← So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
So Money with Farnoosh Torabi
1798: How to Build a Profitable Business Without Losing Yourself
00:33:18
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- [00:02]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Race the rudders. Race the sails. Race the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.
- [00:07]
Sam Vanderweelen
Over.
- [00:08]
Farnoosh Tarabi
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Sam Vanderweelen
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- [00:30]
Farnoosh Tarabi
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- [00:42]
Sam Vanderweelen
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Farnoosh Tarabi
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Sam Vanderweelen
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Farnoosh Tarabi
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- [00:57]
Sam Vanderweelen
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- [01:03]
Farnoosh Tarabi
So money Episode 1798 how to Build a profitable business without Losing Yourself. You're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Kharabi. Each day get a 30 minute dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnoosh yourself. Looking for ways to save on gas or double your double coup. Sorry, you're in the wrong place. Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life. Welcome to so Money.
- [01:37]
Sam Vanderweelen
It's a classic mistake to think that the, like, depth and breadth of the Internet is such a positive thing that you should go super wide, you know, and be like, oh, I can sell to anyone, anywhere. I can create any kind of business. But oftentimes that leaves you not really speaking to anyone or like, landing in within your niche. You know of anybody who needs your help?
- [01:57]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Welcome to SEW Money, everybody. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. What if the professional dream you've been chasing, the one you're sure will bring you happiness, turns out to be a myth? Well, my guest today, Sam Vanderweelen, knows this firsthand. She was a successful corporate lawyer who believed that starting her own business would finally make her happy. But when she left law to become an entrepreneur, she realized that fulfillment doesn't come from business success alone. It's something you have to cultivate for yourself. So Sam is now a leading legal educator for online entrepreneurs, helping business owners legally protect their work and scale sustainably. She has, in fact, helped over 350,000 entrepreneurs with DIY legal templates and business education. And she's the host of the podcast on your Terms. She's got a new book. It's Called When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy takes readers inside her journey and reveals what it really takes to build a fulfilling, profitable business without burnout or falling into the trap of tying your self worth to your work. Sam and I talk about the biggest mindset mistakes that new entrepreneurs make and the practical legal steps every online business owner needs to take to stay protected. Plus insights on how to price your product or service marketing in the age of AI and what actually works when you're trying to scale your business. Let's get into it. Sam vanderweel and welcome to Sew Money.
- [03:22]
Sam Vanderweelen
Hey partners. Thanks for having me.
- [03:24]
Farnoosh Tarabi
I'm excited for your book. It's coming out soon this month. It's called When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy. It's a little tongue in cheek or a lot tongue in cheek. Tell me what you mean by your title because I feel like there's a big story there.
- [03:37]
Sam Vanderweelen
That's me. Yeah, I was, I was like, I really wanted the title to have an upward inflection at the end, like I'll be happy. So we put actually like a little hand drawn question mark because we're like, I know that a lot of people start businesses thinking this is it, like, this will be the thing. Right? And so I was a corporate lawyer. I hated my life. I thought everything was everybody else's fault. My boss sucked. You know, my salary was too low. I wasn't getting paid enough for what I was doing. I didn't like the work I was doing. And I thought, well, if I go start my own business and I'm my own boss, so like, I remove all of these quote unquote problems, like, clearly everything's going to be amazing. It was pretty much the opposite in terms of how my life went. My business was great. My business went very well, but my life kind of exploded. And so it was a wild experience to have this like, personal experience on the one hand while, while building a very successful business on paper and realizing, like, the business was not going to make me happy. That was never supposed to be the source of my happiness either.
- [04:38]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Why do we think it would be? I can relate.
- [04:41]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah.
- [04:41]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Is it just because we spend so much time at work, we hear we got to follow our passion.
- [04:45]
Sam Vanderweelen
And I think it's because we look to external things to make us happy or we, we maybe have an unrealistic kind of the equivalent of like white knight on a horse sort of thing with romance, with our jobs. Like our jobs are supposed to be this blissful thing and then the happiness is supposed to come from the job. And it was really interesting for me because as a lawyer, I was super miserable. So I thought, okay, when I go start my own business, I will be happy. But then I realized, like, I actually had an opportunity to be happy. Even when I was in my corporate job, I just didn't do any. Anything about it. And so then thinking, like, my business was gonna make me happy. No, no, that was up to me. And it had nothing to do with my job, my salary, or who my boss was.
