Joe Casabona [00:00:00]:
Foreign hey everybody, and welcome to episode 169 of How I Built It. Now, before we get started, I want to tell you about a free PDF guide that you can download from howibuilt.it 169 and that is a guide on how to build websites faster. On this show we talk about tools and processes to help your business grow. Well, if you are making websites or you are creating content and want to own that platform, you want to make sure that setting up your website is as easy as possible. This guide is for you. It is five Tools to Build Websites Faster. And you can find that over at Howibuilt it 169. Now, today we are talking about a topic I've tried to avoid on this show and that's COVID 19.
Joe Casabona [00:00:58]:
And in a way it was kind of silly for me to avoid it because it is affecting our lives and especially small businesses are either seeing a slowdown in work, a lot of people are maybe furloughed or unemployed and they're looking for new opportunities and they're not sure where to turn. And so I wanted to put together an advice episode. So I reached out to a bunch of my friends. I asked if they would record messages for you, the listeners, about what they're doing to pivot or change. And I'm putting it out now because we're a few months into this at this point, and so we're beyond the gut reaction part of the pandemic and the stay at home orders. And we're settling into the okay, what are things going to look like moving forward? How can I help people? How can I serve? How can I make sure that my business stays afloat during the pandemic? So we'll get into all of that advice in a minute. But first I do want to tell you or give you a word from our sponsors, ahrefs. This episode is brought to you by ahrefs.
Joe Casabona [00:02:14]:
Ahrefs is an all in one SEO toolset that solves solve that problem. It gives you the tools you need to rank your website in Google and get tons of search traffic. As someone who struggles with what kind of content to create or what's ranking best in Google or really anything SEO related, Ahrefs has been instrumental in increasing traffic to my website over the holidays. I had my best quarter for affiliate income because Ahrefs showed me my most popular pages and topics and I was able to optimize my content and my gift guides and update them accordingly. I would have never updated one of my gift guides because I Didn't think it was that popular. Ahrefs actually showed me it is my most popular page. Ahrefs makes competitive analysis easy as well. Their tools show you how your competitors are getting traffic from Google and why.
Joe Casabona [00:03:12]:
You can see the pages and content that send them the most search traffic, find out exactly the keywords they're ranking for and which backlinks are helping them rank. From there, you can replicate or improve on their strategies. Now, as I said, I don't think I'm getting significant search traffic. So I use Ahrefs tools to help find topics worth creating pages or content for. I can easily see estimated search volumes and gauge traffic potential with their Keyword Explorer tool. It's been a fantastic addition to my toolkit. Just this morning I learned that my everyday carry post has been popular. Lots of people are coming, so I think it's time to update that because it's five years old.
Joe Casabona [00:04:02]:
If you want to gain a following or just improve traffic to your website, Ahrefs is the tool for you. You can get a seven day trial for $7 over@ahrefs.com that's a hrefs.com for a seven day trial for $7. And if you're anything like me, you'll be hooked. Again, that's a hrefs.com for a seven day trial for $7. And now back to the show. Okay, so we are back. First, I want to talk about. So I will talk about the things that I'm doing kind of sprinkled in throughout the episode.
Joe Casabona [00:04:50]:
But a few of my friends, six of my friends were able to record messages and I think that they cover a pretty decent range of changes that they've made. And I want to start with some of the, maybe some of the more obvious or maybe just the things that people probably think to do or the things that they think they should do. And that's changing their service in some way. Not completely, of course, but pivoting to take their service and help the people who are most affected. So first up is my friend Shannon Schaefer. Schaefer. Shannon Schaefer. You might remember her from earlier this year and her talking about her processes and how to not necessarily automate the whole process, but put a good process in place to help grow your business.
Joe Casabona [00:05:44]:
Well, let's hear from Shannon about what she's doing during the pandemic to help pivot her business.
Shannon Schaefer [00:05:52]:
Hey, Joe. So, yeah, we had to make some quick changes to our company. We were heavily into both membership sites and also into brochure sites. For local businesses. And what we found is we were able to take our experience with membership sites and WooCommerce that side of the house and quickly translate it into e commerce sites for restaurants locally here who needed to get their menus online. And for some of our other clients who previously weren't selling physical products online, we were able to help them. So while we didn't have a ton of experience in the true e commerce space, we've been using WooCommerce for memberships and other memberships plugins. And we just took that experience and very quickly became a e commerce shop.
