Instagram Live - Answering Your Business Questions

so I'm gonna try I have some weird lighting going on I'm gonna try to stay out of the sunlight here very exciting news the budget mom hit a hundred thousand followers so thank you so much for helping me reach that goal tomorrow I'm actually gonna be doing my $1000 giveaway plus the winner is going to pick a charity of their choice which I'm gonna donate three hundred dollars of my income in their name as well so I'll be announcing that giveaway tomorrow it's very very exciting I have your questions print it out I'm ready to go [Music] hi I'm Kimiko from the budget mom come along with me as I strive to live a life I love on a budget that I can afford today what we're gonna I wanted to do alive for one main thing to answer your guys's business questions I get a ton of business questions I don't always get to them because my main focus on the budget mom as you know is helping you with your financial lives but I don't want to completely ignore it either so I wanted to make sure I did a live segment to answer your business questions I tried your inventory to remind your guys there is that work hard work dedication determine motivation it's all about having a plan that's what gives you the truth my life they're like oh man [Music] I'm just gonna jump in to some of the questions now I got a lot of questions on email and through my Instagram messages I printed them all out I highlighted them and so I want to make sure first audio fine fuzzy comes and goes but mostly good okay so I'm hearing that the audio is a little fuzzy might be because I'm using my phone I don't I don't know I'm not very good with this tech type of stuff Bonjour okay is there anything so right now I didn't know really if I wanted to start out with the questions that I printed out or if I wanted to let you have the chance that high high because of Dave oh let's just jump into one of the questions that I got and I print it out so one of the question was did you grab genuinely a gradual following on social media Awards there one post that suddenly got a lot of attention and went viral so very exciting I hit a hundred thousand followers it's kind of funny in the beginning of 2018 I set a goal for myself for the budget mom on Instagram that goal twenty thousand followers so I totally went up and beyond my goal and I get a lot of questions about my huge success and my huge following on Instagram and how its kind of hat you know happening really really really fast my only thing that I can think of you know and I thought about this question a lot is my growth on social media and what was that kind of one pivotal change that kind of changed everything so for the longest time up until I would say about June July of 2018 I was sitting at about 2,000 followers yes it's kind of hard to believe that now but I was at 2,000 followers for the longest time probably for over a year I stayed at 2,000 followers I think what kind of changed was in the beginning I was terrified of video I was petrified of going online and showing my face and showing you know and having a voice out there in the world I was so scared of doing but I also knew deep down in my heart that I could teach on a different level through video than I could through writing and I think that one pivotal moment in the growth of my social media was showing you my real self letting you know who I really was that I wasn't just some robot behind the computer screen it was allowing you to see behind the scenes my life and who I really am and it took a lot of courage I'm not gonna lie it I can't even explain to you how terrified I was of doing it but the very first budget I ever shared on the budget mom was my real budget in my real numbers because I thought to myself one day you know I'm sitting here and I was asking myself how can I reach more people how can I get the word out and get this knowledge and all this helpful information to more people I was mainly thinking about you know that mom who's sitting at the dinner table looking at her bills wondering how she's going to pay that how do I reach that person and let her know she's not alone and I started thinking what would have helped me when I was that mom sitting at the kitchen table wondering how I was going to make all of my minimum payments and I thought to myself one of the ways that one of the things that I would have thought would have been helpful on my journey was seeing someone else budget in their real life not just throwing examples at me but truly showing me what it looked like the thought process what it went into to have a successful budget and so I started sharing my real numbers and once I start it started showing that realness and that transparency and that truth my Instagram started to grow and I think it has to do with being relatable and showing your readers that you are a real person and that you have struggles I know a lot of Instagram accounts are all about showing the perfect picture and so making sure every picture looks organized and perfect and pretty and but it's not about that for me especially on the budget mom I want you guys to know the truth behind my struggles especially with my finances because I am not perfect my house is not perfect my meal planning is not perfect my budget is not perfect and I think it's important that you guys see that so you know you're not alone and that everyone struggles with their budget from time to time it may be big struggles it may be small struggles but we're all in the same boat and so once I started showing that on my Instagram that's when it really started to grow all right so is there any questions I'm I'm getting a lot of different things I'm kind of just talking I got to remember to look at this feed is there any questions that you have out there right now before I don't want to just keep answering the ones I got I want to make sure that you guys have a chance to answer or ask questions as well so first off let me just first off let me just start off by saying what my business really is I get a lot of questions like what do you do it's kind of hard to explain it because most people see me as a finance blogger that's what most people would actually call me meet and and what I do on a day-to-day basis it's a little bit more than that I look at my business a little bit bigger scale than just say being a finance blogger but what I do basically is my business is the budget mom calm and it's where I share all this crazy helpful information things that I've learned along the way since 2011 on my budgeting journey and that is my business I share the tools and resources and information that I wish I had when I first started on my budgeting journey and