How Nicola Cairncross Built A Successful Agency Using Her Be Everywhere Online Method

In the podcast:

02:37 – How Nicola started her journey
15:52 – Birth of her business Be Everywhere Online
17:58 – 30 Day challenge content creation and how it works
19:36 – Creating content in the most efficient way
22:10 – Alternate tools to use if you’re not into videos
23:38 – How long does it take to see some results
25:21 – Which industries it wouldn’t work for
26:24 – Pains and frustrations of clients with videos
28:05 – Ideal content release that works
29:16 – Best practice in linking back
30:24 – Being authentic with your content

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Welcome to Episode 27 of the talking with marketing podcast. Before we get stuck in today’s show, which is a very interesting show, I want to ask you if you have managed to go to our website to download our free video course.

Free Video Course

This is a free video course where I go through how you can create a profitable and holistic ad campaign. Holistic, I mean by being on multiple platforms, not just one platform. So it’s a free video course it’s probably about eight to 10 hours of free video content.

So if you go to http://greenarrowdigital.com/free-video-course/ you can register for that free video courses. So be sure to check it out.

So today’s episode, I am interviewing Nicola Cairncross. Nicola is not new to the world of online marketing. And she actually has a very interesting background which she talks about in today’s episode, and I’m sure you get a lot of value hearing about but besides having an interesting story, she is also up to some pretty interesting things now. Now, she currently runs an agency called clicks and leads where she helps people get their business out into the wonderful digital world using a method she calls be everywhere online. So I believe she does this for businesses as well as teaches people how to do it.

Ilana: So welcome to today’s show Nicola Cairncross It’s a pleasure to have you here.

Nicola:Thank you for having me a llana. It’s lovely.

Ilana: So for those of you who don’t know you, I’ve actually known you online have actually met you in person many, many years ago. Very briefly, do you mind giving us a little bit of a background about yourself and what you’ve done online in the past? And, and I guess what you do now?

How Nicola started her journey

Nicola: Okay, cool. Well, I’m 56 years old. And until the age of 38, I was a dismal failure. I always knew I was bright, but I could never seem to do better. I can never seem to find my niche. I kept taking a job and hating it, you know, going and reorganizing it doing well at the interview. And then 18 months later, I was bored stiff, I was very good at going into setting up systems and absolutely the following them. So then I’ll move on, I never seem to be able to earn enough that I thought I was worth and I tried absolutely everything from being a fashion designer to being a salesperson for classified ad space to working in record labels, just terrible. You know, I just couldn’t settle it on anything, really, I thought the fashion was it. But then I didn’t get to go to the College of my choice. So. So that really disappointed me. And I just kept moving on.

And when I got to about the age of 27, I met my to be future husband. And he was in the music industry. And at that point, I’ve managed to work myself into a sales job in a recruitment consultancy, who dealt with, among other things, the music industry, so it was starting to dovetail a bit I had always been very proactive. I’ve always worked really hard, and people like me. So this point, I was trying to forge a division in the music industry, part of this company. And I was being very proactive when people were coming in to try and find jobs, I was being really nice to them and helping them along, I couldn’t sending out letters recommending this candidate to the, you know, the head of a&r or whatever, I was doing a lot more proactive stuff than just doing home course, which is what they did in the recruitment consultancy at this point computer started coming along. So I’ve got a bit fascinated with how they worked. And I ended up getting really a really good reputation.

And so when people that I tried to help actually, when it got jobs, they then started bringing me into fill their vacancies and word processing was getting going by them. So I was able to send out letters to 10 or 20 people in the music industry. It was at one point at one time, which felt like a miracle, you know, direct mail without actually having to write every letter separately was a revolution. So then I moved on a bit further, my ex husband wanted to he was involved in the Jive Bunny Team. I don’t if you remember Jay Jive swing the mood.

