Guests: Amber Vilhauer, Daniel Ramsey
Recorded: 2019
Excerpt
Do you want to know THE ANSWER to get the attention you want for your business? Do you want a bulletproof, predictable way to build an online following? Our guest, Amber Vilhauer from Leverage to Scale, is an Online Digital Marketing expert and will talk about doing just that!
With Leverage To Scale, simply plug in your team, and they’ll quickly learn how to think and act like an advanced internet marketer to maximize your brand exposure, generate a consistent flow of warm leads, and nurture your audience to convert.
In this exciting webinar, you’ll learn how to get people to pay attention to you in the busy online world, what to do to save your time and energy when creating content, and you’ll learn the process for perfect execution of your content.
Transcript
[03:24] (Daniel) Daniel Ramsey here at my house. If you’re seeing my picture right now, that is actually me on the Star Wars set. Hey, everybody. Okay, so we’ve got Amber Houser. Wait, no…
[00:17] (Amber) Vilhauer. This is funny! (laughs)
[00:19] (Daniel) I knew I was going to screw that up. I knew it. Okay, so here’s that. Here’s the word we’re doing. She owns a company called Leverage to Scale. And it’s been doing this for 11 years. My favorite thing is her agency company is called NGNG: No Guts, No Glory, which is amazing. And she helps entrepreneurs actually learn how to stop buying ads, getting in debt, you know, having Facebook or Google change their algorithm and having everything blow up.
She helps entrepreneurs switch, zig and zag and go to content marketing. And what’s cool is she’s taught virtual assistants how to do it. It’s like this is like the perfect marriage of two brainiacs talking. And Amber, thanks for joining us today.
[01:07] (Amber) No, this is great. I’ve been very impressed with your organization, Daniel, and with you as the leader at the helm. So this is this is awesome.
[01:14] (Daniel) Yeah. And so if you’re listening today, here’s the thing. Never has an entire process where she tells you what to post on social media or what to write in a blog so that you can have organic visitors coming to your site every single day, raising their hand and saying, I want your product or your service. And today we’re going to break that down.
And Amber, again, thanks for being here. Like, let’s dove in and like, what? What is it? Why is this important for an entrepreneur? Why is this matter for business owners?
[01:46] (Amber) Well, we’re at a very interesting time. And I actually think that we’re in a bit of an online marketing crisis right now, and a lot of entrepreneurs don’t even see it coming. And it kind of reminds me of that movie Titanic, or they didn’t even realize what was happening until it happened. Yeah, but I have a really unique vantage point and I’ve seen this kind of this these trends happening and I’ve seen this coming.
I have a unique vantage point because I’ve spent my career being more of the secret weapon behind other success. Well, top online brands. I am the girl that you call when you want results with your website or your online marketing or your launch. Right. So I have not spent my career trying to be the person in the limelight saying, “Ooh, look at me!”, I’m the person behind that person right now.
I’m really seeing what’s been happening online. And there’s a few things. Number one is that competition has never been higher as more and more of the population comes online to start a business. Two is that corporations are in trouble because print, radio and TV advertising are not working for them the way that they used to. So they’re spending their millions and millions and millions of advertising dollars pumping content out online 24/7, effectively dominating search engines and social media.
Right. And it begs the question, what’s going to happen to the little guys, the small business owners that have a message to get out to the world, who, by the way, are going in debt, they’re drowning in overwhelm. They have no control. They have no time. And their their message is not getting heard. It’s not landing. They’re not getting customers.
So I’m watching all of this, Daniel, and I’m thinking this is messed up. Now, it’s really messed up. On top of that is that business owners have no control. As I mentioned, if you want to get your message out online, you have a couple of options. Number one is you’re going to buy into $10, $20, $60,000 courses where you’re hoping to learn maybe 80% of the solution.
And it’s going to last 20 weeks. And at the end of it, you’re not even going to know where to start or how to actually do the work, or you’re going to go hire an agency at $2, $3, $4,000 a month and you’re going to have no clue what it is that they’re actually doing for you. So you have no control there.
