Latest / Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight / Small Town, Big Impact: Revolutionizing Social Media Marketing from Rural Nova Scotia

Transcript

Small Town, Big Impact: Revolutionizing Social Media Marketing from Rural Nova Scotia · Hope + Possibilities: Trust, Leadership + Strategic Foresight

• 0:00
  Nola Simon: I'll see you next time.
• 0:22
  Thank you so much for joining me.
• 0:23
  My name is Nola Simon and I'm the host of the Hybrid Remote Center of Excellence.
• 0:27
  And today we actually have the person that I wanted to be the first guest
• 0:31
  on my podcast, and she has the honor of being the last for 2024 . So
• 0:36
  ingrid Dion, Ingrid and I have been connected for a very long time.
• 0:40
  When I actually really started getting active on social
• 0:43
  media and I changed jobs, I
• 0:45
  had connected with people who are doing the social media because
• 0:48
  that's how I wanted to grow my brand and I wanted to understand better.
• 0:52
  And Ingrid had this connection with the company that I was working with.
• 0:56
  And she did all kinds of interesting things.
• 0:59
  I remember her posting about alpacas and chocolate and, uh, knitting, and I don't
• 1:05
  do any of that, but it caught my attention because it was so different and much like
• 1:11
  very organic to who she is as a person.
• 1:13
  And I remember reaching out to her and talking to her about, because it would
• 1:16
  have been actually probably when you first started the business, yeah, for sure.
• 1:20
  Yeah.
• 1:20
  And she told me all about her approach.
• 1:23
  And one of the ways that we really connected was actually a random
• 1:27
  connection with Erica M on LinkedIn.
• 1:30
  It was.
• 1:31
  It's just bizarre.
• 1:32
  And if you're not Canadian, you may not truly understand who Erica M
• 1:36
  is actually, especially to Gen X.
• 1:38
  But she used to be the host of Much Music.
• 1:41
  And to actually have an interaction with her, when every day I used
• 1:45
  to watch her after high school.
• 1:47
  Anyways Ingrid and I tag teamed Erica on LinkedIn.
• 1:51
  Ingrid actually brought her in to actually do some work for the
• 1:53
  company that we were working for.
• 1:55
  And I eventually built up that connection, and Erica and her sister have both
• 1:59
  been guests on my podcast before.
• 2:01
  The connection to Ingrid is, what I'm telling you, is deep.
• 2:06
  We're way back.
• 2:08
  It goes way back.
• 2:08
  Yeah, exactly.
• 2:10
  But that is that story of how you built your company and how you
• 2:14
  got to where you are right now.
• 2:16
  Because again, if you don't know who Ingrid is, you should because
• 2:20
  she's been nominated by Ernst Young for entrepreneur of the year.
• 2:24
  And she's done it all from a tiny little place in Nova Scotia called Yarmouth.
• 2:29
  That's right.
• 2:30
  So do you want to tell me the upshot of your bio because you're you said she sent
• 2:35
  me the bio last night and I'm like that.
• 2:37
  That's exactly the story that really needs to be amplified.
• 2:42
  Yeah.
• 2:42
  So I guess my story is just being able to run.
• 2:49
  An award winning world class marketing agency from a tiny little town that
• 2:55
  has a population of around 8000.
• 2:56
  that is 3 hours from the nearest Starbucks and working with multinational companies.
• 3:04
  billion dollar companies that are our clients that we're
• 3:07
  creating social media content for.
• 3:10
  And it's also very near and dear to my heart to hire locally.
• 3:14
  So I'm so proud to say that my entire team is either from rural Nova Scotia
• 3:19
  or living in rural Nova Scotia.
• 3:21
  And in fact, four of us are here in Yarmouth.
• 3:24
  We have a little office on Main Street, the cutest office on the whole street.
• 3:29
  And yeah, so a bunch of us are just here in Yarmouth, which is a place where
• 3:35
  there never was this kind of industry.
• 3:37
  It really relies on fishing, forestry.
• 3:41
  And tourism, and those are the main industries.
• 3:44
  So when I was looking for a job in my field of marketing or
• 3:49
  communications there were no jobs here.
• 3:52
  And so I, that's how I, that's one of the ways that I started remote working.
• 3:58
  Back when I was 10 years ago, I was a single mom living under the
• 4:01
  poverty line and working three jobs.
• 4:04
  And my fourth job was to try and find a job.
• 4:07
  In my field and there were none locally.
• 4:10
  So I applied for a lot of jobs in Halifax, which is a three hour drive away.
