Prioritize the Boring Money Making Activities in Your Business [Ep. 197]

Michelle (: 00:01

Hey, hey everybody. Welcome back to the real truth about business. I'm super excited today because we have our very first guest episode. So you know with, if you've been listening to my other podcasts for a while, I did mostly solo episodes, but with the real truth about business, my goal is to bring on guests and just have basic conversation. You know, the goal here is not to, I want to obviously showcase the expertise of other people.

But the goal again is to just tell the real truth and have conversations with people I see building their business in a way that is sustainable. And today I have Elaine Jarden with me who is a email marketing strategist and copywriter and also my email marketing strategist. So I absolutely love her and she's also probably one of my biggest sounding boards. I blow up her WhatsApp on a regular.

Um, which is, I just appreciate and love that I have you in my corner right now, Elaine. So please take the mic and introduce yourselves, tell everybody. And then we're going to dive into today's topic, which is about prioritizing the boring moneymaking activities. So anyways, Elaine, it's all you.

Elaine Jardon (: 01:18

Yes. Okay, hey Michelle, thank you so much for having me. Yes, I am a former teacher turned email marketing strategist and a copywriter, and I really built my business on the boring stuff, to be honest. I'm one of those people that entered the online space during COVID, and that was...

the thing, the boring stuff is what allowed me to make more money my first year in business than I ever made as a teacher, even with a master's degree and a lot of experience. So I'm excited to dive into this.

Michelle (: 01:51

Yeah, me too. Because one of the things I think the reason why I asked Elaine to come on this call today or this episode really was because she's been posting a lot of TikTok content about, you know, doing the boring things and how, you know, you see all these people on basically social media managers. Let's just call them what they are and the content creators and telling you all of these things like, Oh, your content's not sexy enough. That's why things aren't doing. And you're, you're

You're not telling people what they really want to hear and having to do all these boring things is not what's sexy and that's not what's drawing people in. And I've been told that probably for the whole five years that I've been in business, that the things I teach and the things that I talk about and the things that I really find important when it comes to building business are boring, right? They're not sexy enough, but the reality is again, it's just the truth. The non sexy things are the things that make you money.

Right? Yes, the sexy things are fun. And when I talk about that, when I say the word sexy, what I mean by that is the creative things, the websites, the playing in Canva all day and being super creative and creating new offers. And all of these things are really fun, right? Like we love to create new offers. We love to raise our prices. We love to do all of these fun things, but none of it sells if you don't have the boring stuff backing you up. So Elaine.

I would love to just hear like, what are your boring things? What do you prioritize as boring and what makes you the most money?

Elaine Jardon (: 03:25

Okay, so I firmly believe that in, and I'm talking about, so service providers are the people I primarily work with. So if you're e-commerce product-based, if you wanna be an influencer like this advice does not hold true. But if you're a service provider coach, somebody who works one-to-one with clients, like I really truly believe that it's not always that the best person wins. I think it's the person who shows up the most who wins.

So I prioritize being the best at following up. So, which is kind of a boring activity, right? You know, you send out a proposal, you don't hear back, you keep following up, you keep following up. You're like, wonder what's going on? Because like my goal is to get to an answer. Like I'm very fine with hearing no, but I don't like living in the gray. So following up can be very boring and tedious, but that's the key.

even if it's not a proposal situation, following up on somebody you had a networking call with six months ago to see what's new, how you can support them. That to me is my number one boring activity is following up.

Michelle (: 04:28

Yeah. And following up, I think for a lot of people, the reason they don't do it, not necessarily so much even that it's boring is because there is that fear of being, being told no, right? There's a fear of being told no, there's a fear of being told they're being too pushy or they're too salesy or anything like that. But the reality is, again, we're here to talk real truth. The reality is, is business is business. And in order for you to make money, you need an answer. Right. And we are all in business.

to make money. These are not hobbies. This is not a volunteer opportunity. We are not a nonprofit. We're not doing this as a donation of our time. We do this because in exchange, we need to make money. That's what a business is. Business runs on revenue and profit. And if you're not bringing in the revenue and you're not making any profit, then you don't have a business. And so these things, like following up, like Elaine is saying, like just get to an answer. No means move on, right? And maybe for the most part, no means not right now.

in a lot of ways and that's a topic for another day. But I think following up is one of the biggest things that people don't do consistently, which I think is another point you wanted to mention too that you talk about all the time is consistency.