Right. I’m coming in looking at this massive storm of all of these elements and I’m thinking this is messed up. I want to give control back to the business owner. So my feeling is if I can create a system that can teach any virtual assistant who’s supporting these business owners how to do that person’s marketing for them on a daily, weekly basis.
And it just implants into their business. That frees up the business owner because they control the system. It’s theirs. They know the work is getting done and they’re paying, getting it done for a fraction of the cost. They’re getting on search engines, they’re dominating social media, they’re getting their message out. And the beautiful thing is that they’re only attracting and qualified buyers because of this more custom content approach.
So there’s a lot more to it. But I’m just seeing the storm and I’m wanting to give the the little guys the control back. And so I’m you know, I’m kind of disrupting the industry a little bit here.
[04:59] (Daniel) I love it. We have this client and unfortunately it didn’t work out like we what we do is we give leverage to business owners. And I’m and so I’m wondering, like what? So I schedule a time to meet with them. And before I meet with them, I just Google them. I just google them. Right. He didn’t come up.
He did not come up. Not only did he not come up, he had no branded website to himself. His LinkedIn profile was all messed up. And I’m like, Oh, okay, well, he’s just not really a business owner. He doesn’t have a footprint. Like, now I’m in in business. Like if you don’t have a website and you’re not personally branded like that just isn’t you don’t really have not legitimate.
Yeah yeah. And people I mean the very first thing I think I want to bang this into the entrepreneurs like mindset the very first thing that when somebody says, hey, I hate you, I know a guy, the first thing I do is I go online, I go online and I look, I work. So we voted a couple of years ago, right?
So what did I do? I looked on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram for the candidate to see what their message was. If they didn’t have a page, they didn’t get a vote. And I think this is a mindset that well, I mean, it’s just it needs to be out there for the business owner. So talk to us about how you would set this up, because one of the biggest concerns, you know, is like, how do I get a website?
How much is that going to cost? And then what do I put on it? And I’m not a designer, so I don’t know how to do that. Like help us through all that.
[06:30] (Amber) Yeah, it’s. It’s tough, man. I have so much compassion for business owners today because there’s a lot of mediocre information online. Yeah, and it’s hard to know who to trust, because a lot of business owners or influencers have gotten really good at marketing lingo and empty promises. And so poor business owners are out there like investing in people that they shouldn’t and learning hard mistakes.
I totally get it. And that’s why I take a full transparency approach. So I’m constantly putting so much value out on a weekly basis, daily basis. Go to my YouTube channel, you’ll see exactly what I’m talking about. You could probably get a really strong marketing education just by watching my YouTube videos. And my belief is like, let me just correct a lot of these myths and provide real value in education, not the fluff, not recycled content that I heard from some conference three years ago.
Right. So, yes, when an entrepreneur comes online, you definitely need to build out a foundation for an online platform. It’s no different than if you want to start a bakery, you need to set up your storefront, right? That’s your website. Your website is the hub and heart of everything else that you do online, so you have to dial it in and do it.
Right now, web designers are a dime a dozen. You could probably go get some cheap website for a gram somewhere. I don’t really necessarily recommend that because there’s no strategy behind it and it’s probably going to have a pretty shoddy design and you deserve better than that. My website’s are somewhere between the five and $8,000 range, which is very fair, especially considering the amount of strategy that we put into it and the results that we get.
Our clients based on that website. Right. So you could go to NGNG Enterprises dot com and get a sense of our portfolio and the type of website that we build on that website. I talk about what you need to have on your website. I showcase all of our pricing, our process. It’s fully transparent so that you can investigate all of that before you even get on to a call with me.
I also have an hour long training on how to get better website conversion. So even if you have a website and you’re curious to see if you’re doing it right, that training, you can sign up for it for free. Super deep dive into website conversion. That’s all you need beyond that, once you have this website. The mistake most people make, Daniel, is they kind of abandon that.
