How Niching Down Allows You to Charge More Without More Clients with Tara Claeys

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[00:00:59] <teaser sequence>

Joe Casabona: There are a few chains freelancers in the WordPress space carry around their necks if we’re being honest. Not charging what you’re worth is one. Not wanting to niche down is the second. And thinking you need to grow to an agency level to make real money is the third. These are all related.

Tara Claeys bucks all of these trends. We have a great discussion about it. We talked about how she decided to finally find a niche and how her podcast helps her establish authority, and why she doesn’t want to become an agency, but how that authority allows her to charge more money.

This is a lesson that freelancers in and out of the WordPress space can learn from. But it’s also something that creators and any small business owner can look at. As a creator myself, I know that sometimes I don’t think what I’m creating is worth what I want to charge. And that’s simply not true. You just need to find the right audience.

Plus in Build Something More, we talk about the new Macs, which one I got and the configuration, and when I’m getting it. So maybe by the time you’re listening to this, I’m putting out new episodes on that machine. You can sign up and get all of the show notes for this episode over at streamlined.fm/260. By the way, big thanks to our sponsors, NitroPack, TextExpander, and Nexcess.

Now let’s get on to the intro and then the interview.

[00:02:40] <intro music>

Joe Casabona: Hey everybody, and welcome to How I Built It, the podcast that helps small business owners create engaging content that drives sales. Each week I talk about how you can build good content faster to increase revenue, and establish yourself as an authority. I’m your host Joe Casabona. Now let’s get to it.

[00:03:05] <podcast begins>

Joe Casabona: Real quick, before we get started, I want to tell you about a free weekly newsletter I’m doing called Creator Toolkits. I want you to become a more efficient creator. It’s the whole purpose and mission of this show. I want you to be able to free up more time to create, to get more sales, and to make more money. And you’ll be able to do that with these free weekly tips delivered to your inbox every Wednesday morning at 7 a.m. with the Creator Toolkits newsletter.

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Hey everybody, I am here with my good friend Tara Claeys. We’re going to be talking about specializing your agency. She is the owner over at Design TLC. She’s a fellow podcaster. Let’s bring Tara in. Tara, how are you today?

Tara Claeys: Hey, Joe. I’m great. Thanks so much for having me on your show. Longtime listener.

Joe Casabona: Well, my pleasure. Thanks so much. I appreciate you taking the time. This came about because we were in the GoWP… They’re called the Digital Agency Owners group now, right?

Tara Claeys: I think so, yeah.

Joe Casabona: We were in that happiness hour. It’s one of the Zoom calls that I make an effort to be a part of, because it’s a lot of fun. You had mentioned that you had specialized and you had a podcast to go along with that. So I’m excited because I’m always telling people to niche down. And Chris Lema is always talking about like micro-segments. It’s really cool to hear more people in the WordPress space finally hearing that message. I feel like for a long time people were beating the drum and nobody was listening.

So why don’t we start with a little bit about who you are and what you do?

Tara Claeys: Sure, thanks. I’m really excited to talk about this too. This topic has been an evolution for me. I’m kind of an old person in the space of the WordPress community. Actually, I’m in my mid-50s now. I started out in advertising before the internet. So I have a marketing advertising communications background and worked in a variety of industries.

Worked for ad agency, did a marketing director at a gourmet store, worked at MCI, telecommunications doing direct mail. So I have a foundation of sort of strategic thinking and communications. But then I had my first child and decided that I really wanted to stay home because my husband worked a lot. And I just felt like it was the right thing for our family.

At the time, my job at MCI was great. I had a great group that I worked with there, but it wasn’t really fulfilling. So I realize, now looking back, that I don’t really have the patience for a big corporate process where you sit in meetings for months at a time trying to decide if the stripe on the envelope should be orange or blue, and then changing your mind. And sort of no progress seemed to ever happen.

So it was a great job and I learned a lot but it wasn’t something that I felt really passionate about. So making the decision to stay home was a pretty easy one. But it was also a hard one because I had a career and I didn’t want to leave that behind.

So I had been doing some artwork, some illustration as gifs. And before I took the job at MCI, I had considered starting a stationery business. I had, for years, been doodling and making note cards by hand. So when I stayed home, I started just with the moms that I was meeting in Baby and Me classes and stuff, sort of softly I’d say mentioning that I do this illustration work.

So I started doing custom illustrations and then the Internet became a thing So I started teaching myself how to use Photoshop to scan into my stuff. And ended up with a gigantic printer and paper cutter and ended up putting my illustrations onto cards. And before I knew it, I had a website.

So this was back before tiny prints or anything. What I did were characters. So they had faces and hairstyles and bodies that you could kind of pick and choose and put together. So I had this massive sort of library on a Microsoft FrontPage website with tables for all of the different images. I still have a little bit of an archive of that site.

Anyway, I liked the whole website process. And after several years of spending Christmas totally stressed out trying to print thousands of Christmas cards, I decided that I wanted to stop that and just do digital work. So I cleared out my office of all the paper and the ink. Actually, it was a relief to do that.

I had, through this sort of the networking of the stationery business, met some other business owners whose websites I had built in a rudimentary way. And then FrontPage made the announcement that they were no longer going to be supporting that software. So I had to choose something else.