Shannon Schaefer [00:06:36]:
And we are pushing out several new WooCommerce sites here in the next couple weeks. So while our core offering is still available, we have let our customers know that they need to get their businesses online, specifically in the restaurant space. Some of our retail customers who only had a brick and mortar space. So we've kind of partnered with them to help them get their products out there and still be able to do business. The other thing that we've done is help with COVID messaging. We do a lot of email marketing and that was important that we were like, hey, now's not the time to stop. So we've actually ramped up the amount of email marketing that we're doing for our clients. Brochure sites are kind of on hold.
Shannon Schaefer [00:07:21]:
You know, people don't need. They need something interactive, something where they can actually make sales online. So sometimes you just gotta stop and think about how your business can evolve. So for me, I think that what I've learned in this pandemic quickly is that sometimes we have something that we do really well that can translate to another line of business. And instead of sitting on it, we were pushed to make it happen. So hopefully we will be doing e commerce sites at scale in the near future.
Joe Casabona [00:07:52]:
All right, so I want to thank Shannon for calling in a special shout out to her because she did it basically as soon as I asked, which was amazing because you never know, people are busy and I wanted to get this out as soon as possible. So thank you, Shannon. You can find out more about Shannon and everybody in this episode over at the show Notes for this episode at how I built.it 169. But the important thing to remember about what Shannon said here is that she was doing brochure sites and membership sites and she was able to then take and use that experience to help people build e commerce sites. I know that she works with a lot of local clients and some not so local clients, but she's communicating with her brick and mortar stores. She's helping them get online so that they can continue to do business and helped with their COVID 19 messaging, which we'll hear about from somebody else later. But what I loved about her answer was she said, now is not the time to stop. And I think that's so important for us to remember and for us to relay to our clients or customers.
Joe Casabona [00:09:03]:
This is a time where people are probably worried about money and they're thinking that they should pull back and go into complete defense mode. Um, but you're, you know, you're not gonna score any goals if you're just playing defense. So I really miss sports. So that's what that sports analogy was brought to you by. Um, so if you can help your clients go on the offense and be proactive about their businesses, I think that Shannon offers a great way. She took her experience and her team's experience, and they were able to use it in a way to help businesses where they need it most. Now the next guest is Jason Reznik. He kicked off this season talking about finding the ideal clients, and he offers a few pieces of advice based on the services he offers as well.
Joe Casabona [00:09:51]:
So let's hear from Jason.
Jason Reznik [00:09:53]:
Yeah. So how my business has changed. Well, my business has two arms, one of which is helping designers and developers build systems and build predictable income as well as specializing. And what I did there was, I have a membership called feast Club. It's $5 a month. It's really just a community that's built on a rising tide, raises all boats. And the idea behind that is, is, look, we learn each and every single day. We run into problems each and every single day as we build our client services business.
Jason Reznik [00:10:33]:
And so things like when you create a template on how to, you know, craft up a sales page, boom, you put it in Google Docs. Well, I share that. Inside of the community, we also have a private Slack group. We have a secret podcast. So it's really just a community. Like I said, it's five bucks a month, and that's a low barrier to entry. And it's really just there to pay for the platform. The other side of the business, the client services side.
Jason Reznik [00:11:01]:
Well, Nurturekit Co It's. I've built a day rate into my services. Now I serve high, large, large lists inside of ConvertKit specifically. And I've done custom builds and strategies and marketing plans and so on and so forth. Well, there's a. Essentially, there's a new market as a result of the pandemic. And it's those people that are starting to focus on the side, hustle a little bit more focus on their email list. It's also those that are saying, hey, look, I don't know that I want to go back to the office anymore and so I want to build up my Etsy store or whatever, right? And so those that are now starting to build, well, they can hire me for a day.