They’re like so busy with other things. Who cares about that website, right? A website is like a houseplant man. You got to water and give it sunshine and love and nourishment, which means you need to add value to that website. Ongoing. Best way to do that is through a blog. This is content marketing, right? It’s just publishing consistent free value so that people coming in get a sense of, Oh, Amber is active.
She knows what she’s talking about. I like her personality. Okay, I’ll buy it. I’ll take the next step. That’s the whole point of content marketing. Most people give up on it before they even give it a chance to see if it’s successful or not. And so they’re overwhelmed or they don’t know how to do it right or whatever the issue is.
So it’s not getting done. But then at the end of the day, business owners are crying the blues because they’re not getting the clients, their message isn’t getting hurt. So then they think, it must be me. I guess I should go get a new message and redo all of my stuff all over again. And it’s like, No, you just need to give it a chance to see if it can work.
So I think content marketing is what’s going to build the credibility. It’s what’s going to get you more of the right qualified clients coming in and it’s going to help your conversions. Like it’s going to lead to more opportunities. It’s the thing to do. But you shouldn’t be doing it. So that’s where we that’s where it ends, where we’re talking.
[10:21] (Daniel) That’s wow. What how do you how do you like? Okay, so I want to write a blog. I’ve got it there. I do an introduction to who we are and what we do. How do I figure out what I write about? Like, what kind of content should I write about? Let’s say I’m a contractor in the Bay Area, San Francisco, and I’m brand new start now.
I mean, what topics would matter to my clients?
[10:48] (Amber) That’s a great question and it’s an easy one. I think the first thing is to really understand who your target audience is, right? So I think it’s more than just what are their demographics, but it’s like, who are these individuals? Right? So if my audience, I largely tend to work with authors, speakers, coaches, that type of thing. So I might think of an author and I might think of what are the feelings that that author experiences, what are the stresses, the challenges, what keeps them up in the middle of the night?
What questions are they asking themselves? What are they Googling right now? Your blog simply needs to answer those things, right? So if this author is thinking, how do I sell more books? That’s what they would type into. Google. That’s what you should write a blog post about. How should I style my book cover? How what is a developmental editor?
Or like how many pages of my book be? These are all questions the author is asking. So those are individual. A blog posts that you could be writing and wild blog posts in a text format are great so that you’re getting indexed in Google. The thing to remember too is that we are in an era of video, right?
80% of internet traffic users today prefer video over text. So my whole thing, Daniel, really coming to a point here is that I would encourage business owners to do a quick three minute video answering those questions. How many pages should my book be? Three minute video answering that question? Yep. And then leverage that, repurpose that to create the text based blog post that really just summarizes what you’re talking about in the video and then put the video and is the main showpiece of that blog post.
So now you’re appealing to Google with the text, but YouTube with the video and this is it’s the video content that most of the people coming in are going to actually pay attention to, not the text. Right. And what’s interesting about the video video is the most effective way to make a human connection in a digital world. Right.
So if I’m using this video talking to one person, my one author, we’re making an emotional connection. And people buy from those they know, like and trust. So if they like me, then they’re going to take the next step with me. So the retention is there, the focus is there, and now the conversion is there. All through that video.
But then we repurpose that into a blog post to make Google happy.
[13:20] (Daniel) Yeah, makes sense. And how do you get it out in the social media world like I mean, you do the blog, you do the video and social like you link back. I mean, I’m just kind of curious like how you would.
[13:35] (Amber) Business owners can’t stay on social media and that’s fine because, you know, if you look at social media like layers of a cake, the base layer of social media, you should not be doing that. A virtual professional should be doing that for you. Right now, there’s always an upper level button, so the business owners should be spending their time on the next layer of the cake, which is doing like Facebook lives or connecting with influencers, right?
