Get Radical With Your Business
This show is for content creators who want to monetize their passion by embracing their profitable superpowers. Whether you're starting your entrepreneurial journey or want to take things to the next level, this podcast will help you Get Radical with Your Business! Join host Heather Zeitzwolfe, long-time vegan, Gen-Xer, cat mom, drag queen enthusiast, and collector of weird dolls and lunchboxes. Using her professional background in business, marketing, design, and finance, she's here to help you get off the cash flow rollercoaster and have smooth-sailing profits. If you're ready to crush your fears, take action, and do things scrappy, then pop on your headphones! (Podcast formerly known as Get the Balance Right)
Get Radical With Your Business
Bootstrap Your Business: Free & Low Cost Ways To Build Your Business On A Budget (Guest Sarah St. John from Frugalpreneur Podcast) Ep. 121
In this episode, we dive into ways to build a business without breaking the bank. With insights from Sarah St. John of the Frugalpreneur Podcast, we discuss the value of free resources, the importance of networking, and how to leverage low-cost tools effectively. The conversation offers actionable advice for entrepreneurs at any stage.
The spotlight in this discussion is on harnessing free and low-cost resources to build, promote, and sustain a business. The conversation includes tips on generating leads, making sales, managing banking, and collecting payments without hefty price tags. Drawing from their own experiences, Heather and Sarah unveil a variety of business hacks that will assist budding entrepreneurs and seasoned business owners. If you've ever wondered how to maximize your resources and get the most bang for your buck, this episode is your roadmap.
Tune in to discover actionable methods to bootstrap your business to success.
Tools mentioned in the show: Sendfox.com, Systeme.io, Beacon.by, MailChimp.com, AppSumo.
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Hey there. This is Heather Zeitzwolfe. You are listening to get radical with your business. Today we are talking all about bootstrapping on a budget. Yes. So if you've been thinking about starting a business and you don't have a whole lot of money to spend, well, this is a good episode for you to listen to. Or maybe you have a business and you're like, oh, man I've been spending a lot of money and I need a dial back some of that spending. Well, I am joined by my buddy. Sarah St. John from the frugal preneur podcast. So you are in for a treat. All right, let's do this. I am here with my friend, Sarah St. John, who is the host of the Frugalpreneur. I love that word. Did you make that word up, Sarah?
Sarah St. John:Yeah, I did. It just came to me cause I was taking This was a few, several years ago. I was doing that Dave Ramsey financial peace class to pay off debt and everything. Cause he's like talking about all these ways to pay off debt, save money and all this, which is great. It occurred to me. But what about ways to like actually make more money to help with that and I was like, hmm frugalpreneur Because I had been testing all these online business models I was like I should write a book about this and then as I launched the book I launched the podcast to coincide with the book as like an extra marketing lever It was only going to be like 10 episodes or whatever, but I got more leverage and traction with the podcast than the book. And so love the networking and connections and conversations and all of that. Now I've been doing it for over four years and over 200 episodes.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:And you've had quite the success. Let's just brag for a moment. is the status now with your podcast? I know Apple podcasts, you've seen some success. let's brag about that.
