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Episode 100: You Asked, We Answered
170 Plays4 years ago
We’ve reached episode 100! Well, technically we've already passed episode 100, if you count the intro and the Founder Series episodes. But regardless, we're excited to celebrate what feels like a big podcasting milestone!
I just want to take a moment and say thank you for listening. I can't tell you how encouraging it is to receive emails and messages from people who listen to the podcast and have shared how it's impacted their business. It's been such a fun project to take on over the last few years, not really knowing where it's going, but it's been so much fun and I've learned so much along the way.
We wrestled a bit with what the topic of episode 100 would be. I knew that Krista had to join me for this episode and we eventually just decided to ask y’all through Facebook and Instagram what questions you had for us. So we spend the episode chatting about all sorts of topics from advice we'd give business owners who are newly full time in their business, to our daily routines and how we manage parenting while working from home, to how Krista got started in website design, and other life updates. We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did.
I've also decided that I want to answer more of your questions during each episode. If you have a question that you'd like me or my guest to answer on the podcast, let us know by sending us a message on our website or by DMing us on Instagram.
For the show notes, go to https://daveyandkrista.com/btb-episode-100/
Recommended
Transcript
Designing a Lifestyle-Aligned Home
00:00:05
Speaker
Somebody asked about like designing the house. One thing I thought that our architect did that was really cool, he asked us how we live our life. So he asked us to write a manifesto, like describing our lifestyle. So we talked about how we work from home. We're talking commune, manifestos. No, I'm just kidding. But he did ask us to write sort of like a house manifesto. Yeah, a house manifesto.
Celebrating 100 Episodes of Brands That Book Show
00:00:28
Speaker
Welcome to the brands that book show where we help creative service based businesses build their brands and find more clients. I'm your host, Davy Jones. We've reached episode 100. Well, technically, we've already passed episode 100 if you count the intro and the founder series episodes. But regardless, we are excited to celebrate what feels like a big podcasting milestone. And I just
00:00:55
Speaker
to take a moment and say thank you for listening. I can't tell you how encouraging it is to receive emails and messages from people who listen to the podcast and I've shared how it's impacted their business. And it's just been such a fun project to take on over the last few years, not really knowing where it's going, but it's been so much fun. And I've learned so much along the way.
00:01:18
Speaker
We wrestled a bit with what the topic of episode 100 would be. I knew that Krista had to join me for this episode and we eventually just decided to ask you all through Facebook and Instagram what questions you had for us. So we spend the episode chatting about all sorts of topics from advice we'd give business owners who are newly full-time in their business to our daily routines and how we manage parenting while working from home to how Krista got started in website design and other life updates.
00:01:47
Speaker
We hope you enjoy this conversation as much as we did. I've also decided that I want to answer more of your questions during each episode. So if you have a question that you'd like me or my guest to answer on the podcast, let us know by sending us a message on our website or by DMing us on Instagram.
Audience Engagement and Feedback
00:02:05
Speaker
Be sure to check out the show notes at DavyandChrista.com for the resources we mentioned during the episode, and I want to hear from you. Let me know what kind of content you'd like to see on the Branso Book Podcast, especially as we tackle our next 100 episodes. To leave your feedback, just send us a DM on Instagram, at DavyandChrista. Now, on to episode 100.
00:02:31
Speaker
All right, we are back for episode 100 of the Brands That Book podcast. And if you could watch us right now, it's pretty comical scene. We are scrunched together in front of one mic, and it's a great mic. But the thing about this mic is that you have to talk right into it. So we are very close right now.
00:02:51
Speaker
I'm also not as tall as Davey, so I have to be like almost kneeling in my chair in order to reach this microphone. Yeah, we'll have to get you a phone book so that you can reach the mic. Anyways, I am excited about episode 100 here, and it's actually taking me some time to record this episode. And the reason being is because I feel like 100 episodes is a big milestone. One of my friends who also has a podcast actually on her podcast recently, Fostering Voices,
00:03:17
Speaker
gee hey she told me that the average podcast lasts until seven episodes and you know i haven't ever looked up the numbers to see if that's the case but i feel like one hundred is this big milestone so i put a lot of pressure on myself to make this you know some grand episode
Answering Audience Questions
00:03:34
Speaker
and you know turns out when you do that you have trouble getting it done so instead we decided to go the route of just asking people via instagram people in our facebook group what questions they would like us to answer on episode one hundred and that's what we're gonna do so we have you know a decent amount of questions here you know that we went that we got from people so almost twenty here
00:03:59
Speaker
And we're just gonna go through these questions. And these questions are a mix of business stuff, a mix of personal stuff, but I think these are a lot of really great questions. And one of the things that I want to change on the podcast going forward, and I've just been thinking, okay, you know, 100 episodes in, what can we do to change things up a little bit? One of those things is I wanna do sort of a mailbag segment to the podcast. So I basically, on a weekly basis, wanna collect questions from people.
00:04:27
Speaker
and then at the end of each episode, go through some of those questions or really answer any questions that you have. And they can be a mix of business or personal stuff. If it's a really good question, maybe we will talk about it at the beginning of an episode or maybe make it into an episode. So I'd love to hear from you. If you have a question, you can always DM us those questions on Instagram. That's probably the most reliable way to get in touch with us. You know, it's funny, I realized for a hundred episodes,
00:04:54
Speaker
I have pretty much been saying in the intro, hey, send us a message on Facebook. And I check our Facebook messages like once a month. That's pretty funny.
00:05:03
Speaker
So just not a reliable way to get in touch with us. But anyways, DM us on Instagram, send us an email at support at davianchrista.com and let us know what questions did you have. We'd love to feature those on the podcast going forward. Something else that's exciting. What are we doing? Oh, I was just gonna say you're kind of like the Dave Ramsey with answering questions but of marketing. Oh, wow. High praise. I feel like that put a lot of unnecessary pressure on me as well.
00:05:32
Speaker
I hope you send questions. Yeah, and I feel like Dave Ramsey, he can come off as pretty... Abrasive? Abrasive is a good word. But you guys are both Enneagram type 8s. I don't know if you know that.