• 4:14
  And I would say ideally I would work there one day a week and then
• 4:19
  work from home the rest of the week.
• 4:21
  And this was before the pandemic and no one wanted to go for that.
• 4:24
  So I got rejected over and over again.
• 4:27
  Until an agency finally took a chance on me.
• 4:30
  and hired me as a social media coordinator.
• 4:32
  It was very entry level, but at least it was in my field.
• 4:35
  And so every Monday morning, I got up at 4.
• 4:38
  20 in the morning and drove the three hours, four hours with traffic to Halifax,
• 4:45
  worked my day there, drove the four hours again in traffic home, and then
• 4:51
  the rest of the week I worked from home so that I could be home with my son.
• 4:54
  Yeah, and like anybody in Canada who lives outside of a major city can relate to that
• 5:01
  story because that's what you're told.
• 5:03
  That's what I was always told is you're not going to get any kind of job that
• 5:06
  pays anything and that is worthwhile doing unless you actually go to the
• 5:10
  city and as a mom to have that's almost like what a 5 hour, 6 hour commute.
• 5:16
  Yeah, it was six to eight hours commute.
• 5:20
  Yeah.
• 5:21
  And even if you're just doing that one day creates so much anxiety
• 5:26
  because you have to make sure that everything is running in your house,
• 5:30
  that your kid is taken care of.
• 5:32
  And if something goes wrong, even though it's just one day, you're hours away.
• 5:38
  How do You have to have that village that everybody talks about that you
• 5:42
  need while you're parenting, except it doesn't necessarily always exist easily.
• 5:46
  Like it's like pulling in favors.
• 5:49
  And I remember that as well, too.
• 5:50
  And it's such a challenge.
• 5:52
  And so that's where I don't think that story gets amplified enough.
• 5:56
  And I don't think people understand how much Hitchback it would have
• 5:59
  taken to create a business like that on your own, in that remote area.
• 6:05
  Yeah.
• 6:05
  Yeah.
• 6:06
  So yeah, that's the other part of the story is, after I did that for
• 6:10
  three and a half years doing that commute to Halifax Mondays and also
• 6:15
  once I'm I was able to climb up to manager of social pretty quickly there.
• 6:20
  And so I was also managing a team in Toronto and I was in
• 6:23
  Toronto almost once a month.
• 6:24
  So I was really, all over the place.
• 6:27
  And then.
• 6:28
  Working from home in my tiny community as much as I could so that I could be
• 6:31
  home, but I eventually left and started my own business and trying to grow
• 6:36
  a business from here where I'm not I do have a few clients here locally,
• 6:42
  but most of our clients are not here.
• 6:44
  So when I'm here, I'm not necessarily meeting clients.
• 6:46
  Like we don't have clients that come in off the street.
• 6:49
  And want to work with us.
• 6:51
  I have to travel and go to Toronto and go to Atlanta and go to Halifax in
• 6:58
  order to meet clients in order to do that networking to grow our business.
• 7:02
  But it's something that I'm willing to do to keep the business here and to keep
• 7:06
  creating jobs here in rural Nova Scotia.
• 7:09
  Yeah, and it's so important.
• 7:10
  So I know you have a very deep connection with remote work but you've
• 7:15
  chosen to actually create an office.
• 7:16
  So why did you actually decide to actually go to the cute little office
• 7:21
  on the street, which I absolutely adore and I've always followed all
• 7:24
  your innovations and decorations.
• 7:26
  And so why did you actually do want to have an in person environment in your MFA?
• 7:32
  It started because the internet at home was so bad.
• 7:38
  That's a typical Canadian story too.
• 7:41
  Yeah, so we had just one step up from dial up internet, and I was finding it
• 7:47
  terribly difficult to run my business.
• 7:51
  Uploading a video would take a day and that's no exaggeration.
• 7:55
  I remember I was uploading a video once and it said that there was
• 7:59
  like 20 something hours left.
• 8:01
  And when I told the person that I was working with that.
• 8:04
  It was like that.
• 8:05
  It was going to take that long.
• 8:06
  They thought I was joking.
• 8:08
  And I was like no, literally.
• 8:10
  Yeah, I'm literally an hour outside of Toronto, and I once went to an event and
• 8:14
  I took all kinds of photos of the CEO.
• 8:17
  I had 400 photos and whatnot of the whole event, and it was taking so long
• 8:23
  that they actually asked me if I would consider driving in to bring my device.
• 8:27
  So they could actually plug it in and download it.