I started using Dreamweaver a bit. But then I discovered WordPress and started building websites back in 2010, learned how to make child themes, and sort of taught myself a little bit of code in very backwards ways.

And then I discovered the WordPress community. That really helped me really decide that this was what I wanted to do and how to do it better. And I’ve never really looked back from there. So I kind of went from freelancer to calling myself an agency, an agency of one—I know you’ve said and lots of people say—which I really enjoyed. So that’s how I ended up where I am.

I live outside of Washington DC. I mostly have done work for small businesses through word of mouth locally, although over time have some businesses internationally and across the country as well and a few people that work for me to help support by clients. So that’s the evolution of Design TLC.

Joe Casabona: Nice. That’s awesome. Maybe a little bit later we could talk about making that first pivot. Maybe I’m spoiling it, though. I guess if you listened to the intro, you’ll probably know. It sounds like you’ve made a little bit of a pivot.

Actually, let me start here. You got into to WordPress around 2010. Let’s see. I think I’ve got my WordPress history right. Were you a Thesis child theme person?

Tara Claeys: I wasn’t. I think I just found some tutorials online and I felt child… Well, I tried different commercial themes for a while and just absolutely hated that process. So then I discovered how to build child themes off of 2010. So my first child was 2010 child themes.

And there was this guy. I don’t know if he’s still around. He was an Adobe guy, but he had this website called AskBrian. You could pay like $90 a month or something and ask him anything. So I would be building this child site, I didn’t really know CSS very well, I didn’t really know HTML, and so I would send him questions, and he would just answer them all.

So that’s kind of how I learned which was a lot easier than digging for a lot of tutorials. I don’t know if he’s still around. I think he was out on the West Coast, like Seattle, or something. Really nice guy. I don’t think I ever spoke with him, but we exchanged a lot of messages back in the day.

Joe Casabona: Wow, that’s amazing. It feels like it would still be a good business model today. But I don’t know with like Twitter and stuff.

Tara Claeys: Yeah. He was very responsive. I don’t know how he did it.

Joe Casabona: I was having this discussion with Jennifer Bourn. I feel like if you did all of your work in the WordPress space you feel really nervous about charging what you should be paid for stuff. Part of my brain is like $90 a month would never work in the WordPress space. And then the other part of my brain is like, $90 a month is nothing compared to what you charge for one on one coaching.

Tara Claeys: Exactly, yeah.

Joe Casabona: I mean, that’s a conversation for another day, but it just made me think of that. So the reason I asked about Thesis was because you did Genesis.

Tara Claeys: I was. I did, yes.

Joe Casabona: You was.

Tara Claeys: So my first WordCamp… I’ve told this story a number of times. But my first WordCamp was in Baltimore in 2013. I had come across some other person on the internet. I didn’t know anything about WordCamps or WordPress community. And this guy mentioned that he was going to WordCamp. And I looked it up, I’m like, “What is that?” And then I saw there was one in Baltimore, so I went.

I sat down at lunch with two people who turned out to be Shay Bocks and Chris lemma. Chris was the keynote speaker. I had no idea who they were. Shay told me that she had a top-selling Genesis theme. And I was like, “What’s Genesis?”

One of the speaker panels that day, somebody there was a Genesis user. So then I discovered Genesis and I was like, “Okay, this is what I really needed was something that I could use without having to reinvent the wheel every time. Then I just really got involved in the Genesis community. I discovered Carrie Dils. She had live sort of Office Hours podcast at the time where I met some friends who are still my friends today during the chat that she would have during that podcast.

So really that encounter with Shay and with Chris at that podcast really kind of opened my eyes to sort of the best practices and the community of WordPress.

Joe Casabona: That’s fantastic. WordCamp Baltimore 2013. I think I went in 2014.

Tara Claeys: Okay.

Joe Casabona: Chris was definitely there then because that’s when my whole approach to speaking changed because he gave me like a masterclass on how to speak at one of those random tables. But yeah, WordCamp Baltimore was one of my favorites for a long time.

Tara Claeys: That’s good.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. That’s super cool. I think that’s kind of how in my mind you’re like in the Genesis group with Carrie Dils and stuff like that. I think I heard your episode maybe. Were you on Office Hours with Carrie?

Tara Claeys: I don’t know.

Joe Casabona: That felt weird.

Tara Claeys: I don’t know if I was. Maybe I was actually.

Joe Casabona: Or was she on Hallway Chats?

Tara Claeys: Both. Yeah, she was on Hallway Chats. For sure that. And I gave some talks at the DC meetup about Genesis. So I really got to know people in that community. It was a great community. I learned a lot. Still I’m friends with people that I met there.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Very cool. So that’s great. Let me ask you one more question about Genesis though because I wasn’t really big into it. I tried my hand at it because it looked cool and I had a lot of experience with Thesis because a lot of my clients were using Thesis. Like a lot of my designer clients who would hire me to do the code stuff like got things started on Thesis.

What’s going on with Genesis now? I know a lot of… What’s going on with Genesis? I don’t want to lead you to a conclusion. What’s going on with them?

