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Episode 242 - The Secret to Doubling Your Business
265 Plays3 days ago
This is a conversation you won't want to miss, with Bonnie Christine, as we chat about what it looked like to double her business, and what she's focused on to continue to grow it.
Today's episode is sponsored by BDOW!, formerly Sumo, the very best intelligent form and pop-up tool for your website. Use the code DAVEYANDKRISTA to save 20% on your subscription.
As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check 'em out over at https://daveyandkrista.com/secret-doubling-business-btb-242/. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts.
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Transcript
Bonnie's Secret to Business Growth
00:00:00
Speaker
That's kind of my secret. If you double your list, you'll double your business. You're listening to The Brands That Book Show, a podcast for creative entrepreneurs who want practical tips and strategies to build engaging brands and craft high converting websites. We're your hosts, Davey and Krista, co-founders of a brand and website design agency specializing in visual brand design and show it websites. You're listening to The Brands That Book Show.
Getting to Know Bonnie Christine
00:00:27
Speaker
Today, I'm sharing an interview I recorded while at ConvertKit's Craft and Commerce Conference with Bonnie Christine. Many of you are probably already familiar with Bonnie, but if not, she's an artist, pattern designer, and educator. And let me tell you all, she is the real deal.
00:00:44
Speaker
Not only is she a genius business person, but she's also super genuine. And she's got this gift of being really present in whatever conversation that she's in. And of all the people that have been able to meet this year and interview this year, she's up at the top of the list.
Bonnie's Business Journey and Future Strategies
00:00:59
Speaker
This is a conversation you won't want to miss as we chat about what it looked like to double her business and what she's focused on to continue to grow it. As always, links and resources can be found in the show notes. Check them out at DavianCristin.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review over at Apple Podcasts. It really helps.
00:01:19
Speaker
Today's episode is sponsored by Badal, formerly Sumo, the very best intelligent form and pop-up tool for your website. Deliver the right message to the right visitor using our advanced targeting rules. Whether you want to display a pop-up to only new visitors or generate a unique discount code for those who subscribe to your list, you can get the job done using Badal.
00:01:44
Speaker
One of my personal favorite features is the Show a Tab function. Basically, how this works is when visitors close the popup, it minimizes to the bottom of the page so that visitors can open it back up if they'd like, but it also remains out of their way while they browse. You can check out how that feature works over at the Davey and Krista website. Also, use the code Davey and Krista to save 20% on your subscription. Create an experience on your website using Badao.
Bonnie's Fabric Design Origins and Challenges
00:02:13
Speaker
Well, I want to start by just saying that so one of our team members, Adriana, she talks about you a lot. My wife has shared about you. So, like, I've heard about you repeatedly in, like, our own marketing meetings. It's like, well, Bonnie Christine, you know? And, you know, I mean, like, that's great at all. But to finally sit down with you at this conference has been a real gift.
00:02:33
Speaker
And I mean, you're just kind of a joy to be around, you know? And so it's been fun to go back to them and been like, hey, I got to spend some serious time hanging out with Bonnie and learning from her. Day one, you shared some stuff that I think was just sort of mind blowing. But I want to back up a little bit and just start with your story. You know, one of the things that happened day one that I thought was funny it was somebody was like, so you own a wallpaper company company, right? And it's like we've all been there as entrepreneurs. so Like, you know, people ask, so you do the YouTube thing, you know, and it's like, well, not really. So anyways, tell us how you got started, you know, how you found yourself in this world. It's like when someone is like, you know, we sit next to someone on the airplane, and like, what do you do? And I'm like, here we go. How much time do you have? So my story just really started out of a love for creativity. And my biggest goal was to become a fabric designer.
00:03:23
Speaker
I grew up in a, my mom had a quilt shop I was always in as a kid and then I went back and worked for her when I graduated from college. No idea what fabric design or surface design was. I was working with her though and some of my responsibility was to meet with reps to decide what fabric we wanted to keep in the store.
00:03:43
Speaker
And one day it hit me, oh my goodness, this is someone's job. And it just sunk into my soul, like this is my ideal career. Only problem was right like I had no idea what I was doing, how to get started. I had gone to business school, like all this stuff. So I kind of set out to Learn on my own was really difficult. I wasted tons of time learning the hard way, learning things I didn't need to learn
Education and Building a Creative Company
00:04:10
Speaker
and all that. But at the end of about two years, I licensed my first contract as a fabric designer and that was in 2012. So that's my heart is surface design. So that is creating artwork for anything that needs a repetition. So fabric, wallpaper, tape, ribbon, gift wrap, things like that.
00:04:30
Speaker
i Education came as a surprise to me though I did kind of come through that whole season and I was really frustrated at how hard it was like the whole industry just felt very quiet you know like people were but holding it close to their chest and so I had an opportunity to start teaching in 2014 and just really had a heart for sharing everything that I had learned and that just kind of led from one thing to the next so today we run an education company for creatives and specialized in surface design. Yeah. Yeah. I think like so many creatives, it sounds like your interests are relatively multifaceted. You know, you have a lot going on in your business. How do you manage both those brands? I mean, there's obviously overlap between the two, but yeah, how do you do that? That's a great question. Yeah.