Elaine Jardon (: 05:42

Yeah, and I understand where that comes from, right? Like nobody, it's hard, because when you're the person doing the follow-up, you're like, I don't wanna be pesty, like I don't wanna annoy them, and I had a former coach who said something that I say all the time, which is you can't annoy the right people. So there are tons of times that I've followed up with someone and they're like, oh my gosh, like I meant to email you back, or you know when I got to this screen, like.

my credit card wasn't with me and so I didn't put the payment through. I'm gonna take care of it today. Like people are people and I've been that person. I've been that client for other people where I'm like, oh my gosh, thank goodness you said something because I totally like forgot or blanked or whatever. And so if it's the right person, they're not gonna be annoyed. And then the flip side, like you said is accepting no. If somebody's like, no thanks, I'm like, okay, cool. I'm not gonna keep like trying to wear them down or anything, but the followup is like absolutely crucial.

Michelle (: 06:13

Uh huh. Me too.

Elaine Jardon (: 06:34

And if follow-up isn't someone's strong suit, I'd say automate as much of that as you can. Write the templates in advance. Set a system up for yourself where you're like, okay, I'm gonna send a proposal. I'm gonna follow up if I don't hear anything after two days. I'm gonna follow up again after five. I'm gonna follow up again after seven. Something like that takes the emotion out of it so that you can just be like, I'm following my process. And that's also the thing that helps with consistency is if you're like, I'm the kind of person that sits down

and I follow up with two former clients every single day, then that's just who you are. You don't have to make the decision, you don't have to think about it, you just do it. And that's, you know, discipline beats motivation. You're never gonna feel like doing any of these things. You just have to have the discipline to do them.

Michelle (: 07:18

Exactly. I think back in 2018 or 19, I primarily focused my business on that. I created a program, it was called 30 minutes to more at the time. It's included in my lead generation, done differently, bundle now. Now I think I call it my daily three, two, one outreach, but that's essentially what it is. It's this daily activity that's three new connections, like starting three new conversations a day, which I want to talk to you about because I know you do a lot of that.

and then two follow-ups per day, and then showing up, one level of visibility. Like, what are you doing to get visible? What are you doing to keep your name, you know, top of mind for your people? And that's it, and it can be done in 30 minutes a day. I've tested it a million different ways and a million different times, but it's like, that, you don't have to do all the boring things all day long. And I think that's the other thing that we gotta really talk about and really dive into, is that...

These boring money-making activities are fast. They're not like you're gonna sit in them for eight hours a day. Nobody wants to do that. We would never be business owners if we never could have fun, right? But you can also find fun ways to do it, right? Like you can send voice memos, like you said, automate it so that it's just, you know it's happening and you don't even have to, you don't even have to think about it. I actually did a coffee chat with somebody recently and before we ended the coffee chat, she said,

a couple different follow-up messages from me. They are automated, but know that if you reply, it's me on the other side. But I follow up and I put it in there because if I don't automate it, I won't do it. And I wanna make sure that you and I stay in touch. And I wanna make sure that if we talked about something that we meant to follow up on, that it actually happens because that's part of she teaches networking.

She's like, one of the biggest things that never happens is we talk, you know, you have these coffee chats, you do these things, you network, you're like, oh my God, that would be so great. We should do a podcast interview or we should do this. And there's nothing around it. And so she said, I automate my follow-up and it says right in the subject line, this is an automation or something like that. And she doesn't hide behind it, but it works. But she said, I'm on the other side of it. Just know that I can't possibly remember to follow up with every single person.

Elaine Jardon (: 09:35

Yes, and I think that is so smart to name it, number one. And number two, I bet she gets so many more, you know, results, so much more follow through because she's done that automation step. Like the sacrifice in like, oh, it's not like entirely just me setting up my keyboard, but like, let's be honest, that's not gonna get done. I love that, I love it.

