Hi Lovely Simplerista,
It's (still) 2017, baby!
Today's Calvin Show Episode is ... "Friend or Foe?"
We talk about:
- Do you have enemies in business?
- Getting legal threats from Zendesk
- When to fire someone
- Is the Universe really your friend? Really?
Do I look like an 80s teen heartthrob or what??
Go watch it now, and remember to leave a question or a comment.
Like Giving Interviews?
I do. I love it. I've mentioned a couple times here that if you'd like to interview me for your audience, I'd love to participate.
Last month, fellow Simplerista Nicole Holland, interviewed me for her podcast, the Business Building Rockstars Show (here's her interview of me). After the interview I told her how much I'd enjoyed it, and that I'd love to do a lot more interviews, and I asked her if she'd be interested in helping me getting booked on other podcasts.
To say that she ran with that idea would be an understatement. The next day, she came back with a proposal, which I immediately jumped at. She's been super systematic and structured about it, coming up with a process that makes it super easy for me to show up and knock it out of the park. And she's been so great at continually improving the process, something I'm a big fan of. It's just such a joy to work with someone who's so committed and so excited about the work they do.
These days I'm doing about 4 interviews a week, and I basically just have to show up and be present. It's so much fun! All thanks to Nicole.
So if you're looking for increasing your visibility through giving interviews to podcasters, check out Nicole and her offering. You won't regret it. She's absolutely amazing, and it's been so much fun to watch her taking this idea and running with it.
Check out Nicole and what she does here.
Featured Customer Interview: Megan Meyers
Megan wrote us a long, detailed email where she sang the praises of Simplero. When we were done blushing, we felt so proud that we couldn't help but steal the idea and make it into a recurring feature. And of course, the first featured customer is ... Megan Meyers.
I always thought that to inspire others through dance, it meant I had to run (and continually grow) my physical dance studio. I'm also a long-time business and marketing student and so over the years, I've gotten pretty good at growing my business. That MIGHT sound like a good thing but truth be told, running a brick and mortar business was slowly sucking my will to live. I HATED being a "boss" and managing employees (and I had GREAT employees!!) , I hated the stress of having a huge overhead, 5 year leases and MEGA payroll obligations. The better I got at marketing, the more my studio grew and the more the "hassle" around running a bigger business grew.
A year ago, thanks to Simplero, that all changed...
I'm not even sure how I even got the idea to get started, but about a year ago I got the idea to start selling my theme-based preschool dance lesson plans to other dance teachers and studio owners (it's called the Princess Ballerinas Dance Program). I started driving Facebook traffic to a terrible landing page in my brand new Simplero account (Correction: my design and sales funnel was terrible, NOT Simplero!!).
Within the first month, I had 1500 email subscribers and about 100 studio owners PAYING ME EVERY MONTH (that's insane!!) for simple teaching materials I was already creating for my own instructors.
Read the whole interview here.
Simplero Mentioned in Wired UK
Amanda Spann, we're eternally grateful for the shout-out in Wired UK. Than you SO much. If you're reading this, get in touch. Would love to talk to you.
New Features in Simplero
With the new year in full swing, we're back at it working on the next big step in letting you customize Simplero to its fullest. For the non-coders, this will mostly happen in our new customizer interface, where you will be able to make changes and browse around your content live to see what it looks like as you're customizing it. We're really excited to have a much more powerful and intuitive tool for getting the look you desire along with some fresh templates, but for now, I'll leave you with a sneak peek:
For the internationally minded of you, there is however some very exciting news to share this week. One of our great customers, Dr. Vítor Oliveira, who runs his business, Opinião Médica, on Simplero, has put in a massive effort over the last weeks to fully translate Simplero into Portuguese. We can't thank Dr. Oliveira enough for his efforts on this!
Random Links from around the Interwebs
President Bartlet jacket flips. I did this for my most recent photo shoot this weekend. So much fun!
The dazzling and depressing architecture of density in megacities.
Official State of Vermont Maple Syrup logo. Oops!
Lots of love,
–Calvin