Jennifer Priest: Grow Your Startup With Organic Traffic on Pinterest

Listen to our exclusive interview with Jennifer Priest:

Subscribe to this show on Spotify | iTunes | Stitcher | Soundcloud

Need more traffic? Maybe Pinterest is a place for you to start exploring? We speak to the founder of Smart Creative Social, Jennifer Priest to learn more about organic traffic on Pinterest.

As a digital entrepreneur for over 17 years, Jennifer intimately understands what it means to run a successful online business and manage your online marketing needs in-house … or yourself.

With over a decade of digital marketing experience for large corporations to handmade artists (and everyone in between), she knows what it takes to make content that gets traffic, to navigate the algorithms of popular platforms, and to interpret data in meaningful ways business owners can understand and use to make successful decisions.

Learn more about Jennifer and her work at > https://www.smartcreativesocial.com

We also recommend:

Transcription of Interview

(Transcribed by Otter.ai, there may be errors)

Adam G. Force 00:11

Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show where we help entrepreneurs earn a living doing what they were born to do. And if you missed last week’s episode is with Emily Hirsch. She is a Facebook marketing Rockstar. She’s built up her agency, her marketing to 25 people now and I think they have like, they’ve done about a $23 million ad spend so far, and they’ve had over 90 million in return. She’s done talks at like Russell Bronson’s inner circle and Ryan deiss has conferences and stuff like that. So she’s been really growing like wildfire over the past couple years. And so we picked her brain and we’re gonna and we shared all kinds of good secrets in there for you guys to pick up on. So swing back and check that out. If you haven’t already. You don’t want to miss that one. So this week, we’re gonna be talking with Jennifer priest. She’s an expert. She’s actually in a mastermind with me and Amy We were just out in California and we were talking and stuff and she is a, she’s a rockstar when it comes to Pinterest. This is like there’s untapped traffic here, everybody. So we wanted to just kind of see Hey, what are we missing out on? How do we get started in Pinterest and kind of get into the nuts and bolts of that stuff and she also just has an incredible story of transformation. So, you know, not becoming an entrepreneur is not always an easy thing. It’s it’s a push for people, and it becomes this lifestyle. So Jennifer has had incredible changes in her life that have been, you know, really inspiring and she’s been very successful with her business because she’s been working so hard. So we’re gonna tap into those Pinterest secrets and her story in just a few minutes. So last but not least, guys, swing by Change Creator calm, lots of fresh content coming out over there and you could check out the latest and greatest can also get on the waitlist for the captivate method. We are helping people supercharge their marketing with storytelling so They can build trust and actually attract more customers, right? So you could check that out, we’d love to see you in that community can see if it’s a good fit for you. And last but not least, don’t forget to leave us a review. We very much appreciate your support on iTunes and other platforms. It goes a long way guys, and we appreciate you being here. And hopefully you guys are getting value out of this. So Oh, one thing I did forget, if you guys want our storytelling roadmap, you cannot get it from our website. But if you go to Change Creator comm forward slash, storytelling, roadmap, all one word Change, creator.com forward slash and then all one word is storytelling roadmap, you’ll be able to sign up and get a free copy of the storytelling roadmap. There’s a lot of good tips and insights in there and some key information about mistakes that people are making when it comes to their marketing. When we talk about story, storytelling, we’re really getting into the depth of real marketing. That’s what that is all about. So you don’t want to miss that kind of It’s it’s really designed to energize your your business. Alright guys, we’re gonna jump into this conversation with Jennifer about Pinterest and see what we can learn from her. Okay, show me the heat. Hey, Jennifer, welcome to the Change Creator podcast. How are you doing today?

Jennifer Priest 03:19

Awesome. I’m really glad to be here.

Adam G. Force 03:21

Yeah. Thanks for joining us. I’m excited to have this chat because I know you’re all about organic traffic over on Pinterest. And that’s an area that our team is always talking about. So I love to just learn a little bit more about it and share those insights with our audience. So I guess for starters, just tell me a little bit about what’s going on in your world today and how you got into Pinterest.

