In this not-so-techy episode, Jill Hart interviews Beth Ann Kaib, the Nomadic Cowgirl, who is a visionary framework strategist specializing in business launch and building functional websites for small business owners.
Discover more about Beth Ann Kaib at All Things Beth
Find Beth on Facebook at the Nomadic Cowgirl
Find Beth on Instagram at the Nomadic Cowgirl
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Transcript
Transcript
Hi and welcome to the You World Order Showcase podcast.
Today we are speaking with Beth Ann Kaib.
She is the nomadic cowgirl.
We're going to talk about that, I'm sure.
She's a visionary framework strategist specializing in business launch maximizing efficiency through a solid foundation and building functional websites.
Or the small business owner.
Welcome back.
And come on down.
Thank you so much for having me.
I'm so lot glad you're here.
So tell us the.
Story behind the nomadic cowgirl.
And then we'll get into.
What you do?
Right.
So I actually came out of an abusive marriage and I thought it was a great idea to buy a travel trailer and got it and go across the country.
And so that's kind of where nomadic came from and I was born and raised a cowgirl.
So while we while we were traveling.
I thought it would be a great idea to start up a business and my kid and I spent time listing down all the things that embody me on a big like full body mirror that we had in the.
Tyler and eventually nomadic cowgirl just kind of came together.
So it was a.
I love it.
Yes, it was an amazing adventure of rebuilding myself, rebuilding my kid and rebuilding our bond together.
That's so beautiful.
Doesn't it feel empowering when you have a title?
And you just.
It it's like your title makes you feel good and it inspires you to be more.
And I don't know.
Every time I say it, it puts me back into that, into that place where I was at one of the lowest points of my life, and I was on this journey in this mission with all of this dedication and perseverance inside of me to just be better and, you know, do the best that I could.
So every time I save my business name, nomadic cowgirl, it puts me right.
Back in the out of motion so that I can keep.
Ohh, that's so beautiful.
So beautiful.
So you do build.
Websites I do I build functional websites?
I have a firm believer that anybody can build a website, but I like to build websites where they actually work for you.
Because if you're going to pay to have one built, and that's what you're going to be promoting it.
Should be.
It should be working for you.
And how would you?
Define a functional website over just you know your vanilla website.
That anybody can throw together.
It's very, very specific.
I take the time to get to know the business owner and their business and what exactly they're doing.
And I specialize in small business owners because I am one and that's where my heart is.
So I will figure out whatever can be done on the back end through your website to give you more time in a day and keep you from sitting behind the computer.
And processing all the fun paperwork.
So whether it's having your Instagram feed automatically go to your website, so if you're strong on Instagram so that you constantly have updates on your website of current events and that also like pulls your branding right through whether you need to have appointments booked on your website, whether you need forms.
Can be downloaded on your website whatever needs you have.
I want to make sure that you're getting.
The most out of your website.
Very cool.
It's do you do the SEO part?
Of it.
I don't specialize in that.
I have the basics of it, so I do it, but I that is not my biggest strength.
I will say that.
But you do help people like connect it.
To Google and.
Yeah, I like to offer packages because quite often when new business owners come to me, they don't know what they don't know and they don't realize if you don't set up a Google business page, then you aren't showing up on Google.
Analytics system.
And that is like.
Your biggest drive for.
So I go from A-Z I help them. Sometimes they have a business name, sometimes they don't.
So sometimes we're starting at the business name and we'll get a domain build a website, set up all their social media, set up their Google business page.
If they don't need to be on Yelp or LinkedIn or things like that, I can also do that design.
Business cards, all the all the way through.
That's really good.
And most people, when they first get started, they think that, you know first.
I need a.
Website But really first.
You need an offer.
You need an LLC and an EIN, and you know you don't want to.
You don't want to buy a website and build a website if.
You can't have that business name so.
Yeah, and even beyond that, it's knowing what you're selling.
Yeah, because if you're not selling something, you're not actually in business, you have to be able to make offers and.