Sarah St. John:I haven't checked it. In a couple of weeks at least so who knows where it's at now, but here's the story. So I noticed that my episode numbers like my download numbers were increasing and I was confused about it. I was like what happened? So I was like telling some other podcast friends and they actually went and looked up, they're like you're in the top 200 under Apple podcasts on entrepreneurship. I was like, what? I recently released my 200th episode of Frugalpreneur. And I was going to talk about that, and I'm like, I should probably go check and just see if I'm still in the top 200. When I went to check, I was in the top 100, like 92 or something. And I was like, okay I guess I'm going to have to talk about that now. Not top 200, top 100. Yeah, I should probably check that again and see what if I'm in the top ten? I don't know. the last few episodes have been getting downloaded. The numbers are quite a bit higher than before.. Very
Heather Zeitzwolfe:cool. We're going to get to the topic at hand. bootstrap. What does that mean? Bootstrap. It means like pulling up from your bootstraps. I mentioned this to somebody recently and they're like, what does that even mean? Maybe it's an old school term. I didn't realize it was old school, but I'm a little bit older. Bootstrap to me is pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I don't know how many boots have straps on them anymore, but it's Maybe you don't have all the resources, but you're going to just do it anyways, do it scrappy. That's what I like to say. We're talking about ways that you can get into business. You don't have to have a lot of funds. You don't need to put a lot of money on a credit card. You were talking about Dave Ramsey, like we want to avoid debt. There is good debt. There's bad debt, but if you're just starting out and you don't even know if your business is even going to work better not to have debt. You've had 200 podcast episodes. You've met a lot of entrepreneurs. You even had JLD. Did I get that right? John Lee Dumas. What's his catchphrase? Um, fire nation boom. Shake the room fire nation. Anyways, he was on your podcast. So you've had some heavy hitters on your podcast. What is like one. Thing that you can think of, that you can tell anybody, or maybe even from your book of one way that you can start a business on a budget or any kind of tip you want to throw out
Sarah St. John:there. And this is specifically for online
Heather Zeitzwolfe:businesses. Yes. We're talking about online.
Sarah St. John:every online business starting out, you should have a website and email service provider you can collect well in a lead magnet actually to collect and we can go more into that if you want to, but to collect email addresses so you can send them updates, newsletters, whatever.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:Okay, let's just start there. Some people that are just starting a business for us, those things are like, we just talk about this stuff all the time. For some people that are just starting an online business, that stuff might be foreign to them. Let's just back up to having a website. There are resources that you can get that don't cost a lot for websites, I have a recommendation. Oh,
Sarah St. John:let's hear it. There's a platform called System. io. It's S Y S T M E dot IO. And it's like an all in one platform has websites, landing pages, sales funnels, email marketing, which I don't use that part of it, but membership, courses, you can create all this stuff while they have a free plan and you can even connect one domain to it. You'd buy your domain through GoDaddy I recommend Namecheap. Um,
Heather Zeitzwolfe:Yeah, one thing about GoDaddy, I'm just gonna say about GoDaddy is the guy that started the business likes to hunt animals. So I'm against GoDaddy.
Sarah St. John:And they tend to be more expensive but anyway, so you'd have to, purchase a domain name, which is usually 15 bucks a year or something, but you can actually connect your domain for free. To system. io, you can create a landing page, I think you can get three sales funnels under that, 2, 000 collect 2, 000 email addresses, all this stuff. If you're wanting to start free and encapsulate several things within one platform that's my recommendation. Oh, okay.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:I've never heard of that. That's very cool because I use MailChimp for my email. I think they have a free version but if you want to do some fancier things you have to pay one thing about like when we're starting off our business, there's a lot of like bells and whistles out there. We're like, Oh, I want to try this. Oh, I want to try that. And then, or Oh, I now I need to integrate this. After I've already integrated this other thing and oftentimes those software packages don't talk to each other so it's really nice to have something that's all inclusive that way you don't have to worry so much like How am I going to link this to that? And cause that can be come up giant quagmire. And once you're like invested in something I've run into this. I use score space, but does this work with score space? And then it makes it so I can't use a piece of software. I want to, cause it's not talking right. And then we talked about lead magnets. When you're bootstrapping your business, we got to get leads into your business. You can do networking. There's all kinds of ways that you can create leads in your business that don't cost money. Networking, highly recommend doing online networking. That's free. You can look on Eventbrite, Meetup. There's tons of things. If you have an online business, chances are that means that you're going to have potential clients all over the place. Virtual networking room is a great way to do it for free. But find something that's going to have your target audience When you're thinking about your target audience, we want to attract them with something. And what we attract them with, this is a thing called a lead magnet. So a lead magnet. That's what Sarah was alluding to a lead magnet. A lead magnet for people that are new to business. This may online business, this may sound like a weird concept for those that have been around for a while. You're like, Oh yeah, I got like 10 lead magnets. So a lead magnet. Sarah, oftentimes it's a PDF. You want to suggest any cheap ways that people can create lead magnets.
