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How Meryl Johnstone Started & Grew Her Business Using The 7 Day Startup Method

In the Podcast:

01:23 – Episode Overview
03:12 – Guest Introduction
05:13 – Stumbling upon on the Idea for Her Business
08:01 – How did Meryl Drew Interests on Her Business
09:44 – Content Played a Part on Their Business
12:57 – What Did they do Differently in terms of Content Strategy
17:45 – Other Methods They Used to Get Traction
22:48 – Methods She Used to Ramp Up the Acceleration
25:45 – The Role of SEO in their Marketing
31:03 – Things that Meryl Would Do Differently
34:34 – Traffic Generating Strategies in Her Business Going Forward

Meryl Johnston launched Bean Ninjas in 2015 with $1000 and a dream of changing the global bookkeeping game. It has since grown from Meryl’s kitchen table into the multi-national, award-winning business it is today.


How Meryl Johnstone Started & Grew Her Business Using The 7 Day Startup Method


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Episode Overview

Welcome back to Episode 55 of the Teach Traffic Podcast. I’m your host, Ilana Wechsler. And today we’ve got a really interesting guest and story that I want to share with you today. I’m interviewing a lady called Meryl Johnstone and Meryl is an interesting person because back in 2015, she launched her business called Bean Ninjas, with $1,000 and a dream of launching and changing the bookkeeping industry.

So she has grown her business called as I said Bean Ninjas. From her kitchen table to being a multinational and award winning business entities today. But it also interestingly, she launched it in seven days. She followed Dan Norris’s seven day startup method.

And it was really off the back of his Dan Norris’ book, as well as his journey that she launched this been ninjas business in seven days, and has grown it to as I said, what it is today, which is an amazing testament.

So I thought it would be interesting to chat with Meryl today about the way that she grew her business, how she got early momentum. And then once sort of that low hanging fruit was captured how she grew it beyond that, which is obviously a completely different skill set entirely. So let’s get stuck in today’s episode.

For information on today’s episode, you can visit TeachTraffic.com, where we will provide some show notes and resources, today’s episode, so you don’t have to write any notes. We’ll do all that hard work for you. So let’s get stuck in today’s episode.

Guest Introduction

Ilana:Welcome to today’s show, Meryl!

Meryl Johnstone:Thanks Ilana, it’s great to be here!

Ilana:Awesome. It’s awesome to have you here. So before we kind of get stuck into how you stumbled on your new business idea, and grew it to the level that it is today, which is a very decent business. Do you mind giving us a quick five seconds about who you are and what your business does?

Meryl Johnstone:Sure. So my background was accounting though, when I was at university, I wanted to run businesses. And I thought that learning about accounting was a great way to get exposure to different businesses. And so that’s why I started. And actually, it took me 10 years to get out of the corporate accounting roles.

Ilana:I can relate, I spent 10 years in corporate too! (laughs)

Meryl Johnstone:It was a good grounding, I learned some great skills. And as an academy, you get exposure to all kinds of different businesses. And you get to see the mechanics of how they run and then numbers, and also have conversations with business owners. So it was a really good grounding.

But I always knew from earlier that I wanted to own and run businesses. And being ages was my first business. I had a tennis coaching business back when I was at uni, and my transition from corporate to go out of corporate was consulting. And I did that for about nine months before I realized it wasn’t the business model for me. And it was quite hard to scale.

And there are some other frustrations with that business model and being introduced, which is more in the vein of a product type service type business model with my solution to address the problems that I saw with the consulting business model. And so Bailey just started back in 2015.

So were about four years old now. We started as a bookkeeping, fix, favorite keeping service, specializing in zero software. And now we do bookkeeping, but also financial reporting. And there’s an education arm to the business too. So we’ve evolved as the businesses growing,

Stumbling upon on the Idea for Her Business

Ilana:Interesting. And you’ve got an interesting story about how you started that business. You want to sort of touch on how you stumbled on this idea?

Meryl Johnstone:So I’ve been working in a co working space with a guy called Dan Norris on the Gold Coast. And I didn’t know much about what he did. But it turned out he ran a business called WP curve, which was the product or service related to WordPress.

And he’d also written a book called The seven day startup. And he’s kind of been pushing me a little bit to get out of consulting and maybe do the WP curve for accounting.

So having read his book, and then also feeling some of these frustrations with consulting and doing custom work, and just cash flow challenges and difficulty building a team, I decided, Okay, I’m going to do this. And I’m going to, I’m going to launch in seven days for the methodology in that book. And my my co founder, Ben macadam, had also read the book.

And so he flew to the Gold Coast. And in in that week, we we just created our own logo, we built a website in WordPress, we did our best guess at what fixed fee bookkeeping packages should look like. And we found our first customer, he’s actually still a customer today.

We’ve just developed from there. So we each put in $500. And growth in the early days was slow, because we had to earn every dollar before we could spend it. And we were doing this as a side hustle, really, we had other businesses we were running.

So early growth was slow. And then we realized, hang on this business model has legs. And that’s when we really made a concerted effort to be able to transition into that into being ninjas full time.

Ilana:Yeah, right. So I’m just curious, how did you get your first customer?

Meryl Johnstone:We posted in Dan’s Facebook group. And it was a guy called Jared Robinson, you probably know of as well. And he was in that group. And Ted Shaw can help with bookkeeping, and he was our first customer.

Ilana:There you go. I love stories like this. So it’s the kind of thing that I think that you know, you start and where you end up four years later, because I’m sure where you are now looks vastly different, or maybe not vastly different, but somewhat different to where you started.

But had you not started, you wouldn’t have ended up where you are now. So it’s it’s such a, I guess, a chicken and egg thing? I guess.