I don't know how many times I've built.
Websites for people before too so.
OK, OK.
So I have a.
Little bit of familiarity with what?
What challenges that you face?
Yeah, it's like.
And you want a blog.
But I don't know anything about your business.
Do you want to give me some content?
Yep. So what?
What kinds of things would you recommend?
The mostly is going to be coaches listening.
To this podcast.
I love coaches.
I love them too.
They're special people and I like having people on like you that.
Can help give.
Give them some little pointers as far as when you're getting ready to put your website together.
What are the things that they need to?
Bring to you.
To make the process happen smoothly and quickly.
First, I would say is professional headshots, because those generally take the take the longest.
Selfies just don't fly on a website.
If you want to put your professional foot forward highly, highly recommend investing in professional photos.
After that I have.
I've worked with a lot of coaches.
And they come to me, and they always have heart and passion and dedication.
They're never, they're never out just for money, which is why I love them.
Those are the people I want to help.
But they also tend to never really know what they're offering.
They know they, you know, they know if they're a life coach or a business coach or spiritual coach, but they haven't thought about packages or like how the services are defined exactly.
And specifically what services they're offering.
So I love working with them and helping them to.
Figure out what their strengths are, because quite often they don't know what their strengths are, so helping them find their strengths and being able to.
Not undervalue themselves, cause I see that as quite a common issue too.
Don't be afraid to charge what you are worth, not what you think you are worth, but what.
You are worth.
So having some idea of what kind of services packages and what kind of price point you're going to be offering is hugely helpful.
Too another area I see a lot of coaches struggle is some kind of bio.
Like we got to have some kind of information about you and a lot of people have a hard time.
Writing and like essentially bragging about themselves.
I don't want to say bragging, but you have to.
And you have to be able to relate to the people that are coming to you and they have to know that you're their people.
You have to shine your light.
Yes, yes.
Just all about you.
Yes, your websites the all about me site.
That's why they're coming there.
You are your brand.
What problems are you solving?
Because that's what you need to have on your on your website.
You have like 3 seconds to convey exactly what it is you do and give that warm fuzzy feeling because that's the click through rate.
If you don't have them in three seconds, they're gone.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And they have.
To have a reason to.
Stay, yeah.
And you have to have a logical progression.
From awareness when they get there.
To the next logical step and you need to be able to push.
Them there quickly, yes.
Yes, definitely got to have some kind of call to action.
You want to capture as much information from them as you can.
I really highly recommend anybody, but especially coaches have some kind of freebie that they offer so that they can capture e-mail addresses and capture that information to follow up.
And having some kind of newsletter.
Yeah, and the freebie needs to be something that moves them one step closer to getting the problem solved.
It's a micro problem of the three main problems that you solve and being able to.
Encourage the next step, which is a call with you, but it needs to be.
It needs to be congruent with your overall message.
You know, it comes back again to knowing.
What your offer is there's.
Generally, if you can make it simple and easy and they can get like the first stab.
Maybe you have a like a.
Three-step process to do.
Solve 1 micro problem of the main problems.
That you solve.
It moves them a.
Little bit closer, they get to know you a little bit.
You can throw some testimonials in there.
But you move them.
To the discovery call rather than just having book a call with me, cause nobody's gonna book A.
Call with you they.
Don't know who you are.
Exactly. Yeah, that fine.
And making that lead magnet actually.
Productive for you so that it.
You can get on calls with people.
Yeah, you have to find that fine balance.
So you're not giving away all the goods, but you're giving away enough so that they want to hire you and you establish that trust factor.
And they know that you know what you're talking about.
And you spend a lot of time.
In your other content marketing sharing.
Solutions to micro problems and always pushing them to that lead magnet which will push them to the call rather than thinking they're just going to get on a call with you.
Most people don't really know what you're doing and.
And getting.
Clarity around that is really.
Foundational because you can't, you can't make an offer if you don't really understand your own offer.
Yeah, you get.
