Welcome to the 21st episode of the #AskAPrivateLender​​ Podcast brought to you by Mortgage Automator. Continuing with our efforts to bring you more information about how to grow your private lending business, in this episode we have covered another very important, but often overlooked, part of marketing your business—social media.

Our guest is Tracey Nguyen, the founder and CEO of BOWO CREATIVE Inc, a Toronto-based social media agency. Tracey has built her career by cultivating her personal brand, and now she is helping other entrepreneurs do the same. She is highly proficient in all things social media and had some great insights to share with us. If your private lending business is not on social media, you are missing out on business opportunities. Listen to this episode to find out why!

Listen, watch, or read the interview below. And stay tuned for more episodes coming up!

 

Lawrence: Today I’m joined by Mikayla, she’s our social media coordinator. So, if you’re ever browsing our Instagram, our LinkedIn, Mikayla is the great person who deals with all of that stuff. Why we have Mikayla with us today is because we have an incredible guest for you. Tracey, thank you for stopping by today, we really appreciate your time. For those of you who don’t know Tracey, she’s the Founder and CEO of BOWO Creative, an incredible social media agency. She really does it all, but she got her start in the beauty industry and really exploded her business from there. 

Tracey: Thank you so much for having me.

Lawrence: So you are the all-around entrepreneur, content creator, business coach, mentor. Can you tell us, how did you get your start in the social media arena? 

Tracey: Long story, but I’m going to try to keep it as short as possible so we can talk about more important stuff. I graduated from York University in business, and I’ve always wanted to get into marketing. But, for whatever reason, I went into management, instead. And so, after I graduated from school, I got a corporate job in management. Quickly, three months after working at that job, I realized that I was not made for this. I just hated sitting at the desk all day and looking at numbers, and I just found myself watching other YouTubers creating their content.

Back in 2012, Instagram was very new and very organic. Just literally take a picture, apply one of those ready-made filters that they have, and post. So I was like, there’s something about this, I don’t know where this is going to go, but I saw some potential in social media. And then I was looking to start an online business, actually, something that I can do on the side, kind of like a side hustle, while I still have my corporate job, because I couldn’t just quit my job and pursue entrepreneurship.

So I started looking into different options, and a friend of mine actually introduced me to a network marketing business structure. So, I was like, “Great.” They checked some of the things that I didn’t have, and I didn’t have to put my time and a lot of my effort into it. And so I registered my business, I got in, and I realized it’s not what I thought it would be. 

That was just not how I wanted to create that image of me and just wasn’t authentically me. I couldn’t see myself hosting home parties and getting people over. I wasn’t blessed with that kind of personality, so I was like, “Let me take a look at what other channels out there that I can really be myself and build my business at the same time.” So that’s when I discovered the blogs and YouTube, and social media because I wanted to just review products and tell people what I really think about them, and whoever could relate, then they might become a customer. That’s how I got started.

I was just reviewing a bunch of makeup products that I was selling, and then I started getting emails from agencies and other brands were sending me free products. It started with free products, and then it became paid partnerships, and I started to see more potential than just my network marketing business at the time. And then even within that network marketing business, I was able to climb up pretty high, and was almost like the top retailers and top recruiters of the year, in most of the years, because I was building this personal brand, and I didn’t do it the traditional way.

So, at some point, the corporate in the US also asked me to train their distributors on how they could build personal branding as well. So that’s when I started thinking, “Wow, not only can I build this for myself, I can also help other people create a brand that is really authentic to themselves and generate income or revenue for the business.” And then I was doing the training, I got more people coming to me for more questions, and it just kind of snowballed into an agency now.

I left the network marketing business a while ago because I just feel like my business, the agency, right now, really speaks to me, and I can talk about branding all day long, I can talk about helping entrepreneurs all day long, and I get really passionate about it. So, I will say the network marketing was actually a blessing in disguise, in the sense that it gave me the opportunity to see things that I couldn’t see before, and now we’re here.

