← The Side Hustle Show
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- [00:00]
Nick Loper
Lets be real.
- [00:01]
Jason
Nobody starts a business for the joy.
- [00:03]
Nick Loper
Of calculating tax withholdings. That's where our partner Gusto comes in to take the stress out of payroll, benefits and HR so you can focus on why you started your business in the first place. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly and.
- [00:20]
Jason
Incredibly easy to use. So that means you can pay, hire.
- [00:24]
Nick Loper
Onboard and support your team from anywhere. Talking about automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers comp 401k, you name it. Gusto makes it simple and all with no hidden fees, no surprises. Plus if you have any questions, their team of certified HR experts are standing by to help. It's no wonder why more than 400,000 small businesses already trust Gusto and why it's the number one rated payroll software for fall 2025 according to the review site G2. So try Gusto today at Gusto.com Sidehustle and get three months free when you.
- [00:59]
Jason
Run your first payroll.
- [01:01]
Nick Loper
That's three months of free payroll at Gusto.com SidehUSTle one more time. Gusto G-U-S-T O.com Sidehustle she built a.
- [01:12]
Jason
Six figure house cleaning business with a twist. It's her customers that are doing the cleaning. Today's guest is a longtime listener who's built a super creative recurring revenue business combining free public domain content with a near universal problem. And that's keeping your house clean from domestic daydreams.com Cheyenne Bullock welcome to the Side Hustle show.
- [01:36]
Cheyenne Bullock
Thank you so much. I'm so hyped to be here.
- [01:38]
Jason
I am excited. Stick around in this one. We're covering how she came up with this unique offer, how she connects with customers, and some of the marketing and growth strategies that you can probably apply in your own business. So there's a lot going on at Domestic Daydreams, but the core offer is this. For 25 bucks a month or $45 a quarter, Cheyenne will send you six private podcast episodes a week. Basically that are mostly old public domain radio shows, Dragnet true crime shows. But they're interspersed with cleaning routines and instructions. Like instead of a commercial break in the program, it's like now go fold some laundry. And there are over 500 members. Am I understanding this correctly?
- [02:20]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes. Yeah, We've got over 500 members in there and they will pop on. I get emails all of the time. They're like, oh, I feel like I know you because I listen to your voice every single morning while I Do my cleaning. And it's just. It's a fun time in there.
- [02:34]
Jason
So you sourced this stuff and you had some previous public domain experience, or maybe you're still running this public domain publishing business inspired by a previous side Hustle show episode?
- [02:45]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. I was working at a grocery store in a town of 900 people and I heard a side Hustle Nation episode where a gentleman was publishing public dome main books onto kdp. And I thought, you know what, I should take some public domain children's books, annotate them, and publish them for homeschool families. So that was my first business. And that's what inspired me to really look into public domain works, especially combined with. I know. In the four Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss recommends finding ways to jump off of public domain works with your businesses. And I found old vintage radio shows. I've always been a fan of the 50s. I've always been fascinated by the 50s housewife. And as someone who had really struggled with keeping her house clean, especially when I was working full time or I was commuting, then I had developed my own system, put it to the radio shows, and was like, hey, this can actually be a great way to help people clean on autopilot and help them stay on task with the cleaning routine.
- [03:45]
Jason
Yeah. What. What a fun combination there. So what happens first? So you kind of get this idea in your head. I can combine these two things, like, does it start with a YouTube channel? Does this start with a website? How do you even start to spread the word about this?
- [03:57]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yeah. So since I had my other business that I had built up, I had been running that one for about a year. I had built it up to around 60,000 followers on Instagram. I had a tiny little email list. The first thing that I did is I created a few episodes and I sent it out to my audience because I knew they were moms. I knew that a lot of them were homemakers or stay at home moms and would be interested in a cleaning routine. So I threw up an Instagram post, told them I'd send them some free episodes if they wanted to try it. And people loved it. The post did. Really, really lots of people requesting it. And then soon the feedback rolled in and everyone was like, oh my gosh, this is an absolute game changer. This is what I've needed the whole time. I've tried every cleaning routine out there and none of them worked. This did. And so that's when I knew that I really had something for sure. For sure.
- [04:45]
Jason
You got some early validation there, that was under the children's publishing brand. At what point does it become domestic daydreams? You're like, okay, I think there's something here as a spin off.
- [04:54]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yeah. So later that weekend, I was like, okay, I'm really passionate about this. This could really help moms. I need to go all in. So a weekend. I set up a website on Kajabi because I knew I wanted to do it as a membership. I got the sales pages done and the pricing. I made a logo and I started its own Instagram and I started just posting. Up till then, and up until just recently, everything's grown completely from organic Instagram content. And so I just posted every single day, at least once a day. And I would sometimes invite my old account as a collaborator if I felt like it still meshed with my audience there. And that made it grow really fast. I think we grew to like 25,000 followers within a month.
- [05:40]
Jason
Wow. Oh, my gosh. Not. Not at 25,000 followers, even. Even today. So very cool then. Did that following translate into revenue on the membership or was there, like a lag?
- [05:52]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes, so it translated really fast. It was kind of an interesting time period where I needed to transition slightly out of that first business because I had met my husband and we were going to get married and I wasn't going to have the basically the things and resources I needed and used at the time to run my first business. So I need to make it work quick. And within the first, I think three weeks to a month, it had replaced a good chunk of my income. It was matching all my expenses. I had a mortgage to pay, all that jazz. So it was in business within the first month. I had quite a few members.
- [06:26]
Jason
Okay, that's really exciting to hear. What type of content did you see perform well on Instagram at the time?