- [05:27]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Yeah. So you were like a lot of us tying our self worth to our business success. How do we separate that, those two identities? How would you have done it differently at your 9 to 5?
- [05:38]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, I would have developed myself outside of work. I think I would have had some hobbies that didn't have anything to do with it. You know, like a lot of people listening, I'm. I'm very ambitious. So, like, once I. And you know, it's a competitive environment being a corporate lawyer. So once I got there, I was like, I'm gonna kill it. You know, I'm gonna do the most hours and I'm gonna get the most clients, and I'm gonna go out and do all these things. And ironically, I think some of us end up making the thing we hate, like, our entire life, it was. I didn't really have anything going for me outside of the job, which is typical for lawyers.
- [06:13]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Lawyering takes a lot of your. Your soul and your life.
- [06:16]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, that's when it's interesting to look around and ask yourself if you want to be like the people around you when you grow up, no matter how old you are. And so in my. I was, you know, sitting there in my 20s and just being like, nothing against what any of them were doing. Like, we all need to do different jobs. It makes the world go round. And that's great, but it was not for me. And so really having that moment where I was like, oh, I don't want to do this when I grow up. I don't even really understand the financial incentive because especially as a lawyer, you know, there's this whole pressure to go become a partner. It's like, there's no. You don't get any, like, time off or your job doesn't actually change. It's like the same. And so I didn't really understand what I was working towards, but that also helped me see the disconnect and I had the spark of an idea to go start a business.
- [07:02]
Farnoosh Tarabi
So what's your advice in terms of what we should be working towards. How should we be thinking about our work? Whether it's our corporate life or our entrepreneurial life, what is it that we should be extracting from it? If it's not this sense of my work needs to complete me?
- [07:20]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, I think that, yeah, it's resetting those boundaries or the mindset about like, what is my work really supposed to do? I think not putting too much pressure on a job of expecting it to perform all of this stuff for you. I mean, I don't really think it's that different than a relationship, to be honest, that I don't think it's good to look to your partner to say, you're supposed to provide me with my happiness. You know, if you're not really doing great on your own, I think that's a lot to expect for somebody else to provide you with your happiness. So this is the way that I started to look at my job, my career, even once I started my own business, was that that wasn't my business's job. It wasn't my job's job to make me happy. And so I had to get honest about where else am I spending my time, where am I? I say I don't like the energy of this place or I don't like the people I'm hanging out with. Am I putting myself in situations where I do like the people? Am I chasing after that energy and not blaming. Like I was just sitting there. I was doing the worst of both worlds. I was sitting there blaming everything on my job, but not taking any steps to do anything any differently.
- [08:26]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Your book, while it opens with this mindset, shift this ask of the reader to kind of rethink their relationship to work. It's really meant to be this guide to helping those of us who want to transition out of the 9 to 5 into self employment entrepreneurship, specifically online entrepreneurship. And you organize the book, you kind of work, you walk us through four stages that you've experienced and you think everyone is sort of universal will experience when building your business. Can you walk us through those four stages?
- [09:04]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, sure. So I think that the first thing is a seed. You know, everything starts with a seed. And so phase one is always like, you either have this idea or maybe you have a passion, you have something that you want to start. I think that you plant a lot of seeds and not all seeds come to sprout, which is the second phase, which is sprout. But really like cultivating those seeds like you might have. I had a lot of ideas when I First left, being a corporate lawyer. Everything from, like, I wanted to run, like, a farm stand on the side of the road to, like, work at a surf shack over the summer at the Jersey Shore. Like, I just wanted to do anything right. These were all ideas, but none of them are actually things that came to fruition, let alone should have come to fruition. But I think allowing yourself in the seed phase to not only play a little bit and experiment to see, like, what sticks, but on a more realistic level, that's your time to figure out, like, is there demand for this thing? Is there already supply for it? Are.
- [09:57]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Am I going to be good at it? Yeah, yeah.
