Sam Vander Wielen is back on the podcast today (you can listen to her previous interview about getting legally legit in episode 91). This time, we’re talking about how her DIY website, content, SEO, and Instagram presence has helped her grow her business!
https://instagram.com/samvanderwielen
https://facebook.com/samvanderwielenllc
https://samvanderwielen.com/free-workshop
ON TODAY’S EPISODE:
- Can you use a template to DIY web site
- When is the best time to invest in web designer
- Why is important to have a marketing plan
- What is Sam’s number one traffic driver
- Marketing strategies on Instagram
- The results that Sam had from Facebook ads
TRANSCRIPT
Jessica Freeman: Hey everyone, welcome back to another episode of the digital lounge. I’m your host Jessica Freeman and today I am so excited to introduce our guests who has actually already been on the show before so you might recognize her. Sam Vander Wielen is an attorney, turned entrepreneur and legal educator who helps coaches, service providers and creatives legally protect and grow their online brands through her legal templates and signature program, the fearlessly legal ultimate bundle. Sam lives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania with her husband, Ryan, lots of plants and her ever-growing stack of favorite books. Today, Sam and I are going to talk about how she started her business, how her website has evolved, how she utilizes social media and SEO in her business, and so much more. So let’s hop in. Welcome to the show, Sam.
Sam Vander Wielen: Hey, Jess, thanks for having me again.
Jessica Freeman: Yeah, of course. I love collaborating with you. And yes, I’m glad that you are back on the podcast. If you didn’t listen to the last time I had Sam on the podcast, I will link to the other episode with her in the show notes. So you can go listen to that where we talk all about legal things. But today, Sam and I are going to be talking about websites in your online presence, and all that kind of fun stuff. So I think to start, Sam, if you could share what your online presence looked like, what it was not like literally looked like visually but where you were set up where you had profiles, all that kind of fun stuff when you first started.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, so I started in very early 2017. So I started this business in early 2017. And I first set up my website, I think that was the very first thing that I did. And I did purchase a template. So I use WordPress, I purchased a template that had e-commerce functionality to it, because I knew that I was going to sell legal templates from my website. And that was the only product that was my entire product suite at that point. So I bought this template, I uploaded it myself and I built out and designed my first website myself, which was something that so this was my second business.
So I should say that like I had some experience, I had somebody build me a website back in 2015, or 2016, for my health coaching business. And I was really hands-off with that process. It’s so funny actually, just to think back about it. Because my health coaching business never felt like the right fit for me personally. And I feel like it’s so reflective in the website that I had, I didn’t feel like it fit me that it fit my personality. I never really quite knew how to use it. It wasn’t like super user-friendly. I didn’t like it, right. So I was like embarrassed almost to, I think, share it with people. And I think that has such a huge effect on you. So because of that experience that I had. And it was nothing against the person I worked with or anything like that. It just sometimes you as a user or as the business owner, you have to tell the web designer, right? Like what, what do you want it to look like? What do you want it to feel like and all these things, and I didn’t really I wasn’t clear on that, because I wasn’t clear on that in my own business. And so obviously, I couldn’t communicate that to a web designer.
So when I shut down my health coaching business and started my legal templates business in 2017, I for some reason felt so clear about my purpose in the business, my exact like product offering who I wanted to help like it was like the clouds had parted after feeling so foggy for so long that I built out this website and I just knew so clearly what I wanted it to look and feel like so I did it myself.
Jessica Freeman: I love it. And I think this reminds me of a few things that one Absolutely. Like I have worked with clients who are not really clear about their business, their brand what they want. Exactly. They’re just kind of like, I know that I need a website probably, you know, like the in they’ve been told this. And yes, I do you agree like you need a website. But I also agree that you may not need to invest in a web designer, until you were like, okay, like I’m very clear. I have these goals. I have this like purpose. This is what I want. But like I do agree you should have some kind of online presence, whether it’s just a landing page, or you get a template and you just kind of plug-in your information. But it’s definitely true that It can affect the website and how you feel about the website if you’re not clear on your business.