- [06:33]
Cheyenne Bullock
And honestly, still now it was reels. It was during the time period in Instagram where posting static posts and posting carousels wasn't really going to do anything for you. It was. They were really pushing reels. So I would post a reel every single day. I really had developed with my first business, a full strategy. It took me a year to really pop off on Instagram with my first business because there was so much trial and error and learning. And so luckily, I'd already been through that trial and error mirror and I could just jump off and go full throttle into this. So I found focusing on reels, and at the time, it was focusing on calling out basically your ideal audience. So a lot of, like, point of view reels. Like, like pov, you've been struggling to keep up with your house. You want to rip your hair out, but then you find my account, you know, or something like that. Those were really simple videos at the time that did really, really well.
- [07:28]
Jason
Okay. And then combining that with cleaning routines, or here's how I do things, it's hard if, like, that's what's, I guess it's what's behind the paywall. Behind the paywall is the recurring content, the system, the familiarity in your earbuds every day. And it's, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink. Or you can, you can give it away and people are going to pay kind of for the implementation of it.
- [07:49]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yeah, yeah, it's true. And the thing that I learned with my first business, I would just direct people directly to my products. And I lost a lot of people in that middle ground of them getting distracted or whatever. So the thing I learned this time is every single post on Instagram needs to go to the lead magnet, which captures their email. And that has grown my email list to around 30,000 subscribers in two years. And like in the last month, 8,000 of those. And I've cleaned out my email list, so it's been more than that. But I make sure that every single Instagram post it says, you know, comment homemaker and I will send you some free episodes of the cleaning routine to try so that you can get started tackling that mess. You know, I make a pain point oriented Instagram caption that calls out their pain, tells how these episodes are the solution. You can try some free episodes. It takes them to the opt in. They put in their email address and information and it redirects them to a page with the free episodes on top and then telling them, hey, if you want new episodes six days a week, then join the membership and has like a sales pitch below that.
- [08:55]
Jason
Okay, so it's really, really tightly aligned with the core offer. It's like, in fact, in fact, it's like it's a free sample of the core offer. Like, I'm going to send you some sample episodes if you like this. Hey, there's more where that came from. Come on in. So that makes a lot of sense. I think that's really smart. And this is a manychat automation to reply to the homemaker comments.
- [09:14]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes, exactly. And ManyChat was such an incredible game changer because when I was doing my first business, I started doing the comment, if you want the link thing before There was anything like manychat out there and I would sit there and I would have reels go viral and I would manually be sending these and I'd get blocked by Instagram. Have to wait a little while.
- [09:37]
Jason
Like you've sent 100 messages. Yeah, you're blocked.
- [09:39]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes, exactly. And so Manychat has been amazing to be able to use that over the last couple of years. And luckily that was in place by the time that I started this business. So it just directs them through manychat. I know people build out their manychat with like follow ups and stuff. I haven't done that and I've still seen great results. Just keeping it simple.
- [09:59]
Jason
Okay, so they get the sample episodes and then there's a follow up sequence that goes out, you know, a week later. It says, if you like that, there's more. Once you join the membership, talk to me about the sales cycle or the sales funnel, so to speak.
- [10:14]
Cheyenne Bullock
After that, I follow up via email because I want to train them to really connect with my brand. On the email side, going through Instagram or any social media platform, you're building your business on rented land. So I learned the hard way through my first business that you need to make sure that you have them somewhere you kind of control, like an email list, but also that you make sure that you train them and teach them that there's value there so that they will actually look for you in their inbox. So I have an automatic email flow that will send them an email like every four days or so. Originally, I followed a book that said, okay, this is what your welcome sequence should have in your email flow. And then over time, as I was sending out consistent weekly newsletters to my audience as well that were outside of that welcome email flow, I was able to get data on which ones converted highest for sales and I turned those into my welcome sequence. Okay, so it basically just, it's heavy on the email side, following up with people. I give them some more free episodes via a one week challenge. Usually by then people are pretty warmed up. But now I do run ads as well, retargeting ads. And that's been what the huge game.
- [11:25]
Jason
Changer is, retargeting people on the email list or people who have clicked. I mean, I guess it's all through the meta ecosystem. You could target followers on Instagram or people who've seen your post probably and saying, hey, remember me? Do you still have this problem of the dirty house? And here I'm, I'm still here to help you.
- [11:43]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes, exactly. And so when I first got into ads, because I did pay a coach to teach me, they always recommend you do what they call top of funnel ads. And those are the ones that go out to strangers. And then you do retargeting ads. And those are ones that go out to basically the people that found you through those top ads. But was was different with my business that actually kind of blew their minds a little bit and we had to adjust that strategy is I get so much at the top, so much attention, so many new people knowing about my brand through my Instagram, through my Facebook, I get millions of views every single month through my blog. I basically do organic content marketing at the top. And that's what gets new people in. And I only do retargeting ads. And I retarget anyone who has interacted with my website at all, my blog at all, my Facebook at all, and my Instagram at all. And it retargets them with the membership offer.
- [12:40]
Jason
Okay, straight to the offer at that point.
- [12:42]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes. Yep. And it's a special offer page that I made sure still had a sample episode in case they maybe hadn't gotten a chance to try it when they had signed up or if maybe they never did sign up for my opt in. I do have that, like just one on that page so that they can try it with a button, give it a try, see if you like it. And then I also made sure to load that page with comparison videos. I read the book they Ask youk Answer. Incredible book that I highly recommend to everybody. And one of the things they talked about is making sure that you have honest comparisons between your product and your business and your competitors, and even suggests when the competitors would be a better option than your product. And I made sure to embed those on my sales pages so that they could know. Okay, well, how does this compare to the cleaning routines I've already tried? Or maybe there could be another routine out there that would work better so that they know that I'm trying to help them.
