AL 010: Can I Level-up My Brand by Doing Less?

AL 010: Can I Level-up My Brand by Doing Less?

Liz Wilcox: What up, what up? Liz Wilcox here, and you are listening to another bite-size episode called AskLiz of the Smart Passive Income Podcast. Shout out to Pat for letting me share the mic, and shout out to you for submitting your questions. Today we have got Sandra, but before I get into her, remember, this is the podcast where you submit your questions, where you ask Liz basically anything, personal development, business, lifestyle design, all that jazz.

And if I choose one of your questions, which I most likely will, because why wouldn’t I wanna help you, you get a free T-shirt. So today’s T-shirt winner is Sandra, so let’s hear what she’s got to say.

Sandra De Freitas: Hello, Liz. This is Sandra De Freitas, and I’ve got a question for you. You’ve been watching my business for about a year and a half now, and I wonder if you were sitting as my CEO for the next 12 months, where would you put your focus?

What am I underestimating? What am I not doing? What should I be doing? Whether that’s emails or launches or funnels, whatever it is, I’m totally open to your feedback. Thanks, Liz, and hello, Pat Flynn.

Liz Wilcox: Okay, so first and foremost, what you gotta know about my girl Sandra is she does memberships. She is so, so good at helping people build engaged communities, okay?

So if I was CEO for a day, the first thing I would say is, “Let’s not focus on adding.” Most CEOs might come in, and they might start, you know, “Oh, you need this, you need that.” But what I want to convince Sandra is not to add, but to look at what she can subtract, right? What are the things that you can let go of?

For example, if you’re doing three podcast episodes a week, you’re posting every day on social, you’re doing this, you’re doing that, like, what are the things that aren’t moving the needle except to drive you crazy, right? So definitely subtract those things.

Now, looking at all of Sandra’s stuff, I went to her website. She’s got a podcast. I was hanging out in her Facebook group before I hit record. This is what I would suggest. First and foremost, we have got to focus on list building. Always, always, always be growing your email list. I know, I know, you’ve been listening to Smart Passive Income for a while. Maybe you want to be like Pat.

You want to grow your podcast downloads. You want to grow your YouTube subscribers. But guess what? And Pat has been saying this since the beginning. Email is where it’s at. The podcast, the YouTube, all of that is to funnel people onto an email list, okay? So this is what I want Sandra to focus on, and we can do this with partnerships.

Pat and I have been talking about partnerships all year round. Why? Because we’re in a partnership right now, and it’s going really super well, right? So get out there, and I would suggest, because Sandra is such a good speaker, she has a podcast, I would suggest working the podcast circle, right? Who do you know that has a podcast that maybe you could do a podcast swap with?

I’m on yours, you’re on mine. Also, just even cold pitching, warm pitching. What I do on my email list, anytime somebody emails me, I have a signature, right? Liz Wilcox, and it says, “PS, do you know anybody that has a podcast? I am trying to get on as many podcasts as possible this year.” And I get so many replies.

“Oh, do you know Sandra? Do you know Pat? Do you know Shahara,” right? And that’s how I get a lot of podcasts. So that’s what I would suggest Sandra do, okay?

Here’s the thing. Sandra has been doing memberships and engagement with communities since 2005. Okay? That’s before even Pat, right? So why don’t people know you? Why are you not a household name? Why are you not the, you know, queen of the crop, so to speak, right? Who can promote you? Call in some favors. You’ve been in this game for 21 years. Your experience can legally drink in the United States, okay? Let’s call in some favors. Let’s go into that network, tap in and say, “Hey, I need to get on this podcast. Do you know somebody?” Or, “I know you know ABC. Can you make an introduction?” Right? I say it with love, and I’m talking to you listening, and I’m talking to Sandra.

Stop being so humble. You are an expert. You are a pro, and you’re not a jerk, right? You’re not this, I don’t know, sleazy salesman who’s constantly trying to take, take, take without giving. You can call in some favors.

So that is one thing I would suggest. Also, as CEO, I would wanna go into your email list, go into your ThriveCart, SamCart, Stan Store, whatever you’ve got, and I wanna look at your percentage of customers. How many subscribers, followers do you have versus how many of them have you actually converted?

That is my number freaking one metric. I am constantly obsessing over my email subscribers and who on the email list has actually purchased from me. I don’t care if it was a dollar or $100. I don’t care if you’re in my membership for one month or 10 years, right? You’re a customer, is a customer, is a customer if you’ve paid me, okay?

So let’s shoot for a higher number. If you are at 40% right now, how can you get to 42, right? That’s gonna cause Sandra to really start to think about those gaps in her marketing, in her sales. Her thinking about it is better than me just telling you, “Oh, in April do this, in May do that,” right? Thinking about if I’m shooting for a 10% increase in the next six months, what are some creative ways I can make some sales?

Am I sending enough sales emails? Do my sales pages need a revamp? How’s the conversion rate on that? These are the types of things we wanna work backwards on, right? So we wanna figure out our goal. I want 50% customers. I have 40. Now I need to work backwards and ask myself all of those questions. Look at all those things.

