SPEAKER_03 0:34

Hey there, everyone. Have you ever run across life where situations come up, unexpected situations, and suddenly you find that you're completely derailed and your business is hurting, and you know you've got to get back on track, but it's really hard. Today's guest is going to talk on this topic and more on the Resilient Faith Online Show.

SPEAKER_02 0:57

Welcome. I'm Arissa Shadrick, host of the Resilient Faith Online Show. I'm an online marketing coach and certified copywriter. In this podcast, you'll find a different perspective to the external and internal challenges we face as online content creators. Content creators. Join me for some inspiration and practical tips as we create positive change online. To connect with me and my private Facebook group, go to MarissaChadrick.com forward slash community.

SPEAKER_03 1:59

So excited to be here today with a special guest. I actually met uh Blake, and I'm gonna let him introduce himself in a second. I think I just reached out to him and kind of said, Hey, I like what you're doing. Want to chat? Something like that. Hello.

SPEAKER_01 2:16

I think it was, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

Could you introduce yourself, please, and tell us your name and what you do, and we'll kind of elaborate on that story.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yeah, yeah. So uh yeah, my name is Blake Buse, and um among all sorts of things, I essentially kind of help people and businesses connect the dots between the technology or the systems side of their business and you know the practical side of getting things done uh out there. And and I do that with you know online uh coaching and consulting as well as some products and services that I offer to people out there as well.

SPEAKER_03 2:53

I love it. And literally I did reach out to you and we did chat on the phone, I think it was. Yeah, because I just like what you were doing. And I I think I saw a video of yours and you just seemed very approachable. And I just kind of reached out. Do you want to be my friend? And then we kind of connected again, and then we connected again, right?

SPEAKER_00 3:11

Yeah, so it's interesting. We keep bumping into each other, it's good.

SPEAKER_03 3:14

I know, I know, bumping into each other online, but that's that's how it happens, right? It's all about building relationships and stuff. So it really is. I'm really excited to have you on the podcast. I know you are extremely knowledgeable in a lot of things. Um, just from the content I've consumed, you know a lot about a lot of things. And so definitely you're smarter than me. But I know that you've gone through uh incredible journey of um I'm just kind of reset, and I wondered if you could share a little bit about that.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So um, you know, my business journey didn't have a great start, to be totally honest. Um, you know, I was CTO of an events company and uh really, really enjoyed it, but we ended up getting to a point where I got let go unexpectedly. And it wasn't because of performance, it was more because they were kind of going a different direction. And I honestly I don't really know, but I'd always been like one of the top performers in any job I've ever had ever. And so this was it was pretty devastating to be to be unexpectedly let go. And that was at the very beginning of of 2018. So I was still pretty hopeful. I started kind of hustling and seeing what else I could do out there, uh, applied for some jobs and things, but ended up kind of falling into doing a combination of freelance work uh as well as creating some digital products, which is where you and I kind of bumped into one another. Uh, and then in in 2019, um I had my first digital product product that really kind of took off. Uh, the very first month that I launched it and started running ads, I did just under $40,000 in sales in my first month, which was you know pretty incredible, pretty incredible for me. I really enjoyed it. Um, and then from from there to the next for the next six months to the rest of the year, I did just a little bit over $300,000 in sales with that kind of first digital product that really took off.

SPEAKER_03 5:26

Um, yeah, that kind of scratched an itch, didn't it?

SPEAKER_00 5:29

It did. I was like, all right, I've got this. I've I've made it. I kind of cracked the code, you know. I I had had figured it out. I was running ads, my ads were coming back, you know, at two times or three times, kind of depending on the day in the ad of what I was spending. And it was literally I was putting money into this machine and I was getting two or three times the money out. And it was, it just felt like uh, you know, cracking the code of uh getting all this to work. And I had a small team, it was me, uh a VA and a and a contractor to to help with a handful of things. Uh, but then 2020 hit uh and a lot of things kind of happened all at once that made everything way more complicated and uh stressful and frustrating. And I mean, yeah, it started to tie everything started to tank pretty quick.

