Scaling Your Personal Brand with a Team with Meg Casebolt

Jaclyn Mellone 

Welcome to Go-To Gal, Episode number 175. As always, I’m your host, Jaclyn Mellone. And today we have my good friend Meg Casebolt joining us for a conversation. Meg and I had this conversation. We’ve been having this probably an ongoing conversation for several months. And back in probably February, I think it was the end of February, we were talking about just the struggle of scaling your personal brand. Trying to figure out, there’s certain things that feel they have to come from me, but I don’t want them to come through me. How do I hire this out, but still have it be on brand and sound like me? Or how do I do this at a greater scale, because I don’t have the capacity? Just the ins and outs of that, and this is something that Meg and I are still working on. 

But as we’re having this conversation, I know other people are struggling with this too, so I wanted to have this conversation in a way that you could get benefit from it, too. And you may have insight to share. Definitely, if you take something away from this conversation, or if you have additional insights for us, tag Meg and I. Post on IG or wherever you are, and tag us. We’d love to continue the conversation with you. But this is just the behind the scenes look. Meg is local to me; we are lucky enough to live probably I haven’t actually looked at how far apart we live but probably a mile maybe even less than a mile apart. We’ve been friends for a while, and it’s been really nice too, to have someone local that we could be taking walks outside or having hangouts in our garage six feet apart during all of this, this past year with. One, we’re just normally would have this conversation probably anyway. This is slightly more structured than we would have in a garage conversation. But I’m excited to bring you in on it. I’m going to read her bio in case you don’t know Meg.

I do want to officially introduce you to her, so you know who we’re talking to here. But yes, this is a conversation with us diving into the behind the scenes of our personal brands and the different thing, places where the bottlenecks have happened. Where it’s been this is hard to scale and what we’ve done or what we’re trying to do, what we tried that didn’t work, we’re sharing all of it. Here it is. 

Before we dive in, let me formally introduce you to Meg. 

Meg Casebolt is the founder of Love at First Search. An agency singularly devoted to helping women-owned businesses get found on Google and YouTube. Her goal is to show you how to get more visitors to your website who are looking for exactly what you have to offer through simple techniques and strategies, to help you stop wasting time tooting your own horn and start spending more of that time on the work that changes the world. Alright, here it is my conversation with Meg.  

Jaclyn Mellone  

Meg, I’m so excited to have you back. And you have actually inspired me to be leaning more into this style of episode where it’s more conversational, it’s more of a dialogue. Meg and I have these conversations on boxer, sometimes in my garage, sometimes on walks. And having these conversations it’s like “Oh, how many times were I should totally talk about this on the podcast?” And then it started to become “We should talk about this on the podcast. “And here you are. And I’m really excited to dive into some of the things that we have been talking about privately that I know other people are struggling with, too. And one, I’m excited to just get some more clarity today from hashing things out with you. But two, I feel I know we’re not the only ones struggling with this. And hopefully, us hashing this out together will help other people as they’re trying to navigate this. How do you scale a personal brand without just feeling you have to be on all the time or doing all of this? 

Meg Casebolt  

Or feeling like you have to lose your personality or outsource your personality? It’s a really awkward transition when you’re growing something that’s based on you but doesn’t need to be done by you. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes, I love how you put that. You’re doing something that’s based on you but doesn’t have to be done by you. How is it showing up in your business? Now tell us a little bit about where your business is at now, because I know you’ve been on before but things definitely have changed and evolved, I’m sure. What is that? Tell us what your business looks like now and then we’ll talk about how it’s showing up in your business?

Meg Casebolt  

Sure. I think between both your podcasts over the years, this is my third visit. I think pretty soon I’m going to get the leather jacket. It’s when people host now more than one time they joined the club. When I first came on your podcast, I had a different business altogether. I was a web designer. My business name was Megavolt Digital based on my name, Meg Casebolt, helping people with digital businesses. I was starting to dip my toe into offering services for SEO, which is Search Engine Optimization and helping people’s businesses show up on Google. And I ended up really enjoying helping people with SEO, teaching people SEO, and decided to just specialize my business into that specialization within web design. 

And at some point, over the past few years, I also started feeling like I was outgrowing a brand that was based on my name. And that was a really big struggle for me, because I felt really strongly about the Megavolt Digital brands. I liked the way that it looked. I liked the feeling of it. But I also knew that I may not want to do this forever. I wanted to have other people working with me in the business. And I didn’t necessarily want them to have this cutesy nickname of mine applied to their work. It just didn’t feel quite in alignment with how I wanted to lead. I rebranded the business. It is now “Love at First Search”. It’s clearly focused on search and helping people show up in those search results, Google, YouTube, iTunes, wherever. But in making that shift, and in starting to grow the team, and in thinking about a brand that wasn’t just my face is the brand, but the brand exists outside of me.