so that's my business that's what I do most people like I said would call me a finance blogger but I really look at it in a whole different light than that side hustle ideas how are you able to add more towards debt payments so I get a lot of questions on maybe you don't have the passion to go and blogging what are some other things that you could do to possibly generate some extra income if your wine to kick your debts but a little bit faster so one of the things and I'll just kind of share with some of the things that I did so when I started budgeting I literally did not have any extra income to throw at my debt I paid my bills and then it was literally make it work for my gas in groceries and that's how I started out and when I first started budgeting but I also knew it was super important that I was never gonna get ahead on my debt if I couldn't make past the minimum payments because as you know a lot of the time especially on credit cards your minimum payments are going towards interest and it's a really sad story but it's true and so I wanted to make some major progress on my debt and I started looking around my house I started noticing some of the things that I really enjoyed doing I picked up my camera honestly that was really my first side hustle and in fact it was a failed business attempt it was my first business that I starting was a photography business and I failed at it and I'm not afraid to admit that because I think it's important to know that just because you have a passion and like doing something sometimes when you go out there in the world and you try to start a small business or try to start a hobby that can generate income it might not work out the way that you intend it to but I don't want you to give up it doesn't mean that you cannot generate a you know more income from a side hustle so I spent two months learning everything I could about photography and lucky I was really lucky that I was able to pick up some photography jobs on the side was about a hundred and fifty bucks extra a month but it was just enough to start seeing those signs of success with my debt payments and that pushed me even harder and I tried to start a business with it and it didn't work out the way that I thought but it did allow me to not struggle so much with my debt payments and during that time I I was fortunate enough to get promoted at work and I got a raise at work which really helped with my budget but you have to think about the things that matter to you that you're passionate about that you like doing think to yourself what are some ways that I can turn this passion of mine into a hobby maybe it's starting an Etsy shop I had one reader reached out to me she started a cake making business on the side when her son went to bed at night how amazing is that and now it's a it's actually an income for her it's a guaranteed income for every single months that she makes off of these cakes she makes when her son goes to bed because she enjoys baking and who knew that it could ever turn into something like that so you have to think about the possibilities don't limit yourself and never tell yourself that it's impossible because anyone can do it okay I'm a self-employed hairdresser would you do a video about budgeting for your business and saving for taxes so I usually do like doing a business budget overview but they're becoming a little bit later in the month because and I'm trying to not have this light in the video that's annoying okay so for business taxes it really depends on the state that you're living in and here's another suggestion for you something I recommend when you start generating income from your side hustle or business maybe it's $50 maybe it's $100 a month but it's still income and you still have to start thinking about with every single state I believe it's a little bit different here I believe in the state of Washington if you make over $600 you start have to start paying taxes on that income and I got I literally rely on my accountant so heavily I mean he is really my go-to man and he tells me Mikko you have to set this much aside for taxes this is how much your payroll taxes are gonna be and this is how much your federal taxes are gonna be and you have to set this money aside when you start generating an income I do if you're not familiar with accounting or the rules or the regulations or the laws I really do suggest talking to an accountant sit down with them and say hey this is what's happening to me what are your suggestions I really do believe in the power of having a professional accountant because oh man I don't know what I would do without my accountant so that's very very important all right so I want to get really quickly I have one more different a couple of different questions do you use any additional forms to track your business income and expenses so what I'm doing right now to track my business expenses is I am using the expense tracker from the 2019 budget by paycheck workbook I just literally put it into my business binder and that's what I'm using to track my business expenses and my spending so it's really really important in this light I'm telling you do you see my eye twitchin stressing me out my eyes twitching that's how much it stresses me out let me see if I can go this way oh here we go okay so with your business with your business income and your spending it's really important to know especially if you're just starting out where is your money going now I did get one question what if you're just starting out and you don't have a lot of money or don't have any money at all to invest in what you're wanting to do I started the budget mom with zero dollars I mean nothing and I took that chance of spending I think at the time it was three dollars and 99 cents to buy a domain name the budget mom calm and at that time it was a pretty small expense but I took the chance and I just bought the domain name and that's really all I started with when I started the budget mom that was my only expense three dollars and 99 cents but here's what I suggest if you are wanting to start a business don't sell yourself short I want you to know there are a lot of things that you think you may not be able to do but you can do did I ever think in ever that I would ever learn how to write website coding no way but over the years I didn't want to hire a developer in the beginning of my business it was an expense that wasn't truly I did not think was important the content my message helping people is what was important to me and so I learned how to write website coding all by myself by watching YouTube channels yes and it took months for me to learn and I still am learning new things but there are a lot of