SPEAKER_03 6:22

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we we know 2020 was uh hard on many people. Um there was a lot of um personal loss, there's a lot of business struggles going on. Um, you know, I thought, oh, I'm gonna weather this, no problem. And and after a while, you know, month after month, it was like, oh, something's gotta change here soon because it was starting to um it was starting to hurt, you know, it was starting to really we're feeling the effects of everything. So um some people made a lot of money during that season, but a lot of people struggled quite a bit. So specifically, how did it affect your your business?

SPEAKER_00 7:03

Yeah, so so the the most kind of immediate thing that I started seeing that was an indicator is I actually got a bit of a bump in sales because my product was focused towards helping people start a side hustle and show up on social media and kind of build that presence. So a lot of people were getting sent home and they were thinking, okay, well, I'm gonna spend a little bit of time, you know, building my own brand a little bit and and kind of hedging my bets, I guess it would be maybe a good way to put it. Uh so I saw a little bit of a bump in sale and I was thinking, okay, this might pan out. But then uh two things happened that really just kind of threw me off guard. The the first one was uh my refund rate went through the roof because I offered a 30-day refund. If you didn't like it, you know, you could you could refund. And so my refund rate went from about, you know, I think I was measuring somewhere between five and seven percent before to about 14%. Um and then uh the second thing is Facebook ads as a cost started going up.

SPEAKER_01 8:06

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:07

And that was uh that was, I mean, it was ads always kind of get more and more and more expensive. But just because everything got shaken up, we started seeing a lot more people kind of hop online, try to run some ads, try to do this or that. And so the the media buying experience started getting more chaotic uh and and less predictable. Um, and and so between those two things, all of my you know, margins went away and it was just a struggle for the rest of the year to try to make that product hit. The the tough part was is my business was still relatively young as far as the product-based side of my business. Uh, and and because things were going well, I'd kind of shut down the freelance side because things were going really good with this product. We only had the one product and it wasn't really bulletproof yet. My business wasn't diverse enough to be bulletproof to kind of weather that storm because it just kind of hit right at that perfect time. So there was there was uh a lot of struggles there, which led to you know other struggles um with you know mental health. And you and I've chatted about this several times, uh, mental health, and then the kind of fallout of of 2020 and and and kind of beyond that.

SPEAKER_03 9:20

Um key things you said there, you know, the business was young, you had to sort of uh reduce the amount of freelance work you were doing. So what I'm hearing is, and correct me if I'm wrong, um, you did not have any passive income yet. So the you didn't really have set up multiple streams of revenue, right? No matter you know how small, because some people have like affiliates that they make some money or books or whatever, but that was not established yet. So putting all your eggs in one basket, so to speak, ended up, you know, bringing things to a halt. Is that is that kind of right?

SPEAKER_00 9:58

Yeah, yeah. I mean, and the the reality was is I I knew it was uh not really a great idea to put all my eggs in one basket, but I also knew I needed to kind of transition. So I was looking at other products to launch, I was looking into some sort of subscription models and things, but I couldn't, I didn't have time. So I was I I kind of took a leap of a leap of faith at the wrong time uh and said, okay, I'm gonna dive into this and try to launch some new things really quick because I didn't have time to kind of do both because I was getting super busy with both. Uh and the timing just wasn't quite right, which can totally happen, right? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_03 10:34

Yeah, and I I think that's more common than not because there's only so much attention, especially if you do freelance work. I mean, it's pretty consuming, you know, because you're you're providing a service. And so you've got clients and it leaves less room for some of the other things that can create passive income or really leverage your time. So I think that's a common tension that many feel. And I'm transitioning more from the service base to more coaching. So I totally understand what you're saying. Uh it's not not an easy, not an easy play.

SPEAKER_00 11:09

No, it's it's not. And most people kind of in this space, probably most of the people that that listen to you and your podcast and and work with you, kind of have to have this transition phase. They're probably an expert in whatever they do, and then they start offering coaching, consulting, or some products centered around that. Uh, but there's a breaking point where you kind of don't have time to do both all the time. And so one has you you you gotta figure that out. And I think had 2020 not happened the way it would have, I think I could have weathered some of those ups and downs, having all my eggs in one basket for a little bit and then and worked through it, but who knows? I don't know. Maybe it was just the wrong time all the way around.

SPEAKER_03 11:52

So, how did how did you um during that time? I mean, what was what was the hardest part overall? Because I know you're you're a married man, you have kids, right? You have a wife. How many kids do you have?