• 8:30
  Rather than wait for the internet connection to download it all.
• 8:33
  Plus of course, all the cyber security protections and all that stuff.
• 8:37
  Yeah.
• 8:37
  So no, I believe you.
• 8:40
  I used to, I still drop calls like crazy, but that's just a reality of cell phone
• 8:45
  coverage in Canada, which of course, you know, if you're paying for it.
• 8:48
  at any certain speed, it's like a second mortgage to begin with.
• 8:52
  Yeah,
• 8:55
  exactly.
• 8:55
  I know our cell phone coverage here is still absolute.
• 8:59
  It's an absolute disaster.
• 9:00
  Like I can't, I do the drive to Halifax frequently still.
• 9:05
  And there are so many dead zones that I, during that drive three
• 9:10
  hours, I can't take any calls.
• 9:12
  Because they would drop all the time, so it's really time that I spend listening
• 9:16
  to podcasts and educating myself because I can't schedule a call during that time.
• 9:20
  Yeah.
• 9:21
  Yeah.
• 9:21
  Yeah.
• 9:22
  I totally understood that.
• 9:23
  I've always wondered that question, but that makes complete and utter sense.
• 9:27
  But yeah so when I started coming to, so I live like 40 minutes outside of Yarmouth.
• 9:33
  even in a more rural area population 2000.
• 9:37
  And so in Yarmouth, the internet was much better.
• 9:41
  So I started coming into a co working space.
• 9:44
  And working from there in order to access the juicy internet and and
• 9:50
  eventually I got my own office space.
• 9:54
  It was a second floor walk up above a clothing store and work.
• 9:59
  We worked from there for.
• 10:02
  A little over a year, I think, and there were some structural issues with that
• 10:06
  building, so we eventually lived in it.
• 10:08
  Wasn't there rain or flooding or something?
• 10:09
  It rained indoors, yeah.
• 10:11
  Yes.
• 10:11
  That was the problem.
• 10:12
  Yeah, and it felt like Nova Scotia doesn't get rain, it rained indoors and the
• 10:19
  rent was cheap I couldn't really expect.
• 10:21
  A roof over our heads at that rate, but we moved last year to this new space
• 10:27
  and it's street level and it's great, but there are a bunch of us who like
• 10:31
  to come into an office and be together.
• 10:34
  We also do a lot of photography and videography in the office.
• 10:39
  All of our props are here.
• 10:40
  So because we work with product based businesses, most, mostly we have tons
• 10:45
  of props, tons of products, and, we need a place for all of that stuff.
• 10:48
  That's why we have an office.
• 10:50
  But I work from the office three or four days a week usually.
• 10:54
  And some people rarely come into the office.
• 10:57
  Some people come in more frequently.
• 10:59
  It's just good to be able to give people options.
• 11:02
  Yeah, exactly.
• 11:03
  And having the choice and the autonomy to choose what's going
• 11:06
  to serve the work really is the gift there, that flexibility.
• 11:11
  And that's always what I was after was not necessarily, I said to somebody
• 11:15
  the other day that if somebody had ever let me work like the six to two shift,
• 11:19
  so I could have balanced childcare and commuting and hours and stuff like that, I
• 11:23
  would never have actually pursued remote.
• 11:26
  Because I would have been trusted to have the autonomy and the
• 11:29
  flexibility to decide what's going to serve the work and balance my life.
• 11:33
  And 10 years later, we're still challenged to actually have
• 11:37
  that kind of level of trust.
• 11:39
  So when you're, when I'm talking to people who run their own business, what stands
• 11:44
  out to me the most is the investment in trust and interest in your people.
• 11:48
  And you've just.
• 11:50
  Epitomize that so kudos to you.
• 11:52
  This is why she's award winning, right?
• 11:55
  So I wanted to talk about your approach to actually attracting clients I remember
• 11:58
  you telling me the story of how you actually approached my former employer
• 12:03
  and you really just looked at how they were managing their social media and
• 12:06
  sent them a note online basically saying like Hey who's writing your stuff?
• 12:11
  Do you have a need something like that?
• 12:13
  You Yeah.
• 12:15
  So that, that is one way that we approach potential clients.
• 12:20
  We just, we see that they need help and we want to help them.
• 12:24
  I am very, I don't know if it picky is the word, but I'm very specific
• 12:29
  about who I want to work with.
• 12:31
  And early on while running the business, I took some gigs with some potential clients
• 12:39
  that weren't quite aligned with what.