Jason Reznik [00:11:53]:
They go to Nurturekit Co, they click the button, they essentially hire me for a day to bang out some tasks inside of their ConvertKit. And these can be anything from setting up lead magnets to integrating Zapier and their website and Then Stripe and ConvertKit and so on and so forth. It's really deliverables is on the day, not necessarily the performance of these things, but more my experience and my knowledge comes with it. So that's how my business has shaped itself over the past 60, 90 days. And I tell you, there is lots of opportunities out there as long as you are ready to listen to them.
Joe Casabona [00:12:35]:
Okay, so I like what Jason said a lot because he didn't really change anything about his business, but he made his services more accessible. He opened up a community for $5 a month to help business owners in his position or in a similar position to his, which is so accessible. I mean, $5 a month, you are probably saving that on the coffee that you're not getting at Starbucks every day or every week. So I think that's a really great investment and it's a really great thing what Jason is offering there. The other thing that he's doing is for the other side of his business, the consulting side of his business is he's offering a day rate where he can give his clients, his customers, some consulting, some deliverable in the course of a day. And in an economy where you want to try to act fast and implement changes quickly, I think that again, this is just a really great idea. And those two things are something that you can start doing today, right? You can sign up for a Clarity account or set up a WordPress plugin where people can book your time for money. Or Calendly offers that now for, I think $12 a month, you can charge for consulting calls, which I'm a huge fan of, Calendly.
Joe Casabona [00:13:59]:
So you can do things like that to offer advice or membership or some sort of membership benefit or subscription benefit to people to help them grow their business. And the key with the community part is it's at $5 a month, I think that it's really accessible to a large amount of people. I know if I was part of Jason's audience or if I was in the position where he. For the people that he's talking to, $5 a month would be a no brainer. I mean, I pay more than that to a podcast network a month because they deliver really good content that helps me and keeps me entertained. So it's well worth it. But so to pay $5 a month to really help my business and get resources, I think that's just fantastic. So thank you, Jason, for calling in and offering that fantastic advice.
Joe Casabona [00:14:58]:
So changing your services in some way, pivoting to focus on a different area where you still have the area of expert, I think that's the really important part here. Don't just get into a different avenue. Right. You see a lot of people just making face masks now. And I think that only really makes sense if you have the ability to make face masks. Right. An example is Jeff Sheldon of uggbunk. He works with a T shirt manufacturer.
Joe Casabona [00:15:28]:
They make the most comfortable T shirts on the planet. This is not a planned spa or anything like that, but they are so comfortable. And they started making masks too from the material that they had for T shirts. And I think it's helpful. It's a good pivot because they had the ability to do that. And Jeff is selling them on his website for $10 each. Not huge margins, but he can help out his manufacturer and his screen printer because they do the logo on it and it's just a great pivot for the manufacturer, help keeping people employed and things like that. So I would ask you or challenge you to think about what are you doing and what does your client base or your customer base need right now? For me, I have really doubled down on the podcasting, online course and gear aspect of things.
Joe Casabona [00:16:26]:
And it was made pretty apparent from my YouTube channel which content was going to do the best because my Sony A6400 video started getting like thousands of watches a day. So for me, you know, I dabble in a lot of areas and I really want to focus that down. But I realized that a lot of people are stuck at home. They probably have that time to start the podcast that they've been thinking about starting. Maybe they want to move some of the stuff that they do online to an online course or offering webinars and things like that. So that's the pivot that I made in my services. I really doubled down on making sure I get my podcast course out, which here's a little breaking news, exclusive news is that the Videos are almost all edited and they should be ready to go within the next week or so. So really, really excited about that and the direction I'm taking that in and I was able to do that cause I had some clarity from my audience and the things that they want to know.
Joe Casabona [00:17:30]:
So again, think about what you're doing and how you can pivot to help your audience. And if you don't know what your audience needs or wants, well, you could always ask them. So before we get into the next piece of advice or the next area of advice, I should say I do want to mention a new sponsor for this week and that is CircleCI. This episode is sponsored by CircleCI. Whether you're on a development team, manage a development team yourself, or you have a business that relies on working software, a good process is so important to making sure you're creating high quality work. Continuous integration or the ability to check and manage code automatically can help you and your developers stream streamline the process in a big way. And CircleCI is here to help. Designed for modern software teams, CircleCI's continuous integration and delivery platform helps developers push code with confidence.