It brought up a lot of more confusing narratives around it, when it was just me running Megavolt, it was like “Oh, I’m going to use this gift in my Facebook, because I like this show.” And then I had to start thinking about what are the things that not just me, Meg, and feel appropriate with. But what is the way that Love at First Search talks? And what are the gifts that are appropriate for this?  And over time, as the team has grown, I’ve had to really put some systems into place and say ” Listen. We’ll do Schitt’s Creek. We’ll do The Office, Saved by the Bell, but I don’t want Law and Order. I don’t want CSI.” I have very specific answers. You have gift standards, too. I don’t think people talk about having gifts standard.

There’s totally SOPs, there should be. And I use that as an example. Because it’s something that feels playful, but even your playfulness is part of your brand. Sure, we can say “Yes, we do use contractions in our speech, because I know that that’s the brand voice guides will give you that, or ” Here’s our font. Here’s our color palette. Here’s our brand guidelines.” But I think that there’s a lot more in the digital space beyond just what are your brand guidelines and what’s your brand voice. And as you’re trying to teach other people that you really need it to be like “I get the feeling of working for your business.” And there’s a systematization of the process. That’s really weird to pull out.

Jaclyn Mellone 

Yes. And in your case, you have a brand name. It’s Love at First Search, but you are the face still of the brand, right? And even when you get to a point where you’re not “the face”, maybe your “a face”, there could absolutely be other people who are leveraging their personal brands to help grow the brand. That’s all personal branding, so It’s interesting. It’s interesting for me to wrap my head around this too, with the podcast being called “Go-To Gal” and me having these internal debates of like “Okay. Well, I don’t want to be the Go-To Gal for everything, which nobody should be the Go-To Gal for everything. It’s “Okay. Well, what am I the Go-To Gal for?” And I’m having these feelings of being overwhelmed with a personal brand.  What does that mean for the brand? And what I’ve realized is people do have a personal brand. I mean, I think Amy Porterfield is a great example of this of being a personal brand with I think she has 40 employees. Yes, full time employee is working for her. And it’s one point in time in the past, she had a business partner under a personal brand, so that’s interesting, maybe not common, but interesting.

And with my business, it’s a personal brand. But we also have the Go-To Gal brand that we’re growing. And it’s what I think you’re bringing up is whether something is being posted under my own account, from me or by a team member. Somebody repurposing something for me, or whether it’s being posted from a Go-To Gal account and maybe isn’t written as it’s coming from me, but it still has to sound cohesive.  We can’t have this more generic language that sounds totally off brand, so it’s taking things that are maybe very second nature to us of what gifts we would choose or what words we would use and how do we teach that to a team and allow ourselves to be able to scale as businesses by creating this brand voice which is not a new concept, but I think it feels really new personal brands. 

Meg Casebolt  

Yes, And I think, as you’re growing your personal brand, so much of that actually does come out of your personality. And it should, the way that you show up online should be authentic to how you would show up in real life, how you would have a conversation with a real person. But then as you also hire your team, you don’t want to have clones. You’re actually the person who introduced me to the Kolbe Personality test, the way of doing things. And I know that you and I are both Kolbe Quick Starts. We both are like “I have an idea. Let’s do it tomorrow.” And we both hired people in our businesses that are as if they’re Secret Service people holding their ear and be like “The peacock has landed.” That’s not the way the business works.   Every Monday morning, we have a stand up meeting to go through things, and I have slowed down the things that I do. And it hasn’t been easy, because there are times where I get these brilliant ideas. And sometimes I will say “Teresa, I need to make this happen. What can you clear off my plate?” And there are times where I’m like “Theresa, I have this idea.” And she’s like “Q4. You can do it in Q4”.We also have to have these balances of her putting reality into my ideas.

I have an Operations Director named Teresa, and I’m just like “Oh, Teresa tells me to wait three months. “Teresa will tell me “If you want to do this Meg, you have to cut something else out. How are we going to fit this into your schedule? You told me you only want to work 25 hours a week, what’s going to have to give for this to happen?” She’s the one who, I didn’t want to say the constraints, but reality. She puts a reality onto my dreams reality. And because she puts reality on top of mine, she overlays reality on my dreams, you know what I mean? It’s one of those overhead projectors from our childhood. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes. Visually. 

Meg Casebolt  

You can draw the overhead sheet.  If she were to write something for me, it would be very different from the way that I talk. And the way that she would build a program with my brain and mind, is very different than what she would build for herself. And knowing that we’re trying to build and hire teams that are complimentary to us that fill in the gaps that we have. That if we’re the Quick Starts in the Kolbe metrics, we need fact finders. We need people who will go through and come up with the processes that are replica table, because those aren’t our strengths. How do you build a team, that is people who are really different from you intentionally? And then deal with the tension of “I’m an enneagram, seven, she’s an enneagram one.”  We come to this to strengthen each other. But also we have to adjust what it is that we do and how we behave in order to see the greater good of the brand, the business. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes. I’m like “How do you do that?” Totally, totally. And that is something we are absolutely still evolving as a team. But my team right now does feel stronger than ever. And over the past five, almost six. I’m at six, end of June, it’s six years. I’m like “I’m, am I mapping that right?” 