00:05:43
Speaker
Yeah, it's funny. A lot of people who, so Enneagram type eight is the challenger, right? And a lot of people that I talk to who ask about that, they're like, oh, really an eight? You know, I'm not quite sure I see it. And I'm like, well, unless you live with him. Sure. But and I never really let it out during a podcast. I feel like, I don't know, Dave Ramsey does it so well, where, you know, he definitely, he definitely is kind to people. But in a, in a very fatherly way, he can be a little bit of abrasive. Yeah.
00:06:10
Speaker
Yeah. But anyways, we are also doing a giveaway in coordination with episode 100. So to catch the details of that, either go to the show notes or go to Instagram and find out what we're giving away and how to enter. So we should get on to the questions. Yeah, because we have a lot of them.
Krista's Path to Web Design
00:06:29
Speaker
Question one, how did you learn to design and build websites?
00:06:33
Speaker
So I didn't learn to design and build websites. He still does not know how. Yeah, that's a Christa question. So I went to school for graphic design and we learned how to do basic websites there. I think they had us learn to build a website in this outdated Adobe program called Dreamweaver and it basically made like a really bad code.
00:06:53
Speaker
And then I also learned how to make a flash website so also like super dated and I feel really old now talking about Dreamweaver and flash because those are like not anything you would use these days and I got an internship at a nonprofit and they had an opening in their web department.
00:07:09
Speaker
and i realized okay if i can learn to code and design websites then i think i could get a job here and so i got a bunch of books and i started playing around with code and i broke a ton of websites before i actually figured out how to do it but i just learned through trial and error and through some really patient colleagues at my first job.
00:07:29
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that's, you know, it's funny, people sometimes ask me design questions. I'll be like, hey, you know, you realize like, I create all the content over at Davey and Krista, and I focus on the podcast, but I'm actually not the one designing websites. I have learned at least a little bit of HTML and CSS, and have dabbled a little bit. But at the end of the day, I mean, Krista is just so much more efficient in general than me. So, in all things.
00:07:57
Speaker
That's true. No, but I, along with Alex, do most of our website designing and building. Absolutely. And I do have a hand in a lot of our website projects, but it's more from a user experience perspective, talking about user flow, outlining websites, things like that. But I am actually not responsible for design. And you should be grateful for that.
00:08:19
Speaker
Yes. So as far as if you had if you had to give somebody advice in terms of, you know, somebody who wanted to get started with website design, as a designer, didn't really know, you know, what step one would you say?
00:08:34
Speaker
So my step one is reading books. And so I think that it's helpful to read books. Just keep in mind that website does the end design in general grows and expands so quickly that anything you read is probably already going to be a few years dated.
00:08:50
Speaker
Books are helpful reading like articles and tutorial show it is a great way to start learning how to build a website because it's easier than WordPress and it doesn't require any code and then I think that using WordPress builders like elementary has been helpful too because it is so much easier and you don't have to code anything from scratch.
00:09:08
Speaker
I used to code every WordPress website from scratch. I would make a custom theme for each website and that's just a lot of work and a lot of code to learn. And I think that these days, the fortunate thing for anyone getting started is that you don't have to know as much code. It's still really helpful to know CSS, but I definitely didn't, don't need to know like PHP the way that I used to.
00:09:29
Speaker
Yeah, and so I would say you don't have to be an expert in a given language, but it's definitely helpful to start with maybe some HTML and some CSS as you get started because I think even in show it, you're going to put those skills to use, even when it comes to CSS, right? Right. Yeah.
00:09:45
Speaker
So we won't spend a ton of time there because we have a lot of other questions. But if you're interested in that topic, let us know and maybe we'll have to have Krista back on to discuss that a little bit further.
Balancing Business and Family during COVID-19
00:09:55
Speaker
So the second question, are routine of having Jack at home while running a business?
00:10:02
Speaker
Do you want to take this one? Do you want to start it? Yeah, I can start it. And I think what's funny about this is that it just changes so frequently. You know, I'm kind of thinking like, you know, Jack's only two and a half, not even two and a half yet, but just over two. And our routine has changed so much from the time he's been born until now.
00:10:22
Speaker
not only because we moved a bunch just within those two years or at least once but also just because he changes so frequently you know like he's gone from you know as a newborn sleeping a lot during the day to going to like three naps a day to go into two naps again to go into one nap a day.
00:10:40
Speaker
Well, and I think that things would have stayed more consistent because once he dropped to one nap at 14 months, it was pretty much the same schedule, except that COVID happened and that just completely changed our schedule too.
00:10:53
Speaker
Sure. So it's kind of funny to talk about routine in general, but we are very intentional about our routine and we do try to maximize our time as much as possible. So typically what that looks like, especially now with a pandemic underway and certain things that we had access to before not having access to anymore, things are a little bit different. But today what that kind of looks like is we have childcare for Jack come over in the afternoons.
00:11:21
Speaker
Alright, so in the mornings, we are typically splitting our time with Jack. So, Krista will take Jack for about an hour and a half, two hours some days, and I'll take Jack for about an hour and a half, two hours, and we switch, you know, sometimes Krista will take the first shift as we call it, and I'll take the second shift, or vice versa.
00:11:40
Speaker
We also get up pretty early in the morning. So I've been getting up at 4.30 in the morning just because I'm able to get some quiet time in, an hour of work, and then about an hour or so workout in before Jack ever wakes up.
00:11:55
Speaker
I get up at about five and I do my quiet time and I work for about two hours before Jack gets up at seven or seven thirty. Then we do breakfast and then one of us takes a shift and I do my workouts with Jack. So we run a couple days a week and then I do workouts like a lifting workout a couple days a week and I just turn on a show for Jack and he doesn't watch a lot of TV so he just sits there and watches it while I lift weights
00:12:20
Speaker
Yeah, and that's usually only for about a half hour, 45 minutes or so tops. And then after that, I'll take Jack. I don't work out with Jack, in part because some of my workouts take just a little bit longer. You run so much further than I do. And I don't think he would sit there while you're running 10 miles.
00:12:36
Speaker
No, I think it would be a miserable experience for all of us. So that's what we're doing in the morning. And then he goes down for his nap, and then when he wakes up, there's childcare. So we get some good stretches of work in. And so anybody who has children and is running a business from home, one, we get how challenging that can be. I would say that throughout the season, there was a time period where we didn't have any childcare at all. And that was a really challenging season in terms of just getting the work done that we needed to get done.