Joe Casabona [00:18:38]:
Trusted by thousands of companies from four person startups to Fortune 500 businesses, CircleCI helps teams take their software from idea to to delivery quickly, safely and at scale. Visit Howibuilt IT CircleCI to learn why high performing DevOps teams use CircleCI to automate and accelerate their continuous integration and delivery pipelines. As someone who's worked on big coding projects for big companies with distributed development teams, I can tell you that continuous integration tools have helped us make sure we deliver working code to our clients. It helps instill trust in our team and it lets our team focus on solving new problems instead of dealing with the same ones over and over again. So once again learn how CircleCI can help you and your business at howibuilt.it circleci. As a special bonus for how I built it listeners, circleci is having a virtual raffle where you can win a pair of the newest Sony noise canceling headphones, improve your team's processes and enter for a chance to win at howibuilt it. Circleci. That's C I R C L E C I and now back to the show.
Joe Casabona [00:20:04]:
All right, thanks again to Circleci for sponsoring. Really excited to have them on board and so let's move into the next topic and some people are pivoting their processes right or their resources and how they're doing things. So I think the most evident for this and I'm really excited that my friend Rob McManus, he's a lawyer, he called in. And I'm really excited to hear this because this is an industry that is traditionally paper based. They do a lot of in person meetings. If they have to go to court, it's in person court. And that's all changing now. So let's hear from Rob about how their law firm has been affected by COVID 19 and what they're doing.
Rob McManus [00:20:52]:
This epidemic has really made our business change, in my opinion, for the better. It's really forced us into the 21st century in terms of technology. As someone who grew up in this computer era, a lot of the stuff was second nature to me, but hadn't been implemented in our office. For instance, we were still using a fax machine, still using the mail for things that could be easily emailed, making paper copies four times over for stuff that could easily be scanned into a PDF document and sent. All unnecessary costs in today's world. So we are finally becoming more and more paperless, which was a goal we talked about probably two years ago and did absolutely nothing for. It also exposed a lot of holes in our IT system, which forced us to go to a more efficient provider and also a cheaper provider. So while this is an awful pandemic, I think ultimately for our business, it's going to improve our bottom line because a lot of unnecessary costs now are going to be wiped away when all this is finally over and we're back to, you know, regular life.
Joe Casabona [00:22:04]:
All right, thank you, Rob. I again, I really appreciate you taking the time to call in. So they are digitizing, they are embracing technology. And as Rob said, it's something they've been talking about doing for two years and they finally been pushed to do that because they can't have in person meetings right now. They're based in New York, a little north of the city, but still an area that is generally affected by what's going on in the city. So Rob has gotten that push and his law firm has gotten that push to finally implement some better, more efficient and money saving processes, which I think is absolutely fantastic. That's why I'm so glad that he offered that advice and was willing to call in. So thanks again, Rob.
Joe Casabona [00:22:54]:
On that same token, my friend Ross Johnson. Ross is a designer out in Michigan. He works with a lot of local clients, as he'll tell you. But I like what he's been doing as well. He works. He actually specifically mentioned a lawyer. He helped his lawyer client with their messaging and stuff like that. So I shouldn't be spoiling what Ross is about to say.
Joe Casabona [00:23:21]:
Uh, so let's just get to Ross's recording.
Ross Johnson [00:23:25]:
So, as a co founder of a small, smaller web design development agency, we've had to adapt significantly based on the pandemic. Most of the work that we do, I would say over 50%, maybe 60% of the work we do is, has been mostly with local clients. And because of the pandemic and the fact that we can't meet in person, the need to find or maybe the desire to work with an agency that you can see face to face and have in person meetings is less relevant. So between that and the fact that a lot of companies and organizations are afraid to spend money or have been told that they can't spend money, we've needed to become significantly more proactive in our marketing efforts where, you know, before we were kind of so busy it was really hard to market ourselves. Now we're making that one of the primary focuses. So I've been doing a lot more webinars, a lot more activity and outreach on LinkedIn, our email marketing efforts. You know, all the things that we were, you know, kind of telling our clients to do and doing for our clients, we're now doing for ourselves, as well as reaching out to our existing clients and being proactive on figuring out how we can help them. For example, we had a client who is very negatively impacted by the lockdown.