• 12:42
  I feel the way that I am or my interests or my strengths.
• 12:46
  And so I made a sign and put it on the wall of my home office and it said,
• 12:53
  before saying yes to a client, the first question was, is this a social
• 12:57
  media, is this social media work?
• 12:59
  Because I was saying yes to translation work and web copywriting.
• 13:03
  And, so I've just wanted to niche down to social media.
• 13:05
  So is this a social media gig?
• 13:07
  If the answer is yes, then you can keep going.
• 13:09
  And then the second question was, does the client make you want to dance?
• 13:14
  And if the answer was yes, then I could say yes to them.
• 13:16
  But if the answer was no, then it meant that it wasn't a fit.
• 13:19
  And so I'm very particular about who we work with.
• 13:22
  It has to be a client that excites me.
• 13:25
  It has to be a client that excites my team as well, because they're
• 13:28
  going to be doing a lot of the work.
• 13:30
  So if it doesn't excite everyone.
• 13:33
  Then we say no a lot.
• 13:35
  When you run your own business you're able to pick and choose
• 13:39
  who you want to work with.
• 13:40
  Life is short.
• 13:41
  Let's work with clients that we really love and that really align with us.
• 13:45
  And that's how I'm running things.
• 13:48
  Yeah, and I saw you write a little bit about how you're actually targeting
• 13:52
  conferences, but not necessarily marketing conferences, but you're going
• 13:56
  to conferences that they run for industry.
• 13:59
  You mentioned product lines I don't know, chocolate conferences, I would
• 14:02
  turn to a chocolate conference.
• 14:05
  Yeah, this was a realization that I had at Collision in Toronto
• 14:10
  last year, I think it was.
• 14:12
  I'm at this conference, it's tech, it's social media, it's marketing, it's
• 14:16
  communication, it's, all of those things.
• 14:19
  And I'm thinking, why am I here?
• 14:22
  There's, I have, there are no potential clients.
• 14:25
  No, none of my ideal clients are here.
• 14:28
  I'm here.
• 14:28
  I'm learning stuff about my industry.
• 14:30
  Sure.
• 14:31
  I'm not getting any new business here.
• 14:34
  It's all like SAS companies or other marketing agencies.
• 14:39
  So then I thought I have to go to CPG conferences because we're
• 14:44
  targeting consumer products mostly.
• 14:47
  So consumer packaged goods conferences.
• 14:49
  So I start looking like on my computer.
• 14:52
  What's a list of Canadian CPG conferences?
• 14:55
  And I get a list of them and I just pick one arbitrarily.
• 14:59
  So last year we went to Grocery Innovations Canada.
• 15:03
  We got a booth.
• 15:04
  We were the only marketing agency there.
• 15:07
  Wow.
• 15:07
  Shooting fish in a barrel.
• 15:10
  That is so smart.
• 15:12
  Yeah.
• 15:12
  And when we went there, I was like, this is the smartest thing I've ever done.
• 15:18
  I've never had an idea that's good in my life.
• 15:22
  And so this year we went to CHFA the Canadian health food
• 15:27
  association, really big company.
• 15:28
  diet conference for health food products.
• 15:32
  And again, we had a booth there.
• 15:34
  There were a couple of marketing agencies there, but not too many.
• 15:37
  So this has been really a good way of us for us to meet potential clients
• 15:43
  and for us to grow the business.
• 15:45
  Yeah.
• 15:46
  And I encourage everyone to do the same thing.
• 15:48
  Think about your target customer and go to their conferences.
• 15:51
  Don't bother going to your industry conferences.
• 15:54
  Yeah, no, it makes total sense.
• 15:55
  And I honestly, I find that as well too.
• 15:57
  It's if I look at people who are doing the same sort of work that
• 16:00
  I'm doing with hybrid remote, why am I hanging around with you?
• 16:04
  Because you're, it's like an echo chamber.
• 16:07
  You're all saying the same things.
• 16:09
  You might have different focuses, but really like you're really just
• 16:12
  trying to convince each other that you're good and it's this is useless.
• 16:16
  Yeah.
• 16:16
  So true.
• 16:17
  Totally.
• 16:17
  I totally agree with that.
• 16:19
  But that's what I always admired about you.
• 16:20
  You have a way of thinking differently about how things get done.
• 16:26
  So who inspires you?
• 16:29
  Oh, that's a great question.
• 16:33
  I don't know.
• 16:34
  Uh, I just think that.
