Bart
Welcome to the More Life Podcast where creative problem solvers, entrepreneurs talk about squeezing more out and finding meaning in this crazy thing we call life. Let's dive in. Welcome back to another episode of the More Live podcast. I'm here this week with Karmen Kendrick, digital consultant and founder of Karmen Kendrick's Creative. Karmen, please say hello to everybody.

Karmen
Hello, everyone.

Bart
Karmen, we know each other via Twitter. At least I know you via Twitter. I've been a very big fan of your presence there cause you provide a very real approach to, you know, the the market that you're in and talking about marketing and talking about, you know, how it is running your business. I wanted you to be on the show to kind of talk about yourself and talk about maybe your journey. So first up, please explain to everyone what it is that you do for a living, how long you've been doing it and where you live.

Karmen
OK, so I'll start with the current. So currently I am focusing on WordPress Consulting. If you're unaware with WordPress, it is a platform that was originally made to create blogs, but right now you can create anything with it. My journey started about eight years ago. I had an e-commerce store and I hired a web design company to do the website for me and it was on Wix but the issue was at the time, and Wix has come a long way since then, but at the time I didn't have like a really good backing up for me to manage my orders and send out email notifications to my customers. And so I decided to go over to Shopify. So I was on like really a shoestring budget. And so I was like, let me just design the site myself. It looked horrible, but I was still able to get some sales. And this for the longest time before I learned about branding and marketing and just really understood like business because I was like twenty, twenty one at this time and I was just trying to figure things out. And so I always felt like what if my website looked better? I would be able to get more sales, get more clients. And so just naive me, I didn't think I could afford what the what I was being quoted. So I just kept moving around to different platforms and I landed on WordPress by accident. And I built my site there and it was like the first time I had built the site that it actually looked good that people want to shop at. And so some kind of way, I got the idea was like, you know what, I'm pretty good at doing this. Maybe I could do it for other people. And that happened maybe about four years ago. And I decided, like, hey, let me just jump into Web design. And from there, it's just kind of spiraled from design, learning about marketing, learning about branding. And then where I'm at now, just focusing more on the support side of WordPress.

Bart
That's fantastic. So I got to ask, what were you originally selling with the e-commerce site?

Karmen
Yeah, so I was selling hair extensions and I'm like kind of saying it's

Bart
Oh for real?

Karmen
Yeah, yeah. I was really big into hair and at that time it wasn't a cool thing to do. It was just that ever since I was in high school, I was always getting hair extensions and I just ran into a problem that the hair, no matter how much I pay for the beauty supply stores and never like, really just held up like I wanted it to. And so I started doing some research online about this. Very good rated hair that celebrities wear. I'm like, OK, let me check this out. And then I realized the hair was like five hundred dollars and I was like, you know what? I started seeing a couple other people, black women that had their own businesses to sell hair. And I was like, I could do the same thing. You know, I love hair and I'm sure other women are having the same issue. And that's how that kind of started.

Bart
Wow. And for those who don't know, yes, a hair could be that expensive is no joke out here with with an e-commerce site. You were kind of just using it like a side hustle, like, yo, I'm going to start this thing. I'm going to see what it does. Or did you have the intention of this is going to be my main business, this product of selling hair extensions

Karmen
Getting into it, no, I thought it was just going to be just something. I mean, I didn't even look at it as a business, to be honest, when I started it. And then I remember pretty much making because I was working at Walmart at the time and I got an order come through and it was like pretty much one of my paycheques that I made and two weeks working there. And that's when I was just like how trying to make this my main thing.