Jennifer Priest 03:44

So right now what I’m doing is I have an online program called Smart pin Pro, where I help businesses drive massive traffic to their site with Pinterest in just a couple hours a month. And so we use the power of automation. We work with SEO because Pinterest is a search engine. The way that I figured all of this out and started kind of down this path is that all starts with a DIY blog. So I was teaching craft classes all over, I was doing Etsy, eBay craft fairs. I was running myself ragged and on the verge of burnout. And one of my friends was like, Jennifer, you have a blog to promote your business, why aren’t you using that to make more money that way? Instead of just, you know, having do all this stuff where, you know, packing like $2 orders from Etsy and stuff like that. That’s just not a huge ROI. And so in order to work with sponsors, and to get money from ads and affiliate, you need a lot of traffic. And so I started really digging into Pinterest. I felt like I was doing everything that I could. And then I was trying to do everything right, and it wasn’t getting any results. And so I really dug in and started figuring it out for myself. And at the same time, I had some social media management clients that I was running their social media, so I started doing things for them and people were getting word, and they were like, wait, wait, wait, what are you doing? Can you You tell us, can you teach us Can you show us and so that’s why I started this online program a couple years ago, is to help other people drive that massive traffic, so that they’re not having to be on Pinterest all the time, and they can be in their business doing the thing they’re passionate about

Adam G. Force 05:16

Yeah, I think that’s super important. And yeah, I just had a conversation with somebody in our Facebook group. And, you know, they were talking about how, you know, they get great word of mouth and organic in that sense, but they’re having a hard time with using social media and getting people on board with fresh traffic that cold traffic and turning them into to buyers. So how does your process help? You know, is it is it like through developing warm leads? Is it going out to pulling in cold traffic? Can you tell us just a little bit about the approach?

Jennifer Priest 05:48

Really on Pinterest, it’s very much an SEO type of activity. So you know, Pinterest is kind of this strange animal where it’s like, it’s like Google and Instagram had a baby So it’s a very visual, but it’s really based on search. But it has some of those those social elements like you can follow people, you can message. And so we kind of lump it in with Facebook and all of that. But it’s it’s really much different. If you really focus on SEO, like what are people looking for on Pinterest? And then where does that intersect with what you have to offer? A lot of times people will come in and they have this whole Bank of content. And then they’re trying to like shove it and make it like fit into some kind of shoe. That’s the wrong size. Yeah. And so what we do is we actually say, Okay, before you even create the content, let’s do some research on Pinterest, let’s find out what people are looking for. And then we position your content or, you know, we teach you how to position your content, so that it’s going to be found by the right kind of audience that you want. And then it’s pretty easy, right? You’re you’re offering them some information, you’re offering them some kind of solution to a problem they have. And then they’re going to click over and come to your site. And so from there, that’s where it’s really dependent on how Your sales funnel is set up. Right? Do you have a way to capture those leads? We see a lot of people come into

Adam G. Force 07:06

Jennifer, are you there? Is your is your connection ok?

Jennifer Priest 07:10

Yeah, well, I thought it was.

Adam G. Force 07:12

Yeah, you’re back. You’re back. All right. We got some post editing to do.

Jennifer Priest 07:17

No sorry Adam. I’ve never had this happen ever

Adam G. Force 07:23

So I forget exactly where you left off. But you were just talking about some of the ins and outs on Pinterest. But so I guess I’m curious comparatively like you work probably on other social media platforms as well. What’s the major differentiator is the major differentiator for Pinterest the the power of that SEO feature that you’re that you’re leveraging?

Jennifer Priest 07:46

Well, the major differentiator is that Pinterest is actually part of their mission. They’re in the business of sending traffic away from their platform, even though they are monetized with ads just like Facebook and Instagram, and YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube. Want to keep people on their platform, they don’t want you to leave. Whereas Pinterest is like, we want you to discover new ideas go off platform, go try them and come back. And so what that means is that referral traffic from Pinterest to other sites year over year is on an increase. Whereas referral traffic from like Facebook, and we’ve all experienced this is on a decline. And so Pinterest, since it’s it’s engineered to send people off platform, it’s just made for exactly what we want to do send traffic to our sites which I love and that’s that’s one challenge with Facebook. I mean, I love Facebook,

Adam G. Force 08:33

They are a powerful marketing engine for sure. But I love that on Pinterest you can they kind of are, you know, pushing you to to let people go from their platform to another platform and maybe you can give us what’s an example. And you know, we don’t you don’t need to teach all your secrets. But just maybe one little secret or tip for people that might be interesting on how you are using that that fact that you can drive traffic Pinterest, other places like what’s one way that someone might take advantage of that?

