← The Mindful Marketing Podcast (Formerly Known As The Savvy Social Podcast)
The Mindful Marketing Podcast (Formerly Known As The Savvy Social Podcast)
What Real Personal Branding Looks Like with Natalie Bullen
00:45:40
Posting more doesn’t require more confidence—it requires clarity. And as today’s guest Natalie Bullen reminds us, showing up consistently isn’t just about marketing. It’s about choosing to stand in your values, serve your people, and build...
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Transcript53 lines
- [00:01]
Drea
Welcome to episode number 355 of the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm excited for today's conversation because we're talking to someone who I have been low key, high key stalking on Facebook for years now. Love her posts. Natalie Bullen's gonna come and talk to us about magnetic personal brands and how she accidentally started a Facebook group, but not really. So we're gonna get into all of that juicy goodness in a moment. But first, a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here show. I use it to edit not only the audio and the video. It is like Chef's kiss magical, making the entire process so, so easy. Plus, I love their magic AI clips. Their little AI robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments of the episodes without me having to comb through and do it myself. Resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on Tikt Talk and reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips. I pick the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today. The links in the show notes, and make sure to use my code DREA D R E A at checkout to get 15% off your membership. Natalie, welcome to the show.
- [01:25]
Natalie Bullen
Thank you so much for having me.
- [01:27]
Drea
I'm excited to be here. Just to be nosy and pick your brain about all of the things, but let's start at the beginning. You know, talk to me about your business journey. What brings us to today?
- [01:39]
Natalie Bullen
Man. Okay, just a light softball version, right? Of like, a good truncated version, is that I think Covid changed all of our lives in ways that we could not have expected. And I probably was always on the path to entrepreneurship. I just didn't recognize it. But one day you just wake up and realize you could be doing so much more. And having worked in sales and having worked in banking and working two jobs to pay student loans, one day you're like, you know what? Maybe I could do more. Maybe I could do something different. So I started off as a money coach thinking, well, this will be great. People need financial literacy. People need budgeting and savings. And I hated it. And it was so hard to get people to listen, and it was so hard to get people to focus on money. And I realized that I think maybe there's societal bias, but we like to think that people just don't want to be on a budget or don't want to save, I find is that people don't make enough money to accomplish all of their goals simultaneously. So they're robbing Peter to pay Paul. It's not that they don't want to do better. They don't have the money to do better. And I said, well, that's easy to fix. I'll just teach people sales. So most of my business has been teaching people how to sell. But along the way, I realized we're really teaching people to shift identities. You know, most of us have been taught how to care for other people, how to shrink ourselves so we're more palatable to the masses, how to be quiet so we're not labeled an angry black woman, how to flex our degrees instead of build relationship. And so the things that really make you successful in sales, successful as a business owner, successful as a marketer have all to do with belief and identity. So I've decided that I'm just going to call it what it is. And so now I'm the wealth identity coach, and I'm excited about it. I think this is my best iteration.
- [03:42]
Drea
Yeah, you know, one of the things that. So I. I thought you were a salesperson, like a sales.
- [03:48]
Natalie Bullen
Me too.
- [03:49]
Drea
This whole time. But, like, I think so. But no, in all honesty, like, the.
- [03:55]
Natalie Bullen
I was so fooling myself too. Yeah.
- [03:58]
Drea
But I mean, you've kind of. You've driven down to the. The undercurrent of all of that. Right. You. You've kind of peeled back the layers and gone, well, what really is the problem here? And you kind of touched on this a little bit with, like, this, I. This idea about how we're in society. And I think there is this perception, especially for those of us who own businesses and we're so public about it on social media that, oh, we don't want the spotlight on us. Right. So we kind of overthink this idea of being a personal brand. What do you tell your clients and the people that you work with when it comes to this? Overthinking when it comes to this, you know, should. I should die with putting myself out there online?