SPEAKER_00 12:04

I have four kids.

SPEAKER_03 12:05

Four kids, and what's your age?

SPEAKER_00 12:07

Uh so my oldest is 16, uh 16-year-old boy, and then I have twin 13-year-old girls. Uh, and then I have a 10-year-old girl.

SPEAKER_03 12:19

Okay, so as a man, you know, your husband, a father, you're doing this. 2020 hits all what was the hardest thing during that season? The one thing that really kind of like ow, that was like salt on wounds.

SPEAKER_00 12:35

Uh honestly, it was it was the combination of all the things hitting very close together. Uh, because uh we had this business aspect of things. Uh, my wife was in school full time and you know, wasn't working and wasn't earning money. So it was all on me, and that was fine. We'd agree to that, and we were all all on board and everything was working. Uh, and then and then my revenue started to fluctuate. Uh, and and then my kids got sent home to do homeschool the rest of the time. I was working out of my home office. Uh, so four kids coming home. They're supposed to be getting on Zoom calls all day. Uh, my wife was either doing Zoom calls for her classes or or going to her classes still because there was a little bit of a phase where, you know, that was happening. Uh, and so there was just a lot of pressure in the house. And then I think a lot of people kind of forget the mindset we were all in back then of we didn't really know a whole lot about what was going on and how the the the the pandemic or the economy and everything was going to pan out. There's just so many unknowns, uh, which caused kind of additional stress and anxiety and and uh you know for loved ones and family members and things along those lines. There were just a lot of unknowns. So all of that kind of happened at the same time. And then in the middle of the summer, um my older brother was diagnosed with cancer, and that was just another big heavy, heavy weight. And uh, so all of that kind of piled all together all at once. So I couldn't pinpoint one. I mean, the the my my brother's cancer diagnosis was like the biggest thing, but everything was kind of going downhill till that point, and that was like the this huge overwhelming right uh you know thing.

SPEAKER_03 14:36

Right. Absolutely. So yeah, yeah, that's that's a lot, and and sometimes that happens. It it comes like wave after wave hitting you, and and we're just being real. I mean, that's yeah, life. That's life. And when we're entrepreneurs, and I can't even imagine what it's like for for a man with a I mean, my husband, he works as well. So if something happens, you know, we have another income, and uh he's very established in what he does. But for a man, I I think it's just a huge, huge amount of responsibility for your family and your wife, and you know, you want to take care of them. And I know my husband, you know, he just he's kind of the old-fashioned kind of guy, want to take care of all his girls because he's got my daughter, my granddaughter, and me, and he's like always trying to take care of the girls, you know. So um, but if that had to be huge. So as you were in that, how did you I mean it almost sounds like a very, very dark season? How did you manage to come out of that?

SPEAKER_00 15:36

Yeah, well, it was um, it was just it was honestly, it was a slow, it was a slow process. Um, so part of it was uh therapy. I ended up signing up with uh a therapist, an online therapist. And I I've been a fan of therapy for a long time. I've I've gone multiple times over the years, and I I feel it's important uh if you do go to therapy to not use it as your last resort, but to use it kind of earlier on in the process. Uh, and then the second thing, just a little pro tip for everybody, is there's lots of therapists out there, and you might not resonate with one, and that's okay. Find one that you resonate because that's the resonate with, and that's the thing that's going to be the biggest indicator if if that's going to help. But basically just having someone I could chat with that uh could give me solid feedback, tips, whatever, but also wasn't was was outside of this kind of inter the this web that I was kind of stuck in was was helpful. So so that was the first thing um that I did. The second thing is my you know, my wife and I have a great relationship. We've always talked through things, uh, and so she was she was there to uh uh for for me to lean on and and uh was incredibly helpful to have a trusted partner that I could chat with on that. So those those two things were were quite helpful. Um and then and then what I I made the the hard decision because it felt like I was moving backwards, but I made the hard decision to dive back into uh freelance work again, uh, which was just felt like I was taking a huge step backwards. Um, but it helped me kind of gain that confidence and start building some momentum towards a resolution. Uh and and uh so so those were kind of the things that started the long process of uh of getting out of that. And all of this was happening. I mean, it felt like it was moving so slow, felt like everything was just happening so fast as far as how fast things went downhill, and then digging out felt like it was moving super slow. Uh, but but yeah, I think that's maybe just my interpretation of how things went, you know.

