59: How to create a long term marketing strategy & system around your customer journey for consistent sales featuring Kay Hillman (The Systems & Workflow Magic Podcast)

Are you currently doing all the things in your business? Maybe you enjoy the hustle and bustle of wearing all the hats, but sometimes things get a little messy when your workflow is interrupted. In this episode, Kay Hillman is going to be sharing how to create a long term and sustainable marketing strategy around your customer journey for consistent sales and just how you can start creating realistic systems in 2023. If you are ready to keep your marketing funnel running on autopilot while still serving your current clients, this episode is for you!

The Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast is brought to you by Dolly DeLong Education. This podcast is for creative business owners who want to learn tangible steps to automate their business through workflows, systems, tools, and strategies to go from scattered to streamlined with purpose because even muggles can become automated wizards.

Meet Kay Hillman

Kay Hillman is a mom of 2, a wife, and 2-time CEO. She is the founder of a photography studio (Kay Hillman Photography and a Christian marketing and sales coach.  Kay is passionate about teaching service providers and coaches how to create, market, and sell profitable offers to support the lifestyle you want to live. Kay focuses on creating a sustainable business model and selling with integrity. Kay believes that stepping into your calling by SERVING others and providing a deeper transformation through SELLING is the best way to grow and scale a business and is on a mission to help women truly build businesses of impact.

When she isn’t running two companies you can find Kay sitting on the floor eating cereal with her sons and dog or dragging her husband, Tae, along on a Target run.

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Review the Show Notes

Introducing Kay Hillman (1:23)

Breaking down sustainable marketing (4:09)

Staying future-focused while serving current clients (7:37)

Breaking down the client journey (12:30)

Knowing your ideal client (18:32)

The crock pot analogy (25:19)

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REVIEW THE TRANSCRIPT:

Dolly Delong
Hello, and welcome back to the Systems and Workflow Magic Podcast. I am your Systems and Workflow, BFF Dolly. And first off, I just want to say I hope the first week of 2023 has been excellent for everyone listening. And if you are brand new here, welcome. I’m really pumped to have you here. And if you are a regular listener, I am thrilled you’re here as well. Thank you so much for coming back. Now, as a reminder, I am featuring contributors who will be part of the systems and workflow magic bundle, the 2.0 funnel bundle, as I like to call it. This comes out really soon as in the first week of February of 2023, so we are a little under one month away from this bundle, and today’s guest is going to knock you off your feet. Today we have Miss Kay Hillman, who will be speaking on the topic of how to create a system for a long-term marketing strategy around your customer journey for consistent sales and I know you will definitely want to give this episode a listen. Especially as you begin 2023, you may want to apply some of these concepts to your own creative business! So without further ado, welcome Miss Kay! Do you mind introducing yourself and just letting everyone know who you are, who you serve, and what you do within your business?

Kay Hillman
Yes, hey, boo. Hey, I’m so excited to be here. My name is Kay Hillman. Like you just said, Of course, I currently have a baby sitting on my lap. So if you guys hear like suckling and all the things, it’s okay, it’s just a baby. But I am a mom of two. And I am a marketing and sales strategist. I work with service providers and coaches and I really help people create intentional marketing plans and marketing strategies and profitable businesses that are in alignment with their lifestyles. So like I said, I have two kids. So I’m really intentional on helping you build a business that you can do in part-time hours or working in the margins, like a lot of us are working nights and naps, you know, maybe you have a nine to five, I’m really intentional about helping you create like a strategy for your business and for your marketing so that you can consistently make sales and consistently make an impact and you know, part-time hours or as you are building something in the margins.

Dolly Delong
I love that. And thank you so much again for agreeing to be on the podcast, Kay. And I was thinking about this, I don’t know where we met, I’m guessing it’s through. I’m guessing Creative At Heart.

Kay Hillman
Yes, it was Creative At Heart.

Dolly Delong
Because I remember, I purchased the virtual ticket and I watched your talk. And I was like I’m becoming friends with her on social media. So that is the power of social media and connection right there. And I’m really glad we got connected. And I’m so excited for everyone to get to know you. And just like a personal plug for Kay. Like something that I really love about her is that she has a heart for God. And I know that’s not everybody’s journey, but for me, that’s really important and I just like connecting with other women of faith. So Kay, thank you for being here and thank you for being so encouraging to me.