Caught up in the whole trying to talk people into working with you, which never works.
It's all about making.
Making an offer is simply the extension of problem solving.
If they have.
Problem and they have acknowledged that they have that problem.
You can and you discovered where it is that they want to be.
If they didn't have that problem anymore, you can make them an offer cause you can help them see that working with you is the next logical step.
You're going to help them bridge that gap between where they are and where they want to be.
But if you don't know what your.
Offer is it's really hard to figure out how to bridge.
That gap.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
That's what I help you with.
That's amazing. I love it.
I have a few people I.
Need to send your.
I would love to chat with.
Them or you can just simply give them my.
Perfect.
Create an offer.
Your ideal client can't resist.
It's free.
Did I mention that?
You did not added bonus, I love it.
That is so back to what people need to have together when they're working with you to get their website up and functional and.
Yeah, intake forms I find, especially coaches, they're like, oh, yeah, I should.
I should probably ask some questions.
So come in with an intake form and someone like me can definitely build that for you.
But you kind of need to.
Know what you want.
To ask and.
Balancing that fine line too, some coaches don't ask enough and some asked.
Too much so I feel like it's always a good idea to.
Go and stalk your fellow competitors website.
If they are super successful, go see you know what's working for them, what's not, and what resonates with you.
How can you, you know, put your own unique spin on that so that you're being?
True to yourselves.
But put yourself out on.
A good successful step to start.
So highly recommend that.
Yes, I agree.
And sometimes you can just opt in to their staff, see what they're doing, see what questions they ask on their calendar form.
And that is and it's an easy way to get questions answered before you get on a call with somebody.
You know the first call that you have with them maybe just an exploratory 15 minute call where you just see if they actually have the problem that you solve.
Again you need to know what problems to solve.
And if they have the means to pay you because there's nothing more frustrating than getting on a phone call with somebody who's, like, totally broke and there's no way, even if they want to work with you, that they can work with you and I, you know, I get holding space for people to find a way.
My experience is that there are some people that just really are not in that space right now to say that they won't be at a different point, but.
You gotta you gotta determine if they can afford.
You and you need to charge enough money that they're gonna get the result that you offer because a lot of times coaches will just offer, you know, $150.00 an hour or then you're just trading time for money, which is not scalable.
And the idea of charging?
A significant amount, enough that when you say that number it makes.
You both gasp.
It's as much as you can comfortably say without like breaking into a visible sweat.
That's what you should be charging, and it's not for you, it's for your client, because if your client is really that invested, they're gonna work at it.
They're gonna get the result, and if they're not.
Then you're not.
They're not going to get the result and you're going to feel bad because you're going to be like, well, maybe my program doesn't work.
Ohh it would work if they valued it and they did the work.
So that's my goal around pricing and I encourage people to charge.
And don't ever back down on your price.
They can afford it or they can't, but.
And if they can't afford it, they're not for you.
Exactly. And it's much easier to have five clients paying you, you know, $5000 apiece.
Then 15 clients paying you $1000 apiece.
Definitely those five clients or three clients that are paying you 5 grand are going to get results.
They're gonna leave you glorious testimonials.
You'll have time to actually focus on them and help them to really move forward.
It's more of a concierge service rather than a.
Cafeteria style, I guess.
I don't know.
I've done a lot of talking here.
I'm very.
Passionate about this?
That's amazing, though it shows.
Right.
That's amazing.
So back to website building, yes, and helping small business owners who are your ideal clients I know.
And we both talked to the coaches, but.
Do you help other people?
And what kind of platforms?
Yeah, I do.
Do you use for building the websites?
So I love GoDaddy and Wix.
I know there's a lot of people that are not fans of GoDaddy, but I find GoDaddy is a great starter platform.
One of the a lot of the packages offer are in GoDaddy and then I leave you with like a tutorial video so that you can learn how to swap out photos or swap out information on your website.
On your own so that you don't have to spend the money to hire somebody because let's, let's face it, we're all pinching pennies.