• 16:38
  So just to go to I'll think about who inspires me, but yeah, but going
• 16:44
  back to thinking differently, I think the fact that I don't have a
• 16:47
  background in business is an asset.
• 16:50
  It's, it's a blessing and a curse, but the fact that I don't know how to run a
• 16:54
  business and I'm just, Figuring it out as I go is an asset because I'm like looking
• 17:00
  at things in other perspectives trying to tackle this, running a business, however I
• 17:06
  can figure it out and sometimes it brings in some creative solutions because I'm
• 17:11
  not studying it the way that a commerce degree or an MBA might scale a business.
• 17:18
  Yeah, no, I totally agree.
• 17:20
  And honestly, that's why I hire some people to like my coach Gary twig.
• 17:25
  She is in Winnipeg.
• 17:27
  But she has a actually similar story because she initially was teaching drama.
• 17:31
  She's a single mother, she's living under the poverty line.
• 17:35
  And then she got into coaching and she realized that applying
• 17:39
  theater to coaching and business.
• 17:42
  was actually a brilliant solution because she has a perspective that people in
• 17:47
  business don't just generally have.
• 17:49
  And that differentiated background, I think really is the genius.
• 17:54
  Personally, it's what attracts me to people.
• 17:57
  So yeah, I love that you've identified that.
• 18:01
  Yeah, it's interesting.
• 18:02
  And I guess who inspires me?
• 18:04
  One of the most influential people in my career was the person who hired
• 18:08
  me at the agency who gave me that chance as a social media coordinator.
• 18:13
  And and allowed me to work remotely.
• 18:16
  He taught me everything I know about social media marketing.
• 18:21
  And he's currently our client times two.
• 18:26
  I'm still working with him.
• 18:27
  And, yeah, he's just He's his mantra back when we worked together at the agency
• 18:33
  was stay hungry and stay humble and I've lived by that and yeah he's great.
• 18:40
  That's good.
• 18:41
  So you apply that when you hire people on your staff?
• 18:44
  He taught me everything I know about hiring people.
• 18:47
  When he interviewed me, he asked me some questions.
• 18:51
  personal questions rather than questions about my skills which
• 18:56
  I thought was weird at the time.
• 18:57
  I was like, he asked me, he said, tell me about a time when you've struggled.
• 19:01
  And I was like, dude, like I'm a single mom working three jobs,
• 19:05
  working under the poverty line.
• 19:07
  Yeah, I am struggling.
• 19:09
  I'm on the struggle bus right now.
• 19:11
  And And every time we hired someone together, like when I became
• 19:15
  manager of social, we usually got together to do the interviews.
• 19:18
  And he would always ask that question.
• 19:20
  Tell me about a time when you've struggled.
• 19:22
  And we would hire people who had an answer for that.
• 19:27
  They had struggled and I do the same thing.
• 19:30
  Now, I am always asking that question.
• 19:32
  I want to hire people who have struggled.
• 19:35
  We work harder.
• 19:36
  We appreciate things more struggle is a great thing.
• 19:39
  You learn so much from it.
• 19:41
  Yeah, it's not a negative.
• 19:43
  It's a positive.
• 19:44
  So yeah, I also learned that from him.
• 19:46
  Yeah.
• 19:47
  And resilience is a good thing, right?
• 19:49
  And unless you struggle, you don't really develop that resilience.
• 19:53
  Yes, it's so funny that you mentioned resilience, because I was at a talk
• 19:58
  and it was when I was at Collision, and it was an older man, an older white
• 20:03
  man, who was talking about resilience, and he said that he had just learned
• 20:09
  about the concept of resilience, and I was just sitting there I'm sorry,
• 20:13
  you just learned about this concept?
• 20:15
  I've been living this concept for years.
• 20:18
  I could teach an entire course on resilience.
• 20:21
  And anyways, it just really blew me away that it was a brand new concept
• 20:25
  to him and he was doing a talk on it.
• 20:28
  Yeah, resilience, it's important.
• 20:30
  No, I've been at those conferences or things like that.
• 20:33
  I remember attending like an employee events and this guy that I worked
• 20:37
  with we were talking to the head of DEI and he spent 20 minutes telling
• 20:43
  her how hard he had it as a white man getting promoted and getting raises.
• 20:51
  Yes.
• 20:52
  There are all kinds of perspectives.
• 20:53
  It was a women's event.
• 20:56
  He was attending as an ally.
• 20:58
  And I'm like, oh, yeah, and
• 21:07
  he was making more than me.
• 21:08
  And I knew this because at one point I found a salary list,
• 21:11
  which I was never supposed to see.
