In this episode, we dive into ways to build a business without breaking the bank. With insights from Sarah St. John of the Frugalpreneur Podcast, we discuss the value of free resources, the importance of networking, and how to leverage low-cost tools effectively. The conversation offers actionable advice for entrepreneurs at any stage.
The spotlight in this discussion is on harnessing free and low-cost resources to build, promote, and sustain a business. The conversation includes tips on generating leads, making sales, managing banking, and collecting payments without hefty price tags. Drawing from their own experiences, Heather and Sarah unveil a variety of business hacks that will assist budding entrepreneurs and seasoned business owners. If you've ever wondered how to maximize your resources and get the most bang for your buck, this episode is your roadmap.
Tune in to discover actionable methods to bootstrap your business to success.
Tools mentioned in the show: Sendfox.com, Systeme.io, Beacon.by, MailChimp.com, AppSumo.
Contact Heather: Instagram - LinkedIn - Email: heather@GetRadBiz.com
Get Radical With Your Business: Facebook - Website
Book a Discovery Call (via Zoom) - Schedule
Zeitzwolfe Accounting: Website - Facebook
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (00:00):
Hey there.
(00:00):
This is Heather Zeitzwolfe.
You are listening to get radicalwith your business.
Today we are talking all aboutbootstrapping on a budget.
Yes.
So if you've been thinking aboutstarting a business and you
don't have a whole lot of moneyto spend, well, this is a good
episode for you to listen to.
Or maybe you have a business andyou're like, oh, man I've been
(00:20):
spending a lot of money and Ineed a dial back some of that
spending.
Well, I am joined by my buddy.
Sarah St.
John from the frugal preneurpodcast.
So you are in for a treat.
All right, let's do this.
(00:41):
I am here with my friend, SarahSt.
John, who is the host of theFrugalpreneur.
I love that word.
Did you make that word up,Sarah?
Sarah St. John (00:51):
Yeah, I did.
It just came to me cause I wastaking This was a few, several
years ago.
I was doing that Dave Ramseyfinancial peace class to pay off
debt and everything.
Cause he's like talking aboutall these ways to pay off debt,
save money and all this, whichis great.
It occurred to me.
But what about ways to likeactually make more money to help
with that and I was like, hmmfrugalpreneur Because I had been
(01:12):
testing all these onlinebusiness models I was like I
should write a book about thisand then as I launched the book
I launched the podcast tocoincide with the book as like
an extra marketing lever It wasonly going to be like 10
episodes or whatever, but I gotmore leverage and traction with
the podcast than the book.
And so love the networking andconnections and conversations
(01:33):
and all of that.
Now I've been doing it for overfour years and over 200
episodes.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (01:38):
And you've had quite the success.
Let's just brag for a moment.
is the status now with yourpodcast?
I know Apple podcasts, you'veseen some success.
let's brag about that.
Sarah St. John (01:47):
I haven't checked it.
In a couple of weeks at least sowho knows where it's at now, but
here's the story.
So I noticed that my episodenumbers like my download numbers
were increasing and I wasconfused about it.
I was like what happened?
So I was like telling some otherpodcast friends and they
actually went and looked up,they're like you're in the top
200 under Apple podcasts onentrepreneurship.
(02:09):
I was like, what?
I recently released my 200thepisode of Frugalpreneur.
And I was going to talk aboutthat, and I'm like, I should
probably go check and just seeif I'm still in the top 200.
When I went to check, I was inthe top 100, like 92 or
something.
And I was like, okay I guess I'mgoing to have to talk about that
now.
Not top 200, top 100.
Yeah, I should probably checkthat again and see what if I'm
in the top ten?
I don't know.
(02:30):
the last few episodes have beengetting downloaded.
The numbers are quite a bithigher than before..
Very
Heather Zeitzwolfe (02:35):
cool.
We're going to get to the topicat hand.
bootstrap.
What does that mean?
Bootstrap.
It means like pulling up fromyour bootstraps.
I mentioned this to somebodyrecently and they're like, what
does that even mean?
Maybe it's an old school term.
I didn't realize it was oldschool, but I'm a little bit
older.
Bootstrap to me is pull yourselfup by your bootstraps.
I don't know how many boots havestraps on them anymore, but it's
Maybe you don't have all theresources, but you're going to
(02:56):
just do it anyways, do itscrappy.
That's what I like to say.
We're talking about ways thatyou can get into business.
You don't have to have a lot offunds.
You don't need to put a lot ofmoney on a credit card.
You were talking about DaveRamsey, like we want to avoid
debt.
There is good debt.
There's bad debt, but if you'rejust starting out and you don't
even know if your business iseven going to work better not to
have debt.
You've had 200 podcast episodes.
(03:17):
You've met a lot ofentrepreneurs.
You even had JLD.
Did I get that right?
John Lee Dumas.
What's his catchphrase?
Um, fire nation boom.
Shake the room fire nation.
Anyways, he was on your podcast.
So you've had some heavy hitterson your podcast.
What is like one.
Thing that you can think of,that you can tell anybody, or
maybe even from your book of oneway that you can start a
(03:40):
business on a budget or any kindof tip you want to throw out
Sarah St. John (03:43):
there.
And this is specifically foronline
Heather Zeitzwolfe (03:45):
businesses.
Yes.
We're talking about online.
Sarah St. John (03:48):
every online business starting out, you
should have a website and emailservice provider you can collect
well in a lead magnet actuallyto collect and we can go more
into that if you want to, but tocollect email addresses so you
can send them updates,newsletters, whatever.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (04:05):
Okay, let's just start there.
Some people that are juststarting a business for us,
those things are like, we justtalk about this stuff all the
time.
For some people that are juststarting an online business,
that stuff might be foreign tothem.
Let's just back up to having awebsite.
There are resources that you canget that don't cost a lot for
websites, I have arecommendation.
Oh,
Sarah St. John (04:25):
let's hear it.
There's a platform calledSystem.
io.
It's S Y S T M E dot IO.
And it's like an all in oneplatform has websites, landing
pages, sales funnels, emailmarketing, which I don't use
that part of it, but membership,courses, you can create all this
stuff while they have a freeplan and you can even connect
(04:45):
one domain to it.
You'd buy your domain throughGoDaddy I recommend Namecheap.
Um,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (04:50):
Yeah, one thing about GoDaddy, I'm just
gonna say about GoDaddy is theguy that started the business
likes to hunt animals.
So I'm against GoDaddy.
Sarah St. John (04:57):
And they tend to be more expensive but anyway, so
you'd have to, purchase a domainname, which is usually 15 bucks
a year or something, but you canactually connect your domain for
free.
To system.
io, you can create a landingpage, I think you can get three
sales funnels under that, 2, 000collect 2, 000 email addresses,
all this stuff.
If you're wanting to start freeand encapsulate several things
(05:22):
within one platform that's myrecommendation.
Oh, okay.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (05:25):
I've never heard of that.
That's very cool because I useMailChimp for my email.
I think they have a free versionbut if you want to do some
fancier things you have to payone thing about like when we're
starting off our business,there's a lot of like bells and
whistles out there.
We're like, Oh, I want to trythis.
Oh, I want to try that.
And then, or Oh, I now I need tointegrate this.
After I've already integratedthis other thing and oftentimes
(05:47):
those software packages don'ttalk to each other so it's
really nice to have somethingthat's all inclusive that way
you don't have to worry so muchlike How am I going to link this
to that?
And cause that can be come upgiant quagmire.
And once you're like invested insomething I've run into this.
I use score space, but does thiswork with score space?
And then it makes it so I can'tuse a piece of software.
I want to, cause it's nottalking right.
(06:08):
And then we talked about leadmagnets.
When you're bootstrapping yourbusiness, we got to get leads
into your business.
You can do networking.