- [04:41]
Natalie Bullen
You know what? I am very. I'm gonna tell people this decisiveness is one of the best skills that you can have. Like, in general, having more time and more options makes people decide worse. They. We think, if I just had more time, if I reread this 20 more times, if I thought about this for six more weeks, I'll make a better choice. It's not true. Most of us are in decision fatigue. I'm team. Get it out there. I also like to point out because I'm money driven and my clients are not. So I cannot say you'll make more money if you blank, blank, blank, because that doesn't work on my folks. But they will have more impact. And so when we think about what we do, right, you're an ethical marketer, I'm an ethical salesperson. We think about what we do. If we don't put ourselves out there, what happens? Do our prospects and leads just decide they're never going to solve their problem and just decide to be stagnant with us? No, they hire other people. Right? And in my experience, those other people are not as ethical as I am. They aren't as thorough in their process. They don't have a framework that gets results. By and large, the, the online community that people complain about is not us. So when we decide, you know what? Someone might judge me for this post. I'm not gonna post it. There might be a typo in this. I need to read it 30 more times. This might be too personal. What if people don't like me? What if I get backlash? What if it's not right? What if somebody is a troll and jumps in my DMs when we decide that those things are more important than the people that we serve, the people that we serve get harmed. They get harmed because they are high intent and they're gonna solve their problem elsewhere. Somewhere, someone, they're gonna pay somebody else to try to solve the problem. And that's on our, that, that, that's blood on our hands. So for me, there's really no thing that I've got going on that feels more important than making sure that the people I'm called to serve get served. And if right now that is making organic social media posts, then that's just what it means. Now for people who say, well, Nell, I just don't like social media, cool. Market some other way. But that's not an excuse to just not market. And that's what I find. People will say, I don't want to do social, but they're not doing anything else. And it's like, well, you have, there's give and take. You have to be discoverable. You have to be available for people to find out what you do, to be able to pay you. It's also how you stay in business. I don't know about you. Staying in business is very important to me. Staying housed is very important to me. I'm £229. Staying fed is very important to me. So I'm really confused when people are just like, well, I'm not gonna post this today. I'm like, so you don't want to eat? You not hungry? Lunch, dinner? Nothing like you fasting indefinitely. I'm just saying maybe I, maybe I'm too literal. But anytime I hear people talk about they don't have time for marketing, I'm like, so you hungry? I got you. Send them a sandwich. And that's probably not what they're telling me, but that's what I hear.
- [07:50]
Drea
Yeah. Oh my gosh. Boiling it down to the basic needs. Clothing, food, housing. I love it. You know, I think sometimes too, we get so caught up in our own, like ourselves that we forget about the people that we're serving. That's really what I'm hearing from you too. It's, it's like not just for us too. It's for the other people. Our people are looking for solutions and they're going to try to find it. Whether it's you or whether it's someone else. You might as well put yourself out there. Okay, next question is more about controversy online. Because you are very opinionated and I am the opposite. I am like, okay, let's not ruffle any feathers. Like, that's very much my personality type. So I always admire people who are like, I'm just going to say it is what it is. I'm going to say how it is. But how, like what, what kind of hot water situations have you gotten in and how do you navigate that? Especially from like the human being side of, you know, you're saying things. You're very unapologetic about it. But what if someone else is like, I don't know, canceling you or talking back to you or any of the number of things that can happen online.
- [08:56]
Natalie Bullen
I never had that happen to me.
- [08:58]
Drea
Never.
- [09:00]
Natalie Bullen
No. I don't think I'm controversial on the Internet. So I'm like, now maybe I'm just completely insane, but like, that stuff doesn't happen to me. I don't talk politics at all. I don't really get into the race wars. I don't post rage bait. So like, I. People miss me with that. I don't get any of that. I don't get trolls. I don't. That's not true. Maybe once a year I get somebody really pissed off when I post my annual. You can make as much money as you choose to type posts. People do tend to get upset about that, but it's usually like one or two People, this is what I want people to know. I post. I've cut back Vintage Natalie posts 10 times a day, 7 to 10 times a day, every single day, 365 days a year. It's over 2,500 posts a year. Let me just. Okay. Give you some frame of reference of how crazy I am. I've cut that down to about three to four posts a day. We're testing more specificity in my messaging. However, of those 2,500 posts. 2,1500 1,000 posts, maybe five of them elicit actual negative attention. Like, the number is minuscule. And I think that's really important for people to understand. Two things happen when you put your message out unapologetically. One, you repel naysayers. If I come out with a post that says seven figures is the ground floor of your business, guess who's gonna be really upset? People making four and five figures a lot of times. And so they're either gonna say, that's BS and unfollow me and block me and delete me, in which case they'll never see my content again and there's no vitro. Right. Or they're gonna say, natalie's right. We do. We should make more money. I'm gonna follow this woman because I want more money, and she wants more money, and we're walking in the same direction.
- [10:49]
Drea
Yeah.
- [10:50]
Natalie Bullen
So honestly, I think being middle of the road, blase creates more problems than being kind of polarizing. Because being kind of polarizing, you call out your people and you repel everyone else. There's really very few people who follow me who don't want more money, who aren't running a business, and who don't believe that there's at least some merit or curiosity around High ticket.
- [11:14]
Drea
Yeah.