Ross Johnson [00:24:52]:
Basically, all of his clientele dried up. And we helped him, you know, put up some messaging on his site to make it clear that his services were, in fact, open. Because, you know, a lot of people, at least at the beginning of the pandemic, where unsure you land on a website, one of the first things you want to know is, can I still hire you or buy from you? So we made that very clear. We'd also kind of set up this automated inbound campaign that had been running for a few years, but other than the automated emails that went out, he never really used that list. So we helped them set up a few outgoing emails to let people know that he's still able to help them. In this case, he's a lawyer and that everything could be done remotely, including the court hearings. And that generated a ton of leads for him. So we were very proactive at kind of looking at each client that we currently have or had in the past and figuring out are there ways that we can help them and that that has been really effective.
Ross Johnson [00:25:57]:
We're actually, you know, still really, really busy. It's hard to fit in, you know, The. The marketing efforts now that we're doing that, we've deemed, you know, one of the most essential parts of our business.
Joe Casabona [00:26:06]:
All right, thank you, Ross. And so, like I started to say before. Before he called in, is they're working mostly with local clients, but they. They're becoming more proactive. Right. So they've changed their process to, again, kind of what. What Shannon and Jason mentioned was go on the offense and do more outreach, do more webinars, become more proactive. And because of that, they were able to help some clients that they currently have improve their business.
Joe Casabona [00:26:42]:
So, again, as you're thinking about what you can change, think about what you're doing and what you could do better. Right. If you have an intake form, but you're not actively reaching out to people. I know cold outreach is really hard. I. It's something that I don't like to do, but I've gotten sponsors and clients and customers from doing that cold outreach. And it's not just a generic, hey, dear. So and so I make podcasts.
Joe Casabona [00:27:13]:
Do you? You should have a podcast. Have you heard about podcasts? It's more personalized than that. So it is cold outreach, but the goal is to demonstrate their needs or that you understand their needs in that initial email and make a good impression. So Ross understood what his clients needed and what they were going through. And when he reached out to them, he was able to make a big impact on their business. So really love that. So your second takeaway, aside from what services can you pivot, is how can you change your process? Maybe you can cut away some expenses and save that way, but maybe you can take those savings and put them into something else, like doing some more marketing or more outreach to people that you believe you could be of service to. And speaking of being of service, that is going to be the next section of this episode.
Joe Casabona [00:28:13]:
But first, I want to tell you about our friends at textexpander. Today's episode is brought to you by Smile and their product, textexpander. Save time typing and boost your productivity with textexpander. You know I'm all about automation, and textexpander is a great way to get started with automation. It allows you to create your own snippets for repetitive text you tend to use everywhere. Add the text, create a snippet, and boom. Save precious time and keystrokes. One of my favorite snippets is for my address.
Joe Casabona [00:28:50]:
So instead of typing out my full address and risking typos, I. I simply type $A D D R and Textexpander does the rest, filling in my full address for me. I also have snippets for my street, my city, and my zip code. But that's not all textexpander does. With its advanced snippets, you can create fill ins, pop up fields, and more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. Another one of my favorite and most used used snippets is when I type ppt that will take whatever text I have on my clipboard and convert it to plain text so I'm no longer fighting formatting. When I copy from a Word document, a Google Doc, or a plain HTML page like a website.
Joe Casabona [00:29:38]:
I also use it for common links, email messages, which I can completely customize with fill ins and dropdown menus and even date calculations. I'm currently writing a book and Textexpander has been instrumental with that. Textexpander is available on macOS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad, so pretty much anywhere you do computing. If you've been curious about trying textexpander or automation in general, now's the time. As a listener, you can get 20% off your first year. Just visit textexpander.com podcast and let them know how I built it sent to you. That's textexpander.com podcast for 20% off your first year. And now back to the show.
Joe Casabona [00:30:26]:
All right, fantastic. Thank you again to textexpander. Really love their tool. I think they're absolutely fantastic. So how can we be of service pivoting your time and your content? So first up is my friend Maddie. I specifically reached out to her because I knew what she was doing. So let's just get into her recording and then I'll tell you kind of what I think after that.