Tara Claeys: I have no idea. I think they’re part of WP Engine now. But I transitioned again from one thing to another. So I started using Beaver Builder. I’m not sure what year that was. Several years ago I went to CaboPress… Oh, I can tell you what year that was. It was 2016 I went to CaboPress.

I remember specifically people were talking about Beaver Builder. And I had started trying to use it because… Do you know Davinder Singh Kainth?

Joe Casabona: Yeah.

Tara Claeys: He helped me a lot with website stuff. I met him in Carrie Dils’ group and he started using Beaver Builder. I was kind of like, “Really? Is that cheating?” It seems like not really the professional developer way to build a site.” Not that I was a super coder anything.

And at CaboPress, we had some conversations about it and the Beaver Builder guys were there. It was just kind of like… Visually it’s like this slap across the face kind of thing like, “Shut up. Like yes, it’s fine. Stop complaining about it.”

So ever since then I kind of felt like, “Well, if everybody here says it’s okay to use it, then I will.” I really have embraced it since then. So I was using Beaver Builder and Genesis. And then I discovered I didn’t really need what Genesis had anymore. I did some testing between different themes. So now I just use the Beaver Builder child theme, Beaver Builder theme for the most part.

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Joe Casabona: I didn’t want to lead you to any conclusion. But everybody worries with acquisitions that the thing they love is going to die. But since the acquisition of Genesis to WP Engine, I don’t feel like things have been going very well.

Tara Claeys: I have lost touch with it. That in Gutenberg, too. Right? Because Gutenberg is offering a lot of things as well.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. I mean, I just moved. I love Beaver Builder. Robbie and Justin were two of my early guests on this show, but I’ve basically moved completely to Gutenberg. I’m using Kadence Blocks. So I’m not like native Gutenberg because that’s not ready for primetime yet, but that with Kadence Blocks is everything that I need.

Tara Claeys: I really haven’t got gone down that way. And I probably won’t, because I have a system with the Page Builder and all of my sites are using it. So it would confuse things I think to do that. But back in the day with Genesis, it seemed really neat that you could build a homepage without actually having a homepage, right, the widget.

And then as I did that more and I tried to explain it to my clients, it was kind of like, This makes no sense. It’s so confusing for them that you can’t see the homepage, that you don’t exactly know which widget goes where depending on how it’s named and stuff. I think it made sense initially but as I started doing it more and looking at the Page Builder, it was just so much more clear to have a homepage with homepage content on it.

Joe Casabona: Yeah. I’ve been using WordPress since 2004 so I’m certain that I made custom sites like this, where I’d call on the sidebar and it actually served as a section of a page or the homepage. But by the time I got to Genesis and I saw that that’s how they were doing things, I was like, “This doesn’t make any sense.” This is not really the best way to do it. And I understand why it was done that way. Because it was like the most visual way for people to do it kind of pre-Page Builder. But yeah, I mean, Page Builders just serve a much better purpose.

It’s interesting what’s going on with Genesis now, I guess. I know they killed a lot of their themes, and they’re only supporting a handful. And they’re all maybe free now. Or maybe they’re for WP Engine users. But it got very murky very quickly. So that’s neither here nor there. I mean, we talked about a few of your pivots so far. But in the Go WP group, you mentioned that you are now specializing in the education space, right?

Tara Claeys: Yeah. Yeah. Small Schools, independent schools, and nonprofits, which many small schools are nonprofits. So there’s kind of a crossover. And nonprofits, I mean, it can get very, very specific. I choose to work with nonprofits who have some kind of usually childhood enrichment focus to it or something like that.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. And what made you want to choose that? I know I’ve tried to specialize in the school space. I did it in 2009 during the economic crash and schools were like, “We have no money.” And I’m like, “great, what a good niche to be in.”

Tara Claeys: I was a reluctant member of the specialized community, I’d say. I’m friends with Sara Dunn and I watched her YouTube videos and thought about it a lot. And I always thought, “I don’t want to do that.” I really like having a variety.” So I would just take anything that came my way. And through word of mouth, you can get a variety of clients that way.

I think I felt that that was interesting, until I felt like it wasn’t, until the accounting website with the let’s pick a stock photo of the people in the office shaking hands; and then the lawyer, let’s pick a photo of people in an office shaking hands. And I just kind of-

Joe Casabona: Use dark blue and cell phone.

Tara Claeys: Right. Yeah. And then having to learn that industry a little bit in order to better serve them was not interesting to me. So when I thought about it, I knew I didn’t want to grow, which is another topic to talk about. I wanted to stay small. I’ve always been very vocal about growth, meaning that I want to be able to learn more and do things better, but I don’t want to have employees. I don’t want to have an office outside my house. I want to be an expert. I want to get better and better at what I’m doing.

So I think I was at Content Camp… Jennifer Bourn has a Content Camp and I was there a few years ago. And I had been thinking about my favorite clients and my favorite projects. I had done a rebranding of an enrichment program that did cooking classes for kids and I had absolutely loved that.

The more I thought about it, the more I thought, this is really what I like. And I have a number of clients who serve this kind of enrichment space, whether it’s a school, which I had done some or a nonprofit that helps kids or something like that. So I had a few clients in that space and I loved it, all of it. So I kind of decided that’s what I wanted to do.