But on the flip side of that, I will also say that I cannot say this for all web designers. But I am someone who, like we dive into strategy, we dive into your brand, and how that’s going to turn like how that’s all going to turn into your website and how it will reflect you. And so I think when you’re working with web designers, there does need to be that open communication and that strategy that goes into it. And all that kind of fun stuff. So yeah, I mean, it’s totally fine. You can hear me say, everyone, right now, it’s totally fine to just get a template and you can DIY your site, like, that’s fine. And I know you’re not the only one Sam, who has had maybe not like a bad experience, but you had an experience with a web designer. He got a website that you didn’t love. And so then you’re like, Hmm, maybe I’m not going to invest in another web designer. Right now. Like, yeah, yeah. So you’re not the only one.
Sam Vander Wielen: I’m also somebody who likes tech, right? I like yes, stuff myself. And so I understand that a lot of times when I’m, like, really pumped about something, and I like figure out how to do something on my website that feels really techie to me, and I share that with a friend. And like, there’s something one friend in particular, I’m thinking about who’s always like, Oh, my gosh, I would not want to do that myself. That doesn’t sound fun to me. And I’m like, but it was so fun. It’s like a challenge. And so I you know, you and I were talking about this, before we hopped on just that I, I think it’s such a careful balance in business of not wearing just because you technically do wear all the hats as your like sole, you know, solo entrepreneur, CEO self doesn’t mean that you have to put them all on. So you don’t write your lawyer and your web designer and your accountant and your copywriter.
Like there are people who are better at this than we are. I just also think that if there’s something that feels fun to you in the business, whether that’s copywriting, whether it’s graphic design, whether it’s like, I don’t know, doing something, your video editing, like, if there’s something that feels fun to you, like, hang on to that fun stuff, because there’s plenty of not fun stuff that you can offload, like I hated doing my bookkeeping, or looking at the numbers, I didn’t want to do any of that. So I got rid of that as soon as I could. So this stuff just feels fun to me. So I don’t think I don’t want anyone listening to feel like I have to be able to build like there is so much need for somebody like Jess who does what she does. If you have like a good vision, or at least feel like if in talking with someone like Jess or Jess herself, like going through what you what your ideal client looks like, and like, what offerings you’re going to have what you want your brand feel like, like that, let’s lean on that expertise and let them implement. You don’t have to do this stuff yourself, either. It just happens to be like the one thing that I liked doing.
Jessica Freeman: Yeah. And I think that’s great advice to like, those things that you do find fun, like, yeah, doing. I think there’s a lot of people, a lot of like coaches and quote-unquote gurus who, you know, teach, like, outsource everything, you know, like you’re the CEO, and you need to outsource everything, except your client, you know, your one on one clients or whatever. And it’s like, one that may not be feasible from a budget standpoint, but also like, there might be things that you actually enjoy. And so why not keep doing those things?
Sam Vander Wielen: Exactly, I that’s another good point. By the way, I didn’t have the budget at first. So I had started one business. And it was like, it wasn’t profitable, it was generating some revenue, but it wasn’t making more than what my expenses were at the time. And so when I started this business, I started this with a very, very, very limited budget and a lot of pressure on my back that if I didn’t make this work, I was going to have to go back to a full time, you know, quote, unquote, normal job. So I felt a lot of pressure to get this done myself. But not only did it feel kind of fun to me to like dive into the tech side. But I felt like designing my own website. or this could be the same for someone who’s just heavily involved in a web designer, creating theirs. I felt like it was almost like a digital business plan.
Like it had me really thinking about who is my ideal client? What is she going to be attracted to when she comes to my site? Like what kind of feel you know, she looking for? What my number one goal when someone comes to my site, what do I want them? What action do I want them to take? And I wanted to really think of like the skeleton of my business and like what my offerings were and make it as clear and easy as possible. It’s something I actually think about, like Fast Forward three years. It’s something I think about a lot Now, more from like the e-commerce side. Like I’m always trying to make the user experience better from a tech perspective, like making it super easy for people to check out and pay right like people want to pay you don’t make it harder. Then like, you know, make it as easy as possible. So even thinking about those kinds of things I think can be helpful.