Kay Hillman
Yes. I love it. I’m so honored to be here. Thank you.

Dolly Delong
Oh, definitely. So like we mentioned earlier, Kay is going to be sharing just how to create a long-term and sustainable marketing strategy around your customer journey for consistent sales and just how we can start creating systems for ourselves realistically in 2023. Because I love how you mentioned this, how you phrase this, like, we might be working in the margins, we might have a name five, and then we might be doing a side hustle, or we might be moms like we are and we’re juggling being a wife being a mom having a business and so this one is for all the moms who are juggling all the things and want to create sustainable marketing. So, Kay, do you mind breaking this down for us?

Kay Hillman
Yes, yes. So like I said, I love talking about this kind of stuff because the truth of the matter is, is that a lot of times, people like we know what we want our year to look like, you know, at the beginning of the year, we set these goals, we set these resolutions, we know what our year looks like, we know how to break it down into quarters, and you know how to break it down into 30 Day goals and stuff, we know how to do those things. But something that I see a lot of people neglect is thinking about, well, what about three years from now or five years from now? Or 10 years from now? What do you want your business to look like? And do you have strategies and systems in place now that are going to support that? I’ll be honest, having kids showed me just how much I didn’t have in place, and just how unsustainable the things that I was doing previously in my business were. So now on the other side of things, I’m intentional, especially for like women that are pregnant, or women that are juggling the nine to five life and their business, I’m intentional about trying to show you, hey, let’s think about the future because you’re not going to always want to, you know, create content every single day, or you’re not going to have the capacity, it may not even be that you don’t want to because like I love creating content. So that’s something that I really enjoy doing but sometimes I’m in a season where that’s not sustainable for me. So how do we create a strategy that we can still show up consistently, but long term because something that I see happens a lot is that you know, at the beginning, when things are, you know, maybe you have a little bit more capacity or a little bit more time, you’re able to do “all the things” right, like, we all say like, oh, yeah, I do all the things, but there’s gonna get a point where maybe you start to see a little success. And I’ve talked about this, on social media, I’ve talked about how sometimes we start to see success, we start to get traction, we, you know, maybe we book out all our spots, or we fill up all our coaching or whatever and then we find ourselves in a position where we kind of get comfortable, and we stop showing up as much, and at that point, we lose momentum. The reason why is that there’s no real strategy, right? You just posted or you just market it in your business, because you were trying to hit a launch goal or hit a sales goal, but not thinking about what the long-term strategy, like after these contracts are up? Where are my clients coming from, this happens to a lot of people where you have clients today, and then the contract’s end, and you’re like, oh, my gosh, I need to market my business, like, it’s too late, you know, like, it’s, for lack of better words, it’s too late because now you’re going to be marketing, you’re going to be selling from a place of desperation. So this is why I rely heavily on the customer journey, being intentional about, okay, you need to always be thinking about the fact that you need to get more eyes on your content, you need to be nurturing and engaging people, and then you need to be selling to people taking people through that customer journey and so I just find that this is such an important topic to dig into.

Dolly Delong
Go through the points and I’m curious about how you are serving your current clients and then you’re also future-focused towards, okay, I also need to plant some seeds and get those future clients while I’m serving my current clients like that is, I feel like that’s the struggle for so many creative business owners.