When we first start out on our.
So that is why I love GoDaddy.
Wix is a step above Wix.
You can design from scratch.
It doesn't look quite as cookie cutter.
If you want to move your picture an inch to the right and a little bit bigger, you can do that where you can't do.
That in GoDaddy, but again Wix is more expensive and if you want to make changes it's.
It's a lot harder.
You're better off hiring somebody.
But I find by specializing in the two platforms, I move very quickly.
So my turn around time is very quick.
As far as my ideal clients, I love horse people as well.
I have a background of working with horses.
Obviously, the nomadic cowgirl, so horse people I love working with therapists.
I used to like, I used to do occupational therapy for a living.
So I love working with therapists.
I understand them.
And I've also done.
Like a towing company and a couple polygraph companies.
So really it's just anybody who has passion.
I don't like working with the people that are just looking to turn a quick buck because that just doesn't resonate with my.
So anyone that has the passion that comes to me has a goal.
I like to try to push them past that goal because come on, you can reach higher, you can.
You can find that big scary goal reach for that Unicorn dream.
So that's what I love helping people achieve as they're hairy, scary Unicorn dreams.
That's really great.
And we all need somebody.
To just kind of like push.
Us along a little bit just it's more than.
Just hiring somebody to slap a website together cause you can go places and pay.
5 bucks an hour and yeah.
And have a crappy website built for you.
And have a crappy website up for you that you're going to struggle with rather than paying somebody who really knows what they're doing, who can build you a website that you'll be able.
To operate cause.
It really, when it comes down to it, a lot of people don't think about.
The work that goes into maintaining a website, it's not like you just build a website and slap it up there and you're done.
It's a living being.
It it'll change and you'll change and you'll want to change it.
And if.
You don't really have access to somebody.
That you can say hey.
Remember when you did this for me?
Well, I screwed it all up.
I learned quickly after I started this business.
I now offer two small revisions within the first six months after completing the build because people always come back to me and they're like I should have.
Done this, so yeah, I now include that.
Because yes, you always do want to change it.
And the other, the other big tip that I have for everyone.
Because I've seen that.
People lose like 10s of thousands of dollars.
Backup your data.
Back up your website and put it on your hard drive, not the host hard drive, because if you get crosswise with that host.
OK.
Care how good you think you?
Are at paying your bills.
Every once in a while, you're going to have something compromised.
And you're going to forget.
That that was attached.
And your website can disappear and.
Yes, I've.
It's like.
I've had so many people come to me and they were hosting with the small business owner, which I get it.
We all want to host small or we all want to support small.
Business owners.
But that's not where I would recommend that your website goes, because I've had so many people come to me and.
They're like it just disappeared.
They went out of business.
They didn't tell me and my website was gone and that that is heartbreaking.
It is heartbreaking and there.
OK.
Are there are?
Resources for backing, backing it up to take very long.
It can be done automatically.
Good to use WordPress.
Or do you put it on a word press?
Thank you.
I don't do WordPress, I'm not a fan and you have to.
They don't automatically update any of their plugins or any of that stuff.
So if you build it on the GoDaddy actual website builder or Wix, they automatically do all of that stuff for you, so you never have to worry about your website crashing.
WordPress is actually.
Doing auto updates now, which I thought was like hugely amazing but yeah, so that does happen automatically, but there are I'm sure that even with Wix and with GoDaddy that there are ways that you can back up your website the whole thing.
Yes, yes, good to know.
The databases everything and store it on your own computer or in the cloud.
It's just it's really important it.
Even if you only do.
It every quarter.
It and definitely after you make changes that you want to keep and.
Keep a couple versions.
Like at least two.
In case one of those versions is corrupted, then you haven't lost everything and this really did happen to a really good friend of mine. She lost a website and she spent $10,000 on.
Yeah, and more than that.
That was just the.
Cost of the website and.
And she had a lot of work done to it.
So she probably spent another $5000.
So it's.
Like 15,000.