Meryl Johnstone:It is. And I’m such a big believer in speed of execution. And that’s something that we did when we started the business, but the whole way through. I don’t as an accountant, we’re trying to analyze and think about things.

And I do like to analyze and think to a degree, but I think it’s really important to act quickly. And then just test and iterate.

And so that’s something that we’ve we’ve tried from day one to really have it’s part of that culture as the business which is can be difficult in the industry that we need financial services.

Ilana:Yeah, I’m sure I mean, I guess that’s how I’ve pretty much run my business today is to try something right. Does it work? Okay, great. How can we pivot and iterate? Or is this does this have legs?

No. Okay, that would just kill it, you know? Anyway, let’s not digress. So you’ve created your business in seven days, what sort of, what did you do next, in order to drum up, I guess interest in your now productised accounting service.

How did Meryl Drew Interests on Her Business

Meryl Johnstone:So at the time, we still didn’t have a big network, I’ve only been living on the Gold Coast for maybe three years. And I hadn’t put a lot of time into building a network, we didn’t have an email list.

And we weren’t really known in any industry, though. It was friends and family to start with just getting in touch with with everyone that we knew this was both me and my co founder.

And just letting people know what we’re up to, we were trying to tell a story from day one. So our original story was that we’ve we launched this business in seven days last week. And this is what we’re up to. And so that people, some people found that quite interesting, especially if they had read the seven days follow.

And so having a story to tell in those early days, enabled us to have more conversations, because people were interested in listening and also wanted to help us.

So I’d say, for the first six months, it was all relationships, friends, family, friends of friends, that became customers. But at that we wrote our first blog post in that first week, too.

And so we were already starting to slowly build an email list and starting to create content. But it took a lot longer for that to actually turn into customers. It was all direct relationships, in the early days.

Content Played a Part on Their Business

Ilana:Yeah. Well, I can imagine, you know, like you quickly generate those initial customers through your relationships and referrals. But then you exhaust through that.

And then what So you mentioned that you wrote your first blog post, as a content marketing strategy, how often we do write content? And then what would you do with that content? Once you wrote it? Would you syndicate it out?

Meryl Johnstone:Yeah, so we, we’ve gone through different phases in the business in terms of how frequently we produce content. So we I think, in the first year, we were trying to write content every second week. And then we’ve been through phases where we publish weekly, at the moment where we’re publishing blog post less than that.

But we were trying to get into, but we have a consistent routine around it. So our audience knew what to expect and when they could expected. And in terms of promotion, we would say we were building an email list, we were also sharing on social media, and back then you could post on Facebook and get some organic reach without having to pay for it.

And so we would share also share our content in groups where it was relevant. We weren’t just blasting out everywhere. But if someone asked a question, and we had had a piece of content that answered that question, or it was a topic that we thought that was interested in, then we were also sharing our content in different groups that we were really active and try to be great participants. And give is not just blasting out our stuff.

Ilana:Did you find that people were taking action, like moving to the next step, as a result of your content? Like was your content, doing the heavy lifting in terms of making people take some kind of action to take the next step?

Meryl Johnstone:Not in the early days, I’d say certainly now, so with four years, or four and a half years into the business, that content starting to pay off.

So it led to other opportunities, though. So if you’d asked me a new one of the business need all of the effort that we put into content result in a customer, a direct customer, so someone read our content, and then board, I would say no.

But I think that’s partly the sales cycle in it, when you’re selling bookkeeping services, someone needs to have a high level of trust before they’re going to give you a access to their finance, since and then bank account details and things like that.

So I think it was partly that industry. But also, we went that great at writing content in the beginning. And we didn’t really have a clear strategy, there was a lot that we needed to learn about it.

But even in the early days, so I think within nine months of writing regular content, I was starting to get asked to speak at events. And I spoke at zero con when they needed it was a pretty small business and zero clubs, a conference that has about three and a half thousand people.

And so wasn’t directly leading to sales, but it was gradually helping us to kind of move up that credibility line off, even if it wasn’t in front of customers.

But it was in front of the industry. But I think, step by step, as you create content, you build influence. And and also you refine your message and also figure out who your audience is it you might not get results immediately. And we definitely didn’t.

But I’m really glad that we persisted because now four and a half years later, we are seeing good results.

What Did they do Differently in terms of Content Strategy

Ilana:Yeah, right. So you mentioned that your content is different now based on what you’ve learned. And you’ve got more of a content strategy.

Do you mind sort of touching on? How is it different? And what have you done? What do you do differently now, with your content that you were not doing in the beginning?

Meryl Johnstone:In the beginning, I just wrote about whatever popped into my head, and whenever I felt like writing about, and sometimes that audience might be interested in that.

But I wasn’t writing with the audience in mind, I was writing me in mind and what I wanted to say. And I think now, more more effective strategy, which we’re using now is to think about who our audiences and who we want our audience to be.

And then what kind of content would actually be useful for them, what would be interesting, and we also broke out content into some different categories. So we’re an accounting business.

So we write some content related to that. And we might write about the right features or how you solve a particular accounting problem. But then, when we’re working with small businesses, so we also have content thats related to building culture in remote teams, scaling businesses, systems and processes.

And so basically, we looked at what are the broad range of topics that our audience are interested in, let’s pick some categories. And then let’s be more intentional about how much we’re writing about in these different categories. And when we’re going to be producing the content.

As an example, we, in March of this year, we launched a financial literacy course. And so we looked at what are the what’s the pain point or the multiple pain points that we’re solving with this course. And then we started to create content that address or even raised some of these issues.

So that was a lot more strategic approach, then the early days of just writing what I felt like.