- [11:15]
Natalie Bullen
There's really nobody in my audience that doesn't align with those things. So every so often, you know, I might make a post that's like, well, I don't know if I agree, but there's not, like, backlash. Like, I've never been canceled. This never happened to me. And it'll probably never happen to me because I've trained my audience to be like, hey, this is a safe space. We have dialogue here. I'm an intelligent person. I'm a reasonable person. If you bring something to me that you, you know, like, I posted about not loving AI photos. I still don't like AI photos. I had people in my DM say that that was ableist, that disabled persons need AI photos. That was strange to me because I know lots of Disabled persons, people with disabilities that don't use AI photos. So I thought need was a strong word. But here's the thing. I am not a person with a disability. So if a person with a disability says that they need AI photos, who am I to tell them that they don't? Right? And there were posts that got made on their pages, but like, that's their prerogative. I don't take that personally. Unless you tag me and say I hate Natalie Bullen stance on such and such and such. And that's never happened to me. So I don't consider it shots fired unless I got hit.
- [12:27]
Drea
Ah, there's the quote of the episode. I don't consider shots fired unless I got hit. I love that.
- [12:32]
Natalie Bullen
I ain't get hit. I don't care what you doing on your side of the block. You're the drive by on your side of town. That ain't got nothing to do with me. We on the safe side.
- [12:41]
Drea
I need to adopt that mentality because I feel like I internalize too much of what I see online.
- [12:46]
Natalie Bullen
You probably do. And fun fact, I don't say 10% of what I want to say. You are getting the very filtered thought. You're getting like the second or third thought. My first thought is not suitable for Facebook.
- [13:01]
Drea
Okay, there's a few things you said that I want to follow up on. This again. Me just being nosy about your marketing and I mostly see your stuff because I follow you on Facebook. But feel free to expound in other areas of your marketing too. So you said we are cutting back this year. Who's the we? Do you have a team that helps you with your Facebook posts?
- [13:20]
Natalie Bullen
Oh, I say we because unapologetic wealth is not just me. It is myself, my obm, my project manager. It is my stakeholders. It is every single person who reads and watches my content. It is we. We. The collective of UW are trying out something new. But unfortunately no. Natalie writes every single post. No one has ever written my post. It's all me.
- [13:43]
Drea
And how much time do you spend on that? Because seven to 10, even going down to three to four a day, it's a lot.
- [13:49]
Natalie Bullen
Like 20 minutes. It's not a long process. Here's. Here's the thing. Writing content takes a long time. If you are second guessing and filtering what you want to say or your offer is vague, or your messaging is not clear. But if you know exactly what you stand for and exactly who you sell to, you know what to say. So if you don't say it, that's other internal stuff. Oh, someone might judge me, someone might mislike me, someone might cancel me. Nobody cares about my opinion that that's internal stuff that makes it hard, right? Like if you had a client who came to you and said that they had a juice bar and this juice bar was gluten free and, and did all these wonderful things and had all these, it wouldn't be hard for you to come up with a marketing campaign to be able to get their product in front of their people. It wouldn't take you six months to write content for them, right? So a lot of what holds us up is our own internal stuff. Because I'll meet people who especially have marketers and copywriters. They can write other people's stuff really fast. It's their own stuff that they struggle with. So it's not. It's not the content. I also am. Am different. I'm linguistically gifted, I would say. I think that I think of words faster. I also tend to repurpose. So, like, we've had a really good conversation here that you didn't. You shots ain't fired. If they didn't hit me will probably make it into a post like today. You see what I mean? Like, I'm probably gonna be like, hey, I was on a podcast today. And you might not know this because you might think I'm only Facebook famous, but I'm on between 30 and 50 podcasts a year as a guest. Let me tell you one of my tips that makes them really listenable. What I do that makes the guests. You know what I mean? Like, I can make that a post. So like, a lot of times it's almost why people have gotten overweight in the U.S. i can say this because I'm fat. Don't cancel me, okay? But there used to be a time where in America, your work kept you active, right? You were more likely to walk to work, horse and carriage. You were on a farm. There was no electricity. Like hundreds and hundreds of years ago, activity was baked into your day to day. There was no desk job. There were no computers. Right? If you want to do something, it took work. You had to go out to the well to get water. Just living created activity. That's why people tended to be more fit, because the activity was baked into their day. Now we have so many modern conveniences. You can live your whole life in front of a computer screen. You don't have to move at all. You can get food delivered. You don't have to chase chickens. You don't have to Butcher cows. You don't have to do anything. Everything you need could just be delivered. You don't have to sew clothes. My grandma made her own clothes. We just order online, have it delivered to our house. Right? So now we have to make extra time for exercise. It didn't used to be that way. You didn't used to have to go to a gym to exercise after you worked. That's how I treat content. I bake my content into my day, so whatever is going on becomes the content. That way I don't work all day and then at 6:00, go, oh, crap, I still got to write content. Because that's about as effective as 6:00 saying, oh, crap, I still got to go to the gym. Most people aren't gonna make it there because they're already too tired from the work that they've done all day. So, like, be thinking about, like, what could you turn into content? I don't know how often you post, but literally this is your post. I interviewed somebody so funny today, and let me tell you, she really does not care. Like, she is gonna put her opinion out there. And, you know, I'm really thinking maybe that's something that I could try out. What's one time. What's one opinion that you feel like you really ought to talk more about on Facebook? And people might respond like, that could be your post for the day. You know what I mean? You get you some market research, you get a little laugh, you tease the episode. Like, people overthink it. They think, this has to be prolific and perfect and interesting and funny and grammatically correct, and it has to be salient and relevant and brand new. Man, that's a high ass bar. That's a high bar. Okay, I can't. I can't. I'm not U.S. track and field. I can't clear that bar. I cannot clear that ball. Okay, you gonna get what I got. Some days that's better than other. Some days I write posts and I'm like, damn, that was good. And some days I'm like, man, y'all just gonna get what y'all get. Submit. I don't reread them. I don't lament over them. I write it and hit submit. I don't put them in a bank. I don't have notes in my phone with half written posts. I put it on Facebook and I hit submit. Like, I just don't have the time to police my own effort. It's hard enough to put the effort out there. Now I gotta Judge my effort too. No, no.