Jennifer Priest 09:04

Well, I think one thing is on Pinterest to have a really clear call to action of what you want people to do. So ideally, yes, we want them to click over but things like okay, let’s say that you have a podcast, right? have something on the pin itself that says, Listen now, so that they know what they’re getting when they go to the destination. We don’t want them to have a surprise, right? Nobody likes that. They want to know they’re going to a podcast. But we also want to tell them like, Hey, you can listen to this right now. This is available for you right now. So things like an arrow or a text and or a text overlay that says, hey, this is this is what we want you to do subscribe now go download it now. Those things that that tell people what action we want them to take to be very clear because people people are busy, and they’re just not paying that much attention. And so we can really utilize that on Pinterest. We don’t have any kind of penalty for text overlays, like you know, on Facebook, there was a 20% rule and all that. There’s nothing like that. on Pinterest

Adam G. Force 10:01

So I mean, you don’t so you’re not like if you let’s just use the podcast example. So for people listening, I mean, you might have audio clips on Facebook, you might have them on Soundcloud on your website, it just depends where it is for that podcast, we’ll just use that example. And you can use the Pinterest boards and and their space, that environment to kind of find people using your SEO, and then lead them to these other platforms where you have that stuff hosted. Is that right

Jennifer Priest 10:29

Yeah, definitely. You know, a lot of people think Pinterest is just for bloggers, but we actually have a lot of YouTubers in our program, who only have a YouTube channel and they’re using Pinterest to send traffic there. So really Pinterest is a place where you can send traffic from there to whatever destination you want. The key is really making it clear like you’re going to you’re going to search engine, optimize all of it with keywords, etc. But making it clear to the pinner. Hey, where are you going to end up? Am I ending up on a video a blog post or recipe? What do I get?

Adam G. Force 10:57

And do you find I guess people are used to that then but Pinterest, right? Because I know I always I’ve been on there a few times myself when I was looking actually for food recipes, I find that to be a good place to find some ideas. And you have to click into the pin. And then you usually have to click one more time, which will take you then I guess, to the off site location where it’s hosted.

Jennifer Priest 11:18

Yeah, so that’s how regular static image pins work. Video pins are a little bit different. If you click on it, it’ll pause it. And so they’ll have to click the link in the description. So that’s a little bit tricky to get clicks with that. But you could use both like I would say use both in your strategy, especially if you’re doing something like a podcast. You may not want to put an audio clip on Pinterest because people aren’t aren’t watching the videos with audio on but you can have some engaging imagery and then that goes to your podcast.

Adam G. Force 11:47

I just love the idea that you also have a lot of YouTube influencers and stuff or you know, people whose businesses are on YouTube in your program who are leveraging Pinterest and it’s just I guess, I guess kind of breaking into just a freshman source of eyeballs and traffic? And have you noticed certain categories? For you know, because you have to always look at these platforms and say is my audience there? Is this where they’re hanging out? And have you noticed certain categories really popular and flourishing on Pinterest versus others?

Jennifer Priest 12:18

You know, there’s, there’s, of course like food, right? That’s super saturated, and very popular DIY crafts, handmade, that kind of thing, fashion makeup. Of course, those are on there. But that’s not all that’s on there. You know, what I tell people is it’s kind of like if we look at Google and say, Oh, well, you know, news is popular on Google. So there’s no reason for me to try to do SEO because I won’t show up and search. People are still searching for things. So just the same as searching on Google and YouTube for for topics they’re searching on Pinterest. One of the things that I think people should do or actually there’s two things I think they should do if they’re if they’re a little wary and wondering Oh, geez, I don’t know if my my people are on Pinterest. One is go on Pinterest and do a search. Do a search for your topic. And see what comes up. You can learn a lot from that process. And then the second thing is go into your Google Analytics and see if you’re getting any referral traffic from Pinterest. Because just because you’re not pinning something doesn’t mean that your people can’t pin something. So if your people are pinning your stuff, that means they want to save it, and they’re putting it on Pinterest and that can get your traffic. So go see if any, any of that activity is happening. That’s also a good indicator that you should actually be on Pinterest.

Adam G. Force 13:27

Yeah, I love that. So I mean, you just do some basic market research go in there do some searches it does it show you. So you’ll see a bunch of pins. Does it show you how like what the volume is kind of like Google search. It’s like Oh, he had this many results does it show you that?