Ilana:And did you include certain components or elements to the content or is just purely a text based thing?

Like Did you have a call to action at the end or some kind of something that people opt in to?

Meryl Johnstone:We haven’t opted. So we’ve been through phases way, sometimes we’ve tried to have a unique opt in, that relates to each piece of content. But we found and I can see merit to that, but it was just too time consuming.

And within our budget constraints, I’d prefer to spend that time on something else. So we actually don’t do that anymore. Even though if we had more resources, we probably would. And instead, we decided on making one awesome opt in. And so we have, we do have a couple of outcomes that we’re using, but there’s one that performs particularly well.

And we just put a ton of value in into that. So it’s got things like a cash flow forecast template that I created, it’s got a huge checklist of things to check in zero.

And there’s a bookkeeping timetable that I created as well. So if someone opts in, they get all of those things, and they’re really useful resources. So we actually just decided to focus on that. And then most of the most of the posts will have a call to action will have that opt in.

But then, depending on the post, so some of the posts that relate to the financial literacy course, then the call to action might be to join out a five day challenge, a free five day challenge that leads into the goals.

And if I move to our podcast for a moment, we say we don’t have advertisers on our podcast, but but we advertise big news on the podcast.

So we have pulled the actions, that red light, we’ve recorded a number of different call to actions, and depending on the episode, then we insert one of those call to actions.

Ilana:Interesting. Do you find that there’s certain call to actions?

Or do lots of people register for the challenge more versus other things? Or is it sort of contingent on what is that leading piece of content?

Meryl Johnstone:I think it, it comes back to why someone reading that content. And so there might be multiple reasons they might have come across it, maybe they saw it in the email list.

So I think the the person who’s reading it, their behavior will change depending on what they were trying to achieve. So if someone was searching for a particular solution to how to connect stripe and zero, and then they read our post about it, and then there’s an opt in that relates to that, then I think the success rate is higher than if they just read it a general business post, and then the opt ins related to zero tips, because they might actually not be interested in that opt in as much with the challenge.

It’s only early days. So we only run the challenge once. And so we’ve only been testing those call to actions over a short period of time. I don’t have enough data on that. Yes, but that’s something that we’re really we are really data driven with everything.

So I’m interested to dig into that we’re actually running the challenge again, at the beginning of October, I’m really interested to see without if we can tweak what we did, and anyhow, results are going to change. Interesting.

Other Methods They Used to Get Traction

Ilana:I know content marketing is is a long game, and it’s a long term play. And often it takes a little while to get results.

So what are some of the other methods that you were that you used to get traction in the early days?

Meryl Johnstone:I had a podcast outreach strategy. So we didn’t have a podcast for a bit over a year. But back then we didn’t have a podcast. But I was trying to I had a strategy, where I was nobody, no one had heard of me. So I had to work really hard to get my first five podcast interviews.

So being interviewed on our podcast back in 2015. And from that was part of our strategy, I think I was on 15 podcasts in a period of something like six months.

And that was hard work, because I really had to try and explain why these guests should host me. And that really helped in again, it wasn’t a direct sale, but just people being more aware of the pain in his brand and our story.

And maybe I read a piece of content, and they heard that podcast, and then they heard another podcast. And then I thought, oh, maybe I should call Bean Ninjas.

Ilana:So many touch points in there and sort of really hard. And this is what I find I find happens a lot with business owners is they.

So attribution focus, like, is this one specific channel working for me was not I’m going to cut it off, when really, there’s so many touch points that are all leading up to that final sale and who really gets the credit for it. Will they all do you think?

Meryl Johnstone:they do? And that’s something I’ve struggled with, especially around content, because the the payoff period is so long. And often it’s hard to collect data on that.

And but I’ve really believed in it as a strategy. I know, I used to cover a little bit of criticism in some of the mastermind groups that I’ve been in about why am I putting resources into these when I could be focused on more direct sales type strategies that might result in a sale today.

But I feel like building a brand and building assets, signing to rank for keywords, and and building awareness of who I am, who are the key people in the business off.

It’s a longer term strategy. But I think we’re building more of an asset than if we just try to quick short term sales strategy.

Ilana:Yeah, hundred percent agree. And I think podcasting is such an amazing medium for sharing content and building a relationship with your audience that I’ve in my experience, like so obviously, I’ve got my own podcast, we’re talking about it now.

But I also go on other people’s podcasts. And it’s incredibly, what’s the word? It Like, it sort of it’s quite sticky, like it lasts a lot longer in terms of the effect of it and the content, people consume content at different times.

So contrast that to speaking an event which I kind of say it’s like a bit of a sugar high, you know, you get an A huge influx of leads within the event is over.

And then the sugar rush is over the you know, in versus a podcast, which is much more consistent. And as you say, it’s a real asset.

Meryl Johnstone:Yeah,100% I agree with that. And but when you were talking about events that actually reminded me of two of our other really early strategies, we don’t focus on as much now.

So one was, one was referral partners. So I spent a lot of time building relationships with accounting firms. Because we don’t do tax.

We do GSE, but not income tax. And so we could refer a lot of work to accountants, but that strategy didn’t work very well for us, because they retained their really good bookkeeping clients, but didn’t refund refer the more difficult ones to us.

But we in the early days, we did get some clients out of that. And I was part of BNI for a little while, which some of your audience may be familiar with, which gets you to think about how can you help other people and refer them work and build relationships with people, again, that have access to a group or an audience of your target market?

So we did that in the early days, but I don’t spend as much time on that anymore. And then we’ve been to I actually spent a lot of time going to events to not speaking in the early days, so much bit more just building relationships.