Jessica Freeman: Yes, absolutely. There’s always little things you can do to improve the experience of being on your website. And I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t understand or don’t even think about. And I also think that there is this misconception that like, I can only work with a web designer, if they build my entire website. Yeah. Like, I mean, maybe I just need to talk about it more, but like, I help so many people with just like, I just need like a sales page built. I just need an audit, I just need, like, Can you help me with this little thing? Can you help me with that little thing? Like, it’s not the majority of my work, the majority of my work is doing whole websites, but there are these little things that you can hire people to do, because we were talking about this before, but you hired a developer to help you with just a few things on your site. Like, yeah, do the entire thing. But it was just a few things to do around your site.
Sam Vander Wielen: Well, my like, nerdy to self has its limits. So there are only there’s only so much I’ve been able to teach myself how to do without really going too far down the rabbit hole and like, right, basically becoming a developer yourself, you know, so I’ve learned like the basics of maintenance, like things I could do on my own, and I didn’t want to be reliant on someone else. Like, every time I put up a blog post, I didn’t want to have to email somebody to be like, Can you put this up for me, you know, if I have a business, or I generate a lot of content, and I wanted to be able to do the day-to-day, but when it comes to, for example, if you buy a template of a site of some sort, if you buy a template theme, then there are going to be certain like, I don’t want to call them limitate. Yeah, I guess there are limitations, that if you want them to do something design-wise, like I remember feeling so frustrated, like why can’t I get this thing to, you know, override this font or like move over here, center this video. And it would be like, oh, because in my, my theme in the code for my theme, like the CSS code, or whatever. And then it has like these default settings, and I couldn’t figure out how to override it.
So it was really helpful to then have a developer come in and be like, I’m just trying to do this like one function, and I can’t figure it out. So having someone on tap for that has been helpful. But like just said to that, I think, you know, you want to remember your website. First of all, it’s a living, breathing thing. And so it should continue to evolve as your business evolves. But there are also going to be little spin-offs. So like, maybe you develop landing pages for your freebie or your offerings, or you host like an evergreen webinar like I do, or even for like waitlist people will like to fill up different pages for like a waitlist for a programmer something like this, then you can always lean on the professional for that too, because optimizing those and making them really like strategic, but also, you know, nice to look at for somebody to opt into something is really important. Like that stuff makes a big difference. So spending a few hundred dollars or something like that on someone to help you develop that page can make a huge difference.
Jessica Freeman: Yeah, absolutely. Now, how long until you? Or did you I should say, decide to uplevel your website, like, did you change that theme? Are you still using that same theme?
Sam Vander Wielen: Still on the same theme, and the only thing that I’ve really changed is that I did hire a like a, I guess a graphic designer for the header of my website because I was using the default header from the template that I had purchased, which was really just like written text. So now I have not only my brand font but also my I think my sub logo is there. And then also, I wanted to add my own tagline. So that was something else I had developed as you know, like gotten more into my business, I was clear on like, I could come up with a tagline because in the beginning, I didn’t even really know I wouldn’t have known what to say. So now it’s like legal templates and trainings for online entrepreneurs. So, um, I’ve done that. And I’ve created definitely those offshoots of like a signup page for my workshop and a sign up page for different freebies and offerings.
But other than that the website that you see now I guess I’ve changed a few things from the original theme on Oh, this is a good upgrade actually to talk about. One thing I did do is have my developer helped me with my homepage because I wanted to add a couple of different things that weren’t included that weren’t included in my theme. So for example, my theme didn’t include a place for social proof and I thought that that was really important to be on my homepage. So I added basically a banner of different logos or names of companies or publications that I’ve been in or featured in. So I added that for social proof I added an opt-in to my free Facebook community. I think that’s really it. But those are two things that weren’t built into there. And actually, this is something that in later 2020, I think it’s time after three and a half years to actually dive in and build like a custom site at this point.