Maddie [00:30:56]:
So truth be told, I haven't had to adapt my business a lot since the coronavirus started, affecting business operations for other businesses. Mostly because my business is primarily run online and and in terms of business, I'm still getting a lot of inbound leads every week. I'm still working with pretty much all of the same customers I did prior to this point. But one thing that I have done to adapt my business in a way is freeing up more time to mentor other business owners who are struggling. I usually do weekly office hours and I have just kind of extended the time period and have worked to make those more well known to people so that I can help to be of service. You know, while things are going well for me, I know that's not necessarily the case for everyone else.
Joe Casabona [00:31:53]:
All right, thank You, Maddie. So she, as she said, her business, you know, she is still getting leads. Her business hasn't been impacted that much on the bottom line yet, but she is being more proactive about her office hours and making herself available to those who need it. And I love this idea because it's something that I just decided to start doing as well. I offer a free 15 minute consult to people who are thinking about starting a podcast. And I get to ask them, you know, what's holding you up? What advice do you need? And it's been really great so far. It's been great, I think, for them. You know, they've all been really happy with it, but it's also been great for me because now I get to understand better the problems that people are having with starting a podcast and then I can put out more content to help those people.
Joe Casabona [00:32:49]:
So I just love that idea from Maddie and how she's doing it. And it's very generous over time. Right, because time is so important. I know a lot of people have more time on their hands, but if you're a small business owner like me or like Maddie, you might be in a position where you have less time. So I certainly do have less time because my daughter is. Her daycare is closed and my wife is a nurse. And so there are three days a week where it's just me and the kiddo and I can't work those days or I shouldn't work those days. Right.
Joe Casabona [00:33:20]:
I should be present with my child. So I'm a bit busier now. But I know that that 15 minutes is going to help somebody put out a really fantastic podcast. And that's one of the things I can be generous with. And speaking of, you know, putting out more content and things like that, there's no better person, in my opinion, to talk about putting out tons of content than Bob Dunn or Bob wp. He also called in about what he's doing. So let's hear from Bob now.
Bob Dunn [00:33:53]:
Hey, this is Bob wp And actually when this first hit big time, for a week, I did see some serious downturn in traffic. And as people know, I create content that's the center of my business. But I knew at the same time that people were probably immobilized. So for a moment I thought about, well, should I cut back on the amount of content I was doing? Even though I suspected people would be looking for solutions to sell online? And that really only lasted a moment. So instead I thought, heck, I'll bump up my content. And at that moment, it hit me that I didn't really care about the numbers, the traffic. I figured if I write a post and get five views, that really is as important as getting 500 to 5,000. It really didn't matter to me as long as I figured, hey, you know, if this helps someone.
Bob Dunn [00:34:49]:
So instead of living out or cutting back, I started doubling up on some days and starting a new podcast, actually, and I'm glad I did it.
Joe Casabona [00:34:59]:
All right, thank you, Bob, for calling in. I think that, you know, what he said about seeing a slowdown in traffic and how he was thinking about evaluating exactly what he's doing. I think that is an important thing to do. And then he decided to double down and start putting out helpful content, because, again, people are going to appreciate that, by and large, you might get that one annoying comment. But if you are generous with your time, people will remember that generosity. And so, Bob, doubling down, putting out more content is, again, a strategy that I've decided to employ. That's why I wanted to have Bob on, because I think it echoes and reinforces something that I'm doing. And that's always good, right? If you're doing stuff in a vacuum, you're not really sure.
Joe Casabona [00:35:43]:
Well, Bob has been putting out a ton of content. He even started a new podcast, again, something that I did that I'll talk about shortly, but I think that's really great. And then the last person that I want to bring to you, I said six, but it's actually seven. I guess I can't count. I'm really sorry. Is my friend, Laura Byrne Cristiano. She is a. She works with an agency.
Joe Casabona [00:36:08]:
And so let's hear from her about what they've been doing during the pandemic.