Bart
I love it. Everybody has that light bulb moment where it's like, oh, what y'all were paying me for, you know, a whole day's worth of work I made that with one project. I made that doing one thing. And it kind of, it's like you were you were always aware of the numbers, but nobody ever put it into a formula that was like, oh, I see the math. This math makes way more sense because. The online store will be up and running when you're still, you know, sleeping or you're at your other job, and it's a different way to think of life and going through that. And you mentioned that you were using Wix and and Shopify. So you've done the whole gamut of all the big players now. Oh, yeah. So how did you how did you feel using tools like that? Because, you know, coming from WordPress is not a glamorous platform to use, which back in the day was very basic, now like you said, they have done a lot, a lot, a lot for agency type, for small businesses, for entrepreneurs who want everything in one package up for them. Same thing with Shopify. Shopify has a beautiful spin on it as well on doing it. How did you feel using all those different platforms? Because I was younger and I feel like you're very much you don't mind change when you're young. So I had no problem like just making the switch to media platforms where they're hard to learn. I think the hardest thing was probably like trying to figure out DNS records, like how do I point the domain to the website? That was probably the hardest thing. But figuring out how to like, use the platforms, I really did not remember, like having a hard time trying to figure it out. So it just came to me second nature at the time.

Bart
Yeah. And then with with WordPress, you know, when you come when you finally reach WordPress and again, if you're saying four or five years ago, it would have been a theme. Right now all the rage is like front end editors like Eliminator or Beaver or stuff like that Oxygen. But, you know, people don't necessarily if you're just starting out, you don't know that it was still a lot of work to build a site in WordPress because you had to do it in a very specific way. It wasn't as drag and drop as like Wix was back in the day, even though Wix wasn't that good back in the day either. So how did you, because you talked about being, you know, a a somebody who was building a site for your own purpose. And then from there, were you ever designing sites for for others, for other people?

Karmen
Yeah. So, I mean, the first time with the first project I did for somebody else, I actually the guy paid me like three hundred dollars basically. That was the first time that I had done it for someone else. And I never really had a problem like charging what I felt like I was worth. So I know like a lot of people that was starting taking like little projects for free from family and friends. But I've never taken a free project.

Bart
That's good. No, that's really good. A lot of people, they don't feel very confident or they feel like because they're starting out, they don't know what to say. And it's easier to just say, you know, oh, I don't want to offend anybody, especially when your first project is may be coming from a family member, like a cousin. And I got a business and all this. I still get those calls. And once once in a while, you know, I'll do something for someone. But most of the time I'm like, listen, I can I can show you, you know, let me introduce you to Wix. And this is a good place for you to start out. But for the type of work that I do, it's just not feasible for me to spend that kind of time that I would need to build on the site, especially for zero dollars of zero sense. That's also how I pay the bills.

Karmen
Exactly.

Bart
Yeah. so you've been doing this for four years and then you transitioned away from web design, which I find I'm very interested about because you moved away from, I think the last time I saw your website cause I forget when I first discovered you online and I went to your website and I think you were selling, you were selling websites and now you sell only the maintenance for it. So I want to talk about maybe finishing down and how you kind of found that little lane for yourself and and what's made it so lucrative for you to exclusively do that?

Karmen
Yeah. So I've had this great for a long time because once I figured out my process and what I wanted to charge, you got to think about the clients that can afford that. And I'm in like really the personal branding space. Like, you do have some huge personal brands. If you think about people like Marie forleo or can't think of another Amy Porterfield is another one.

Bart
Yeah.

Karmen
yeah. So people like that, like they are willing and they understand the ROI of investing, you know, thousands of dollars, inside their website. A lot of times when you're like just starting out, when you're new to the industry, you're convincing. And at that point you are convinced of people to invest in themselves. And so I just got tired of like meeting the pre revenue people or the people that just did not. They were still thinking like an employee might like to call it

Bart
Yes

Karmen
they didn't see, like, understand, like really invested into their websites. And so I was like, I want to work with with clients that they get it. They've done it before, and the funny thing is like Web design isn't like a hundred percent gone from my business, what happens is web design becomes a back-end offer. So I'm getting people that have maybe got a site built by someone else, but their developer, their relationship or whatever the case, what happened or whatever it was. And then they come to me and of course, down the line they need a website redesign. So, of course, they're coming to me to redesign their web sites.