SPEAKER_03 18:00

Yeah, yeah. Because it, I mean, all of this, I mean, it's hard to believe, you know, two years ago, uh, that's not really a long amount of time, but in some cases it feels very, very long. It feels longer than two years. So yeah, it does for sure. So now you're working on some new things. You want to tell us a little bit about that?

SPEAKER_00 18:21

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, so as part of that kind of discovery process thing and as part of diving back into to freelance, um I number one, I launched a subscription model service. I felt like one of the things that I was really missing with the digital product was that it was very brittle. Meaning, uh, you know, my my product, the product I first launched was a super simple product. It was a uh a content planner for a full year or two years if you wanted to upgrade to that. Uh, and it gave you ideas and holidays and and uh you know some editable graphics, just some high-level but simple to use tools for a one-time price, which was was fantastic. Um, but the problem was I had to keep chasing new uh customers, right? And the the thing I didn't know at the time with that was uh when you start running ads, Facebook, Google, wherever you're running those ads, they want to give you the best people up front. But then as you kind of go through that audience, you have to pay a little more to find new pockets of people that are interested in what you have to sell. Uh, and those people tend to cost a little bit more money. So I was I was thinking, I wanted something that was long-term. The second reason I wanted some sort of monthly subscription model was I felt like I wasn't helping as much as I could with these people. I uh I they would buy my product and they would run with it, but really kind of growing your presence, your audience online, building out your systems is is more custom for you. And it's something that you know you need help with over time. Uh, it's not something that you need this one-time purchase and that solves all your problems. It's more, I need someone I can go to. I can Google a lot, I can watch YouTube videos a lot, but sometimes I just need to ask a very specific question and I need to get a very specific answer. And there's not really good info out there on that specific use case. Uh, and that's where I realized I kind of really shined uh with my expertise and everything. So I launched a subscription service in the same kind of realm, but dove back in kind of, I also dove back in harder on the freelance thing. And I was I was busy, uh still busy. Um, but uh, you know, I decided to hang on to the freelance thing for much, much, much longer and continue to use that to fund uh you know, other aspects of my business and and maybe start delegating in the product side of the business and the subscription subscription side earlier while I held on to the freelance a little bit longer. So I had a little bit more uh robust, less brittle uh business model.

SPEAKER_03 21:11

Yeah. Subscription model is is awesome. And so many, I mean, it's everywhere when you think about it. I mean, look at when you watch TV now, everything's subscription, right?

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:22

Um, Amazon subscription, uh, that button, that one-click purchase, that's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 21:29

That's dangerous. It's really dangerous.

SPEAKER_03 21:30

Yeah, everything is subscription, even um physicians now they have programs where it's a subscription to be able to just, you know, have their presence in your life. You know, everything is going to subscription model. And, you know, if we can think through something that would provide value in the long run, um, you know, it may not sound like a lot of money when you have a subscription model because typically it's less money every month. But in the long run, the idea is having a lot of people, right? Right. And being able to, like you said, sounds like you want it to be able to be available to serve them a little better. And this allows that. So subscription model is awesome. And yeah, but having that passive income, right? Um, you're just creating that content, and then you can have people joining for the subscription. So that's awesome. Yeah, awesome. So um, so I'm I'm curious. I want to know more about that. But um, when it comes to um overall everything that you went through, are there like some key takeaways? Like that, you life lessons, something that like you would pass on to one of your kids, or something that you learned about yourself. Maybe you learned you're more Brazilian than you thought. I mean, is there something that that kind of surfaced that a nugget about yourself or about life that you would pass on to someone?