Laura Byrne Cristiano [00:36:14]:
Hi, Joe. So the way that Bethennon Marketing is adapting to the COVID crisis with our clients is that we're having office hours every Friday for one hour. And what office hours is. Think of it kind of like if you were at university and you had office hours where you could go talk to your professor, and you could talk about either upcoming projects or if you had questions, and then the professor would help you out. So it's basically the same process. We email our clients on Wednesday, reminding them that we have office coming up on Friday, and they can come on in and ask us anything they want to know, whether it's content strategy, whether it's taking their website in a new direction, whatever it is, they have us there live for one hour. You know, and really, it depends when people. Some people pop in at the beginning, some People pop in at the end of the hour.
Laura Byrne Cristiano [00:37:07]:
If we have a bunch of people at once, sometimes they have a shared concern. And it's great because a lot of them learn from each other that way. And it all actually does drive new business for us. We had a whole bunch of clients wanting to talk about donation systems, which led to a larger discussion with form and form implementation. So we have a whole bunch of forms that these clients were previously using PDFs in house, that we've established a whole new system for them. The other thing that we're doing is we're making sure, as I mentioned, to send out an email blast, our newsletter to our clients on Wednesday. And on the Wednesday email blast, we make sure that we talk about office hours. But we also provide a snip of something that will help them succeed during the COVID crisis.
Laura Byrne Cristiano [00:37:55]:
Whether it's talking about how to think about redoing their social media, how to do an effective communication, things that they may have forgotten to update or change on their website. So there's always a nugget of something that maybe they should be thinking about. And then also that kind of helps drive them into the office hour if they want more information about it. So so far, it's been really successful for us. I'd say we have gained pro about a dozen projects just by doing this that we ordinarily would not have gained. So definitely a worthwhile procedure. And we're actually thinking of keeping up with this once the COVID crisis is gone, because it's just that beneficial.
Joe Casabona [00:38:39]:
Okay, so office hours with their clients every Friday. I think that is so fantastic because communication is important. Getting FaceTime these days is important. And so they email their clients every Wednesday for a Friday, live office hours and sharing tips, and you know what I mean. I don't know how they were running their agency before this, but that's probably more FaceTime than their clients have been getting. And I think that's great. I know that would definitely be the case for me. Before all this, I would mostly do like blog posts and communicate via email.
Joe Casabona [00:39:17]:
But now if I could do a webinar or I've been doing more live streams where people can tune in and just kind of see what I'm doing, that's more FaceTime and more kind of real time that people can get from me, I suspect it's the same for Laura. So thank you, Laura, for calling in. So your takeaway, your third and final takeaway from this episode is this. What can you do with your time or your content? I Think that a lot of people are worried about giving away stuff for free. Why would I tell people how to make a podcast when I have a service where I set up the podcast for them? Well, because you're kind of talking to two different people there. There are the do it yourselfers and then there are the people who want to pay a professional, and the people who want to pay a professional. They probably still want to know how to do it or what you're doing or know that you understand what you're doing. So again, I can speak to my experience here, but my experience with putting out all of this content about gear and podcasting and live streaming, people have been consuming that and loving it and referring to me as a podcast expert now.
Joe Casabona [00:40:39]:
And I've been doing it for a while, so maybe I am. I don't. I let other people call me an expert. I don't like to call myself an expert. But doing stuff like that, being generous with your time and your knowledge, is something that others, especially those who consume that content, will remember. So I think it's really important to think about how you can help people now and sow seeds for later. And I mean really help them, right? Don't just, like, do it because you think it'll bring in business, or don't do it with the sole purpose of bringing in business. But I also recognize that, you know, we're all working really hard.
Joe Casabona [00:41:19]:
So how can you be generous with your time or your content? So the three big takeaways of how can you pivot your services in such a way that you help those people that are in need right now? Number two, how can you pivot some process to help bring in more work or to help your current clients? And again, the example I gave is maybe there are some things, some expenses you can cut, but cutting those expenses and just keeping the money might be one thing, but reinvesting that money in some other tool or some other process to help you work better might be a better pivot for you, depending on your bottom line. Of course, don't be reckless with your money. But what is some process that you can improve or change for the current times, the COVID 19 pandemic, stay at home times that we're living in now? And finally, how can you be generous with your time and your content? People need help right now, and if you can help people, those people will remember you. So think about those three things. I've already alluded to some of the stuff that I've been doing. I've been doing a lot More webinars. I've been trying to do one every two weeks, either a webinar or a live stream where I pick a topic and I go through it, or I partner with somebody and we give a more formal talk. In my live streams, it's just me doing something and I try to schedule those for Fridays.