[13:59] (Amber) They’re kind of up here. But the base level, social media, don’t you dare do. That’s terrible use of your time. So the things to know about social media is that it can get overwhelming. You can get stuck in the weeds quickly with it because it’s just like this. I don’t know, weird. Like nobody knows what they’re doing with social media really.
Right. But the point is that we need to be connecting with with real human beings on the other side of the screen. Right. Right. So in many ways, I think we’re all overcomplicating it. But the point is to share a variety of content that is not all about me, me, me, and how great I am. But it’s more about you, right?
Because I’m posting to you so and I’m trying to ask questions or I’m engaging you and sharing tips or, you know, anything that I think is going to add value to your life and to stir up communication and conversation. And yeah, I’ll tell you a little bit about me and why I’m so great, but it’s mainly about you, right?
So I’ve come up with a pretty comprehensive social media formula that combines 12 different posts types. So whether it’s a true false and ask a question, share a tip, share your blog post, whatever it is, and then I randomize it. So there’s no detectable pattern because if people detect a pattern they’re bored with, then they move on and it focuses largely on the end user, but shares enough about the business owner to get that engagement shifted over into now what is the business owner offering so that they take action?
And the last thing that I’ll say about social media is that most people just aren’t doing it nearly enough. You should be posting three times a day on networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram and five tweets a day on Twitter. Now the average business owner is like, Are you kidding me? I would never have time for that. Why?
You shouldn’t be doing it right. So you need to have a really efficient process in place to allow your virtual professional to do it for you in the way that I just described.
[16:14] (Daniel) Yep. And that leads us to our landing page, because Amber is giving away a worksheet where she actually breaks us down and there’s a 90 minute video. So everybody who’s listening who kind of wants to dove deeper and learn more, you go to MyOutDesk dot com forward slash amber we just did your first name.
[16:32] (Amber) It’s easier than Vilhauer, huh? (laughs)
[16:35] (Daniel) And but here’s the here’s the idea. I mean, one thing we want to put out content to help people write and I think this is a miss in in the business world create a blog, get social shares, do a lot, answer questions, tips. It’s all about them. The next layer of that is audience. How do you know? How do you build audience so that you’re actually interacting?
Because you know people who post things and then you’re like, Oh, nobody said anything. Nobody cares about what they’re like. How do you build an audience if like you haven’t? I know most like business Facebook pages have like no likes or haven’t had a like in four years, you know what I mean? Like, how do you how do you reengage something or start something when you have nothing?
[17:23] (Amber) That’s okay. There’s so many things I could say there, so I’ll try to keep in my head. First of all, I have to just add a little caveat that there are certain audiences that just won’t engage and actually minus one of them. Daniel, so surprisingly, most of the people in the community that I’ve attracted in, they’re not the type to make comments, but I know they’re there listening.
I never I don’t necessarily hear from them, but three years later or three months later, I’ll get this. Oh, I listen to your, you know, weekly videos religiously. I’ve saved every email you’ve ever spent or I’ve been doing this, this and this. And I’m thinking, really? I’ve never even heard from you. Like, that’s so crazy, right? So they might be out there watching, even though you think that they’re not.
So that’s the first really important thing. The second really important thing is that Facebook, all all of these places is right. They want you to add regular, consistent content to the network because that makes them more valuable. But most business owners are sporadic. They’ll do a thing here and a thing there. So why would Facebook reward you with viewership if you’re not giving them what they need to become more valuable?
So the key is that once you start blogging more consistently and adding more video and being on Facebook, those networks start to pay attention to you and say, Oh, you’re making us more valuable by adding more content to our network. We’re going to reward you by showing more people on your network, your stuff. And if you keep going, imagine it like there are these milestones, predetermined milestones, right?
What I found, Daniel is that if somebody can consistently execute content marketing for about 4 to 6 weeks, that’s the first milestone where you’re going to get a good spike in results and you’ll think, Wow, that was exciting. I want more of that. Right? Then there’s another kind of plateau for a while, and then if you keep going, you’ll hit the next milestone and get the next burst, right?