Lawrence: It was a stepping stone for you. I always feel like it’s a formula. And if you understand the formula, whether it’s in beauty, mortgages, lending, you stick to that same formula, and you understand how to get it to the next level, read the statistics, see what’s working, see what’s not working, and build whatever business it is. 

Social media hasn’t been around for that long. I think that there was a period of time where the big brands weren’t really interested in it. They were doing their traditional marketing, their television commercials, their billboards, etc. Over the years, of course, things have changed. How do you stay on top of all the latest trends, and is there something that businesses should focus on to ensure that it’s always going to work, and their social media platforms are always going to be great, regardless of all of the things that are surrounding and happening?

Tracey: Absolutely. Earlier this year, in January, I woke up one morning, and my Instagram account was disabled, it was completely gone. Absolutely no warning, no reasons, nothing. And I have grown this Instagram account since 2012, and I had around 23,000 followers on that account, and it was gone like poof, overnight. I’m still fighting to get it back, I still don’t have it. I decided to take six months off because I am a big believer that the universe has your back. So when that happened, of course, I was in shock. It took me a few days, and I realized maybe this happened for a reason, and maybe I need to take a step back and really focus on actually building my business, and create a system behind this whole social media thing. Within six months, our agency doubled our revenues. We hit our 2021 goal in six months, without social media. 

I’m so glad you asked that question, because a lot of the time, people think that they have to put all of their eggs on social media, it’s like an all-or-nothing kind of mentality. And then they get really overwhelmed every time there is a change in algorithms and all of those changes that Instagram does. I think the best thing to do is to go in with the right strategy and have a goal. Because sometimes business owners or entrepreneurs feel the need to be on social media because their competitions are on there, but they don’t really have a clear strategy for themselves. They just kind of jump in and be like, “Oh, she’s doing that and he’s doing that, and I should be doing this.”

But really, what works for you might not work for other people, and vice versa. So you need to really have that strategy for yourself and build it in a way that social media is like icing on top of the cake, but your business system is the cake in itself. Also, use social media as an amplifier for your brand, not something that you put all your eggs in. So there are still many other things that you should take into consideration, like, do you have a funnel in place? Can you get leads while you sleep? Are you collecting your potential clients’ information in your database? Because at the end of the day, you don’t own that social media space.

Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Clubhouse, whatever it is, that’s just a place that you rent to market your business. But you have to follow their rules. If you have a website, and you have a lead funnel or some sort of leads magnet going on on your website, you have content on your website, at the end of the day, you own that database. You have people putting email, phone numbers, and whatnot.

I was actually talking to another software company because we want to implement SMS marketing with our agency as well, because we are seeing how these days people are even reluctant to give their email. So you have to really have a strategy with that email marketing. But email marketing, till today, is still the best form of conversion. It has the highest conversion rate compared to any social media platform. So, there are so many other ways that you can build around your social media strategy so that you are solid.

Mikayla: Right. You mentioned strategy and how you can incorporate social media into, say, email marketing, like you have a funnel, which is very beneficial. Of course, you need to have your goals in place, your strategy in place, and social media is just a piece of that puzzle. Since you know our audience, how would they be able to use social media, and what other kinds of things should they be doing or would you recommend for them to have in their strategy?

Tracey: I like to call the content strategy the three E’s. If you work on these three E’s, your content will, guarantee, attract your target audience. But before that, you need to know who you’re talking to. You need to really understand your entire audience, where they’re hanging out, what kind of information they’re looking to get.

But the three E’s essentially are, number one, if your content is sending some empowering message that attracts a lot of people. Because we all need some positivity, especially during this time. And then number two, educational. Especially for your target audience listening to this podcast and the industry that they are in, education is really important, because people need to know more about you, what you do, and then feel that they could trust you to actually come to you and do business with you because we’re talking about lending and mortgage.

And then the last one is entertaining. We see this with Instagram reels a lot. Sometimes I start scrolling reels, and two hours later, I’m still on the phone, because it’s just so entertaining. If you can combine being entertaining and providing education at the same time, that would be amazing. I have a feeling that Instagram is trying to drive TikTok out of business, like how they did with Snapchat. So, they’re really prioritizing content like Instagram reels right now.