- [13:40]
Nick Loper
Oh, okay.
- [13:41]
Jason
Maybe the instinct would be, I don't want to introduce that potential competitor thought in their head. But you're saying the book says they already know. They already know your competition, your customer's smarter than that. Give them some credit and just be open and honest about it.
- [13:53]
Cheyenne Bullock
Exactly, exactly. And it really helps them to be able to see the differences. And a lot of times people tell me that they have tried those other ones already and mine's the only one that worked for them. And other times, you know, maybe there are people that have found my competitors through one of my videos and they decided that would be a better fit and that's totally okay with me because I want the longevity of people in my membership that are going to stay and be able to build a community.
- [14:17]
Nick Loper
With More with Cheyenne in just a moment, including her retention rate for her membership and how offering too much content to members might actually be hurting your business. Whether you're a seasoned business or you're experiencing your very first Black Friday Cyber Monday, you need a platform that can handle the rush. The last thing you want is inventory errors or your point of sale crashing when new customers are trying to buy for the first time. So make sure your business is ready for the busiest time of the year with help from our sponsor, Shopify. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, including dozens of side hustle show guests and 10% of all e commerce in the U.S. shopify has thousands of templates and tools to make sure your site looks great and is functional at the same time. And if you ever have any issues or questions, Shopify's award winning customer support team is standing by 247 so you can get back to business as fast as possible. If you want to give your customers the best shopping experience this holiday season, you need Shopify this Black Friday. Join the thousands of new entrepreneurs hearing for the first time with Shopify. Sign up for your free trial today@shopify.com Sidehustle that's shopify.com Sidehustle go to shopify.com SidehustlE and make this Black Friday one to remember. When you're growing your business and your team, you need a hiring partner that can help you rise to the challenge you need Indeed. Our sponsor. Indeed is the hiring platform where you can attract, interview and hire all in one place. Here's our recent guest skyler from episode 645.
- [15:48]
Jason
What's your recruiting look like? I would use Indeed. Indeed was really really helpful at first.
- [15:54]
Nick Loper
Plus with Indeed Sponsored jobs, there's no monthly subscriptions, no long term contracts and you only pay for results. How fast is Indeed in this 60 second commercial? 23 businesses just hired their next team member. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed side Hustle show listeners get a $75 sponsored job credit. To get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com Sidehustleshow just go to Indeed.com SidehustlesHow right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com Sidehustleshow terms and conditions apply. Hiring indeed is all you need.
- [16:36]
Jason
You've been doing it for two or three years. Do you have a sense of customer lifetime value after a certain percentage churn out?
- [16:43]
Cheyenne Bullock
I've noticed if, if people are going to cancel, they'll usually cancel within the first 30 to 45 days. It's not as big of a percentage as you would think. I struggled at first with the retention rate because I tried to load so much content into my membership, so many freebies, so many bonuses, and it actually really overwhelmed people. And so I dialed it back, focused just on the routines, the things that would help them, and my retention rate is actually really good. I think I have about a 5% retention rate. So most people I've noticed will stay for at least a year. Sometimes it's more of a three month thing, which is why I introduced the quarterly. And then they might leave because they'll be like, oh, yeah, well, my house is under control now. I don't think I need this anymore. I can just keep going with the written routine and it'll be fine. And then they usually come back and join and say, yeah, I actually needed those radio shows.
- [17:38]
Jason
Yeah, they self graduate out of it. And then maybe this was actually helpful. Okay, so we say that like every month, 5% of the people drop off. And so it's just on you to kind of fill the bucket with more than that on the top and you give yourself a raise every month. Like, this is the kind of cool membership model recurring revenue business where if you can kind of master that and it's somewhat predictable and start stacking on and then you can pull different levers to keep people in longer and it's a really cool business. There was a question like, what advice would you give to somebody? You've mastered the organic marketing side, you've mastered the retargeting side. What advice would you have for somebody who is posting consistently?
- [18:20]
Nick Loper
Yeah, I'm doing what they say one to two times a day.
- [18:22]
Jason
It's like I'm racking my creative mind trying to come up with reels that are going to hit and they're just not. What do you tell that person?
- [18:29]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes. Okay. They're not going to like this answer because I haven't liked this answer when I've gotten it. But quantity leads to quality and I know that's so frustrating when you're first starting out and it takes a lot of time to create. Also be personable and be observant. When you're scrolling through your Instagram feed Study it. Because Instagram has changed so much. I've gone through waves personally where my content's doing great. I still do. Where some content does great and some content does terrible. Because Instagram people will blame it on the algorithm. I used to make that mistake too when stuff doesn't do well. And the fact of the matter is, is that it's a people based platform. The people are training the algorithm and what they like changes over time and you can't predict quality. There's posts that I have thrown up thinking this is probably going to do terrible. But I just have to post today and it goes viral and really connects with people. And I've had posts that I work really, really hard on, spend maybe a week on that do terrible.
- [19:32]
Jason
So, so frustrating. You're like, I have hours into this thing and it's a dud.
- [19:36]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes. And it's got like two likes and it's just, oh, it's so annoying, you know. But what I've learned and what I've done recently is I've started posting three times a day. And I'm not saying you have to do that to succeed at all, but I'm doing that because Instagram, what people like, has shifted. What I did in 2020 with my first business that worked for so well does not work at all now. So I post three times a day simply to one. It gets me the views overall combined between those three posts that I would have needed before.