Nicola: He was involved in that team. And they had five number one hits in the south. We started going out together and it was great fun. And but my ex husband really wanted to put together his own dance compilation albums. He had a very particular taste in soulful, jazzy house music. And it I you know, I loved it as well. So we put together a record label, we got some government funding, we found ourselves some people to licensed music from in America and Australia and Italy and the UK. And we put together five albums. Well, this was pre Ministry of sound days. So we did, okay. And then the Ministry of sound came along and wiped everybody else off the face of the planet. But so I sort of got the entrepreneurial bug. And I’d always had it as a kid, even when I was making clothes for people and selling them. You know, I’ve always been someone who makes things and sells things, but I just didn’t know how to be a successful entrepreneur. And so I’m fumbling my way through the dark still. And then the record labels did alright. Then I got two babies. And I was trying to manage DJs from home, you know, and you know how hard it it’s working.

And my ex husband was doing things. He became my ex husband, he wasn’t, he was my husband at that point. And he was doing things on he was getting into online radio and stuff like that. This was back in the late 90s. And we got to a really terrible place financially, he got made redundant three times, I couldn’t go out to work. So babies were tiny. And I was struggling to do anything at home that was earning any meaningful cash. And we got to a point where we simply couldn’t pay the rent at the end of the month. So my sister said, Why don’t you come and stay with us, my husband’s away at sea, because he was in the Navy, and you can all live in our house and just give yourself a little break from having to pay London rent for a few months. And that point, we ended up buying a house together, doing it up and making some good money with it.

But at the same point, I was traveling to London and back, which was an hour and a half each way. And I saw an article in a newspaper for coaching, I thought I could do with someone that really feel I need l working out what I can do and what I’m good at. And so I ran the international coach Federation who, funnily enough, I just spoke for last weekend, and also asked, yeah, really, it was really spooky. And my first coach who I rang and said, You know, I need a coach and I saw a need one in the music industry. And they put me on to this lady called Rachel Turner. And she was in the audience last week. So that was really cool. But it was the beginning of my personal development journey, really, I found out about things like taking responsibility, hundred percent responsibility for yourself about positive thinking, and that the power of the, you know, the secret and the law of attraction and how thoughts become things and how, you know, you give off I’m not a very win-win person, I’m very down to earth person.

Nicola: But whenever I think about these things a lot, I realize they are true because, you know, if you’re miserable and down and pessimistic, you never going to achieve anything. So it’s important to keep your vibes high. I’ve always been a quick learner and a good learner. So after a couple years of being coached by Rachel and starting to have some real success, she said, Why don’t you try and as a coach yourself and I signed up for Thomas Leonard’s coach University. And it was a real turning point there’s ’98-’99 because a massive weight box of stuff arrived from America. And I never opened it because Thomas Leonard was a genius online learning distance learning he had everything online in the form of PDFs. He did everything on webinars, he did everything for america he lived in an RV and traveled around America with internet system and it just opened up my eyes to the possibility of online learning and the internet was really getting into full swing by then and I had an idea for a business called artist manager dot com which matched up artists and managers in the music industry Pop Idol was just get going you know there was hundreds of thousands of aspiring wannabes and I thought they all need managers before they even need a record label.

So I started to work with a programmer and we put together this site and I was making a bell or looking back I was writing about 1000 pounds a month from income you know recurring income and I read a book it was called striking it rich dot com by Jacqueline Easton. And it’s still worth reading now because it talks about 33 websites you’ve probably never heard of that are making more than a million a year Ah, and they were very niche membership sites so it really you know fueled my fire around the whole artist manager thing but just to that point I’m because I’m a complete person who jumps from one thing to the other I’m a creator star personality and he ended up reading a book at that point called rags to riches through real estate by Russ Whitney and ended up buying a hotel half a million pound hotel no money down. Don’t try that at home folks you end up with really big repayments!