And when I was at Content Camp, I went there not knowing if I was going to Content Camp to learn how to better serve my clients or to better identify my own business. So what I ended up doing during that workshop, because it is a hands-on, it’s an excellent process, but you actually do the work while you’re there, was changing my entire messaging on my website and making it completely focused on this niche.

And I never really looked back. I identified some messaging language, I identified some strategic marketing thoughts, all of that. And then I came back from it and just kind of started gradually implementing some of the things that I had planned out during that Content Camp.

So that was really, really helped for me to go all in. I had been thinking about it, but I kind of just pulled the trigger and went for it. I think now I’m ready for a rebranding again of my own website. But it works for me what I started with I think.

Joe Casabona: That’s so awesome. First of all, you mentioned both Sara Dunn and Jennifer Bourn. I love both of those people very much. They both been on the show twice. So I will link to their episodes in the show notes, again, over at streamlined.fm/260.

I mean, the more I hear about Jennifer Bourn’s Content Camp, the more I think that I should do it. Because while I am a content producing machine, I am never good at writing content for me, if that makes sense. I’m very good about learning in public and talking about the stuff I’m working on. But when it comes to like honing the marketing message for this specific group of people I’m trying to serve, I’m still very Ron Swanson and matter of facty. Like, Oh, yes, make money with your podcast in these ways. And it’s like, “All right, well, I’m not even podcasting consistently. So how can I do that?”

Tara Claeys: Well, it’s hard when it’s your own self too, right?

Joe Casabona: Yeah.

Tara Claeys: It’s hard to work on your own messaging. It’s an amazing program. It’s a little overwhelming and intimidating because there’s so much. I mean, the workbook that you get there is huge, and there’s index cards. If you really had the attention span, which I don’t necessarily think I do, to hone in all day long on this stuff, you could get your whole year’s worth of content, and you could really get… I mean, it’s set up for that.

For me, it was most effective and really sort of defining my message and thinking through my marketing strategy. So it was really invaluable that way. I think the other element of specializing was the idea of not just growing in some way and becoming an expert, but also simplifying my business.

So when you become specialized in an industry, you learn it. So now having done a number of websites for these independent schools, looking at other websites for these independent schools, it’s somewhat formulaic. And so you can get a sense of what works and why and see what the trends that are happening there and focus on that, rather than trying to apply something that works for a school to a bakery.

So I think it helps you sell more projects. My close rate is super high because I don’t get a ton of leads. But once they get to me, I pretty much know that they’re going to hire me because I can express my expertise to them.

Joe Casabona: You’ve done that thing where you’ve sold them through the fact that your content speaks to them or that they already know that you can help them specifically. This is something that I tell people all the time. I’m like, “You need to niche down.” The way I like to tell is through baby clothes. I’ve written about this. I podcasted about this. Do you know what I’m referring to?

Tara Claeys: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: So for the listeners, I’ll link this in the show notes as well, but there’s a specific type of baby clothes that I know were designed by parents because they are easy to get on your child even in the middle of the night when you’re half asleep. That’s the kind of service that you should offer your clients. Like when someone goes to you, they’re like, “Man, this person knows my struggles and they can really help me.”

Tara Claeys: I think it’s really important. I think you have to open your mind to the possibility of niching down or niching down. As I said, I was really reluctant for a while when I heard Sara doing that. I think also she started out thinking about maybe just choosing a specialty and I think she talked about this with you, right?

She had looked at chiropractors because she had done some chiropractor things. She decided she didn’t like doing that. So there’s a trial and error there. I think you can’t just decide like, “Oh, here’s an opportunity, dentists, I’m going to do that because there’s an opportunity.” I do really believe if you’re going to make this move, it has to be something that you really enjoy and that you feel connected to, and for me, passionate about.

So it’s also easier to sell your service when your potential client sees that you are passionate about it. I love working with content that talks about how to enrich children’s lives and how a school or a program can do that. That’s really fun for me to do. I feel good about it. So I do a better job as a result, right?

Joe Casabona: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I see the same thing to people who are thinking about starting a podcast. What should I podcast about? True crime is really popular, or whatever. Sure. I mean, do you like listening to true crime podcast? Because I gotta tell you, if reporting on murder bums you out, this is not going to be a good time for you. You need to pick a topic that you’re passionate about, because it’s a grind. And that passion will help you get through the grind or will help you talk to potential clients better. So I love that.

I know that, like you said, you need to open your mind up to niching down because I can be scary, right? The idea of really limiting the amount of or the types of clients or the types of projects that you’re going to take. But as you said, your close rate is super high because you’re not just casting a wide net and hoping for the best. You’re barely casting in at all. You got the worm on the hook, and people will come to you instead, which is the beauty of niching down. I hope that wasn’t a weird metaphor.

Tara Claeys: I think that’s really true.

Joe Casabona: So how did you do it? You mentioned that you had some clients in this space. You mentioned that you really honed your message with content camp. But how did you let people know, like, “Hey, I’m doing this and also I see you, I understand, you and I can help you?”