- [20:13]
Jason
And every one of those has the lead magnet. Call to action. Grab some sample episodes.
- [20:18]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yes, every single one. Now I do switch it up every once in a while where it might be like comment for the link to my YouTube video or my blog post and I'll send them to my blog post with the YouTube video embedded. But it still has a sales pitch for that free opt in in that post. So ult all roads direct to that lead magnet. But I'll just post those three. I get lots of data from that that I can see what works, what doesn't work, create more content. And I also have learned that every like 15 or so posts, I'll have a hit. It's always been that way for me. So when I was posting one a day, it took 15 days to have a hit. When I'm posting three times a day, that happens a lot sooner.
- [20:55]
Jason
Got it.
- [20:56]
Cheyenne Bullock
So it really is worth it. I used to fight that advice so hard, but it really helps. And my content's improved.
- [21:03]
Jason
I'm gonna run out of. Yeah, talk to me about the creative or ideation process for having to consistently come up with that volume of content.
- [21:11]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yeah, so I'm from og, Cheyenne is from the blogging background where when I was like 12 or 13 I started blog. So what I do with any business is I do a ton of keyword research first. So I'll go to answer the public I think is the website or I'll go to and Pinterest and YouTube search and I'll type in keywords and see what people are searching for related to my niche and keep that in a master list. And that gives me something that I can always go back to for more ideas. So that's one side of the ideation phase. The other side is when I'm scrolling on Instagram, I try to look in niches outside of my own because you don't want to look the same as the people in your niche. You want to stand out. So look in niches outside of my own and I will save the link in like a little notes document on my phone if I see something interesting or see something in a format that I like and I'll write a little idea on how I can apply that to my business. And between those two, I never really run out of ideas of what to post. And then since I do create long form content based off of those keywords that I researched, usually those are listicles which give me a bunch of little ideas that I can also take and make into short form content for like a video for each little bullet point in a blog post or in a YouTube video. Okay, so across all of those the ideation is simple. The creation of content has become really simple for me because I just do two formats usually. Well, three, I'll do either a talking head format where I am talking directly to the camera or like long form YouTube. So I'll do this for my short form Instagram content. I will just talk directly to the camera with an idea and that's like one option. Or I will record B roll and just put text on top real quick. And that's another option. And then thumbnail, the third one is like a voiceover where it's footage of me doing other things and then I'll record a voiceover with the idea. With YouTube I do almost entirely just voiceovers. I record a talk to camera intro and outro, but I just do a voiceover. I'll put my podcast to footage of me cleaning or cooking.
- [23:26]
Jason
Okay, are you still doing the long form listicles for the website or is like I'm not going to bother with the blog anymore.
- [23:32]
Cheyenne Bullock
So yes. So my whole flow right now is that I will create. It kind of bounces back and forth, but I'll usually create three reels a day and then I'll turn those three reels into blog posts by expanding on them. Like I will use the little notes app and the voice to text feature and I will plug in the transcript of what I actually said in the short form piece of content into my voice notes. And then I will also just spitball any other ideas that I think if I were going to turn this into a long form content, if I was going to turn this into a podcast or a blog post, what are some ideas that play off of this? How could I expand that?
- [24:14]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [24:14]
Cheyenne Bullock
And then I'll take that over to chat GPT and I will have it turn it into a blog post for me. Basically just polish what I said so that it's still me, it's still my ideas. I might have it add in any relevant statistics in. If that short form piece of content was like speaking to pain points of my audience, okay, I might add in statistics that back those pain points up and then I'll turn that into that blog post goes on the blog. If it does well, like if I see it kind of get some views, I will turn it into a podcast episode and then I'll just. I always have B roll whenever I need to clean or cook and I have time to get ready, I will record it. And then I just have this log of long form B roll that I will put to the podcast episode recorded from the blog post. So I'm putting out three blog posts a day as well as the short form ones. And then I'll like send an email out with a roundup.
- [25:06]
Jason
You're a content machine. That's intimidating the volume of stuff that you're producing. But it's all kind of starting from this point of audience pain point research, answer the public. The Pinterest. Is there a tool for Pinterest or is it just like typing stuff in and looking at what the auto suggest populates?
- [25:23]
Cheyenne Bullock
There is a tool now. It's called pin clicks I believe. And it's. It wasn't around when I first started doing the research, but it is. So I used it recently and it is so nice. So you can use that instead. I believe it's called pin clicks.
- [25:38]
Jason
Okay.
- [25:39]
Cheyenne Bullock
And that makes it so much easier because now you did used to have to just go into the search bar and find everything and it was actually really labor intensive. So the thing that I learned, you know, with content Cuz I am a content machine now. I used to be a lot more simple about my content. My husband was a wildland firefighter and so he would be gone two weeks at a time and I had a baby. And trying to post content was difficult. But I heard a thing from Alex Hormozi recently where he's talking about how you just need to do more. That's usually the answer. And I went and I calculated how many new subscribers I got from how many pieces of content I had posted up to a certain point. I think it was like over a six month period, I realized I'd only posted 50 posts. And I. That's between Instagram and the website.
- [26:28]
Jason
Okay.
- [26:29]
Cheyenne Bullock
I realized I'd only posted 50 posts in that time period and I'd gotten like 122 new subscribers or something like that. I'm like, okay, I'm gonna do that in a month. I wanna get 122 in a month. I posted more than that, I think, cause I was posting three times a day, but I got like 174 new subscribers in a month doing that.
- [26:45]
Jason
Okay.