things that you can do on your own when you're just starting out I learned photography I learned how to deal with some of the technical stuff in the background for my blog I learned how to do it on my own then when I had a little bit more income from my business I used every dollar I made and I threw it back into my business and that's really how I started the ball rolling with choosing what expenses I wanted for my business who do you recommend to build a website blog okay so my story when I first started I used Bluehost and I still do use Bluehost for my website hosting our my service provider there's mixed opinions out there about Bluehost some of the have bat's experiences with it because I have to be truthfully honest with you some people have bad experiences with it some other people say it's been great I have been with them my whole entire journey of blogging I've never had a bad experience with them they have treated me very very well and their customer service has been great so I have not had any bad issues with Bluehost for my my blog I you'd where I use wordpress.org that is the platform that I use to build my website now in the very beginning I bought a free theme and that's what I use I wanted to keep my costs as low as possible after two years though when I had some more income from my blog I made the conscious decision of hiring a website designer a professional website designer and that's what you're seeing when you go to my blog today I've been through a couple of different transformations with it but the navigation of my website is probably one of the most important things and it's still something I'm constantly thinking about I want to make sure that every single one of you can get to exactly what you're looking for quickly I don't want you to feel like frustrated when you come to my website because you can't find something that you're looking for and so navigation was really important I couldn't get the navigation that I wanted by using one of the free themes I had to go out and buy a custom design how did you decide to sell workbooks and templates kind of stuff on what to offer okay if you're struggling with what to provide to your readers for help here's what I suggest and you might not like this answer but it's the truth and it's my honest opinion start with offering free resources if your heart is in the right place and if you're truly doing it to help people then helping people is more important than generating an income off the fee of your first product so one of the first things that I've ever offered my recent my readers was my budget crush workbook it was a four-page printable absolutely free but it also let me know feedback from readers what they didn't like about it what they really liked how did it help them it helps you gauge what your readers truly need help with and what they're looking from from you and so start with those free resources if you do already offer free resources take what you have and make it even better how can it help your readers even more so it's never about never ask yourself how much can I make from this product you want to ask yourself how can I help people with this product what is the impact on their lives how is this gonna change their lives by offering this to them because then your product truly has value and that's what's really really important could you please tell us what you're doing as director of client operations so at my day job I do a little bit of everything so I have what's called a series seven it makes me basically registered as a financial professional and it gets a little bit confusing but I also hold my accredited financial counseling designation now I started it and I'm still em in the investment world okay I deal with investments every single day I go onto the computer and I trade stocks mutual funds it's my job to know the rules and regulations behind where money is getting placed into an IRA into a Roth 403 B 401ks 401 A's it's my job to know all of that type of stuff at work and that's what I do as director of client operations but it's also my job to deal with the clients and make sure that they feel comfortable with asking questions and I'm able to answer those questions successfully when I talk to them and in confidence so that's what I do at my day job the accredited financial counseling designation and I've talked about this before I'm in the investment industry and sometimes I feel like the industry that I work on work in it doesn't truly take care of the low income families and sometimes it's hard for people who don't make a lot of money to get the financial help that they need by going to say a regular financial adviser or an investment advisor I got the accredited financial counseling designation because it specializes in low income situations and problems and it allows me to help them on specific subjects sometimes it's specific to only low-income needs and that's what I really do with that designation how do you figure out pricing for your products so my products there is no at least for me there is no special formula out there for how I determine how much I'm going to price something but there is always one question that I have in the back of my mind the industry that I'm in finance personal finance helping people with their personal finances it's sometimes a hard industry to be in because the one question I always have in the back of my mind is the people that I'm trying to help may not have the money to afford the help or the resources that I'm trying to offer that could truly make a difference in their lives and so I want to make sure obviously that my time in the supplies that I use to create the products is covered because then if I don't adds a business I'm going into a deficit and that's never a smart business decision so when you create a product make sure you track the expense on what it costs you to create that product include your time in there as well because your time is important it has Worth and it has value time away from my kiddo it's worth something to me and so make sure when you're coming up with a product that you cover your expenses beyond that it's called profit and how much you want to earn as a profit is up to you for me though I always have in the back of my mind how can I make sure that everyone can afford this product and that it's not so far out of reach of the people who truly need help with their finances can't afford it and so I have to really make sure that I am juggling between the two of covering my costs as a business and making sure that my readers and my audience can afford my products when you calculate your business profits how do you determine the amount you keep in the business and how