- [09:59]
Sam Vanderweelen
Are you good at it? I think also making sure you don't fall back into that same happy trap of being like. You chase your passion, for example, to make that your business. Your passion doesn't necessarily have to be your business. If you love to cook, that doesn't have to be your business. You can start a business and cook for fun and just keep it fun, and it doesn't have to be the thing. So that's where I always recommend starting with people with just the seed. And I think from there, you see phase two, things start to sprout, right? That idea of, like, oh, I am good at this, or, oh, people do want this. And that's when things start to take a little bit of hold. In phase three, we start to grow this thing. That's when you actually start making sales, you make customers, you know, you start to maybe expand your product offerings. And in the final phase, I call it propagate, and, you know, you're taking what already works and making it even better. Or maybe you're pruning things to allow new growth in your business. And that's really when businesses scale and expand.
- [10:56]
Farnoosh Tarabi
The scaling part is really tough. I think when entrepreneurs arrive at the online space, the whole game, there is a. The end goal is to, like, I want to reach a million customers or 10 million customers, the world. I feel like that is not a healthy or productive way to go about planning your business. In the beginning, at least. What do you think? I mean, shouldn't it just be to, like, start small? But it's overwhelming online and there's so much competition. How do you stay focused without getting overwhelmed by the. The need to, like, scale and in some cases, scale quickly.
- [11:36]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, it's a classic mistake to think that the, like, depth and breadth of the Internet is such a positive thing that you should go super wide, you know, and be like, oh, I can sell to anyone. Anywhere I can create any kind of business, but oftentimes that leaves you not really speaking to anyone or like, landing in within your niche, you know, of anybody who needs your help. So I think it's really great to hone in on, like you mentioned, what your skill really is, what you're really good at, but also, where's there the hole in the market? I mean, I started my business illegal templates business. So I started this business because I saw there was a hole in the market for people who had online businesses who didn't have their legal stuff together. I thought, this is easy. I can resolve this. There were a couple of things being offered, but I knew that there was like, a way that was missing that it was being that that could be offered. And that's what I created. And it was like, boom, instant. It was. It was very successful pretty quickly. And so I think spending that time to really look at, like, looking at the fact that there's competition shows you that there is demand for this thing. It's proof of concept. But now what's missing from the market and where can you kind of swoop in and help to plug something? And if that relates to your secret sauce, then even better, right? So for me, breaking down, like, what are commonly thought as complicated legal topics into a very simple way is my. My secret sauce. That's what I'm really good at. And so being able to combine, like, selling legal templates with then creating content where I'm like, hey, here's what an LLC is, or here's. Here are the first three steps you need to take was like, boom, off to the races. Yeah.
- [13:09]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Where do you hang out as an online entrepreneur? Obviously you have to have a website, a domain, but there are so many. Speaking of marketing and getting the word out content, what's your advice to entrepreneurs as far as, like, where to show up, how to show up, and how to not burn out in the process?
- [13:29]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, great question. The first thing I recommend is actually pouring the majority of your energy into what I call the big three. One of the big three. So you choose either a podcast, a YouTube channel, or SEO optimized blog, like through your website, or you're just gonna, like, double down on SEO through your website in some way. And so I really like the idea of choosing one of those and making that kind of your content home and allowing things like social media, especially platforms, more like Instagram or TikTok or Threads or whatever, to be more of like your passenger seat, if not even your backseat. If I could convince you to have things really be driven more by content. That is long form, which is what podcasts are and YouTube are, but also things that are much more searchable, which things like YouTube and even Pinterest or SEO. Anything related to your website would be so that if I had my druthers, that's what I would ask you to do, is to start there and be present on social, but allow that to be more of your connection, your fun place, like allowing people to see you. It's, it's free advertisement, which is fantastic, but I never recommend building your house on rented land.
- [14:37]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Mm. Yeah. If you had a crystal ball in the next two years to five years, what do you think is going to be the real marketing growth engine for online entrepreneurs?