Michelle (: 09:56

Yeah, she's just real. You know what I mean? Again, like this is, that's why I want to the real truth. It's she's just calling the truth out. Don't hide behind it. She's saying I'll never remember. So this is what I did and here's how it works. And so I think that is really important, but talk about consistency. And I want to tell people your story a little bit on how you replaced your income in your first year. Like you are not afraid of cold pitching, which you know is not a

It's not for everybody, but let's talk about that. You're not afraid to have conversations and you did that. So just talk about it. Talk about what did you do when you decided like, you know what, I'm gonna give myself a year to figure this out. What did your days look like?

Elaine Jardon (: 10:38

Yeah. Okay. So I started as a Dubsado specialist. Dubsado is a client relationship management system, right? So you can send your contract proposals, invoices, all that kind of stuff in there. And so I think the first thing that I did that was, I didn't mean to do it, but that worked very well for me is I became very specialized, very early. And so it was easy for people to refer me.

you know, anytime I spoke to them, they're like, what do you do? And I'm like, I set up DubSado. And they're like, do you do anything else? And I'm like, no. And at first I thought that would be really limiting. I'm like, I'm gonna have to add on like all these other services, but no, cause then anytime people heard DubSado come up in a conversation, they're like, oh, you need to talk to Elaine, oh, you need to talk to Elaine. So I think that really played in my favor. Then there was one specific Facebook group that would always have a coffee chat thread on Mondays.

And so I would go in and I would look through and anybody that dropped a coffee chat link I hadn't spoken to, I would book a call that week. And I talked to like 150 different people. And what's crazy is some of these people now are like running meta ads and they seem like such big like people and I'm like, who was I? Just being like, hey, I'm Elaine, let's talk about Dev Sato. But that was really the key is I had a ton of conversations. I tracked them all in ClickUp.

Right, so I had like who it was, what their industry was, when I was gonna follow up with them, all my notes. And like that was the bulk of my marketing for an entire year was just talking to people. And then I'd say like, hey, if you know anybody else who is a service provider, who's an online business manager, because those are great referral people for me, like I would love to meet them. And it was just like coffee chat after coffee chat after coffee chat. Also, I asked former clients for referrals.

So that's another area that I think is a helpful thing to automate, because it's easy to forget, oh, we worked together a year ago. It's nice to have an email that comes out that's like, hey, so-and-so, here's what I'm up to, blah, blah. How are you? I'm looking for this kind of person. Is there anybody you know I can talk to? If they had a good experience, it's a very natural thing for them to be like, oh yeah, you need to talk to so-and-so.

Michelle (: 12:51

Yeah, I think that's another key point here to remember is that we assume people will send us referrals, you know, on a regular. And we just assume that people know or are thinking of us. But the reality is, is most people aren't thinking about other people. And that doesn't mean that we're being rude. It doesn't mean it just we're busy. For the most part, people are busy and they're not thinking about unless somebody specifically comes to them and says, Hey, I'm looking for somebody. Do you know anybody? Right? Like they're not.

thinking about you or they don't know that you're taking on new clients, right? They don't, they could just assume like they could watch your social media content and think, oh my gosh, she's killing it. She's busy. She's crazy. They could just assume that you're too busy and that you're not taking on new clients. So even just letting people know like, yes, I am available. I have these many spots. Here's what it looks like. Do you know anybody?

Then, you know, it just, again, it's about that top of mind awareness. I view that as like a visibility. If I were talking like my three, two, one strategy, it would be more of the one. Like asking for the referral is something that you can do to keep yourself visible. Keep yourself top of mind. And that is what maybe not the most exciting thing to do in your business, but what's exciting is when you get a referral on the other end.

Elaine Jardon (: 14:07

Exactly, exactly. I was also going to say too, I think that there's this issue of capacity that all of us have if we work one-to-one and that's where like the conversations like you're describing really can come in handy because it, at least for me, it forces me to be more attuned to like how many spots do I really have right now because

it's easy for me to be like, yeah, I'm gonna keep selling. And then I'm like, oh my gosh, I have to actually deliver the work. Like I don't have any time. And so having those things where it's like, okay, I have this many email marketing spots available. I have this many website copy really helps me then manage that capacity and makes my outreach more targeted because I know exactly what I'm asking for. I know exactly what I'm trying to fill.