There's all kinds of ways thatyou can create leads in your
business that don't cost money.
Networking, highly recommenddoing online networking.
That's free.
You can look on Eventbrite,Meetup.
There's tons of things.
If you have an online business,chances are that means that
(06:30):
you're going to have potentialclients all over the place.
Virtual networking room is agreat way to do it for free.
But find something that's goingto have your target audience
When you're thinking about yourtarget audience, we want to
attract them with something.
And what we attract them with,this is a thing called a lead
magnet.
So a lead magnet.
That's what Sarah was alludingto a lead magnet.
A lead magnet for people thatare new to business.
(06:52):
This may online business, thismay sound like a weird concept
for those that have been aroundfor a while.
You're like, Oh yeah, I got like10 lead magnets.
So a lead magnet.
Sarah, oftentimes it's a PDF.
You want to suggest any cheapways that people can create lead
magnets.
Sarah St. John (07:07):
You can create, yeah, it could be an ebook, a
checklist, a resource, yourrecommended resources.
Any kind of thing that someonecould basically download for
free or, it could even be like aprivate podcast feed or a mini
course.
There's a million differentthings you could do.
But if it's like something thatthey can download, you could
(07:28):
create a free lead magnet, I'mall about free, at beacon dot
by, B Y.
So beacon dot by, and you cancreate a free lead magnet there,
that's how I've done mine if I'mdoing like a checklist or
something like that
Heather Zeitzwolfe (07:43):
so is this different from like, doing it in
Canva?
You can do a checklist for free.
So is this...
That's true.
Yeah, is that software thatyou're talking about, is it a
graphic y kind of software, oris
Sarah St. John (07:52):
A little bit...
The advantage of Beacon, you canactually like embed the HTML
code onto your website to whereit'll have like the button like
download And then integrateswith some different platforms
and stuff.
But yeah, you could create it inCanva and then just, set up a
landing page for it withwhatever platform you're using
(08:15):
for your website,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (08:16):
there's a free version of that you can
use.
And then the beacon one.
Okay.
I had not heard of that onebefore.
So that's cool.
The other things that we need toset in place when we start a
business, whether it's on abudget or not on a budget is we
want to make sure that we have abusiness bank account.
do you have any recommendationson banks.
Sarah, have you dealt with anybanks that maybe have no fees or
non fees.
Sarah St. John (08:37):
So one bank that is that's new and it's an online
only bank, which I don't know,there might be disadvantages to
that, but there's one calledLily, is it's L I L I, and it's
specifically for entrepreneursokay.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (08:51):
Yeah.
I have no affiliation with usbank besides the fact that I use
them, but they don't charge meanything for a business bank
account, which is very cool.
There may be like a certainamount you have to keep in the
account.
But I like the fact that theydon't charge me for that.
I have a business credit cardthrough them.
which actually earns me cash.
I get cash back.
I report that as income on my Pand L and because I get money
(09:15):
back.
So that's pretty cool, becausewhen we do use credit cards, we
want to pay them off everymonth, not have debt.
And then if you get a littlespiff back from the company,
that's a pretty darn good too.
Okay.
we want to start a business bankaccount.
Then You want to get leads.
We want to make sales, sellingthings online.
Again, we have to get paymentfor things.
(09:36):
And there can be some trickythings about payment because,
fees and all of that okay.
Do you do Stripe or PayPal or,you got to pick one of these
when you're online, unless youcan coordinate with a client to
be, do it like an ACH where it'sit just money goes from one bank
account to another, which can besometimes challenging to have
things like that, especially ifyou're selling online courses,
(09:58):
you're not going to be doinglike an ACH.
Any tips that you've come acrosson.
Payment platforms that may beless expensive or they're pretty
much all the same.
Sarah St. John (10:07):
I think they're roughly the same.
I use Stripe, it's super simpleand it integrates with
everything.
Sometimes I use PayPal, maybe ifthere isn't a Stripe
integration, but almost Stripealmost is becoming more.
likely to be integrated withplatforms than PayPal
Heather Zeitzwolfe (10:26):
so I have a client that has been using
PayPal with her clients.
She's a creative.
She did a bunch of work for themthey got the work and then they
told PayPal that they somehowpulled back the payment from
PayPal, even though theyreceived the work.
Yeah.
So deceitful clients.
Getting the work and now she'snot getting paid.
(10:46):
And now trying to have a disputewith PayPal is a real tough
thing.
I've heard other nightmares withPayPal as well, that people can
pull back the payment.
you gotta be careful of scammyclients.
Hopefully you don't have scammyclients.
Hopefully you've got contractsand everything.
But even with that, what are yougoing to take them to court over
300 bucks then it's all held upin PayPal and you did the work.
Wow.
I haven't heard
Sarah St. John (11:07):
that.
I haven't really heard badthings about PayPal, but I have
heard with Stripe though,, theyhold your money for a period of
time or if you even have, Ithink one charge back or any of
that, anything, or say, youhaven't had any transactions or
you've had really lowtransaction dollar amount, but
then all of a sudden, now you'reselling high ticket or something
and a big charge comes throughor whatever, that they won't
(11:30):
release the funds for quite awhile, That's what I've heard,
that there's issues there, too,with them kind of hanging on to
stuff.
I haven't had that issue yet,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (11:40):
These are things to consider.
So if you are bootstrapping abusiness you think that money is
going to be coming in, you mayhave a cashflow issue if you're
counting on that money cominginto your bank account and it's
being held up.
So we want to be mindful ofokay.
If we are doing things on abudget, don't be like, Oh, I got
this money coming in and thenyou spending it.
And now it's not coming in andmaybe it's being held up by one
(12:02):
of those third party paymentthings.
So don't get so excited aboutmaking a sale until you actually
get the money into your bank.
anything else that you can thinkof that you've come across with
being frugal bootstrapping whenyou're starting out, or maybe
even like you've been inbusiness for a while and you
want to save some money.
What are some other ways thatyou've come across to save
money?
Sarah St. John (12:20):
I really like free software or software that
like to have a free plan anddon't upgrade until you need to
type thing.
Are you familiar with AppSumo?
Oh,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (12:30):
too familiar.
Sarah St. John (12:31):
feel like most entrepreneurs know what that is,
basically a marketplace, wherethere's all these different
softwares that are offering likeone time, something that might
normally cost a hundred bucks amonth.
You can get it one time for 50bucks or whatever.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (12:46):
You can try it out for 60 days and then you
can return it, which is reallycool.
I have gone down the AppSumorabbit hole many times.
some of the software I'vepurchased from AppSumo has been
a godsend because now it'sreally expensive and other
stuff, not so great.
A lot of this stuff is juststarting out.
They have great videos on appsumo and that kind of pull you
(13:06):
in.
You're like, Oh yeah.
And then they use it like this,like metaphor with tacos.
They rate things by tacos.
that attracts you.
Right.
Cause it's like, everybody lovestacos.
Yeah.
If you are interested in a pieceof software, go on to their
website, that actual software'swebsite, check it out, see how
much they're really charging,see what it integrates with,
find out a little bit more.
don't get caught up in the thesquirrel that has been my
(13:27):
problem.
I've bought so much software andI've not used it.
I'm sitting on so much stuffcause I'm like, Oh, I need this.
I need this to create that.
And I'm not even there yet in mybusiness, but I know in the
future I need it.
And I'm like, I can buy it at adiscount.
And then by the time I will goto use it, it's not so good.
At the same time, AppSumo hasgreat things.
I like this idea.
Sarah St. John (13:45):
Yeah, definitely.
I recommend checking it out.
It is easy to, you know, shinyobject syndrome and get carried
away, so if there's somethingthat you really want or need or
know that in the future or nowthat you could really use then,
yeah, you might be payingusually anywhere from like 20 to
100, somewhere in that range,one time, and then that's saving
(14:09):
you, who knows how much over thecourse of time.
there will be other softwaresthat come out to do something,
and I'm like, ooh, that looksgood, but it does something
similar to something I got onAppSumo, I have to keep
reminding myself of that.