- [18:30]
Drea
Yeah. See I feel like this is why I've been loving threads lately. Because I feel like the platform is unpolished. Like that's what it's supposed to be, you know. And as someone who spent so much time. Yeah. Like I. A lot of my clients are on Instagram, right. And Instagram is so stuffy. It's so like you have to have the grid and even now with like the reels and the editing and the caption, it's a hot. Sometimes a lot. Yeah. That's why I love threat. That's why I love live streaming. Because the very nature of it is you just show up and you get what you get. You get what you get. Like however it's. There may be a spelling error, I may stumble over my words and live.
- [19:12]
Natalie Bullen
Over there and talk your trash on threads like wherever. Facebook is not like my God, right Facebook, just like it's. I'm an OG, I'm 37 is my first social media platform is where I live. I hang out. So I'm good with it. But like I could rep anywhere. Like if I had to go to LinkedIn I could. I mean you just got to make it work. As long as I can talk to people, I'm good because I'm good on video and I'm good written. So like I'm not, I'm not as picky about where people are. Do SEO, do blogs, do all of it? I think the biggest mistake people make in marketing is choosing one platform and thinking that one platform is going to bring them all of their business. You might be blessed. I was blessed with Clubhouse, I'm blessed with Facebook. I do get a ton of business from social media, but I'm still on dozens of podcasts a year. We still send out marketing emails. That's not a visibility like a discovery platform. But still we have my private podcast which has thousands of downloads even though it is paid. Like we are still doing things right. This year I'm going to write a book. I'm launching my public podcast. We're finally creating a lead magnet. Believe it or not, I've never had a free lead magnet. So that's going to be interesting. We're revamping my quiz. It was very short lived but very popular. But we're turning it from a sales quiz to a wealth quiz. So like putting yourself out there more. Most people have a traffic problem. They're trying to sell the same thing to the same people over and over again and eventually your audience gets offer fatigue. They're just not going to buy it if they haven't bought it after a certain period of time, so then what? Right? It's our obligation to get in front of as many new people as possible. So wherever you feel comfortable, that's what you do. The biggest mistake people make is trying to be me. Natalie makes Facebook work. I'm going to make Facebook work. But why are you trying to be Natalie? Why are you not trying to be yourself? Nobody is you. That is. That is a job with no competition. Imagine if somebody told you, I got a job open. It's only for you. You're the only person who could feel it. And your exact credentials make you that what you have is exactly what the job post have. And imagine you saying, no, I'm good. I won't hurt job like you. Be you like whatever makes you you like be more of that. That's what resonates. And that's why I make money. I don't even consider myself a great marketer, but I beat the hell out of people. Inconsistency. Most people's message isn't seen enough for anyone to even remember it. No one forgets Nat Bullen. For good or for bad, it's the best thing I have going. You could be a mediocre marketer if you just show up more often. That's the truth.
- [21:47]
Drea
Yeah. There's another quote, y'all. You can be a mediocre marketer if you could show up more often. I love that. I love that. Okay, so I'm going to talk about the secret Facebook group, but I have another question here, because there's something in what you're saying that is ringing very true to me. And I'm also curious about how you, yourself and your and your team measure if all of this is working. Because I do find that sometimes people show up, they put in the consistency, and then they come to me and they go, andrea, it's not working. And I want you to an example of what you're going through, because I think it's really important for listeners to hear what success looks like in variety. And it's not just, you know, what they assume success looks like. So tell me, how are you measuring the success of all of this energy you're putting into Facebook?