Ilana:Yeah, look, I can relate to that, too. When I started out with my agency, or what 70 odd years ago, I used to do a lot of business, networking breakfast, I didn’t do BNI. But I know it up and I is.

And it was a great way to build a referral base, at least like you know, I never did web design, for example. So it was a great way for me to meet a web designer, that I could refer them work, and then they might possibly refer me work.

So business it working, I can relate is definitely where I cut my teeth sort of growing my business. Alrighty, so content, referral networks, all that kind of, I guess, slow burning type strategies.

What are some of the other methods that you used once you had a few clients under your belt and needs to really kind of ramp up the acceleration?

Methods She Used to Ramp Up the Acceleration

Meryl Johnstone:So we tried Facebook ads, probably in about at the 18 month mark, we ran ads to a free zero audit. And we thought it was a pretty good offer, we’d had a convert at an event before and it converted well.

And it didn’t convert well. Well, actually, I let me rephrase that, what some people signed up for, but then no one would give us the zero file access in order for us to do the audit, because I thought we might be a scam.

And so it went well. Yeah. So that was our first attempt at Facebook ads, and it didn’t really result in sales. Then we ran Facebook ads to a job ad with a picture of me, you know, the typical digital nomad picture with me with a laptop, at a beach, it was me working at one of our clients surf resort.

And it was funny that didn’t result in some job applications. But that also resulted in some leads to. But I think that was more just indirect and walk that someone looked at the picture and then kind of click through to our website and and awfully but… so we put Facebook ads on hold for a couple of years. And we didn’t really feel like it was working for us.

And we had our limited budget that we were directing into content marketing. We’ve started Facebook ads again recently. And the method is we’ve created eight videos that talk about different elements of financial literacy or address a specific financial problem, like preparing for tax time, or a cash flow challenge.

And the call to action with those videos is to join the five day challenge. And so we’ve been running that for a short amount of time. And again, I don’t feel like I’ve got enough data to know whether it’s working well yet.

But we’re still gonna we’re going to try the same strategy for the next the upcoming five day challenge.

So we’re not putting a ton of money into it at the moment, we’re really still pretty early with learning about Facebook ads and figuring out our audience and, and yeah, tweaking different things cut up, the intention is that once we figure it out, then I’d like to spend more money on.

Ilana:Yeah, and I think that’s some very wise to spend a little bit of money and test it first before, you know splashing out a huge amount of cash for an unknown.

It I’m assuming you’ll be promoting that those videos and your video will have as you said that call to action at the end. But then you’ll probably create a retargeting audience of the people who’ve watched the video and then show them an ad for that challenge. Is that right?

Meryl Johnstone:Correct.

Ilana:Yeah, I can see that working. I don’t see why not. Just make sure you put, you know, time sensitive stuff in the red. But anyway, we can probably talk offline about that. Are there any other strategies that you found were successful in growing your business generating traffic to your site and targeted traffic?

The Role of SEO in their Marketing

Meryl Johnstone:Well, we’ve talked about content marketing, in the sense of bringing customers and also just increasing or building relationships with people. I haven’t really talked about it from an SEO point of view.

And we weren’t really thinking much about SEO in the first couple of years. But then we did kind of double down on that probably 12 months ago. And it’s taken about 12 months to really save, I think traffic doubled over over a period of 12 months when we really focused on SEO and and just tweaked a lot of things in the back end.

And as well as being more intentional about the content that we were creating. So now we get so we track where our leads are coming from, and the percentage of leads that are coming from SEO, it used to be zero at the beginning.

So someone that’s found that five Google search, and now that percentage is gradually increasing as the week’s Go on, which is great.

Ilana:Yeah, definitely. Do you did you have some kind of targeted SEO strategy?

I mean, I know a little bit about SEO, I usually say to people, I know enough to be dangerous.

I’m certainly no no SEO expert. So I’m just curious as to what kind of SEO strategy you took.

Ilana:We spent a lot of time reworking our site structure. So we looked at what our objective, what what is the goal of this, and it’s to have to increase traffic and increased conversions.

And then also, we looked at the countries we were in, and there was some things we needed to do to this little things like having our addresses verified in the different countries that we operate in.

So there were things like that we spent a lot of time and outside structure, and then we redid our website. So we started with SEO, and this site structure recommended, and then kind of built it up from there with copy and then design. And then we would more specific about keywords, the keywords we wanted to target.

Ilana:from memory site structure is a huge component to SEO and I usually direct people to there’s a really in depth article by a guy called Bruce clay. You heard of him?

Meryl Johnstone:Yeah, I’ll check it out.

Ilana:Check it out. So he, I mean, I can put a link in the show notes to this article. I’ve directed so many people to this article. But basically, Bruce sort of explains the ideal structure of your website, as always being like 80% of its ranking.

Google’s the way Google ranks sites. And it’s got to be callable, so he uses the concept of different colored balls. So a bad website structure would be one where the different colored balls are in the same jar together.

So for example, you might have an inner page linking to a different part of your website. content, I’m probably butchering this explanation. But this is the theory that you have silos on your site.

So for example, for my website, for example, where I’ve got kind of two main parts to my business, I’ve got my agency, and I’ve got my training stuff. So would never link an article that’s in the training silo to something that talking about my agency, for example.

And so it’s very distinct branches of a tree when the branches don’t cross over. But Bruce clay explained it in a much more elegant manner that I have. But yet, you should definitely check it out.

And the times that I’ve done these two websites that I’ve owned, it’s made a massive difference to SEO.

Meryl Johnstone:Yeah, I need to go and do some reading on that article. And it’s funny in my calendar, I have it like in my gmail account, I use Boomerang to send things back to myself.