00:13:04
Speaker
but then also being very present with Jack, which we of course want to do. I run another business till and that compounded that a little bit because I really can't just work a half a day. Right. We had another question that's related to this. Do you work when Jack is around or only during childcare? Neither one of us works when we have Jack. We're available over Slack in case somebody from our team has a pressing question, but we're generally not checking email. We're not
00:13:32
Speaker
like actively communicating during that time. We really try to be present with Jack or just doing things around the house with him so he likes doing laundry with us right now and he likes vacuuming so if we have like household needs we'll take care of those when we have him.
00:13:48
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. Loves pressing the button on the dryer, for sure. But I think that there's always ways that you can try to stack some time so that you get some uninterrupted work. So for instance, back when the gym had childcare, which of course, childcare isn't a thing at the gym right now, but when they did, it was great because whoever was going to go to the gym that morning could take Jack, and then the other person could be working at that time. And then when we came home, Jack would go down for his nap,
00:14:18
Speaker
and then childcare will come over the afternoon. So one of us every other day would pretty much get a, you know, quote unquote full day of working. So we just try to stack our time as best as we can so that we get longer uninterrupted stretches of time to focus on Jack and then also to focus on work.
00:14:40
Speaker
And then when we're working, we're really focused. Like I don't normally check Instagram or Facebook. You're really focused. I feel like I have to be. I don't normally check social media unless I have to go on there to post something. I only check email a couple of times a day. I don't send emails when I'm working in the morning. I use Boomerang to schedule emails, typically to go later in the day to give myself like a bit of a break before I get responses. And so that helps me pace my work a little bit better.
00:15:09
Speaker
Are you still using Boomerang? Well, I use the one that Gmail has built in now. Yeah. Yeah, I use that. Sorry. I think I still have the Boomerang button, but I use the built in Gmail one. And I like with the schedule that we have, because I time myself and everything that I do, I work like seven or eight hours a day. So it's like a normal work day.
00:15:29
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I just think that there's ways. Obviously, like, everybody's in a different season, everybody has different stuff going on, even state to state right now in the country, right? There's different restrictions. So, you know, obviously, it's not feasible, and people might not want to adopt our schedule in particular. But I think the biggest thing is how can you block your time as much as possible to maximize it?
00:15:50
Speaker
So anyways, that was a pretty, we have more questions to dive into. We already talked a little bit. So the next question is how are we adapting during the pandemic? Do you have any thoughts about that in particular? I feel like we talked about a lot of those. Yeah. I mean, outside of the first few weeks, I feel like where it was just confusion and everything kind of was slow. I think the biggest adjustment for us was that we didn't have childcare in the middle of the pandemic. And so we had to adjust our schedule.
00:16:19
Speaker
Yeah, so I mean, that was a big one. You know, it's hard to talk about, I guess, on one hand, because there's been so many changes, I think, in the last couple months that it's hard to sort of keep track of what those were, you know? To a certain extent, I feel like we're starting maybe to settle into a new normal. Again, not to say that things are normal. That's not what I'm suggesting. But just that, you know, since all this has started, we finally set into a new routine within this season. So,
00:16:49
Speaker
Yeah, like we used to take a lot of little trips outside of the house at night to entertain Jack like walking around the bookstore. We'd go to the grocery store together and we had to figure out other ways to entertain him in the evenings that didn't involve leaving the house with him because right now Dave is the only one who typically runs errands. I haven't been to the grocery store since like February.
00:17:08
Speaker
Yeah, it's sad too because it was a fun family thing to do. Why that's fun, I don't know. But it's one of those little things that I miss for sure. That could be a business question too, so there wasn't a lot of specificity around that question. But even in terms of the business, I think everybody's done this, which is just really focusing on
00:17:30
Speaker
what we can do in our business right now that will hopefully pay off six months from now looking at different ways that we can keep our business lean for sure you know and really just focus on the things that make the biggest impact so i think on on some level anybody who owns a business has taken some time to reevaluate that what that looks like
00:17:49
Speaker
for us really getting down to, okay, what is it that we want to focus on and can focus on right now? Fortunately, when it comes to websites, we don't need to go into an office. It doesn't require any in-person interaction. From that perspective, we've been able to serve our clients online. Same thing with Till Agency. How we communicate with clients is online. A lot of the businesses that we work with, we're online businesses.
00:18:12
Speaker
but still looking at different ways that we could keep our business lean. We went through our expenses at the beginning of the shutdowns and really just tried to figure out what do we need right now and what are we just paying for but don't really use. There was a lot of that as well. Anything else to add to that?
00:18:30
Speaker
No, a lot of those expenses for software that you wanted to play with. Sure. Yeah. And I've said this before on the podcast, I love playing around with new tools. So, but anyways,
Relocating for Community Living
00:18:39
Speaker
okay. So if a enjoyable personal question here, where and why are we moving or yeah, where are why and why are we moving? And then I guess some questions around designing the house. So we are moving from Annapolis and we've lived in Maryland for how long now?
00:18:58
Speaker
Well, I've lived here all of my life except for college and then like a couple years post college. Sure, but us together. Us together? Like eight years? I think our first two marriage we lived in Pennsylvania, two years in marriage we lived in Pennsylvania. Our first two marriages? We haven't just for anybody who caught that we haven't neither of us had been married before. I forgot a word. So since you're two of our marriage, so eight years or so we've been in Maryland together, but we grew up here.
00:19:25
Speaker
Yeah. And so we're moving from the Annapolis area to Lexington, Virginia. And that's such an interesting question. We are moving really to be closer to some friends of ours. We're moving and, you know, that's a, I feel like maybe an interesting reason for somebody to move, but I don't feel like it's that novel, you know, I think. Well, especially as our families are still here for the most part.
00:19:50
Speaker
your family is still here. And your family wants to leave. That is true. My parents have talked about leaving for like years. Yeah. So in part, I mean, just even like my family specifically, having moved throughout the country, there is maybe less of an anchor when it comes to family here. And there's just like a lot of different opportunities that have lined up that have made a move like this possible. I think that if we had
00:20:13
Speaker
just a ton of family in the area that was sticking around, maybe it would be harder to move, especially having kids, you know, or having Jack that, you know, it would just be something that we'd really consider more just in terms of staying. But, you know, one of the things is, like growing up, I always thought, and I feel like this is just a normal kid thought, like, you grow up and you just think that you're gonna live next door to your best friends all the time, your entire life, right?