- [22:35]
Natalie Bullen
That's a good question. I think success is relative. Marketing only serves to get you eyeballs attention. That's it. So people who expect marketing to turn into sales or money immediately, those are the people who tell you it's not working almost all the time when people tell Me, their marketing isn't working. I'm like, what does working mean to you? What is working? And they're like, money conversions. I'm like, great. So that's what sales does. So what is your sales process? And usually there is none. So one is expectation, making sure that you understand where the baton handoff is between marketing and sales. That's one. Two, do people have an actual marketing strategy or do they just, like, randomly post on the Internet? Because those things are very different as well. It's scary to me how many people don't know that you could hire a marketer. People think that a coach is the only thing that you can hire. People think a coach is a foundational purchase for business. It's not foundation. Foundation is legal, financial, and marketing risk compliance. That is the foundation of a business. That's how it makes it sales. Right. The oldest profession. So I'm always intrigued when I meet people who are like, no, we don't really have a marketing strategy. I don't know how my next client's gonna come, but I'm just gonna post this on Facebook. So I think it's important for people to define what does success look like, because you can't measure what you can't articulate. In terms of some things that I Measure, I'm a KPI snob. I measure way too many KPIs. My operations consultant, Brianne Dick, has tried to break me of that. But I think it's important, at minimum for people to, like, define, qualify, and track leads in their audience. Right, because everyone in your audience is not a lead. Your audience is literally your Facebook followers, your people on your email list. But that could be old classmates, family, strangers, people who just found one of your viral videos. Like, an audience is very low intent. They may never buy from you. So normally it's better for you to set some parameters around maybe how many leads are we trying to generate and then, like, breaking them down. So I break mine down into a marketing qualified lead. This is like a lead who has demonstrated interest but isn't ready to buy yet. So maybe somebody who, like, engaged with one of our freebies, downloaded a lead. Magnet just opted into our list, took my quiz. They clicked on my sales page. I've never spoken to them, but they've demonstrated some interest. And then sales qualified leads, which is a lead who's shown, like, purchase intent and also meets the criteria to buy. This is where most people make their mistake. People think this person is a Facebook follower, an Instagram follower, a LinkedIn connection. They are A sales qualified lead. They want what I have because they exist over there. That's why you get those pushy dms from people inviting you to stuff you ain't never heard of because they think you're sales qualified. Sales qualified means you've had a conversation. It's a prospect. And so like, do you have a chart every week? Every Monday, I meet with myself. I actually meet with my project manager now, but up until I hired her about two months ago, I met with myself. And in that meeting I would look at my stats. How many new people came into our world? How many new people got on our list? How many new people. Follow me, how many new people, Right. That I could ascertain. How many clicks did we get on our offers? Every single week I want at least 1,000 clicks on a page where people can pay or apply. Pay or apply. So a sales page, how many clicks did we get? My goal is 1000. If less than a thousand people saw your sales page, you didn't really try to sell it that hard. People aren't gonna like that. But if only 100 people or 50 people or 7 people or no people, or you have no clue because you're selling a Google Doc and you can't even track diagnostics on that, that's why I don't like when people say they're gonna sell out of a Google Doc because you lose all that data. You have no idea how many people looked at that page. Maybe you put your check out there, but the data for like clicks, you are losing all of that data when you put stuff in a Google Doc. So like tracking how many people came into our world, what did they do when they got there? Right. If you do a lot of Facebook lives like I do, minutes watched YouTube minutes watched. So how long did people engage? I go look at my podcast analytics. I use hello Audio. Hello Audio is created by marketers. Lindsey Padilla has a great product. And so being able to look at my listener score, who were the highest listeners? Who are the people who were really invested in my message? Right. What did these people do when they got into my world? How many sales calls got booked? You know, I did a whole masterclass on this once. And I find that people really only track revenue. That's it. So they're like, we made posts and we made money. They're not tracking anything in between in terms of effort. So when they don't hit their revenue goal, they don't know why, they don't know what didn't work. So you need to be Backing in what generates revenue. I happen to know that if I make a certain number of posts or if I go live a certain number of times, I will get enough leads to be able to get sales calls booked or consultations booked. And if a certain number of consults booked, I will close a certain number and hit the goal. Like I can back into my revenue goals. So what KPIs are you tracking? Any single person who's telling you, I tried blank and it didn't work. 8 times out of 10, they are not tracking any KPIs at all. I would be willing to wager my entire LLC on that. Like, people have no idea. They're not tracking anything, anything. Because they've got this social media myth that followers equal leads. And so they're like, well, I've got 10,000 followers, so of course I could sell 80 of them into this group coaching program. What? What? We don't even know if your audience is qualified. Most people cannot even explain succinctly what qualifies a person in their world. So, like, if you're listening to this right now, I need you to understand that there are leading indicators and there are lagging indicators. There are things that you put in that tell you this is working. I'm working towards what I'm trying to get. You know those KPIs like we talked about. And then there are things that only show up after you do the results. Those are called lagging indicators. Revenue is a lagging indicator. How much money you actually made. So if the only thing you track is how much money we actually made, but you don't track any of the things that lead into that indicator being different. You don't know what to shift leading indicators like your number of leads you generated or your website traffic or your social media engagement or your number of outreach emails sent, something, those are the things that should directly correlate to your lagging indicators. Number of clients acquired, revenue generated, customer satisfaction, Net promoter score. So if you've got an issue with your lagging indicators, that is you're not making enough money, you're probably not tracking the right leading indicators or taking the right actions. That's the issue. And if you don't really know what those terms mean, you just spin your wheels. Posting on Facebook.