I’ve got some training from AHREF that I’ve been wanting to do, but I’ve had to, I’ve had other things I needed to work on. So I’m kept on Boomerang and get, but this conversation is inspired me to sit down and do that training.

Ilana:Nice. Yeah, you definitely should also put a link to this article in the show notes and I’ll send it into you too Meryl. And its really, really helpful and needs to he explains it in a very clear and concise manner, of course.

And it kind of makes sense how Google just basically makes your site really, really readable to google google upset, is how I understand it.

Obviously, there’s a whole linking strategy to SEO, which I know nothing about. And I don’t claim to know anything about. But really often for many kinds of local businesses that are not in a super competitive industry. Often, this is actually all you need to do.

And you can rank really quite easily, which is pretty cool. Okay, so if you were starting out, again, let’s say, you know, you as you were reading this seven day startup by Dan Norris, today, what’s something that you would maybe do differently if you were starting now, as opposed to when you started four years ago, because I think internet user like dog years, so four years is really a long time in the internet space, and things have changed. So what’s something that you would do differently now?

Things that Meryl Would Do Differently

Meryl Johnstone:Well, I think I would want to, I think I know more now about how to grow an email list. And we were really slow with that, even though we were trying.

So I would still want to grow an email list. But I’d be putting more resources into that. And I think if I was to grow business now and have a bit more capital behind me, and so we could move faster, I did find that frustrating the first time around, you know, putting $500 in and then having to wait for turn every dollar, it just made that everything was so slow.

So next time, I’d put more money up front, so that we could actually.

Ilana:I think you pay with money your with time.

Meryl Johnstone:Yeah, spot on. And so we were doing everything ourselves, but also kind of scrimping and saving on what software we’re buying, or everything.

So next time, I’d hire people much faster, and also just invest in the infrastructure faster. But I suppose you can do that.

Yeah, back then we didn’t really have an option. Yeah. In terms of strategies, I mean, there’s lots of different digital marketing techniques.

So I would like to learn more about and this might come back to a philosophy of mine, where I think it’s important to learn enough so that you can hire the right people. But you don’t necessarily need to go into super detail, you just need to know that you’re hiring the right people to help you.

And then enough to keep them accountable, or to guide them with what the vision is, and apply that same theory to accounting, I teach a lot of financial literacy. And I think it’s really important for every business owner to know that.

But that doesn’t mean they have to be doing it all themselves, they can be if I know enough, and they can hire the right people to help them. And so that would be my philosophy, if I were starting a business, again, would be to be really clear about what the vision is.

And our target market, I mean, again, would probably adapt and either right, if we grew, and then I’d be hiring much earlier, the right digital marketing experts to come in and help with whatever strategy, we’re going to use it and that would probably depend industry and the audience that I was going after, in terms of what strategy, what kind of tactics we would use?

Ilana:Yeah, what would you say would be the first thing that you would hire someone to do in the digital marketing space, what’s been them move the needle the most for you?

Meryl Johnstone:Well, Ryan, content is a huge time suck. So it just takes so long. But let me think about how I build teams. So previous, when I was starting out, I would build a team by hiring someone Junior, to, to do to take a little bit off my plate.

But my hiring philosophy now is to hire someone really experienced who can build a team around them. So if I was hiring someone here, I’d probably engage a strategist post, who’s really experienced to help set the strategy but probably paid consultant to do that.

And then I’d want to hire someone that’s good at project management, who can juggle the different contractors that we would use across the different audience specialists that we would use that I think is important in house to have someone who’s good at Project Management with a with a marketing mindset to because my mistake in trying to hire a full time marketing person in house is you can’t expect them to be an SEO specialist, PPC, copywriting design, you know, you can’t expect that only one person.

So I think is more important if it’s a small business to have someone that’s got broad skills, and is good at project management, to get other people to do that work. And they might even not be the strategist because you might not be able to expect them to have that skill set.

Traffic Generating Strategies in Her Business Going Forward

Ilana:Interesting. It’s hard, isn’t it? So going forward, what? What are you going to be focusing on to grow your business like what, what traffic generating strategy.

Meryl Johnstone:So I see the financial literacy course that I’m working on, as it’s a revenue stream, and it’s a way of diversifying the business.

But I also see it as a lead generator. And we’ve seen that have to close is that I’ve already run, where we teach a lot of skills around how to do bookkeeping and how to interpret financial reports.

But then once we’ve taught it, then someone knows best practice and realizes it’s time consuming or need expertise. And so then there’s been changes can can look after this for me. So I’ll be focused on making sure that the content is really great, and that everyone going through the courses, getting a really good experience and getting results.

And then a step back from that is looking at how do we scale the sales behind selling the course that then leads into our recurring or done for you service?

And ideally, I’m hoping that we can find a paid traffic model that works, we’re still experimenting with that. Because once we figured that out, and streaming we do, then we can put more money behind that and digital courses or a more scalable model.

So we can, when we won’t have the service delivery challenges that we’ve had previously in trying to scale a down volume tennis. Yeah.

Ilana:Yep, that makes total sense. Yeah. If I guess if you can find a way that your ads can pay for themselves, then you can grow and scale at a much faster, right.

So I find so many business owners are so focused on their ads returning a certain amount of profit, where they probably don’t realize that actually, if they can make their money back, so they’re not losing money there.

There are such additional benefits to that, you know, you’re growing your customers, like for example, like I personally, any day of the week take buying 10,000 customers and breaking Gavan versus buying 100 customers and making a huge profit on it.

Because 10,000 customers, even though I’ve broken even and I haven’t actually made money, I’ve got suddenly this huge customer base, I’ve got a referral network, I’ve got a database and all this kind of stuff.