Is my homepage set up to get leads that are likely to buy? Am I getting on the right podcasts where, you know, I’m really nailing it and only the people that are… have the potential to buy are getting on, right? Does my lead magnet really lend itself to a later purchase? Do I have a tripwire? If you don’t know what a tripwire is, it’s that I join your email list, and instead of, you know, you sending me, “Thank you. Check your email.” Y’all, it’s the 21st century. We’re in the 2020s. I know to check my email. Send me to a sales page, a limited time offer, right? At SPI, if you join our email list, I’m sure the link will be in the show notes, you get sent to a tripwire that you can join our SPI community for a dollar. It’s a 14-day trial.

It’s a dollar. Right off the bat, we are saying, “Hey, I’m a business. I offer real solutions for your real problems.” So again, having that goal of increasing the percentage of customers is gonna allow Sandra to look at her overall online ecosystem to see where she can increase.

And the last thing that I noticed, I think it was the last thing. Actually, I’ve got a couple things. I don’t know why I said last. Moving on. I noticed Sandra doesn’t really have that many podcast reviews. Despite her podcast having hundreds of episodes, I was only able to see one review. So I would do a big push for your show. Again, Sandra’s so good at speaking. She’s an absolute expert.

She’s incredibly consistent with her content. Let’s get her some more listeners. And not even that, like, let’s get her listeners that take action, that leave reviews.

Side note, if you want to leave her a review saying that you are loving these new AskLiz episodes, I would be incredibly grateful. We need feedback.

If you don’t like it, you could say that too. I just want to know.

Anyway, back to Sandra. So doing a big push for the show. She could do it on social media, on her email list, even in the podcast, say, you know, giving incentives for people to listen again, for people to share the show with their friends. You know, I don’t want to bribe people to leave reviews, but just the way that I said, “Hey, if you’re liking this,” in the middle of the episode, I asked you to leave a review.

Sandra, I love you. I say it with love. Do that, right? Ask for the reviews. Again, be a little shameless. Call in some favors, right? All right. Oh, I got a couple more ideas for you, and then I will leave you to it, my dear. So I was looking through, and she’s got, Sandra’s got some freebies, some lead magnets, some opt-ins, but she’s got something called a Burnout Free Blueprint.

Uh, I think Burnout Free Membership Blueprint, excuse me. Run a contest among your subscribers. So I remember back in the day when I was an RV travel blogger, I was learning from a guy named Jeff Goins, and I went to one of his private workshops, and I was desperate to get 1,000 new subscribers. And he said, “Well, you know, do you have a paid product?”

And I said, “Yeah, I have this book called Tales from the Black Tank.” And he said, “Well, why don’t you just give that away for free?” And you can get your 1,000 subscribers. Tell your current subscribers… I think at the time I had, like, 500, maybe 600. He said, “Tell your current subscribers, ‘Hey, I’m gonna give this away for free.

You have seen me promoting it because it is paid. I’m not lying. You’ve seen me promoting it. I’m actually gonna give it away for free now. Can you share with your friends? Share wherever you feel would make sense.'” And I did that, and I got those 1,000 subscribers in, like, three or four days. So I would run a contest among your subscribers to promote that, to promote, like, a paid thing into free.

Or you could just… It doesn’t even have to be a contest, right? Like, it could just be, “Hey, this is only available for 30 days.” Maybe it’s a 30-day trial into Sandra’s membership, and, you know, it’s, it’s gonna be gone after 72 hours, so share it. Share, share, share, share. I want as many people to check this out.

You know, like, it’s a thank you for, you know, trusting me with your ABC, right? People love a gimmick. It’s sort of gimmicky, but people love a gimmick. It’s fun. It’s fun, fun, fun.

All right. So that is what I would do if I was Sandra’s CEO for a day. I hope this was helpful, not only to Sandra, but to you, and I hope you stick around for the next episode.

I’m sure it’s gonna be magical because around here, that’s just what we do. Thanks for listening. I’ll see you on the next episode.

Psst, are you still listening? Quick, while Pat’s away, I’ve got a special little secret just for you and me. If you love this episode and want more, like a lot more, you need to get yourself into the SPI Community.

You know that’s where I’m hanging out as the director. My friend, it really is where the magic happens. You get access to the full Superfans System, you know, Pat Flynn’s entire framework for turning strangers into ride or die fans of your business that actually buy from your business, right? We’ve got courses, resources, implementation guides.

It’s all in there. Okay, okay, listen up. This is the part where you and I can get really close to your monetization goals. I do office hours inside the community. That’s right. You can bring your business questions. You can screen share. Whatever’s holding you back, we will figure it out together. But here’s the secret.

The SPI community normally $99 a month. But with the coupon code SECRET50, you get 50% off. That’s less than 50 bucks a month for life as long as you stay active. This deal is just for the people listening to this Ask Liz episode, so don’t sleep on it, babe. Head to SmartPassiveIncome.com/2026 and use code SECRET50 at checkout.

I will see you in there.