Bart
Right. And that's very, very smart. The way you've you've just explained that because people sometimes don't pay a lot of attention to their audience. Who exactly am I looking to sell? Because, you know, like like like anything there's levels to this. Right. So what's good for me and what's a like two to one of my clients or to somebody that I've done work for the past five hundred dollars is a lot of money to spend on a website to a client that I've done work for in the past ten thousand dollars is a lot of money for a website to other clients. Twenty thousand dollars is a lot of money for a website. So everybody has a threshold as to what they're willing to pay for a site. But if you try to be all things to all people, I think you're going to end up not reaching all the goals you want because you're not going to be known for anything. So let's talk about a little bit about Brand and about being known for something, cause you like I said, you know, when I first saw your site, I kind of felt that I knew what you were doing. And now, recently, since I've checked up on you before I invited you to come on the show, I saw that you have you have transformed and leaned in on a very specific signature product, which would be the the the management of WordPress sites. And I love it because the more specific you can be, the more recognizable and a more of an authority you can be in that industry. How did you make the decision to say, OK, I'm going to create a whole brand around that? It's not as sexy as I'm a web designer. Right? Like when when you when someone asks you or what do you do? And you have to explain to them, well, this is actually what I'm known for, because you're kind of you're always going to have business because all you need to do is partner with other digital marketers who also have business and you can be that back-end support for all of them. How did you make that transition? How did you create a brand around that for your audience?

Karmen
Yes, I think this is kind of two prompt. I think the pandemic is what kind of got me thinking in this mindset, because I was thinking like, I need to get some kind of, you know, recurring income coming into my business and support is a recurring type of task that businesses need. And then also, I just don't like the title of a web designer, just really didn't fit what I did. So you can do at first I was like the web designer/strategist, but that doesn't feel good either because

Bart
I've had that before in my bio

Karmen
right, and so a lot of people. They use that one as well. So it was just like, even though I design websites, it wasn't at all that I did because like, I'm very big on strategy and making the website work for you. And so I was just trying to find a way to make myself different. And I think I had one idea about doing some kind of where you could build your own website with WordPress. That was one idea that didn't quite work out. And then I don't know when what happened. The light bulb just went off just like just offer support. And I don't know why I didn't think of that before, because even prior to me deciding to do support full time, I would always have people come and see me for like little one offs for their WordPress sites, which is actually very lucrative. And I'm not in a project for like months and months at a time.

Bart
Yeah. So we live on opposite sides of the same coin where I'm trying to stay away from the one off project. But you're finding a lane, which is which is fantastic. I want people to understand that listen to this show that no matter what your idea is, no matter how small the Niche, there is always enough food for everybody to eat. And all you got to do is find your people. You find the community of people that really rock with you, that are looking to support you and say, oh, that person has value in this sphere. And what seems small to others can actually become really big if you doubled down. The only people that see, I think, a very small return on that investment is going to be somebody who over diversifys into multiple different things. Well, I'm a photographer, but I also do websites and I'll make your video and your business card, I'm your printer.

Karmen
I've seen that.

Bart
You're never going to see a good return. But if you say, listen, I am THE headshot photographer and that's all I do and I'm really good at it. And not to say that you can never do anything else, but you become known for something. I think there's something to be said about building authority in a specific industry or within a specific topic and a specific niche, those things help clarify exactly how you can be referred over and over and over again. I want to also talk about how you generate leads, how you generate business. This is a tied and tried and tested question. Many people always ask even they ask me as an entrepreneur. So how do you actually make money? How do you get people to find you? What's your strategy with that, Karmen?

Karmen
Yes, I don't have the perfect formula. I'm still figuring that out, but

Bart
Nobody does.

Karmen
Right? So this is what I've done so far. I've done a great job of, like, building an online personality. I know that Instagram is like the you know, everybody wants to hang out on Instagram, but Twitter is actually my place and it makes sense for me and I want to grow my Instagram. So I've done a great job of just making a lane for myself on that platform by just sharing my helpful tips. And you don't have to know everything. So I share a lot of times what I'm learning. So if I tweet something, I probably just learned it, you know. Yeah. And people think, oh, that's fraud. I'm like, no, it's not. It's just like you're teaching as you're learning. So I do that. Another thing I focus on is lead magnets. And I just started to understand lead magnets, probably like in the last year or so because I would just make lead magnets. I should call them freebies because you would get people's email addresses to sign up, but it's not really leading them down the path to work with you or whatever you want them to do. And so now I'm getting very focused on, OK, what are the steps working backwards, really? If they need this service like, where are they coming from to even get here? Like, what's on the project?