Michelle (: 14:51

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And one of the things that you also mentioned was that you tracked your coffee chats and you track your numbers. And like you just said, you know your capacity, you know how many clients you have. And I think tracking numbers, this is obviously my wheelhouse. I am all for tracking data. I tell everybody, like, I want you guys to be educated business owners, making educated data-driven decisions that are with real data.

Not just like, oh, I think this is what's happening, or I think this is where my referrals are coming in, or this is where I'm spending the most time, and so this is what must be working. No, like really looking at and seeing like what's working. And you obviously could see that your coffee chats was what's working. It was working to tell people that you did dobsado only at the time, and now you do email marketing. But the other thing too is you do email marketing, but really only in ConvertKit.

Elaine Jardon (: 15:48

Mm-hmm. Yep.

Michelle (: 15:49

So that's also very specific, which I think is, you know, again, there's niching and getting spent, you know, specific, there's, there's a bunch of sides to that coin, but it's the tracking of the data to know where people are at, what's working, where you're at. And so how are you, how do you do that on a regular basis?

Elaine Jardon (: 16:08

So I update all my stuff on Monday. I know a lot of people do like CEO day Friday, but like I like to start the week that way because it kind of gets me in the right gear. You know, if I'm like, oh, I didn't do enough of whatever last week, then I can make the change going into this week. Or sometimes I'm like, oh, this worked really well. Like, okay, I am moving CRMs right now. And I didn't really think people would care that much. So I tossed it up on stories. Okay.

I have gotten so many DMs about like, tell me about it, show me what's going on, all of this. And I'm like, okay, like there's an opportunity here. And so that means I can, you know, do with that what I will. But if I had, I got to look at that kind of thing, like my engagement, da da. I was also gonna say something about starting conversations with people is also being someone that people want to have a conversation with. And so putting like a little bit of personality or something into...

DMs or onto posts really helps. For example, I always say, whenever I drop my coffee chat link, I'm like, I'm happy to talk about anything except for sports ball, video games, and dressing for your body type. I have no interest in that. And so many people will respond and they're like, I don't wanna talk about dressing for your body type either. And I'm like, great, because now we already have something in common. And people that are like, I love dressing for my body type. Well, don't get on a call with me. We're never gonna gel. I want you to know right away if I'm for you or not. So it also just...

when you're looking to make connections. Like I always look for people who have something that I can comment on beyond just like, you're killing it, babe. Business looks great. Love it.

Michelle (: 17:44

Again, like that to me, right, is something that people do because it's easy, right? These easy type comments are... but true engagement is boring, right? It is boring to scroll social media and have active engagement. It's boring to go through and actually search these Facebook groups for posts that are relevant to what you are doing and then actually comment on them.

Elaine Jardon (: 17:51

Mm-hmm.

Michelle (: 18:13

I agree on Mondays. I think Mondays are a great day to set up your week. And there's a few things that like I do that are super, I consider them like boring and I have to write them down. Like I have to keep them on my to do list because otherwise they won't do it. And that's catching up my quick books, right? To look at like, where am I at? What's working? What's not working? Because again, like you don't want to just spend money.

if it's not there or aimlessly or maybe realize like, oh shoot, I forgot I bought this. You know what I mean? Like how many times have you bought something and then you forget and then you go to priority, you know, you put it in QuickBooks. It was like, oops, okay, let me go look at that. I have one thing right now that I know for a fact, I've not purchased, you know, I purchased and didn't watch. Catching up my Coffee Jets tracker. So for the, you know, I have the lead tracker, you have a tracker and click up, but like updating that, I don't, I try to update it as I go with the notes and whatnot.

but I don't always send up the email that says, like I always send out an email that says, hey, thanks, it was great to connect, here's the one sheet that we talked about, or here's the referral link, or here's something. I always try to create and provide value after the fact, but I don't wanna do it immediately, because again, I don't want it to get lost, they're busy, I'm busy, I don't wanna not put any thought into it, so that's something I do every Monday. And also, I look at and lay out like,

where can I fit in my reach out? Like, what does it look like? Because if you don't schedule that in, it just is never gonna happen. It's never gonna happen. We get chatting on WhatsApp for, you know, you're going back and forth with people on WhatsApp all day, or Messenger, Voxer, whatever it is. And before you know it, your day is booked. Your day is booked, you've not really done anything. And I think even looking at the end of the day, like, what did I get done today? Like, taking just a minute and looking at, like,

Who did I talk to? Who didn't I talk to? What do I need to do? Right, like just spending 30 minutes here or there, you're not having to spend an hour, two hours, three hours doing this stuff. If you get into a routine with it, it's maybe 30 minutes at a time, an hour a day, that you're actually doing these boring money making activities, but then you can spend the rest of your day doing whatever you want, right?