much you put towards debt so this is a great question so I let my business income grow in my checking account every month until the end of the month it's the end of the month where things really start moving with my business income in my business finances it's when I pay my employees it's when I pay my payroll deduct on my payroll expenses because I am now cutting myself an actual paycheck from the budget mom it's when I pay all of my different expenses after all of my expenses are paid which I always have a good idea because I'm budgeting my expenses for my business it's then I have to decide okay I have this leftover money what do I need to do with it where is the best place to put this money for me personally and for my business a lot of time and most of the time my Inc my leftover income gets put some of it gets put back into the business on what I'm working on for that month but a lot of the time so in my business and what I'm doing on online business it's kind of amazing that the costs are fairly low to run a blog they're really not that expensive because I'm able to keep my expenses so low I can have more of my income to keep and the income that you keep from your business is what's important it doesn't matter how much you make you can come on and tell me that you made a million dollars today on your business that really doesn't affect me all that much because what I want to know is what are your expenses because if you make a million dollars today in your business maybe you're spending 999 thousand dollars on expenses and he didn't get to keep that much money so it's all about figuring out how to keep your expenses low so you can keep more of the income that you earned and when it comes to paying off debt it's literally every penny that I make after paying my expenses it goes to my financial goals whether it's saving for my or paying off my debt how long did it take to get to a point where you knew you could hire employees so this is the first year that I've actually have employees or contractors on a full-time basis so grant my graphic developer I'm now working with a brand new graphic designer I have Stephanie a brand new content writer who's helping me stay on top of the content for the budget mom that turning point on figuring out I can no longer do it alone and I'm not gonna lie it was a very hard decision because with the budget mom I like to wear all the hats I like to be a part of everything from my business I like to make the decisions because I care about what I'm doing and it was really hard for me to let go of some of that control but you will become to a point in your business as it grows where you're gonna figure out very quickly that you're only one person and you can't do it all there's only 24 hours in a day and sometimes it's also about expertise I don't know everything and I am NOT skilled than every single thing out there when it comes to my business in the blogging world I rely on help and so it came to that point of ok it's time I'm not sleeping at night my stress level is through the roof I can't handle my workload and do it to the best of my possibility my potential if I'm trying to do it all and so when I do work for the budget mom I want to make sure I'm putting in my best work and you can't put in your best work if you're constantly trying to do 50,000 projects a day how much do you pay yourself and how did you come up with that figure my accountant honestly he kind of sat me down and we talked about you know we looked at last year's income and it came to the point where he was like Nico this is how much I'm going to let you pay yourself that's it you're not getting any more but the great thing about owning your own business is really the paycheck that you pay yourself it really doesn't matter it's strictly to like for me changing to a corporation this year was to save me on business taxes I was paying a fortune as a sole property airship when I was doing everything under my Social Security number for my business change changing it to a corporation I no longer have to pay those small business taxes on payroll which means there's a big chunk of money there that I'm no longer have to pay those taxes on but it doesn't mean you can't touch the rest of your income that you make it's just really for tax purposes and so the amount that my accountant kind of told me Miko this is how much I'm going to give you I was kind of like oh okay because if I do need extra something comes up and I need extra money for my budget I have it if I need it do you think an Etsy shop is a good place to start so when they're looking at Etsy okay I've looked at Etsy myself for some of my products and in fact I tried to sell some of my artwork on Etsy did it go well not for me it did not and I'm not afraid to admit that Etsy was not my platform um one anytime you're looking at a platform to sell a product or your your anything that you're passionate about you have to look at the fees because even selling something on say a site like eBay they charge a fee it may not be a lot but it's something you definitely have to be aware of because you never want to get your mind set and thinking of where you are now especially when you're just starting a business you want to think about the big picture where are you gonna end up doesn't matter where you are now what is your potential where do you want to go you might be selling one product today but in three years you could be selling twenty thousand products in a day and that fee is going to matter so it's important to look at the fees on the platforms that you're trying to sell on now Etsy has a little bit of a higher fee oh my um Etsy has a little bit of a higher fee ebay is a little bit smaller so when it comes to selling my products I did something a little bit different I could have sold my products on Etsy I could sell my set my products on Amazon here's why I didn't I decided to sell my products directly through my website I cut out that middleman and so really the only fee I have when I sell a product is through my payment gateway the the program that collects the payments for me and make sure it's secure and for me that's PayPal I go through PayPal now there are a lot of different payment gateways out there I chose PayPal because it's been around the longest and it's one of the most trusted sites when you sell products directly on your website which means as you if you've ordered from my website before you get to enter your credit card information directly on my website before I did that though I had to make a hundred percent sure guaranteed no matter what that my site was a hundred percent secure that means I forked over a lot of money to hire a security specialist to