I know it can be very intimidating for a lot of people who are not in the social media world, but trust me, it still takes me half an hour to an hour to create one reel. So, we’re all going through that. Stop focusing on having perfection, and just put something out there and be authentic, and you’re going to attract the right audience.

Lawrence: But is it quality over quantity, or quantity over quality?

Tracey: Absolutely. Quality over quantity, but sometimes I feel like when I say that, people think the quality is like, “Oh, I have to look like this influencer or this person that has millions or thousands of followers.” But you can still get customers, and you can still build a business with less than 1,000 followers on social media, if you can deliver the right content to the right people. So understanding your audience, number one, is super important, before you even go out to do anything.

Number two is understanding you, who you are, how you want the world to see you, instead of looking at everyone else and trying to do what everyone else is doing. I cannot dance, and so on my reels, you won’t see me dancing whatsoever. But I really enjoy doing those lip syncs, and people love it. So I’m like, “Oh, that’s my lane.”

So find something that works for you and you actually have fun doing it. Number three is, have a goal in mind. Like, what is it that you achieve by putting out this content? Because again, followers and likes and all that stuff are vanity metrics. At the end of the day, how much money is your business generating from this content that you’re putting out is more important?

Mikayla: You mention IG Reels, and that’s a really popular form of content these days, short-form videos. You mentioned TikTok, as well. TikTok has been a popular up-and-coming platform, and also Clubhouse. What are your thoughts on platforms like TikTok and Clubhouse coming into the social media game, and businesses jumping on those? 

Tracey: I think that you have to understand your audience, the very basic part to start because then you will know where they hang out. I am personally not on TikTok, just because my type of clients are small to medium businesses looking to scale the business and are overwhelmed already. They don’t have the time to run social media, that’s why they’re looking to hire our team to come in and help them. So they’re not going to be on TikTok watching my content.

But let’s say, if I have an online course that teaches a solopreneur or new entrepreneurs to grow their brand and their business online, then maybe TikTok is the place to be, to give them some tips and tricks and get them to see that I have values to offer. But that’s, unfortunately, not my current target audience, so I’m not on TikTok. I’m also not on Clubhouse, because again, that’s not where my target audience is. I think that every single social media platform that you see out there has its own potential, but the good news is that you don’t have to be on every single one of them, and the good news is that once you know exactly who you’re talking to, you can really have a solid strategy to go about those.

Lawrence: What about how Facebook started as a university platform. It started with Harvard, and then other universities, and then it opened up to anybody, and then it opened up to children. And then you see the same thing with Instagram, where it started out as a younger demographic, and now it seems like… Mikayla puts posts up on the Mortgage Automator Instagram, and my mother’s commenting on them. Things change. So when you’re talking about demographics on a TikTok, for instance, and now it’s a younger crowd, I think I’ve seen a shift a little bit to an older crowd. Do you think that in five years, if TikTok is still around, it’s going to be a different platform? If it is a different platform, do you want to get an early start, or do you just figure it out later?

Tracey: Good question. I think Gary Vee has a really good talk on this one because he always recommends going into the lane that is not too crowded … because it’s easier for you to stand out, because your content is different than the rest of the content that is pumping out. So I cannot say the ultimate answer, because at the end of the day, it goes back to who your audience is, and where they’re hanging out. Things change, obviously. That’s why I didn’t say young or old, I said, my audience is the type that’s too busy, doesn’t have time for social media. 

It’s more than just a target audience kind of thing. You need to really look at what your niche is. A lot of the time I think people misunderstand niche being an industry, but a niche is not an industry. A niche is actually, what kind of problem you’re helping your target audience solve. So when you have that niche in mind… Again, your niche might change. Like you said, you’re in business, nothing’s going to stay the same. Whatever I’m saying today might become obsolete tomorrow if Instagram or TikTok start to change. So it’s really important for you to always keep your eyes and ears open, always learning, which is why I love that you guys have this podcast and have this conversation. Always learning about what’s coming up next, and really see where is the best strategy for yourself and for your business.