00:20:41
Speaker
Which isn't like so far from true, especially as you're adults. Like we do have really good friends who live here in the Annapolis area, but nobody's like walking distance. So I don't think you said this, but where we're moving, we're next door to our friends and like some of their families. So there's just going to be a bunch of us right on the same beautiful property. And it's like a couple hundred acres that will be shared and the kids will be able to run around together.
00:21:05
Speaker
Yeah, sounds very commune-like, not trying to paint it as much as a commune. But like I said, you know, you just grow up thinking, you know, of course, I'm gonna live like right next door to my friends. And I think for very few of us, does that actually end up being the case? And even if you live in the same area, so we do have a lot of friends in the Maryland area, but it's still sort of an event traveling and seeing them just as much as it is traveling and seeing, you know, Buddy and Jill in Lexington.
00:21:30
Speaker
you know, it's like you gotta plan ahead and work out a date and stuff like this. And what we wanted to do is just move into a setting where literally, you know, you're walking over to your neighbor's house and you see them on the front porch and you can go hang out and things like that. So we'll have to talk about
00:21:45
Speaker
you know, the story of how all this came together. Maybe we have Buddy and Jill on the podcast since they were largely, you know, this vision was largely theirs, you know, and they've invited so many different people into it. And so we'd love to talk about that. I think on the podcast, if you all are interested, let us know for sure via Instagram or whatever, and we can make that happen. But where we're moving, there's no development right now. So we've had to, you know, in order to move there, we've had to build a house.
00:22:11
Speaker
and it's been a two-year process about.
Architectural Challenges and Lifestyle-Driven Design
00:22:15
Speaker
So two years this August. So we put our other house on the market almost exactly two years ago. It took a little while to sell and but during that time we purchased the land and then buddies started the process of building the road to even get to our property and there were permits involved and then we hired an architect which was a really cool process. We looked at doing stock
00:22:36
Speaker
plans and we walked through a ton of model houses to kind of get an idea what we wanted but we're building up on a hill and we just didn't think that like standard southern living plans would work for our land so we hired someone to help us.
00:22:51
Speaker
Yeah. And mostly, I think just because how the terrain was laid out, we sort of determined that even if we were to use stock plans and a few that we really liked, they would have to be adjusted so much by an architect that we might as well have just gone through the process of hiring an architect. And we hired an architect. He was awesome. He was great to work with. But that took a few months. And then from there, we started building. They actually broke around sometime I think last October.
00:23:16
Speaker
So we're coming up on about a year here of just the building process alone but we've been living in my dad's house for the last two years and we love my dad but we need to leave. We didn't think he was going to be here. When we moved here, he was living abroad and working in Dubai.
00:23:35
Speaker
And then he retired early came home was planning to travel more but then the pandemic happened so we moved in thinking we'd have a lot more space than we actually ended up with and so it's a tight squeeze we've had one bathroom for like almost two years so we shower on top of Jack's toys and.
00:23:53
Speaker
We're really close to Jack and we're very excited to have our furniture back and just have our own space. I do want to talk about a little somebody asked about like designing the house. One thing I thought that our architect did that was really cool. He asked us how we live our life. So he asked us to write a manifesto like describing our lifestyle. So we talked about how we work from home.
00:24:13
Speaker
We're talking commune, manifestos. No, I'm just kidding. But he did ask us to write sort of like a house manifesto. Yeah, a house manifesto, not, yeah. He asked like, do you wake up early or do you sleep in? I think just to figure out like what way should our bedroom orient it? Like how do we spend a lot of time in our rooms or our communal space is more important. So the bedrooms are smaller, the communal spaces are bigger. There's like one big kitchen, dining room, living room area. And then we have a private
00:24:43
Speaker
separate office that's above the garage and there's another couch that'll be in there for another hangout space but it was cool to go through that design process with him and figure out a house that worked for us. Yeah, absolutely. Really got to focus on the things that are important to us. So like Krista said, smaller bedrooms because we're just not the people that spend time in our bedrooms. And we don't want our kids to be bedroom people either. We want them to be out and about for sure. And I say kids, we only have one kid. God willing, we'll have more.
00:25:10
Speaker
you know, point being is that we wanted to emphasize the communal spots and we have a great view and so we wanted to take advantage of those sorts of things. So, it was really great going through this process. It very much reminded me of the branding process. You know, like we have all of our clients go through the brand questionnaire and so we're drawing out a lot of this of similar stuff but when it comes to business. So, that was a pretty great experience. All right, we got to move on. We might not get to all these questions here.
00:25:39
Speaker
Yeah, for sure.
Web Design Platforms: Showit vs. Elementor
00:25:40
Speaker
So let's go on to biggest differences between show it in WordPress slash Elementor. So this is a question that we get often because we design on both platforms. And I'm going to let Chris to answer this one. The only thing that I want to preface this with is we really like both platforms. We're huge fans of show it in particular, because we know the founder of the company, we know the team there. And I just think that their heart for their business and how they serve people is outstanding.
00:26:04
Speaker
So really love both platforms and people always want to know which one is quote better, you know, and I think a lot of it's going to come down to personal preference because we're not going to build on a platform that we don't think is a good platform. Oh, yeah. I mean, we love show it. I love building sites on show it.
00:26:19
Speaker
We used to have a show at website, but as our shop grew, it was really challenging to keep our shop on show at. So it's really designed for a little bit more of a simple site. It's amazing to edit it because you can put things anywhere you want. You can make it really pretty and do a lot of fancy layering and stuff. So I love it for that aspect. It really wasn't meant to hold a big e-commerce website, which is what we were getting to be.
00:26:45
Speaker
Yeah, and to clarify simple, you mean more, I think we don't mean simple in functionality.
00:26:51
Speaker
No, we show it there is no integrated cart system in show it. So you have to add it in through Shopify or through WooCommerce. And if you add it through WooCommerce on show it, it's a little bit more limited. So if you need a really robust shop or if there are other plugins that you really want, I think WordPress and Elementor can be a little bit better of a way to go.