- [14:49]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, I think it's going to be one of, or all of those big three that I mentioned. Because I think long form content is going to continue to the way to authentically connect with people. Same with email lists. I'm a huge email list person and so like some sort of like weekly newsletter, something more that you own, but also that allows you to connect with an audience, show parts of your personality, you know, Mark Zuckerberg said recently that over 50% of the content you're currently seeing on Instagram and Facebook is AI generated. And so I think that, you know, that's not good for us for a lot of different reasons. But I think that as it gets easier for people to put out fake content, cruddy content, it's just going to kind of, I don't know, like wash things out and it's going to be harder and harder to stand out there. I also think that people and about you, but like most people are pretty sick of social media. I think we are going through a bit of a cultural shit.
- [15:45]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Yeah. Including TikTok.
- [15:48]
Sam Vanderweelen
I mean, I feel so disconnected from this sometimes because I don't know about you, but I'm like, I don't like it. So it's a little like it doesn't speak to me. I feel like my generation is Instagram and that's kind of where my friends hang out. But even amongst my friends, they're like, I don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to do it.
- [16:04]
Farnoosh Tarabi
I know it's not fun anymore. And my philosophy is if it's no longer fun, you need to re. Reroute, need to course correct. You don't need to jump ship, but you got to find a new way. Because at the end of the day, if you're not having any fun, it will show. So it won't be very fun for others. And of course you won't want to continue doing it. And we know consistency is the key.
- [16:31]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yes, exactly. One of my friends always says like that. She talks about this concept of like friendship buckets, about how you have different friends, kind of like different areas of your life. And I've been thinking about this as it relates to how we run our businesses. And like, I just reorient my relationship to platforms like Instagram. It's just like you're in a different bucket now. That's kind of how I think of it. It doesn't have to be so black and white, like you're either on there all the time or never. But I think you can park something there for your business, allow people to know that you exist, connect with your audience in a different way. It's just not where I would spend the majority of your time if I was trying to build a business online.
- [17:07]
Farnoosh Tarabi
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That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com so money for free shipping and 365 day returns. Go check out Quint's. You will thank me later. All right, pricing, let's talk about pricing and maybe you could even walk us through how you decided on the pricing for your legal templates. This is a question I get a lot, but it's so hard because it depends on what you're selling, the quality, what your goals are. For me, I've always, I've always liked to produce and put out in the world premium products. I'm not looking for scale. I'm looking for the right people, whatever number of people. Small is fine, but it's going to be more expensive because with that you also get more of my attention. And you know, I offer myself up to like I do, like mentorship, let's say, for example, is one service that I provide. I'm not looking to create a course around it. I'm rather here to like do something with five, six, ten people, maybe even meet up in real life because that's what I like to do. That's fun for me. But of course I can also charge more for that and not have to worry about getting a million people to sign up. So that's just a little behind the scenes of things that I've done around pricing in my world. But if you have a calculus or a cheat sheet for how those listening can think about how to price or how to start researching pricing, we'd love that.
- [22:37]
Sam Vanderweelen
That, yeah, I'm similar to you that I think about. The first thing is what kind of business are you trying to build? So I always say I'm trying to build a Nordstrom and not a Walmart. And so I'm not generally interested in the masses being able to come here necessarily because of what that means. Then for my time, my availability, like my. I provide, for example, a ton of customer service. I can't do that if I have 3 million people. So I think first deciding that second then is deciding, as you mentioned, like, what kind of business do you want to have in terms of services versus products versus digital products? Because that stuff, there's no right or wrong. Like that was a big goal of my book as well, was just dropping this idea that there's some right way or better way to run a business. If you like Farnoosh, love spending time with people and you want to see people in real life, that's fantastic. And you will hear people say to you, that's such a waste of time. It's all time for money trade. You can't do that. Everything has to be scalable. Right. That doesn't work for everyone. And some people feel the opposite to you and that's okay too. So I think deciding that, because then that's going to dictate your pricing. Because if it is your one to one time, then that should be the premium. Right? Like getting to you, in my opinion, should always be the premium. And so you have to then account for how much time are you spending. Not just the face to face time, but in the time you're prepping for things and the time you're reviewing things, all the correspondence back and forth. So you would roll that all into how much is your time worth? Sometimes with pricing, when you're in this beginning is a matter of trying something and when you get really easy yeses, that was always. I know for me when I started, people would just not blink an eye. I would say, I think that might mean that the pricing is a little too low. If you get a lot of no's and your prices are low, that can also mean that people think your product's too cheap or your services.