- [30:00]
Drea
Yeah, yeah. And this is exactly what I talk to people about too, because I feel like they look at the follower number and then they look at their bank account and they're trying to make the draw the line between the two. And that is not. That's Not a line to drop. It's really hard.
- [30:16]
Natalie Bullen
I can't think of anybody like that. Even the big celebrity people, people I love, like Tabitha Brown and Lovey, like yeah, lots of followers. But just because someone follows you, like even my crazy Facebook group people are like, Natalie, you should be getting the email address of every single one of those people and you should put all these people on your list. But these people are low intent to buy. For me, getting in a group because you're curious about why Natalie has a group when Natalie hates Facebook groups does not mean that you are qualified. I sell to affluent persons, high net worth persons, high income people, or people who have businesses with high revenue. Everyone in that group does not fit that bill. Most of the people in that group do not fit that bill. Right. Most entrepreneurs never even make six figures. 88% of women owned businesses will never do a hundred thousand dollars in top line revenue. So why would I want a lot of low intent, low revenue businesses in my email list? Moving my conversions down when they didn't even want to be there. They just wanted to get in the group. Right? Even if they consent to be on my email list, Consent saying yeah sure, why not? Is not the same as saying yes, I want this. I would rather have a smaller list of high intent leads than a very big list of people as a vanity number. Just to be able to say I have 10,000 people on my email list. Well, how much money do you make? Because if the email list doesn't make you any money, it's wasting your time and it's costing you money because convertkit will damn sure charge you for a higher tier. Hell, at this point, you want to get off my list, get off it. I ain't mad at you. Save me some money. Every month I get mad as hell. Like why am I paying for this?
- [31:56]
Drea
Over, oh my gosh, mine just went up. Because once you pass, I think it's either it has to be 20,000 because I'm almost close to 20,000 on the list.
- [32:07]
Natalie Bullen
Ain't no way.
- [32:10]
Drea
Some people unsubscribe.
- [32:12]
Natalie Bullen
I will likely never have 20,000 people on my list list because you know what? Unless, unless every email I send better be making 10,000. Like I'm just such a snob. I just, I, I'm spoiled. My mother spoiled me with love and attention. I, I it know it's hard for me. Like if y'all don't want it, I don't want to sell it. Like, you know what I'm saying? Like if you don't Want to buy it? I don't want to sell it. So I. I could not know. I would have to have, like, the highest converted email list ever. I can see myself now, like, If I'm paying 2, 300amonth. Oh, someone is buying my stuff. Like, y'all gonna start getting threats in the email. Like, veil threats in the email. Like, hey, I see you looking. Why you not booking? Yeah, you got a problem? You busy? You going through some life stuff? Because, you know, you could get off until you. You better. You know what I'm saying? You know what I'm saying? Like, until your credit card recovers, you know, when you find your amex, you let me know.
- [33:12]
Drea
Okay, I want to go back to the Facebook group because this is why I wanted to have this conversation in the first place. Because, like I said in the beginning, I've been following you on Facebook. I love your post. Sometimes I'll even, like, copy the link and send it to people and be like, look at this, because I love it. But then I saw this accidental Facebook group. Can you tell me this story? How did this happen?