Tara Claeys: That’s the challenge. I mean, I think that’s the scariest part is how do you do that. For some people, they may already have a lot of connections in an industry, so it may be easier. I didn’t really have many. So I had to kind of start from scratch. It’s still evolving. I use the 12-week year process, and I have an accountability group. And so every quarter I set goals.

So for a long time, my goal has been “become known as an expert in WordPress school websites.” That’s niching down even more, because the first step is doing research on the industry on who the competition is and on what the issues are for your potential clients, what problems they’re trying to solve. Not even just website problems, marketing problems for schools, enrollment problems, retention problems, so that you can identify with them and know where they are coming from, not just about the website.

I talked to a potential client the other day, and I was able to discuss retention and retaining your families by letting them know what’s going on in the classroom. That’s not necessarily website-related, but it shows them that I understand their situation. So that’s a key. You have to know that.

Joe Casabona: And going beyond that, I think a lot of people in our position where they’re web developers are worried that Squarespace is going to take their job. Squarespace can’t learn about an industry. Sure, anybody can set up a five-page website. But what you’re offering should be more than that. It should be solving, like you said, other concerns where the website is just the vehicle.

Tara Claeys: Yeah. There is one company in the school website space that dominates, completely dominates. They’re a huge company. They have their own CMS. They have tons of digital marketing plans. They have a lot lot lot to offer. Most of the private schools in the world use this company and they’re very expensive. And you can get a really amazing website or you can get a templated website and pay a lot of money for something that’s not really very good.

The second largest platform for school websites in my research is WordPress. So there’s a huge opportunity there for me. There are a lot of other agencies and companies that do WordPress websites for schools. I am not aiming to be the biggest. Like I said, I’m not aiming to grow. I want to be known and thought of.

And so how did I do that? How have I been doing that? I’m still not the best known but I am known. And I will say like my first step was the first year that I did this I sponsored… There’s an independent school marketing group. They have a LinkedIn group and a Facebook group and they send out an email every week. So I sponsored them, and they reached like 1,500, 1,800… They have a pretty decent size list for an industry that’s not necessarily huge. Got to know them, got on their podcast.

So that was a great entry because they are very specific to this industry and a lot of small school marketers subscribed to them. So that was helpful. I don’t know that I got any business from it at all directly. But it introduced me to a lot of people and it kind of forced me to engage in that community.

I also reached out, through that group, to some other contractors who do work for independent schools, but don’t do websites. So people who do marketing surveys, people who do other types of work, and actually ended up being invited to join a mastermind with a group of women who have become good friends of mine, who don’t do websites, but they do other types of consulting. So they have a lot more school experience than I do. And so we talked about the challenges in the school so I’m better understanding where they’re coming from. So I did that.

I hired someone to do some LinkedIn outreach for me, which is definitely not my comfort zone. I got one client from that process, which was all I really needed to make it worthwhile. But that’s a soul-crushing process. That’s just not fun, cold calling kind of thing.

Actually, I just forgot. I just remembered that I did this first. In that first few months after I got back from Content Camp, I made direct mailers. I got these little heart-shaped ice pack. You know those little gel packs?

Joe Casabona: Yeah.

Tara Claeys: Made a little mailer and researched local schools and camps and sent them this in the mail. I got zero calls from it. So I just knew after a couple of attempts that sort of outbound cold calling that that is not what I want to do. I’d rather close up shop than do that. It’s no fun.

Joe Casabona: Wow. I’m very interested in somebody who does LinkedIn outreach right. Because in my experience no one does. Just the people who have reached out to me are just like, “Hey, happy to connect here. By the way, do you blah, blah?” No.

Tara Claeys: They have very automated process. I think they try to make it personalized. But it was really outside of my comfort zone. I’m glad to have tried it. I think it was worth a try. One of my colleagues who does a different kind of consulting had a lot of luck with it because what she was offering is something that I can think is maybe more people are looking for directly.

Whereas with a website, it’s kind of like they already have a website. What are the chances that you’re going to hit them at the moment that they’re considering or refresh? And that did happen with one. So I did get one really great client through that process. So I can’t say it was a failure at all, but it’s just wasn’t comfortable I think is the better way to think about that.

And then the other thing I did was at the end of last year I had been doing a WordPress podcast called Hallway Chats with Liam Dempsey. And we had done that for a couple of years and enjoyed it. It was not anything. It was just a service to the community. But I enjoyed that.

We kind of came to a point where we were wrapping it up and Topher and Kate DeRosia were growing their HeroPress, and so they took over Hallway Chats. And at the same time that that was closing, I reached out to one of the women that I met in this school mastermind consulting group and asked if she’d like to do a school marketing podcast.

So we pretty quickly started a podcast directed toward independent school marketers, mainly women, I would say is our target audience. It’s called Mindful School Marketing. We try to talk about mindfulness. We had Shay Bocks come on and talk about Enneagram.

So, you know, trying to make it a little bit fun and not too heavy in terms of just marketing. There are a number of podcasts in the school marketing space, enrollment space run by some big enrollment companies that do enrollment management but most of them are run by men. So we wanted to create something different.