- [26:46]
Cheyenne Bullock
So it really was simple math and a simple experiment to realize, okay, I need to just be putting out a ton of content because that's really what's driving the sales on the top end.
- [26:58]
Jason
Yeah. And it's almost a, you know, increase your luck surface area or your, your algorithm surface area, your chances of discoverability. It's like if I take more swings at this, you know, even if, like you said 1 out of 15 hits, you know, if I put more batches of 15 out there, you know, it's just a, kind of a lot of large numbers and there's some compound effect. You improve, you put in the reps, you get better at making the stuff and you start to figure out what, what, what works and what doesn't.
- [27:24]
Cheyenne Bullock
Exactly a mistake I made that really hurt my business was being perfectionist about my content. So I wouldn't post as much content and I wouldn't make as many sales. It really is as simple as success really is. Predictable with enough consistency and effort. And I used to think it was luck and maybe there's a small factor of that, but luck never really did it for me. It was just consistency and a ton of doing the output, doing the reps. Yeah.
- [27:52]
Jason
Is Pinterest a source of traffic for you as well in terms of like static image to the website or even posting the video reels up? I don't know, can you repurpose that kind of stuff there?
- [28:03]
Cheyenne Bullock
So yeah, so what I'm doing right now is the video reels, since I'm turning them into blog posts, that those will be my first Pinterest pins for that post and then the rest are going to be static pins. Pinterest has been like the little poor side, you know, thing of my business, but it still gets me sales. I'll post like five pins a day and I get, you know, 100 and something thousand views a month on Pinterest, which isn't actually a ton, but I still get sales consistently from that every single month. And it does compound. That's the thing that I love about content marketing, is that the more that you put out, the more places you're making sales from at any given point to where it's almost like you look at your business and you're like, I have no idea where all these are coming from because they're just flowing in constantly. So I do make sales from Pinterest and I really would love to scale that up more because it's steady where Instagram goes and Facebook go in like peaks and valleys. Pinterest tends to be a little bit more steady. It can have dips here and there, but they're smaller dips than Instagram and Facebook.
- [29:04]
Jason
Yeah, it's more of like a search, I mean combination social platform and search platform where yes, it's not necessarily completely algorithm driven viral spike. It's more, hey, people are typing this in and they're finding your stuff. It seems like perfect, perfect fit for cleaning routines, homemaking tips. Do they do a retargeting platform where you could, if you could be like get even more exposure there similar to Facebook or meta platform?
- [29:29]
Cheyenne Bullock
I surely probably do. I know you can run Pinterest ads. I've heard people have a lot of success with them. But since I can retarget anyone who does click over from Pinterest to my blog with my Facebook and my Instagram ads, I don't stress about it too much.
- [29:43]
Jason
Well, that's a warmer lead. Is there a target cost of acquisition that you like to be at on that ad spend?
- [29:48]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yeah. So this is the other reason why it's a good idea to go hard on creating content and learning how to create short form content like for Instagram and Facebook because it really comes in handy with your ads. I will repurpose what I post on my Instagram or I will create with the ads in mind that that'll be an end goal. So I probably come out to. Lately I've been coming out to like 17 to $20 per purchase. My ads. And since it is a recurring thing, even if they only sign up for the monthly, I almost always keep them the next month. So that will make a profit. But I sell a lot of quarterly and annual. So annual is $150, quarterly is $45. So I usually have like at least a three for what is called my ROAS, my return on ad spend. That means I made three times what I spent or I generated three times in sales what the ad bad spend was.
- [30:45]
Jason
Yeah. And then it just becomes a question of timing, of cash flows. If somebody opts for monthly, I'm not going to collect that 3x immediately. So I just got to. Maybe there's a little bit of a float, but anytime I can trade a dollar for $3, I would do that all day long.
- [30:59]
Cheyenne Bullock
Exactly. And the interesting thing I mentioned being consistent and really like zoning in. I did feel like at one point in time with my Instagram and my Facebook because I was relying completely on sales from the organic only, you know, no ads, no other platforms, no YouTube, no podcast, no PODC blog, any of that. It's easy to get squirrely when things don't work out on a platform and be like, okay, I need to try all this stuff. And I will say if you are going to go hard on Instagram or Facebook or the short form, my next steps for people would be one, to have a long form platform that you're doing. Whether it's a blog or a podcast or a YouTube, you don't have to do all three like I'm doing. And to also look into learning ads so that you can recapture and retarget those people that have interacted with your content. Because then you're not as reliant on going viral all the time. Because when you do have stuff, do well every once in a while. That's great. But even when I'm posting three times a day and my posts are doing terrible, you can retarget those and recapture those and you can nurture them with your long form content because they really do need to spend more time with you than just your short form.
- [32:07]
Jason
Yeah, I'm learning a lot from you here. This is, this is great.
- [32:11]
Nick Loper
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- [34:32]
Jason
All right, so in addition to all of this public facing content, there's also the content demands of the membership where we got to come up with a new episode for them six days a week. And the bulk of that is at least free to you. But got to come in and do your voiceover. You still got to add the cleaning routine part of it.
- [34:49]
Nick Loper
How are you keeping up with all of that stuff or how far ahead can you.
- [34:52]
Jason
Can you really batch that?
- [34:53]
Cheyenne Bullock
So what helps a lot is that once I created a ton, like when I first started it, I created as many as I could. I just sat there for a few days and edited these podcast episodes, basically radio show episodes with the cleaning routine. And then I set them to drip on Kajabi. That allowed me to time the release for a certain amount of time after someone joins. So when they join, you know, they'll get. The first month is already loaded in there, and then a week later it'll release another week, and a week later, it'll release another week. And those are usually ones that I've edited forever ago now. So I still. Obviously, for the people that have been with me for the. From the beginning, I need to be putting out new episodes to keep up with it.