00:27:17
Speaker
I love Showit because this setup is super simple. So if you buy a Showit website template from us, you get this tiny little code, you add it to your website, and then it's all ready to customize. With WordPress, while you can customize more in the long run, there's a little bit more setup. It can be a little bit more fragile. If you don't keep your plugins updated, things may start not working right. So there's more flexibility in WordPress, but it's also a little more fragile because of that.
00:27:45
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. If you're looking for an easy to use website platform, Showit is for sure the way to go, I think. And that's what we're pretty upfront with people about that. If you are a service-based business, I would say Showit is the way to go. It's really when you get into e-commerce and especially if it's a true e-commerce platform or business where that is
00:28:07
Speaker
how that business makes money is through e-commerce, then it just makes sense to go with an e-commerce platform. Hopefully, that makes a little bit more sense of this. I have written a post about Show It and WordPress that compared the two. I think it's a pretty fair assessment of both platforms, both strengths and weaknesses. That is on our blog if you search for it. I think it's also just linked to throughout the site, so it's pretty easy to find.
Podcasting Insights and Strategies
00:28:30
Speaker
So question number six about podcasting, and we actually cover more than six questions here. So if you're listening, you're like, oh my gosh, they're already 30 minutes in and they're only a question six. A lot of these have been combined as we talked about them. But this question is about podcasting. The best and hardest part about podcasting, what would you recommend as a first step for someone to get started? And one thing that you'd do differently if you were to start a podcast tomorrow, that is a great question. I'd say one of the hardest things about podcasting is just it requires a little bit of setup.
00:28:58
Speaker
Like it requires a little bit of technology and bringing different things together to record an episode. I don't particularly love editing and so I just don't do it. And so one of the things that I think, one of the best decisions I made early on was that I've never actually edited my own podcast. We've had somebody internally edit it for a while and then after that we outsourced it. And it was just one of those things where if it wasn't gonna be outsourced, it wasn't going to get done because I hate listening to myself.
00:29:26
Speaker
You know, and I don't mean that like, you know, that I don't like the content I share whatnot. But I just think maybe some of you can can sympathize with this. Like, I just don't, I think I get too critical of different mistakes. And so even though they're not big mistakes, but maybe I slip up a little bit.
00:29:44
Speaker
I want to go and edit every little thing whereas our editors they just roll with it and they get it out and they get it done and they understand done is better than perfect. So that has been one of the best things about podcasting I would say also it's just a medium that is not as superfluous not superfluous as the right word ubiquitous
00:30:03
Speaker
as blogging. If you compare the number of podcasts versus the number of blogs, there'd be far more blogs than podcasts. It is a growing medium, so I think more and more people are listening to podcasts. It's been a great top of funnel lead generator for us. I think a lot of people have learned about us through the podcast, and so I always say, hey, it's a great way for people to build an audience. I highly recommend getting into podcasting if it's a medium that you feel like you would enjoy.
00:30:30
Speaker
What would you recommend for a first step is getting started just getting started? You know, I think that's again one of the things that I did early on was I just decided I was going to do it. I got the gear. I had a friend shout out to Tyler Harrington helped me get set up with the initial tech stuff and then I just got started. Well, you recorded a few episodes to go live together so that you didn't just release one episode all of a sudden you had I think three that people could listen to.
00:30:54
Speaker
Yeah, I actually think I recorded five episodes, released the first three and then had to kind of waiting. And I definitely batch stuff like that. Again, just going back to block scheduling and doing things and, you know, as much as you can in groups of time there. You know, we are actually starting a podcast for Till Agency. So I've had to think through things that I do differently. One of the things that we're doing for the Till Agency podcast is we're doing different segments, you know, so we're starting each show off with a certain segment. And then there's the
00:31:22
Speaker
the bulk of the content and then we end with a segment, things like that. I think it just adds a little bit of variety to the show and allows you to maybe bring up different interesting things even if it's not totally on the topic of the episode. So that's one thing that I know is going to be different for the Till Agency podcast versus something like Brands That Book. There are probably a lot of little things that I'm going to do an episode on podcasting in particular. So that's coming where I'll talk more about that.
00:31:50
Speaker
Next question.
Financial Discipline in Business and Personal Life
00:31:53
Speaker
How do you budget as a new business and as an established business when income is less reliable than going to a job? Okay, I feel like this is a crystal question because I am like the queen of numbers and budgets and all of those things. In both our business and in our personal life, we have a six month emergency fund. And we had about six months of reserve income built up in this photography business before we even left our job. So I left my job as the designer for a nonprofit
00:32:23
Speaker
a couple of years before Davey left his job as a teacher. And so having that question makes it easier to leave and not stress about if you have a slow week or if somebody doesn't book you or maybe if a pandemic hits. We do try to keep our business and our personal life, our budgets like really lean. We don't
00:32:43
Speaker
spend a lot on things that we don't need and then i track everything every month so within our business we go over our expenses every month and then actually every saturday for our personal life and mint i go through and check all of our spending and i can see exactly where we are with different things.
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah, and so it's not unusual for Chris to send me a list of things at the end of a month saying, hey, do we still need these things? So it's something that we're just paying attention to. I'd say the biggest resource when it comes to finance in our lives has been the one that with the biggest impact has probably been Dave Ramsey's total money makeover.
00:33:16
Speaker
And you may have heard others talk about that book and that resource and Dave Ramsey in general. But really, we followed that to a T pretty much. And I think it's served us really well. And I'm really grateful. It's funny, I give Michael also up who actually introduced us to Dave Ramsey or his resources. I give Michael a hard time because at the time I wanted to buy a Jeep. And that was I was really excited about it. I wanted to buy a Jeep Wrangler. He wanted a new like $30,000. I don't even know how much they got. You wanted a new one.
00:33:45
Speaker
Yeah, so it was more than $30,000 because I don't even know if you can get a new $30,000 Jeep. But point being, I was really excited about this. I wanted a new Jeep, Jeep Wrangler. I had one in college. We had gotten rid of it. Hold this long story. But the short of it is Michael introduced us to Dean Ramsey and Crystal's like, oh, no, no, no, no, no. We're not buying this car. We're not taking out a loan for this car. We are paying off all of our student debt. We had a ton of student debt at the time.