Jennifer Priest 13:42

It does not show you the volume. It doesn’t show you search volume either. But there are some in some things that you can look at as far as indicators. So when you do a search underneath the search bar, there will be some bubbles that come up with additional keyword matches like the keyword combination. And if those are happening, that’s a good indicator that there’s a significant search volume on Pinterest for that topic. You can also go into the Pinterest trends tool, which is brand new, and it’s only in beta in the US as of the time of this recording. But you can go in there and you can see some comparative analysis for search volume. So it doesn’t show you overall volume, but you can compare different keyword terms to see what is more popular and when it’s most popular.

Adam G. Force 14:27

I see I see. Interesting, and I guess, how long did it take you to start? I guess finding your methodology that worked for Pinterest. So can you take me through that process a little it.

Jennifer Priest 14:40

So it took me a few months to really start to understand Pinterest and how it works. And that was in 2015 and 2016. So you can imagine that a lot has changed since then. So with Pinterest, really my approach starts with their mission statement. You know, what are they What are they here to do? They want to help you To discover and try new ideas, they use the language in their marketing that they are a planning tool, right? They help people plan weddings plan, travel plan purchases. So they’re a tool for people to plan their lives. And so when you think about that, and then you kind of drill down a little bit lower and you say, Okay, well, what, how does Pinterest make money, they make money from display ads. So they need people to have a good experience. They need people to come back over and over. They need, you know, lots of opportunities to show those ads. So they want to have the best user experience possible. A lot like Google, right? If Google showed you like horrible results in the in the top of the feed that had like belly fat ads and pop ups all over, you would not go to Google anymore. You’d be like, Oh, no, I’m not going there. Because that’s a bad experience. Yeah, yeah, same with Pinterest. So if you keep that top of mind, and that drives everything that you’re doing, and I mean, we get way way more granular when we talk about strategy, but that’s, that’s kind of the basis like don’t spam Do things that you think are going to create a good experience, do do things that are going to give that pinner all the information they need in order to click over and get what they need from you. You know, make sure that that pin delivers on whatever it promises they’re going to get by clicking. You know, that’s, that’s really where it comes down to. And then you know that it’s all the tactical things, right? Like how many times you should pin and that kind of stuff, but yeah, you know, really, it’s, it’s letting that mission drive you and say, Okay, what is it that that is? How is the Pinterest ecosystem set up? And then how do I function within that in the most quality way? That’s gonna give me the best ROI?

Adam G. Force 16:38

Yeah, I mean, and that’s the key is really like attracting the right people. Because I think people get so us today, they get obsessed with numbers, and they become these vanity metrics, like we’ve heard and, you know, it’s like how many followers and you end up focusing on getting as many followers as possible, when really that’s not what matters, right? So, the SEO factor I love because I think with SEO, you really can start attracting the right people. And then if you have the right story, like your brand and personality and what you offer, they will stick around and follow you. So then you really do attract the right people. Now, I know a little bit about Google SEO, and my co founder, Amy is an expert in SEO on Google and stuff like that. And I’m curious, when you consider SEO for Pinterest, like when you’re putting stuff up? Does it take time to start coming up in searches? Like, is there any kind of delay in that like there is in Google like to be ranked or anything?

Jennifer Priest 17:35

Yeah, so the first 24 hours that a pin is up. Pinterest is essentially that’s when it’s crawling your site, and is trying to figure out okay, what is this pin about? And so there’s lots of data points that it looks at from the pin, the board, you know, the URL, the destination, URL, etc, for it to determine, okay, who do we show this to? What’s this about? Right? And is this a quality experience that we can then you know, push this higher up into feed. So the first 24 hours is pretty important. And where you upload it to is pretty important because that all that data is, is used for that. And then there’s, there’s a drop off after that point, right, you might hit peak for about 30 days. And then there’s a drop off in performance. Typically, that’s what we see, depending on how you’ve optimized that pin. Whether you’ve used hashtags or not which keywords you used, you know what board you pinned it to how frequently you’ve pinned it, all those factors, those can determine the length of time that that pin is still functional and working. And, you know, so so sometimes we’ll see we use a lot of UTM codes to track stuff. Sometimes we’ll see that pins with hashtags perform better right in the beginning, but then they taper off and pins without hashtags don’t perform as well in the beginning, but then the performance picks up a few months in. So there’s some some different, you know, things that you can do for mixing up how you’re going to how you’re optimizing each pin like we talked about. Every single pin exactly the same way, there’s no one formula that we’re using, because we’re trying to get that even traffic over time. So that, you know, we may have something that spikes pretty early on because Pinterest, you know, it scans it in the first 24 hours. Or you may have something that takes a while or it may have something that’s three years old, that’s picking up traffic because Pinterest, every pin is evergreen. So Pinterest will always pull old stuff and serve it back up as long as it is very, very relevant to those search search results into the interests of the people that are looking for that topic.