But I have the coaching business going because I’d specialized accidentally like you in a niche. I knew I didn’t want to be a life coach. And I was really interested in money and the psychology of money and how money works practically because I’d never been I come from a poor family, I’d never been able to hold on to money I wasn’t a saver and I just didn’t know how money worked at all. I didn’t really even understand the concept of compound interest so I was specializing in learning all about that I was reading all the rich dad poor dad’s books Richest Man in Babylon. The trick to money is having some every book I could get my hands on about money and how it works. So I was accidentally becoming a wealth coach, but Financial Intelligence coach and I started a business called the money gym, which became very well known and probably the biggest in the UK for financial education and wrote a book well I’m it 101 emails and then turned into a book and at the same time at the hotel, which made everybody think, gosh, you must really know what she’s doing. And she can buy a hotel, no money down. So that attracted clients. We used to have workshops for the money gym at the hotel. And it was all going really, really, really well.

Nicola: I mean no skin at 38 at ’98-’99. And by 2006, I had a business that was nearly turning over what attending well over a quarter million with for Coach five coaches, two business partners and 12 bedroom hotel. And then the property market crashed and the global credit crunch hit and bank stopped lending and it turned out that a lot of our money dream clients were coming to us to learn how to invest in property because what I did was taught the four lanes of the wealth highway property investing building your own business having an online income and learning how to trade the stock market or invest in the stock market we call them the fallout four lanes the wealth highway and I thought everyone was coming for all four and it turned out most people were coming for property so now the banks aren’t lending and nobody can get remortgage their properties and so nobody can buy anything. So nobody wants to learn how to invest in property anymore. So literally from November 2009 to January 2010, my business the money gym just fell apart in three months. It was just unbelievable how quick it happened. So we had to close that and I went into a complete meltdown because I hadn’t known how I’d been successful that time. You know the money gym I felt like it was an accident, accidental success and I didn’t realize that it was actually to do with me and I could do it again in a different place. So I floundered about for a long time and I just I knew about internet marketing because I marketed the money gym learning how to do internet marketing for the money gym and the hotel and so I started just getting a few internet marketing clients but that never really worked. It kept the wolf from the door a little bit but I didn’t really know how to make it bigger or take it better and then what happened 2014 I came across a course Laura Betty I’ve been on the internet marketers cruise and I I met Laura better Lee who is very good at the con stuff you do as well, but in America and liked her enormously and she launched a Facebook ads course which completely changed my life. Because now I have not only got away or see the thing I’ve missed out here is that in the money gym days, I got Google slapped, I was not allowed to advertise on Google anymore because they felt that I was a get rich quick scheme, which is the most ironically hilarious thing I’ve ever heard in my whole life.

Ilana: I’m assuming you tried to appeal it.

Nicola: Of course, but they wouldn’t they just countdown without any kind of recourse. And I just didn’t have the will in me to go and start a new account and you know, getting new address and getting new card and all that stuff. So when Facebook ads came along, it really did change my life. Because I was suddenly able to advertise my business again, I was able to get new leads for affordable amounts of money again, it just changed everything completely. I had a product that sold which was internet marketing mentoring, and I applied Facebook ads to and it just got better and better. And then I suddenly that was all I could start a Facebook ads agency and I thought that’d be a great idea. And I’m not kidding.

That went to over 10,000 recurring revenue a month within three months because the demand was so high and that was in 2015. I think 2015-2016 was my best every year and I had a fantastic start of 2016 I went to the internet marketers cruise I drove across America when we got off the cruise from Miami to San Diego and went to the whole set with big thing called traffic and conversion summit. And then I got home and I thought I’m bit bored. I’m going to go to Australia and go to superfast business. And that’s where I met you. I think.

Ilana: Yes, you did.

Nicola: And got home from that on the Tuesday and on the Friday Saturday morning. My partner died. It was really tough, really tough. So just didn’t know what to do myself. I scrambled along for about six months to try to get my head straight and just didn’t work. So I then got a little windfall pension payout that I’d forgotten all about. And somebody said to me, do you want to buy a house in Greece for six months. And I said, Well, it was a winter, it was coldest winter in Greece for 20 years, it was absolutely perishing and nothing was the same because we didn’t they don’t have central eating out here. So it’s like going back to living in the 50s, you know, with hot water bottles and blankets and eight layers of clothes when you’re in the house to keep warm.