Balancing Design and Entrepreneurship
00:05:20
Speaker
It's one that we're like very much figuring out so the vast majority of my business is surface design but we do have this other kind of part which is creative entrepreneurship and my podcast is focused on creative entrepreneurship that's not specific to surface design and so there are kind of like these two sides to the business and it's a topic that the team talks about all the time is how do they go together, how do they really work well together, and then when do we need to kind of separate? And so I would say that's something that we're kind of in the messy middle of right now, yeah and it's kind of new to us. But my heart is there for both of them. One of the ways that I manage though is through the team. so
00:05:59
Speaker
I love talking about this topic because I was a solopreneur for like 10 years too long. And so I started building a team in 2019 and there is 12 of us today and it it's just the wildest, most beautiful part of what I get to do is have these women come alongside me and do it alongside me. And we all just have this huge heart for I mean, our our heart number one focus is to allow creatives to make a living doing something that they love. And that just means we get to show up to work every day, work, yeah and dive in and love what we do and love hearing what it means to people.
00:06:37
Speaker
Yeah. And I love that even though you don't have it totally figured out how these things, you know, coexist that you're just doing it. You know, I think that's like half the, yeah, that's like half the battle, right? It's just like maybe not waiting until you feel like, you know, you're totally ready. So those early years, especially you'd mentioned like, you know, you just felt like you wasted a ton of time, yeah but you know, it got you to where you were. And my guess is that the business background has helped maybe a little bit.
00:07:00
Speaker
Yeah, oh, I regretted going to business school so much. I mean, I was filling out an application to go back to college for design school. And I think I got to the essay. I was like, you know, what if I just try? And I will never forget this time I walked into a,
00:07:19
Speaker
like a fine art gallery. And I was lamenting to the man who owned it, kind of, that I wish that I would have gone to art school. And he said, yeah, but you know, you could be the best artist in the world. And if you don't know how to market your work, you'll never be successful. And that just immediately kind of turned my thinking around. And I actually love that I think the opposite is true as well. Like maybe you're not the best artist in the world, but if you know how to grow and build a business, you'll be successful as well.
00:07:48
Speaker
And so I just really embraced that part of it. And I'm so, so glad that I did. I think it's interesting. I feel like God really doesn't waste anything along the way. You know, sometimes you think this doesn't make sense. And then all of a sudden you're like, I see what you did there. Yeah, absolutely. Well, thinking back along your journey, what are some of the things like if you go back in time and you say, OK, Bonnie, these are the things you need to focus on in order to build your business, what would some of those things be?
Lessons in Business Growth
00:08:15
Speaker
Lots of things that I waited way too long to do. One would definitely be to get help in the business as soon as I possibly could. I just waited way too long. We kind of already covered that one, but as soon as you can start focusing on doing only the things that you can do,
00:08:34
Speaker
your business will grow much faster if you can kind of hang out in that zone of genius, if you will. The second one would be grow my email list. So I started my business in 2009. In 2017, that's eight years. I had 4,500 people on my newsletter list with a 6% open rate, Davey. Wow. Yes, I did. Okay.
00:09:02
Speaker
And that was just collected from like some subscribed in my, you know, they were just cold. They didn't know who I was, right? And I was just coming out of having a couple of children. I remember feeling like the whole world had passed me by because I kept hearing about this email list thing. I didn't have time to wrap my head around it. And I kind of came out of that, like ready to hit the ground running in late 2017. In six months, I doubled my list to 8,000.
00:09:30
Speaker
And I got my open rate to 62%. And ever since, I've doubled my list every year. And that's kind of my secret. If you double your list, you'll double your business. And so it went from 8 to 16 to 32 to 64. It's at over 200,000 today.
00:09:48
Speaker
And with that, your revenue doubles. And so it's not like your revenue doubles and then your list doubles, it's all generated from the list. And so my goal has always been to have more email subscribers than I do like Instagram followers, even though I love Instagram. My goal is always to get that next level of connectedness in email. And so it's been the best thing and just um wish I would have started it
Growth Strategies: Organic vs Paid Traffic
00:10:15
Speaker
much earlier. Yeah. Well, tell us a little bit about how you've been able to grow your list or double your list each year, because that's incredible. And I mean, did they teach you that in business school? Like where did that? Yeah. Yeah. So tell us you know a little bit about doing that.
00:10:29
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So I would say it is, I mean, I built my whole business organically, right? And I think that as creators, we're so proud of organic growth. And at some point there's this line to where like, we're negative about non-organic growth, but I have a different perspective.
00:10:46
Speaker
I think organic growth validates that you're doing something well, right? Like you figured it out, you have a solution to a problem people have and they're happy with it, right? So organic growth is a great validator of your idea. As soon as you have that, you need to pour fuel on the fire.