Dollars flushed down the drain cause didn't back it up.
And the hosting company a lot of times hosting companies will back it up weekly or even daily.
But if you.
Forget to pay your bill.
Or your credit card got her credit card.
Got compromised or something and so it.
She didn't find out about it for like 2 months, and by then it was gone.
Everything was gone.
It's like, don't, don't let this happen to you.
Some of my less tech savvy clients that didn't want to invest the money in backing up, they actually went and took screenshots of all of the pages on their website, so even that is better than having nothing.
At least you have a starting.
At least you have someplace.
And there's always the way back machine.
I've rebuilt.
Websites that machine.
Love it?
Yeah, it's the things you.
Have to do.
It's complicated though cause you have.
To like change.
All of the links and reinstall all of the images and it.
It's just like.
So much easier just to like have it restore.
Yes, rebuild.
Save the.
Headache. Yes.
I feel like an elf, my camera.
Sometimes the lighting works weird and so I like become this elf like person and then I'm back to normal.
I thought you just had a nice angelic glow.
Ohh that was it, yes.
So do you have anything?
Else that you would like to suggest that people think about when it comes to websites and.
So not so much websites, but just in general.
I am a huge advocate.
You have to put time in your schedule for yourself.
I have seen especially coaches because they do wear their hearts on the sleeve. You have to put self-care 1st.
You cannot take care of anybody else.
You cannot run a business if you are running on E so maintain those date nights.
Those kids play nights, game nights, whatever, whatever you need.
But definitely scheduled time for yourself, it is a must.
It should be.
At the top of your list.
Absolutely, absolutely.
And time for yourself.
For meditation exercise.
All of the.
Little things in life.
It's so important that you have some place where you can close the door and say work is over now and take breaks, you know.
Go outside for 5 minutes.
You don't have to stay glued to your desktop.
Or your laptop.
Yeah, I listened to this, this, this flow state on Spotify, and it has the binaural beats and then it has like these mandated breaks.
9 hours.
I get so much work done because it gives you this.
This like motivational music and you just crank out some work and then it's like.
And now is your 5 minute break and that's my reminder so that I don't burn myself out in a day too.
So finding something like that that helps keep you on track too.
And I have a friend that lives by timers, so whatever works for you.
Yeah, and knowing scheduling your breaks in, in throughout your day is really important.
It's you just can't work the long hours that people that are starting a business.
You could just find yourself there. You're working. You know, 1214 hour days like your whole day is spent working on your business and you're not taking any time for yourself and your family and your connections with other people. And those are really the things that matter more than anything else.
In the world.
It's not.
Not this ethereal thing that we're striving for.
Being present and knowing that sometimes in the breaks you get the most clarity because you're not like hyper focused on doing a task.
Excuse me so.
It gives your brain time to.
To kind of.
Like play with itself and figure out, you know, what is, what is it that I really want?
To do and.
You know ideas will come to you and write them down, but don't start working again.
A little, a little.
Reset. Yeah, for sure.
Many resets are great.
So what's the one thing?
That you would like to leave the audience with today.
Ooh so I am a firm believer that you should never stop learning and you don't have to climb the mountain and set this like big goal just to be learning.
You can invest in meet up or Groupon and learn how to act, throw or Weld or whatever.
In that space you are constantly learning and growing.
Thing, and if you if you aren't challenging yourself, if you aren't feeling uncomfortable, then you just get stuck in this rabbit wheel of a space and you can't have that flow of energy to expand yourself.
And that leads to expanding your business.
So I'm a firm believer you just you have to do the unfamiliar.
Things and you have to keep learning and growing.
Well said, well said.
Thank you.
So how do people get in touch with you, Beth Ann?
Ah, the easiest is my website. You can go to www.allthingsbeth.com. I'm also on social media mainly. I hang out on Facebook and primarily Instagram at nomadic cowgirl.
And we'll put those links in the.
Show notes? Thank.
You so much for joining us today.
Thank you so much for having me.