But what it did do was it gave me space and time and looking at beautiful surroundings. If you live somewhere between you know this, but if you don’t live somewhere between you don’t realize what impact it has. Until you look at you go and live somewhere beautiful.

Ilana: I attempted to live in London. So I know what you mean about living somewhere beautiful and not living somewhere beautiful.

Birth of her business Be Everywhere Online

Nicola: Been to London the lovely I lived in under 15 years quite happily. But there was a young woman then. And when you have kids, everything changes. I’m sure you know if Do you want somewhere that’s bit healthier and a bit more wholesome, and where you’re not worrying about your kids getting shot on the high street and things like that. So yes, Greece was great. And I took me six months. I mean you into my brief. And by then. And I did some courses. I spent some time doing a lot of personal development did some courses. And I came back ironically to the thing that I’d been doing just after the money gym clothes, which was running a membership site for people who wanted marketing, mentoring, you know, internet marketing, mentoring, and I just came back to that. And I just thought, Okay, I’m going to invest money in this, set it all up properly and go at it like it, you know, like a train.

And I was doing all that. And it wasn’t working. And I remember saying to my, one of my mentors, what’s, you know, what am I doing wrong, I’ve got all the gadgets, I’ve got all the automation, I’ve got everything working and nothing, nobody signing up. And they said, I you haven’t got an offer that converts yet. And that was a really pivotal moment. Because I realized that in order to make money online as an offline you are, you need an offer that people like and will buy. And it’s funny because when I interviewed you, you you sort of alluded to it, you know, you gotta you gotta have an offer that converts, then you got a mechanism behind that for turning your prospects into sales in a really authentic way. So what I did was I went back to what I done when the money gym and I went back to what I’d done, when I set up a business for Neil, a friend of mine, who’s Australian, I started creating content. And then I started taking that one, that bit of content, which I was creating every week, and leveraging it across all of the social media platforms and using things like Facebook ads to boost the content and build an audience and then advertise my offer my free offer to the people who’d engaged with that content. And it turned into gradually what I’m calling be everywhere online now. And people really respond to it.

30 Day challenge

Ilana: And that’s what you’re going to talk about today is your big everywhere online concept. I guess a bit of a weird concept.

Nicola: I just run a 30 day challenge. Because I was trying to work out how to get the word out to more people. And I also wanted more success stories rather than just my own because I used the being online concept to launch three businesses. And I wanted to see if it worked for other people. So I did a 30 day challenge at people signed up, as is the way the 80/20 rule applied. And only 10 to 15 people actually did a thing. But those 10 to 15 people got such great results. And they really started seeing action, you know, happening from really week one, week two, which was fantastic, because it’s only when you follow a system like that, that you realize how little content marketing people actually do. They think they’re doing marketing. But they’re actually not doing very much at all. They write a blog post occasionally, or they put a meme onto their Facebook page, or they might make a video and put it on YouTube. But until you’re doing it consistently, and leverage it across all the other platforms, you just realize how little you actually doing and just doing something consistently, especially with video, do people look in the whites of your eyes, and they feel like they know you. So it really builds up, builds a bond very quickly. And so I encourage people to start with video and then strip out audio and then turn it into written word, and then put it on to all the different platforms in a systematic step by step way.

Ilana: Okay, so let’s just take a step back for a quick how would you sort of, I guess it’s like the concept of kind of what’s the, you know, like a surround sound kind of concept with listening to music, it’s, you know, put, would you say, it’s like, putting content in lots of different places that surround sound concept.