Kay Hillman
Completely. Yes, and one thing I tell people all the time is you’re your first client, you’re your first client, you have to put yourself and your business and the needs of your business first like that’s going to be super important, because you’ll wake up one day, and yes, you would have fully served and support your clients, but then they’re gone, you know, or they move on to something else where you know, if you’re good at what you do they’re going to graduate, you know, they’re going to move on from meeting your, your coaching. As a service provider, you’re usually able to kind of retain them a little bit better, but you never know, like, life happens for people, things happen in people’s businesses, so what you don’t want to do is, again, wake up one day, and you’re like, wow, these contracts have ended, what am I going to do. So this is why I’m, I teach to focus on the customer journey, and market to that at all times and so when you take yourself on as your first client, it helps you just shift your thinking from, okay, I have to do all the stuff for all these other people and okay, I have to do stuff for my clients, of course, but I also have to think about the health of my business and think about the future of my business and the future of your business, it’s not going to be a business with no clients. And so one thing that I like to do is once a week, at minimum, once a week, I have a marketing day and basically, it’s the day of the week that I use to do anything related to marketing or selling for my business, whether that’s creating content, or you know, writing emails, following up like doing things like that I’m intentional about having one day a week that belongs just to the company. So I believe Cat, which if anybody knows Creative At Heart, Cat posted something about how she breaks down her days and I call mine the three C’s. I say, who needs my focus today, the company, my content, or my clients? That’s how I’m able to kind of make sure that there’s time set aside intentionally for my business because if the company needs my attention, usually that’s going to have to do with marketing or selling or creating content, something like that. So just being really into Need to Know About the day like dividing your time, and I know it can be hard, especially when we have client work. It can be hard to like, make the time for it, but you just literally have to do it. Because if not, you will get to that point as we all have been there, but nobody wants to keep experiencing it, you know, especially not in 2023. We don’t have time to experience periods where we’re having a client drought like that’s a really scary time, so that’s why this customer attorney type of marketing is going to be important.

Dolly Delong
If you are listening to this episode live, I have some time-sensitive news to share with you today. After listening to this week’s episode, I want you to head on over to the show notes and get on the waitlist for the systems and workflow magic bundle 2.0 funnel edition today. Yes, you heard me the popular bundle is back but in 2.0 form. So if you are ready to sprinkle in some systems and workflow magic of funnel building into your business in 2023 Get ready my friend coming February 6 through February 10 of 2023, you are going to have access to over 30 experts who are going to be contributing different funnel related resources to help you grow your top of the funnel, middle of the funnel, the bottom of the funnel, and beyond the funnel strategies for 2023. This bundle includes resources from experts such as Ellen Yin of Cubicle to CEO Ashlyn Carter, Linda Sidhu, Krista Miller, and Kate Doster, just to name a few, and so many more amazing experts and industry leaders. You don’t want to miss out on the systems and workflow magic bundle 2.0 funnel edition. So head on over to systems and workflow magic.com to get on the waitlist or head on over to the show notes. Either way is 2023 the year you learn more about funnels and how to apply them to your own business? I certainly hope so and as always stay streamlined and strategic with your workflows you amazing muggle! I’ll see you at the funnel bundle. I was going to ask you a question about the customer journey. Can we peel it back even more for the listener? Who is like, okay, customer client journey? I’ve heard that phrase before but aren’t there different phases? Or are there different levels? Like do you mind breaking it down even more?

Kay Hillman
Yes, yes, yes. Okay, I love talking about the customer journey. So there are different phases and I like looking at the customer journey in terms of a funnel, okay, I look at a funnel, there is the top, there’s the middle, and there’s the bottom. So the top of the funnel, where most of your audience and most of your attention, I guess will happen is called the awareness stage, and this is when a new person becomes aware of your brand, right? When they first find out about you when they first you know, maybe they find you on Instagram or like you, and me, we connected at an event, right? So how do people become aware of your brand? That is step one and when you’re creating content for this area, you’re going to be thinking about, you know, maybe educational content. This is where like reels right reels are really big for brand awareness, that top-of-funnel type of marketing. From there, you’re going to move your ideal client into the engagement stage, so this is what people like to call nurturing, right, where you’re nurturing your audience, having those conversations creating community. This is where stories play a really big role or we’re like just chatting in the DMS, that’s where that stuff is gonna happen. Engagement also happens like with your email list, because I find that I create a lot of intimacy via email, and this is a common thing for people, I think people don’t realize just how much intimacy you can create via email, because it’s a very special place like, people aren’t going to give you their email with ease anymore. We all know, you know, the traps of giving up your email, so that’s precious real estate and so it’s important to be engaging with your emails and to create a culture, I guess, in your email where people are responding. So for me, a really good metric of the value of my emails is people responding and I will engage with them. Like I love having email conversations with people. It’s so crazy, because like, I can be talking to somebody on Instagram, and then like, we’ll have a full-blown email thread back and forth. It’s like, wow, like, you would think in 2023. Like, this wouldn’t be a thing, but it’s amazing. So that is the engagement phase. Yeah, it’s cool. Then you move into the middle of the funnel and the middle of the funnel is the consideration stage and so in the consideration stage, what is happening is that people are aware of you, people have been engaging with your content, and now they’re starting to think you know what, maybe I have this problem, or maybe I’m ready for some support with this. So now they’re considering if they need help, if they need your services, if they need your offer, right, they’re considering that, but they’re also measuring you against other people that may be in that space. So they’re just weighing out their options, figuring out who would be the best fit for them to hire or a program to join, or whatever. So this is like, I like to call it like the thinking stage where they’re thinking and considering whether or not they want to work with you. The last stage is the decision-making stage, and this is the bottom of the funnel. This is when people purchase so a lot of times in this stage, it’s going to be important for you to like show between the decision-making stage and the consideration stage, you want to kind of create like case studies and reviews, things like that, so that people can see what it is that you have to offer and how they can fit into that, but that’s the last stage is then making a decision and doing the conversion. So making a purchase.