Jessica Freeman: Yeah. But I love that you just kind of kept tweaking, like, this is what I’m always teaching, my Better Collective members is like, there’s little things that you can do, like adding that social proof and authority of like, hey, I’ve been featured in these places. And, you know, adding those things to your homepage, having the developer help you with little things can like, I feel like sometimes it’s the littlest changes on a website, can that can make the biggest difference? Yeah, like, it’s not necessarily that you always have to like, overhaul your website? Like, I mean, sometimes, yeah, it might be a hot mess. And it just, you just need to, like start over. But sometimes, or if you’re pivoting or you know, like, you’re totally rebranding, like, there are circumstances when an overhaul is best. But sometimes it’s like, if you just want to make those little tweaks, then that’s fine. But I’d love for you to share, like how, because you now have like you have your templates, but your main offer is your ultimate bundle, which also talk about a little bit if you want to share what that is. But I’d love for you to share just how your website has helped support your business. Like I know you’re active on Instagram, and you have a Facebook group. But obviously, you still need this website to sell those templates and all that kind of fun stuff.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, you know, this, this the conversation that you guys are listening today, between Justin I actually was born out of a car like a private conversation we were having about how my brain starts to short circuit when I hear people suggesting that people don’t need a website, because even like hearing you asked me that question, just like how is the website helped your business? And I’m like, Oh, my hot like I like don’t even know where to start. Because my website, everything. Because I so people are always shocked to hear this. But my number one traffic driver is Google. And I get so many sales from cold Google traffic directly to my site. So like, I don’t even know almost how to answer this question. Because it just seems so huge and obvious to me.
So I think something that people get a little twisted sometimes is that yes, social media is great for presence, right? So it’s a great like, top of mind reminder, like you stay of like people see you in their feet, and they watch your stories, they get to know you, they like you like they engage with you. They maybe see ads, like all of these things. That’s wonderful. But that is not a traffic driver. And it’s not a lead generator directly, right? Maybe yes, maybe someone watches your Instagram story. And then they’re like, let me go over to Justin’s profile. And then I have to click this link and then click another link. And then I have to sign up, like there are all these things. But what about somebody who sits down at their computer, and types in legal contract for wellness coach or legal contract nutritionist, right, I come up, and then they buy my thing, like, it doesn’t require me to have my face shoved in the camera every single day. It doesn’t require emails to my list, it doesn’t require all of these things. It’s like you’re literally a hot lead, somebody’s looking for exactly what you do. And so this idea that you can just like, ignore a website, or that you would just pass up this like opportunity. It’s just sitting there.
And so I want you to think about as you’re, as you’re marketing your business, you’re building out your business, think about what you can do to create content that works for you. And then what content is going to require your presence all the time, right. So content that works for us otherwise known as like, basically evergreen content, but I would call it I would take it a step further and say like SEO driven evergreen content. So that’s more like blog posts on your site that are written with rich keywords that people are actually searching for in your niche, right. And that could be pins to those posts or pinch like to other things, but that people are searching for on Pinterest, and that is also a search engine, um, YouTube videos. Because people are searching Google, obviously this YouTube video can come up and if you have the right title and all the things adjusted to do on our YouTube channel as well like learning how to optimize those so that people are finding it and then lose.
The other thing I would say oh and podcast now are technically you know, searchable. Like if you go on the podcast and you can search for text, I guess we’ll see about how that leads people in terms of lead gen, but I would definitely go more personally in the Google and SEO direction at the moment. And so that is like the content that I think about The most and I spend the most of my time and money on. And then yes, social media is also there in the background as my little like workhorse. But that requires me to be really present, right? If there is a lot of noise, you’re competing with a lot of things, you don’t necessarily know whether everybody watching your story or reading your post necessarily needs what you have to offer. But the lady typing into Google, like health coach picozed, or something like that is going is that’s what she’s looking for. She’s looking for a health coach to help her with PCs. So it’s like, you really want to spend the majority of your time on that, in my humble opinion.