- [33:31]
Natalie Bullen
That's a great question. I used to be in a group with a leader whose name we don't say, and I was really excellent. And I got put out, and there was a group of women in this group that were making less than $2,000 a month. And I'm not saying this to belittle these women. I'm saying this to paint a picture, right? Everybody in this group was paying the same amount of money. But as you could imagine, the people who were lower on the revenue scale, it. It hit them harder, right? It felt larger. Anyway, they had a pod in a free Facebook group. And I became the admin. And I said I would be more than happy to help kind of informally mentor these women, to just check them out. Even though the group kicked me out, I felt like these women still deserve to have leadership and camaraderie. I wasn't trying to pitch them anything. As everybody knows, there's really nothing in my business that's appropriate for that revenue level. I literally did it out the kindness of my heart. And the group's been open for two years. I got kicked out of that club in 2022. Two and a half, three years. Had, like 150 people in it. So December, I. I, frankly, was having a rough year. Last year was not great. It just. It just wasn't great. There was a lot of stuff going on. And I said, you know what? I'm gonna take December off. Like, you know, the revenue ain't where I wanted to be, but I'm still blessed. My company's still thriving compared to a lot of other people. You know, there was a downturn, but I was like, it's fine. I'm just gonna take it off. I said, I'm gonna do 75 soft. I got this free Facebook group with 200 women. We're gonna lose weight. I lay out my workout clothes, bottled water. I'm super sedentary. So I'm getting excited. I'm getting hype. I'm thinking about how fine I'm gonna be on my birthday. I said, the 75 days to the day before my birthday, I wake up to thousands of notifications and dozens of missed calls. I might get one phone call a day that's not from my mom. So I knew something was wrong. So my OBM messaged me and was just like, I see you broke the Internet, huh? I don't know what she's talking about. I don't know what she's talking about. I'm like, I guess something like what you said some of your posts go viral. I was like, almost had post go viral. So I'm chilling. So I got a podcast interview at 9. I'm a sleepyhead. I wake up like 10 minutes before my first call. So I'm looking and I'm like, going to the podcast. And the guy was like, man, you had a crazy morning, huh? I was like, did my hair look bad? I don't know what you're talking about. He's like, the group. I was like, the group. Hold on. So I will look at my text, and I'm like. They're like, natalie, you invited me to a Facebook group last night. And I'm like, y'all are idiots. I was sleep last night. I slept like 11 hours last night. Like, I. I promise you, I went to sleep like 10 o'clock. I ain't woke up to like 8 o'clock. I slept like 11 hours last. But I had no. I promise I didn't invite you. Why Facebook then? Toggled on some setting overnight that's been invited all 10,000 of my followers into my private, minty Facebook group. Now here's my bone to pick. Meta. I have a Facebook group called NATS VIPs. It is a group of people who have paid me for premium private coaching. It's literally a group of past clients. Why they couldn't have blew up that.
- [36:56]
Drea
Group that would have been so much.
- [36:59]
Natalie Bullen
More appropriate to put people in the group that was already the group for people who paid me money. No.
- [37:04]
Drea
Yeah.
- [37:05]
Natalie Bullen
And so it just. It was a lot. It's got 4, 600 people in it. It was a whole thing. It really is something. And what's worse, I don't want it. That's the crazy part. After all of that, I really still hate free Facebook groups. I hate them with every fiber of my being. I don't know why it's still open. I think I'm just stubborn. God is trying to teach me something and I'm trying to figure out what that is.
- [37:30]
Drea
Yeah, I mean, I'm in the group because of curiosity and I. I like being. I'm like a lurker. So I like being nosy. And I look at all the posts and it is a group of people who all have similar. We have similar business models. We have similar values, even though there's different revenue points. The post that I see, I am like, oh, ok, here's someone I didn't know before now posted in the group. So like it. But has there been any other, like, big wins from the Facebook group? Are you just kind of chilling? Like, what's the plan?
- [38:01]
Natalie Bullen
That's a great question. I'm gonna figure out what God wants me to do. I really don't. I don't like using Facebook groups as funnels. I don't like it. I dislike all of it. I don't. My page does more than what most people's groups do. Like, I'm already running a high engagement. Just because my Facebook page is not a group doesn't mean it doesn't funnel people the same way. So having the group feels duplicitous. I also don't really like when people switch up and have a group that's free and then all of a sudden it's not free. I don't like selling to people who are low intent. So most people who make a lot of money in Facebook groups, that's not their first play. Facebook groups are actually an advanced strategy. People think they're a beginner strategy because they're free. They're an advanced strategy. And I do not see myself as an advanced business owner. I don't have a social seller in my company. I do all of the sales. So for me, it's just an extra job trying to chase people around to filter and see who wants the service. Now, will I put out my link and say, hey, if you want to get on my email list, you can join it? Sure. Because those people are higher intent. They actually want to learn about the service. We've definitely had like a pop in sales just because like I said, people were nosy, they were curious, they wanted to buy stuff. But as of present, I don't see myself turning that into a traditional funnel because here's the thing. I'm a rule follower. I like things decent and in order. Had it been a group that I planned, I would have set it up from scratch. I would have had better intake questions. I would have had very firm rules. But now we got 4, 600 people in my house and they've been partying for months. You can't change that behavior. You