Adam G. Force 19:35

Yeah. Okay, that makes sense. Interesting. So, um, one thing that as you were talking I’m curious about is you said you started this in 2015. This process what were you doing before this?

Jennifer Priest 19:50

Oh, I was trying all kinds of stuff. I was doing Facebook, I was reading Facebook groups. I was watching YouTube videos and going on blogs and just getting caught up you know, even going to conference isn’t getting caught up in all of the tactics that people are using. And they’d be like, okay, follow this step, this step, this step this, and then like rainbows are going to shoot out of the sky. Yeah. And so, you know, and I felt like, Okay, I’m doing all the things that everyone told me to. I’m jumping through every single hoop. And I’m not getting any results. And what I, what I realized was actually a lesson I learned back in college when I was struggling to learn math. And I was I was like struggling my college algebra class. And I learned that once you understand the why of what you’re doing, then you can solve any problem, right? It’s not the steps. It’s not the process. That’s important. It’s understanding why why do we cross multiply? What is that right in math. So the same thing with Pinterest, it’s like people are telling you do these steps, these steps, these steps, these steps, but as you’re doing the steps, and you’re not getting the same result, because you’re a totally different business than that other person’s business. There’s so many factors involved in that she can’t just like cookie cutter it as you’re applying those things and things aren’t working out, right? Because you don’t know why you can’t adjust. You don’t know what to adjust, because you don’t even know why you’re doing the steps other than like so and so told you these steps worked for them. Exactly.

Adam G. Force 21:17

You have no Northstar. Yeah, it’s so true. It’s true. Yeah. And so I mean, did you ever have Were you always pursuing entrepreneurship? Or did you ever have jobs that you just were doing the good old nine to five?

Jennifer Priest 21:32

Yeah, so I I wanted to be a music journalist. When I was in high school, I had a Xen, I work with record labels. It was amazing. And kind of things fell apart when I was getting ready to go to college, and that had some family stuff going on. And so I went in the military. And then I got married and had a kid and I was like, Oh, I can’t do this crazy, entrepreneurial travel writer, musician life, I have to be responsible and so I went to school and I became a substitute teacher. And then from there I became a grant writer and contracts manager and analyst and I worked in the government for a few years, doing the nine to five grind. And it was absolutely soul sucking. And I, I lost my job. And it was the best thing that was traumatic, but it was the best thing that could have happened to me. Because that night I was getting my master’s I went to class and my professors like you can’t be here like it was snowing and you know, bus like beside myself. So then I go to the scrapbook store because I had been teaching classes there on the weekends, and the owner of the scrapbook store is like Good, I’m glad you lost your job because now you can teach scrapbook classes full time and I was like, I’m never gonna make that much money doing this and it just kind of all worked out and then look at I mean, I still scrapbook I just came back from a scrapbook retreat. But I do all this other stuff, you know

Adam G. Force 22:55

A scrapbook retreat. Is that a real thing?

Jennifer Priest 22:58

Yeah, totally. I’ve been to 45 ladies rented out a full bed and breakfast and we sit there and scrapbook and, you know, laugh and have a great time

Adam G. Force 23:08

Like creating a scrapbook of like memor

Jennifer Priest 23:11

Yeah, yeah. Our photos of our family. J

Adam G. Force 23:14

ennifer now you’re really nerding out on me.

Jennifer Priest 23:18

I mean, I am I’ve been in the craft arts and crafts industry for 17 years. So,

Adam G. Force 23:22

Wow. Interesting. Interesting. Okay, and so how has entrepreneurship changed your life?