You don't have to go get thatthing.
That's 20 or 50 bucks a monthwhen you already have something
similar.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (14:26):
buy software when you need it.
I've done this where it's I'mgoing to need this in the
future.
Great.
If you have the money and youreally think you're going to use
it, but map things out.
Make sure that you are actuallygoing to use it.
Cause I've bought software andI've, like I said, I'm just
still sitting on it and I don'teven know if it works anymore.
Here's another tip that I'mgoing to say though talking
about software, chat GPT, andyou can use any other kind of
(14:47):
free type thing.
I personally pay for chat GPT.
Cause I find that it's just, youget the plugins and all of that.
And it's 20 bucks a month.
That's totally worth it.
But there are other things thatyou can use using AI and it is a
great way to Increase yourproductivity and creativity on a
budget.
So if you can't afford a virtualassistant, because if you have a
virtual business, eventually youprobably will want a virtual
(15:09):
assistant.
you were talking about leadmagnets.
If you can't figure out what youwant to put in the lead magnet,
you can start using AI to helpyou create it.
I'm not saying like completelycreate it, but maybe.
Spur some ideas or ignite some,like maybe some topic ideas or
something like give, use it aslike a tool but not as just like
the end all be all.
Any thoughts on using AI to helpsave money in your business.
Sarah St. John (15:31):
Oh, for sure.
There's been a few things thatI've gotten through AppSumo.
Like Cast Magic had an AppSumo.
Oh, I've heard of Cast
Heather Zeitzwolfe (15:38):
Magic.
Okay, so tell us a little bitabout what that does.
Sarah St. John (15:40):
So that would be for podcasters and it basically
creates your show notes,transcripts, the speaker bio,
the timestamps, the socialmedia, and there's, Captcha was
also a really good one, shoutout, because they're friends I
don't think Cast Magic is doingthe one time deal anymore.
I was able to get in on that.
Yeah, so different stuff likethat, and that would be AI.
(16:02):
And while we're on the AppSumotopic, they also create some of
their own AppSumo originals.
of those, I recommend SendFoxfor email.
As your email service provider,because you can get it for free
up to a certain number ofsubscribers, but then if you
want to upgrade, it's like a onetime fee of 50 bucks.
And that's what I use.
(16:23):
one thing I really like about itif you're a podcaster, a
blogger, or a YouTuber, you canput in your RSS feed or your
YouTube channel, it'llautomatically generate a
newsletter or an email based onyour latest episode.
And it's very minimal.
It's not overwhelming andconfusing like some of the
others.
as far as email serviceproviders that are free to very
(16:45):
cheap that's my recommendation.
Oh,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (16:47):
wow.
That's very cool.
Another thing about AppSumo is Ithink that they have a
marketplace where like creatorscan sell things as well.
Have you ever done
Sarah St. John (16:55):
that before?
So I have I did it with Mypreneur trilogy.
It was like frugal Preneur,authorpreneur and Podcast
Preneur.
They were all eBooks I think Isold and I, it was just like a
dollar each.
versus 2 99 on Amazon.
And I'm pretty sure I got moredownloads or purchases.
(17:16):
from that than Amazon.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (17:17):
Wow.
Now, how does something likethat work?
So you're selling it on AppSumo.
It's being printed by Amazon,right?
How does that work?
Sarah St. John (17:24):
The ones on AppSumo are just PDFs.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (17:27):
I see.
you're not having to pay.
so it's not like you're gettinga royalty from Amazon.
Okay.
Sarah St. John (17:32):
Yeah, so like with Amazon, you can get the,
Kindle, whatever it is.
Yeah.
Or the print book, but that'sall through Amazon, and so the e
book version is 2.
99 on Amazon, but then I had thePDF uploaded to AppSumo for a
dollar
Heather Zeitzwolfe (17:50):
writing a book can be a great way to get
your visibility out there, yourcredibility, all those things.
I'm actually toying with theidea of putting out a book so
I'm curious on, you've writtenseveral.
You put it on Amazon.
I know that there's certain waysthat you can get people to buy
your book for a dollar and it'sunder a certain topic.
And then like it reaches the topand you can call yourself a best
(18:12):
selling author.
That's like the angle that youwant to take, right?
Without doing too muchmarketing, you get your friends
all download it and buy it for abuck or something.
And now you're a best.
selling author, even if it'slike for a moment in time, you
take a picture and you're good.
Were you able to do that withAmazon and how were you able to
do that if that was the case?
Sarah St. John (18:30):
know for frugalpreneur, I was able to get
it to the top position withinwhatever the category was.
I guess it would have been, somekind of business category.
There's like a whole strategybehind that.
you can have it free for acertain amount of days to
increase, Or lower the price andit's probably changed since then
Heather Zeitzwolfe (18:50):
if you do offer it for free on Amazon, do
you have to then pay Amazon forThe fee for having it there, or
is it free and you don't payAmazon anything?
Sarah St. John (19:00):
Yeah, if it's the e book and it's free, you
don't pay anything.
You can't do it free, really,with the print book.
the print book, so all my booksare like, 80 pages or something.
They're very thin.
And it's about 2 or so for themto actually print that's their
cost.
And then anything after that,then they take.
I think 30 percent and one ofthe two.
(19:27):
Okay.
Yeah, it's a big difference.
Yeah, I think it's 30, whatever.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (19:30):
It is a way though to be out there and
visible in the world thatdoesn't cost a whole lot of
money you could put everythingin Word first and then make sure
that it's formatted correctlyfor Amazon.
And then you might need to paysomebody, I guess to edit it,
perhaps you can find somebody onFiverr or something like that,
or use Grammarly, which is Ithink they have.
They might have a free version.
(19:50):
I pay for that.
Sarah St. John (19:51):
the thing that I like about, self publishing on
Amazon you don't have to keep aninventory.
It's all print on demand.
it's not like you have to buy abunch of books and then hope you
sell them.
So it's like when someone ordersit, they print it, they ship it.
And as far as creating the bookyeah, you could use Grammarly,
there's a few different,ProWritingAid is another one,
there's a few different that canhelp you make sure that your
(20:11):
grammar and punctuation and,everything I recommend doing
that for your first round.
But then hiring an editor, likebasically the amount of money I
spent on each book, includingthe editor.
And then I do recommend hiringsomeone to do artwork,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (20:26):
cover, yeah, the cover art.
Yeah.
Sarah St. John (20:27):
I think I spent about$200 per book.
between the editor and the coverI went to Fiverr for, the
editing, I wouldn't recommenddoing Fiverr, because I didn't
have a good experience.
But I found some editor.
That would charge like two centsa word and since they were like
10, 000 words at most But herprice the person I was using her
(20:48):
price has drastically gone up.
And then for formatting to makesure that it's in EPUB and MOBI
and whatever that Amazonrequires, Readsy is a good
source.
R E E D S Y.
They have this free thing whereyou can lay out each chapter and
have it properly formatted andthen download it in these
different versions for Amazonand
Heather Zeitzwolfe (21:09):
all that.
Oh, okay, so Amazon requiresdifferent formats for the
different types like if it's aprint book versus an e book or a
Kindle or something like that.
Okay, That's really good toknow.
Besides the visibility and thecredibility for putting out a
book, another thing is that itcan help you go on podcasts,
which most of the time you don'thave to pay to be on a podcast.
So it can help you get your wordout there.
(21:30):
What are some other return oninvestments that you can think
of having a book?
How has that helped you?
Has it helped you get speakinggigs clients, like how else has
writing books helped you?
Sarah St. John (21:38):
It can help you get on podcasts, I definitely
recommend podcast guesting ifnot hosting, if not having your
own show for your business, butfor sure being on other shows.