And because of my experience with Hallway Chats and some of the advice that you shared with me too, Joe, it was really easy to spin up this new podcast because I had a lot of processes in place. One thing we do differently, and I think you asked about this on Twitter a few days ago, is we do post video on our YouTube channel. My co-host has a VA who does all of the editing, and all of the posting, which I was doing for Hallway Chat, so I don’t have to really do much work. It’s pretty nice. And we just got our first sponsor.

Joe Casabona: Congratulations. That’s fantastic.

Tara Claeys: Thanks. So it’s just another platform to try to establish authority. Again, I don’t know that it’s translating to new business so much, but it’s something that I can mention when I’m talking to a potential client that I have this podcast. So it kind of just helps to… Again, it’s another avenue toward being known in this industry, in this space.

Joe Casabona: I think that’s great. I mean, this is obviously something I tell a lot of people: start a podcast, establish your authority. That’s awesome that you got your first sponsor because that’s work. It’s not always easy to do that. But if you find the right fit, then… I think a lot of people worry that they don’t have enough downloads. I will tell people, if you find the right fit, downloads is not the most important thing.

Tara Claeys: That’s good to hear. Yeah, we don’t have a lot of downloads. We’re very specific. So it’s a pretty small target. So I think it’s targeted. It’s not a very broad thing that we’re doing. But it’s fun. I really enjoy it.

Joe Casabona: Absolutely. Did you say you had Shay on for Enneagrams?

Tara Claeys: Yes.

Joe Casabona: Do you know your Enneagram type?

Tara Claeys: Yes. We had my husband and I had Shay do our Enneagram. She does it for couples, which is very cool.

Joe Casabona: Oh, very cool.

Tara Claeys: I am Enneagram one.

Joe Casabona: Okay.

Tara Claeys: Which is the perfectionist.

Joe Casabona: I have it listed here as the reformer. I don’t know if I took a different one.

Tara Claeys: Are you a one as well?

Joe Casabona: I scored equally on the helper, type two, and the enthusiast, type seven.

Tara Claeys: Yeah, I can see that.

Joe Casabona: And then very close was type eight, the challenger. I feel like those three words are pretty descriptive of my personality.

Tara Claeys: My daughter is an eight. It’s fun to talk about that. We’ve had some other kind of life coach type people on. We had Sherry Walling on to talk about burnout. I was able to reach out to some of my friends in the WordPress space to talk about different topics or people that I’ve met through WordPress.

And that’s the biggest challenge of a podcast, I think, is finding the guests. At least for the podcasts that I’ve had is finding the right fit, finding the guests to talk about lining up your topics, making your schedule, all of that.

Joe Casabona: I agree. I think a lot of people think that they need to do interview shows. Especially people who are establishing authority, I generally try to steer them to at least doing a partially solo show. Like your co-host and you could talk about stuff that you’ve been doing.

Tara Claeys: Yeah, we have done that.

Joe Casabona: Yeah, right. Exactly.

Tara Claeys: We just did one on retention. We have done that.

Joe Casabona: Perfect. I suspect that those are probably good episodes, especially in establishing your authority. I’m experimenting with this right now with my other podcast, Make Money Podcasting, where it’s just me talking for… I shoot for less than 20 minutes on how to grow and monetize your podcast. So we’ll see. Just launched it. I had a launch day sponsor, which thank you Nexcess, also sponsor the show. But we’ll see how that goes.

Tara Claeys: I think the short ones are… I mean, they’re great. I listened to or maybe you did a blog or maybe you mentioned it at GoWP. Anyway, The Daily Stoic. I’m a huge fan of that podcast because most days it’s under 10 minutes. Sometimes it’s like three minutes and it’s just a little gem of information. So I think short podcasts are good idea too.

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Joe Casabona: I guess this is like the first official mention on the show. But I’m going to launch a new short form version of this called How I Built… I think I’m going to call it How I Built Bits, where it’s like 15 minute segments from previous episodes that you might have missed.

Tara Claeys: That’s a great idea.

Joe Casabona: Thank you. We’ll see how it goes. I said to Nicole Osborne recently that content creation is experimentation. So I’m doing a ton of that.

Tara Claeys: Repurposing is great. That makes a lot of sense. I’ll mention one more thing that I’ve done if I think about my whole strategy. This is another tough one. I’ve been trying to do some webinars. So I did a couple of webinars with some other people in the schools marketing space, who do like digital ads and stuff like that.

I really want to be the WordPress expert for schools and be a helper and be known as somebody who can help solve your WordPress problems, which, of course, lots of people have. So I started doing these Lunch and Learn sessions once a month. And it takes a lot of patience, self-confidence, self-esteem, which I don’t always have in abundance.

When you are on a zoom call and nobody talks or you have two people show up, it is definitely a commitment. You have to have a little bit of inner strength to do that. So I’ve had no one show up. I’ve had 20 people show up. I’ve had a range. Almost never does anyone engage or interact. Who knows? I don’t interact on webinars either, so I can’t really blame them.

But I have gotten a couple of clients that way. So I think that is helpful because they can see you, they can see you in action, and they can see you offering them knowledge that they weren’t aware of when it comes to where it was like, “Oh, my gosh, I didn’t realize I could do that,” or “I did one on Search Console. I didn’t realize that I could do that.