- [24:23]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Yeah. How do you tell the difference?
- [24:26]
Sam Vanderweelen
Well, I do. I did ask people, so I would talk to them. It was interesting because in the beginning I would get comments like, I would have paid 10 times more for this. Or I loved this so much, like it was worth every penny. And so that started to give me a little bit more confidence to know that that's what was going on. I mean, of course you can look at what else is going on in the market, but I don't always recommend dictate, letting that dictate what's good for you. Like it's. I always say it's an example, not a rubric. But you can look to see what else is Going on?
- [24:56]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Yeah. I have a workshop in New York and it's called Book to Brand. And it's, it's thousands of dollars per ticket. But, but we're very clear about what this is and what it isn't. We always fill the room and inevitably there's always someone who's like, wow, that's not worth it. And I get that it's not worth it for you because you don't see or want the value. But for someone who is looking to, you know, get a book out in the world and what they're lacking is relationships, I. E. Literary agent, publisher, other authors to be part their community so that they can grow together and learn from each other. It's anyone, if anyone is in the audience that has ever written a book. You know, it's a very lonely process and you need people to usher you through the process. So we, that's what we offer on a silver platter and we keep it small. And again, the ticket is like thousands of dollars and people come, but it takes time to find the people. So what we find is that we can't start selling this, you know, two months out. We have to start selling it three months, four months, five months out, and then do a lot of offers throughout the way. You know, we'll do webinars, we'll do lots of emails. Nurturing relationships too. Some people say, well, this isn't the right time for me, maybe next year. So we follow up with those people and sometimes they do buy at different times. And so because it's only 20 or 25 people who attend, we can have those relationships with our customers and our wannabe customers. Whereas if it's like a hundred bucks and 5,000 people buy it, that for some, that's their speed. But that's not what we want to do. I love the Nordstrom versus Walmart. I would say like Brunello Cuccinelli versus Versus Walmart. Let's, let's take it, let's kick it up a few notches.
- [26:41]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, I did this a few years ago, so I should probably update the, the branding, but I agree. Yeah, I, I think, I think also you touched on a really important point that a lot of new entrepreneurs don't know, which is that there's a lot more a hustle involved in getting clients, even when you're premium, then people might appreciate. And I don't mean hustle as if you're never, you know, you're always attached to your phone, you're working all the time. Hustle. I mean, that Specific outreach that, like, you know, I just ran a huge sale, for example, two weeks ago, I generated about $348,000 in four days for a sale that I ran. And I, you know, have a very successful online business. Have. For many years I was in the DMs, answering people's questions, sending voice notes, answering every email that came in. Like, I just don't think that. I think people think there's like some point where you can like, take your hands off the wheel. And I'm like, no, that's why it's successful, because I. But because of the, the way that you and I have approached pricing that has allowed me to be like that.
- [27:40]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Yeah, you can show up.
- [27:41]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah.
- [27:42]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Tell me about your business, the behind the scenes. Are you a solopreneur? You make seven figures, but you're also like, you don't have 30 people on your team. I love that for you. I want more entrepreneurs, especially women like you, because I feel then you can actually have a life outside of work, which is obviously why we're here talking. But tell me a little bit about how you've designed your business so that you can have this. I don't want to say balance, but you know, this. Right. Mix of work and life and play.
- [28:15]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah. I decided pretty early on I just wanted to sell digital products. So I sell downloadable contract templates and then this kind of one major package called the Ultimate Bundle that gives people all of the contract templates they need and the trainings they need to learn how to start an online business. And so it's this like, great starter package. And I think an accidental, like, good move that I made was that for eight years now, those are the only two products I've ever sold. I've sold over $9 million in the Ultimate Bundle alone in just the last five years. And so I. It's a very successful product, but I think that it has just allowed me to stay super focused by like finding these two products that were really good and continuing to make them better versus like going out and creating a million different things. My life didn't really get that complicated until I said, hey, I have a crazy idea. I want to write a book. Everything was pretty, pretty smooth up until. Yes. I'm not sure if it was my smartest decision, but I, it was, you know, my life is very like, I don't know, predictable and stable and so I don't have to work a ton. I keep it really lean and tight with my team. I have a full time employee and a few contractors that's it. We don't work like crazy. We take vacations. But yeah, I also take this very simple approach to content, which I think allows my life to be normal because I have a podcast called on your terms. And so it's like I decided I want to have this thing, you know, be my driver. And I have an email list that I've built up, and that's where I spend my time. And I just, I really keep my head down, keep my eyes on the prize.