Creating content in the most efficient way

Nicola: Yeah, it’s building a brand, but without getting all corporate and wine curry about. So if you think that your brand is you, and it’s how you speak, and it’s how you act. And it’s the things you know, and it’s what you believe in. And it’s your authenticity, we talked about that earlier. And what it does is if you create content in the most efficient way possible, which is video, and then you can take out audio and written from that. And then you take those bits of content, and you put them onto the platforms in the way that it works most. So for example, with Facebook, you wouldn’t put a YouTube link onto your Facebook page, you would actually upload your video to your Facebook page, then you boost it with a simple ad campaign that’s geared towards video feel about this, to be honest, and then you make your offer your free gift offer to the people who engaged with it over on YouTube and put it on YouTube. But then you would SEO it for Google so that you’re spinning that video for a key phrase. And that hopefully gets you you know, onto a good page on Google and you bring in SEO traffic on LinkedIn, you do it differently again, and on medium, you do it differently again, and on Instagram, you do it differently again. So it’s about being hyper aware of what works on each platform.

Ilana: I mean, I know a little bit about SEO to be dangerous, I’m certainly no expert. But concept of duplicate content, do you ever sort of concerned that you putting that same content, duplicating it in lots of different places?

Nicola: Well, what you find is your prospects are not as obsessed with you as you think they should be. So they don’t come across every single bit of content in lots of different places in lots of different ways. And so they might catch a video one week, or they might catch a podcast the next week, or they might read a blog post next week. And then you’re going to send out your easing, telling them what they’ve missed that week, they’re not going to go and consume it all, they just haven’t got time, and they haven’t got the inclination, they’re going to consume what they feel like at the time. So if you’re only offering your content in one format, in one place, you’re going to miss out on an awful lot of interaction with your prospects. But if you make it easy for them to consume your content, your valuable good, interesting content in lots of different ways in the way they want to at the time. So for example, if someone’s walking the dog, or going to the gym, they might listen to a podcast version. or if they’re on YouTube, they might watch a video. Or if they’re on Facebook, they might engage on the Facebook page or in a group. It’s about giving them choices about how to engage with your content in the way that’s most appropriate and enjoyable for them at the time.

Alternate tools to use if you’re not into videos

Ilana: It’s interesting. So you mentioned that the best starting point is usually for video, what if you’re not really comfortable on video? And you’re a bit awkward?

Nicola: Yeah, well, there’s a lovely tool you can use. In fact, I was just using it as often and called lumen five, Liu, m e n, number five. And what that enables you to do is drop a bit of like a blog post into it. And then you get to upload different pictures and choose which bits of the words go on top of which pictures and then yeah, the end of it, it’s free, and you could download the video. And you can upload that to your Facebook page or your YouTube channel. And the beauty of using video is that you can set up an audience of people who’ve watched it through to a certain percent, and then you can look alike. audience engagement rates are one of my favorites. Yeah, it’s great people in their list. Because as you start making content and generate an audience, which is as good as a list, because then you’ve got someone to advertised it.

Ilana: That’s exactly right. And you can even create an engaged audience of people who have like clicked on any kind of Facebook ad, even if they haven’t done anything, which Yeah, that’s a good one.

How long does it take to see some results

Ilana:You mentioned, you’re the 30 day challenge that people were getting results, some some were getting results after one year, what would you say would be typical, like if you sort of do this sort of the fundamental work when I and obviously this is a bit of an unfair question, because it depends on your industry. So I’m mindful of that. But generally speaking, how long did it take you, for example, to start seeing some results?

Nicola: Well, I’ve got one client Kate, who’s a radio presenter, and she coaches, radio presenters. And she’s now moving into coaching people who have to perform on webinar on video conferencing it within the corporate world. And she started I would like people to think in terms of 12 weeks, because if you can think of 12 bits of content, and then you create them all in, say, one day, and then you’re set them for the next three months, you know, you can follow my little system to leverage those bits of content. But she was getting results within three weeks she was getting we were trying to sell a radio presenters course and for $97, and she started getting one to one clients begging her take them on. She also found that doors started opening in terms of she was asked to speak several places, she was also asked to present something big digital media company and Manchester where she lives. And then she got in touch with one of the heads of one of the big radio stations. And he’d already heard of her. And funnily enough, even within that 12 week period, she went into our local Waitrose and she made a video about how to stop earning when you’re presenting. And the guy behind the counter said, You’re that lady on you. So even the guy in the Waitrose noticed her.

