Podcast - Nora Conrad: Recent Episodes
Nora Conrad
Business, productivity and serving others - Nora Conrad combines her faith, business and organization tactics to help you build a more productive business built to serve others. With business tips, bible studies, and online tools, Nora helps you make the most of your time and build something you love.
Are you thinking of hiring a brand designer? Listen to this first ;) Search for branding advice on Pinterest for a few minutes and I’m guessing you’ll find one consistent piece of advice: hire a professional to get it right the first time. Before we get into this too much - I want to start with a disclaimer - every business is different. Every products, service, owner and timeline varies.
This advice I’m about to give you will not be the best option for all of you. For those of you who just took out a $50,000 business loan to fund your new product development - get professional branding. But if you’re a solopreneur starting up a blog or a photography business or a freelance business - dropping $2000 on a professional brand is just plain silly.
First I want to talk about WHEN you should invest in professional branding, then we’ll talk about what to do until you get to that point.
- If you have more than $5,000 to invest in your new business, branding and website design are a great place to start.
- If you’re producing more than 100 units of a product, invest in some branding.
- If you have at least 50 paying customers lined up before your launch, invest in branding.
- If you really really really want pro branding and you have saved up the money to invest in it already, get some branding.
- If you’ve been in business for awhile and you want to rebrand with some professional branding, hire someone.
If none of these sounds like your situation, there’s this really cool option for you - DIY it. I know there’s some of you who hate the DIY trend. Leave the work to professionals, right? And some of you love this trend! You’ve built your own home all from youtube tutorials. I think the magic spot for DIY projects in somewhere right in the middle of things. If it’s going to cost you more time and money to do it yourself than it would be to hire someone, you need to hire someone.
Now - I want to make one thing very clear when I talk about a Do-it-yourself brand. If you have no prior experience in design - your logo, your website and your branding WILL NOT be very strong when you start out. You will not get clients paying you thousands of dollars to help them.
Paying someone to do your branding professionally is a great investment because you can grow your business quickly, earn some credit and attract paying customers - hence “investment”. But if you’re starting out with a small easy shop selling jewelry or a mom blog about parenting, or you are starting a small business as a side-hustle - do not go broke in order to invest in something you don’t need yet.
I think there is something important that you learn through building your business on a shoe-string budget. When you start small and you purposefully grow your business slowly, you have a lot more freedom and flexibility to learn from your mistakes and make adjustments to your business. I’m going to share my story as an example of why DIYing my branding was the best thing I ever did.
When I was in middle school my friend and I started a website called blueberry design. We create graphics for Neopets guilds. Shoutout to my fellow 90’s kids who were in the prime of the Neopet days. From the time I was 13 until I was 19 - I taught myself HTML, CSS, photoshop, in design and illustrator. I knew the basics and I could create a simple website in an hour or two. When I was 20 and I started Nora Conrad .com I decided to forego the investment of branding and design my own site on Squarespace.
There are two key elements to why I designed my own brand #1 - I understood the basics of branding. I knew what it was about and I had some incredible brands to learn what good branding looked like, paper and oats, spruce rd, by Regina and Elle & co are just a few examples. #2 - I knew the basics of websites. I didn’t need to hire someone to build my site on Squarespace because I knew how to customize my own site with HTML & CSS.
If you don’t understand what good design looks like, and if you don’t know at least a little bit of HTML, designing your own brand will have it’s speed bumps. Even with my own business, I’ve re-branded 3 times since I started my original site in 2012. But through those years of testing, failing and learning - I really began to understand my brand on a level I would never have been able to explain if I had hired someone in 2012. I’ve grown up and changed my business a lot in the last 5 years - and if I had dropped $2000 on a brand design when I was first getting started, I never would have started my coaching business, which now makes up for 80% of my income.
Branding is important in business - it tells people who you are and how you can help. Branding is the face of your business. But it’s also not the end-all-be-all in the business world. It’s better to have a crap logo and a stellar course than it is to have a beautifully designed site and fluff-filled blog posts.
Branding matters, first impressions matter - but learning how to research, teach yourself, learn from failures and come back from flopped launches will do more good for your business than any logo ever could. So - if you still go with a professional designer - go in with a clear idea and a well-planned business. And find ways to DIY other aspects of your business while it’s still small. You won’t have the luxury of failing without anyone noticing as your business grows.
A start here page is a simple way to funnel new members into your most important pages. It makes your site easier to navigate and it's a great asset for all business owners.
When someone comes to your website for the first time, what kind of impression do you want to have on them? Sometimes as business owners, we become so comfortable with our own site and our own service offerings, that we THINK our sites are easier to navigate than they are. A start here page is a simple way to invite new readers to stick around and explore all you have to offer.