Dolly Delong
I love that. So are you saying that creative business owners should be weaving this into their marketing strategy? Okay.

Kay Hillman
Yes, exactly, exactly. So that’s what you want to do is you want to weave the customer journey through, you want to use this as like the, I don’t want to say baseline, but you want to use this as a part of your marketing strategy to help you move people through the journey because you’re going to create different types of content, depending on where people are, so there are two things that you kind of need to know are two things that you need to do to create a long-term business strategy. So the first thing is, you need to intimately know who your ideal client is. And when I say intimately know, I don’t mean like, you know, everybody talks about like, how old are they? Where do they live? Well, no, no, no, no, you need to know way more about them. You need to understand what stage in life is this person at and or what stage is their business in right? So for me, my ideal client, I call them an advanced beginner or intermediate in their business. So they’re not brand spanking new. But they’re not seven-figure business owners, right? Like, you want to be specific about what season are they in, I have created a quiz that I just use internally, where I tell people like, hey, fill out this quiz, so I can see where they are in business and I’m able to tell based on their answers, okay, this person is, you know, trying to hit this specific milestone. So you want to know, where your ideal client is, what milestones they want to achieve, what accomplishments they want to achieve, what things they struggle with, you know, what things are mental obstacles. A lot of sleep on mental obstacles. But like, a lot of times people’s problems, people’s biggest issues are happening in their mind and if you understand your ideal client, and you know, what causes them pain and what causes them problems, you can speak to that, like, I’m sure for you, a lot of your ideal clients, like they’re struggling to put together systems. This is like a shameless plug for her but like, when you sent me all the stuff for the podcast, and for this Systems Workflow Bundle, I was looking at it like, oh, my gosh, I have never thought to like to create a workflow for the podcast, this is the smartest thing ever and maybe I wouldn’t stress about going back and forth with people if I had a system set up, right? For me, certain things in my business are stressful and when I saw that, I was like, this is genius, you know? So it is like you are a genius.

Dolly Delong
So are you!