Because she’s been posting videos everywhere, you know, but there was a lady who are just worked with recently who it didn’t work for, and it was nothing to do with her or her content or anything. It was just the industry was going through a state it was about, you know, exporting overseas if your business and because of Brexit and everyone so uncertain, it didn’t work for her to attract new clients, because nobody wants to get involved in exploiting now until they know what the rules are going to be after Brexit. So it depends on the industry

Which industries it wouldn’t work for

Ilana: That was actually going to be my next question. I mean, so that’s obviously a unique example. But can you think of some other industries that you think it wouldn’t work for? I mean, obviously, the Brexit one is, is unique.

Nicola: Yeah, it seems to work best where you’re talking to the video camera, and you’re talking to someone who’s going to make the buying decision. And I can put the credit card their hand in their pocket and bring out their credit card, it seems to be difficult. Generally, I think this is in pay per click. I don’t know if your experiences the same, it seems to be difficult when you’re trying to reach people like human resource managers, or people who were looking for managed call centers, you know, where, where the person concerned finishes their job, and they clock off at the end of the day, and they go home, and they don’t think about work, it seems to be quite difficult to get in front of them. Unless, you know, you’re going to go to LinkedIn. And I still think it’s more difficult. I think you’ve got to try and find the purchaser or the purchase decision maker and I am your content at them. It seems to work much better if you do that.

Pains and frustrations of clients with videos

Ilana: Yeah. Interesting. Do you find that and I would imagine that this success with this really hinges on the person’s ability to really hone in on exactly who they’re talking to. And I know from my own experience of dealing with clients, and also, you know, coaching students, and how to do this stuff, like many people struggle with trying to work out who exactly they’re talking to the pains and frustrations? And what thoughts are going through their head? Do you find the same thing?

Nicola: Absolutely right. To make people make a decision is really difficult.

Ilana: Yeah, like, Who’s your target customer? Everyone? Wrong answer.

Nicola: Yeah, tear your hair out behind the scenes. Now, the best thing is, is what I do is I get around this by saying, look, we’re just going to make 12 bits of content for one target market. And we’re going to evaluate how successful that was. And because they’re not using anything fancy, there’s no fancy equipment involved, they can actually just do this with their computer or their phone. And then, you know, once they’ve learned how to do it, the I mean, I’m talking about a five pound a day ad spend, you know, none of it is very expensive. And it’s all using free tools. So why don’t we just make 12 bits of content for the most low hanging fruit kind of customer, and then who have us profitable customers now, and then if they don’t know all the, it’s a new business, I just say, Okay, so let’s pick one target market and make 12 bits of content for them and see what happens. And then at the end of 12 weeks, you can aim another target market and make 12 bits of content for them. So by making it a cyclical like that, it’s not making them make a decision that they think they’ve got to live with for the rest of their lives.

Ilana: And it also makes it very digestible. Like everyone can think of 12 weeks of content and breaking it up into bite size chunks.

Ideal content release that works

Nicola: Your videos need to be 5,6,7 minutes long. It need to be under 10 minutes. Otherwise, you can’t put them onto LinkedIn natively. And that’s really important at the moment, because LinkedIn are really pushing video hard. So if you put a video on to LinkedIn, you would get lots and lots of us organically that you wouldn’t have had otherwise without needing to pay to boost them.

Ilana: Let’s say, you create your bits of content. And obviously, the idea is that you’ve done that huge amount of upfront work. But you’ve got that for the next 12 weeks.

Nicola: Actually social media is supported for the next three months.

Ilana: Wow. So you stagger it like I would imagine.

Nicola: Yeah.

Ilana: You do one topic, there’s a per week?

Nicola: So you create your 12 bits of content, and then you release it one bit a week. And every day in that week, you’re doing a different bit of thing with with that content. So if you know, you might be making an Instagram meme on day on Thursday, and then on Friday, you’ll be uploading to LinkedIn on Saturday, you’ll be releasing the audio of the video to your podcast. And on Sunday, you’ll be promoting your podcast, Episode Two on your Facebook page, your LinkedIn, so you also promote each bit of content in each different place.