Meg Casebolt  

Yes, I think you’re “mapping” that right. Yes. You were you’re in the business when I met you, and you’re pregnant with Marshall, so that’s right. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes. I started to like us, our children’s ages two.  Yes. It is all anchored. All of my business timelines are anchored, too. And I feel I’m hitting that next. I started an Instagram account the summer of 2015, fall 2015, when I started my first podcast. Sold my first anything, actually became a business probably in the fall. Summer was more just playing on Instagram. But it’s funny because I think that’s when I found out I was pregnant with Marshall, all in the same week, the first week of November and 2015. All of it opened in one week. Much of my business journey is totally anchored to milestones with my kids. 

Meg Casebolt  

As soon as you start hiring a team, that it can spiral to the point where it eats up most of your profits, and you’re like “Oh. But this is what success is.” I love that you’re saying that you prefer to have a smaller team that goes deeper. Instead of having four contractors all working five hours a week, having one who works 20 hours a week, and gets to know that. Did I math that right? 

Jaclyn Mellone  

No. But that’s okay. It’s seven. I feel I’m about to hit that next big one because Marshall starts kindergarten in the fall. I’m going to have kids in some form of school, childhood, school and childcare. Yes. But they’re being cared for, they are children in a row. Never have that. That’s going to be an interesting experience for sure. But I digress. What was I even talking about? Six years. The growing team has been the hardest thing for me, the hardest thing. And for me, what’s helped his work is having a smaller team that I can go deeper with. Because there’s been times where I’ve really hired a bunch of experts. But then I felt it was really on me to connect everyone together. Because I didn’t have someone else to do that. Bigger businesses have someone else to do that. But I really just built this up. All these people, they’re all coming to me, and they’re not communicating well with each other. Could someone else maybe with better leadership skills or whatever, be able to add cores that happens in big businesses? But for me, in my personality in my business runs, that was just really overwhelming and felt very disjointed. Whereas having a smaller team where they’re working longer hours and working closer with me, everyone’s like “How do you cut down meetings?” I’m like “We need those maps.” I love that you said stand up meeting because having those meetings and having longer meetings actually has helped so much with a remote team to get us all on the same page.

Meg Casebolt  

Especially a remote team across multiple time zones, multiple countries. We’re in New York. My employees in Georgia, and then I have half my team in Canada and one more in Scotland. It’s like finding the time to meet up with people can be really hard to go back to what you were saying about having a bunch of experts who aren’t communicating with each other.  I think that the business growth advice that you were probably getting, if you were complaining to people about that, at that time was ” Oh, well. Then just hire an integrator.” That seems to be at least a couple years ago. That seemed to be the direction that online businesses were going is “Oh, hire a bunch of experts and then hire an integrator. And then you can just be the visionary and the integrator will take care of the day to day, and you have this.” I don’t even remember. I’ve read the book years ago, but it’s like “You have the visionary integrator relationship.” And I’m like “None of your org. chart, blah, blah, blah.” And that just stresses me out so much, because not only do we have these micro businesses of a handful of people. But as soon as I think about hiring somebody else to manage all the other people that I have already hired, it’s like, “Oh, my God. How much money do I need to make this month in order just to pay my team, let alone, pay myself, pay my taxes, pay my software?”  Do you know what I mean? Having people who can do more than one thing and who aren’t. I think the other thing that people don’t think about when they have multiple experts is that those experts are experts in multiple businesses. They are spreading themselves across. They have six or seven clients at a given time, you are one of their jobs. You are not their employer. Not being an employer, but you have to be an employer from a legal perspective. 

But if somebody has five hours of your time, or 20 hours of your time, you’re going to pay more attention to the 20 hour, they’re going to be more top of mind to you.  Instead of trying to split yourself between multiple people, having fewer people doing more for you can make a huge difference. But then also should something happen to one of those people, then it’s a bigger role that you have to fill later on and figure out what the right kind of fit is with that person, which can be really hard, too. Because a lot of, when people have entered my business, they’ve started with one role. And then it’s sort of evolved over time in terms of “Oh, you’re really good at this. Do you want to try this? Do you want to try this?” And I can’t replicate that skill set later on, so I have to   re-split it apart when they exit and they have figured out things on their own. Then we have to re-figure it out. The transition can be really complicated. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes. That happened to me, a year and a half ago. And it took probably took a year to recover from it. 

Meg Casebolt  

Yes. You had multiple hires, because you were like “Maybe I’ll find someone local. Maybe I’ll find someone online. Maybe I’ll find someone and start them small. But there are skill sets, it’s hard to find. We can’t clone ourselves. We can’t clone our team. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes. She was at the time, my assistant or OBM, whatever you want to call her, was working close to 70 hours a month and was doing so much and I took her position and broke it in half. And then I was getting frustrated because then I was having two people working close to 70 hours a month and like “How was she doing that?” But it’s interesting because people work differently and also your business changes, too. Maybe it wouldn’t have been as “replicatable”. But yes, it took a while to find the right people because it wasn’t just one role. That’s a really good point.  I want to bring us back though, too.    I think social media is where this whole struggle with scaling our personal brand just shows up the most. We’re talking about gifts. But when it comes to content, because with content, it’s like “Okay. Well maybe Love at First Search is a brand, but you’re “the face” of it right now. And with my business, I am absolutely “the face”. With content, it feels like it’s all on me and I’ve hired. I’ve spent a lot of money to hire people to try to get it not to be on me, and it hasn’t really gone all that well. A lot of that is on me, because I’m still figuring out how to translate those things.  But also, there’s just something to my approach to things. And I’m like “I want to keep that essence there where it feels like me.” But I also have my own limitations with how much I can create an output. I’ve made some changes recently. But I want to hear how you’ve handled this because you are so consistent with your content, which I’m not consistent. I’m always really impressed with people who are. How is that, that you’re so consistent with content? And I know you do a lot of it, but you don’t do it all yourself. How does that work for you?