Sarah St. John:You can create, yeah, it could be an ebook, a checklist, a resource, your recommended resources. Any kind of thing that someone could basically download for free or, it could even be like a private podcast feed or a mini course. There's a million different things you could do. But if it's like something that they can download, you could create a free lead magnet, I'm all about free, at beacon dot by, B Y. So beacon dot by, and you can create a free lead magnet there, that's how I've done mine if I'm doing like a checklist or something like that
Heather Zeitzwolfe:so is this different from like, doing it in Canva? You can do a checklist for free. So is this... That's true. Yeah, is that software that you're talking about, is it a graphic y kind of software, or is
Sarah St. John:A little bit... The advantage of Beacon, you can actually like embed the HTML code onto your website to where it'll have like the button like download And then integrates with some different platforms and stuff. But yeah, you could create it in Canva and then just, set up a landing page for it with whatever platform you're using for your website,
Heather Zeitzwolfe:there's a free version of that you can use. And then the beacon one. Okay. I had not heard of that one before. So that's cool. The other things that we need to set in place when we start a business, whether it's on a budget or not on a budget is we want to make sure that we have a business bank account. do you have any recommendations on banks. Sarah, have you dealt with any banks that maybe have no fees or non fees.
Sarah St. John:So one bank that is that's new and it's an online only bank, which I don't know, there might be disadvantages to that, but there's one called Lily, is it's L I L I, and it's specifically for entrepreneurs okay.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:Yeah. I have no affiliation with us bank besides the fact that I use them, but they don't charge me anything for a business bank account, which is very cool. There may be like a certain amount you have to keep in the account. But I like the fact that they don't charge me for that. I have a business credit card through them. which actually earns me cash. I get cash back. I report that as income on my P and L and because I get money back. So that's pretty cool, because when we do use credit cards, we want to pay them off every month, not have debt. And then if you get a little spiff back from the company, that's a pretty darn good too. Okay. we want to start a business bank account. Then You want to get leads. We want to make sales, selling things online. Again, we have to get payment for things. And there can be some tricky things about payment because, fees and all of that okay. Do you do Stripe or PayPal or, you got to pick one of these when you're online, unless you can coordinate with a client to be, do it like an ACH where it's it just money goes from one bank account to another, which can be sometimes challenging to have things like that, especially if you're selling online courses, you're not going to be doing like an ACH. Any tips that you've come across on. Payment platforms that may be less expensive or they're pretty much all the same.
Sarah St. John:I think they're roughly the same. I use Stripe, it's super simple and it integrates with everything. Sometimes I use PayPal, maybe if there isn't a Stripe integration, but almost Stripe almost is becoming more. likely to be integrated with platforms than PayPal
Heather Zeitzwolfe:so I have a client that has been using PayPal with her clients. She's a creative. She did a bunch of work for them they got the work and then they told PayPal that they somehow pulled back the payment from PayPal, even though they received the work. Yeah. So deceitful clients. Getting the work and now she's not getting paid. And now trying to have a dispute with PayPal is a real tough thing. I've heard other nightmares with PayPal as well, that people can pull back the payment. you gotta be careful of scammy clients. Hopefully you don't have scammy clients. Hopefully you've got contracts and everything. But even with that, what are you going to take them to court over 300 bucks then it's all held up in PayPal and you did the work. Wow. I haven't heard
Sarah St. John:that. I haven't really heard bad things about PayPal, but I have heard with Stripe though,, they hold your money for a period of time or if you even have, I think one charge back or any of that, anything, or say, you haven't had any transactions or you've had really low transaction dollar amount, but then all of a sudden, now you're selling high ticket or something and a big charge comes through or whatever, that they won't release the funds for quite a while, That's what I've heard, that there's issues there, too, with them kind of hanging on to stuff. I haven't had that issue yet,
Heather Zeitzwolfe:These are things to consider. So if you are bootstrapping a business you think that money is going to be coming in, you may have a cashflow issue if you're counting on that money coming into your bank account and it's being held up. So we want to be mindful of okay. If we are doing things on a budget, don't be like, Oh, I got this money coming in and then you spending it. And now it's not coming in and maybe it's being held up by one of those third party payment things. So don't get so excited about making a sale until you actually get the money into your bank. anything else that you can think of that you've come across with being frugal bootstrapping when you're starting out, or maybe even like you've been in business for a while and you want to save some money. What are some other ways that you've come across to save money?