But the book itself, I think forme there hasn't been like a
direct ROI, I wouldn't say.
It's more of a I've been able tospeak because I have a book.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (22:00):
So you're leveraging it.
By leveraging it, eventuallythere will be a payoff and ROI
because you'll get clients fromit and all of that.
Okay.
So you've gotten speaking gigs.
Yes.
Let's just go there for asecond.
So You got speaking gigs.
Are you applying to speak placesand you're saying like, I have
this book and this is the topicI can talk about?
Or like, how are you leveragingthat?
Sarah St. John (22:20):
I think I mentioned the books, but that's
not even my main thing.
Like I'll submit a topic, Therewas something else I was going
to say about that.
Oh direct monetization, throughlike Amazon sales, but again,
the amount that you're gettingpaid you're not gonna get rich
off of that by any means.
I think I've probably earnedenough to cover the cost of
making the books, hiring theeditor and whatever.
(22:41):
to me, with self publishing, mygoal isn't really to make money
directly from the book.
and then like, last year atPodcast Movement in Dallas, I
had just released my latestbook, the one with the yellow
cover.
I actually ordered a hundredcopies from Amazon Physical
copies.
Here it is, 27 way.
Oh, you have it right there.
Wow.
So what I did was I had releasedit literally the week of podcast
(23:06):
movement.
And so I decided, since this isa podcast conference, I had
Amazon print out a hundredcopies.
And there was a whole issue withgetting them they couldn't
handle that I ordered a hundred,they weren't here, and then I
had to order them in like, tenand twenty.
It was a fiasco, but I did getthem all in.
And how
Heather Zeitzwolfe (23:24):
much did that cost you, to buy that two
dollars a book?
Or, did they give you a break ifyou're buying it directly for
yourself?
Sarah St. John (23:29):
You buy it as an author purchase you only have to
pay like the two bucks orwhatever to make costs, what I
did was I got a hundred copies.
I bought myself a clearbackpack.
I put the books in the clearbackpack.
And then I put a little notethat's get your free book.
But that didn't work at all.
(23:49):
So I was like, screw that.
And so I just started maybebecause people were afraid I was
going to pitch them orsomething, but I didn't.
So I just started anytime I talkto someone or whatever, I'm
like, Hey, here's my free book.
And a lot of people weresurprised.
They're like, You're notcharging for that.
You don't want money.
I'm like, no, here's your freebook.
I think I handed out like 80 outof a hundred and then so I had
(24:10):
another 20 that I took to someother conference because I just
wanted to get them off my hands.
It's basically, a lead magnet, aphysical lead magnet that really
doesn't cost much, like two,maybe three bucks.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (24:23):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Again, you're matching up thetopic with the audience, the
target audience I've actuallyhad some clients that have
published books that have doneactually really well, and it's
become one of their majorrevenue streams.
I was surprised when I went todo this person's tax return.
I was like, wow.
The Amazon sales have reallyincreased.
(24:44):
it probably depends on howyou're leveraging it.
Maybe, you could have somethingwhere it's like you have a group
program and then they need thebook that goes along with it.
I mean,, there could be waysthat you could leverage it more,
it depends on what you're it.
Intentions are like for you, itwas more of like a marketing
thing, right?
Sarah St. John (24:59):
A couple of things I want to mention.
So like when I ordered a hundredcopies, that doesn't count
because you're ordering them asauthor copies.
It doesn't count for sales.
I had the initial push for thebooks because my focus is more
my podcast and just podcastbusiness I'm not really
promoting the book activelysince that initial like month or
so.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (25:19):
For most of these bootstrap business owners,
publishing a book is more aboutwhat you're doing.
It's not to get the big booksales.
It's more for the credibility.
You can put it on your website.
I published a book.
If you do get on the Amazonbestseller thing, you can put
that on.
If you're putting on workshopsof, bestselling author hosted by
whatever, it's a great marketingtool that doesn't cost a lot.
(25:40):
That's what we're getting at.
Sarah St. John (25:41):
That's the bottom line of that whole thing.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (25:43):
We're not saying that you're going to
become Stephen King or whatever,it's just another tool in your
toolbox to market yourself on abudget.
Any last thoughts, Sarah, beforewe wrap up on being a frugal
preneur,
Sarah St. John (25:55):
I know for me and several entrepreneurs that
I've talked with that shinyobject syndrome is a big
problem.
We just keep getting distractedwhether a new business idea or a
new thing we need to be doing,or a new software we need
Heather Zeitzwolfe (26:09):
to be doing.
Or software on AppSumo.
Sarah St. John (26:11):
Yeah, whatever it is but we just need to be
more focused, pick that onething that's moving the needle.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (26:18):
it's a tough thing, especially when you're
first starting out your businessit's so exciting when you start
off your business and you'relike, there's so many
possibilities.
That's where you can end upspending a lot of money on
avenues that you're never goingto really go down.
Me included.
I'd like to think that I'mfrugal.
I pinch pennies all the time.
I'm cheap, but I will spendmoney on things that I think are
(26:39):
possible opportunities.
when I first started mybusiness, I met this person
who's a really good financialadvisor, nothing against her.
But she suggested that I selllife insurance.
And at the time I was like, Oh,that sounds good.
Okay, Until I started studyingit and I'm like, I do not care
for this subject is the mostboring thing I spent money and
time studying for this thingthat really did not have any
(27:02):
payoff for me because of justI've all I did was discover that
I hate.
learning about life insurance.
And I never want to sellinsurance.
I learned that lesson, but itwas costly because I spent for
the course, don't let peoplederail.
I'm not saying she derailed me.
It was me that did it, but weget that shiny object of like,
Oh, I could also offer this, nowwhen I'm going to be a insurance
salesman, like what?
(27:23):
I don't know what I wasthinking, but Hey, want to buy
some life insurance?
Like I'm just not that person.
Nothing against life insurancesalesmen.
We need them.
Yes, try not to get the FOMO,the shiny object, because it can
be very costly.
And when you are bootstrapping,we got to pinch the pennies and
watch what we're doing.
So have a plan that is soimportant to have a plan.
I work with people to put inplace a business plan and not
(27:44):
just like a business plan thatyou're gonna bring to the bank,
but have a plan of what it isyou want to do for the next
year.
What is your vision?
What is your mission?
Have these things in place,understand your target market,
those sorts of things so thatwe're not spending money on all
the bells and whistles becauseWe can go down those rabbit
holes and guilty as charged isme.
(28:04):
I'm saying this, I'm telling youI'm, teaching because I'm
learning from my ownexperiences.
Sarah, how can people work withyou?
Sarah St. John (28:10):
If you want to check out the podcast for
Googlepreneur You can go tofrugal.
show and then that'll have linksto whatever platform you listen
to podcasts on.
I also give away my free eBooksthe PDF version of my books at
frugal.
show forward slash free.
If you want to work directlywith me on podcasts related,
(28:30):
then.
all the information will be
Heather Zeitzwolfe (28:32):
there.
Okay, perfect.
And what do you help people withtheir podcasts?
Is it starting a podcast?
What is it that you help outwith?
Sarah St. John (28:38):
So I initially was helping with like podcasts,
post production, launching, allthat kind of stuff.
But I'm now switching into likepodcasts, growth, marketing, and
monetization.
more of coaching.
I'm creating a program,basically, it's going to be a 12
week program, it's geared morefor people who already have a
(29:00):
podcast.
How do they get it out there,how do they market it properly,
monetize it, things like that.
Okay.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (29:07):
people that have a if they're like only five
episodes in, would you be ableto help them?
Or is this more of a they havemore of a, like a hundred
episodes or anywhere in betweenor
Sarah St. John (29:16):
yeah anywhere along the spectrum.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (29:18):
You're not helping them launch, you're
helping them with The otherparts of it.