Meg Casebolt  

I think you started with one question and ended with another, so always or both. No, it’s okay. I think the reason that you and I started having this conversation a couple month ago is because I had started outsourcing my social media management. And then you were looking for somebody and I connected with the person that I was using. And you’re like “Wait. How did you get this person to see inside your brain? “And I think that there needs to be a lot of open communication whenever you hire anybody to your team. But especially people who are speaking on your behalf. And there’s a lot of “Oh, I didn’t know I said it that way until someone else said it a different way.”  And there’s this back and forth that you need to have in a very respectful way, while you’re figuring out what it is that you’re trying to say and what you’re trying to get across. And then I think you and I also have this experience of, we’re not just promoting our content, but we’re also promoting our programs, and we’re also promoting other people’s programs. And they are often giving this swipe copy and saying “Here’s the way that I want you to talk about this summit. You’re in or here’s the way that I want you to talk about this program that we do.” The people that we’re hiring have their own expectations of the way that we talk. 

They’re getting feedback from the leadership about the way that we talk. And then they’re getting this third party thing about ” Here’s the way that we talk about this thing that we’re promoting for a short time.” And that can be a very complicated thing for our team members to balance. And then they’re also trying to bring in something new. Going back, I create a lot of content. I’m have a YouTube channel. I’m blogging. I’m trying to be a thought leader within the space that I’m in. I’m creating a ton, but I don’t just want my social media channels to be “Look at this stuff that I did.” I want it to be a conversation that is engaging. And finding ways to pull out the interesting things from the content, but also have fun posts and engagement posts and prompts and things that still feel the way that I would say it or the brand that I’m trying to build. That’s really hard to balance. I don’t have a solution here except constant communication with team.

Then eventually they start to figure it out on their own. I’ve had some things with my team where they’re like “Oh, I you know, I went and researched this thing about SEO. And I wrote up this post for Facebook. ” And I’m like “No, I don’t want to talk about that, though.” Ask me, I’ll give you 20,000 things that I want to talk about. But that’s not one of them. But they’re learning. And I think this is interesting, too. For people who are subject matter experts. Your team has to learn your voice and your subject matter.  Jacqueline’s team has to know enough about podcasting or enough about branding that they can make stuff up for her that still sounds like her, but doesn’t just sound like they’re copying and pasting what she’s already done. But some of it is copy and pasting what you’ve already done. They have to know what’s happening in the field and also know what your body of work is, and not as a tightrope walk. It can be really frustrating for us as leaders to say “Well. How do they not know?” But then when I put myself in the shoes of the team members who are bringing who are trying to incorporate other people’s specialties and voices into what it is that they do, but not take the credit for it? That’s really difficult.

Jaclyn Mellone 

That is really difficult.  And the reason why we’re having this conversation isn’t because either one of us totally figured this out, it’s because we’re having this conversation and I’m like, “Let’s have this conversation. ” because I know other people are, too. For me, I’ve really struggled with the copy like that. It’s been so hard to have someone else write copy on my behalf for social post, for emails. I’ve hired professional copywriters this year and didn’t use a lot of the copy that was hired. And that was really hard to just swallow that like “Okay. That was a big investment that I didn’t really use.” But at a certain point, you have to make a decision and be like “Okay. This isn’t the type of content that I would create.” And if you’re moving fast, you don’t always have time to go back and get edits or what have you.

But having that, what I’ve been struggling with is I need to be more consistent on social. I have hope, I have hoped for me and for our team, because we are consistent with the podcast. And we do have a really great workflow for repurposing the podcast. I’m like “This is my evidence that it can be done as hard as it has been in other areas. We got this here, so we can get it in a different place.” It just, we got to figure it out. Because the copy has been such a sticking point.  What I decided to do was do more video. And I’m like “Okay. Well, if we do video, we don’t need as much copy.” And there’s also a ton of copy, if you will, of my words from the videos that if we need copy that can likely just be repurposed or pull a quote from all of that, I’m like “Because I haven’t figured it out or haven’t found that right person who can capture my voice and my expertise.” 

I guess I hadn’t thought of it like that. But it is. It’s the knowledge with the voice and all of that.   And that might take having a full time person. But right now I’ve switched the focus. And I’m like “Okay. Instead of trying to make that work, let’s go another way.” For me when I’m like “Okay, this is not working, so let’s just find another way to accomplish the same thing.” If I’m doing more video, then “I’m the face”, I’m “the voice”, but how do we do that in a way that doesn’t feel overwhelming for me? It was like “Okay. I like to do videos with other people. I don’t like to do video by myself.” It’s way more fun. This is audio but we’re recording it video. Maybe you’re even seeing this repurpose video on social media right now. 