• 21:13
  So that was all entertaining.
• 21:16
  But where do you think that, like, where do you hope to
• 21:20
  take social media marketing?
• 21:21
  Because social media marketing is not without controversy these days,
• 21:26
  especially with everything that's happened recently in the States.
• 21:29
  Yeah.
• 21:29
  So where do you want to take it?
• 21:32
  Where are you hopeful of taking it?
• 21:35
  I am a big proponent of putting the social in social media, and
• 21:40
  that's why I primarily do, or yeah.
• 21:44
  Almost exquisitely work in organic social media.
• 21:48
  So our company does not do the paid ad campaigns.
• 21:52
  There are so many agencies that do that and so few that
• 21:55
  focus on organic social media.
• 21:57
  So posting consistently, not paid ads.
• 22:00
  And the goal is really to create engagement.
• 22:03
  So getting people to comment, asking people questions, getting people to share
• 22:07
  because they've learned something new that they think more people should know about.
• 22:11
  Those authentic connections, and being social on social media,
• 22:15
  that's what I am all about, and I've always been all about that.
• 22:19
  And I did not know that it would become a trend, or that the algorithms would
• 22:25
  prioritize content that encourages, conversation authentic connection
• 22:31
  when I started doing this, but this is where social media is going.
• 22:35
  It's all about those authentic connections and being social on social media.
• 22:40
  So whether it was smart or not, I don't know.
• 22:43
  It wasn't strategic, but here we are.
• 22:46
  This is what I'm really focusing on.
• 22:48
  I will continue to focus on this.
• 22:50
  Getting in the comments is one of my favorite thing and answering
• 22:53
  people, engaging with people, finding out what people think.
• 22:57
  It's the best kind of market research you can do.
• 22:59
  And, back when we worked together and at the former company that we
• 23:05
  worked at one of the things that I pioneered was the comment based contest.
• 23:10
  And so many people run contests.
• 23:13
  That are like, okay, like this, share it for a chance to win
• 23:17
  tag your friend or whatever.
• 23:19
  That is the most useless.
• 23:22
  Yeah, because you're not finding anything out.
• 23:24
  You're finding out nothing.
• 23:25
  You are getting a lot of reach because people are sharing it.
• 23:28
  You're getting a lot of reach because people are tagging their friends.
• 23:31
  Yes, that cannot be denied.
• 23:33
  But there's nothing authentic or useful.
• 23:37
  People are just going to unfollow you as soon as your contest is over.
• 23:42
  We started running the comment based contest where you ask a question
• 23:47
  that you will learn something about your followers from that question.
• 23:51
  It's something about their preferences or their habits or whatever it is.
• 23:57
  Maybe it's just a fun question.
• 23:59
  And every answer in the comments is an entry.
• 24:03
  So we started doing those.
• 24:05
  And we were able to organically grow the following and grow
• 24:10
  engagement astronomically.
• 24:13
  We had some of those comment based contest posts that would get 50 percent
• 24:18
  engagement, which is unheard of.
• 24:19
  The benchmark is between one and two percent.
• 24:22
  So 50 percent of the people who saw those posts would leave a comment.
• 24:27
  Which is just bananas.
• 24:28
  It's some of the highest engagement I've ever seen on a
• 24:31
  post and we would learn so much.
• 24:34
  You can export the comments at the end of the contest, put them together, create
• 24:39
  a report on what people are saying, we were asking questions like what is a
• 24:44
  service that you wish your bank offered.
• 24:47
  That they don't offer currently, or what would make you switch to a new bank?
• 24:51
  Those kinds of questions, we get so much information from our following.
• 24:56
  And all you have to do is give away some gift card or something.
• 25:00
  But we would also ask some fun questions what's the first thing
• 25:03
  you ever bought with your own money?
• 25:06
  And just some fun ones to Keep it light.
• 25:09
  But yeah, that's smart because you're really putting it in the context of
• 25:13
  people's lives and hopes and desires and dreams and people like talking
• 25:18
  about that kind of stuff, even though they're helping with that research,
• 25:22
  they it doesn't feel like it.
• 25:24
  And yeah, so that's, I remember those contests.
• 25:27
  It was always really smart.
• 25:29
  Yeah.
• 25:29
  And then some of the some competitors started running them.
• 25:33
  Of course.
• 25:33
  Similar contests just because we're having so much success with it.
• 25:38
  But yeah, those are the types of things that we are continuing to do.