Sarah St. John:I really like free software or software that like to have a free plan and don't upgrade until you need to type thing. Are you familiar with AppSumo? Oh,
Heather Zeitzwolfe:too familiar.
Sarah St. John:feel like most entrepreneurs know what that is, basically a marketplace, where there's all these different softwares that are offering like one time, something that might normally cost a hundred bucks a month. You can get it one time for 50 bucks or whatever.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:You can try it out for 60 days and then you can return it, which is really cool. I have gone down the AppSumo rabbit hole many times. some of the software I've purchased from AppSumo has been a godsend because now it's really expensive and other stuff, not so great. A lot of this stuff is just starting out. They have great videos on app sumo and that kind of pull you in. You're like, Oh yeah. And then they use it like this, like metaphor with tacos. They rate things by tacos. that attracts you. Right. Cause it's like, everybody loves tacos. Yeah. If you are interested in a piece of software, go on to their website, that actual software's website, check it out, see how much they're really charging, see what it integrates with, find out a little bit more. don't get caught up in the the squirrel that has been my problem. I've bought so much software and I've not used it. I'm sitting on so much stuff cause I'm like, Oh, I need this. I need this to create that. And I'm not even there yet in my business, but I know in the future I need it. And I'm like, I can buy it at a discount. And then by the time I will go to use it, it's not so good. At the same time, AppSumo has great things. I like this idea.
Sarah St. John:Yeah, definitely. I recommend checking it out. It is easy to, you know, shiny object syndrome and get carried away, so if there's something that you really want or need or know that in the future or now that you could really use then, yeah, you might be paying usually anywhere from like 20 to 100, somewhere in that range, one time, and then that's saving you, who knows how much over the course of time. there will be other softwares that come out to do something, and I'm like, ooh, that looks good, but it does something similar to something I got on AppSumo, I have to keep reminding myself of that. You don't have to go get that thing. That's 20 or 50 bucks a month when you already have something similar.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:buy software when you need it. I've done this where it's I'm going to need this in the future. Great. If you have the money and you really think you're going to use it, but map things out. Make sure that you are actually going to use it. Cause I've bought software and I've, like I said, I'm just still sitting on it and I don't even know if it works anymore. Here's another tip that I'm going to say though talking about software, chat GPT, and you can use any other kind of free type thing. I personally pay for chat GPT. Cause I find that it's just, you get the plugins and all of that. And it's 20 bucks a month. That's totally worth it. But there are other things that you can use using AI and it is a great way to Increase your productivity and creativity on a budget. So if you can't afford a virtual assistant, because if you have a virtual business, eventually you probably will want a virtual assistant. you were talking about lead magnets. If you can't figure out what you want to put in the lead magnet, you can start using AI to help you create it. I'm not saying like completely create it, but maybe. Spur some ideas or ignite some, like maybe some topic ideas or something like give, use it as like a tool but not as just like the end all be all. Any thoughts on using AI to help save money in your business.
Sarah St. John:Oh, for sure. There's been a few things that I've gotten through AppSumo. Like Cast Magic had an AppSumo. Oh, I've heard of Cast
Heather Zeitzwolfe:Magic. Okay, so tell us a little bit about what that does.