Jessica Freeman: I agree wholeheartedly, obviously. Because what a lot of people don’t think about is that, like you said, people go to Google with intent. They go there searching for a template, they go there searching for an answer, for recipes for you know, like, all these things. And yes, like, I know that so many people that I follow they, they post recipes on their Instagram, they post these quick tips, they, they are posting valuable information. But I don’t go to Instagram, looking for an answer. Now, I might be like, Man, what, you know, do I need this, you know, thing in my contract, maybe Sam has a post about it. And like, I might look through a few of your past posts or igtv, or whatever. But I’ll probably be like, Okay, this is too many posts, let me go to her website where there’s a lot more content, there’s a search bar, that I can actually search the keywords like, you know, health, wellness contract, whatever. And see if you actually have this template, if you are if you have the answer to my question, whatever.
But it’s, again, people go to Google with intent, looking for help. People on social media are usually there because they’re bored, or they want to connect with friends, you know? And yes, you might show up with that solution. But like Sam said, there’s like, I have to click this button, and then this button, and then this button, and now I’m on my website, and like, it’s just easier to read it on my desktop. And so like, I’ll try and remember to do that, you know, like, it’s just a long, and you might think, like, well, but people do go and I’m like, Yes, I mean, just the other day, one of my better collective members. Because we did, we were talking about Google Analytics, and she was like, oh, like, I am on Instagram every single day, very active. But I don’t get very much website traffic from Instagram. It’s like my least my lowest driver of traffic. And I was like, I mean, one that could be your Instagram strategy. Like, maybe you should try some different things. But also, yeah, because I mean, how you have to think about like, how often do you personally, go click on someone’s profile, to, like, you know, oh, like Lincoln bio? How often? Are you actually doing that? personalize it? Yeah, it’s rare. It’s rare.
Sam Vander Wielen: I think, more often than not happens that someone finds you or find someone that they like, and then Instagram or something like that is a place that you go to get further like enveloped in their web email, just kind of like be in their world. And it’s like someone that you want to be around or something like that. Like if there’s any kind of influencer entrepreneur or celebrity or person that you’re just like, I just like want to hear more of their content. I think you go to their social media to feel that, but they’re not probably, for the most part, not discovering, you know, I’ve just recently started to implement some strategies that have worked that people now have started finding me, like I had someone by the my ultimate bundle the other day, who found me through the the Discover page on Instagram, saw one of my igtv videos, because of a very specific strategy that I implemented like the week before, and literally bought my program that day. So that was an example where like, something has now happened. But that’s because I’ve put now a lot of thought and intention, like not just randomly showing up or, you know, whatever. But I’ve put a lot of intention into it.
The other thing that was coming up for me, just while you’re saying that was that, I think, too, that people make the mistake of not like dancing with the platform. So I think that when you’re on social media, you have to think about like, what is the what’s like, really the strategy of this platform, right, like, so Instagram, for example, is not a link driven platform. It’s not better. It’s not Facebook. That’s not the point of it. And I heard something a couple of weeks ago that for some reason really clicked with me. And this is what made me shift my strategy, which is that Facebook was designed to or sorry, Instagram was designed to keep you on Instagram. It wasn’t designed to send you out. That’s why they don’t do links. So instead, so if you’re dancing with the platform, in other words, you’re really using it. So it’s like full potential and capacity. You’re doing what the platform really rewards people for Doing which is staying on Instagram. And so the longer you can kind of keep somebody there get to know you utilize the tools, and nurture the relationship there, then they go and become so IGTV like videos, for example was one of my ideas where I was like, you know, if if Instagram is going to reward this, instead of me constantly sending people out of the platform to watch a video elsewhere, why don’t I try posting them here and see what happens, right? And it totally shifted the engagement, the number of views, like the clients that came from those videos, all that kind of stuff. And that’s where that woman came from, that I talked about the other day,
Jessica Freeman: Every platform just wants to keep its users. They’re like, why would they build this platform of like, hey, just broadcast and advertise and just try and send people elsewhere? And like, that’s the point of our app like that doesn’t? That’s not a good business plan. So I think that’s, that’s really smart. And I know, something else we talked about before we hopped on is, you’ve also been experimenting with Facebook ads. And we can talk about that. But I think the key thing to remember is, you really need a website for Facebook ads. You have to send them somewhere. And I know like I say, you know, I know somebody listening is probably like, but you could just use lead pages and send them to a lead page. And I’m like, but why would you pay so much? Because the lead pages subscription is like 20 or $30 a month? So I’m like, why don’t you just do a website that costs less than that? And then you can have all these other pages?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, like a landing pages on my site.