Sarah St. John (29:21):
Yeah, at least, for now, that's what I'm doing.
It's
Heather Zeitzwolfe (29:23):
a shiny object of something else because
us creatives, we have that thingwhere we just want to keep
changing up and doing new thingsall the time.
Guilty as charged.
well, Sarah, thank you so muchfor being on the podcast today.
And everybody go check out thevery popular Frugalpreneur
podcast.
Sarah St. John (29:42):
Thanks
Hey there.
(00:00):
This is Heather Zeitzwolfe.
You are listening to get radicalwith your business.
Today we are talking all aboutbootstrapping on a budget.
Yes.
So if you've been thinking aboutstarting a business and you
don't have a whole lot of moneyto spend, well, this is a good
episode for you to listen to.
Or maybe you have a business andyou're like, oh, man I've been
(00:20):
spending a lot of money and Ineed a dial back some of that
spending.
Well, I am joined by my buddy.
Sarah St.
John from the frugal preneurpodcast.
So you are in for a treat.
All right, let's do this.
(00:41):
I am here with my friend, SarahSt.
John, who is the host of theFrugalpreneur.
I love that word.
Did you make that word up,Sarah?
Sarah St. John (00:51):
Yeah, I did.
It just came to me cause I wastaking This was a few, several
years ago.
I was doing that Dave Ramseyfinancial peace class to pay off
debt and everything.
Cause he's like talking aboutall these ways to pay off debt,
save money and all this, whichis great.
It occurred to me.
But what about ways to likeactually make more money to help
with that and I was like, hmmfrugalpreneur Because I had been
(01:12):
testing all these onlinebusiness models I was like I
should write a book about thisand then as I launched the book
I launched the podcast tocoincide with the book as like
an extra marketing lever It wasonly going to be like 10
episodes or whatever, but I gotmore leverage and traction with
the podcast than the book.
And so love the networking andconnections and conversations
(01:33):
and all of that.
Now I've been doing it for overfour years and over 200
episodes.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (01:38):
And you've had quite the success.
Let's just brag for a moment.
is the status now with yourpodcast?
I know Apple podcasts, you'veseen some success.
let's brag about that.
Sarah St. John (01:47):
I haven't checked it.
In a couple of weeks at least sowho knows where it's at now, but
here's the story.
So I noticed that my episodenumbers like my download numbers
were increasing and I wasconfused about it.
I was like what happened?
So I was like telling some otherpodcast friends and they
actually went and looked up,they're like you're in the top
200 under Apple podcasts onentrepreneurship.
(02:09):
I was like, what?
I recently released my 200thepisode of Frugalpreneur.
And I was going to talk aboutthat, and I'm like, I should
probably go check and just seeif I'm still in the top 200.
When I went to check, I was inthe top 100, like 92 or
something.
And I was like, okay I guess I'mgoing to have to talk about that
now.
Not top 200, top 100.
Yeah, I should probably checkthat again and see what if I'm
in the top ten?
I don't know.
(02:30):
the last few episodes have beengetting downloaded.
The numbers are quite a bithigher than before..
Very
Heather Zeitzwolfe (02:35):
cool.
We're going to get to the topicat hand.
bootstrap.
What does that mean?
Bootstrap.
It means like pulling up fromyour bootstraps.
I mentioned this to somebodyrecently and they're like, what
does that even mean?
Maybe it's an old school term.
I didn't realize it was oldschool, but I'm a little bit
older.
Bootstrap to me is pull yourselfup by your bootstraps.
I don't know how many boots havestraps on them anymore, but it's
Maybe you don't have all theresources, but you're going to
(02:56):
just do it anyways, do itscrappy.
That's what I like to say.
We're talking about ways thatyou can get into business.
You don't have to have a lot offunds.
You don't need to put a lot ofmoney on a credit card.
You were talking about DaveRamsey, like we want to avoid
debt.
There is good debt.
There's bad debt, but if you'rejust starting out and you don't
even know if your business iseven going to work better not to
have debt.
You've had 200 podcast episodes.
(03:17):
You've met a lot ofentrepreneurs.
You even had JLD.
Did I get that right?
John Lee Dumas.
What's his catchphrase?
Um, fire nation boom.
Shake the room fire nation.
Anyways, he was on your podcast.
So you've had some heavy hitterson your podcast.
What is like one.
Thing that you can think of,that you can tell anybody, or
maybe even from your book of oneway that you can start a
(03:40):
business on a budget or any kindof tip you want to throw out
Sarah St. John (03:43):
there.
And this is specifically foronline
Heather Zeitzwolfe (03:45):
businesses.
Yes.
We're talking about online.
Sarah St. John (03:48):
every online business starting out, you
should have a website and emailservice provider you can collect
well in a lead magnet actuallyto collect and we can go more
into that if you want to, but tocollect email addresses so you
can send them updates,newsletters, whatever.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (04:05):
Okay, let's just start there.
Some people that are juststarting a business for us,
those things are like, we justtalk about this stuff all the
time.
For some people that are juststarting an online business,
that stuff might be foreign tothem.
Let's just back up to having awebsite.
There are resources that you canget that don't cost a lot for
websites, I have arecommendation.
Oh,
Sarah St. John (04:25):
let's hear it.
There's a platform calledSystem.
io.
It's S Y S T M E dot IO.
And it's like an all in oneplatform has websites, landing
pages, sales funnels, emailmarketing, which I don't use
that part of it, but membership,courses, you can create all this
stuff while they have a freeplan and you can even connect
(04:45):
one domain to it.
You'd buy your domain throughGoDaddy I recommend Namecheap.
Um,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (04:50):
Yeah, one thing about GoDaddy, I'm just
gonna say about GoDaddy is theguy that started the business
likes to hunt animals.
So I'm against GoDaddy.
Sarah St. John (04:57):
And they tend to be more expensive but anyway, so
you'd have to, purchase a domainname, which is usually 15 bucks
a year or something, but you canactually connect your domain for
free.
To system.
io, you can create a landingpage, I think you can get three
sales funnels under that, 2, 000collect 2, 000 email addresses,
all this stuff.
If you're wanting to start freeand encapsulate several things
(05:22):
within one platform that's myrecommendation.
Oh, okay.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (05:25):
I've never heard of that.
That's very cool because I useMailChimp for my email.
I think they have a free versionbut if you want to do some
fancier things you have to payone thing about like when we're
starting off our business,there's a lot of like bells and
whistles out there.
We're like, Oh, I want to trythis.
Oh, I want to try that.
And then, or Oh, I now I need tointegrate this.
After I've already integratedthis other thing and oftentimes
(05:47):
those software packages don'ttalk to each other so it's
really nice to have somethingthat's all inclusive that way
you don't have to worry so muchlike How am I going to link this
to that?
And cause that can be come upgiant quagmire.
And once you're like invested insomething I've run into this.
I use score space, but does thiswork with score space?
And then it makes it so I can'tuse a piece of software.
I want to, cause it's nottalking right.
(06:08):
And then we talked about leadmagnets.
When you're bootstrapping yourbusiness, we got to get leads
into your business.
You can do networking.
There's all kinds of ways thatyou can create leads in your
business that don't cost money.
Networking, highly recommenddoing online networking.
That's free.
You can look on Eventbrite,Meetup.
There's tons of things.
If you have an online business,chances are that means that
(06:30):
you're going to have potentialclients all over the place.
Virtual networking room is agreat way to do it for free.
But find something that's goingto have your target audience
When you're thinking about yourtarget audience, we want to
attract them with something.
And what we attract them with,this is a thing called a lead
magnet.
So a lead magnet.
That's what Sarah was alludingto a lead magnet.
A lead magnet for people thatare new to business.
(06:52):
This may online business, thismay sound like a weird concept
for those that have been aroundfor a while.