Best practice in linking back content

Ilana: And do you find that you link let’s say, one of the social media posts to another social media place? Or do you always link back to your main website?

Nicola: Always will link back to your work main website. Think of it like a cartwheel. Your main website is what the place where the sales get made, and so on, you know, and perhaps are intelligent, you ever call with a client, but the call is always requested on that on your website. And so think of a cartwheel the the clients, prospective clients move around the outside, each spoke of the cartwheel is a social media hub, you know, so you’re moving in and out of Twitter, and Instagram, and Facebook and Snapchat, you know, whatever you like YouTube, but the core of your business is definitely always your website. And that sits in the middle.

Ilana: Yeah, amazing. That sounds very interesting. And, you know, I really like the way that you make it bite size and digestible for people. Because I know from talking to clients, you know, so often, and people get very overwhelmed with all that has to be done and all the content needs to reproduce and syndicated out. So you mapping it out in in such a way. I think it’s really beneficial to people. And I’m not surprised people get results because if they’ve got a plan, they kind of know what to do then.

Being authentic in your content

Nicola: Yeah, and, you know, the thing is, I really encourage people to be 100% authentic, I am not beautifully made up. When I made my content, I’m often you know, bit hawks, it’s Greece. You know, there’s often chain buzzing chainsaws in the background, or just as I get sorted, that some buzzy beetle plays pause my head but I’m, you know, I’m 100% authentic like that. And people know that I am actually in Greece and actually working but some of my clients were a lot more polished. But I really instill in them they got to be themselves I managed to get a lot of people onto video who really don’t like the way they look and sound and I say you know, but your class your potential future clients don’t know what you think you’re supposed to look like in your head they just see you sharing fantastic information in an authentic and direct way and videos fantastic when you know someone looks you in the eye from a video you feel like they’re talking to you directly.

Ilana: Absolutely. And I would imagine you know, sort of touching on your authenticity point that I know for myself like we live in a world where all these Instagram accounts are so beautiful and polished and Facebook profiles look the people got the most perfect lifestyle i think that you know showing that authenticity is you know is really important or make you know your personality shine through.

Nicola: Yeah, I my daughter Phoebe is a pretty girl and she’s got a YouTube video channel where she shows people how to do makeup and when she put some makeup on she looks absolutely stunning. But her most successful videos are the ones where she tries out weird face masks and with a combination of a little bit of SEO knowledge so I taught her how to put the key phrases in the war video that she uploads in the title of the YouTube video the first line and the last paragraph of the description of the video I’ve you know few more tips like that tags put in x she managed to get to the first page of Google for to me which is k doubly oh me hydration facemask. And her video got to page one of Google and she got 6000 views in one week. Wow. The thumbnail she us makes us look like Hannibal Lecter. So it’s that that grabs people’s attention. She’s gone on to have another Facebook video when she’s pulling something off a nose. And that’s done even better. And the weird the ones where she makes herself real and not groomed and not beautiful are the ones that do the best ironically because, you know, perfection is boring isn’t it?

Ilana: Well I guess. Yeah. But some people don’t agree with it. Some people you know, perfection is that you know, what’s the word I’m looking for the only opposition you know.

Nicola: Well, if I tried to be perfect in everything I do, Ilana I would never get anything done at all. So I just I go for good enough.

Ilana: There is something in that for all of us. Listen I’m mindful of the time you’ve been really really generous with your knowledge and your insights and and all that you’re doing so where can people find out more information about you.

Nicola: Okay, well nicolacairncross.com is the my sort of hub website and if you look on the top menu up there, there’ll be a link to the 30 day challenge which is completely free and let’s cut you know, come on in. Let’s see if we can help you get online and get yourself being everywhere.

Ilana: Thank you so much Nicola for coming on today’s show. It’s been a pleasure and yeah, maybe I’ll even give this a shot and I’ll report back with my result.

Nicola: I’d love to give you some help on that. So just yell.

Ilana: All right. Thank you!