- [35:32]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [35:33]
Cheyenne Bullock
So it'll usually just take me like an hour and a half to two hours to edit the episodes and load them into the membership for the week. Week. So I just will sit there, get comfy, turn on a TV show now, because the business has done well. I have an iPad, which makes it so much easier. And I'll just sit there, edit them real quick, upload them. The thing with the old radio shows, I do kind of have to try and scrub through them real quick and, like, listen because they can be really offensive on some things that are just very outdated. So I have to catch things every now and then that I'm like, oh, my goodness, that almost went live. And that would have been terrible.
- [36:08]
Jason
Yeah, we're not gonna hear that part anymore. Okay. Yeah, it was a different time. Interesting. So mechanically, does this show up, like in the Apple podcasts or in Spotify? Like, how do you. I'm gonna upload it into Kajabi. But how, as a customer of yours, how am I listening to it?
- [36:22]
Cheyenne Bullock
So they have a membership platform where they basically just log in just like a course and they listen to it. It is in the Kajabi app, too. I've considered making my own private branded app with Kajabi, but I had the hardest time figuring out. I think I hit a wall with Google's developer account or something like that, and I was just like, I'm not gonna worry about. About it.
- [36:42]
Jason
Okay.
- [36:42]
Cheyenne Bullock
But what I'm doing now, and this is going to be a new thing that I start doing this month, is I'm going to send out a QR code magnet. It'll be a cute little branded magnet. I actually already have them made that they can just put on their fridge and they can scan it with their phone and it'll take them directly to their radio dashboard and they can press play.
- [37:00]
Jason
Got it? Got it. Now, if I want to do this with a different public domain radio show, where do you go to find this stuff and see what is freely available? How do you download it? Like all of this stuff?
- [37:13]
Cheyenne Bullock
So you just go to National Archive. Some stuff that's on there is actually still not in the public domain, but not usually with radio shows, because radio shows had different domain laws.
- [37:21]
Jason
Okay.
- [37:22]
Cheyenne Bullock
So you may want to research it just a little bit. Usually a quick Google search will tell you for sure if it's in public domain or not. But if you search old time radio shows on the National Archive website, then you can just find tons. There are so many and they are so good. They're so fun to listen to.
- [37:40]
Nick Loper
Yeah, interesting.
- [37:40]
Jason
Yeah, there's, there's a whole world of public domain stuff that is out there, whether it be books, whether it be radio, whether it be print material for the military. You know, there's like some really interesting stuff that you can kind of dig into and use as source material to then, you know, layer on your value add in this case the, the cleaning routines. But what else is going on on the, the tools and tech side? You've been really gracious in sharing manychat and Kajabi and chatgpt and pin pin click or whatever. The other thing was. Anything else that we should know about on the tools and tech side?
- [38:15]
Cheyenne Bullock
What I do use a ton of is descript. I will use that for my podcast episodes. What I love about it is that it has all of the transcripts generated for me. So for example, if I decide to record a podcast episode first instead of a blog post or something, maybe I just come up with an idea and record a podcast real quick. I can take that transcript and have it put it into AI, have it format it into a blog post for me. I can also have it come up with a YouTube video title and thumbnails in ChatGPT from that transcript that Descript generated. It will come up with when I put in a YouTube video and edit it in there, it'll come up with the chapters for me. It's just made things a lot simpler and faster since I am putting out so much content. I've really, really loved descript for that.
- [39:01]
Jason
Yeah, descript is really cool. Some of their tools and it's getting better all the time. So that's definitely one that we use as what's running the email list.
- [39:10]
Cheyenne Bullock
I do that within Kajabi as well. I had to upgrade what I pay in order to account for all of my contacts that I have because I'll have a reel go viral and I'll gain, you know, 8,000 subscribers in a week or something like that. I know that the tracking's not as great with Kajabi as far as metrics and stuff go for email list but email platforms are so expensive. I realized that it was still just, just most cost effective and honestly most easy for me to be able to just do it all in one platform and not have to stress too hard about bouncing between different platforms.
- [39:47]
Jason
Oh, that makes sense. Any other cool tools that you're using?
- [39:50]
Cheyenne Bullock
I am using the Edits app that Instagram put out to edit my short form content and they said that they were giving people a little bit of a boost at first if it was made with edits. I think that's probably gone away by now. They fully admitted that they were giving people just a, just a little help in the algorithm if they use that. And honestly, it's not been as glitchy. The Instagram, the native Instagram app editing in that is terrible. It's not fun. But the edits app has been really nice because I can just download it natively really easily. And so when I share it to other things, like I embed all of my Instagram reels into my blog posts to make them just easier for people to read, give more value and bounce off of. Or I'll share them to YouTube too every once in a while. It just makes it easy to be able to download it right from that app to be able to share it to Instagram re edited a few times. Like I'll go back and since I have that file and edits. So this is like a practical tip. If you're going to be doing short form content and then also doing ads, I will record a different ending. So in a lot of my talking heads I'll say comment homemaker and I'll send you some free episodes to try. Well, that's not what I want them to do with my, my ads.
- [40:59]
Jason
Okay.
- [41:00]
Cheyenne Bullock
I want them to click the link. So I'll record a different ending where it's like click learn more if you want to have a clean house on autopilot. And then I will be able to go back to that original video that did well on my Instagram and I can edit it and add that little clip at the end, save it and upload it for my ads. So it is nice to Use the edits app for that.