00:34:10
Speaker
And so we learned just to live lean and then taking that, you know, taking that and then even after we got out of debt, continuing to live lean after that, I think is just service really well. And if you, you know, I think... And not getting back into debt. So like we have one car right now and we don't need more than that. So we share one car, we don't have a car payment, we don't have any student loans or credit cards or anything anymore.
00:34:33
Speaker
Yeah. And so, well, we do have credit cards, but we don't keep any money on the credit cards. So, Krista actually pays our credit cards at the end of every week. So, that is one area that we do deviate from Dave Ramsey, but she's also trained me. She's also trained me well. So, you know, I almost, I joke that it hurts every time I spend money on something, you know, because it's like, what is it? Pavlov, the like getting shocked every time you do something. But anyways,
00:35:00
Speaker
Anyways, been trained well. So that's a great, so I check out Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. Another thing that I've heard really good things about, I read it, I don't know, I don't think we've ever implemented this though, is profit first. I've heard really good things about that resource as well from a business perspective, if you're looking at for a business resource when it comes to paying yourself and things like that.
00:35:20
Speaker
I do know that advocates for paying yourself first, whereas we kind of did the opposite and paid ourselves a lot less than we could have for a long time to make sure that we had business reserves and we learned to live on a lot less too. Yeah, so I'm sure there are a number of different approaches out there, but those are the two that come to mind and Dave Ramsey in particular has been super helpful for us.
00:35:42
Speaker
So next question, love to talk about marketing. How have you gotten your business out there? Maybe where you guys learned to take, take yourselves from photographers to where you are today.
Marketing and SEO Strategies
00:35:52
Speaker
So that is a question that is probably, I hope has been unpacked a little bit throughout the entire podcast. Just like each episode, hopefully talking about that a little bit. Hopefully you've heard me talk about, you know, different things that we've done from a marketing perspective.
00:36:06
Speaker
I think a few things that we've really focused on and have been really beneficial is the given stuff like we want to serve our clients well and then we want to share the work that we've done for them and share their wins and things like that. But even from a PR perspective, creating content and then getting that content out there
00:36:25
Speaker
You know, something that was big for us, I think, as photographers was just getting published and realizing, you know, the trust that people will extend to you when they've seen your work in a publication or that you can say that you've been in a publication. And then beyond that, you know, backlinks from publications, which helped in terms of things like search engine optimization.
00:36:45
Speaker
helped us rank on the first page for different keywords that were important to us. And this is all even back in the photography business and then extending those lessons to Davey and Krista. And I think one thing that we've always been really focused on is education and creating as much content as possible.
00:37:00
Speaker
And I think, you know, we do literally, Vanessa and I, this is actually, it's going to be episode 101. Vanessa and I already recorded it though, is talking about building trust and demand. And so much of that comes down to serving people well. And there's different, there's other things that we talk to when it comes to building trust and then creating content, educating people. But yeah.
00:37:20
Speaker
and also networking. When I was first becoming a photographer, I became friends with Natalie Frank and we started a local networking group in Annapolis and we got together I think once a month at that time with vendors from all over the Maryland area. And so we met a ton of people through that. We did styled shoots together with all sorts of people and we built a lot of relationships by giving people images, by being kind and referring hair and makeup people.
00:37:48
Speaker
We had a wedding blog and so people love to get featured on that and that built our reputations as well. And then eventually we started Rising Tide Society and so that was the ultimate networking group. And so just like building relationships through that.
00:38:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think relationships have been huge and this ties into another question that I guess we don't have to answer because I'll answer right now, which is one thing you continue to do even if you don't get paid to do it. I love building relationships with people. I love hearing about what they need. I do some coaching. We don't really advertise it, but I take on a handful of coaching clients throughout the year and I just like seeing people's business or helping people improve their businesses.
00:38:33
Speaker
I think that's something that I'd continue doing even if I didn't get paid for it just in the sense of I love building relationships with people and coming alongside them and hearing about what they have going on. Relationships too, it's just what I gravitate to I think even in terms of our businesses. With Till, I do a lot of marketing, content creation, things like that. I feel like so much of marketing is building relationships.
00:38:57
Speaker
and not in a manipulative way to get things out of relationships. A lot of times relationships take a long time to form and they have to form organically and from a place of not asking for anything, but it's so interesting to see the power of those relationships and what different opportunities they lead to.
Passion for Design and Business Success
00:39:14
Speaker
Oh, and if I could get paid or not get paid for doing something, it'd still probably be design or something in the design aspect. So I mean, on Saturday, I came up with a logo for fun while we were sitting with our friends. So I just I love design. I love painting, which I share a lot about on my Instagram.
00:39:32
Speaker
And at this point, I don't want to ever sell my art. And then I also love interior design. So it's been really fun for me to think about what we want in each room of our house and kind of come up with the overall aesthetic for it.
00:39:46
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, even thinking about my role in the different businesses, and we have even a new project that I'm excited to share about at some point, but a lot of it is just helping people succeed in different areas, you know? And I would say that, like, for Davey and Krista, I'm not necessarily the one designing the brand or the logo, but I love, you know, helping people get to a spot where they can. You know, same thing with their website. In websites, I have a little bit more of a hand in.
00:40:12
Speaker
And then, you know, moving on to till agency and paid advertising and things like that, you know, seeing people grow their business through paid advertising. So, yeah, I mean, hopefully that answers that question. And hopefully it doesn't come off as like too, I don't know what the right word is, earnest, eager, you know, or whatever.
00:40:35
Speaker
Anyways, a couple of these questions we've already answered as we go through them just around, you know, childcare and stuff like that.
Work-Life Balance and Outsourcing
00:40:42
Speaker
Things we implement to keep work life balance. I feel like we answered that a little bit, but we can expound on that a little bit as well. Do you want to start?
00:40:51
Speaker
Yeah, I mean I think that not answering emails at certain times has been vital. I don't really look at my phone very much once we put Jack down. We tend to do like cleaning up personal projects. I've had a lot of house stuff to research at night.