make sure that my website was set up the way it was supposed to setup to make sure every single one of my readers information is a hundred percent secure at all times it was a business expense that I thought was necessary because I was no longer paying a middleman like paying a fee to sell on Etsy I could use that money a one-time fee and have people go directly through my website and that's the route that I decided to take yeah a lot of you are saying PayPal is a great platform I haven't had any issues with them we're currently me and my developer are currently looking at another platform because like I said it has to do with those fees now last year here's the crazy thing and something you have to think about last year I spent $15,000 on PayPal fees in the year of 2018 that's how much money of my money PayPal took from me and so you have to start thinking about is there a platform out there that's just as good and secure as PayPal that I am NOT gonna be spending so they're not gonna be taking so much of my money from me because here's what that does it means I have to in the incra increase the price for my consumer because I have to cover those higher fees the lower you can keep your fees actually is better for your readers and your clients because you're able to keep your costs lower how did you get started with the website what platform do to use so I just mentioned that so I started with Bluehost and wordpress.org where did you find your person to make sure the website was secure through WordPress WordPress or Bluehost so right now Bluehost is actually the one that holds my SSL certificate it's that little lock that you see on my website when you come to my website it lets you know that my website is secure I get a lot of question it was one of the questions that I got em I printed out questions that I have here how did I decide who to hire how did I know that they were trustworthy how did I even figure out where to find these people I struggled with it for a long time in fact I reached out to a lot of people to try to get referrals first because if I could get a referral from somebody that I knew and trusted who worked with the person and they already established a relationship that's the route that I wish I would have gone but I didn't get a lot of referrals so here's what I I went to a place called upwork.com I don't know if you're familiar with upwork.com they are a great place if you're searching maybe you just need one job done and it's something really specific and you're looking for one person to complete that job on a one-time basis it's not like you want to go and hire them full-time upwork.com is great for finding a freelancer or a contractor and contractors are different than full-time employees and the fact that you're not paying them a paycheck you're paying them based on the work that they're doing for you at that time I also like up work because it makes every single person that you hire keep a work log or an activity log with videos yes it's kind of crazy it allows you to see what exactly is the work that they're doing for you and what is your money going to pay for it also allows you to determine how much you want to pay that person so I got really really really lucky with my graphic designer I found her on up work and guess what she just happened to be here in town in Spokane Washington and that was great because that means my team I can meet with I can actually go to a coffee shop sit down and brainstorm and have business meetings with my contractors and my employees which is super super important especially in my world because I will be honest right now I'm not the best at sending out descriptive emails of somebody to try to get something done for my website I don't want to sit there and say okay in this upper right hand box and five clicks below that I want you to change this one sentence that's giving me a hard time no I don't want to do that I want to sit down with them and meet with them face-to-face and show them and say this is what I want done so with up work I really had great experience in fact it's where I've hired every single one in between the team members that I work with how do you figure out what your niche is and what to create a blog about it's very difficult to find that one passion yes it's true I have many different passions artwork riding my Harley Davidson motorcycle budgeting you know being a mom is a passion of mine there are a lot of things that I could blog about and write about but I guess you could say that finance has kind of always held its place in my life somewhere I've always had debt I've always struggled with it and if I look back on my life some of the most stressful moments in my life had to do with my debt and had to do with my finances some of the most scariest times in my life like when I went through my divorce not having something to fall back on a savings a cushion something those were really hard times for me it was a very scary time for me and so that's where I wanted to help people and it became very very clear very very in I mean within seconds there was no doubt in my mind that was the change I wanted to make in the world that was the footprint that I wanted to leave behind that was my legacy and I I happen to have the skillset and the knowledge to do that and so that's how I chose finance do you have a business coach to help you know where to start and where to go someone to help you map out your business goals I don't and that's one of the things I get a lot of questions about that and why I don't hire a social media manager I'll tell you right now another person will not be touching my social media accounts it's something that I'm very very passionate about I get a lot of questions like why don't you just let someone else answer your emails because I'm sure you're answering the same question over and over again or why don't you let someone answer the thousands of Instagram messages that you get every day no that is one part that is my connection to you guys that is that personal relationship that I never want to get rid of I don't care it takes me forever to answer those emails it's really important to me that I answer every single one personally because it's I don't want to just be some girl behind a computer screen or a camera phone I want you to know that I'm a real person and I'm here to help you one of the ways that I feel that connection with you guys is when I can answer your message and your emails personally did you just start with social media then create a website when did you realize is you needed a website so I always started with a blog but here's my number one tip when it comes to social media in your business don't focus on all