Kay Hillman
Thank you. But yeah, so like really understanding those mental obstacles and those different challenges that people are having and creating an ideal client profile for them so that you can spot them in a crowd. Like I always say, if I walked into a room, if somebody talked and answered a couple of questions, I would know what my ideal client is, like, that’s how well you should know your ideal client that if you were blindfolded and walked into a room, and people were talking, you’d be able to say like, that’s my person, you know, like, that’s how well you should know them. So that’s the first thing you need to know and you need to be confident in your ideal client and have the ideal client profile. But the second thing that you need to do is to map out what the customer journey looks like for you and what the journey that she’s going on with you specifically. So one thing that I usually recommend is for you to do it for a client that you know, so if you have a client, go and interview them, like just say, like, Hey, can I just get a few minutes of your time I really enjoyed working with you and I want to just ask you a few questions so that I can better understand how to serve people like you and they’re gonna say yes. Especially if it’s somebody that like loves you, you know, of course, they’re gonna say yes, so you’ll interview them, and after you interview them, you can add to it, but really, what you want to know is how do they find you? Right? Like, how do they find out about you? Where did they find out about you? Right? So in our example, we found out about each other from any event and that may be something really good to know because a lot of times we are doing these different things to market our businesses and it’s like, you may not need to do that right? Maybe like I have a client who the way that she markets her business by attending events, she doesn’t do social media. And it’s like, that’s like, how liberating is it to know that you don’t have to do social media to reach your ideal client. Now, she still uses it as a portfolio space, but she’s not using it as like, oh, I need to grow my followers to build this business. So really asking and figuring out how are people finding out about you, where are they finding you, and why are they seeking you out, right? Like, why does somebody decide to follow you? Why does somebody decide to engage and consume your content? We talked about this earlier, and you enjoy the fact that I talk about my faith. Well, that’s something that happens a lot. I know, for me, the reason why I follow certain people and continue to engage with their content is that they talk about their faith, and that connects with me, and you want to know not to exploit that, right? Like we’re not exploiting it. It’s just that it’s nice to know that people are connecting with a core value of yours and so you want to understand, what the journey that they’re going on, why are people following you, what they want from you, what their problems, and where their issue is, and you want to write how that looks. Especially with that client that you interview, or the person that you decide to interview, do you want to go through all the phases? How did they find you? What made them, you know, feel connected to you? What made them choose to work with you over somebody else, right, that’s that consideration phase, what made them choose to work with you over someone else? Then you can ask other questions outside of that. But those are like the three main ones that you want to ask that you can kind of map out what the journey looks like. So now when you’re creating content, you can think to yourself like, Okay, I do need to create content that is centered around, or that includes my faith because that’s what gets my ideal client to connect with me. And so when you’re creating content from that space, it becomes so much easier for you to do it and you never really run out of ideas like you won’t run out of ideas, while you’re thinking about it in terms of your actual customer journey. The other thing that I want to say about this is that a lot of times people teach to do things based on content pillars like to create their marketing from content pillars, and I’m not saying that’s a bad thing but one thing I will say is that content pillars don’t move people through the customer journey. All content pillars do is find people who are interested in similar things as you, but it may not compel someone to buy, so I’m not anti-content pillars, but I am anti-using them by themselves, right? It’s not an effective long-term marketing strategy. Instead, what I would recommend is combining your content pillars with the customer journey, and the marketing from that standpoint. So I created a matrix, and it’s going to be something that I’m going to include inside the system bundle, which I’m super excited to talk about. But I created a matrix that combined your content pillars right from your ideal client to the customer journey. So it combines the content pillars with your customer journey so that you can wake up like, I have clients that say like, oh, yeah, I literally woke up and I just picked two things and I just started talking about it. Because it’s like, you’re able to look at this matrix. I say, All right, I right now I’m in a season where I’m focusing on brand awareness, I’m focusing on getting new eyes, new people to my content. So if that’s the case, then I need to focus on brand awareness and pick a content pillar that is going to expose people to my brand and just keep it simple. Like you’re just going awareness, engagement, consideration, purchase, right? You’re taking people through the customer journey. And that’s how you create a system where you are actually selling and creating a sustainable plan long term, because a lot of times, we just show up, and we try to sell and it’s like, you can’t do that like at a certain point, you’re going to fatigue your current audience. At a certain point, people aren’t going to feel as moved by your content, not because your content sucks, right? It’s not that your content is bad, it’s just literally, that they have moved on to something else or you are not connecting with them on the same level because they can feel the desperate energy that you’re putting out there because you need a client. So by work focusing on this, you can create a strategy that long-term, you never like the weld runs dry, because you’re always adding new people and you’re always moving people through the journey, and then once you get to the purchasing stage, what do you do? You start all over again, and you go back to awareness, back to engagement, back to consideration, and sell again, like it’s just a rinse-and-repeat cycle, which I love because it makes everything super easy.

Dolly Delong
I love it! While you were talking I just wrote, “This is gold”. Like literally as I was taking notes, this is gold. All of these points you’re sharing with my audience. I hope you guys are going to take notes and listen to this episode because Kay’s bringing a lot of magic to this episode, one thing I wanted like I am excited to learn more about the matrix because I’ve never thought about that before. Like I’ve never thought of using that system before so I’m so excited for you to share more about that with my audience. Also, I’m like all over the place right now, but I was also thinking through when I was introduced to you like speaking about like, where people are connected when I was introduced to you and your brand and your business at Creative At Heart, now, I could be wrong about this. Were you the one who did the crockpot analogy?

Kay Hillman

Yes, that’s me!