Jessica Freeman: Exactly. And that’s what I do, too. Like, you can just why pay for leap? And I know people who have a website and lead pages and I’m like, you realize your your website? Can two landing pages. You don’t you don’t need lead pages. But so you have to have a website for Facebook ads. And I know someone listening is like, Yeah, but I’m not doing Facebook ads. And I don’t want to I don’t play into I think that is short sighted. Like, you may not think you’ll do Facebook ads the next six months or next year. But I mean, what if you win a million dollars? And so I’d love for you to share, like the results that you got from your Facebook ads during your last launch?
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, sure. So I also feel like, it’s important to note that I’ve been in business for a little over three years. And this last like two weeks was the first time I’ve ever run Facebook ads. So I think it’s I’m not saying you necessarily have to wait that long. And there were a lot of Facebook ads managers like chomping at the bit to get me to run them earlier because of how much organic marketing I had already done. And proven, you know, in the business. But I say that just because I almost see the opposite Joseph where like, people are literally starting out and they’re not getting traction. And then the like the answer to my problems is running Facebook ads. And so I’m I’m really glad that I waited because I have everything I’m so set up that like I know where I’m sending them, I know where they’re being retargeted to I know like all of the things and so I’m just very like in my business.
So I feel like I’m very, like specific about what I’m doing. And because of that it’s cheaper and is actually working and all that. So basically, what I’ve decided to do is run to two sets of like evergreen ads essentially. So one will be the goal is to get people to watch my workshop, it’s called the first five steps to legally protect and grow your online business. And then the other is that the other evergreen funnel essentially will be that once people watch the workshop. Now I want to remind them that they have 72 hours to buy the ultimate bundle and get the bonuses that they’ve heard about on the workshop. So those are the two things. But in the meantime, I when I was setting these up, I just so happened to be running a promo for my ultimate bundle, I never discounted or put it on sale. And so instead what I do is what I did is that I added something of value.
So I’m going to offer a workshop to my ultimate bundle members to teach them Instagram strategy. That’s not slimy or weird and and they can they’re going to get access to this live workshop. And so I ran Facebook ads for about nine days, just letting people know that my ultimate bundle was having this special promotion that there’s a new payment plan and that they if they join but before it was April 24 then they got to attend this live workshop for members only. And also that I would review their Instagram bio, personally. So I ran this for about nine days and we made 10 sales just from the Facebook ads, and three of those 10 were to completely cold subscribers. So it was somebody who was not on my email list. Didn’t find On Instagram, didn’t like my Facebook page, like, as far as we knew they had no prior knowledge of the business. The cool thing about that, actually, is that because Facebook like because everybody at Facebook is working from home and all that, they don’t have quite the same capacity right now as a company. So their algorithm has been a little sensitive.