Sarah St. John:So that would be for podcasters and it basically creates your show notes, transcripts, the speaker bio, the timestamps, the social media, and there's, Captcha was also a really good one, shout out, because they're friends I don't think Cast Magic is doing the one time deal anymore. I was able to get in on that. Yeah, so different stuff like that, and that would be AI. And while we're on the AppSumo topic, they also create some of their own AppSumo originals. of those, I recommend SendFox for email. As your email service provider, because you can get it for free up to a certain number of subscribers, but then if you want to upgrade, it's like a one time fee of 50 bucks. And that's what I use. one thing I really like about it if you're a podcaster, a blogger, or a YouTuber, you can put in your RSS feed or your YouTube channel, it'll automatically generate a newsletter or an email based on your latest episode. And it's very minimal. It's not overwhelming and confusing like some of the others. as far as email service providers that are free to very cheap that's my recommendation. Oh,
Heather Zeitzwolfe:wow. That's very cool. Another thing about AppSumo is I think that they have a marketplace where like creators can sell things as well. Have you ever done
Sarah St. John:that before? So I have I did it with My preneur trilogy. It was like frugal Preneur, authorpreneur and Podcast Preneur. They were all eBooks I think I sold and I, it was just like a dollar each. versus 2 99 on Amazon. And I'm pretty sure I got more downloads or purchases. from that than Amazon.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:Wow. Now, how does something like that work? So you're selling it on AppSumo. It's being printed by Amazon, right? How does that work?
Sarah St. John:The ones on AppSumo are just PDFs.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:I see. you're not having to pay. so it's not like you're getting a royalty from Amazon. Okay.
Sarah St. John:Yeah, so like with Amazon, you can get the, Kindle, whatever it is. Yeah. Or the print book, but that's all through Amazon, and so the e book version is 2. 99 on Amazon, but then I had the PDF uploaded to AppSumo for a dollar
Heather Zeitzwolfe:writing a book can be a great way to get your visibility out there, your credibility, all those things. I'm actually toying with the idea of putting out a book so I'm curious on, you've written several. You put it on Amazon. I know that there's certain ways that you can get people to buy your book for a dollar and it's under a certain topic. And then like it reaches the top and you can call yourself a best selling author. That's like the angle that you want to take, right? Without doing too much marketing, you get your friends all download it and buy it for a buck or something. And now you're a best. selling author, even if it's like for a moment in time, you take a picture and you're good. Were you able to do that with Amazon and how were you able to do that if that was the case?
Sarah St. John:know for frugalpreneur, I was able to get it to the top position within whatever the category was. I guess it would have been, some kind of business category. There's like a whole strategy behind that. you can have it free for a certain amount of days to increase, Or lower the price and it's probably changed since then
Heather Zeitzwolfe:if you do offer it for free on Amazon, do you have to then pay Amazon for The fee for having it there, or is it free and you don't pay Amazon anything?
Sarah St. John:Yeah, if it's the e book and it's free, you don't pay anything. You can't do it free, really, with the print book. the print book, so all my books are like, 80 pages or something. They're very thin. And it's about 2 or so for them to actually print that's their cost. And then anything after that, then they take. I think 30 percent and one of the two. Okay. Yeah, it's a big difference. Yeah, I think it's 30, whatever.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:It is a way though to be out there and visible in the world that doesn't cost a whole lot of money you could put everything in Word first and then make sure that it's formatted correctly for Amazon. And then you might need to pay somebody, I guess to edit it, perhaps you can find somebody on Fiverr or something like that, or use Grammarly, which is I think they have. They might have a free version. I pay for that.
Sarah St. John:the thing that I like about, self publishing on Amazon you don't have to keep an inventory. It's all print on demand. it's not like you have to buy a bunch of books and then hope you sell them. So it's like when someone orders it, they print it, they ship it. And as far as creating the book yeah, you could use Grammarly, there's a few different, ProWritingAid is another one, there's a few different that can help you make sure that your grammar and punctuation and, everything I recommend doing that for your first round. But then hiring an editor, like basically the amount of money I spent on each book, including the editor. And then I do recommend hiring someone to do artwork,
Heather Zeitzwolfe:cover, yeah, the cover art. Yeah.