SPEAKER_00 22:54

Yeah, I I actually um I I think about this, I think about this a lot. I actually have kind of three little little things that I tend to tell people a lot when when this comes up, because it comes up a lot. Um the first thing is it's okay to a lot of people focus on goals. Goals are something that have I don't know, I struggle getting goals done. Uh probably because I mean just this year I was diagnosed with ADHD, and I was like, that makes a whole lot of sense given a lot of my life. So no wonder I struggle with goals. But before I even kind of figured out the ADHD thing and started working with my doctor on that, um I didn't like goals. And I always liked focusing on a direction and a velocity because I felt like goals sometimes locked us into something and didn't give us enough flexibility to pivot and make that change. And when you're starting a business, you have to pivot two, three, four, five, ten times sometimes before you land at the place where it can really get you where you want to go and get your get your customers, you know, clients, whoever where you want to go. Sometimes those pivots are who am I serving? Sometimes those pivots are are moving from a single use, a single purchase product to a subscription model. Sometimes it's it's all sorts of things. So I like to focus on a velocity and a direction because a lot of the decisions are made as you're moving towards something.

SPEAKER_01 24:27

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 24:28

But I don't have to hit that finish line because I can pivot at any point in time. But as long as I'm moving towards that something, I feel like I'm gonna figure, figure out what I need to do, right?

SPEAKER_03 24:41

Wow, that's awesome. That's wisdom. That's wisdom, my friends. I mean, that's the truth because it has to be very pliable, not rigid, because it is a matter of tweaking and adjusting all the time. So this is like this is like pure wisdom here. But what happens is people think they're a big fat failure and then they get all you know unraveled. But true, and it is, and and and the market changes too. And so once you think you got it dialed in, the market changes, and then you got to tweak again. But it's so true what you're saying is so true.

SPEAKER_00 25:14

Yeah, and I think the other thing, other than people feeling like failure because they didn't hit their goal, the other problem is when someone has a perfectionist personality, they never get started because they spend so much time trying to figure out exactly what their goals need to be and how to get there. Whereas if you have a velocity and a direction, you can just get started now. Uh, and the perfectionism can kind of happen in little bits and pieces as you go down the path.

SPEAKER_03 25:38

Yeah, very good. And one of the things that's good for perfectionism is start doing a whole bunch of stuff and you'll be so tired you won't be so perfect anymore. You'll just say, you know what? Ship it. It's ready to go.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Ship it, ship it, it's ready to go. I know.

SPEAKER_03 25:52

I speak from experience. I used to be a lot perfectionist, but after a while, you know, you want excellence, right? Yeah. You don't have to be perfect. It's just it uh it's you can't be perfect. Nobody's perfect. And I think it's more of a mindset thing. And a lot of mine came from insecurities, right? I it wanted to appear a certain way.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 26:13

And so it was more about that. And once you get freed up with that, then you know, okay, this is this is excellent enough. This is okay. It's maybe not perfect, maybe I could have used a better tool or I could have used a graphic designer, but it's okay. It's good.

SPEAKER_00 26:25

Right.

SPEAKER_03 26:26

And so very true what you're saying.

SPEAKER_00 26:28

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And to move on to my second thing is about like 99% of people feel imposter syndrome. There's, but we most of us think that other people don't, if that makes sense, right? We think it's we're the 1% that feels imposter syndrome, but really it's 99% of people. I mean, so many people that I chat with, friends that that I have that are, you know, successful in their areas of life, they all feel it from time to time. It it happens to all of us, and and it's an okay feeling to have, and we can kind of accept that feeling and and and do it, even though we feel like an imposter. Um, I think the biggest lesson for me with that is my first product was to help people grow on social media. And when I launched it, I only had about 100 followers on social media. Um, and so I felt weird doing that, even though I had done this stuff in the corporate world, I had done marketing technology stuff, I had grown things, but my own brand that I was launching this under didn't have that. Uh, and I ended up doing, you know, just over $300,000 in sales before, you know, 2020 hit and everything, and the game changed. Um so that's so good.

SPEAKER_03 27:43

That's so good for people because you're right, everybody struggles. I had Paul Klein on um not that long ago in a podcast. He's um one of the co-founders of Visible TV. It's a new program, kind of like Netflix. He said the same thing. I he said, you know, uh right down to the wire, he was going, Oh man, what was I thinking? Did I do the right thing? Is this like gonna work? It's like all these ideas, you know, they're they're thinking, is it just an idea? Is it really something the public will embrace? And I think everybody does struggle with it. And it is entrepreneurship is sometimes it feels risky, but again, like you said, you pivot, you know, you don't get so rigid that if you see something that's not going quite white right, you can adjust it and keep adjusting it. So um, yeah, no, good good word on that one for sure.