There’s opportunities to grow my business beyond that. So great compared to, you know, the short term aspect of hundred customers that I bought profitably. So it makes sense.

Meryl Johnstone:It does. And I would choose the same option as new. And I think something to think about there is the customer lifetime value, because this particular product that they bought through the ad, my breakeven.

But if you can work out what your customer lifetime value is, which is much easier with a subscription model, or recurring billing type business, if you know they’d stayed with you on average for a year, then it really makes sense to invest in that or they might buy different products.

And so getting clear around what what your customer lifetime value is, I think would be helpful in knowing Well, how much is it okay to spend on acquiring that customer?

Ilana:True, I think the risk with the lifetime value as the main metric that you’re going by is you want cash flow issues, and I guess no one would know better than you.

So I mean, I’m not a big fan of managing ad accounts to a lifetime value, because of that customer. Because of that cash flow issue.

You know, I want to get it depends how long the customer is like, if you’ve got to wait five years to get that full lifetime customer value. That’s a problem as opposed to three months.

Maybe it’s not, you know, but yeah, I guess it’s sort of the the gray area and it depends on different business models and different businesses, how aggressive you want to be in growing your business.

Meryl Johnstone:Yeah, I think there’s probably a number of things to look at. I normally give that explanation if someone’s resistant to spending any money to acquire a customer or Yes, well, they don’t want to then having that conversation about well, how much you expect them with customer to spend with you can then change their perspective on not wanting to spend anything, but yeah, there’s a number of factors to consider.

Ilana:Yeah, definitely. Well, we’ll will thank you so much Meryl for coming on today show sharing your strategies that you’ve managed to grow your awesome business? Where can people find out a bit more information about you and what you do

Meryl Johnstone:Bean Ninjas, which is BeanNinjas.com has, that’s where we we post a lot of content. And I’m also quite active on LinkedIn. And that’s just my full name, which is Meryl Johnston and I can provide a link to that as well and and happy to connect with anyone that’s interested over on LinkedIn too.

Ilana:Awesome. Too easy. We will make some resources available in these show notes on today’s episode, you can head on over to TeachTraffic.com and find it there. Thank you so much, Meryl, for coming on today’s episode. It’s been a real pleasure of mine to have you on.

Meryl Johnstone:Thanks so much for having me.

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About Ilana

Hi, I’m Ilana Wechsler, former data analyst, turned Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing expert.

I discovered the world of PPC about 10 years ago when I left the corporate world as a data analyst.

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Privacy Policy

We are committed to protecting your privacy, and this policy explains how we collect and process personal information about you when you use our products and services (our “Services”), or when you otherwise do business or make contact with us by visiting all of the Sites and services owned, hosted, or operated by Altolana Pty Ltd t/a Green Arrow Digital (collectively “we,” “us,” or “our”), including greenarrowdigital.com, greenarrowdigital.com.au, ilanawechsler.com and any other site that we have owned or operated, do own and operate or may own or operate in the future including social media sites (collectively, the “Sites”). Unless we say otherwise, all references to the Sites in this policy include all such Sites.

Should we ask you to provide certain information by which you can be identified when using our websites, then you can be assured that it will only be used in accordance with this privacy statement.

Green Arrow Digital may change this policy from time to time by updating this page. You should check this page from time to time to ensure that you are happy with any changes. This policy is effective from 24/05/2018.

What Type Of Information We Collect

We may collect the following information when you register to use our Services, subscribe to our newsletters, respond to a survey or offer, make an enquiry through our websites, or contact us in any other way:

  • Name, email, address, phone number
  • Job title, organisation information
  • Usernames and passwords
  • Billing details (Payment card details are processed and stored via one of our contracted third party service providers. We encrypt your payment card details in your browser and securely transfer this data to our relevant third party payment provider to process a payment.)
  • Transaction data for of products and services you have purchased from us.
  • Demographic information such as postcode, preferences and interests
  • IP address and your use of our websites
  • If you register for a course the information is used to to track your preferences, and to keep you informed about the course and related events
  • Copies of your communications with us

How We Use The Information We Collect

The personal information we collect from you may be used in one or more of the following ways to help us understand your needs and provide you with a better service :

  • To deal with enquiries, requests and technical support (your information helps us respond to your individual needs)
  • To create and administer records about any online account that you register with us
  • To provide you with information and access to resources that you have requested from us
  • To improve our websites (we continually strive to improve our website offerings based on the information and feedback we receive from you)
  • For website and system administration and security
  • For general business purposes, including to improve customer service (to effectively respond to your customer service requests and support needs), to help us improve the content and functionality of our Services, to better understand our users, to protect against wrongdoing, to enforce our Terms of Service, and to generally manage our business
  • To process transactions and to provide Services to our customers and end-users
  • For recruitment purposes, in the event you apply for a job with us
  • To administer contests, promotions, surveys, or other content across our sites
  • To send periodic transactional emails. The email address you provide to process your order and purchase a product will only be used to send you information and updates pertaining to your order. Where it is in accordance with your marketing preferences, we will send occasional marketing emails about our products and services, which you can unsubscribe from at any time using the link provided in the message.

Your Rights With Respect To The Data We Collect

Under the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), you have the right to access, rectify, port and erase your data, as well as the right to restrict and object to certain processing of your data. This includes:

  • where you have agreed to direct marketing, the right to object to our processing of your data for that purpose, which you can exercise by using the “unsubscribe” link in such marketing communications; and
  • the right to object to our processing of your data where we are pursuing our legitimate interests or those of a third party which you can exercise by requesting us to delete your details at any time by sending a written request via email to: support@greenarrowdigital.com

You can contact our Data Privacy Officer (DPO) and dedicated compliance team at any time by emailing us at support@greenarrowdigital.com and we’ll be able to assist with your data inquiries, requests and data protection issues.