• 25:42
  We're continuing to stress the importance of organic social media.
• 25:45
  And.
• 25:46
  Intentional connections on social media and keeping growing a community
• 25:51
  of loyal fans, an engaged community online rather than just always selling.
• 25:57
  And of course you need your paid ads to sell your product or service.
• 26:00
  But your organic social media is really meant to create loyal fans
• 26:05
  out of your product or service.
• 26:06
  And that's where we really shine.
• 26:09
  That's cool.
• 26:10
  Do you get involved with employee advocacy at all?
• 26:13
  Or you don't?
• 26:14
  We have before.
• 26:16
  Yeah.
• 26:16
  That can be a lot of fun.
• 26:17
  It can be a lot of fun.
• 26:19
  Yeah.
• 26:19
  Yeah, for sure.
• 26:20
  You just need to make sure Try to get everyone on board, make
• 26:24
  it fun, make it interesting.
• 26:25
  And and it can be super valuable, especially on LinkedIn.
• 26:29
  . Yeah.
• 26:30
  And that's always , my area that I love.
• 26:32
  Yes.
• 26:32
  It's also my favorite only to top voicemail.
• 26:35
  That's awesome.
• 26:36
  That's awesome.
• 26:37
  But honestly it's from people like you that I learned.
• 26:40
  You're teaching people good habits even though, really just doing it in the
• 26:44
  context of your everyday life, right?
• 26:46
  And that's what I think is valuable.
• 26:48
  And the fact that you've been able to do it from where you live without actually
• 26:53
  having to compromise, the lifestyle that you want to move away from your
• 26:57
  family to move away from your community, people can learn so much from that.
• 27:04
  Yeah, thank you.
• 27:05
  Yeah, it's important to me.
• 27:07
  And you speak about that too, right?
• 27:08
  Like you're often doing podcasts and you're actually doing keynotes.
• 27:13
  Yeah.
• 27:15
  Yeah.
• 27:15
  And I would love to to speak more about my story of, I, I do a lot of speaking
• 27:21
  specifically about social media, but, I would love to try to do some more speaking
• 27:26
  about my journey from, poor single mom to CEO of a marketing agency and having done
• 27:31
  this in rural Nova Scotia and, creating jobs for people in rural Nova Scotia.
• 27:37
  Yeah.
• 27:37
  Yeah, and Ingrid has been such a help to me.
• 27:40
  I remember talking to you about coaching and grants and different things that
• 27:45
  you've actually put your name forward through is there a government programs
• 27:49
  that will support entrepreneurs and to so she's answered a lot of questions.
• 27:54
  I did start up Canada.
• 27:55
  I think I talked to you about that at that time.
• 27:57
  Okay.
• 27:58
  Yeah.
• 27:58
  Yeah.
• 27:59
  So she's a really great resource.
• 28:01
  And she's 1 of the most approachable people I've ever actually come
• 28:04
  across in social media as well.
• 28:05
  This is my way of giving back to her.
• 28:08
  This is.
• 28:08
  Sometimes why I do podcast episodes is like the people that have been
• 28:12
  supportive to me is like, how can I amplify your story and give back in a way?
• 28:16
  And, maybe five people watch it.
• 28:18
  I'm not sure.
• 28:19
  You never know who's going to pay attention, but this has
• 28:22
  always been my goal is how can I thank you for inspiring me?
• 28:25
  So that's my question.
• 28:28
  That's the answer to my question.
• 28:29
  I told her before we started, the person who actually captured my interest
• 28:32
  initially with social media was this woman who ran my doggy daycare because
• 28:37
  she did the same thing of building community and authentic connection.
• 28:41
  Like she would throw birthday parties for the dogs and people would
• 28:44
  bring special dog cookies and she would write about it on Instagram
• 28:48
  and it was just the best thing.
• 28:49
  And Between her and Ingrid that's where I've learned a lot about
• 28:54
  authentic media connection and yeah, anyways, that, that was part
• 28:59
  of the goal of doing this episode.
• 29:02
  Is there anything that you wanted to talk about that we haven't?
• 29:04
  I don't think so.
• 29:07
  We're great.
• 29:08
  I'm just so honored to be here and to chat with you again.
• 29:11
  It's been a while since we've been face to face and, It has.
• 29:15
  Actually, I think we did a phone call our one time that
• 29:19
  we actually did a phone call.
• 29:20
  We were rocking it old school back then.
• 29:22
  Who didn't scream?
• 29:24
  Yeah, exactly.
• 29:25
  But it's so cool to watch your growth.