SPEAKER_00 28:36

Yeah, yeah. And then I think the the third thing I tell people when when this comes up is uh trust yourself. I think in this space, it's so easy to uh listen to all the podcasts and read all the articles and watch all the YouTube videos. And when you sit down to to work on something or to create that product or to maybe put that email out there to spend the next hour researching what you should do or what headline you should have on this or that. And that's kind of based in in perfectionism, but it's also based in that there's so many ways to do it out there, and so we get stuck in this uh analysis paralysis phase where we're frozen because there's so many options. And so we feel like we're making progress by researching or doing all of uh, you know, listening to a podcast or watching the videos and really sit down and trust yourself and get a rough draft out there first, yeah. Then maybe do a little bit of research and tweak it and hone it. Um, and I know this sounds a little counterintuitive because I, you know, my subscription is having people come to me and I share with them my, you know, my knowledge and everything like this. And I too have a podcast that I want people to listen to. But when it comes to like getting things done, put a little faith in yourself and just get a rough draft out there. No one else has to see it yet, but get a rough draft out there, trust yourself. You've already put time and energy into learning a lot of this stuff. I mean, you've already listened to the podcast, just dig deep, put a rough draft out there, whatever it is, and then hone and tweak it based on maybe some of your research from that point in time.

SPEAKER_03 30:16

Yeah, no, so true. I know exactly what you're saying. I had this on another of my podcasts. Don't second guess yourself. It's one of those distractions because you know, people think, well, maybe if I and and personal development, we're not saying that obviously we're not saying don't listen to a podcast because you're listening to a podcast. But we're saying there is there is part of what you do that's personal development, but don't use that as an excuse to not do the income producing work. You know, it's just like you can't just do admin work. You have to do income producing work and then you need to do other type of work. And you know, growing uh communities and relationships is important too. You know, you could be on a mastermind or whatever it might be, and that's important too. But I think what you're saying um is that we shouldn't use it as an excuse to not to avoid putting something out there.

SPEAKER_00 31:06

Exactly. Exactly. Yep.

SPEAKER_03 31:07

Yeah, yeah, very true, very true. And I think that does happen. Yeah. And so those are my oh, I'm sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

I was just gonna say, so those are like my three pieces of advice when when this comes up that I talk with, but I kind of cut you off. What did you say there?

SPEAKER_03 31:20

No, I was just gonna say that some of the things that why we put off is that we use those excuses like technology. I need to know more about technology, I need to learn more about this tool. And um, you know, I I love technology, you know, I feel like I grew up with technology.

SPEAKER_00 31:35

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

Back in the day when the IBMs came out and my laptop was 50 pounds, you know. I thought it was amazing. The little green cursor, you know, I'm dating myself, but for sure. But sometimes people do spend too much time worrying about the technology and not putting something out there, so that's really, really valuable. I think it's a real problem for many people. So, again, we teased a little bit about the membership. I would love for you to kind of expand a little bit on that so we can end on that on your new project, your membership, and how people could join and what they can find. That would be awesome.

SPEAKER_00 32:12

Yeah, yeah. So the membership is called SM3. Um, and I'm kind of a kind of a math nerd. So it's like SM and then a little three in the superscript. So it looks like an exponent, but uh it stands for social media moneymakers. Um basically one of the things I ran into with my product to help people post was a lot of people were posting, but then they couldn't convert those into those followers and things into clients and things along those lines. So the membership focuses on making it really easy for you to post content out there. We have editable uh captions and that you can use even for emails, you can use them for your social media posts. They're very versatile, but you don't have to stare at a blank screen. You can pick a caption you like, run with it, fill in the blanks, maybe tweak some things, but that gets your creative juices going. Um, we have editable graphics that are now in Canva. Last, you know, with my other product that was a one-time purchase, they were in Google Slides. Very easy. I wanted something easy, but these are Canva images uh created by me and my team and some professional designers. So they look significantly better than my first, uh, but they come out every month. We have a new set of these each month, but also it includes what's uh trainings on what's happening right now in social media, trainings on strategies to take uh you know, followers and turn them into clients or customers, um, and and uh just basically that kind of stuff. If anybody has a tech question, because that's my core background, because a lot of people get hung up on the the tech questions of how do I integrate this or that or whatever, you know, I'm there to answer. I have some team members there that are knowledgeable. Um, and so basically it's a place for you to get all the components, all the puzzle pieces you need to put together a strategy that works for you, as well as the expertise you need for your unique situation. Uh, so when a question comes up, you can get the answer for your use case. Uh, and and uh frankly, it's a way, way better value than my consulting hours when I do freelance on the side. Uh, if if people people hop on with that, because you know, I love the member, the membership model, the subscription model, in that I can help people over time and my business can pivot as needed, and I can address the needs of people in real time. Uh, and so I put a lot of effort into this outside of you know the freelance and consulting stuff that I'm doing, and it's you know, a great value for that. And you have community members that can help answer your questions as well. So it's a good, it's a good place to be.