the platforms if you are worrying about putting your business or getting exposure on Twitter LinkedIn Google+ Pinterest Instagram Facebook if you're worrying about getting your business on all those platforms you will fail at all of them and here is why it doesn't give you a chance to master one of them and move on to the next so when I first started I was very very overwhelmed oh I need to be here and I need to be here and I need to be on this platform until one day another blogger told me stop focusing on all of them focus on one where are your readers where can you reach your readers what platform and I thought to myself well Pinterest and most people don't know this Instagram is not my biggest platform Pinterest is I get almost 4 million views a month on my Pinterest account if I think about 62% of the traffic from my website is from Pinterest I started with Pinterest and I mastered that program in fact one of the biggest investments that I first made for my business was taking a course on how to learn to use Pinterest what the analytics were what worked what didn't work what picture sizes was I supposed to use what graphics was I supposed to use I mastered Pinterest I learned that platform inside and out before I even attempted another one and then the next one I focused on was Facebook and so it's really important if you're trying to go grow your social media following start with one platform put your heart and soul into knowing your readers and your clients on that platform what works for you what doesn't work for you test it out see what is working and then move on to the next how or did you keep your social media separate for personal and business so it didn't affect your job so here's what makes my day job a little bit difficult and what I do because I am registered and I do hold my Series seven I am completely a hundred percent regulated by FINRA and it makes it very difficult on what I can and cannot say on the big budget mom so what I do at my day job in the finance industry especially with employees and financial advisors the rules and regulations are crazy and they do that to protect the investor they told me when I started the budget mom I was not allowed to give investment advice because here's the problem if I were to go to you and say hey go invest in this stock it's doing really well I think it's a great investment you went out yet you know tomorrow and invested in that stock and the next day at teint you could sue me for bad investment advice yes it's true and so especially on an online platform like this where there has to be clear disclosure of your fiduciary responsibilities as an investment advisor and I don't have those on my website and in fact I'm not allowed to talk about it which is why a lot of the time I don't talk about investing or how to get started in investing in fact I even have to be careful on when I tell you about specific counts even like a Roth or or a traditional IRA when I quit my job I will be able to talk about that stuff a little bit more freely but it has hindered my ability a little bit here on the budget mom how did you learn pinterest so well so I actually ended up taking a course pimpin it growth by a girl named Melissa Griffith and it's called pimpin it growth and that's the first class that I started with and the first one that I invested my money and I learned a lot and so I that's it was referred to me by another blogger and so that's how I actually started with Pinterest do you plan to quit your day job or actually want to quit that is a really good question cuz I love my job I love what I do and but I was thinking about this the other day do you want to know one of the first interview questions that they asked me when I interviewed for the job they asked me where do you see yourself in five years what will you be doing and I thought about it for a second and I remember answering the only thing I want to do is help people I hope I get to a place where I can help people and if that means I can do it here great and I and you know my my answer is still the same but I don't feel like I get to help people at my day job like I do with my business and I've always told myself helping people as my number one passion I love my job I wouldn't have stayed there for over nine years if I didn't love my job but it's come to the point where like I said I'm only one person and I can't do it all I have to focus on one or the other and I've chosen my business I'm going to jump in and take that risk and I'm really really excited about it so did you take a blogging course Oman okay let me tell you about something really okay about the blogging courses when I first started I got pulled in 10000 directions with blogging courses how to make you a better blogger how to perfect your branding and all this stuff I spent thousands thousands of dollars on blogging courses have I ever finished one of them no that's the honest truth so there is one blogging course that I did take that I found very very very helpful its elite blog Academy and I think it was helpful in the very beginning because not so much now because I'm more of an advanced blogger but in the beginning it helped me decide what subjects I was gonna talk about on the budget mom what my branding what I wanted my branding to look like what did I want my message to be my tagline you know my tagline real finance are real women real finance real life that tagline was created two years ago because I went through that blogging course I still have not finished all of it it's a huge course it takes a long time you're not supposed to move on to the next class until you've finished one of them it takes me a long time because I don't have time right now to go through them but I think before you jump into a blogging course and actually pay money be aware of your free resources that you have out there because there are a ton of really good free resources that will do just fine when you're just starting out do you know if anyone from your day job purchased your budgeting course no no one at my day job I do have a couple of clients who are now following me on the budget mom but as far as employees know so I really like to keep what I'm doing here on the budget mom and what I do at my day job separate I know that's kind of a weird thing but it's because I didn't want to co-mingle what I'm doing here with my day job just for some you have to look at it from a business standpoint with that I didn't want to be turn into competition for the place that I work at and this light it's following me it's getting me okay I'm gonna maybe I'll go this way here we go okay so let me see if there's any more questions on this okay answered that one in the process