Meg Casebolt  

And making all the funny faces knowing that that’s possible.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes. But that’s way more fun for me to be having this conversation with Meg than just having this conversation with myself. I’m an extrovert. And my people think that extroverts are really good at video. And I feel it’s an entirely different thing like “I don’t get my energy from talking to myself, I get it from other humans.” I’ve really been making some hacks in terms of “Okay, I am recording videos with my team. And I’ll be doing outfit changes and stuff so that they can take that and we’ll sit down and do a one-hour video.” They asked me questions. And then we can chop that up and use that video in a bunch of different places, or potentially even the audio is one to put it on the podcast. We haven’t done that, but maybe we do that. 

Meg Casebolt  

The wheels are turning. Yes. The wheels are turning. That’s where I’m like “Okay. I need that. That’s going to be fun. For me, it’s accountability for me to show up and actually do the video. And then we can repurpose it in a bunch of different ways. I’m also right now actively looking to hire someone on a pretty part time basis, but locally, to record stories in person with me, which sounds really good. I just I need this level of hand holding.

Jaclyn Mellone  

I am at the point where instead of beating myself up, I’m all about the mindset, but there’s a certain point where it’s like “Okay. This isn’t a mindset. This is just how you are.” Instead of beating yourself up about trying to get better at doing something that you’ve never been good at, just “How do we accommodate you?” I know if I’m with someone else, I’m going to have better energy. I’m going to be more accountable to it.  And then they can take it and edit it down and post it and do all of that stuff for me. That is where I’m like “Okay. We could start doing real.” They could edit. We could record them together. I might even still be holding it selfie style, just them there and asking me the question, and then being able to actually take it and run with it. Because that’s where I lose steam. Even if I psych myself up to do that, then it just feels like a drag to do that editing and the uploading and all of that, I just lose that. 

And sometimes I’m really good, but most of the time I’m not. And I’ve been not for a really long time. I feel this year just put me up.  It’s the calendar year, but the past 12 months plus. It took a lot of that steam out for me to be able to go that extra mile with some of those things. Yes. That’s how I’m working around this right now. It’s like “Okay. If I can find those places that I’m just not able to do it, how can I accommodate that and go from there?”  I have a question for you about that. Was it hard? Because you’re the mindset around it, of like “Oh, I could I could do it. I could do it better. I can do it faster. I like doing it.” Or was it hard because they weren’t doing it how you want? Did you have to teach someone how to do it, how you want? Was that part hard, like it was as hard as the copy is for me?

Meg Casebolt  

And recognize your strengths and recognize who you need to have on your team in order to make it happen. You asked about the kind of my workflow, and how is it possible to create this much content? For me, it’s actually very similar to what you’re doing, because I do have that extrovert streak. But also, it’s an accountability tool more so than anything else, what has gotten me through the first half of this year putting out YouTube videos and blog posts every single week is accountability. I have a video editor who is amazing.  It was both. Yes. It was definitely not only do I know that I can do this faster, but if I’m going to be teaching you and giving you feedback on how I want things done, I may as well just do it myself. But then when I think about the volume at which I want to be producing, if I were writing one blog post a month, I would have time to make the perfect Facebook image or YouTube thumbnail or Pinterest images. But when I’m talking about eight to ten a month, that would bleed all of my time. And I’d be spending all my time on that, especially if we start to get to the more complex audiograms and carousels and I’m just like “Meg, this cannot be not everything can be an equal priority, that defeats the whole purpose of having a priority, like priorities.” And I don’t want to leave her in a lurch. And it’s like the Gretchen Rubin has The Four Tendencies. It’s being an Obliger.

Before I had a team member, that I would say “I need to get this to Samantha by x date, so that way, we can get it to Cess by this date, so that we can give it live.” But reverse engineering from the publication date to how much time does the team need to actually get it done and get the images over to the social teams. By figuring out how much of a process there is on the back end of it, that also now I know Sarah and Cess, and Sam, and anyone else who’s name is relying on me, I’m the start of the process. And I don’t want to bottleneck them, but I have to give them the raw materials. But then I don’t have to be the one doing the editing, I don’t have to be doing my transcriptions.  I don’t have to be creating the images. And it took a lot of work for me to not be the one creating the images, because that was what I did. That was what my business started as a lot of social media graphics. And that was fun for me, and I really liked it. And it was hard for me to let go of the things that I liked in the name of efficiency.  Plural is not a word, technically. A priority is a single thing. What is the priority in your time? And what are the things that other people are qualified to do and can do if you give them the support that they need? And that was tough, because I was the team member before I was the team leader. I was in so many other teams providing the kind of support that now I’m asking people to give to me. And I think that’s where the mindset shift came in, of going from a service provider and team member to CEO and team leader and needing to hold the vision more so than needing to manage the production was a very difficult shift. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes. Thank you for sharing all that, because I do think it helps really get that peek behind the curtain, if you will. Do you have templates for “How did you get them to?” Or did you just have them make templates and help edit them? Or how did you smooth out that process, so you didn’t feel? One thing I want to add before you answer that is you saying ” Okay. I could do it for one, but doing it for this many made impossible.” I think that’s the core of what we’re talking about is at scale, we can’t do all these things that we used to do, either have to not do them, which sometimes happens or sometimes it’s strategically, we’re just not doing things because it doesn’t make sense. But realistically to grow. We need to have other people take these things on. How did you do that with the graphics? 