00:41:06
Speaker
You'll probably never get an email from us after work hours or before like normal work hours start even if we are working. We don't really work on weekends unless it was like an emergency and somebody's site is down and we need to get it up. And then we also really try to do things together as a family. So I think planning activities helps make sure that we're not tempted to work.
00:41:27
Speaker
Make right now in an apple sweet like to walk downtown and get ice cream on weekends and we do a lot of walks around the we live near the navy stadium so it's like a two mile walk that we do on most evenings when it's not a hundred degrees out blistering
00:41:43
Speaker
During naps on weekends, I like to paint because it's probably the only uninterrupted paint time that I get. I'm normally too tired at night. So having an active rest activity for me has been really good to not be tempted to work. And then I think exercising too. We both really try to build that in and so I don't have time to check my email when I'm running.
00:42:06
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. I think all of that's true. And just trying to be present in whatever activity we're doing at that time. So, you know, if we're hanging with friends, we're hanging with friends. If it's time to spend with Jack, then we're spending time with Jack. And when it's work and it's work, we have meals together. So even breakfast, we do together. Lunch, not so much just because that's more dependent on Jack. And, you know, again, just how we sort the middle of the day. But dinner, we do together as well. And so, you know, it's not like most nights, Krista, you're making dinner.
00:42:35
Speaker
I was going to say, you know, it's not like I'm making dinner and Chris is working. That's certainly not the case. But, you know, we try to sit down for dinner together and that keeps, I think it just creates a natural bookend to the end of the day. And then, you know, I think this is something that I'm grateful to you for, which is we just don't send emails after work hours and we just schedule them for the next day unless it's something that has to be responded to absolutely. And the standard for that is high, you know, because I think you can always justify, oh, well, I should answer this.
00:43:05
Speaker
right now. So hopefully that answers that question. Parts of your business that you outsource, we're coming down to the last few here. Parts of your business that you outsource, maybe how this has changed from when you started until now. That's a great question. I would say that early in our business, we outsourced nothing. Yeah, absolutely. I did all the things.
00:43:27
Speaker
And that, you know, I go back and forth on all that. Like, on one hand, it's good, you know, to learn a lot. It's good to learn what it takes, what different aspects of your business take. Even if it's just, you know, when you do outsource it, you're more grateful and more understanding of the person that you outsource it to, you know? So, I think it's a good thing from that perspective.
00:43:51
Speaker
And also just there's certain things like even if you're going to so for instance i think a good example is copywriting copywriting is something that we have been outsourcing as of late we've had. Our friend jessica jedana going through different pages of our website and we're kinda it's you know sort of an iterative thing we're not.
00:44:08
Speaker
We haven't tackled our entire website, but copywriting is something that I feel like I can do. I've taken some time to learn. I feel like it takes me just a lot longer, you know? And I'm gonna go maybe a little bit more slowly than, you know, for instance, like when we hire Jess where she cranks out, you know, great copy. It's super long, you know?
00:44:28
Speaker
It's just good. But point being is I still think that copywriting is something that every business owner maybe should have a basic understanding of.
00:44:40
Speaker
Right. And I don't think that Jess could have, I mean, maybe she could have, I don't know if she could have quite come up with a copy that she did if you hadn't taken a stab at it first and kind of like thought through all of the different things on those sales pages and gotten like the general ideas out there. So I think because you had kind of done some of it already, she could just make it like killer. And that's just like, yeah.
00:45:02
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. And I think that's true of anything. Even of website design, somebody coming to us, if they can provide a framework for what they want, of course, it's going to be that much better instead of just saying, I don't really know what I want and here's a blank piece of paper and just come up with something, right? I can do a lot, but it's hard for me to work from nothing. So if somebody has a framework for what they want, it just makes my job so much easier.
00:45:29
Speaker
Yeah, and so for Jess, for instance, going through that process, we filled out questionnaires and stuff like that. But we try to outsource, I mean, things that make sense to outsource. I mean, really, I think it's just looking at our time and okay, so if we didn't spend time on this, all right, what would that free us up to do? And does it make more sense to invest in whatever that frees us up to do? Would that make us more money?
00:45:52
Speaker
in order to do that and if so, then we typically make the decision to outsource. Something that I finally got Chris to outsource recently is bookkeeping, just because bookkeeping has become a much different task than it was when we first started our business and had fewer transactions and things like that.
00:46:08
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I can do it in about two hours, but they definitely do it a lot better than me. And I think it's not that expensive to have them do it. We outsource like filing payroll taxes. You outsource your podcast editing. We've outsourced video editing. We outsourced cleaning our house. We used to shoot film. And so while we didn't outsource actual like editing of the images, film is kind of outsourcing editing. It definitely takes a lot of the like hard work out of it.
00:46:36
Speaker
Yeah, and even from – and that's – I guess just when it comes to outsourcing, I would say a lot of the stuff that we outsource now, we used to hustle with earlier. So it wasn't like – I wouldn't say to a new business owner who has maybe less expenses than somebody who's been in business for a few years and things have really started kicking up to outsource their bookkeeping.
00:46:58
Speaker
I mean, if it absolutely gives them nightmares at night, you know, like, of course, okay, yeah, okay, find somebody else that's gonna do it and do it well so that your bookkeeping is done and done well so you can file taxes and all. But, you know, if we try, I mean, even, and we've talked about this on a different episode when it came to Till Agency, we tried to do as much stuff of ourselves and kept things as lean as possible with Till Agency until we grew it to a certain point. And then all of a sudden, for us to get to sort of the next level,
00:47:27
Speaker
of growth, we had to outsource things because we didn't have the time to invest in those things that would get us to the next level of growth. So hopefully that provides a little bit of framework and idea of what we outsource and why. All right, so there is a question here. We are, let's see, we have two questions left. We'll answer this one first. Best advice for a newly full-time business owner working from home, especially workflow? I will say,
Maintaining Focus and Avoiding Distractions
00:47:58
Speaker
Routine, find a routine. Yeah, and having a strict work schedule. So I don't think that we would be able to accomplish all that we do with 15 hours of childcare a week if we weren't so strict about our schedules and our routines. And as a business owner and a new business owner at that, yes, as newly or newly full-time business owner. But I think all of you who own businesses, right, which is, I would assume pretty much everybody who listens to the podcast,
00:48:25
Speaker
All of you probably realize how much stuff you could do in a day. You could do all of the things. I think that's one of the biggest transitions into running your own business is like, what do I focus on? Because there are just so many different options. So really creating systems for things that are repeatable and making time during the week.