Jennifer Priest 23:30

Oh my gosh, like, the whole thing of lifestyle design and, and all of that it just always seemed kind of foreign and, and I just didn’t really understand it. And this last year has been one of the best years in my entire life as far as really embracing entrepreneurship. And the the possibilities. You know, last summer I my son and I were looking at this thing on Facebook, it was you guys might have seen it. It’s like this 30 day road trip to see everything in the US and we’re like, we should totally do that. And we did it like I got in the car. We drove for 31 days, we saw tons of people, we drove all over the country. We didn’t see everything but it was amazing. And then so having the time to do that, the freedom, the location, freedom to do that, you know, and I did a launch. Wow, I was I was at The Ohio State Fair in the middle of a launch. It was so awesome. alive. Yeah, it was a live launch. And I made a ton of money while I was at the fair with my son. I mean, who doesn’t love that? You know, and then now I’m actually sitting here I’m looking out my window and looking at Palm trees and I am four blocks from the beach. And just like knowing that like with, with entrepreneurship, you can scale things you are in control of where you live. And I was living in the desert like six months ago miserable and sold my house and now I live by the beach like it’s is incredible, what it allows you to do the people it allows you to meet. I mean, if you’re going to talk about lifestyle design, this is ultimately lifestyle design. And really the only way you can do it is as an entrepreneur.

Adam G. Force 25:13

It’s true. You know, it’s interesting. It’s hard. You know, once you’re in a nine to five, and you start working on your own projects and making money and doing things, it’s you can almost never go back. It’s just, it’s just, you get so used to designing your own life and doing things the way that you want to do them. It’s a whole other sense of freedom. And I find it to be so motivating. So yeah, you know, and I’m curious though, like, a lot of times as we’re building our businesses, and say, from 2015 till now, I’m curious of what some of your biggest challenges have been to scale your courses and the programs that you’ve now been operating

Jennifer Priest 25:59

Well, I was doing launches for a long time. And that was really draining. And I did this launch in December of 2018. And I worked really, really hard on it. And, and I did like a five day challenge, you know, kind of like a PLF style thing. And I had all these people asking me for tons of help, and I was running myself ragged. And I look at the people that signed up, I only had five sales, which was definitely not my target. And none of the people that signed up were the people in the challenge who were sucking me dry of like, all my time and knowledge. And I realized I am I am like burning myself out now with this new thing. serving people that are never going to pay me like some of them had been through my challenge five times already. And I changed everything and I joined a program to help me evergreen my mind launches. And so now I’m on the Evergreen model and I absolutely love it because it really does free me up so that I can show up for my people that are paying, you know, I can show up in my group and I’m fresh and yeah rested. And, you know, I’m not like running myself ragged trying to help all the people with freebies.

Adam G. Force 27:19

Yeah, that’s the challenge too, because we have done challenges in the past as well. And we noticed the same thing. You know, I guess it comes down to really just trying to really attract the right people, but the freebies can, it can be a great starting point, but I’ve noticed to your point, people go through them the saint like over and over and they’re just looking for free information and they never become a buyer. And that is that’s exhausting. After a while

Jennifer Priest 27:46

It is and you know, learning that lesson because I was of the school of thought of like, give your best stuff for free, and, you know, help everyone and then people will just come and pay and you know, and I i really had to come by I don’t know, I had like a come to Jesus moment in that December 2018. And I was just like, this does not work. And I really had to relearn how to market because, honestly, the easiest thing for you to do is just tell people how to do it. That’s so easy, right. But you’re handicapping them. Because now you told them how to do it. They don’t didn’t learn why they didn’t learn how to do it themselves. So now, the next time that that doesn’t work, because if we’re talking stuff with algorithms, it’s not going to work right, you know, just a matter of time. Now, they don’t know what to do. So you give them enough that they feel like they know enough to move forward when you know, they don’t know enough because you just gave them a little tidbit for free. And then they don’t even know how to adjust or they didn’t learn the methodology or any of that stuff they really need to know to understand. And so you just handicap them for a little bit longer. Yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s a it’s actually so much more compassionate, to not teach for free

Adam G. Force 28:57

Now, I mean, we found the same thing like you don’t want to teach people to how because there’s so much behind it and they have to understand other things first, so you can really teach them the, like you said, the whys and the what’s and then they gotta, you know, the deeper education is the how cuz I agree that the order of that I mean, you do a disservice to people when you just give them quick how to use and then they try it it doesn’t work and they just don’t know the full picture right? They get like a little tiny piece of the puzzle.