Sarah St. John:I think I spent about$200 per book. between the editor and the cover I went to Fiverr for, the editing, I wouldn't recommend doing Fiverr, because I didn't have a good experience. But I found some editor. That would charge like two cents a word and since they were like 10, 000 words at most But her price the person I was using her price has drastically gone up. And then for formatting to make sure that it's in EPUB and MOBI and whatever that Amazon requires, Readsy is a good source. R E E D S Y. They have this free thing where you can lay out each chapter and have it properly formatted and then download it in these different versions for Amazon and
Heather Zeitzwolfe:all that. Oh, okay, so Amazon requires different formats for the different types like if it's a print book versus an e book or a Kindle or something like that. Okay, That's really good to know. Besides the visibility and the credibility for putting out a book, another thing is that it can help you go on podcasts, which most of the time you don't have to pay to be on a podcast. So it can help you get your word out there. What are some other return on investments that you can think of having a book? How has that helped you? Has it helped you get speaking gigs clients, like how else has writing books helped you?
Sarah St. John:It can help you get on podcasts, I definitely recommend podcast guesting if not hosting, if not having your own show for your business, but for sure being on other shows. But the book itself, I think for me there hasn't been like a direct ROI, I wouldn't say. It's more of a I've been able to speak because I have a book.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:So you're leveraging it. By leveraging it, eventually there will be a payoff and ROI because you'll get clients from it and all of that. Okay. So you've gotten speaking gigs. Yes. Let's just go there for a second. So You got speaking gigs. Are you applying to speak places and you're saying like, I have this book and this is the topic I can talk about? Or like, how are you leveraging that?
Sarah St. John:I think I mentioned the books, but that's not even my main thing. Like I'll submit a topic, There was something else I was going to say about that. Oh direct monetization, through like Amazon sales, but again, the amount that you're getting paid you're not gonna get rich off of that by any means. I think I've probably earned enough to cover the cost of making the books, hiring the editor and whatever. to me, with self publishing, my goal isn't really to make money directly from the book. and then like, last year at Podcast Movement in Dallas, I had just released my latest book, the one with the yellow cover. I actually ordered a hundred copies from Amazon Physical copies. Here it is, 27 way. Oh, you have it right there. Wow. So what I did was I had released it literally the week of podcast movement. And so I decided, since this is a podcast conference, I had Amazon print out a hundred copies. And there was a whole issue with getting them they couldn't handle that I ordered a hundred, they weren't here, and then I had to order them in like, ten and twenty. It was a fiasco, but I did get them all in. And how
Heather Zeitzwolfe:much did that cost you, to buy that two dollars a book? Or, did they give you a break if you're buying it directly for yourself?
Sarah St. John:You buy it as an author purchase you only have to pay like the two bucks or whatever to make costs, what I did was I got a hundred copies. I bought myself a clear backpack. I put the books in the clear backpack. And then I put a little note that's get your free book. But that didn't work at all. So I was like, screw that. And so I just started maybe because people were afraid I was going to pitch them or something, but I didn't. So I just started anytime I talk to someone or whatever, I'm like, Hey, here's my free book. And a lot of people were surprised. They're like, You're not charging for that. You don't want money. I'm like, no, here's your free book. I think I handed out like 80 out of a hundred and then so I had another 20 that I took to some other conference because I just wanted to get them off my hands. It's basically, a lead magnet, a physical lead magnet that really doesn't cost much, like two, maybe three bucks.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. Again, you're matching up the topic with the audience, the target audience I've actually had some clients that have published books that have done actually really well, and it's become one of their major revenue streams. I was surprised when I went to do this person's tax return. I was like, wow. The Amazon sales have really increased. it probably depends on how you're leveraging it. Maybe, you could have something where it's like you have a group program and then they need the book that goes along with it. I mean,, there could be ways that you could leverage it more, it depends on what you're it. Intentions are like for you, it was more of like a marketing thing, right?