Dolly Delong

Do you mind because I’m gonna butcher it, because obviously, I’m already butchering it right now, if you were like a crockpot, because I feel like this, like weaves in perfectly with a very strategic and sustainable marketing strategy? Can you give me your crockpot analogy? Maybe it could encourage some creative business owners who are listening right now.

Kay Hillman
Yes, yes. So it does fit very perfectly with this. It’s so funny, anytime somebody talks to me about Creative At Heart, they always talk about the crock pot moment.

Dolly Delong
I want to think, is it, Kay? I think it’s Kay. I’m so glad it was, you know, pipe brain for me right now, like “Is it a real thing?” So I’m glad it was you!

Kay Hillman
Yes. So the crock pot situation. So basically, the crock pot thing. It’s so funny. But basically, the idea is that when we are building businesses, a lot of times we want that overnight success, you know? We see everybody, well not everybody, but we see people on social media and it’s like, they wake up to a $10,000 launch or like, right now the craze is $100,000 launches. I’m like, Lord have mercy. Why are we doing this? Not that it’s a bad thing, right? Like, God bless you. Like, I’m so glad for you. But it’s like, whoa, you know, it’s becoming a thing where people are feeling less than because they’re not having these types of big launches, and a lot of times what people miss, right? The part that’s not shown is how long it took to get to that point, right? It doesn’t happen overnight, even though that’s when we see it and it’s the same thing with our marketing, or just in building our business in general. It takes some time. But I think a lot of times, we try to have microwave businesses, right? We try to, you know, wake up and press a button, and boom, we have this launch, you know, wake up, we post this one post and everybody buys our offer. And it’s like, that’s not how it works. Businesses work like a crock-pot, right? We want to have a crock pot type of business. Furthermore, let’s just talk about this microwave thing, microwave meals are not good, right? Like microwave, meals are disgusting, you know? I mean there are good ones but…

Dolly Delong
The food explodes everywhere… Yes.

Kay Hillman
See, it’s a hot mess Express. Like, let’s just be real, like nobody ever. I can’t think of a single microwave food meal or whatever that was like, Oh my gosh, this is the bomb, everyone needs to eat this. Like I’ve never had that thought. But what I have thought is man, that pot roast in the crock pot. Amazing. Like, everyone needs this and that’s what you want, but in a crock pot, it takes time, right? Crockpot meals take hours, and they take hours to create but once it’s done, it’s amazing! Once it’s reached its point of being finished and it’s time to eat that thing, it’s amazing! That’s the same approach that we want to have to our business. We want to play that long game, right? Because yeah, you can have quick success, but it’s not sustainable, right? It’s not sustainable. Imagine trying to heat a turkey in the microwave, like, Girl, that’s not going to work out for you, right? But we want these big, we want these big wins and we want these big goals in a short amount of time, and it just doesn’t work out the way you intend. Then it leads you to feel discouraged and defeated but you shouldn’t be. If you’re in business for I would even say less than three years, I would not make $100,000 the goal, right? That should not be the goal. The goal should be to stay in the game, to stay consistent, to keep showing up, to meet new people to make friends, right? Because it can be lonely in this online space. So make friends, find your community, find your people take your time, and build the thing, right? Build the thing, right instead of trying to jump and I mean I know, I know that sometimes, it seems like oh man, like I need to, you know, hit this 10k goal. I want this $100,000 a year, whatever. I know that that seems fun and all but it’s not fun when you’re burnt out and tired. It’s not fun when you have no time for your family or for the things that you love and enjoy. Because you’re trying to build this vision of quick success. It’s just unnecessary. We want to be crockpots we want to take our time we want to build the thing right so that when the time comes for us to reap the fruits of our labor, we can enjoy it. I mean at the end of a crock pot cook and I just think about it at the end, you know I might have a crock pot dinner tomorrow because it’s too late to make it today. But I might make a meal because you know, it’s going to be good like it’s going to be so much better and it just lasts longer. Like when you create a business where you’re thinking about that long-term game, it’s just so much better and you stay in longer. The other thing that people don’t talk about is that there are a lot of people that have successful like they blow up out of nowhere. Mind you, that’s not a common thing, but for some of the ones that do, they don’t stay long. They don’t stay in the industry long, so if you want to have that staying power, you have to shift your thoughts from “I need this immediate win” to “What are the incremental things were the small steps and changes that I can make today, make tomorrow and next year and five years from now”, possible?