Meg Casebolt  

I think it all started when I decided to do the rebrand and recognize that the timeline that I put in place for the rebrand and the things that were on my calendar made it impossible for me to do the web design for my own site and the new brand for my own site. And this was two years ago. And it was really humbling to be a web designer, who hired another web designer to design their brand and their website to outsource the thing. That I had been in charge of for so many other brands. And that opened the door to me of like “Oh. My ideas aren’t always the best ideas. They are just mine.”  Having other people where I could say this is my ideal client and going through their processes took me a little bit out of being the center of the conversation and more being in the leadership of the conversation. And then when it came time to actually start producing, first, it started with the blog images when we updated the website before I started going into heavy production mode. And that was one of the designer’s templates that she came up with when she was doing the website branding. And I’m like “Okay, I can just have a team. She built it in Canva, my team can go in and replace the text, make sure that the colors are on point with what was already a template.” It wasn’t that hard of a stretch. And then we could use that. 

And then once I started producing for YouTube, I came up with the template, and I created the loom videos that go with a Canva to say “Okay. Here’s how I want you to remove the background. Crop me out. Add a little white around me. Here are the fonts that we use.” I had all of that by that point, so that now I don’t look at the thumbnails anymore. They just appear and then I put it. It automatically goes live at 9am every Tuesday. And if there’s not a typo in it, I might see it. But otherwise, it’s good until we feel the need to optimize it and say like “Oh, people aren’t clicking on this one. Let’s see if we can change it. But for right now, it’s good where it is.”  And then the next phase of that has been that I hired someone to redo all my Pinterest images. And I just sent her a bunch of things and said like “These are the pins I like. Here are my brand colors. Here are my brand images. What do you have?” And letting her take the lead on that has also been very hard to take my hand in a white knuckle grip up the steering wheel of the design, but she’s coming up with cool things that I wouldn’t have thought of. I think part of the release of control is “Oh. That’s a neat take on that. Oh, I wouldn’t have thought to say it that way.” That’s respect for the craft is stronger than my ego. Now, I think that there’s also part of that, that comes into it.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Yes, I can totally see that. And I think templates for graphics or for copy are such a great way to be able to do that. Because what she’s doing, one, hiring someone that is her expertise and allowing her to really shine in that. But once you get those templates, you don’t necessarily need to keep having her create new ones, you could then have a VA be filling those templates in. I don’t know if you’re doing that already or not. But it doesn’t have to always be the specialist for that.

Meg Casebolt  

Exactly.

Jaclyn Mellone  

That’s what I was trying to do with copy. And I think we made some headway, but I know that’s going to be something we’re going to keep working on. But that it showed to me, “Okay. Well, it made me go back to my own pose” and be like “Okay. Well, this is how I start.” Even a sequence of stories, this is how I get people to want to go to the next one. And then that’s how I format or for a post this is the headline that we start with and how we do things. And I realized “Okay. If I’m going to have someone helping with copy that doesn’t do that the same way, I do.” Which sometimes you hire someone, and they’re way better at that. But it still has to feel right, and you just leave them to how they do it, which is totally fine.  But what I’ve also found is if you hire that expert, and that expert isn’t always going to be in the business, this wasn’t the case for me with my copy. But I can see this being the case, as I’m thinking about your scenario with graphics. And you don’t take those systems, you don’t take what they’re doing and turn it into a system that’s replicatable. I think that’s where it’s hard to go from person to person.  And what I’m realizing is because I’ve been that person and I don’t have a system to have other people do that in the same way I do for things outside of the podcast. That’s our sticking point. Now I’m like “Okay. We need to put that in place.” And then, sure, we’ll still need to hire people to write copy that are good copywriters in the future or whenever we’re ready to do that, which now I’m like “We’re just going to lean into video and take your curve around for a little bit.” But when we’re ready to go back to it, I’m having those templates, those frameworks I think is going to be key. 

Meg Casebolt  

And I think you’re hitting on something really good, which is that when you have the video, then that can lead into future copy and people can get to know your approach to things and that way. When I’ve hired copywriters in the past, I go through stuff like “levels up” will say. Where I come up with an idea. I don’t necessarily have time to hire a professional copywriter to get that idea into paper or I don’t have the money. I want to soft launch things or beta test them and I don’t want to spend five, ten thousand dollars to get a professional sales page done when it’s a $50 product that I haven’t sold yet. We have to find the time that it makes sense to increase our investment in particular things that we’re working on. Usually I’ll start with writing something myself and starting with, either here’s how I know at this point how to write a sales page, or I will go by a sales page template. Even though I’ve been doing this for a long time, our friend Sarah, who we’ve had on the podcast fairly recently used to sell sales page templates, and I would use her template whenever I wrote a sales page.