- [41:20]
Jason
Got it, Got it. Now, in addition to the membership, it looks like there's also some digital products, some printables for sale. Is that a decent chunk of the business? Is that only on your website? Is that on Etsy as well? What's going on on the digital product side?
- [41:35]
Cheyenne Bullock
It's only on my website. It does make a big difference because every once in a while I just do have people that really only want the written routine. That was something that was important to me. Is that my cleaning routine be so good and so helpful that it can stand on its own. It doesn't need the radio shows. And that's definitely been the case for people. But it's nice because it's a great upsell. So whenever I'm running ads, the membership, when they buy the membership, it does upsell them. It has an option for either an order bump bump, and then it'll also redirect them if they purchase and they don't do the order bump. To get more information about the printable bundle, it has a video of how I use all of the printables as a working mom to stay organized and like a little sales pitch. And that helps me get that great return on ad spend as well. Because they might buy that printable bundle that's like really discounted. I think it's like 47 instead of 80 or something like that. That. That helps a lot.
- [42:31]
Jason
Oh, okay. Yeah. Are you ever promoting those directly to people who don't want. Don't want the recurring thing, but they're like, I like Cheyenne. I want to. I want to support her. I want. I'm into what she's saying, but I don't know if I'm really going to plug Old Timey Radio into my head. Besides, I want something absolutely.
- [42:49]
Cheyenne Bullock
So every once in a while I will record a reel or do a post that just directly sells the printable bundle so that people know that it exists. Exists. I really use the pinned posts feature on Instagram to my advantage and I make sure that on the pinned posts, I have a post that has reviews of my product. I have a post that kind of talks about a pain point and how my product solves it. And then I have one that also ties into my printable bundle somehow and so that I can kind of hit across all of those in order to, when new people find me, kind of increase those conversions.
- [43:24]
Jason
Okay, so you'd have three pinned posts across the top and make sure you're hitting those high points.
- [43:29]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And in my content in general, I've learned that you really need to hit every once in a while those four Ps, you know, pain. The pain points that your target audience is experiencing promise like the transformation that you're promising them or that they desire. So from drowning in the mess to waking up to a clean house or something like that. Proof, so proof that you've gotten this result, that of that promise that you've solved that pain point for other people. So that's going to be your testimonials, telling stories and case studies and then process where you're going to walk them through the actual process of either using your product or tips that you have and like hacks and how tos in general. And so I try to hit on one of those every day in my three posts that I post.
- [44:16]
Nick Loper
Got it.
- [44:17]
Jason
That's cool. Those are, those are different from the four Ps of marketing that I was thinking you were going to go with. So that's really good. What's a day in the line life look like? Trying to keep up with the content demands both inside and outside of the membership and running a house and being a mom and like there's a lot of. There's a lot of stuff going on where it's like, this is definitely not a side hustle anymore.
- [44:36]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yeah, it is full time now and I was able to bring my husband home to help me and that's really been a big help with increasing that content because when it was just me and no help, I didn't quite have the time.
- [44:47]
Jason
Yeah. Well, congrats on retiring him, so to speak.
- [44:50]
Cheyenne Bullock
Oh, thank you. It's been a dream come true. That's what we've always dreamt of because he was. Would just. We always missed each other so much and it's nice to be able to spend time as a family now.
- [45:01]
Jason
Very cool. Do you have a guesstimate of the hours you're putting in on a. On a daily basis?
- [45:06]
Cheyenne Bullock
So I timed what my actual workflow takes and it's about three hours of work sometimes there's days where I will get into a little bit of a creative rut and it takes me a little bit longer or I run into technical difficulties, but it takes me about 20 minutes to schedule the three reels. Yeah. Okay. I'll just give you like the typical everyday thing because I do batch content, batch record days that will take all day.
- [45:30]
Nick Loper
Okay.
- [45:30]
Cheyenne Bullock
Or I will batch edit like that footage that I recorded, which would take pretty much all day. But the average day that I do I'll wake up, you know, we spend a little time as a family, maybe do breakfast. I'll either do a cleaning routine myself because I use my products, or I'll turn one on for my husband or just give him the list, you know, if it's a crazy busy day, put him to work. Exactly. Yep. He's a lot of help with that. So once that's all done, I will get to work and I will schedule and edit my three reels first. Usually I'm a few days ahead, so I'm actually scheduling a few days from now instead. And that takes me 20 minutes or so. Some days less, some days more because I keep all my footage in a folder and it's ready to go. And then after that, it takes me in about an hour and 10 minutes, hour and 15 minutes to turn three reels that have already been published into blog posts. That's probably one of the most time intensive things that I do. And then after that, I will record and edit a podcast. Whether it's I pick one of those blog posts to turn into a podcast script real quick, or I also have podcast scripts already loaded that I've kind of just generated whenever I feel like it or get an idea, I'll. Or have time, I'll just kind of add some into a. Into a folder.
- [46:40]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [46:41]
Cheyenne Bullock
And it takes me from, you know, recording to posting. I kind of do shorter episodes. It usually takes me about 35, 40 minutes.
- [46:49]
Jason
This is for the public facing, the content marketing side, the public podcast. Okay.
- [46:54]
Cheyenne Bullock
Yeah. So this is for the public podcast because I try to always start my workday with marketing because that's one of the most important things you do. I will do customer service too, but that can mess with my creativity a little bit. So I will handle the urgent stuff and then wait for customer service towards the end. But first things first. I put in the time on marketing because that's what keeps the business going. So I'll do that outward facing public podcast. I'll write out an email that takes like 15 minutes promoting that podcast episode. And then also the links for those three blog posts or whatever, like in the PS field and send that out.