If you think your site is perfect the way it is, I challenge you to test out Peek. You can go to Peek to get a free video of total strangers navigating your site. This is an incredibly valuable tool for business owners, because, like I said, we all think our sites are easier to navigate than they really are.
Use some free user testing to see what people really think of your site. Fair warning, you might need tough skin for this. Some people might hate your site, keep in mind, not every user who sends a video will be within your target market, so take advice with a grain of salt.
Let’s look at a couple reasons why you should create a “start here” page
- Having a link to a start here page is an easy and obvious first step for new visitors. If you were new to a site, it’s very clearly the first page you should go to. This makes it easy for you to redirect those new visitors exactly where you want them to go. A start here page is the perfect beginning to your sales funnel and it’s an easy direction for your visitors
- It’s easy to set up. Creating this page doesn’t have to be hard. On my own page, which you can see as an example on my start page, took about 20 minutes to build. I created graphics using Canva, then listed each area of my website with short descriptions of each link so that visitors knew what they were clicking on.
- It makes a great homepage. If you don’t already have a home page on your site, a start here page can easily become a home page for your business. Add on a newsletter signup and a little blurb about your business and you have a beautiful way to welcome someone to your site.
While you create your page, you might realize some ways to simplify your navigation or offerings. When I created my page, I realized there are a lot of options for someone to join a community from my site. So, I combined all those options into one Facebook page where users can connect with each other and share resources.
I also found that my library page, recommendations, and favorite tools page all had the same purpose, so I combined them together.
While you create your page, look for ways to simplify your site. Can you combine any pages together? Maybe you can delete an entire page. Maybe you’ll find that you’re missing important pages like an FAQ, a contact page or a blog archive.
This simple task can change how productive your day becomes. Here's a simple way to build discipline and start your morning off right. If you didn’t know - I’m a morning person. I wake up at 4 am Monday through Friday and at 6 am on the weekends. I like waking up early because I can get some of my hardest tasks done early before anyone else is awake and the distractions of the day begin. One of the first things I do every single day, no matter what time I wake up, is make my bed. This is weird - but hear me out. In a commencement speech at the University of Texas in 2014, William H McRaven, a US Navy Admiral, shared one of his tips to a successful life is making the bed every morning. By making your bed every day, you’re accomplishing just one small and simple task. That sense of pride and accomplishment, no matter how small, is the first step to a productive day.
Making your bed does a few amazing things that I’ll run through, but this podcast isn’t about just making your bed. This is about productivity and discipline. Discipline is one of the most important things you can learn and use in business and in life. It’s the stuff that makes a college dropout into a successful millionaire. Discipline is the difference between a college football player and an NFL player. Discipline is what takes you from average to successful. And discipline is grown through small decisions. Every habit you develop, every choice you make, every task you complete can either grow your discipline or fight against it. Making your bed is a small, quick step to building discipline and making every day more productive.
- Making your bed makes it easier to not crawl back into it. If you’re trying to wake up earlier and be productive in the mornings, having your room be a little more clean is one easy step to success in the mornings.
- In the Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg, he says “Making your bed every morning is correlated with better productivity, a greater sense of well-being and stronger skills at sticking with a budget” - your bed being made will not magically bring you more customers or fix your bank account, but it does lead to better habits in your life and a more disciplined mind.
- Making the bed keeps the dust, hair and other allergens away from your sheets. A bed that’s made also helps your room look cleaner. The rest of your room could be spotless but an unmade bed makes the whole room look half-finished. Making the bed is the first step to a more clutter-free living space.
Personally, I wake up, get my coffee started and take one minute to make the bed. By the time the coffee is done, I’m sitting at my table ready to start the miracle morning (more on this in future episodes because I’m a HUGE fan of this morning routine).
I’m going to end this episode with a book recommendation. I’m a huge book reader, this year I’ve been reading a book a week (technically I’m listening to a book a week with Audible, but you get the idea). This week I want to recommend that you read Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. It’s an incredible book and a great way to start building better habits and working on your discipline.
It doesn't' matter how organized your desk is, if your online space is a mess, your business will not run the way it should. Here are 5 ways to organize your online space. 01. Your email inboxSign up for the inbox zero ecourse through The Zero Strategy
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Your contacts (set up a CRM)I personally use a combo of 17Hats and Google Contacts. Insightly is a great free option if you're looking for something a little more robust.
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Your calendarGet google calendar and start using it. Seriously.
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Your finances (Budgetsimple and wave accounting)Get your business finances in order with Wave and then get your personal life under control with BudgetSimple.
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Social media (remove and unfollow)Unfollow, unfriend, unsubscribe - minimize what your see in your feeds to only the things you love or the things you need to run your business. While you're at it - delete some of those apps on your phone.
RebeccaLynn Bologna of the Badass Moms interviewed Nora to learn more about productivity. Here's the recording! You can download the free goal worksheet HERE and check out RebeccaLynn HERE.