Bart
I love it. While we're on the subject of freebees, let's talk about Pinterest because you, OK, like like any guest that I have on I do like a deep dive on like where they're at, what are they doing. So I know it probably feels crazy that I know everything about you, but but your Pinterest is on fire like you have a lot a lot of posts people often don't think about Pinterest as a social network. They think of it only as like a search tool. But in reality, if you think about it long enough, a search tool can be a social network where you can find answers to your questions. So you have hundreds of posts on there. Many of them are lead magnets or freebees, what are the what is the benefit for you to be on Pinterest and what are the returns that you're seeing with that investment?

Karmen
Yeah, so for one thing, I had no idea, but a lot of people that found me on Twitter, Instagram, they said they found me on Pinterest first. And I can see how I would say that on Pinterest because I'm not going to lie, the most of the people that create content for Pinterest they are white.

Bart
That's true

Karmen
Yeah, just being a person of color, you see my little brown face in my little bio.

Bart
And the photo the photos are fire.

Karmen
Right? Right. And so you're seeing all this you like, OK, who is this girl or whatever. So I had a lot of people to just say, hey, I actually found your Pinterest first. And wait there was another part to that question, what else were you asking me?

Bart
What's what's the return on the investment? Like like you kind of answered it. You said that people on Twitter, which I think is your largest platform, are coming to you through direct links from your Pinterest.

Karmen
Oh yeah, that's the thing. So Pinterest is really great for driving traffic to your website. I mean, other than Twitter, it's unmatched because of course, we know Instagram, you can only share a link in one place. But with Pinterest, you can share links, however, to whatever many places. And I learned even with that because say, for example, you write a blog post, you can literally make 20 different graphics, they all lead to their blog post. And the thing is, like Pinterest, they want you to make content for the platform. And so no one's ever going to say, like, oh, she just made pin on that. Like, you have no idea unless she does keep up with my every move, like you have no idea. But I have more of what they call it, urns in the fire basically. And so more people, they're seeing my post, either for that one blog post and they're coming back to my site and you're building traffic. I think it's one of the hardest things for most people with websites is how do I get traffic, especially if you're not using paid sources for traffic.

Bart
Yeah, traffic is tricky, especially with people that are just starting out. They they they partially assume that if I build it, they'll come. And that's where, you know, in my world, in the web developer and digital market marketing person, that's where we offer the secondary solution. Say, now that you've built the thing now, now let's actually put more effort into making it recognizable. Making it no one making it seem and I think a lot of people forget that step is not good enough just to make a business card, that doesn't mean you're going to get business, but you probably have to go to some networking events and meet people and do the legwork. And marketing is one of those things where it's kind of like the legwork. And I feel like what I've seen your Pinterest page, I guess I was late. I didn't know that you had such a strong presence on there of of people that follow you and how many different things that have been pinned with within Pinterest. I don't I know as many people who are listening to this podcast right now who don't even know that you could make your own Pinterest. I know there's pins out there. I don't know who's making them or how to put them on there, but it's actually a social media platform where you can easily share ideas. And I wanted to, you know, lastly, talk about a little bit more of, you know, the the business side of the business, which is kind of like how do you find working by yourself? Is or is there a team behind you? How do you manage all of these different sites? And we'll go a little bit more granular that way. Yeah.

Karmen
Yeah. So right now it is just me. I had an assistant. That was my first time actually hiring somebody. It didn't quite work out. But I am in the process of like hiring for a design assistant. So I have to do the applications and look through them tonight to see what I mean for that. But yeah, my goal is I want to build out a small team because it is a lot. But one thing about me, I'm very organized and so I've made like a schedule and Google calendar, like I have like times I've taken my lunch at this time. I have my calls. I'm doing something like repetitive every day. I make sure that's on my calendar. And of course, I'm also using Asana, which is a project management tool. But I personally. Yes, me too. If I use it for my clients and I use it for myself, like just different tasks I need to handle. So that's what I pretty much been doing, like I said I work alone, but I'm just very, I guess, in tune with my schedule and making sure I follow it at least as much as I can.