Jennifer Priest 29:27

Yeah, exactly. And I mean, I’ve seen this where, you know, years of helping people and they’re still in my free group, trying to cobble stuff together on the free plan. And they’re like, I’m not getting results. I’m not getting results. Okay, we’ll pay for printing. I don’t have money to pay for a program. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And you’re just like, okay, but this is why you’re gonna stay in this place like, and it’s heartbreaking. But at the same time, it’s like, you know, I’m not helping them if I just give it to them.

Adam G. Force 29:56

It doesn’t work like that. And you know, it’s a hard lesson to learn especially early stage. entrepreneurships we found it, we find that there, it’s it’s interesting because I have seen people who just start a business or a course or whatever it might be, and they will be the people that will sign up for a $20,000 program right out of the gate. And I’d be like, Oh my god, like, I wish I had the courage to step right into it. But nine times out of 10 people are trying to Jerry rig all the freebie information and tried to pull stuff together and figure things out, because they’re afraid to invest in themselves, right? Like, what if I lose the money? What if it doesn’t happen? Like all those different doubts and stuff? And we’ve noticed that a lot and they end up a year goes by and they look back and they they end up quitting or scratching their head going What happened? How come I’m still stuck, you know? Yeah, happens alot.

Jennifer Priest 30:46

Yeah, it’s like, I call it like adulting in business, right? So I had lunch with a blogger, a DIY blogger yesterday, and she was telling me how she’s really concerned about her her sight because she does stuff with power tools. And she’s like, Oh my gosh, I don’t know, like if somebody got hurt, I don’t know about my liability and blah, blah, blah. And I’m like, well, don’t you have liability insurance. And it’s funny that I even say that to her because I didn’t have liability insurance for a long, long time. And it’s like, we’re kind of just kind of just limping along, hoping to get by with like, the least amount of stuff that we can do in our business. And then we’re wondering, why are we not successful? And a lot of us is mindset shift of saying, This is not just my business. This is my life. Yeah. And how am I going to proceed? That’s going to give me the best success. Like, I need to be serious about this, like, we can have a lot of fun, but I need to be serious about this, like, you know, do all those adulting things in my business and one of those things is investing in yourself to get the training you need instead of just kind of hacking it together

Adam G. Force 31:45

Absolutely. You know, and it’s, we, I’ve had conversations with people and they’d be like, I just can’t afford to do that right now. I’m like, can you afford to not do that right now? You know, it’s like people just like, I just see the pain. I can hear the pain I literally have people who would write to like Amy and I in our groups and stuff to make a man and I just, you know, I’m about to give up. I’ve been trying to do this, and they just never had the courage to really invest in themselves. And it is like you said, It is sad to see and you can only help so much. But sooner or later, they have to figure out and take, I guess that that leap of faith and believe in themselves, right?

Jennifer Priest 32:22

Yeah, there’s an example I love to give one of my dear friends, he’s been in business for 10 years. He just hit a million dollars this year, which is amazing. I’m so proud of him. Right? But he refused to take any classes to invest in any coaching. He only would consume free content. And he’s amazing. Imagine how much sooner he would have hit a million dollars. It took him a decade. Imagine how much sooner he would have hit that if he would have just invested a little bit in learning and that would have accelerated it so much. But instead he spent a decade trying to get to a million.

Adam G. Force 32:56

That’s that’s that’s what I see. I agree. I mean, that is That is a painful, so I mean, kudos for making it. But like, Why spend 10 years of ups and downs and struggle when you can accelerate? I mean, if you’re just willing to give it a shot, and you know, even even if we have like a $20,000 investment, or whatever it might be, we look at it and say, it’s not I don’t worry about how expensive or how big that number is, I just say, well, what’s the ROI? Right? Like, is this gonna get us where we need to go? Because if that’s what you need to do, you just that’s just what you need to do, you know

Jennifer Priest 33:29

And you can play a game to make that money. You know, it’s kind of interesting how we look at money as something that’s finite money is energy energy is infinite. And so we can manifest that we can do something like Okay, great. I want to invest in this program. That’s 20 grand. How many of my widgets Do I need to sell to make that? Yep, you know, and it’s very simple, but we’re like, oh, no, no, no, no, I can’t invest. I can’t do that like, and you can make the money you can bring it in like In fact, there’s a car. I’m looking at buying right now. And my co Just challenged me He’s like, play a game make the money. And I was like, I have the money. He goes, No, no, play a game, make the money and to buy the car even though you already have the money, why not challenge yourself? Because I want But you know, it’s it’s that thing of like, yeah, I can make the money like so we we tend to look at it like oh, I don’t have the money right now then go make it, go make it, you can totally do it.