00:11:03
Speaker
And so that's really where all the growth has, I mean, not all the growth, but I would probably say 80% of the growth is from paid traffic. And I remember reading something in a book called, I think it was in Your Best Year by Lisa Jacobs, who Full Circle is now my COO.
00:11:20
Speaker
And Lisa said if you have something that you want more eyes on you can get them all you have to do is pay for them and that was just like the littlest oh Moment for me. And so we just started what we had that was already working. We just started to bring more people to it and And I think what a gift it is to be able to do paid traffic today because it wasn't that long ago where we were doing one to many, right? So you were buying a billboard or a magazine ad or like a commercial.
00:11:51
Speaker
yeah or a newspaper ad and hoping that what maybe 1% of people might be interested. And today, ah we get to target the exact perfect person. And so I'm just not mad about algorithm and on all of that stuff. I think we live in such an incredible time where we can get more eyes of the right the right eyes on what we're doing. And I love it both ways. I love it for my business. I also love that what I see is like the things that are you know relevant to me
Using Instagram for Business
00:12:19
Speaker
as well. I think it's such a cool time.
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And music to my ears as a former agency owner, you know, so big believer in paid advertising and the power of of that. I want to ask you too about like kind of this deepening connectedness, right? You have your list. It's growing by double each year. There's obviously a ton of value in that. One of the things I also admire about you is that, you know, like if somebody sends you a DM on Instagram, it's you, you know, like you're, you're responding to people. Tell us a little bit about how you've been using Instagram to build your business.
00:12:50
Speaker
Yeah, Instagram, you know, to be honest, I had fallen out of love with Instagram. Yeah. Instagram is fun and beautiful and also so much work. And so we have this thing we say in the business all the time, is the juice worth the squeeze?
00:13:06
Speaker
And it was like, really, I don't know if the juice was worth the squeeze because we were squeezing a lot for a little bit of juice, meaning tons of time going into content creation for something that you know is here in a moment and gone in the next. And so we've really had to step back and think about what is our mission, such a beautiful way to like spread the word and about what you're doing and and a beautiful way to connect, but how do you really make it work for your business?
00:13:34
Speaker
And so part of what we've been doing is using direct messages to talk to people. What a concept, yeah right? Crazy. Like for a couple of years, not that I was frustrated by DMs, but it was just another thing to like make sure we were keeping up on.
00:13:50
Speaker
And now we're using DMs in a way where I can really say, like, where are you in your business? Let's see if I have anything that can help you. And so we have, you know, you can imagine like an Ascension model where we've got a ton of free stuff and some low cost, mid cost and high cost options that also kind of travel up in the amount of like transformation that you're looking for.
00:14:11
Speaker
And so just through conversation, I can start recommending and plugging people in to exactly what they might need in my business and how I can genuinely help. And it's just been the most fun thing because as you can imagine, as you grow, I think as the founder or the visionary, you get further and further away from that kind of frontline direct conversation. And that's really why we all started our business. like we love it it just is at some point It's not possible to be the one answering everything. And so for me, I started thinking about Instagram and DM as like my personal way to have that direct communication with my people. yeah And it's been really beautiful, like beautiful conversations. So fun to hear about where people are, the insane like success stories that come in. It's just been really fun.
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah. One thing, you know, to wrap up here, I want to ask you about is just generally your perspective. You know, even in talking about Instagram, you're, you know, you're talking about how Instagram loss is fun. You're not the only person I've heard that from, right? I mean, I think that's something that all of us have experienced, but as you talk, you know, you talk about the gift in this and, you know, making Instagram fun again and looking to connect deeper with people, you know, where does that perspective come
Values and Customer Relationships
00:15:27
Speaker
from? You know,
00:15:28
Speaker
Yeah. Well, our heart is very much in making someone, we have all these values that we run our business by. And one of them is how do we want someone to feel after they interact with us in any capacity?
00:15:43
Speaker
whether it's ah read an Instagram post or a DMS or send us an email. and We always want to leave them feeling better than they did when they came. Meaning even if they come frustrated or they come with a question or they you know it's not the right timing or something, we're always trying to leave someone with something that's helpful, something that can still move them forward and them knowing that we care. We're not just in this for the business. We're absolutely in this for the transformation. and so Our heart is really focused on seeing the creative really lean into their like creating the beauty that they want to see come alive in the world and then also being able to make their financial goals and their time freedom goals successful from their work as well.
00:16:27
Speaker
Yeah, there are so many things that I'd like to ask you about. And so at some point, we're going to have to make that happen, you know, just to close here. I think one of the things that I really appreciate about you is that you can build this business at scale and also be genuine and authentically, you know, connect with people and live out your values. And that has been a real gift to me and encouragement to me at this conference. So thank you so much for that. Thank you so much, David. Yeah.
00:16:56
Speaker
Thanks for tuning in to the Bransa Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing, leaving a review on Apple Podcasts, and sharing this episode with others. For show notes and other resources, head on over to DavianChrista.com.