of creating an online store to sell my artwork should I copyright and Trademark before I get the shop up and running perfect this is what I want to talk about let me talk a little bit about my trademark and copyright attorneys one of the number one things that I wish that I would have done earlier in my blogging career was know the legal stuff behind creating a blog so I hired a trademark and copyright attorney about four and a half months ago I started looking into it because I noticed them stealing going on with some of my products on Instagram I was getting some readers that were saying hey I noticed that so-and-so is selling your work sheets and I go over and it'd be like an exact copy of what I created on the budget mom it's hard to see that sometimes but at the same time you have to think about what you do to protect your work and my next step in that was going and getting a copyright and trademark attorney I wish I would have known what I know now with with trademark and protecting my work earlier because now I'm having to go back track and and fix some of them my mistakes that I made on not doing certain things so if you're thinking about or wondering should I go out and hire a trademark attorney no not when you're just starting out but what you could do is you can educate yourself on the difference between trademark registration and copyright registration because there's a really really big difference protect your work if you put pen to paper and you create something by law you own the copyright of that work you don't have to register it anywhere you don't have to do anything it's you it's already it's magically copyrighted at that point the moment you put pen to paper put a copyright notice on the bottom of that page it may not be registered but you still own the rights to your work I wish I would have known that and I wouldn't have to be backtracking right now and fixing a lot of my different products and fixing a lot of the things on the blog so when you're wondering when should I really start getting getting into hiring though that level of expertise it has to do with come from comfort where you feel comfortable but not only that you have to make sure that your business is generating enough of an income to cover those types of expenses so educate yourself Google Google will be your best friend when you're just starting out because let me tell you I relied on Google when I first started it's where I found all of my information there's a lot of things that like I said you can do on your own and sometimes it's hard there's gonna be a lot of work involved if you're just getting started but if you're passionate about what you do it's worth it how do you register it a register a copyright oh you're asking me some questions I'm still learning about so I'm basically its US copyright gov that's where you register anything like you create a printable and you truly want the copyright to be registered with the US Copyright Office that's where you go u.s. copyright gov hahaha someone's Murray Khan doing right now if she says she's watching me to keep her company okay so here's a little secret and when I quit my job coming up very soon I'm be doing that type of organization throughout my entire house you guys are gonna be able to see the ginormous pile of clothes I have going on because I'll tell you what I'm getting rid of a lot of it it is one of my goals to deep clean and organize this entire apartment when I have more time when I leave my job so it's actually gonna be one of my first goals and tasks and to be taking you with me during that whole entire organization organizing journey can be little embarrassing but I think it's important for you to see where I'm starting and where I'm gonna end up in that process is it expensive expensive to hire a copyright lawyer so all lawyers are different I'm gonna try to hide from this light all lawyers are different it depends on who you go to my lawyers are not the cheapest I will tell you that but they're good at their jobs and not only that they care about small businesses so when I met with my my copyright attorney one of the first things he said to me he said your business reminds me of my business when I first started its your type of business I love helping so we have a connection on that level and we have an understanding on that level so shop around if you can get a referral get a referral but if you can't get a referral shop around know your options no call them ask them what are you gonna charge me for an initial meeting what is your hourly rate after that know your cost upfront what advice do you have for someone who is scared to pursue a business since they need to work a full time job to pay for bills it is scary and that's exactly what I did you know I started my business and I'm still working full time because I need now I can rely heavily or 100% my business income to cover my bills I don't I still use the income that I get from my day job but when I first started it was very scary and it I'm one of it is worth it it is worth it now because now I get to be home full-time with my son I get to spend more time with the people that I love and care about I don't have to work weekends anymore I don't have to work late nights or get up at 3:30 in the morning anymore but it took time it took sacrifice its time away from my son while I was getting there and that's something that's really hard to deal with sometimes still to this day realizing how much time from him that I actually took you know and a lot of the fun things I missed out on with him to get to a point to be a hundred percent present with him as a single mom and so it's gonna be scary at first but you have to ask yourself what's important to you and if you do dive in with starting your own business while you're working a full-time job is it worth it for you is the benefits and hard work and everything that you're gonna have to be put into it worth it for you because it is gonna take some sacrifice and you have to ask yourself are those sacrifices worth it to you for me it's hard for me to say yeah they were because I regret some of it and some of the time that I missed out with the loved ones and and working so hard in the very beginning of this business night and day non-stop work but now where I am knowing that I get to be home with my son everything all day get take him to work and take him to school and volunteer it is at a school and do fun projects with him 100% worth it okay so I wonder how much I this thing usually Blinky's at me when it's about an hour I know it's gonna shut off on me so let's see do okay one of the questions I'm getting is are there techniques that I use to bring traffic to my blog