You're like, Oh yeah, I got like10 lead magnets.
So a lead magnet.
Sarah, oftentimes it's a PDF.
You want to suggest any cheapways that people can create lead
magnets.
Sarah St. John (07:07):
You can create, yeah, it could be an ebook, a
checklist, a resource, yourrecommended resources.
Any kind of thing that someonecould basically download for
free or, it could even be like aprivate podcast feed or a mini
course.
There's a million differentthings you could do.
But if it's like something thatthey can download, you could
(07:28):
create a free lead magnet, I'mall about free, at beacon dot
by, B Y.
So beacon dot by, and you cancreate a free lead magnet there,
that's how I've done mine if I'mdoing like a checklist or
something like that
Heather Zeitzwolfe (07:43):
so is this different from like, doing it in
Canva?
You can do a checklist for free.
So is this...
That's true.
Yeah, is that software thatyou're talking about, is it a
graphic y kind of software, oris
Sarah St. John (07:52):
A little bit...
The advantage of Beacon, you canactually like embed the HTML
code onto your website to whereit'll have like the button like
download And then integrateswith some different platforms
and stuff.
But yeah, you could create it inCanva and then just, set up a
landing page for it withwhatever platform you're using
(08:15):
for your website,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (08:16):
there's a free version of that you can
use.
And then the beacon one.
Okay.
I had not heard of that onebefore.
So that's cool.
The other things that we need toset in place when we start a
business, whether it's on abudget or not on a budget is we
want to make sure that we have abusiness bank account.
do you have any recommendationson banks.
Sarah, have you dealt with anybanks that maybe have no fees or
non fees.
Sarah St. John (08:37):
So one bank that is that's new and it's an online
only bank, which I don't know,there might be disadvantages to
that, but there's one calledLily, is it's L I L I, and it's
specifically for entrepreneursokay.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (08:51):
Yeah.
I have no affiliation with usbank besides the fact that I use
them, but they don't charge meanything for a business bank
account, which is very cool.
There may be like a certainamount you have to keep in the
account.
But I like the fact that theydon't charge me for that.
I have a business credit cardthrough them.
which actually earns me cash.
I get cash back.
I report that as income on my Pand L and because I get money
(09:15):
back.
So that's pretty cool, becausewhen we do use credit cards, we
want to pay them off everymonth, not have debt.
And then if you get a littlespiff back from the company,
that's a pretty darn good too.
Okay.
we want to start a business bankaccount.
Then You want to get leads.
We want to make sales, sellingthings online.
Again, we have to get paymentfor things.
(09:36):
And there can be some trickythings about payment because,
fees and all of that okay.
Do you do Stripe or PayPal or,you got to pick one of these
when you're online, unless youcan coordinate with a client to
be, do it like an ACH where it'sit just money goes from one bank
account to another, which can besometimes challenging to have
things like that, especially ifyou're selling online courses,
(09:58):
you're not going to be doinglike an ACH.
Any tips that you've come acrosson.
Payment platforms that may beless expensive or they're pretty
much all the same.
Sarah St. John (10:07):
I think they're roughly the same.
I use Stripe, it's super simpleand it integrates with
everything.
Sometimes I use PayPal, maybe ifthere isn't a Stripe
integration, but almost Stripealmost is becoming more.
likely to be integrated withplatforms than PayPal
Heather Zeitzwolfe (10:26):
so I have a client that has been using
PayPal with her clients.
She's a creative.
She did a bunch of work for themthey got the work and then they
told PayPal that they somehowpulled back the payment from
PayPal, even though theyreceived the work.
Yeah.
So deceitful clients.
Getting the work and now she'snot getting paid.
(10:46):
And now trying to have a disputewith PayPal is a real tough
thing.
I've heard other nightmares withPayPal as well, that people can
pull back the payment.
you gotta be careful of scammyclients.
Hopefully you don't have scammyclients.
Hopefully you've got contractsand everything.
But even with that, what are yougoing to take them to court over
300 bucks then it's all held upin PayPal and you did the work.
Wow.
I haven't heard
Sarah St. John (11:07):
that.
I haven't really heard badthings about PayPal, but I have
heard with Stripe though,, theyhold your money for a period of
time or if you even have, Ithink one charge back or any of
that, anything, or say, youhaven't had any transactions or
you've had really lowtransaction dollar amount, but
then all of a sudden, now you'reselling high ticket or something
and a big charge comes throughor whatever, that they won't
(11:30):
release the funds for quite awhile, That's what I've heard,
that there's issues there, too,with them kind of hanging on to
stuff.
I haven't had that issue yet,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (11:40):
These are things to consider.
So if you are bootstrapping abusiness you think that money is
going to be coming in, you mayhave a cashflow issue if you're
counting on that money cominginto your bank account and it's
being held up.
So we want to be mindful ofokay.
If we are doing things on abudget, don't be like, Oh, I got
this money coming in and thenyou spending it.
And now it's not coming in andmaybe it's being held up by one
(12:02):
of those third party paymentthings.
So don't get so excited aboutmaking a sale until you actually
get the money into your bank.
anything else that you can thinkof that you've come across with
being frugal bootstrapping whenyou're starting out, or maybe
even like you've been inbusiness for a while and you
want to save some money.
What are some other ways thatyou've come across to save
money?
Sarah St. John (12:20):
I really like free software or software that
like to have a free plan anddon't upgrade until you need to
type thing.
Are you familiar with AppSumo?
Oh,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (12:30):
too familiar.
Sarah St. John (12:31):
feel like most entrepreneurs know what that is,
basically a marketplace, wherethere's all these different
softwares that are offering likeone time, something that might
normally cost a hundred bucks amonth.
You can get it one time for 50bucks or whatever.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (12:46):
You can try it out for 60 days and then you
can return it, which is reallycool.
I have gone down the AppSumorabbit hole many times.
some of the software I'vepurchased from AppSumo has been
a godsend because now it'sreally expensive and other
stuff, not so great.
A lot of this stuff is juststarting out.
They have great videos on appsumo and that kind of pull you
(13:06):
in.
You're like, Oh yeah.
And then they use it like this,like metaphor with tacos.
They rate things by tacos.
that attracts you.
Right.
Cause it's like, everybody lovestacos.
Yeah.
If you are interested in a pieceof software, go on to their
website, that actual software'swebsite, check it out, see how
much they're really charging,see what it integrates with,
find out a little bit more.
don't get caught up in the thesquirrel that has been my
(13:27):
problem.
I've bought so much software andI've not used it.
I'm sitting on so much stuffcause I'm like, Oh, I need this.
I need this to create that.
And I'm not even there yet in mybusiness, but I know in the
future I need it.
And I'm like, I can buy it at adiscount.
And then by the time I will goto use it, it's not so good.
At the same time, AppSumo hasgreat things.
I like this idea.
Sarah St. John (13:45):
Yeah, definitely.
I recommend checking it out.
It is easy to, you know, shinyobject syndrome and get carried
away, so if there's somethingthat you really want or need or
know that in the future or nowthat you could really use then,
yeah, you might be payingusually anywhere from like 20 to
100, somewhere in that range,one time, and then that's saving
(14:09):
you, who knows how much over thecourse of time.
there will be other softwaresthat come out to do something,
and I'm like, ooh, that looksgood, but it does something
similar to something I got onAppSumo, I have to keep
reminding myself of that.
You don't have to go get thatthing.
That's 20 or 50 bucks a monthwhen you already have something
similar.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (14:26):
buy software when you need it.
I've done this where it's I'mgoing to need this in the
future.
Great.
If you have the money and youreally think you're going to use
it, but map things out.
Make sure that you are actuallygoing to use it.
Cause I've bought software andI've, like I said, I'm just
still sitting on it and I don'teven know if it works anymore.