Controlling Your Personal Information

You may choose to restrict the collection or use of your personal information in the following ways:

  • Whenever you are asked to fill in a form on our websites, look for the box that you can click to indicate your preference regarding receiving further marketing correspondence from us
  • If you have previously agreed to us using your personal information for direct marketing purposes, you may change your mind at any time by emailing us at support@greenarrowdigital.com
  • We will not sell, distribute or lease your personal information to third parties unless we have your permission or are required by law to do so. We may use your personal information to send you promotional information about third parties which we think you may find interesting if you tell us that you wish this to happen.
  • You may request details of personal information which we hold about you. If you would like a copy of the information held on you please email your request to support@greenarrowdigital.com
  • If you believe that any information we are holding on you is incorrect or incomplete, please email us as soon as possible, at the above address. We will promptly correct any information found to be incorrect.

Email newsletters:

If you subscribe to receive one or more of our email newsletters, you will need to register an account with us. We provide newsletters to you free of charge.

Our newsletters may contain promotions or advertisements relating to goods or services provided by us and associated third parties. If at any time you wish to unsubscribe from an email newsletter you may do so by following the unsubscribe instructions on the newsletter or by emailing us at support@greenarrowdigital.com.

Cookies:

The website automatically gathers certain information such as IP addresses and the number and frequency of visitors to the website and individual web pages. This is collected using cookies and is used by us for security and monitoring purposes, to manage the website, to track usage, to improve the website and to improve the website services.

Cookies are pieces of information that are stored by the browser on the hard drive of your computer. The website also uses cookies to enable us, and any person who advertises on the website, to provide features such as remembering certain information about you and your preferences so that we and they can deliver targeted material which will be of most interest to you.

Cookies can be deleted from your hard drive or you can configure your web browser so that it rejects cookies. Rejection of cookies will not prevent you from using most of the features on the website. If you experience any problems deleting cookies, you should contact the supplier of your web browser.

Information sharing:

We only ever share your personal information with third parties with your permission.

If any third party organises or manages on our behalf a promotion, competition, survey or poll run through the website in which you wish to participate, we may ask to disclose your information to that third party to enable them to do so. They will be prohibited from using your information for any other purpose unless you have given them specific consent.

Note that if you upload or post any information to a public part of the website, we may use it in accordance with our Terms and it may be viewed and used by others.

Forums and Blogs:

Please be aware that when you post information to any forums, chat rooms, blogs, or message boards on or through the website, that information can be accessed by the public and used to send you unsolicited communications.

Data Retention

Your information is collected and stored on servers on behalf www.greenarrowdigital.com. We may keep your information for a reasonable period for the purposes set out in this Policy.

We may retain your personal information as long as you continue to use the Services, have an account with us, or for as long as is necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in the policy. You can ask to close your account by contacting us at the details at the bottom of this document, and we will delete your personal information on request.

We may, however, retain personal information for an additional period as is permitted or required under applicable laws, for legal, tax, or regulatory reasons, or for legitimate and lawful business purposes.

Security:

We adopt appropriate security procedures to help prevent unauthorised access to your information. www.greenarrowdigital.com shall not be liable for any attempt to hack or crack or otherwise gain access to any part of this website including any of your information.

Use of details:

In order to make use of some services provided through the website such as the forums, email newsletters, competitions and polls, you will need to register an account with us. When you do so, you will provide us with information about yourself and you will be able to choose to receive our newsletter. You can log in to your account and update your preference at any time in the membership details section of your profile. We will only use your information in accordance with your instructions and as set out in this policy.

By providing us with telephone numbers or an email address, you consent to being contacted by these methods for these purposes. If you do not want to receive marketing information from us, you can notify us as part of the registration process, you can stop receiving this information at any time by following the unsubscribe instructions on the correspondence you receive, by amending your account preferences, or by emailing us at admin@greenarrowdigital.com giving your username and password plus details of the information you no longer wish to receive.

If you wish to take part in any poll or survey run through the website, we will also use your information for the purposes specified in the poll or survey. We may also disclose non-personal, aggregated information we collect through the poll or survey to third parties.

If you wish to take part in any promotion or competition run through the website, we will also use your information for the purposes specified in the promotion or competition, to make sure you are eligible to enter the promotion or competition, to contact you if you have won a prize and for publicity purposes.

Governing Law

This policy and the use of this Site are governed by the laws of Australia exclusively. If a dispute arises under this Policy we agree to first try to resolve it with the help of a mutually agreed-upon mediator in the following location: Sydney, Australia. Any costs and fees other than attorney fees associated with the mediation will be shared equally by each of us.

If it proves impossible to arrive at a mutually satisfactory solution through mediation, we agree to submit the dispute to binding arbitration at the following location: Sydney, Australia. Judgment upon the award rendered by the arbitration may be entered in any court with jurisdiction to do so.

Green Arrow Digital is controlled, operated and administered entirely within Sydney, Australia. This statement and the policies outlined herein are not intended to and do not create any contractual or other legal rights in or on behalf of any party.

The application of the United Nations Convention on Contracts for the International Sale of Goods, as amended, is expressly excluded.

Other sites:

The website contains links to third party websites. We may, on occasion, disclose non-personal aggregated information to the owners or providers of those third party websites.

We link to a wide variety of other websites and we display advertisements from third parties on our website. We are not responsible for the content or privacy policies of these websites or for third party advertisers or for the way in which information about their users is treated. In particular, unless expressly stated, we are not agents for those sites or advertisers nor are we authorised to make representations on their behalf.