00:48:48
Speaker
maybe every monday is your editing day alright if you're a photographer maybe every tuesday and thursday you're gonna devote or you're gonna make certain times that you meet with clients but if you can get into a routine and really systematize different aspects of your business i think that's going to be really helpful and then you know don't try to do it all at once you know really asking yourself like
00:49:10
Speaker
What is the one thing that I can do today that's going to move my business forward and if it doesn't because I think we can trick ourselves and I talked to you maybe I talked to Jordan Demos about this back on and Jordan Amy back on like episode two or one but it was you know getting into the habit of creating a big to-do list that doesn't really have anything meaningful on it just so you can cross things off your list and
00:49:34
Speaker
So really talking about, look at the month doing some planning and saying, okay, what is going to move my business forward today? What is that one thing over the course of a week? What is that one thing over the course of a month? And being ruthless about it. If it doesn't qualify, get rid of it. You don't have to do it. Don't focus on it.
00:49:52
Speaker
Yeah, I think I would definitely echo that. And then also keeping blinders on. I feel like I have to kind of limit how much I'm taking in. So I don't spend a lot of time on social media. I don't look at a lot of people's stories and not because I don't like those people or want to see what they're doing, but I feel like the more I watch, the more ideas pop into my head and then I feel like I need to be doing more. And I think it distracts me from the things that I actually need to do to move our business forward.
00:50:19
Speaker
A good example is email. If I were to keep my inboxes open all day long, I would feel like I need to respond right away. Most people don't need a response in an hour or even a couple of hours. If I can keep my inboxes closed and I can focus on the tasks that actually matter for our business that we actually get paid to do that are going to help us get to our five, 10-year goals, that's what I need to be doing.
00:50:44
Speaker
Yeah, and I think that one of the, speaking of keeping blinders on, just having an understanding of what other businesses are doing or maybe doing even some competitor analysis, that sort of thing, that's all well and good. But at the same time, I think that
00:50:59
Speaker
limiting how much you're taking in from social media from people in your industry will keep you more fresh and maybe that sounds unintuitive but instead of thinking so is doing this and so now i feel like i need to have an aspect of my business that that does the same thing or that you can't do something similar.
00:51:18
Speaker
Yeah, I think that none of that is helpful. So I find that I am more innovative when I am less concerned with what other people are doing in our respective industries, and whether it be Till, whether it be for Davey and Krista. And again, it's not that I try to be completely unaware of what's going on. There's definitely a balance. But if you're always looking at whatever somebody else is doing,
00:51:40
Speaker
and you're always trying to copy that or trying to incorporate that into your business, then you're always going to be following. I think keeping blinders on is good advice as well. Having structured work time and being comfortable with the time that's not work time. Maybe you decide, we typically work on
00:52:00
Speaker
from 4.30 to 5 in the that sounds like a lot but there's different periods of time in that that were were either resting or were working out or something like that but I mean that's the general time frame during the day that that work might be happening and so when's works happening like works happening when it's not it's not and that's okay you know like it's okay to shut off your computer your your business isn't gonna end if you do that and you take some time with your family so
00:52:24
Speaker
Hopefully that's helpful. That could probably be its own episode as well. With that said though, there are plenty of episodes I think that I've covered similar things with people. So last question, I saved it for last. I feel like it's interesting because I really do have trouble. So the question is this, what do the next five years look like for you all personally and professionally?
Future Aspirations and Stability
00:52:44
Speaker
This is always my least favorite question because I feel like life changes so much and I am not a long-term thinker.
00:52:51
Speaker
Yeah. And if you asked me what the last five years, like, if you asked me five years ago, what, you know, 2020 would look like, I mean, okay, of course, minus pandemic and all the other stuff that 2020 has brought, I would have never guessed, you know, like, I would, like, there'd just be so many, there's even moving to Lexington.
00:53:10
Speaker
you know, that wouldn't have been that would have been something that I even mentioned as a possibility. So it's really hard to think about what the next five years will look like. So the only thing that I can say is that it's not like the last few years have certainly been years of transition in different ways. But you know, certainly this last two years of not really living in our own space. And so I joke with Chris said that once we get into our own space again,
00:53:34
Speaker
We are never leaving. We are never traveling again. Of course, that's not true. We love to travel, but there will be a serious, you know, I'm going to have a newfound appreciation for being in a place and in a community and just again, being in our own space again. So I hope that in the next five years, there is sort of this sense of growing into that, like growing into a place, you know, and not maybe as much transition and change as there has been over the last
00:54:03
Speaker
you know, a few years. And that's not to say that I haven't appreciated the transition and change from the last few years. I mean, even starting till agency, I mean, some of those kinds of changes, which have been just so much fun. Like, of course, you know, I hope that there's always freshness like that. But I am excited to be in a place. Yeah. And we've moved, I don't know, like six or seven times since we got married. So I'm hoping that this is a longer term move.
00:54:32
Speaker
Absolutely. So I hope that was as enjoyable for you all as it has been for us. Right now is one of the things that I'm not going to miss is that my office is upstairs without air conditioning. It is probably near 100 degrees outside. And so that means it's pretty hot in the office as well. So we are both sweating.
00:54:52
Speaker
And so we're ready to wrap this up as well since we are approaching an hour. Thank you again for listening. I hope that an episode, even if it's just one episode over the last hundred has been beneficial to your business. And like I said, we are always looking for
00:55:09
Speaker
feedback when it comes to the podcast, new topic ideas. We want to hear about the topics that you all would like us to discuss. We also hope that this sort of mailbag segment that we're adding to the Brands of Book podcast allow us to answer more of your direct questions as well. So don't be strangers. Feel free to DM us on Instagram. Those questions, send us an email, reach out, carry your pigeon, whatever it is, let us know and we'd be happy to answer those. Thanks. Bye, y'all.
00:55:42
Speaker
Thanks for tuning into the Brands That Book Show. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider subscribing and leaving a review in iTunes. For show notes and other resources, head on over to dvandchrista.com.