Being real & honest is the best way to grow your business. Everyone wants to be seen as trustworthy and honest in the online world. It’s how we get business and how we can ask customers to pay us upfront without losing their interest. Being transparent online helps you establish that trust with the people who can help your business grow.
Trust is gained slowly and can be lost quickly if you’re not careful with how you act online. So, today we’re going to talk about the do’s and don’t of online trust building and how you can be more transparent with your audience.
Be real about your mistakesOne of the best ways to lose trust is to lie. I see too many business owners try to cover up mistakes in fear of backlash. In reality, admitting mistakes and being upfront with an apology can actually build trust.
If you saw a blogger copy another writer’s content - and you called them out on it, what would you prefer? That they be upfront and apologize or that they remove the content and say they don’t know what you’re talking about?
This doesn’t just apply to mistakes in copyright - you can also be honest about mistakes in past choices. I made the mistake of starting a blog without doing any kind of target research. For years I wasted my time blogging about a million topics with no purpose. This is a mistake I can share with my audience and they can use it as a tool to learn.
When you share your mistakes, people know they can trust you, to be honest about past shortfalls. You’ll also be able to forgive your own mistakes easier and allow other people to share in your lesson.
Be honest in your contentA few months back I did an entire periscope about why I didn’t like CoSchedule and I preferred Buffer. Now, I’m using CoSchedule daily and I haven’t touched my buffer account in months. I could delete all my old content about buffer and pretend that CoSchedule was alway my number one tool, or I can be honest about why my mind was changed. The internet changes incredibly quick, and our preferences change almost as quickly.
Don’t be afraid to contradict your past content for what is true now. It would be wrong of me to swear that coschedule is the best tool ever when just a few months ago, buffer was the right tool for the job. Being honest about your changing business and updating your position is important.
We don’t want to be in the same profession as we did when we were 4. Our preferences change and our tools change. Documenting those changes help other people follow your path at a much smoother pace. Instead of wasting 4 months with a sub-par tool, my audience can now look at my content and decide for themselves whether they prefer buffer or coschedule.
Being honest in your content can be as simple as keeping your old content on your blog.
Use your social media to its full potential by giving followers a glimpse of your blogging skills. Instagram is one of the largest social media platforms in the world and it’s not surprising because it combines two things we love. Photos and short stories. For a long time, I was not using my Instagram account to its full potential, and I don’t want anyone else to make that same mistake. So today, we’re going to talk about how to use your Instagram account to microblog.
Microblogging is just mini blog posts. For my own account, I like to use it as a more personal platform. I rarely talk about myself or my life on my site, so my Instagram account allows me to share business tips and my personality in one post.
In order to make the most of your account, there are three steps that you’ll need to take to microblog.
- Take photos ahead of timeThis is pretty easy to do at home or through your day. Get a white poster board or some contact paper. Take photos of your office supplies, your home decor, notes from workshops and anything else that applies to your business. I like to take around 100-150 photos at a time, and edit them all at once using my iPhone app, VSCO cam. It’s free and easy to edit everything quick.
Once I’m done editing I save all my photos to the cloud and hop on my computer. Which leads us to the next step -
- Write content in bulkWhen you’re blogging regularly, you typically write one post at a time, so this can get hard to get used to. When you’re microblogging on Instagram, you want your posts to flow well together. You want to make sure you’re not repeating content or not explaining ideas well enough.
I usually open a google doc and start writing one post. It might be about starting a blog or using apps for time-saving tips. It can be about any topic you’d like. Once I have 5-10 paragraphs, I break each paragraph into a post. I’ll add any wording that helps the post make sense first, then I’ll add relevant life updates, hashtags and anything else I need for the post to make sense and be helpful.
- Schedule the contentOnce everything is written, I open up Grum.co - this is the tool I use to schedule my Instagram posts. I pick images that best relate to my descriptions and I schedule around 60 posts at a time. I’ll also leave some days empty so I can promote upcoming workshops, exciting life events or just fun posts between my pre-scheduled content.
It’s a pretty simple process. (1) take photos (2) write content (3) schedule posts. But by doing these steps in order and bulk-creating your Instagram posts, you’ll be saving yourself a ton of time and making sure your audience gets business tips that will truly help them as well as entertain them.
That day job you hate might be teaching you skills you'll need in your business. Peek around on Pinterest or any "soloprenuer" blog and you'll probably run into the phrase "Quit your day job" somewhere within 30 seconds. That's the dream, right? Hustle now, so you can live the American dream. Start your own business in your basement and grow it until it becomes your full-time gig?
We all probably want some form of that idea, but too often, we're told to make the leap and not often enough are we told to wait. Today we're going to talk about the advantages of waiting and why you shouldn't quit your day job... yet.