Here's another tip that I'mgoing to say though talking
about software, chat GPT, andyou can use any other kind of
(14:47):
free type thing.
I personally pay for chat GPT.
Cause I find that it's just, youget the plugins and all of that.
And it's 20 bucks a month.
That's totally worth it.
But there are other things thatyou can use using AI and it is a
great way to Increase yourproductivity and creativity on a
budget.
So if you can't afford a virtualassistant, because if you have a
virtual business, eventually youprobably will want a virtual
(15:09):
assistant.
you were talking about leadmagnets.
If you can't figure out what youwant to put in the lead magnet,
you can start using AI to helpyou create it.
I'm not saying like completelycreate it, but maybe.
Spur some ideas or ignite some,like maybe some topic ideas or
something like give, use it aslike a tool but not as just like
the end all be all.
Any thoughts on using AI to helpsave money in your business.
Sarah St. John (15:31):
Oh, for sure.
There's been a few things thatI've gotten through AppSumo.
Like Cast Magic had an AppSumo.
Oh, I've heard of Cast
Heather Zeitzwolfe (15:38):
Magic.
Okay, so tell us a little bitabout what that does.
Sarah St. John (15:40):
So that would be for podcasters and it basically
creates your show notes,transcripts, the speaker bio,
the timestamps, the socialmedia, and there's, Captcha was
also a really good one, shoutout, because they're friends I
don't think Cast Magic is doingthe one time deal anymore.
I was able to get in on that.
Yeah, so different stuff likethat, and that would be AI.
(16:02):
And while we're on the AppSumotopic, they also create some of
their own AppSumo originals.
of those, I recommend SendFoxfor email.
As your email service provider,because you can get it for free
up to a certain number ofsubscribers, but then if you
want to upgrade, it's like a onetime fee of 50 bucks.
And that's what I use.
(16:23):
one thing I really like about itif you're a podcaster, a
blogger, or a YouTuber, you canput in your RSS feed or your
YouTube channel, it'llautomatically generate a
newsletter or an email based onyour latest episode.
And it's very minimal.
It's not overwhelming andconfusing like some of the
others.
as far as email serviceproviders that are free to very
(16:45):
cheap that's my recommendation.
Oh,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (16:47):
wow.
That's very cool.
Another thing about AppSumo is Ithink that they have a
marketplace where like creatorscan sell things as well.
Have you ever done
Sarah St. John (16:55):
that before?
So I have I did it with Mypreneur trilogy.
It was like frugal Preneur,authorpreneur and Podcast
Preneur.
They were all eBooks I think Isold and I, it was just like a
dollar each.
versus 2 99 on Amazon.
And I'm pretty sure I got moredownloads or purchases.
(17:16):
from that than Amazon.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (17:17):
Wow.
Now, how does something likethat work?
So you're selling it on AppSumo.
It's being printed by Amazon,right?
How does that work?
Sarah St. John (17:24):
The ones on AppSumo are just PDFs.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (17:27):
I see.
you're not having to pay.
so it's not like you're gettinga royalty from Amazon.
Okay.
Sarah St. John (17:32):
Yeah, so like with Amazon, you can get the,
Kindle, whatever it is.
Yeah.
Or the print book, but that'sall through Amazon, and so the e
book version is 2.
99 on Amazon, but then I had thePDF uploaded to AppSumo for a
dollar
Heather Zeitzwolfe (17:50):
writing a book can be a great way to get
your visibility out there, yourcredibility, all those things.
I'm actually toying with theidea of putting out a book so
I'm curious on, you've writtenseveral.
You put it on Amazon.
I know that there's certain waysthat you can get people to buy
your book for a dollar and it'sunder a certain topic.
And then like it reaches the topand you can call yourself a best
(18:12):
selling author.
That's like the angle that youwant to take, right?
Without doing too muchmarketing, you get your friends
all download it and buy it for abuck or something.
And now you're a best.
selling author, even if it'slike for a moment in time, you
take a picture and you're good.
Were you able to do that withAmazon and how were you able to
do that if that was the case?
Sarah St. John (18:30):
know for frugalpreneur, I was able to get
it to the top position withinwhatever the category was.
I guess it would have been, somekind of business category.
There's like a whole strategybehind that.
you can have it free for acertain amount of days to
increase, Or lower the price andit's probably changed since then
Heather Zeitzwolfe (18:50):
if you do offer it for free on Amazon, do
you have to then pay Amazon forThe fee for having it there, or
is it free and you don't payAmazon anything?
Sarah St. John (19:00):
Yeah, if it's the e book and it's free, you
don't pay anything.
You can't do it free, really,with the print book.
the print book, so all my booksare like, 80 pages or something.
They're very thin.
And it's about 2 or so for themto actually print that's their
cost.
And then anything after that,then they take.
I think 30 percent and one ofthe two.
(19:27):
Okay.
Yeah, it's a big difference.
Yeah, I think it's 30, whatever.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (19:30):
It is a way though to be out there and
visible in the world thatdoesn't cost a whole lot of
money you could put everythingin Word first and then make sure
that it's formatted correctlyfor Amazon.
And then you might need to paysomebody, I guess to edit it,
perhaps you can find somebody onFiverr or something like that,
or use Grammarly, which is Ithink they have.
They might have a free version.
(19:50):
I pay for that.
Sarah St. John (19:51):
the thing that I like about, self publishing on
Amazon you don't have to keep aninventory.
It's all print on demand.
it's not like you have to buy abunch of books and then hope you
sell them.
So it's like when someone ordersit, they print it, they ship it.
And as far as creating the bookyeah, you could use Grammarly,
there's a few different,ProWritingAid is another one,
there's a few different that canhelp you make sure that your
(20:11):
grammar and punctuation and,everything I recommend doing
that for your first round.
But then hiring an editor, likebasically the amount of money I
spent on each book, includingthe editor.
And then I do recommend hiringsomeone to do artwork,
Heather Zeitzwolfe (20:26):
cover, yeah, the cover art.
Yeah.
Sarah St. John (20:27):
I think I spent about$200 per book.
between the editor and the coverI went to Fiverr for, the
editing, I wouldn't recommenddoing Fiverr, because I didn't
have a good experience.
But I found some editor.
That would charge like two centsa word and since they were like
10, 000 words at most But herprice the person I was using her
(20:48):
price has drastically gone up.
And then for formatting to makesure that it's in EPUB and MOBI
and whatever that Amazonrequires, Readsy is a good
source.
R E E D S Y.
They have this free thing whereyou can lay out each chapter and
have it properly formatted andthen download it in these
different versions for Amazonand
Heather Zeitzwolfe (21:09):
all that.
Oh, okay, so Amazon requiresdifferent formats for the
different types like if it's aprint book versus an e book or a
Kindle or something like that.
Okay, That's really good toknow.
Besides the visibility and thecredibility for putting out a
book, another thing is that itcan help you go on podcasts,
which most of the time you don'thave to pay to be on a podcast.
So it can help you get your wordout there.
(21:30):
What are some other return oninvestments that you can think
of having a book?
How has that helped you?
Has it helped you get speakinggigs clients, like how else has
writing books helped you?
Sarah St. John (21:38):
It can help you get on podcasts, I definitely
recommend podcast guesting ifnot hosting, if not having your
own show for your business, butfor sure being on other shows.
But the book itself, I think forme there hasn't been like a
direct ROI, I wouldn't say.
It's more of a I've been able tospeak because I have a book.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (22:00):
So you're leveraging it.
By leveraging it, eventuallythere will be a payoff and ROI
because you'll get clients fromit and all of that.
Okay.
So you've gotten speaking gigs.
Yes.
Let's just go there for asecond.
So You got speaking gigs.
Are you applying to speak placesand you're saying like, I have
this book and this is the topicI can talk about?
Or like, how are you leveragingthat?