- [29:52]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Excellent. Yeah, I want to copy paste everything that you've done and, well, obviously with your book, you can too. Everybody. Yeah, I want to learn also about any smart investments you've made along the way, whether in your business, in your personal finances, that's allowed you to have more Runway in your life. Financial Runway optionality. You know, one thing that I am really happy that I did was about five years ago, I started investing even more. Like, outside of my retirement accounts, in a brokerage account. I was like, I have to start investing even more. I don't know what this is going to be for, but I don't think I'm going to regret it. And the market's done very well over the last five, six years. So it's, you know, just a small snapshot. But now, having seen that growth, it for me has afforded me a lot more relief in my. I don't have to feel like I have to hustle so much. This is why we say savings is important, why having, you know, a cushion is important. But more is more in your financial life, the more you invest and then that money is there for you. You know, now in my mid-40s, kids are growing up, I don't want to always be hustling as much as I did in my 30s and knowing that I have some additional financial Runway to fall back on if I have a slow quarter or if I don't want to work so hard next quarter, that for me, has been just nice. And again, I didn't go out with this intention that that's what this was going to serve, how this was going to serve me in my midlife. But I'm just going to say, like, I don't regret it. And if anyone's listening and you're in your 30s or even 40s and you have extra money, you don't know what to do with it. Just invest it. Because in five, 10 years, it will have grown nicely, hopefully. You know, I can't guarantee, but that's usually how it trends. And at the minimum, it will afford you some calm, less stress. So that's my tip. What's one thing that you have invested in that has been really fruitful for you?
- [31:56]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, I would say on the business end, I'm glad that I was very careful for a long time. So as I made and as the business continued to like, tick up and I made more and more in the business, I didn't go out and spend it. I also didn't pay it all to myself. So I was very measured and careful, which built up what I call in the book a business war chest. And so I really built up this nice little nest egg that also allowed me this freedom and flexibility within the business. Right. So I didn't have to make moves from a scared place, but I could also afford to make some investments in the business. Like, like, for example, during COVID Facebook ads became cheaper than ever and you were able to reach more people than ever. And so this catapulted the business. You know, five, five years ago, they became very profitable. We were getting crazy returns on investment. I was able to do that because I knew that, you know, Facebook ads are a gamble. And if you don't do them right, there's a science and a strategy to it that I'm like, obsessed with. But if you, if you don't do it right, you can't be in a position that that's going to like, tank your business or hurt you in some way. And I had built it to the point where it was like, if this doesn't work, it was an experiment and that's okay. And sometimes investments don't work out. And that's. That was the attitude I took. So that's kind of been, I think, my greatest business thing because that has also then allowed me to take my foot off the gas from a lead generation perspective to know that those are working so well for me in the background that I don't have to be on social media all the time. I don't have to be hustling.
- [33:24]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Wow.
- [33:24]
Sam Vanderweelen
So that's worked really well.
- [33:26]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Can we talk a little bit about the Facebook ad strategy? That could be a whole book. It is books and books and. Well, how did you learn about it? And what's your, like, top. Top two tips for someone who wants specifically a Facebook ad strategy which also stretches to Instagram and I guess just Instagram and Facebook.
- [33:45]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, yeah. When I say Facebook, I mean, I guess nowadays I should say meta, but that means that it gets posted everywhere. It's even on like, apps and it's on, like the mta. In New York. It's funny. So they. But I would say that if you want to explore Facebook ads, Facebook ads are never a means to fix something that's not working. They are something that you explore when something is working really well, that you want to amplify it. And so my best tip that I can give you is that if you're doing something in your business, like you have a freebie or a piece of content even that's going well, that leads to somewhere else in your business, like maybe leads people to your email list, for example, or you have a marketing funnel set up like, like I did that was already working really well just from me putting, you know, encouraging people to go through it. That's when it was like going from a drip of a faucet to, like a flowing fire hydrant. And so it is not a. A means to fix things. Like, a lot of people look to Facebook ads to be like, oh, I'm not getting any. No one's reaching out to me. Like, I'm not getting any leads. I'm gonna try Facebook ads. It's like, no, you'll just get, like, more no leads and spend a lot of money. That's what will happen.
