convenient location. And all you have to do is go stand in front of that traffic source, connect with that traffic source and bring those eyeballs to your page. So who cares if you only have 100 followers, because your 100,000 dream clients are already congregated somewhere else and you can bring that traffic over to your profile.

Laylee Emadi 11:23
Oh my gosh, what a like freeing and refreshing way to think about Instagram. I personally always say like, I know a lot of people have a love hate relationship with Instagram. I just personally love it. I have fun there. And I don’t really worry that much about like, what else is going on, which probably is not like the best strategy, but I like it. Okay, so I love this, I love this concept. I would love to like do like a deeper dive into it and talk about like, a few ways that that we can get in front of those pre existing communities like the traffic sources that you want to go stand in front of like, how do we stand in front of them. And, and you mentioned something earlier, that stuck out to me about optimizing your bio, things like that. I mean, this is embarrassing, I’m going to admit this, because these are, these are my people and you’re one of my people. But like, I spent, we had an annual team planning retreat in January, where I like, flew out my team members, we all like holed up in a house for like a couple of days. And we spent like an hour and a half on my Instagram bio. Because we realized that our messaging has to be like, so spot on, it has to be so clear, it has to be so concise. And Instagram is amazing. because it forces you to be concise. So I’d love to hear how to get in front of those traffic sources that you mentioned. And be I’d love to hear like your tips and tricks on optimizing that bio. And being really clear in your messaging. And is that important anywhere? Is that just something I think is important?

Ellen 12:49
Oh my gosh, it’s so important. It’s it’s, it’s the most important thing you can do your messaging and your clarity is what drives conversions. And you know, we have a mutual friend Haley, right, she always says clever, doesn’t convert clarity converts. And I love that I that message is like ingrained in my brain because I think it’s so, so valuable. And here’s Okay, let me start with the bio. The way I like to describe the bio is I tell my community that is your 24/7 billboard, it never sleeps, even if you you know, ditch your phone for three weeks your bio, if it’s if it’s optimized, it should be converting for you all the time, it should be selling for you all the time. And every single post on your feed should be a little unit in your sales army, pre selling your people crushing their objections. And always educating them on taking that next step. So just realize how important it is for you to have a lot of clarity and intention and what you are creating. That’s why I don’t post every day. I mean, literally, there are months where I post one time, it doesn’t matter because my content is all evergreen, meaning that’s relevant no matter when somebody finds it. So I’m not stressing out about trying to be consistent about posting, because I don’t care about how many likes I get again, it’s all about perspective and what your end objective is, right? So with your bio, someone needs to be able to tell in literally 10 seconds if you’re speaking to them. So you need to make sure you have a clear call out in terms of who you’re talking to. What is that identity? How do they describe themselves? And what is the one specific result that you are providing them? And what is the one biggest thing that’s standing in their way of having that result? That should be in your bio that should be super crystal clear. And in my membership, we actually take people through a very in depth market research process to help them craft that perfect power of one statement. That’s what I call it and we do lots of lots of workshopping to really help people nail that. So you know, I think it’s I think that’s a great place to start in terms of optimizing your bio and making sure those keywords are you know, in in your name In your name field and that they’re searchable. Now moving to, to traffic sources and how to generate traffic from other people’s traffic sources. I think we often forget that social media is about being actually social. And so a lot of times people post things in there. They’re like, Oh, woe is me, Instagram hates me. Nobody sees my content. And then I asked him, Well, what are what exactly are you doing? Like? Are you just like posting and they’re just like, waiting for waiting for magic to happen? Because Yeah, it might not happen unless you, you know, hit the jackpot and go mini viral or whatever. And so I actually spend probably 90% of my time on Instagram connecting, and only 10% of the time, do I ever really create content, because I’m very intentional with the content that I create. So, for me, when I’m on Instagram, I’m always thinking about Okay, again, where do my existing ideal clients or customers already hanging out? And how do I make them feel seen? It’s not about you, you become interesting by first being interested. So stop trying to show up in people’s DNS and sell your things stop trying to cold pitch or, or you know, whatever it is that you do, make sure that you’re taking the time to actually consume other people’s content and connect with them on what is top of mind for them, what’s important to them, what’s interesting to them, so always make it about the other person. And if you can spend a solid amount of time every single week connecting with other people, I guarantee you just based on human curiosity, your traffic on your profile will go up.

Laylee Emadi 16:35
Oh my gosh, I love this advice. So much. Like you guys can’t see me but Elon can and I’m like throwing up my praise hands. And I’m like, Yes. Because I there is there are a few things in this world that I hate more than being cold pitched on Instagram dm, I just assume it’s spam. And I know it’s not sometimes I’m just like, delete block, move on. I cannot handle it. Like it is not a conversation. I want to have an Instagram in my dm. Like I said, I do not have a love hate relationship with Instagram. I just love it. And these people are making me hate it. So that’s, you know, shade. Just stop doing it. Like, stop right now. Listen, Ellen. She’s an expert. This is her job. I love that. I can say that. Because I just me hating. It is not expertise. It’s just my opinion. But I will say like, I feel like I learned more about things not to do when somebody approaches me and sells in a way I don’t want to be sold to. So thank you for sharing that. So when you’re engaging with these people, what is it what’s like a great organic way, I love that you mentioned that people need to listen before they speak or that you know, you need to actually show interest in order for people to be interested. So once you’ve started that rapport and you’ve started that relationship, like what’s an organic way, I think people get really nervous to then come across as salesy. If you want to bring up like, Oh, I have this thing going on, that you would be a good fit for. Or if somebody reaches out. I feel like I’ve maybe talked to you about this before. If someone reaches out and they have a question about your program or your offering or whatever it is that you do whatever your business is, and you’re like, yeah, here’s the information you asked for. And then they’re like, ooh, I can’t I can’t I can’t do that right now. Like I can’t afford it. I don’t have time for it. Like they have a more objections. How do you then like, as a, you know, like social friend? How do you approach situations like that in order to grow your actual business?