Bart
And how do you find the workload? Because it's it's hard when you're for many years I was the primary business person as well as the primary person who was trying to market the business. And that's where it gets a little bit complicated, where it's like, oh, there's so much client work. And then at the same time, there's so much work that I need to do where it's like other sites not quite done. Our own personal site or our processes are not refined to the place where I would want them to be. And I feel like you can get bogged down by that. Like we we just hired someone in the summer of this past summer in June and, you know, getting all of that stuff up to speed where it's like we don't have anything that talks about our culture, how we deal with clients, all these different things that are like nitty gritty. And it's like an extra weight on my shoulders of like these are the things that if you're going to be a boss, if you're going to be somebody who is a CEO or owner of a company that you need to be investing more time in. And as somebody who is creative or somewhat artistic, it's hard to find the administrative, I guess, light bulb to always turn on. I'd much rather, you know, make a pretty picture than try to like being Google spreadsheets. But for you, I want to hear a little bit more about how how are you managing, being working in the business and working on the business.

Karmen
Yeah, so I work with a business coach early this year, and I think I had the issue of always trying to cram everything in at one time. And so now I really break down everything. So I touch myself, as I call it, which is working on the business or whatever. And then I also touch a lot of my clients stuff working inside of the business. So I'm very good about just making, as they say, like eating an elephant. Like you gotta break it down into little small pieces. And so that way I'm able to really just touch everything. And then I also realized that I can't do everything. So, for example, I had to build out a sales page for, like one of my for my support plans. And so I hire a copywriter to write my emails from my funnel. I hired the same copywriter to write the page. Of course I designed it. And took like you know a total maybe like a month just to get that started. But it's just like, you know, just small chunks at a time, especially with me being by myself.

Bart
No, that's one hundred percent true. I think there's a lot of people who might feel like it's daunting to start a business this way, to start a business in the middle of a pandemic. Like you said, you pivoted your business during covid just podcast was birthed out of COVID. It started in that same time. You know, there's opportunities always for things to be born into something like but it's about putting in that effort and it's not about where you start, it's always about where you finish.

Karmen
Right.

Bart
Like you've got to put one foot in front of the other. For people who are looking. Kalman to start. What advice would you give them if they have an idea, just like how you did, maybe they want to sell something online, maybe they want to be a designer, a photographer, an artist, or maybe they want to do something on the side. What would you tell somebody, is it beneficial? Is it worth it?

Karmen
Yeah, it's definitely beneficial. I would just say research, research, research. I know people say like analysis paralysis, but what I notice is that like a lot of new business owners, they get out there and their business takes off but then there's issues like for example, you started selling stuff on Etsy and then you don't have a domain, which is really crazy, you know, things like that. And so, you know, people are crazy, like people will buy your domain you know, or, you know, they'll do all kinds of crazy stuff. and it's just I just look at what you need. Make sure you set a budget because I'm a new business owner like that. Doesn't cut it like people expect to get paid for their work. And so you have to research what are your costs going in and you also need to know your costs just because you need to know what is a profit and like what's not.

Bart
So, yeah, when you're starting out, you will make mistakes, but you really have to go through the process. And the more you can learn from other people who have been that way or find a mentor the same way that Karmen was talking about, you can avoid some of the pitfalls I've done that many times where, you know, it was more work than I was worth and use you when you're starting out, sometimes you're so excited about the idea of a prospect that you might overcommit and under deliver or you overcommit and get underpaid. And those things are things that could be easily discourage you from keep going on. Karmen, I'm so happy that you were able to be on the podcast today. Thank you so much for your time. Please let everybody know where they can find you online.

Karmen
Yes, of course. My website first it's Karmen K, it's Karmen spelled with a K, so Karmen K, last name, Kendrick, like karmenk.com. And then everywhere on social it's I am Karmen K.

Bart
That's fantastic. This has been the More Life Podcast. Peace out.