Dolly Delong
All right. I love it. Mic drop. That was incredible. Okay, so wow, wow, okay, that was amazing. Thank you so much for, just rehashing that crockpot analogy, and just like a reminder of the importance of creating a sustainable marketing plan that not only lasts for the month but could be sustainable for the months and years to come for your creative business. I love that. Thank you so much, again for rehashing that out and it made me just like, fire up inside. Also, my husband is making a crock pot meal tomorrow night and it’s making me excited for so blessed.

Kay Hillman

You’re so blessed.

Dolly Delong

Carnitas, which I love meat, and so I’m excited about it. I’m sure somebody’s listening. They’re like, Oh, that’s gross, but I just love carnitas so much! Hey, friend, if you are listening to the Systems and workflow magic podcast, I just want to say thank you for allowing me to bring some Systems and workflow magic into your earbuds every single week. It seriously means so much to me that you are tuning in. As a thank you to all of my listeners, I have a special gift for anyone who wants to take their system and workflow strategies around funnel training to the next level. Are you ready, I have created a free private pop-up podcast dedicated to the systems and strategies of funnels. It’s called the foundational funnel training private podcast, and if you try to look it up in your favorite podcast app, you won’t find it because it’s private training! So here is what is inside this free, fantastic foundational funnel training private podcast, you’ll get access to four episodes, all dedicated to teaching you the different digital funnel parts and strategies which you can, in turn, apply to your own creative business in 2023, and hopefully beyond. So day one is dedicated to the top-of-funnel strategies. Day two is dedicated to some middle-of-funnel strategies. Day three is dedicated to you guessed it, the bottom-of-funnel strategies. Finally, day four is dedicated to more of a continuation of funnel strategies, meaning what should you do with your new leads that have come through your funnel so that they are not scattered but streamlined and want to continue to get to know you! The best part, I have invited over 20 different industry leaders who are experts in these different parts of the digital funnel so it’s not just me who is going to be educating you, you are going to be learning from some amazing female business owners who are not only encouraging, but they are so knowledgeable when it comes to these specific strategies at the top, middle bottom, or a continuation of the digital funnel. Again, this is all for free. And you’re probably wondering, well, what’s the catch, Dolly? Well, because one, I just want to give you a behind-the-scenes look at the new systems and workflow magic bundle 2.0 funnel edition coming later in February of 2023 and I wanted to give you some strategies to use straight out of the gate when you begin planning and strategizing for your business in 2023. So I want to give you some free education. The fun begins on January 31 and again, as a reminder, each episode drops until February 3 2023. But don’t worry, I’ll have replays up until February 11 2023, then it does go away forever. Not kidding, it does go away after that. So if you are wanting access to this private podcast you then make your way to the show notes and snag the first intro episode that way you can get the episodes all queued up for January 31. When they drop in, they will stream to your favorite podcast app. Again, go to Waitlist: The Foundational Funnel Training Private Popup Podcast, or just simply head on over to the show notes and get on the foundational funnel training private podcast waitlist, so that you will get instant streaming to the four days of digital funnel training when they dropped. Again, if you sign up today, meaning before January 31, you will get instant access to that first intro episode. So let me ask you, what are you waiting for? Are you ready for some fantastic foundational funnel education? I truly hope so. I look forward to seeing you in the private podcast training, until then stay streamlined and automated you magical muggle! Now that you’ve shared a lot of information about content marketing, and sustainable strategies for content marketing, do you mind sharing what you’re going to be contributing to the systems and workflow magic bundle, I’m so excited about your contribution.