Joe Casabona [00:42:53]:
So I've been trying to really get myself out there and just put as much of my own knowledge into the world so people can get ideas for how they can stay afloat or even grow their business during this recession. And the stay at home orders. So there is that. I guess we can't call it a recession yet technically, but during this current economic downturn. Right. So that's what I'm doing. As I mentioned, I'm also offering free 15 minute consults. I limit those to four a week because there is a big constraint on my time.
Joe Casabona [00:43:25]:
But I want to help the people that I can help. So people can grab 15 minutes of my time and they can ask me anything about podcasting in those 15 minutes. And then finally I am really working on the content and the products that I think will help people now. So I've been doing a lot of gear related stuff. I've put out two new free PDFs, one for automation and one for how to look really good at home with video and how to sound really good. I know a lot of people are interested in that. So I've been doing a lot more of that stuff. And I've been really carving out time to finally record and launch my podcast liftoff course, which I was hoping to have done in October and then December and then January and then March.
Joe Casabona [00:44:17]:
So finally getting that out the door and I think the timing could not be better for a lot of people. The last thing I'm doing is I started a new podcast with my friend Liam Dempsey. You might remember from the Matt Medeiros episode that I kind of off the cuff said, I think I might want to start a local podcast. Well, Liam heard that and reached out and we kind of talked about it. And then the pandemic hit and he reached out again and he said, I think we should start this. I think that we can help small businesses in our area, that's Chester county and the greater Philly area in Pennsylvania. I think that if we have the right guests and ask the right questions, we can help small businesses. And so we kind of turned around and launched the podcast in a week.
Joe Casabona [00:45:06]:
We set up the website and the host and got our first interview. And I did the trailer and we've been putting them out weekly and now we're getting some really, really great guests in the near future that I'm really excited about. And the really nice thing about the guests is that it's not necessary. I mean, they are all Chester county based or they're all kind of based in the greater Philly area. But a lot of this advice is good for small business owners in general, especially brick and mortar small business owners. Those people who are they or they have an office to go to or something like that. So I'll link that in the show notes too. That's at StartLocal co.
Joe Casabona [00:45:46]:
And I've been really enjoying doing it. You know, it's. It's. We get on a zoom call, we record, I edit it just a little bit and then we put it out. Because the information is so, so, so important, especially at this time. That's why we wanted to turnaround and launch it quickly. So that is all of the stuff I'm doing. I want to hear from you.
Joe Casabona [00:46:08]:
What are you doing during the pandemic, during the stay at home orders, during the economic downturn that we're currently experiencing to help yourself, to help your customers or your clients? I want to know if you're a small business owner or if you have been furloughed. Let me know. I want to know if I can help you in any way. I want to know what you're trying to learn. Just let me know. You can write in or tweet at me at JCASabona, but the link to write in in the contact form, that'll be over with all of the show notes at howibuilt it169 I want to thank our sponsors for this episode. Ahrefs, CircleCI and Textexpander. Those are three tools that I absolutely love and they make my job easier.
Joe Casabona [00:47:02]:
They save me time so I can focus on the right areas of my business like putting out really good content and offering people free 15 minute consults. I just think about, I mean, especially with Textexpander. Cause that's the one I use every day. The amount of time that it saves me from like not having to find the link that I want and things like that. But anyway, thank you to those three. Reach out to them, let them know that you appreciate their support and check them out. Thank you so much for listening. If you liked this episode.
Joe Casabona [00:47:36]:
First of all, it's a little bit of a different episode. So let me know if you liked it by writing in or tweeting at me. And saying, like, yeah, I want to hear more of those types of episodes, but also leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcast because it helps people people discover the show. We were recently ranked in the more to explore area of Apple Podcasts in the technology category, which is super exciting. I would love to see us get back on the top charts. So leaving a rating in review will really help with that. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.