can't just go to your party in little non rent paying room and be like, hey bro, you wanted to tighten up. Now like nobody cares. It's like, no, you've been letting me party for two months, so I'm gonna keep partying. I'm a party. Or you gonna kick me out. And Facebook won't let you delete people in mass. I would have to delete them one by one. The last time I had a free Facebook group, I spent all of Mother's Day 2022 Deleting 1783 people one person at a time. Because you have to remove everybody to permanently close the group. Otherwise you can only pause it. And Facebook is real finicky. They will unpause your group, they will unarchive your group. Those tools don't work because Facebook wants the group to be successful. They have all these initiatives. So right now groups are hot again. But you know, like I know there's people with dead groups all over the place who can't get any engagement. I have another pod that came from that group where I got kicked out of. You can't get engagement in there. I can post in there right now and it might get three or four people reach and there's a thousand people in there. So it's interesting that Facebook has decided to make my group the the group of the day. Part of me is flattered and part of me is very irritated because the the boundary list of boundarylessness of social media is frustrating. I don't know how many times I have said don't DM us on Sunday, Don't DM us about these posts. Don't reach out to this and that. I had somebody report a post at 2 in the morning just because she didn't like it and making comments on the page about how she's shocked that this got approved and this is not in the spirit of the group. And I wrote and was like, is this like I have a racial Undertone, like, is there something I'm missing? Is there like a swastika in this imagery or something? Like, I'm freaked out. And she's like, well, no, I just don't feel like it's fitting. And these are. People are doing it 2:00 in the morning. So, like, there's just. There's just their entitlement. People are so accustomed to not marketing. They don't know how to market. They don't take any personal accountability for marketing their own services. So they think that you, the owner of a free Facebook group, are in, they are entitled to you letting them post their stuff. No, I want to get leads. No, I want to make posts. No, I want to make subliminal messages in your group. You have to approve my stuff. Like, it's just difficult. And what people don't get, it's just me, my co, coach and my obm, none of whom are getting extra compensation for running this group. They're doing it out the kindness of their heart. I'm not going to let folks run me or them ragged because they don't know how to market and this is the only place that they can put their sales crap. You know what I mean? Like, it's just, it. It's been a lot. And so, like, again, unless you're gonna work the leads, I don't feel like it's worth it. But again, God teaches you things. So, like, this might be a patience thing for me. Who knows? This might be a test of my money mindset. Am I willing to close the group? Even though maybe potentially somewhere down the line it could make me money? I don't know. In the interim, I just been telling people, sit down and don't touch nothing.
- [42:43]
Drea
I like that. I like it. And I'll. I'll be watching. I'll be watching for the group. And I love, just like your. Your willingness to explore, but also maintaining your own boundaries. Because I do think that there is something to that where, you know, you are trying new things. The Facebook group happened on accident. It's still here. We're gonna see what happens. And I, I like that. I like that flexibility there. Okay, so for those people who are listening who are like, I love everything Natalie is saying and I need more. You've got a private podcast. Tell us about it.
- [43:11]
Natalie Bullen
Oh, it's so amazing. So, like, I do Facebook lives and they're great, but, like, they're an hour and you ain't always got that kind of time. So I committed to doing a micro audio series that grew Into a thing. Okay. So for a year, you can get nadalie in your ear, five minutes a day, really targeted specific episodes on wealth, finance, sales, marketing, visibility, getting over yourself. And you can listen to it, you know, in any of your podcast player while you're dropping the kids off. You can get fussed at in a very loving way and get over your own stuff. Right? And it's great. You know, I think it's smart for a couple of reasons. One, it helps you stay connected to me in the world of like that it gets you off Facebook in case social media feels loud for you and you have some skin in the game. It's not free. Most people put out stuff and they're like, here's my free podcast and whatever, but I'm like, no, for a year, for me to commit to recording quality content for a year, I feel like I should be compensated. And we have huge listener scores and great results because people have skin in the game. So it's 200 bucks. It's 272 episodes. So a little bit more than a year because I'm crazy. But it's probably the best product that I've ever created.
- [44:32]
Drea
I love it. Honestly, I think I bought it right in the beginning when you launched it maybe like a couple years ago.
- [44:39]
Natalie Bullen
Go back and listen for a while.
- [44:41]
Drea
Now that I'm like, oh, you tripping.
- [44:42]
Natalie Bullen
Go back and listen. I have a couple new episodes in there because I missed y'all.
- [44:47]
Drea
So yeah, I love it. Okay, I'll put the link to that in the show notes. You all listening? Go to this link right now onlinedrea.com 355 and get the link to Birthright and also all the links to connect with that Natalie Hint Facebook. Follow her on Facebook. Amazing. Natalie, thank you so much for being on the show today.
- [45:07]
Natalie Bullen
Thank you.
- [45:08]
Drea
And thank you, dear listener, for tuning in to another episode of the Mindful Marketing podcast. Make sure you rate and subscribe on Apple podcasts and Spotify. We. We dropped in the rankings for a sec. We used to be in the top 100 marketing podcast. We kind of dipped down. So we need your support. Make sure you leave that five star ranking and that will help us out. I have more episodes coming at you soon, next Tuesday. I'll see you then. Bye for now.