Adam G. Force 34:24

You just got to figure it out. And you know, it’s interesting because I in my first business, I had a record label and we would be struggling with things. This is very new to us. And this is also like 10 years ago. And I would be like we weren’t focused on making money. We were focused on getting artists on the record label, you know, doing record release parties, all these things. And it wasn’t until we said, Wait a minute, like, we’ve got to focus our energy on actually making money and it just changes your decision making. And all of a sudden, because people are like, well, I don’t know how to do that. Well then you need to become financially literate. You need to start figuring out how money works and how to make Make money and get creative. But if you’re not even thinking about it that way, it’ll never come to you. You know?

Jennifer Priest 35:06

What I think one of the big challenges with that is that a lot of the things that we see people doing in their business and that we’re told to do in our business, are not things that actually produce revenue. Like I love social media, but social media typically does not produce revenue in one to two steps, right? So that’s a business building type activity. And what you need to do is be like okay, if I got to make money right now, what is it I’m gonna use my time for? That’s gonna get me only there’s only one or two steps from money. And just like you were saying with signing, signing artists, not one to two steps away from money, right sales is one of those way for money. So that’s the thing like bloggers tend to focus on, you know, oh, let me go on social media. Let me write a bajillion blog posts, right. I see people that are like, course creators, they’re like, let me start a podcast. Let me Yeah, we’re that’s so far away from money right

Adam G. Force 36:00

It’s true. We see it all the time, I had another media partner that runs another media company sake. And I’m just not making enough money. And we would do a little brainstorms, like once a quarter and stuff and share what’s working, what’s not. And he’s like, I think I’m gonna start this podcast and then I’m gonna do this and do that. I’m like, dude, like, you’re putting all your energy into things like a podcast, which may give you some fresh eyeballs, but it’s so much work. And there’s really not big revenue behind it, and especially not anytime soon. So I totally hear you dude, when you put energy into these things, so part of it is just taking the right steps at the right time. Right. It’s kind of like prioritizing your efforts.

Jennifer Priest 36:39

Yeah, just being really discerning and and kind of taking the emotion out of it. You know, we get so married to our business and we’re like, oh my god, it’s my baby. And, you know, we we get so tied up in it and instead of taking a step back and going well, what actually is going to move my business forward? And I mean, to go back to Pinterest, I see this on Pinterest all the time, people Like, well, I’m going to blog about, you know, my five favorite ways to style my dog’s hair. And it’s like, okay, but that, like, no one’s looking for that. Right? So it’s like making business decisions about like, what content Am I going to create to promote my course or promote my site or whatever you’re you’re promoting, is that content people are looking for. And a lot of times, people are so married to this? Well, I’m passionate about it. And so other people must want it instead of doing the research.

Adam G. Force 37:26

Yeah. And I kind of think it comes it goes back to what you were talking about earlier about understanding why you’re doing certain things. Because if you don’t have that grounding, like a foundation of your house is not solid, you’re gonna start doing content and programs that just don’t really make sense for the end goal because you don’t have that foundation. So you get kind of I’ve been messy before as an entrepreneur doing things all over the place, you know, shiny object syndrome, and all that stuff. And you’re like, wait a minute, why am I doing this? Did I look at the data What’s happening here? So anyway, yeah, on the same page with that, but to listen, I want to be respectful of your time, and we’re Definitely a little bit over and I appreciate you sharing all your insights on Pinterest and all the great success that you’ve had since you’re started your journey. So let’s make sure we give you a chance just to give a shout out anybody out there looking to learn some Pinterest strategies from an expert like Jennifer, where do they find you?

Jennifer Priest 38:19

So you can just go to smart pin, pin dot pro slash free, and there’s a masterclass that you can take and learn how to actually create a Pinterest strategy in five steps. So it’s pretty cool.

Adam G. Force 38:33

Awesome. Thank you so much, Jennifer. Appreciate your time today. Thank you. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play or visit Change Creator mag comm we’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator Po