SPEAKER_03 34:51

I think it meets a need because you ask people, you know, what's something that you like doing, but you shouldn't be doing, or what's something you don't like doing and you do, and people always say social media.

SPEAKER_00 35:04

Yep.

SPEAKER_03 35:05

This is gonna take the sting out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

So yeah, well, we even have people in the in the group that use the components and everything, and they just hand them off to their virtual assistant. Uh, and we even have a uh, you know, a project management board each month that comes out that you can make a copy of for yourself that has the captions and everything in there, and you can have a VA or copywriter or social media administrator just combine the graphic they want after they've edited in the caption and put it in a column for you to review, and you can review, sign off on it, and then they can go ahead and post it for you. So a lot of that's another area people struggle with is how how do I actually start outsourcing and handing off some of these things? Well, I've been doing that for years and years and years in so many areas of of business and corporate and and everything. So to me, it's a no-brainer, uh, but to a lot of people, they have a hard time just wrapping their head around that step of the process.

SPEAKER_01 36:01

Right.

SPEAKER_00 36:01

Uh and you know, people can make it really easy with with how this is as well.

SPEAKER_03 36:06

This is so helpful. So how I'm a member. So how people how do people join? Where would they go?

SPEAKER_00 36:15

Yeah, so you can just go to blakebuce.com slash sm3, and that will that will take you to it. And my my last name, a lot of people struggle with the last name. It's B-E-U-S, uh, instead of B-U-E-S, but B-E-U-S, uh, and you'll you'll be able to find it right there. And uh there's a trial if you want to sign up for a dollar uh trial offer right now, you can sign up and check it out. Uh canceling, I I'm super straightforward. I signed up for for a different marketer's monthly subscription once, and it took me six months to cancel. And I promised myself when I did my model, I would make it as easy as possible possible for people to cancel and not make them jump through all of these different hoops. Uh, because I just it feels unethical to me. And so you can cancel right from inside the membership. Uh, you don't have to send an email and wait for a response back, none of that stuff. You just if if it's not for you, you just hop into the admin panel, you go ahead and cancel. Uh, so it's really a super easy way to try it out and see what, see if it's going to be a good fit for you.

SPEAKER_03 37:23

Yeah, that sounds awesome. And a dollar, I mean, yeah, you guys are listening to this, a dollar. You can buy this for a dollar. So you can go in there and poke around, look at everything, and and uh I know you'll find lots of value and it'll simplify. That's what I love if removing complexity, simplifying a process, and reducing the time that it takes to do this stuff. So you've got all those components in there. I mean, it's my copywriting brain going there. All these components going there. So yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome. Well, Blake, thank you so much for being on the show. I really appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

And thanks for having me.

SPEAKER_03 38:00

Program is going to be fantastic because it does meet a need. Social media is one of those pain points for a lot of people.

SPEAKER_01 38:06

Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_03 38:06

Uh, you're providing a lot of value with that membership. So thank you so much for offering that to all of us who struggle with social media. So I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

Yeah, no problem. No problem. Thanks so much for having me.

SPEAKER_03 38:17

Any last words from you?

SPEAKER_00 38:19

Um, just get out there and get busy doing something, right? Don't be frozen, but take some action. You you tend to figure out your best ideas while moving forward. So start moving forward.

SPEAKER_03 38:30

So true. All right, everybody. I'll have all of the links in the show notes. And I know this is very valuable for you. We'll talk to you soon. Take care. Bye bye.

SPEAKER_00 38:41

Bye.