Elaine Jardon (: 20:28

Yep, and I think you're wise to make it time bound because we all know it'll expand to take however long you give it, right? So if it's like, okay, I only have 30 minutes to do these three tasks, it will get done. Otherwise it will eat the entire day.

Michelle (: 20:42

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I usually try to like, you have to schedule it in. That's just the reality of it. You schedule it in and then I usually have something followed up with something that I want to do. Right? So whether that's, you know, getting into Canva, whether that's checking my WhatsApp messages, because I love being on WhatsApp or whatever it is, like I always schedule something after it that I enjoy doing because, but again, if you find a way to enjoy, like you said, whether it's through automation, whether it's through

Find a way to like make these things fun. You can make them fun.

Elaine Jardon (: 21:16

Yep, and I think too, I find numbers to be very reassuring because they don't feel as personal. So once I know my conversion rate on whatever it is, then I know how to make more of that happen. For example, okay, so if I know my opt-in page right now is converting at about 50%, okay, if I want, you know, X number of new subscribers on my email list, here's how many people I have to get it put in front of, okay, that seems manageable to me. I feel good about that.

What I don't feel good about is when I'm like, oh my gosh, I gotta get more people on my email list. It just feels like panic, right? But if I know, okay, I wanna get 10 new people, it's converting at 50%, that means I need to get 20 new people to look at it. Okay, I can get 20 new people to look at it. That seems very doable to me. So even though tracking numbers can come across as really boring, I find it very comforting because it feels less arbitrary. It makes me feel more like I'm driving the car.

Michelle (: 22:14

And it also gives you an ability to create like a strategy for the rest of the week or a strategy for the rest of the month to know where you're spending your time. Right? So you may have looked and planned on spending your time doing all these other things only to find out like, oh, I only got to get 20 people if I want 10. That's cool. You know what I mean? And you can just change what you're doing and then you can get super creative with that. You can have a plan of attack for what you're doing and how you're spending your time. And I think

Ultimately, it comes down to consistency and figuring out what boring activities you need to do in your business. Like, for Elaine, it looks a little different than what I prioritize as boring or money making, right? Like, everybody's business has different money making activities because we all grow our businesses differently. And so really just sitting down and looking at what is it that you want to do? If coffee chats aren't your thing, that's...

Elaine and I feel very strongly about it. We built our business that way. You know, I have the hundred coffee chats club, all the things like I believe wholeheartedly that everybody should be having a hundred coffee jets a year. But if that's not your thing, then look at your numbers. What is it? What is your thing? Is it conversations in the DMS? Is it networking? Is it, you know, cold pitching? What is it? Is it that you do really well on social media? And if you create consistent content and you have a really powerful attraction marketing, what is it?

Even if that's what it is, that's what you have to do. But what is the plan to follow up? What's the next step? Always having that next step.

Elaine Jardon (: 23:46

Yeah, absolutely. I will say as a little plug for cold pitching, generic cold pitches don't convert, right? They just don't. But like a really thoughtful, well-crafted cold pitch is probably the, if you're like, I need a client like yesterday, I have found for me as a service provider, right? So like there's some caveats. That is the most direct route to booking a client.

right, is a well-crafted cold pitch, not just like, hey, by the way, I can help you with your email list. Like nobody wants that. Nobody wants that at all. But I think it gets a bad name because it's done poorly, but when it's done well, especially for businesses that are not online, like they're very used to that. And so it doesn't seem as taboo as some online business owners. Like, you know, people will be like, don't pitch slap me.

I don't mind getting a cold pitch. If it's terrible, I'm not moving forward. That's all right. But like, I admire the guts on you. You took action, which a lot of people don't do. They just put up a graphic on Insta and call it a day. Like, at least you were brave enough to reach out to a person. I admire that.