Ellen 18:27
Yeah, these are all great questions. And first off, if you are listening to this right now and you’re resonating with this conversation, I want you to know that obviously we only have you know a short amount of time here so I can’t get to nitty gritty but if you do want to watch my free masterclass on this topic, I go way more in depth and you can get that at Ellen yen comm slash get clients and, you know, we’ll cover more analogies, more examples, blah, blah, blah. But short answer is that when it comes to connection in the DM’s and not being salesy in the DM’s, the only time you can ever come across salesy, is when you tell someone to do something that they don’t want to do. That’s when you come across pushy, desperate salesy. And so, in the DM’s I always believe that when you when someone’s like asking about, you know, your program, and maybe they have an objection, or even if you’re just having a natural conversation, don’t tell someone, hey, I think you’re a good fit for blah, blah, blah. And here’s all the information about it. Because what you’re doing right there is you are taking their autonomy away and you are assuming something about them, you’re assuming based on you know, whatever that they are a good fit for XYZ, but you don’t know that because you didn’t ask. And so I always say treat your conversations in your DM’s like a tennis match. It should be one serve another serve back, one, serve another serve back. Not Like a word vomit, and then hoping someone takes action from that. So when you’re having conversation, be a detective, look for clues, ask questions. And if someone vocalizes something where you actually do believe that one of your services or your programs would be a good fit for them, don’t assume and tell them that ask them and say, Hey, it sounds like you’re saying, confirm whatever it is that you think they said, I actually have something that could help you with maybe insert whatever, you know, pain point they have? Would you? Would you like the link for that? Or would would that be helpful to you ask them and if they give you their their, their consent, then you can send them more information, I think that’s really important is that in this day and age of digital conversations where everything is so so quick, we forget that we’re talking to a human and that nobody likes to be, you know, dictated, or told what to do they really want to feel like they’re in control, and have the ability to say yes or no to that. So I hope that helps a little bit. I don’t know, I know, you asked a bunch of questions. So I’m sorry if I missed one of those. But does that kind of answer what you were talking about lately?

Laylee Emadi 21:10
Oh, absolutely. Yes. Sorry. I know. I’m like rapid firing questions at you. So pumped about it. That was perfect and totally, totally answered my question. And I feel like, honestly, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just like feeling super woowoo today, but like everything that you’re saying, I think is such a great life advice, not just Instagram advice. Like, I think everything that you’ve said so far is something that people should apply in real life, as well as on social media, whenever you’re speaking to anybody in your business or in your life, like paying attention to people’s signs and paying attention to what they are reacting to, and making sure that it is like a tennis match that it’s a back and forth. And that’s not just a you kind of, like you said, taking away their autonomy and just assuming things is just key life advice there. So thank you so much for sharing that. Okay, so you guys know, I like to keep things bite sized. That was so much content, so much great information. But I have to end with my signature question. What is your unpopular opinion on growing your Instagram in order to grow your business?

Ellen 22:15
My unpopular opinion is that you do not have to grow your Instagram to grow your business. That’s it. I mean, I know a lot of you probably, you know, look at that statement. Say that No way. But I promise you guys like, there are people I know, who have millions of followers and literally, they like they’re broke, they can’t, you know, pay their bills. And then I also know people who have like 2000 followers, who are seven figure business owners, if you understand how to actually utilize traffic and drive it to a converting sales system, which is, you know, what I teach teach my community, that’s when you can build a profitable business. It’s really not about the number of followers you have.

Laylee Emadi 23:01
I love that. And I completely agree. I mean, honestly, I talk about this a lot on the show. I I do not have a massive following whatsoever. But we are very comfortable. I take care of my team. We’re good like I it’s not something that’s top of mind for me, because it doesn’t need to be my following as loyal. My funnels are set up like I’m good. And so I like to encourage that, like, yeah, it’s fun to have a lot of followers. It’s fun to swipe up like, all I love people, so the more people the better. But at the end of the day, I think people tend to put so much stock into it that it prevents them from moving forward and actually doing the work that can that can help them succeed. So I really appreciate your time guys. We’re gonna link all of Ellen’s stuff her membership links and her masterclass and all the all the ways to get in touch with her podcast. But Ellen, what’s the best place to like hang out with you?

Ellen 23:53
Definitely my podcast every Monday Cubicle to SEO podcast and in my in my DM’s on Instagram at MissEllenYin.

Laylee Emadi 24:01
I love that. Thank you so much for being here. You’re amazing. Thank you for show notes and resources mentioned on today’s episode head to so here’s the thing podcast.com and if you’re enjoying the podcast, I’d love to read your review in iTunes. Thanks so much for listening and I’ll catch you in the next episode.

The post Episode 61: Growing your Business without a Large Audience with Ellen Yin appeared first on Laylee Emadi | Coach for Creative Educators.