Sarah St. John:A couple of things I want to mention. So like when I ordered a hundred copies, that doesn't count because you're ordering them as author copies. It doesn't count for sales. I had the initial push for the books because my focus is more my podcast and just podcast business I'm not really promoting the book actively since that initial like month or so.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:For most of these bootstrap business owners, publishing a book is more about what you're doing. It's not to get the big book sales. It's more for the credibility. You can put it on your website. I published a book. If you do get on the Amazon bestseller thing, you can put that on. If you're putting on workshops of, bestselling author hosted by whatever, it's a great marketing tool that doesn't cost a lot. That's what we're getting at.
Sarah St. John:That's the bottom line of that whole thing.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:We're not saying that you're going to become Stephen King or whatever, it's just another tool in your toolbox to market yourself on a budget. Any last thoughts, Sarah, before we wrap up on being a frugal preneur,
Sarah St. John:I know for me and several entrepreneurs that I've talked with that shiny object syndrome is a big problem. We just keep getting distracted whether a new business idea or a new thing we need to be doing, or a new software we need
Heather Zeitzwolfe:to be doing. Or software on AppSumo.
Sarah St. John:Yeah, whatever it is but we just need to be more focused, pick that one thing that's moving the needle.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:it's a tough thing, especially when you're first starting out your business it's so exciting when you start off your business and you're like, there's so many possibilities. That's where you can end up spending a lot of money on avenues that you're never going to really go down. Me included. I'd like to think that I'm frugal. I pinch pennies all the time. I'm cheap, but I will spend money on things that I think are possible opportunities. when I first started my business, I met this person who's a really good financial advisor, nothing against her. But she suggested that I sell life insurance. And at the time I was like, Oh, that sounds good. Okay, Until I started studying it and I'm like, I do not care for this subject is the most boring thing I spent money and time studying for this thing that really did not have any payoff for me because of just I've all I did was discover that I hate. learning about life insurance. And I never want to sell insurance. I learned that lesson, but it was costly because I spent for the course, don't let people derail. I'm not saying she derailed me. It was me that did it, but we get that shiny object of like, Oh, I could also offer this, now when I'm going to be a insurance salesman, like what? I don't know what I was thinking, but Hey, want to buy some life insurance? Like I'm just not that person. Nothing against life insurance salesmen. We need them. Yes, try not to get the FOMO, the shiny object, because it can be very costly. And when you are bootstrapping, we got to pinch the pennies and watch what we're doing. So have a plan that is so important to have a plan. I work with people to put in place a business plan and not just like a business plan that you're gonna bring to the bank, but have a plan of what it is you want to do for the next year. What is your vision? What is your mission? Have these things in place, understand your target market, those sorts of things so that we're not spending money on all the bells and whistles because We can go down those rabbit holes and guilty as charged is me. I'm saying this, I'm telling you I'm, teaching because I'm learning from my own experiences. Sarah, how can people work with you?
Sarah St. John:If you want to check out the podcast for Googlepreneur You can go to frugal. show and then that'll have links to whatever platform you listen to podcasts on. I also give away my free eBooks the PDF version of my books at frugal. show forward slash free. If you want to work directly with me on podcasts related, then. all the information will be
Heather Zeitzwolfe:there. Okay, perfect. And what do you help people with their podcasts? Is it starting a podcast? What is it that you help out with?
Sarah St. John:So I initially was helping with like podcasts, post production, launching, all that kind of stuff. But I'm now switching into like podcasts, growth, marketing, and monetization. more of coaching. I'm creating a program, basically, it's going to be a 12 week program, it's geared more for people who already have a podcast. How do they get it out there, how do they market it properly, monetize it, things like that. Okay.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:people that have a if they're like only five episodes in, would you be able to help them? Or is this more of a they have more of a, like a hundred episodes or anywhere in between or
Sarah St. John:yeah anywhere along the spectrum.
Heather Zeitzwolfe:You're not helping them launch, you're helping them with The other parts of it.
Sarah St. John:Yeah, at least, for now, that's what I'm doing. It's
Heather Zeitzwolfe:a shiny object of something else because us creatives, we have that thing where we just want to keep changing up and doing new things all the time. Guilty as charged. well, Sarah, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. And everybody go check out the very popular Frugalpreneur podcast.
Sarah St. John:Thanks