Lawrence: That makes sense. I love how you said that you could create a business with less than a thousand followers. I think people get caught up in the larger accounts that have millions of followers and hundreds of thousands of followers. You can have an account with 100,000 followers, but if no one really cares about you or what you’re posting, the 100,000 is useless. I’d rather have 500 followers that really want to know what’s going on. I think it’s about building a great community on your platforms who look forward to your posts. How do you gain the right followers, build the right community, and do it the right way? 

Tracey: First of all, you need to make the decision to not be one of those people that are chasing the vanity metrics, which I think is really difficult, because it’s such a peer pressure thing. You’re on Instagram, you see everyone else having tons of followers and all these views, but a lot of the time you don’t know how many of those followers are actually paying customers. The first thing is to really decide to focus in your own lane and do the right things at the beginning, and then the second thing is to market-research your target audience.

I love Instagram stories, because I can always run polls, yes or no, and ask me a question, because then I can actually find out more about my audience, and find out what it is that they are looking to learn from me. Social media is not about you. If you want to build the right community, it’s actually about your community. It’s still about you in terms of your branding, and who you are, and what you want to stand for, but in terms of putting content out there, what you think they need might not be something that they need. So utilize Instagram stories for asking questions.

I know Facebook has a lot of Facebook groups that are very niche with certain industries. For me, I’m a part of Women in Marketing, because that’s literally where my target audience is at, and I go on there, and I would ask questions, like, what is the number one struggle when it comes to growing your engagement on Instagram? And then people would actually give me all of their struggles. And then, from there, I realized, “Okay, I know a way that you can overcome this. So let me create content that people are already asking for.” So that’s another thing.

Second thing is, like you said, social media is about building community, so make sure that you have that conversation with your people. Every time a new follower starts to follow me, I send them a DM. It’s not a bot, a ready-made message, but it’s something like, “Hey, thanks for giving me a follow. Can I know more about what you do? What industry are you in, and where did you find me?” That’s also a great place. Because I just started to rebuild my Instagram from scratch, and I think today I have like 400 followers. But I message them and I ask them, because I want to know where they are finding me, so I can adjust my strategy and focus on that place more.

Surprisingly, the three people that messaged me today said, “I found you on the Explore page.” So I’m like, “Yes, I made it on the Explore page.” So that means I need to keep pumping out content. Ask questions like that. A lot of big brands, the big influencers, the big business out there, they’re not doing that. So when you do these kinds of steps, you are different, and people actually think that, “Wow, Mikayla, genuinely cares about this relationship and cares about me following her.” Even if they’re not ready to buy right now, you already made a good impression on them. Down the road, whenever they’re ready to be your clients, they might reach out to you and ask you questions, and that happens a lot to me.

Lawrence: Make it personal, turn it from like a business page to there’s actually a person behind this account that you can interact with, and they’re real.

Mikayla: Engaging with your audience is really important, and they do need to know that there’s someone on the other side, and that you do care about people that are interacting with your account. You mentioned pumping out content, posting to stories, doing polls, answering questions. What would you say are some things that you do to help increase the engagement? Sure, you throw up a story poll, but how are you going to get people to want to reply to it, ask you questions, or interact with your posts, leaving comments and stuff like that? 

Tracey: You interact with them first. Think of it as our everyday life. You’re not going to walk into a room full of people and say, “Hey, my name is Tracey, and this is what I do. Buy my service.” You’re going to come to them and say, “Hey, nice to meet you. My name is Tracey, and this is what I do. What do you do?” Have that conversation with your target audience first, and just go from there.

For example, I’m actually currently coaching a mortgage broker. For her, I encourage her to actually interact with her target audience, which is first-time homebuyer young couples, and just commenting on the family pictures. Be as human as possible, and give them comments, compliments always work, and it makes them want to go to your profile and find out more about what you do. Like I said, every engagement that goes out is not a direct transaction. So it’s not like you’re going to engage with this person, they’re going to engage back to you.