Sarah St. John (22:20):
I think I mentioned the books, but that's
not even my main thing.
Like I'll submit a topic, Therewas something else I was going
to say about that.
Oh direct monetization, throughlike Amazon sales, but again,
the amount that you're gettingpaid you're not gonna get rich
off of that by any means.
I think I've probably earnedenough to cover the cost of
making the books, hiring theeditor and whatever.
(22:41):
to me, with self publishing, mygoal isn't really to make money
directly from the book.
and then like, last year atPodcast Movement in Dallas, I
had just released my latestbook, the one with the yellow
cover.
I actually ordered a hundredcopies from Amazon Physical
copies.
Here it is, 27 way.
Oh, you have it right there.
Wow.
So what I did was I had releasedit literally the week of podcast
(23:06):
movement.
And so I decided, since this isa podcast conference, I had
Amazon print out a hundredcopies.
And there was a whole issue withgetting them they couldn't
handle that I ordered a hundred,they weren't here, and then I
had to order them in like, tenand twenty.
It was a fiasco, but I did getthem all in.
And how
Heather Zeitzwolfe (23:24):
much did that cost you, to buy that two
dollars a book?
Or, did they give you a break ifyou're buying it directly for
yourself?
Sarah St. John (23:29):
You buy it as an author purchase you only have to
pay like the two bucks orwhatever to make costs, what I
did was I got a hundred copies.
I bought myself a clearbackpack.
I put the books in the clearbackpack.
And then I put a little notethat's get your free book.
But that didn't work at all.
(23:49):
So I was like, screw that.
And so I just started maybebecause people were afraid I was
going to pitch them orsomething, but I didn't.
So I just started anytime I talkto someone or whatever, I'm
like, Hey, here's my free book.
And a lot of people weresurprised.
They're like, You're notcharging for that.
You don't want money.
I'm like, no, here's your freebook.
I think I handed out like 80 outof a hundred and then so I had
(24:10):
another 20 that I took to someother conference because I just
wanted to get them off my hands.
It's basically, a lead magnet, aphysical lead magnet that really
doesn't cost much, like two,maybe three bucks.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (24:23):
Yeah.
Yeah, that's awesome.
Again, you're matching up thetopic with the audience, the
target audience I've actuallyhad some clients that have
published books that have doneactually really well, and it's
become one of their majorrevenue streams.
I was surprised when I went todo this person's tax return.
I was like, wow.
The Amazon sales have reallyincreased.
(24:44):
it probably depends on howyou're leveraging it.
Maybe, you could have somethingwhere it's like you have a group
program and then they need thebook that goes along with it.
I mean,, there could be waysthat you could leverage it more,
it depends on what you're it.
Intentions are like for you, itwas more of like a marketing
thing, right?
Sarah St. John (24:59):
A couple of things I want to mention.
So like when I ordered a hundredcopies, that doesn't count
because you're ordering them asauthor copies.
It doesn't count for sales.
I had the initial push for thebooks because my focus is more
my podcast and just podcastbusiness I'm not really
promoting the book activelysince that initial like month or
so.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (25:19):
For most of these bootstrap business owners,
publishing a book is more aboutwhat you're doing.
It's not to get the big booksales.
It's more for the credibility.
You can put it on your website.
I published a book.
If you do get on the Amazonbestseller thing, you can put
that on.
If you're putting on workshopsof, bestselling author hosted by
whatever, it's a great marketingtool that doesn't cost a lot.
(25:40):
That's what we're getting at.
Sarah St. John (25:41):
That's the bottom line of that whole thing.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (25:43):
We're not saying that you're going to
become Stephen King or whatever,it's just another tool in your
toolbox to market yourself on abudget.
Any last thoughts, Sarah, beforewe wrap up on being a frugal
preneur,
Sarah St. John (25:55):
I know for me and several entrepreneurs that
I've talked with that shinyobject syndrome is a big
problem.
We just keep getting distractedwhether a new business idea or a
new thing we need to be doing,or a new software we need
Heather Zeitzwolfe (26:09):
to be doing.
Or software on AppSumo.
Sarah St. John (26:11):
Yeah, whatever it is but we just need to be
more focused, pick that onething that's moving the needle.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (26:18):
it's a tough thing, especially when you're
first starting out your businessit's so exciting when you start
off your business and you'relike, there's so many
possibilities.
That's where you can end upspending a lot of money on
avenues that you're never goingto really go down.
Me included.
I'd like to think that I'mfrugal.
I pinch pennies all the time.
I'm cheap, but I will spendmoney on things that I think are
(26:39):
possible opportunities.
when I first started mybusiness, I met this person
who's a really good financialadvisor, nothing against her.
But she suggested that I selllife insurance.
And at the time I was like, Oh,that sounds good.
Okay, Until I started studyingit and I'm like, I do not care
for this subject is the mostboring thing I spent money and
time studying for this thingthat really did not have any
(27:02):
payoff for me because of justI've all I did was discover that
I hate.
learning about life insurance.
And I never want to sellinsurance.
I learned that lesson, but itwas costly because I spent for
the course, don't let peoplederail.
I'm not saying she derailed me.
It was me that did it, but weget that shiny object of like,
Oh, I could also offer this, nowwhen I'm going to be a insurance
salesman, like what?
(27:23):
I don't know what I wasthinking, but Hey, want to buy
some life insurance?
Like I'm just not that person.
Nothing against life insurancesalesmen.
We need them.
Yes, try not to get the FOMO,the shiny object, because it can
be very costly.
And when you are bootstrapping,we got to pinch the pennies and
watch what we're doing.
So have a plan that is soimportant to have a plan.
I work with people to put inplace a business plan and not
(27:44):
just like a business plan thatyou're gonna bring to the bank,
but have a plan of what it isyou want to do for the next
year.
What is your vision?
What is your mission?
Have these things in place,understand your target market,
those sorts of things so thatwe're not spending money on all
the bells and whistles becauseWe can go down those rabbit
holes and guilty as charged isme.
(28:04):
I'm saying this, I'm telling youI'm, teaching because I'm
learning from my ownexperiences.
Sarah, how can people work withyou?
Sarah St. John (28:10):
If you want to check out the podcast for
Googlepreneur You can go tofrugal.
show and then that'll have linksto whatever platform you listen
to podcasts on.
I also give away my free eBooksthe PDF version of my books at
frugal.
show forward slash free.
If you want to work directlywith me on podcasts related,
(28:30):
then.
all the information will be
Heather Zeitzwolfe (28:32):
there.
Okay, perfect.
And what do you help people withtheir podcasts?
Is it starting a podcast?
What is it that you help outwith?
Sarah St. John (28:38):
So I initially was helping with like podcasts,
post production, launching, allthat kind of stuff.
But I'm now switching into likepodcasts, growth, marketing, and
monetization.
more of coaching.
I'm creating a program,basically, it's going to be a 12
week program, it's geared morefor people who already have a
(29:00):
podcast.
How do they get it out there,how do they market it properly,
monetize it, things like that.
Okay.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (29:07):
people that have a if they're like only five
episodes in, would you be ableto help them?
Or is this more of a they havemore of a, like a hundred
episodes or anywhere in betweenor
Sarah St. John (29:16):
yeah anywhere along the spectrum.
Heather Zeitzwolfe (29:18):
You're not helping them launch, you're
helping them with The otherparts of it.
Sarah St. John (29:21):
Yeah, at least, for now, that's what I'm doing.
It's
Heather Zeitzwolfe (29:23):
a shiny object of something else because
us creatives, we have that thingwhere we just want to keep
changing up and doing new thingsall the time.
Guilty as charged.
well, Sarah, thank you so muchfor being on the podcast today.
And everybody go check out thevery popular Frugalpreneur
podcast.
Sarah St. John (29:42):
Thanks
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