do I use SEO search engine optimization if you are an online entrepreneur or a blogger you know about SEO I'm gonna tell you something very truthfully here I have never ever ever ever paid a single second of attention to SEO I never tried to do it right I never researched it I never put any time into figuring out keywords I'm like when it asked me for a keyword on my blog I'm like oh budget that's a great keyword and sometimes I use it multiple times um I know if I'm doing it right no I and I still don't have any plans right at the second to take the time to learn SEO because honestly I don't strategize my traffic growth I really don't everything that Bin's with the budget mom is a hundred percent organic all of my followers are true followers they're not followers that I gained for doing a certain strategy or doing a certain thing on Instagram or or posting at this time and this time on Facebook no I don't want to spend my time doing that it's kind of like the people that I am helping worth it what I'm doing is worth it if more people jump on board awesome but am I gonna take my time away from the helping the people that are currently following me to come up with the strategy to gain more and more for the pure fact of gaining followers No so I got a lot of questions like did I strategize my Instagram growth what was it was I posting at a certain time every day was I looking at my analytics every day was I paying attention liked it was I talking to marketing managers no in fact I I think I've had my business account on Instagram for over two years and I've only looked at my analytics like three times that's the honest truth because I don't want to strategize to gain growth into green followers I want organic true followers that really truly need my help and it's just kind of amazing the growth that I have seen from maybe that is a strategy maybe organic growth is a marketing strategy I don't know I'm not a marketing specialist but it's what I have done I just don't feel like learning search engine optimization yeah I could probably have a heck of a lot more visits to my website but when I look at my business visit to my website and not really I mean it's in it I tell you what I'd rather have more people sign up for my budget blueprint email course because I know they're gonna get action steps to truly make a difference in their lives just to get a ping to traffic for my website not a not I mean it's not where it's important to me how you plan to expand the business once you have more time oh man so 2019 is just the start of it I you know I'm like I said I plan on releasing three new websites budget to freedom Academy is being released I'm hoping within the next year that's gonna be a huge one I want it to be open like when I think about my online course I want it to be something where someone comes out and say mine blown that just changed my whole entire life everything for it with stress and overwhelm all the that you know the depression I was feeling over my debt of my debt and finance is gone that's how I want them to feel when they're done with the course so I'm taking my time on it to make sure I add in every single detail everything that I think would be monumental in helping you into that course and so that's that's a one way that I'm going to be growing I'll let you know right now - I don't know a release date I don't even know if this is going to happen but a part of the growth that I'm looking at is turning the budget by paycheck method into a full-blown app I get a lot of questions on why don't I have an app or a program like mint.com or YNAB it's because right now I'm focusing on helping people with the resources that I have and I struggle because I've always said and I still do believe manually doing your finances bringing pen to paper gives you a certain set of psychological benefits that you will not get from using an electronic program but I'm getting a lot of readers that say my life is crazy I'm a busy mom as well it would be amazingly helpful to have this in an app where I can use it on the go and I don't have to wait to get back to my budget binder I get that I hear you and it's something that I am looking into so that is a possibility for me as well okay so I want to make sure all right what is the best way to monetize a podcast or blog hopefully when you're asking me this question your goal is not just to monetize your blog okay we've talked about that before your number one goal should never just to be monetizing a blog but there are a couple of things that you can do to earn money on the work that you already are doing so for me in the very beginning it started out with a purpose to help people to share these aha moments that I wanted to scream from the rooftops but I didn't know this at the time I do now you could I could actually set up say ads on my web site and earn a little bit of income and still do the number one thing I set out to do my number one goal of helping people it's just adding a little different element to what you're already doing and you can earn some money that way it does take a pretty I want to say big a lot of views to your website to work to earn money off of ads on your website but it is something put it up there what are two ads see what you generate from it maybe when I say a be test it test it one way then test another and then compare where does it get you so ads is a great way but for me when it comes to monetization and it's something that I still really don't focus on all that much one the budget mom I track it I deal with it because it is part of my business finances but I'm not every day I don't wake up and say oh what product can I push out now to make so much money it doesn't work that way for me and so it's all about learn as you go a resource urchin itch that you're in the business structure that you're in and see what other people are doing a great thing to do take another business that is similar to yours something that you really really really enjoy see what they're doing and see what works so I'm got just got the pop-up I have twenty one seconds so if you have any more additional questions head over to TV family and I will answer them over there thank you so much for joining me today if you found this video helpful please share it and don't forget to subscribe [Music] you

Channel: THE BUDGET MOM

Views: 7,581

Rating: 4.9148936 out of 5

Keywords: Budget, budgeting, business, small business, save money, save, debt, pay off debt, entrepreneur, business budget, income, the budget mom, thebudgetmom, how to budget, cash envelope method, dave ramsey, budget

Id: AFv566A78WI

Length: 59min 45sec (3585 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 14 2019