And then once I found out the product was validated, or enough people had been through it, that I wanted to update it based on their experience and the ways that I changed it, then I would hire a professional copywriter. Then that person would go talk to people who had been through the program, or they would have really deep conversations with me about what I wanted it to look and feel. And then there was still in the same way that I was talking to the social media team and saying “No, that’s not really the way that I would say.” Or “No, that’s still not quite there.” And I don’t know exactly why I’m having those same conversations with my copywriter.

But I also know that due to her level of expertise, and the legitimate conversation she’s having  the way that she’s thinking about my business, her depth of knowledge about online businesses, and what works in sales pages, it really is a dialogue at that point. It’s not someone handing me the copy and saying “Okay. Hand this tear designer time to get the thing up.” But it’s also not me going “Here’s everything that you need to know, and here’s how I want it to be said. It really is a partnership. And that can be hard to find a good partner. It can be really hard to find the right person and the one that respects you, but also is so good at their craft. I’ve felt the pinging of how much of me do I want to have in this process versus how much do I need to trust someone else to do it really well.

Jaclyn Mellone 

Yes, it is. And I think that partnership, that collaboration piece is really important, maybe not forever. At some point, I’d love to have someone on the podcast who does this or something, I don’t know. They’re like “Yes. “Also, I don’t know if it’s a personal brand, you got to be somehow be still in there. But the skim, I think the skim is a great example. Maybe I can invite the ladies from the skim on some point. Because I know they created this brand voice for the skim in the beginning. But yes, that collaborative part is so important. Whether it’s ongoing, or it eventually leads to some destination where you don’t have to be as hands on, I think that is where the magic is for sure.

Meg Casebolt  

I think the clearer you know what you’re trying to sell, the clearer you know who you’re trying to reach, the easier it is to be able to collaborate, outsource partner with other people who can then get to know it. And I know this from being a web designer, when people would come to me and say, and still in SEO, it’s like “Well, I’m a coach.”, “Okay. Well, who are you coaching?”, “Well, anybody who needs a coach.”, “Oh, what are you helping them with?”, “Anything you can coach them through?” That’s not the people. 

Well first, for SEO reasons, people aren’t going to find that and two when they get to your website, they’re not going to go “Oh, I’m an anybody who could use coaching.” If you can get more clear, if you can have some clarity around, what is it that you do? Who do you serve? How do you serve them than any of those following conversations about helping other people be able to speak or create on your behalf gets easier? And having that vision for who you serve, what you do where you want to go is also an integral component in there.  But stepping from “DIY-ing” into bleeding can be a very difficult transition. That’s what we talked about on our walks around the block.

Jaclyn Mellone 

It’s so true. I think I have a big update for you, too. And I’ll be talking about that. It’s not that big of an update. But just with repositioning, I need to do an episode just on. Because I have some clarity that I think I had even before, even before I knew I had an if that makes sense. How to reposition my own brand and that’s opened up so much clarity, and also we could be repurposing all of this stuff. And I’m glad you brought up the clarity, for sure helps. But sometimes the clarity comes from the collaboration.  Because you don’t think about that until you’re working with someone else. And they’re asking and you’re like “Okay. Well, now I have to make these decisions to get clear on that thing.” Or you realize that something that you’re saying maybe isn’t as obvious to other people, and that can be a really good check, too. Does your audience even understand this? If you’re having team members asking you those questions that has helped me over the years for sure. 

The thing that you said, though, about buying the sales page template, there’s so much available right now for sales page templates, for social media templates, for the graphics templates. What I find myself doing is one, it’s been a shortcut to just be able to buy a template and have it for myself or for a team member, or what not. My personality type is, I don’t know. I’m an Obliger. But I’m also kind of a Rebel, because I don’t know how those go together.

Meg Casebolt  

I’m the same way. I want things to happen a certain way because I know people are relying on me. But I don’t want my stuff to look like everyone else’s stuff. I don’t want to sound like everybody else. Yes, I know that feeling well. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

And I can’t even follow a recipe. I’m incapable of following a recipe. This is why I can’t bake because cooking leaves room for creativity baking does not. And I usually cry when I bake. I can’t necessarily, I’m buying these templates. And I’m not using them as they’re intended because I’m incapable of doing that. But it gives me that ability to tweak and edit. It’s so much easier for me to edit than to start with that blank cursor.  Actually recently, I’ve been putting together this whole content library. We’re trying to organize it and I’m excited about where it’s heading. And I have all of these different content things to help you organize your content. But there’s not one system that really fits the way that I like to do it or want to do it or just my business, so I literally am in all of them. And like “Okay, this, I like this, I like this.” And I’m pulling together my own way of doing it. But seeing how other people structure it, allows me to make that decision easier, if that makes sense. Even if you’re like me, and you’re like “Oh, but I can never actually like to use that sales page template or that Instagram template.”  But if you’re struggling with this, I think it’s so worth buying one or a couple of these to start to see “Okay, this is how people actually put together their framework or their template for it.” You can tweak that and make it your own. And then you can have your team tap into it. Or if you just if you’re not at all like me, you could just buy it and have your team do it and not make it so hard and complicated. That’s a better route. 