But, over time, it’s like building a business, it’s going to start hitting a point where it starts to become exponential, and the people that you engage with or interact with two-three months ago, now wanting to buy a house and need a mortgage, and they might remember, “Oh, she was really nice, and she’s commenting on my photos, on my posts all the time. Let me just say hi, which I’ll then see if she’s a good fit.”

I don’t think social media should be your conversion strategy, I think social media is your brand-building and your exposure strategy. If anything, building a brand on social media is going to help cut your selling time in half. You still got to do that sales work, but people already know you, or if they go on social media and they check you out, they’re like, “I like her, I like the content she put out, I like the values or the vibe,” then it’s easier for them to come to you and become your client.

Lawrence: So if someone follows you, you message them, you introduce yourself, do you give them a follow?

Tracey: If their content is something I want to follow, yes. There is nothing wrong with following more people than the followers you have.

Lawrence: That’s always a thing that I see, right? How many people are they following, because they’re probably following people to get a follow back. So people try to keep their following low, because it makes it look like you’re a bigger account that way.

Tracey: That’s just the same as following vanity metrics, right? At the end of the day, I feel more secure and more confident if I know my business is thriving and is successful than how many people I’m following on social media.

Lawrence: I’m all about vanity. I’m only kidding. The average person on these platforms only looks at the biggest accounts, and they say, “I need to be like the biggest accounts.” But they don’t realize, you don’t have to be like them. You can still be very successful and do extremely well by just being yourself and doing whatever you want to do.

Mikayla: Authenticity, and showing off who you are and your brand.

Tracey: That might be another way to do it, because you have no pressure. You don’t get stressed out anytime Instagram changes the algorithm, because you have a solid business that is running, and social media is, like I said, icing on top of the cake. So it’s generating leads and traffic to your business, but your pan is always full of fish, so you’re not worrying about how many people I’m following or how many people are following me.

Mikayla: Switching gears a little bit here, and back to the content types, what are your thoughts on A/B testing, trying out different kinds of posts, trying out the same kinds of content, but in a different way? What kinds of things have you tried or would you give examples of?

Tracey: As a social media agency, we’re A/B-testing all the time, because we need to make sure that we’ll always track and adjust our content and optimize what we’re doing. A/B testing is actually more common when we do paid ads. What it is, is that you can have the same ads going out but different copywrite, the same graphics and different copywrite to see which one attracts the most impressions and the most leads to your business. Or, you can have the same copy and different graphics, and see which one people react to you better.

Now, when it comes to creating your content, it wouldn’t be these kinds of events. If you’re on Instagram, and if you don’t know already, when you go to your insights, it will show you reached impressions and your audience, and then there’s a little part that says “posts”. So you can click on that, and you can actually look at the posts that you have been generating over the last few days, and you can select to see how many followers or reach, or likes, or comments that you have been getting from these posts. If you see that there’s one post that stands out in terms of getting more engagement and getting you more followers, then go back to that post and see what did I do here that people like a lot, and can I duplicate this with different topics and produce the same kind of content?

So that’s not exactly A/B testing, but that’s something that you can do, that doesn’t require too much of an advanced thing. You don’t have to do too much testing. But when it comes to paid ads, always A/B test, the purpose is finding that winning copy, the one that actually generates the most results with the lowest cost per click. That means you’re spending less but generating more results for your ads.

Lawrence: You put up a post recently on Instagram, why someone’s business isn’t really growing. I think it was like three reasons why, and it talked about how they’re focusing too much on social media, not enough on lead funnels. I know you talked about lead funnels earlier in the conversation, but what should companies be doing to make sure, number one, they have a great balance, and what are some examples… How can they focus on a lead funnel? What should they be doing to make sure that they’re converting and they’re making money and leads are coming in? It’s not just about posting random posts and getting nothing out of it. So, what would you do to make sure that, number one, you have the right balance, but number two, leads are coming in?