So when you’re showing them that you know something and then they come to you and ask some questions. I think for me, I really liked solving their problems. And oftentimes what ends up happening is they have more problems than they knew they did. So we can work together to solve them, and it becomes a bigger project. So that’s all good.

The nonprofit space is huge. So I’ve been really focusing on schools, but I do also really love working with nonprofits and have had a few childhood enrichment-related nonprofit projects come my way through Google searches and word of mouth that I really enjoy as well. So that’s another avenue that I can explore as I move forward, I think too.

Joe Casabona: That’s awesome. Is Launch and Learn an education thing? Because I first heard it at the University of Scranton, where I was a tech con, a student, technical person, and we had to host these Lunch and Learns for staff. I’m like, is that a corporate thing? Is that an education thing?

Tara Claeys: I have no idea because I’ve heard it all over. I mean, I’ve seen a number of people do it. Sara Dunn does them. He calls them that. I don’t think it’s a proprietary term. I think it’s familiar to people that it just means casual and short. It’s well under an hour. I will prepare a couple of slides for them but I don’t spend a ton of time because it’s I do it on a topic that I already know.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Awesome. Definitely I need to do… every year, probably every six months. I’m like, “I should do more webinars.” And then I’m like, Nah, though.

Tara Claeys: They are a lot of work.

Joe Casabona: I do live stream almost weekly, but live streams are just like, whatever. I’m just talking through what I’m working on. I feel like webinars maybe a little bit more prepared. Maybe I should have somebody on to talk about live streams versus webinars versus workshops, which are paid things right?

Tara Claeys: Yeah. I would tune in to that.

Joe Casabona: Excellent. So if anybody out there is listening, webinars versus workshops, reach at joe@casabona.org. The last note on this, as somebody who has taught in the classroom to students who don’t want to participate while also being the person who participated when I was a student, looking out at just blank faces is like… You got to get used to it fast if you’re going to teach because it’s like demoralizing at first.

And the first few weeks I taught, I was like, “These kids don’t participate.” Somebody was always participating in my classes when I was a student.” And then my friend was like, “Was that somebody you?” I’m like, “Yeah, right. It was me.” So yeah, getting those blank stares is rough.

Tara Claeys: Yeah, for sure. My heart goes out to teachers who do this every day, especially with COVID. I mean, these are the people that we talk to because a lot of people who do marketing in small schools also teach in small schools, they wear many hats.

Joe Casabona: Absolutely. It’s a tough profession. I know a lot of parents in the COVID era learned just how hard it is.

Tara Claeys: Yes.

Joe Casabona: Awesome. Well, as we approach the end of our time here, I know that the last topic we want to talk about and something I think is a really good one for independent creators especially is not wanting to grow. Paul Lacey was on the show. My New York accent just came out super hard there. Sorry, everybody.

Paul Lacey was on the show last year where he talked about how he kind of went from freelance to agency back to freelance. I think we both read “Company of One” by Paul Jarvis. Tell me a little bit about that philosophy. Because I think we’re in a place where it’s like, hustle, grow, publish every day, do the thing, don’t sleep, whatever. And I’m just like, “I’ve got three kids. I want to sleep whenever I can. I don’t want to run a huge business.”

Tara Claeys: I like talking about this, although it reveals some of these insecurities that I referenced. I went to CaboPress and just felt like I did not fit in because everybody there had these products. I think CaboPress has changed in the past few years. But I just felt like I’m just this little… I use the term “mompreneur” and people yelled at me.

I’m sort of an accidental entrepreneur. This is something I set out to do with a business plan. I have colleagues here in the local area who have marketing agencies, and they’re hiring people, and they’re getting office space and putting a sign up on the building. And that’s their dream. And I see that they didn’t take a paycheck last month because their client didn’t pay and they had to pay their employees. They end up dealing with somebody quitting when they are just really busy and then they have to do the work themselves.

And all that kind of stuff, which takes you away from the thing that you started out doing. So I’ve been very adamant about not wanting that, and yet, question it all the time. Because that’s what you hear, right? That’s what you hear. I’m a competitive person and this community is very supportive of growth. Even the GoWP group, people talk about growing and they talk about getting to seven figures, all of these different things. That scares me. I never set a revenue goal because I’m afraid to not meet it.

So for me staying small has been really important. For my own peace of mind, I think. But it’s hard to admit that I think sometimes. And so sometimes I feel like a loser because I’d say I don’t want to grow. And I think Paul Lacey on that episode with you talked about growth and getting better is a form of growth.

So when I think about that, I absolutely am super passionate about self-improvement and growing skills, and getting better. So if I think about that as a growing then, yeah, every day. I want to grow every day. So that shift in mindset has helped. It’s helped me I think embrace this specialization more as well.

Joe Casabona: I love that so much because I think that, again, maybe this goes back to like that necrosis, I’ll call it, in the WordPress space where it’s like, I individually can charge that much. And if I want to grow my business, I need more clients, which means I need employees but that’s not true even a little bit.

I can off the year with Rochelle Moulton because I want people to hear that you as an expert individual can charge mid-five or low six figures for an engagement if you know what you’re talking about. You don’t need 10 employees to make a million dollars in a year or whatever. And I just agree so hard with that.