Meg Casebolt  

Yes. Well. I’m the same way where I will buy a sales page template. I will write the words into those sections. And then I’ll go “Well, I hate the way this sounds. “And then I’ll rewrite it. But at least I’ll have that square one to start from. And I think if you were to take final blog post or sales page or whatever, and compare it against the template that I started from, you wouldn’t recognize the template. But the template is not there to give you the step by step navigation. This is the framework that you can follow. These are the elements that you need to have in here.  I think the same is true. If you were to go to creative market and buy one of their Tik Tok templates, I don’t know if they have to. Is that a thing? We’ll go with Instagram templates. This is what a story could look like. But then when you go in and you change it to your fonts, your colors, your layout your stickers, it feels like you. But it may be a similar format or framework to what someone else has. That doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It just means that’s where you’re starting from. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Totally. And yes, sometimes especially with the copy piece, but I think for the graphic design, too, especially with the team I have now. It’s when you think about “Okay, well Jaclyn, somebody might be listening” to being “Well. Jaclyn, if you’re not going to actually use the template, why are you buying the template?” But the thing is, if I was to spend my own time going through my own copy and figuring out a template, or if I had a team member go through and try to put that together, it is going to be more than the $27 that I bought the darn thing.  It’s being able to start with someone else’s, and then compare that to mine gives me a framework of like “Oh, that’s what they’re calling this section, I’ll move this here.” I’ll do. It gives me that starting point. And for anything that’s under $100, it is worth it to just buy it, someone else already took the time and poured so much into that. One, they may have a better strategy than me that we’re going to implement. But two, it just gives us that framework that we don’t have to start from scratch and it saves time.

Meg Casebolt  

Right. And I think you can also hand your template to someone else have them started. When we were doing podcast pitching recently, we pulled out your templates from the plugin pitch, I had my assistant go through and write it. And then, I wouldn’t say it this way. I would say it this way. But I didn’t have to start with like “What’s everything that I would want to say on a podcast?” It’s like you, the template square one, the team is square two. And then I can go through and make those edits instead of and we’re already most of the way there by the time it hits my desk. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

That’s the perfect example. Exactly. Well, we can clearly jam on this all day. But we got to wrap up. But thank you for coming on and just chatting this out with me. I’m getting clarity from just this conversation. I don’t think people talk about the side of things enough, hopefully someone listening is also like “Okay. Yes, I’m there, too.” Because that’s why we’re doing this. 

Meg Casebolt  

I think there’s a lot of information out there about how to start a business and the foundation that you have in place. And there’s a lot about how to scale your offers. But there’s not necessarily the mindset and logistical piece of how to scale you. Actually step out of things but still feel you can have a personal touch. I’m so glad that we talked about this because it’s just something that we all are struggling with and it’s not enough in the forefront of people’s minds. We think that we’re doing this in alone, and we’re not in isolation. And this just isn’t something that’s sexy that someone can sell you a product for.  It’s not showing up on your Facebook. Sorry. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

There’s not a good template for those. 

Meg Casebolt  

There’s no good.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Better tagging me.

Meg Casebolt  

And it’s complicated. It’s complex. It’s not something where you have a five-word search term that somebody can look for. These kinds of growing pains are legitimate, but they’re not packaged up in a nice box. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Exactly, exactly. Okay, Meg, how can we stay in touch with you? 

Meg Casebolt  

Sure. Come on over to loveatfirstsearch.com and find me there or probably Instagram. The place that I hang out is Love at First Search or YouTube. All those places love it for search. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

I thought you’re going to be like “Come on over to my house.” 

Meg Casebolt  

That’s creepy. Although to be fair, Jaclyn, we can share our mailbox.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Well, that’s true. I know. We’re going to be mailbox roommates. Yes, we are. 

Meg Casebolt 

We could have parties at the UPS Store.

Jaclyn Mellone  

Oh my gosh, but on the other way you really like “Come on over.” Because that’s how we would typically hang out.

Meg Casebolt  

We’d hangout in the historic Erie Canal. 

Jaclyn Mellone  

Amazing. All right. Thank you so much, Meg. This has been a lot of fun and definitely had me thinking and I’m feeling a little bit more inspired by all this.

Meg Casebolt  

I’m so glad. All right. I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks, everyone. 

Jaclyn Mellone 

Can I just say thank you so much for listening? I don’t think I can say it enough. But I love that you are here. If you enjoyed today’s episode, or if you’ve been getting value from this podcast, do me a quick favor. Head on over to iTunes and leave a rating and review. When you leave a rating and review, it basically tells iTunes that they need to spread the word and tell more people about this podcast and I am on a mission to get the word out. I’m so grateful for your support. We want to make sure to shout you out too. If you do leave a rating review, keep your eyes and ears open. We will be either shouting out the podcast or an Instagram stories.