Tracey: Number one is, I suggest you build your social media strategy around your business, and not your business around a social media strategy. For example, in our agency, what we’re doing is pumping out content that attracts the right target audience. Okay, we’ve got new followers, what’s the next step? The next step is to create content that asks them to opt into our free offer, which is a free branding checklist, a free Instagram guide or a free 2021 tips and hacks, something similar like that, which is great. Because today, no one subscribes to your newsletter anymore, to be honest. People don’t want more emails in their inbox, unless there’s some value.

So it depends on what industry you are in. For us, when we work with real estate agents, we ask them, can you think of something that you can offer your target audience for free? So, one of the agents offered a free first-time home buyer guide. What you need to know, what you need to do if you’re a first-time homebuyer. Because that’s her target audience. It’s great to have these lead magnets because they attract people to you, and they put in their emails and their phone numbers or whatnot, you collect their information, then you can go on and nurture that lead, you can send them more information.

Let’s say an interest rate is increasing, or there’s a new stress test with their mortgage, you can send them emails and educate them on that, you can send an email to build a relationship with them, simply by sending an email saying, “Hi, thanks for subscribing to my list. This is who I am, who are you? I would love to connect and see… Are you looking to buy a home, or are you looking to invest in the next few months or the next few years? I would love for you to have me in your email.” Something really personal like that.

If they download that lead magnet or free offer, they qualify themselves as somebody who’s ready to have that talk with you. So you’re not just talking to someone randomly, you’re talking to people who you already know they’re interested in, at least, learning more about this. So, that’s how we do it, social media content that drives them to opt into the leads. And then once they go to that, what we call lead funnels, then they go down to the funnels, we send out monthly emails to update them about new Instagram changes, or any social media tips and tricks, to build up that credibility, to let them know we know what we’re talking about.

And then once they’re ready, all of our newsletters have a call to action. So if you’re struggling to create a brand or build your business on social media, book a free discovery call with us. That’s how we funnel them to the next step, which is booking a call with any of our team members. We give them a free audit in terms of their branding, and from there, because now they know what they’re not doing well… Because sometimes people don’t know. They don’t have the tools to run this in-depth analysis on their SEO or the website. So when we can point out what it is that they are still lacking, and the competition is doing better than them, now we can offer our solutions, and not just sell a band-aid to everybody. We’re selling band-aid to someone who is in need.

Lawrence: Makes sense. If you think about Superbowl commercials, people spend millions of dollars for like a 10-second commercial, and the point is to get as many eyeballs as possible on your piece of content, your commercial, your billboard, or whatever it is. I always think about these people who have no following at all, they produce one piece of content, and it goes viral, and now all of a sudden, they have a business if they capitalize on it correctly. It seems like everyone has that goal of, I want to create that content that’s going to go viral. It’s almost like a shortcut to success, if you could do it properly. What do you think you need to do in order to create a piece of viral content? And have you ever had any of your pieces of content go viral before?

Tracey: Yeah, I actually had, but it’s a shame that I can’t show it because my Instagram is gone. What’s actually funny is that there is really no formula to go viral. The formula that everyone is looking for, correct me if I’m wrong, or I haven’t found one yet. But honestly, the most random content that I’ve done went viral, and the one that I put so much thought and energy into, and I pour my heart out, and no one is reading.

Mikayla: Yeah, that’s the way it goes.

Tracey: Right? I had a post, I think this was 2019, going into 2020, and it was just saying 2018 was a lesson, 2019 was the preparation, and 2020 I’m ready for success kind of thing, and it went insane. I got 2,000 saves and 3,000 shares on Instagram. That post has like 10,000 likes. That was that one post, and I’m like, “What did I do?” I’m trying to pump out more of that kind of content, and it didn’t have the same effect. So I wouldn’t be worried about going viral, I would be more focused on creating content that makes me feel good, makes my audience feel good, and ultimately provides value. Because a shortcut is good, but it’s not always the most stable one. You can have one piece of content that goes viral, and then it goes flat. 