The reason I left Crowd Favorite back in 2017 was because I wanted to spend more time with my family. Because I guess it’s long enough now that I could say this, but you know, they were like, “Can we get you to stay?” And I said, “I’m not going to miss my daughter’s first steps because I was working late for somebody.”

So you got to think about why you started a business. I started the business so that I could be there for my family. Why would I start my own agency, which would take more time away from my family, not less time? Unless I was totally hands off, which I am not like that. I’m not like a serial entrepreneur who just starts a bunch of businesses that run on their own. I like doing the work.

Tara Claeys: I appreciate that so much and I respect that decision. For me, I’m 54 years old. My kids are grown, they live far away. My husband works from home and we don’t have college tuition anymore. We have more flexibility.

So for me, I like working. And I’ll work into the night if I want to work into the night. And that’s a whole nother topic, right? It’s guilt about that. But I think it’s more the concept of just not wanting to have the pressure of growing and meeting some kind of thing.

And maybe if I were 28-years-old or 30 years old and I was looking forward to my life and thinking I wanted to build something I could sell, I think that’s awesome. We both have many friends in this space who are doing that. More power to them I think. And they’re good at it. They’re good at leadership. They’re good at managing a team. They love doing that.

I like working by myself. I have some contractors who are amazing, who work with me. I can go days without contacting them. I’m generous and kind and let them know how much I appreciate them. But I don’t want to sit in a meeting and talk about stuff I just want to do. It’s also a mentality of workstyle.

Joe Casabona: That’s so interesting. I don’t feel like we’re that far apart in age, though, to be honest, we’re farther apart in age than I thought we were. And we’re in different stages of our life. You know, I have a newborn at home. But we both have our reasons for not wanting to grow.

One of the reasons that I’m picking the path that I’ve picked, which is one less reliant on client work and maybe more reliant on product sales and recurring revenue is for that very reason. We both have the ability to enable the lifestyle we want as well as quickly pivot. I think that’s probably another thing, right?

Tara Claeys: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: Because again, if you have a company of 10 or 20 people, we can’t just like decide today, “Oh, well, I want to move into this,” or “I want to try my hand at this.” Sara Dunn talked about that. She did have employees. She was a little bit more surgical about her niching down and about who was going to come on this journey with her.

Again, like you said, more power to people who have employees and start the agency. That’s not for me. My accountant is like, “So who do we need to give 1099 to this year?” And I’m like, “1099, whatever.” So like having to set up like payroll for other people and worry about that, I’m not about that.

Awesome. Well, Tara, this has been such a fantastic conversation. I miss talking to you.

Tara Claeys: Me too.

Joe Casabona: In the before time, we went to a lot of regional WordCamps and got to meet up and chat. Oh, gosh, I need to ask you the most important question here. Didn’t show up on my notes. Do you have any trade secrets for us?

Tara Claeys: I would say—I give this a little bit of thought—do good work. That’s the number one Enneagram perfectionist in me. But do good work, be responsive, set respectful boundaries. And I think caring about the work that you do and caring about your client. They’re not secrets. They’re just I think an approach to doing business.

Joe Casabona: I love that. That’s so funny because I just interviewed Jack Hitterhing—you pronounce the H. I double checked—and he said something very similar. My trade secret is I don’t have one. And it’s do the work, right?

Tara Claeys: Yeah.

Joe Casabona: But I also like what you said about respectful boundaries because that is something I feel like a lot of freelancers, especially small business owners need to do for themselves. Like I’ve had clients call me at like midnight and I’m like, “Hi. It’s midnight. I’m asleep.”

Tara Claeys: Wow. Yeah, that’s not good.

Joe Casabona: That happened once and only once. And the client who called me that time got a very direct feedback about how inappropriate that was.

Tara Claeys: I actually have one more thing if I can add it on, which is the idea of relationships. I think it’s also really important to let people know what they mean to you. Whether it’s your client, whether it’s your colleague in a Slack group, whether it’s a contractor who’s working with you.

I lost a few people who passed away recently and I feel like leaving things unsaid is one of the biggest mistakes that you could make. So I would share the tip of just once a week, whatever, just reaching out to somebody and letting them know what they mean to you.

Joe Casabona: I can’t say anything better than the way you just said it. So let’s leave our guests with this. If they want to learn more about you, where can they find you?

Tara Claeys: Designtlc.com is my website. I’m Tara Claeys on Twitter. And that’s C-L-A-E-Y-S. And I’m on LinkedIn and Facebook and Instagram as well.

Joe Casabona: All right, I will link to that and everything that we talked about. It’s going to be a rich show notes page this week over at streamlined.fm/260. Tara, thanks so much for joining us today.

If you want to get a little bit of an extra conversation by joining the Creator Crew, Tara and I talked about the new Macs, which as we record this were announced yesterday. One of us purchased a new Macs. But you can listen to the pre-show. You can sign up over at that show notes page, streamlined.fm/260.

Tara, thanks so much for joining us today. I really appreciate it.

Tara Claeys: Thank you, Joe.

Joe Casabona: And thanks to our sponsors, NitroPack, TextExpander, and Nexcess. Thank you for listening. And until next time, get out there and build something.