So this is a long term game. This is not something that you do for six weeks and give up on it, do it forever, just accept it, commit to it. And that’s it.
[19:42] (Daniel) It’s part of it’s part of the cost of being in business.
[19:45] (Amber) Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. That’s a great statement.
[19:48] (Daniel) Great right. So simply. But I think everybody on this call was like, Oh no, this is one more thing I have to do, one more thing that I’m going to have to spend time on. How do you alleviate that issue? I mean, how do you give somebody time, freedom and also execute a content strategy that makes sense?
[20:07] (Amber) Yeah. So if you have to do it, you have to do it, right? Right. My whole thing has been how can I put it into a process and document it so that I can give it to somebody else? And it’s so well documented that they can do it as if I am doing it. And then I can have somebody else go do it.
So I got this idea about three years ago, right? And I thought, I am sick and tired of spinning my wheels doing a blog post here and an email there. And I was distracted and drained. So I thought if I can batch record like 20 of these little tip videos now put it into a documented process and give it to my team and say, take my videos and once a week pick one, do keyword research, make the blog post, do my social media, send an email to my email list and then send me a report every Friday tracking my growth results.
Do that. Here’s 20 videos go. And they did. And when I ran when they ran out of videos, I did another batch record of 30 some videos and then they kept going. So in two afternoons I recreate I created enough videos for a year’s worth of weekly content. My team got me exposure on all major online platforms that brought traffic back to my website, where they watched the blog posts and the videos.
They opted into my email list. They got the weekly email to continue that conversation, and when they were ready, they reached out to me to build their website or help them with marketing, and it was so dialed in. Daniel, you’ll love this, especially with what you do. Yeah, this process was so dialed in and so leveraged and so systematized that my team was doing all of that work in about 7 to 10 hours a month.
[22:04] (Daniel) There you go.
[22:05] (Amber) I used to spend almost 20 hours a week doing this on my own. So to have them spend 10 hours a month getting me all of that exposure and freeing me up for I didn’t have to do any of it. It was amazing. When we got enough of the right leads coming in to where I actually had to stop marketing for a while because our agency was at capacity and that’s when I turned it into a training system for other Vas to do it on behalf of their business owner clients.
[22:32] (Daniel) Yeah, it’s kind of insane what when you do this because you’ve done it for a lot of entrepreneurs and you have a Facebook group where you help them through it and you teach people how to do it. Where do people fall down? Like, where do people make the mistakes? Where do people kind of get frustrated and and you have to help them over that hump.
Like, where’s the friction points?
[22:52] (Amber) Usually the only friction point, honestly, is just getting the business owner to commit to trying video. That’s it. Once they try it, they realize like, “Oh, this isn’t that hard or scary or complicated”. Yeah, they just get over that hump. The rest is so easy because what’s interesting, Daniel, the VAs really have no hump. They they love the structure.
They crave a system like this. They want they are constantly saying, do more systems and sales and operations do a book launch, do webinars, do this, do that because they they’ve never seen a solution like this that gives them everything they need to be set up for success in this way. So VAs love it right? Business owners, they have this fear of video which is totally made up in their head.
Once they start it, they see it’s easy and then that’s when it’s like they open up to possibility and realize that business doesn’t have to be an uphill climb all the time. So that’s really it for them and that’s their only part. The VA does the rest or the virtual professional.
[23:59] (Daniel) Yeah, I love it. You know, I was at this training thing with this billionaire guy and he gave a tip and it was an amazing tip. He’s like, as an entrepreneur, call your 10 or 20 best clients and ask them why they chose you. Just one reason why you chose me. And you get this list of all these different reasons.
You can kind of combine them up and usually you’ll find one or two reasons that somebody works with with you. So, Amber, why do people come and work with you? What is it that they get and why?
[24:31] (Amber)
God, I love that.