Lawrence: I think it’s difficult, but I think that’s why people are attracted to TikTok. Because I feel like TikTok, you can put out a video, and it’s just so much easier to get the eyeballs, the likes, the followers than any other platform. I don’t think it’s better or worse than any other platform, I just think that just the ability to go viral, get more followers, it just seems easier there.

Tracey: I think because TikTok is still running it the organic way, not the funny Instagram algorithm. With an organic algorithm, it’s always easy for you to grow, because people that genuinely like your content can actually see your content. LinkedIn is another really underrated platform that I also encourage a lot of entrepreneurs to get on. Because after Microsoft bought over LinkedIn, it’s now like a whole different machine on its own, and there’s a lot of potential there. Again, speaking directly to your target audience, LinkedIn might be a better place than Instagram, depending on who you’re talking to. So there’s a lot of different platforms that you can go on, and I don’t think having a goal to go viral should be the main thing for your business. If you’re an influencer, feel free to do that. But I think the goal for your business should always be growing and scaling sustainably.

Mikayla: So you mentioned LinkedIn, you talked about Instagram, a bunch of different platforms out there, and you talked about lead funnels and all those good things. What services would you say that you currently provide to your clients? 

Tracey: So we offer both “done for you” and “done with you” kinds of packages. So the “done for you” is really to the entrepreneurs who basically started the business, wore all the hats, and now they’re just overwhelmed. They’d rather focus on what they’re doing well in their business than try to figure out the next Instagram algorithm. So they come to us, we’ll come in, and it’s pretty much hands-off for them. We work very closely with them, actually, to make sure that our social media strategy also ties in with their overall business strategy. And then we have a “done with you”, where we come in, and we help them with a whole branding package, where we create the brand, we create a social media strategy for them, and also create Canva templates, where they can just plug and play, and social media banners, we help them optimize their websites, but that’s more like a one-time thing. And then they have that strategy, they can run with it, and if they have any questions, they can always come back, and our team will be more than happy to support.

Lawrence: So they can come in and basically ask for everything or ask for pieces, you can help them in any area that they’re looking for help. I know for us personally, it’s tough to run your own business and also worry about all the externals. I say external, but really, it’s internal and really it’s probably one of the more important parts of your business. People, I don’t think, realize this, and I know I didn’t realize this at first, but the marketing, the social media, like the lead funnels, this is the core of your business, and if you can’t give the focus that is required in order to be successful there, you have to get an agency like yours on the team to help you with that or get someone full time to help you with that, because it’s so important.

I think that more and more businesses are realizing this, and I know you started out in beauty but now you’re getting calls and reach outs from every industry, because they’re starting to understand as well. So we deal with lenders and brokers, but Tracey could be a great option for you guys. You should totally think about reaching out and seeing what she has to offer and how she can help you. How do people get in touch with you?

Tracey: Our website is BOWOCreative.com. We offer a free audit. So it doesn’t matter if you’re in the beauty industry or not, if you just want to hop on a quick call so you can see where you’re at in terms of your social media presence and your online presence, we’d be more than happy to offer that. I’m a big believer in focusing on your lane, so I try not to branch out to too many things, but I do have other people in my network that also do similar things in different industries. So even if we’re not a good fit, I can always refer you to someone else who can help you better, as well.

Lawrence: If people want to get to know you a little bit better, you do have your own podcast, right?

Tracey: I do.

Lawrence: Tell us a little bit about your podcast.

Tracey: My podcast is called Her Inner Badass, and we talk about pretty much everything that the mainstream media is not talking about when it comes to growing a business and growing your brand as a woman in all different kinds of industries. You can find me on Instagram as @ TraceyNguyen.co. The podcast is picking up in September, and you can find the podcast on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and also Google Podcasts. So we’re there. Just type in, Her Inner Badass, and you’ll be able to find me.

Lawrence: That’s amazing. Tracey, we really appreciate you stopping by.

Tracey: Thank you so much for having me. This is such an honor.