- [34:53]
Farnoosh Tarabi
And why do you. Why is that?
- [34:55]
Sam Vanderweelen
Because if you can't sell or convert people, what we call, like, your warm audience, so the people who are already following you, you know, doing stuff, then the cold audience. So, like, Facebook is going to start showing your ads to all kinds of people, right? And of course, we do our best with training it, to tell it what audience and all this, but it's going to show people. They don't know who you are. They have not been getting your weekly emails. They don't know, like, what you're talking about and what you do, why you have any authority, you know, all this kind of stuff, they're not going to trust like, and know you enough to do anything about it. So what's going to happen is going to show it to a lot of people. No one's going to do anything. Which then tells Facebook that it's not very good, which continues to drive it deeper and deeper and deeper, and it goes in a bad direction.
- [35:39]
Farnoosh Tarabi
So Facebook's instinct isn't to help you out at that point and say, oh.
- [35:42]
Sam Vanderweelen
No, they're not going to help you. Yeah, they're not going to help you at all. But when something you're doing is already working, ads are a fantastic option because it really is just like, you're just putting. You're paying to put more eyeballs on something, but you want to put eyeballs on something that you already know is converting. Like think about every time you guys see an ad on TV or you see a billboard, that thing has been tested to death. It's already gone in front of all these people. They know that the messaging works. They know that the people are likable in it. Like they know everything about it. It's that they're not testing it out by showing you the billboard, they're testing it out before you ever see it. It's the same thing here.
- [36:19]
Farnoosh Tarabi
And I can't let you go, Sam, without having to ask you your best legal tip for a fledgling online entrepreneur. I want everyone to invest in your downloads, but while we have you, of course, it would be silly not to grab you and ask that question.
- [36:37]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, well, obviously to financially protect yourself, that's my best tip. So by doing, you know, by getting an llc, for example, so that you personally insulate yourself from liability, we don't want you to be financially responsible for what happens in your business. I think my bonus tip for anybody who has a business is to make sure that you have business insurance because that's. You also don't want your business to be financially responsible for a lawsuit because that would be crippling to pretty much any business. And so business insurance provides you with a lawyer and pays that lawyer's bills and then any settlement or judgment that's found against your business. So now you're not financially responsible personally and your business is not financially responsible. So that is like, like my best tip to not only being financially safe, but to sleeping well at night.
- [37:21]
Farnoosh Tarabi
That's a really important tip. I actually just learned that if you're an S corp, you can also layer onto that the llc, which I didn't know, I didn't. I thought you had to be one or the other because that's usually how we talk about them. Right. Are you an S corp or are you an llc? Well, you can actually be both. And that's.
- [37:38]
Sam Vanderweelen
Yeah, so people talk about this incorrectly all the time. So when you're an LLC in America, by default you're taxed as a sole proprietor, what's called pass through taxation. You can elect S corp taxation. So you can actually be an LLC who just pays their taxes as an S corp. The big difference there is that you don't pay self employment taxes on the entirety of your business's profits, just on the amount you pay yourself. It's nearly a 16% effective tax rate. So it's a pretty big savings.
- [38:04]
Farnoosh Tarabi
All right, Sam vanderweelen, thank you so much. Your book again is called When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy. Thank you so much.
- [38:15]
Sam Vanderweelen
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
- [38:18]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Thanks to Sam Vander Wheelen. Her book again is called When I Start My Business, I'll Be Happy. You can learn more about her at samvanderwielen.com Links in our show notes. Thanks for tuning in. I'll see you back here on Wednesday. And I hope your day is so money Race the rudders, Race the sails. Race the sails. Captain, an unidentified ship is approaching.
- [38:53]
Sam Vanderweelen
Over.
- [38:53]
Farnoosh Tarabi
Roger, wait. Is that an enterprise sales solution?
- [38:58]
Sam Vanderweelen
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- [39:15]
Farnoosh Tarabi
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