[24:33] (Daniel) Okay, right? Have you ever been asked that question… “If a billionaire said…”
[24:38] (Amber) I’ve heard a lot of different feedback. Honestly, the number one reason people hire me is for my mind. I’ve had that consistently over the years. I have a very creative and innovative mind, but I’m also very strong in systems and efficiency and those four things. Most, most entrepreneurs just can’t think that way. And I simplify every thing for them and they love that because other influencers overcomplicate and I say nano, it can actually be pretty simple.
[25:12] (Daniel) Right?
[25:12] (Amber) And they really, really appreciate that. I think the unsaid part is that I am extremely nurturing, I am very empathetic. And so I pour a lot of love, empowerment, belief into the people that I work with. And let’s face it, business owners really need that. They don’t really have a resource for that when you think about it. Right.
So I think they hire me for my mind and my approach and my ideas. But they I think a lot of times also really stay and refer me like crazy because the way I make them feel, honestly, if I’m being, that’s it.
[25:53] (Daniel) I love it. Okay, so what’s the I mean, let’s say somebody decides to follow your system and like nails content marketing and does it for the 90 days go over the first time and then another six months to get over that second hump. Now they’re out there, they’re doing well, they’ve got it into a system. So in ten, 10 hours, a month at at max doing this stuff and they’re generating revenue and leads, what’s what leave us because we only have 4 minutes left.
Leave us with what’s next level after that, like sell us on what the end game is.
[26:28] (Amber) Well, I think that the people I tend to work with want to have more impact and they want to build toward their legacy. Right. So really, this this content marketing is just the first layer of it. Like that’s what everybody has to do. But then we need to look at, okay, how can we then create a sales system so that the qualified people coming in have a really dialed in sales system?
Like I when I figured out my sales system, I went from a 25% close to an 85% close in half the time. It used to take me to talk to prospects. Right. That’s amazing. So now my marketing systems dialed and sales system is dialed in. And then I looked at operationally in my fulfillment, how do I put systems there?
Once you have these systems in place, your dial, your operating at high, high efficiency, that’s when I really was able to free up and spend a lot more time thinking about my leadership abilities and being more of the CEO and how do I scale and just being that influencer. So that’s really where that impact gets to just exponentially grow and where the legacy is built, right?
So business really does have these different stepping stones and I have the ability and the experience to move entrepreneurs from that stage of I have an idea and I don’t know what to do with it and move them through these different phases as they have built up their mindset and their team and their organization, their systems, their structures and everything, I have them climb the ranks.
[28:06] (Daniel) This is amazing. Okay. And now you’re a client of ours, right? I mean, this is this is the coolest thing, is that we’ve found a way to work together so that our folks now have your system. And we have best in class systems along with best in class talent. Guys, we have a minute left. We we have a question.
I want to create my brand. And we didn’t even know there was going to be questions. That’s the best part about it. So I love what Michael says, but he’s he wants to be a probate guy. And I think that’s amazing. And I think Amber, you know, there wasn’t I guess there was just not really a question in that he thinks it’s an untapped market.
How would you go after like an untapped market in your space in the content world?
[28:53] (Amber) How about this due to the amount of time that we have and I want to be more thoughtful in my approach, I’m going to respond to the comment in the stream and I will tag that comment to make sure that we give a really thoughtful reply.
[29:07] (Daniel) I love it. Amber, you’ve been great. Hey, thanks for your time today, guys. If you want her free workbook, it’s a lot of a workbook, and I’ll give you the step by step process to answer questions. What to post, when to post, where to post. She’s giving it away for free at MyOutDesk dot com forward slash Amber. Thank you again for being here with us and dropping that blowing in the mind knowledge stuff.
[29:29] (Amber) And I’m happy to answer any other questions or engage with you guys more one on one. So feel free to drop more comments in the Facebook thread there. And I’m super easy to talk to and approachable. Happy to help you with the custom solution based on your business. So just reach out anytime.
[29:46] (Daniel) Awesome. Thanks, Amber.