• 29:29
  And your positioning yourself as a thought leader in remote work
• 29:34
  just so cool to watch you and I'm always cheering you on LinkedIn.
• 29:38
  Yeah, I that the most important thing that I did this year, honestly, was
• 29:42
  the McLean's magazine interview, and I did a TikTok for them, and
• 29:46
  then, of course, Canada decided to shut down TikTok, so there's that.
• 29:50
  Oh, yeah.
• 29:52
  That's a whole other topic.
• 29:54
  Yeah, I know, but it's been such a journey learning all of that kind of stuff and
• 30:00
  pivoting from what I did before, right?
• 30:02
  And it's because people share.
• 30:05
  So generously online that I've been able to do it because I, I sometimes
• 30:10
  do tell people that part of the reason I started the podcast was because
• 30:13
  smart people will actually come and talk to me for free for an hour.
• 30:18
  So smart.
• 30:20
  And I love to amplify their stories, but it's also about
• 30:23
  what it does for me as well too.
• 30:25
  And that's.
• 30:27
  Another part of my podcast that I don't necessarily advertise, but it's true.
• 30:31
  Yeah, that's awesome.
• 30:34
  So you've been in business, what, it's six years, is it five years?
• 30:37
  Five, five, yep.
• 30:39
  Yeah, that is so cool, because honestly, I met you right at the
• 30:43
  beginning of your journey and to see you get to the point where you're
• 30:46
  like winning awards or nominated for awards in entrepreneurship it's just
• 30:53
  fabulous to see how you developed it.
• 30:55
  Where do you want to go?
• 30:57
  What, do you have a big hairy audacious goal?
• 31:00
  We're looking at exporting right now.
• 31:02
  All of our clients are across Canada.
• 31:04
  So I've been to Atlanta twice this year to meet some folks and try
• 31:10
  to learn more about the U S market to see if we can break in there.
• 31:13
  I know it's a pretty saturated market when it comes to social media.
• 31:17
  But I think there's.
• 31:19
  There's room for us in there and also looking at other markets
• 31:23
  internationally just to see, Canada's big, we could definitely
• 31:27
  keep playing in the Canadian pond.
• 31:29
  But yeah, it's just interesting to see what exists outside of Canada.
• 31:34
  And I always love a new challenge.
• 31:36
  So that's one of the things that we're doing right now.
• 31:39
  And just, growing the business.
• 31:43
  creating more jobs, bringing in some new clients figuring things out,
• 31:49
  trying to figure this thing out.
• 31:51
  Yeah.
• 31:51
  That's cool.
• 31:52
  Yeah.
• 31:53
  It's always interesting when I look at my, like my podcast audience,
• 31:56
  cause people often ask me like where my audience mostly is, and it's
• 31:59
  Canada and the U S which makes sense.
• 32:01
  But at the moment I'm on the top I've been on the top of the charts
• 32:04
  in Romania and I'm like why Romania?
• 32:06
  What is it about Romania?
• 32:09
  Oh my gosh, that's wild.
• 32:10
  I know.
• 32:11
  You have to plan a trip.
• 32:13
  I know.
• 32:13
  Yeah, I have no idea.
• 32:15
  So it's interesting to see what resonates with people and what
• 32:19
  really, what magic you can create.
• 32:21
  Yeah, that's cool.
• 32:23
  All right.
• 32:24
  Thank you so much for making the time to do this.
• 32:26
  I really, as I said I've appreciated all your support over the years and I,
• 32:31
  I wish you all the best in the future and your team, of course, too, because
• 32:34
  creating jobs in rural Canada, especially in an industry that is not traditional
• 32:42
  takes a lot of work and I don't know that people necessarily understand that.
• 32:47
  Without any reliable Internet I started my career at Rogers.
• 32:51
  Okay, it has not changed all that much.
• 32:55
  That's 1 of the things that I really think the future.
• 32:59
  Of working Canada really needs to resolve because yes, it's
• 33:03
  holding us back quite frankly.
• 33:05
  It certainly is.
• 33:06
  Yeah.
• 33:07
  It's, you could work from anywhere if you had a reliable Internet
• 33:10
  connection, it's super important.
• 33:12
  And yeah, it's absolutely my pleasure to be here.
• 33:16
  And I'm so thankful that you had me on your show.
• 33:20
  Awesome.
• 33:21
  Thank you.
• 33:22
  Here we go.
• 33:26
  One, two, three, four, five.
• 33:33
  Watch yourself in orbit.