Michelle (: 24:58

Yeah. I mean, it comes back to like rehumanizing business, right? Like that's what it is for you is, is rehumanizing, talking to people and looking at how can you help and how can you be of service? It's not about, you know, but really looking at if you need a client sitting there saying like, I need a new client, I need a new client, I need a new client. What do you need to do to get it? Like, what do you need to do to get it? Where are you going to go? Like, do you have people in your pipeline? We talked about that.

Elaine Jardon (: 25:02

Mm-hmm.

Elaine Jardon (: 25:21

Right.

Michelle (: 25:27

You know, the last episode, where are you at? Like, what do you need to do? If you need a new client, go get one, go get one. Showing up on TikTok's not gonna get you a new client, right? Like showing up on Instagram. I mean, it may, if you have warm people waiting, right? But again, do you have warm people waiting? Are they in your DMs? Have you spoken to them before? Are you looking to see, like, who are the warm people? Who are the people interacting with you all the time, right? Like there's...

Elaine Jardon (: 25:35

Yeah.

Michelle (: 25:54

Those are boring things, right, to actually take a look at the numbers. But also again, like think about how exciting it is when you see like, oh my gosh, this person is open to every single one of my emails. They click on every single one of my links and then you reach out to them and say, hey, I see that, you know what I mean? How can I help you? Or you craft something based on the links they're clicking and the stories they're watching and they say, oh my God, I've been too scared to reach out to you, right? It makes too money.

Elaine Jardon (: 26:21

Yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm, it does.

Michelle (: 26:26

Awesome. Anything else you have a amazing freebie offer for them you to help people reach out to people talk to people to be human. Tell everybody about that.

Elaine Jardon (: 26:37

Yes, so it's my standout intro generator. And kind of like I was saying before, you wanna give people something to talk to you about this. Well, you'll answer some short prompts and then hit enter. It's a spreadsheet and it'll spit out five different intros that you can use that are clear about what you do and who it's for, but also have some personality so that people will remember you. You're not just the 28th copywriter that they've spoken to today. So you can go to alainjarden.com slash intro and grab it.

Put it into action today.

Michelle (: 27:08

Yes, it's fun. I was playing around with it the other day actually, because I was getting ready to be on a networking call and I was like, ooh, how do I want to introduce myself today? And it's fun if you really just trying to create different ways or really get clear on it. It's really a powerful tool and it's fun to use. But don't get too wrapped up playing with it, right? That's not a money making activity if you don't do anything with it. Yes, absolutely. Awesome, Elaine. Thank you so much for being my first guest. I will make sure everybody can connect with you.

Elaine Jardon (: 27:16

Yeah.

Elaine Jardon (: 27:26

Right.

Elaine Jardon (: 27:30

Right.

Michelle (: 27:38

in the show notes, we'll get all of your links. And again, remember guys, I think, you know, we talked about a lot of things here and we talked a lot about follow-up and all of these things. So if we're taking action, you know I love to give you action tips, right? So action tip number one would be to really create your list of boring money-making activities. What is it in your business that you need to do that you consider boring? And you know how you can tell if it's boring? Is if

You see it on your list and you go, mm, I don't feel like doing that right now. Right, like if there is something on your list and you get every day you look at it and go, I don't feel like doing that right now. That's a boring money making activity and you need to start prioritizing it. Right, so prioritize your list, figure it out. What are two or three things? We don't need 10 things, we don't need 20 things, we need two or three things that you can commit to every single day, okay? Number two, schedule them on your calendar. Schedule them on your calendar, whether it's once a week, whether it's something you need to do every single day.

You know, whatever that looks like. Number three, is there a way to automate it? Elaine gave you some great ideas on ways that you can automate some of these boring activities. And then number four, find a way to stay consistent, whether you need an accountability partner, whether you need somebody to help you out, whether you need a coach, a mentor, you need to hire somebody to do it for you. I know personally, I couldn't stay consistent with my email marketing. So what did I do? I hired Elaine. There's a reason for it, right? Because I know there's power in it, but I also know I'm never going to do it. Right?

I'm never gonna be able to do it and I'm never gonna be able to do it well. So hire somebody. So again, go take action. Don't listen to this and go, yep, I've heard all this before. I'm sure you have. Nothing we said is rocket science or new. It's just the truth. But go take action. All right? Love ya. We'll talk to you soon.