Once you have used these links to leave our sites, you should note that we do not have any control over that other website. Therefore, we cannot be responsible for the protection and privacy of any information which you provide whilst visiting such sites and such sites are not governed by this privacy statement. You should exercise caution and look at the privacy statement applicable to the website in question.

Information use:

We may use your information as set out in this privacy policy and in any other manner you expressly consent to us doing so, we may also use your information for any purpose if we are required to do so by any law or other regulatory or government authority, to enforce our terms or to protect the safety of others. In particular, we may collect and use personal information for the purposes of investigating and, if necessary, removing any content about which we receive a complaint.

Policy changes:

By using the website you agree to the terms of this Policy and our Terms. We may amend this Policy and the Terms from time to time. If we do so, we will post an updated version on the website. You will be bound by the new terms upon your continued use of the website.

Altolana Pty Limited trades as Green Arrow Digital

ABN: 72 141 554 047

If you have any questions you may contact us at:

Green Arrow Digital

PO Box 562

Rose Bay

Sydney 2029

Australia

support@greenarrowdigital.com

Terms and Condition

Introduction

Green Arrow Digital regards customer privacy as an important part of our relationship with our customers. The following privacy policy applies to all Green Arrow Digital users, and conforms to Internet privacy standards. If you have questions or concerns regarding this statement, you should first contact Ilana Wechsler at (02) 8060 7311.

Collection of Information

In order to use the Green Arrow Digital website, we may require information from you in order to provide the best service possible. All correspondence may also be collected and stored, particularly in regard to sales, support and accounts, including Email. Any information collected by Green Arrow Digital is collected via correspondence from you or your company. This may be via the telephone, Email, mail, fax or directly through our website.

Use of Collection Information

Any details collected from Green Arrow Digital customers is required in order to provide you with our products and/or services, and a high level of customer service. Correspondence is recorded in order to provide service references, and to assist in our staff development.

Storage of Collected Information

The security of your personal information is important to us. When you enter sensitive information (such as credit card numbers) on our website, we encrypt that information using secure socket layer technology (SSL). When Credit Card details are collected, we simply pass them on in order to be processed as required. We never permanently store complete Credit Card details.

We follow generally accepted industry standards to protect the personal information submitted to us, both during transmission and once we receive it.

If you have any questions about security on our Website, you can email us at ilana@greenarrowdigital.com

Access to Collected Information

If your personally identifiable information changes, or if you no longer desire our service, you may correct, update, delete or deactivate it by emailing us at ilana@greenarrowdigital.com.

Orders

If you purchase a product or service from us, we may request certain personally identifiable information from you. You may be required to provide contact information (such as name, Email, and postal address) and financial information (such as credit card number, expiration date). We use this information for billing purposes and to fill your orders. If we have trouble processing an order, we will use this information to contact you.

Communications

Green Arrow Digital uses personally identifiable information for essential communications, such as Emails, accounts information, and critical service details. We may also use this information for other purposes, including some promotional Emails. If at any time a customer wishes not to receive such correspondence, they can request to be removed from any mailing lists by emailing us at ilana@greenarrowdigital.com. You will be notified when your personal information is collected by any third party that is not our agent/service provider, so you can make an informed choice as to whether or not to share your information with that party.

Third Parties

Green Arrow Digital may at its discretion use other third parties to provide essential services on our site or for our business processes. We may share your details as necessary for the third party to provide that service. These third parties are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for any other purpose. Green Arrow Digital does not share any information with third parties for any unknown or unrelated uses.

Legal

We reserve the right to disclose your personally identifiable information as required by law and when we believe that disclosure is necessary to protect our rights and/or comply with a judicial proceeding, court order, or legal process served on our Website.

Links

Links on the Green Arrow Digital site to external entities are not covered within this policy. The terms and conditions set out in this privacy statement only cover the domain name of www.greenarrowdigital.com

Changes to Privacy Policy

If we decide to change our privacy policy, we will post those changes to this privacy statement, the homepage, and other places we deem appropriate so that you are aware of what information we collect, how we use it, and under what circumstances, if any, we disclose it. We reserve the right to modify this privacy statement at any time, so please review it frequently. If we make material changes to this policy, we will notify you here, by Email, or by means of a notice on our homepage.

Green Arrow Digital Security Policy

Green Arrow Digital uses the eWAY Payment Gateway for its online credit card transactions. eWAY processes online credit card transactions for thousands of Australian merchants, providing a safe and secure means of collecting payments via the Internet. All online credit card transactions performed on this site using the eWAY gateway are secured payments.

– Payments are fully automated with an immediate response.

– Your complete credit card number cannot be viewed by Green Arrow Digital or any outside party.

– All transactions are performed under 128 Bit SSL Certificate.

– All transaction data is encrypted for storage within eWAY’s bank-grade data centre, further protecting your credit card data.

– eWAY is an authorised third party processor for all the major Australian banks.

– eWAY at no time touches your funds; all monies are directly transferred from your credit card to the merchant account held by Green Arrow Digital

For more information about eWAY and online credit card payments, please visit www.eWAY.com.au

Delivery Policy

After ordering online, you will receive an email confirmation from eWAY containing your order details (if you have provided your email address). We will normally confirm receipt of your order within a few minutes of ordering. We will attempt to send your software/license/access code via email within 2 working days.

If you wish to query a delivery please contact us at ilana@greenarrowdigital.com.

Refund Policy

If for any reason you are not completely satisfied with your purchase we will give you a 7 day money-back guarantee from the time you receive the goods. Please email us at ilana@greenarrowdigital.com within that time if you are not satisfied with your purchase so that we can resolve any problems.

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