Kay Hillman
I’m so excited too, so I know that it’s a month away, but y’all, I still don’t even have a name for this thing. But I’m going to figure it out, I’m going to figure it out. But essentially, it’s going to be the matrix. It’s going to be a workshop where you’ll learn how to map out your customer journey, and then how to line it or align it with your content pillars so that you can easily create a strategy that you can rinse and repeat. My whole mission behind the business is to help you create something and create systems, that’s why I love what you do, like to help you create systems that you can rinse and repeat. And something that, you know, one thing that I’m passionate about is making your business “you optional.” It’s like you don’t have to be there. If you don’t want to, you know, you can hire somebody in the past. I mean, obviously, like, we’re all innovators, and you know, we are like the leaders, but taking you out of that day-to-day, I have to do every little piece too, okay, here’s the system, we can hire someone to help us you know, or we can spend a couple of hours a month and execute this strategy. So the way the workshop will go is, that I will go into detail on how to map out your customer journey, and how to create your client profile so that you know what specific content pillars you should create for your business. Contrary to popular belief, the “how to”, “education” and  “inspiration” content pillars, it’s just not enough, it’s not enough to connect and deliver the value that you need to deliver to your audience for them to trust you enough to buy from you. So we’ll take your customer journey and your client profiles and we will map it out so that you can see what your content pillars should truly be. Then you’ll have the matrix so that you can just like I said, wake up and look at the matrix, you can look at your square and be like, Okay, I’m gonna talk about this specifically and so there will be different prompts. I’m really big on prompts. I love giving prompts for things. So there’ll be different types of prompts to just kind of help you figure this out and once you sit down and do it, you won’t have to do it again. Now, it may change because one thing I’m conscious of is that your ideal client changes every single day, right? They’re driving changes every single day. We all just went through a traumatic experience in 2020 and your ideal client shifted from that. My ideal client shifted a few years ago when I started having kids because I realized that my ideal client, that most of them are moms, not everybody is a mom, but a lot of them are moms, so it’s like you have to do more than just, oh, I’m going to do tips, or I’m going to do inspiration, I’m going to do educate, right, it has to be a little bit more than that and that’s what this workshop will really go over and take you through, but then also give you like this system so that when you are sitting down to create your content calendar, you can say okay, this week, I’m going to focus on awareness. Next week, I’m going to focus on nurturing and engagement. In the third week, I’m going to focus on the consideration, and in the fourth week, I’m going to focus on selling, right? Now, this is going to be great for the person that struggles with feeling like they have to sell all the time and not wanting to be sales, right, because while I am I’m team selling every post. I do recognize that it doesn’t always feel good to everyone to do that so by having this system, you’ll be able to you know, break it up and focus like really hard on one week is when you focus on selling but throughout the month, you’re gearing people up you’re preparing them you’re warming them up which who I can go on a whole tangent about warming up your audience but you’re warming them up so that when you do sell they are interested and invested, but it keeps you on a cycle so that you’re never waking up one day and you’re like, oh, no, I don’t have clients. It’s like, No, you’re always creating a pipeline. You’re always moving people through the funnel so that you can have clients consistently.

Dolly Delong
I love it. I am so excited about accessing this contribution as well. I’ll be consuming it along with everyone else. Kay, as we wrap up, can you share with people how they can connect with you, find you, work with you, and get to know you even more?

Kay Hillman
Yes, yes. So you can hang out with me. I hang out the most on Instagram. You can find me at becoming CEO. That is the brand page or you can come to follow me on my page at Mrs. Kay Hillman. You can also come to hang out with me on the podcast. I have a podcast called Becoming CEO. It’s a vibe over there. I have a lot of shower thoughts. So yeah, like that’s always fun. I don’t record in the shower although one day I did say I would try to record just to see if it would be like “acoustic” and give it a vibe. But who knows? I’m just so dramatic. But hang out with me on the podcast. But really, Instagram is going to be like the main place to just kind of see everything that I’m doing. I like to have a lot of conversations over there. Feel free to send me voice notes. I love voice notes. So yeah, that’s how you hang out with me.

Dolly Delong
She has two beautiful sons who you will just fall in love with I have gotten to meet her youngest right now. And he’s so sweet. So thank you. Thank you again, Kay, for being a part of this episode. And again, I’m so excited you’re a contributor and for those of you who are listening, I will make sure to put all of the resources in the show notes so that you can connect with Kay today. I will talk to you all next week with another contributor for the systems and workflow match bundle funnel edition, until then, I hope you all continue to stay streamlined and optimized in all your workflows this week. Talk to you next week, bye! Thank you so much for listening to the systems and workflow magic podcast. You can find full show notes from today’s episode at systemsandworkflowmagic.com/podcast. If you love the podcast, I’d be so honored if you’d subscribe and leave a review on your favorite podcast player. Be sure to screenshot this episode, share it with your stories, and tag me  @DollyDeLongEducation on Instagram. Until next time, go make some strategic workflow magic!