- [47:30]
Jason
Is there anybody else on your team?
- [47:32]
Cheyenne Bullock
No, it's just me. Wow. Yeah, it's a lot. It's really a lot of focused work. And it's like. And after that, I still have to do Pinterest pins, which also take about 30 minutes.
- [47:42]
Jason
Yeah.
- [47:42]
Cheyenne Bullock
And oh my goodness, sometimes I'll alternate. Like, I'll do a podcast episode one day and then I'll do the YouTube video the next day, and that takes maybe an hour or an hour and a half instead of. Instead of the, you know, 30 minutes that a podcast episode will take. So I alternate days on that. It's a lot of work.
- [48:00]
Jason
It sounds like it. I'm impressed, though. It's a really cool business. I was going to ask what's been the biggest surprise over the last two or three years of running it.
- [48:08]
Cheyenne Bullock
Oh, my goodness. You know, I've always been confident in my product, but I think it still humbles me every day when I get emails and comments from people saying how much it has changed their lives to you, the cleaning routines, how much it has helped them, how much it has helped their relationships. I got an email from a girl once saying that she turns it on with her husband and they do it together. And he loves the radio shows, so he's down. And she feels so supportive and cared for, and it's like a bonding time for them. I've had moms who have kids with disabilities or lots of children that are struggling with health issues, but they still, you know, want to have a clean home and a clean space and how much it's helped them to be able to have a system that. That they don't even have to think about it. So I think that's the thing that surprised me the most. It's not a very technical, detailed thing, but it does always humble me to see how needed it is and what a big difference it's making.
- [49:03]
Jason
There's something really powerful about these audio clues or audio routines. And it's taken a page out of morning radio playbook where it's this segment and then leads to this segment. There's, like, a comfort and familiarity with that. The first time we put on, like, the cleaning song for the kids, they must have done this at their preschool. It was like, could not get them to pick up anything, right? But this song comes on, and it's like they're little automaton robots all of a sudden. Like, oh, I guess this is what we do now. I was like, this is magical. Only lasted for a week or two before I was like, what do you guys try to pull on us? But it was really, really interesting there. And as a podcaster, you kind of understand, too, the power of an audio connection. Spending time in people's earbuds, but really exciting. Domestic daydreams.com radio.domestic daydreams.com Links is a cool place to go to see some resources that Cheyenne has. What's next for you? Where do you want to take this thing?
- [49:57]
Cheyenne Bullock
Oh my goodness. I next would probably be to write a book. I have some interest in me writing a book that I've been getting lately and I would love to do that to give some simple, easy tips to people and get a little bit of reach.
- [50:12]
Jason
Are you going to self publish? You got publishers reaching out to you?
- [50:15]
Cheyenne Bullock
I've got publishers reaching out. So I'm really excited about that. And then also going hard on YouTube. I really want to be able to, to reach people on there.
- [50:24]
Jason
Yeah, very good. I mean the channel is at 5,000 subscribers. It's not nothing. But there is definitely an ecosystem on YouTube for cleaning and cleaning routines and decluttering. So I'd see some opportunity over there as well. Cheyenne, this has been awesome. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for side Hustle Nation.
- [50:44]
Cheyenne Bullock
Make sure marketing is your number one focus, like every day. And number two, quality. Quality but quantity. Go hard on getting yourself that on doubling down on whatever it is that's already working for you in your business. And just don't overthink it. Just if it's posting on Instagram or Facebook, just press post, put it out there because you need that data. You need to just be able to reach people or whatever it is. Make sure that you're just focusing on getting out there on learning and on doubling down on whatever's working in your business. Because the answer is is simple yet hard. Usually whatever the problem you feel like you're experiencing is, it's a simple answer. Do more of what's working. But doing more is hard. So make that happen.
- [51:36]
Jason
Yeah, yeah. There's only so many hours in the day. Sure.
- [51:38]
Nick Loper
Yeah.
- [51:38]
Jason
Make marketing your number one focus. You gotta increase that surface area of potential attention for people to find you. I loved that angle of well, if only 1 out of 10, 1 out of 15 is going to hit, why don't I do 15 more often? How could I increase the frequency of that? I love the retargeting angle to. Yeah, people aren't going to buy on the first time. Or some people are, but a lot of people aren't. So how do I get this in front of them again and again and just make it easy and obvious for them to take that next step was kind of cool. At the very beginning we talked about this intersection of things that you were interested in. You know, the 1950s housewife style, the cleaning routines, a broad pain point, point. And then these old time radio shows like trying to find that intersection. What got me thinking was like I wonder if there's like old time, you know, baseball radio broadcasts or so Just like it's background noise, you know. Okay, it's a three two count. It lasts for three hours. So like there's probably a huge archive of stuff like that. Really cool creative way to get free raw materials and intersperse your own personality and stuff on top of that. If you are listening to this and you want more side Hustle show in your life, we'd love to have you binge on the archives. Hundreds of episodes to choose from. If you want a more curated approach, I want to invite you to grab your own personalized playlist at Hustle Show. Just answer a few short multiple choice questions and it'll spit back out 8 to 10 of our greatest hits episodes based on your answers that you can add to your device. Go learn what works and go make some more money. Big thanks to Cheyenne for sharing her insight. Thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up Sidehustlenation.com deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Case that is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. So fire off that text message to somebody who needs to hear this and I know they will appreciate it as well. Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen and I'll catch you in the next edition of the side Hustle Show.
- [53:38]
Nick Loper
Hustle on the.