So at first, they did not like that I use the word legal, or I asked people like, Are you afraid about legal or something like this. And so they kept shutting down my ads, and they kept shutting down my ad account, like the entire account. And so I only ran these ads for nine days. And I think that the ads were only active for about half of them, because it kept getting shut off. And I had to, you know, contact them, and then they would put it back on when they realized the algorithm had just, you know, picked up on something. So, um, I would consider that pretty successful. Like first Yeah, got it. But it’s also because I had this very, I was sending them to a landing page on my website that looked good that was optimized to convert, you know, I had them redirected to a thank you page that was on my website that then had another call to action. So all of this stuff was like, very spelled out. And also, the legal person me has to just mention that I had a privacy policy on all of the pages that I was directing people to Facebook will knock your ads off if they don’t have if you don’t have a privacy policy. that’s legit on your page.
Jessica Freeman: Oh, fun fact, did not know that. I thought you were just gonna say like, just because you needed a privacy policy, like since there, yeah, you’re buying but also because Facebook will shut you down.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, they actually review. And so if you don’t have it at all, they will definitely shut your ads down. The other thing that I have heard that has happened to people is that they’ll just like try to outsmart the algorithm and put like privacy policy, but then when you click on it, it’s blank. So they they know about that tactic, too. And we’ll also shut it off.
Jessica Freeman: Interesting. Yeah. So I think to just like sum up, we’ve talked a lot about different things, different aspects of websites, and social. But I think what it all comes down to is, like, like you said earlier, with social media, you have to keep showing up like you like that platform like it’s to connect, but it requires that you actually show up that you post your your on Insta stories, you know, whatever. But with your website, you’re able to drive organic traffic from search, and allow more people to find you more people to join your email list to then maybe come for also follow you on social media. And then you also have the capability of, you know, running ads, which then again, gets you exposed to more people, of course, you’re paying for that exposure, but it’s exposure nonetheless. And I know someone’s listening and thinking, yeah, but what like Instagram hashtags like that exposes you to more people. Yes. But again, you have to post to know. And you have to post often because those Instagram, the hashtag feeds move so quickly, because there’s millions of users.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah. And be honest with yourself, like the last time you bought something, did you go search hashtags on Instagram first? Or did you go in Google bingo, or look on them? Yeah,
Jessica Freeman: I believe that, yes, social media should support your business. And it’s a great way to connect with people. But it’s not where you should solely build your business.
Sam Vander Wielen: I was, as you’re saying that I was kind of thinking that well, first of all, because I’m a foodie. But as I’m very visual, so thinking like, this is almost like a marketing sandwich. Like your website is like the top thread where people find you. Your social media is then the place where you like nurture them in the middle, like all the delicious toppings. And then the bottom piece of bread is like your website again, because it’s like the checkout. So now you should be selling things through your website so that you’re also not only relying on one to one stuff, like whether it’s a membership or a course or a program like mine, like you that’s also the place where people should almost end in a way Hmm,
Jessica Freeman: I mean, is the marketing sandwich like trademarked?
Sam Vander Wielen: I think we should trademark obviously now. Yeah, I can do that. That’s genius.
Jessica Freeman: I love it. Well, this has been so fun and so informative. And I hope that it’s given the listeners something to think about in their own business, and how they’re showing up online. But before we hop off, I would love for you to share where we can connect with you online.
Sam Vander Wielen: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. So I have to talk about our website, my website so much so you guys can head to my website, Sam vandermeulen.com. And that’s where you can learn more about my legal templates or my ultimate bundle program. You can also download any legal template like a contract or website policy that you need or get inside my ultimate bundle, which gives you 10 of my DIY legal templates and 23 on demand video trainings to learn how to legally protect your online business. They’re on my website. And I’d love to connect with you guys on social media. So if you want to reach out to me on instagram I’m at Sam Vander Whelan on Instagram, I’d love for you to send me a message and let me know that you met me through this episode with just today. And I would say that if you’re trying to get started with legally protecting your business, the best place to start is my free on demand workshop called the first five steps to legally protect and grow your online business. That’s a workshop that you can watch completely instant replay on demand and it’s free. It’s where I teach you my five step strategy to legally protecting your business.