In 2015 my business was growing quick. I finally found my target market, had a great service offering and was growing my list every day. I became obsessed with "make the leap" blog posts and I started reading books about leaving my day job.
Then I read one book that completely changed my outlook on the topic "Quitter by Jon Acuff". It sounded like the perfect book - how and what to do to quit your day job and start your own business. That's exactly what I wanted. As i started reading, though, Acuff introduced an entirely new view on day jobs.
Now, before we go any further into this podcast - I want you to know I 100% recommend "quitter" to any small business owner - even if you've already quit your day job, or if you're 10 years away from quitting. The book will help you appreciate your position so much more than before you read it. That being said, I want to summarize some o f the main ideas and expand on them a little bit to be more specific to us soloprenuers.
- Your day job is stable.I'm guessing one of the reasons you might have a day job right now is to supplement your income. Maybe you're not making enough from your biz right now, or maybe you're making plenty one month and zilch the second month. Either way, having a part-time job offers stability that may not be something you can find in your own business right now. That's obvious, right. So you might think - okay well once I have a stable income in my biz, I'll quit. Let's look past income, though.
Right now, you're the boss of your business. You set your hours, you do the work, you get paid and you pay the bills. If you want to hire a VA next week to help with a big project, you can! No problem. You need to update your website branding, you can bust it out in a couple hours next Saturday. Now - let's take away your stable day job and see how those situations change.
You can't afford a VA anymore - or maybe you can, but the budget is much tighter. If you can't afford the bill, you're not dipping into your day-job income, instead, you're dipping into your grocery budget. You want to change your branding, but if you change too much, no one will recognize you - it can result in a loss of sales for a few weeks and suddenly you're skipping date night because you didn't make enough money that month.
Your day job gives you flexibility, not only based on income but also based in growth. You have the ability to make mistakes and try new things in your biz because if it goes belly-up, your family isn't depending on that income.
This is a flexibility that is taken for granted while you have a day job. Use this time to your advantage! Fire clients you can't stand, update your branding on a whim, double your prices. Take this time to experiment and see what works, before you don't have this luxury.
- The Gap is Smaller than you ThinkOne of the complaints we hear most often is that your day job isn't your "dream job". I have a bit of bad news for you. You probably will never work your dream job. My dream job is to hop around on the moon - but I am terrified of small spaces, not smart enough to become an astronaut and do not have the proper talents to do such a job, even if it did exist. Your dream job needs to be put aside and you need a goal job instead.
My goal job is to work for myself from my home, where I spend 10 hours a week on work and the other 158 hours spending time with my family, traveling and learning new skills. This is obtainable, something I can work towards and a job I actually have the skills to do. Make a goal job. Now, look at your day job in comparison to THAT.
The gap between your day job and your goal job isn't as wide as you might think. Look at the lessons your learning in your day job that can translate to your side-hustle. Are you learning about customer service at your restaurant gig? That can translate into better relationships with your clients. Are you doing data entry or answering emails - ding ding ding, you'll need to do that in your business too.
Start looking for similar tasks in your day job and side hustle and start to improve on them. Find ways to speed up email management. Find great customer service tools that you can use in both jobs. Find a task-management system that works for your day job and a side hustle. Start looking for a connection in your two worlds and soon, you won't be able to stop finding similarities.
On top of those connections, there are general skills like patience, dedication, hustle and time management that you can learn in ANY job. These are skills you can always improve on no matter where you are.
- You can achieve a lot in 3 hours a dayWhen I wanted to quit my job, it wasn't because I was making too much money or that I was feeling overwhelmed. I just wanted more time to work on my business. But, like Tim Ferris explains in 4 hour workweek - if you're given 15 hours to do work, you'll fill those 15 hours with busy work.
If you're given 2 hours to complete a project, you'll probably get it done. One of the best reasons to stay at your day job is because it FORCES you to use your time wisely. It's easy to procrastinate if you have spare time, but if you only have one day to get a blog post written, odds are - you'll get it written.
You can achieve a TON of work in only a few hours each day. There's an entire community built on that idea. But you have to do the work first. If you supplement your income in your day job for awhile, you'll begin to learn how to effectively use time. Then, when that wonderful day does come to quit your day job - you'll be able to replace the time spent at work with vacation, family and fun instead of more hustle.
I hope you'll consider reading "Quitter" if you need some more convincing. Or check out the "3 DAY WORKWEEK" workshop in October for more ideas on making more money with less time.
Write until your hand cramps. Carry a notebook everywhere and see what it can do for your business.
People who wake up earlier are happier and more productive. Here's how to beat that snooze button.
Today we look at Proverbs 31 and how being a proverbs 31 woman can help you grow your business and be an incredible woman.
Ready to expand your team? Here's how I hired my first team members and tips to finding the perfect fit.
You might be breaking these little known rules on social media or your blog. Make sure you're following the rules and keeping your business safe.