447 Rachel Ngom: Food Stamps to High 6 Figures

What’s it like to be flat broke… in the red… on food stamps… and somehow turn it all around from there to launch and grow a profitable high six figure business?

MELINDA

I’m Melinda Wittstock and today on Wings of Inspired Business we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who went from food stamps … and overdrawn … to creating a high-six figure online business while traveling the world.

Rachel Ngom now helps others do the same with her signature courses and programs.

She’s is a lead-generation expert, helping purpose-driven female entrepreneurs drive more traffic, leads, and sales primarily through Pinterest, blogging, and strategic use of automation. She built her business while living in Kenya, Senegal, Morocco and then France. Rachel also hosts the

She’s Making an Impact Podcast.

And before I share this conversation with Rachel Ngom I have a special invitation for you…

If you already have a podcast and you want to make it profitable, Grab my 7 tips for profitable podcasting at wingspodcast.com/liftoff – that’s wingspodcast.com/liftoff.

Please make sure you take a moment, follow Wings of Inspired Business on facebook @wingspodcast, Twitter @MelindaWings and Instagram @melindawittstock2020. It’s such an honor to be featured by Entrepreneur Magazine as #8 of the top 20 podcasts in 2020 alongside some big names like NPRs Guy Raz of How I built this, Lewis Howes School of Greatness and Tim Ferriss. If you like what you’re hearing, please review us on iTunes so more women can find these amazing interviews and soar in business. And if you have Alexa, listen to Wings by simply saying, Alexa, play Wings of Inspired Business. And if you like what you’re hearing, please review us on iTunes so more women can find these amazing interviews and soar in business.

Now back to the inspiring Rachel Ngom.

Today we’re going to learn how Rachel increased her traffic by 34,000 per month for free – using Pinterest.

Pinterest is one of the biggest search engines out there and people pin ready to buy. Yet so many of us are missing out because we’re focused merely on Facebook and Instagram. One of her blog posts has been re-pinned 145,000 times!

Rachel is a lead generation specialist growing her online business into the high six figures while traveling the world – and how helps others do the same. Beyond Pinterest we also talk SEO Strategies, Content Repurposing (now that’s a topic close to my heart having grown several of my high-margin businesses around that concept!)  plus how to engage loyal fans … Rachel has a following of 100,000 women on her social media accounts.

So are you ready for Rachel Ngom? I am. Let’s fly!

Melinda Wittstock:         Rachel, welcome to Wings.

Rachel Ngom:                   Thanks for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m always intrigued by people who find themselves in a crisis, and lift themselves out of that and appropriately for wings like a phoenix. Because there you were, you’re flat broke, you’re like in the red, you’re on food stamps, and then somehow you turn that all around and you’ve grown a profitable high six figure business. And so, what was the spark that got you out of that dilemma?

Rachel Ngom:                   The spark was there was no other way out. So, I got my masters in social work and I couldn’t find a job even with that masters. And so, I was left with a new baby trying to figure out how to provide for our family without having any job opportunities in our area. And it was through that desperation that I poured everything into entrepreneurship.

Melinda Wittstock:         What was the first thing you did?

Rachel Ngom:                   The first thing that made the biggest difference for me was actually investing, ironically enough into a program to teach me how to do social media. And that’s one of the things people are always like, “I can’t afford it,” or making up some BS excuse. I couldn’t either. I sold everything in our house that I possibly could. I sold our dining room table, I sold all our bedroom furniture except for our bed. I would have sold my husband. Kind of kidding.

You just got to get resourceful and figure stuff out. And so, I invested, it was $450 for a six month program to learn how to use social media back in 2013, I believe it was. And that took us to six figures in that first business within a year and a half.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, that’s a good return on investment.

Rachel Ngom:                   Oh, heck yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         But you see, this is so important because we have to ask for help to be able to succeed, and yet it’s… I don’t know what it is. Women, in particular, really struggle to ask for help, and also struggle to invest. Why do you think that is? Is it something that… Why do you think… Well, sorry. Why do you think it is that women, in particular, struggle with those two things?

Rachel Ngom:                   I think they struggle to invest because they might have a fear of it not working out. Maybe they don’t believe in themselves or they don’t believe in their business, and they have a fear of, “Well, I might put money into this, but then that’s taking away from my family. And what if it doesn’t work?” So, I think that’s one of the big things. What was the other question? Sorry.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, asking for help.

Rachel Ngom:                   Oh, asking for help. I think women are just conditioned to do a lot on their own and figure out everything on their own. And I think if you want to succeed in business, you have to humble yourself and you have to know that you don’t know everything, and you have to go to people that are smarter than you.

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely true. So, social media, 2013. I think of how fast it’s grown, where now everybody thinks they’re an expert in social media, but I guess back in 2013… Right?

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Sorry, my phone was ringing. Gosh, sorry about that. So, back in 2013, and I’m trying to remember where we were at there, what were the biggest takeaways that you got from the course?

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah. I learned Facebook pages and Instagram. Facebook fan pages worked so well back then. I had 50,000 followers on my Facebook fan page, and it was so easy just to post something and get so many comments of people that wanted to work with me. Same thing with Instagram. So, at that time, it worked wonderfully. And starting Facebook ads too, so I was able to build my email list and that kind of thing with Facebook ads.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, it’s much harder now.

Rachel Ngom:                   It’s more expensive now. There’s a lot more competition.

Melinda Wittstock:         There’s a lot more competition, low barrier to entry, and then Facebook, God knows, changes its algorithm every week. Right, it’s really difficult to grow those kinds of communities. So, what do you advise people to do now? What are some of the hot hacks that work on Facebook, and also Instagram?

Rachel Ngom:                   I don’t focus… Well, on Facebook, we focus on Facebook ads. But one of the things that happened was when the logarithm changed, I was left scrambling trying to figure out what to do. So, I focused on Pinterest and my blog, and that made the biggest difference. And we were able to build our email list over 20,000 subscribers for free from Pinterest. So, that’s one of the things that I teach people is to really focus on your email list. Something that you own, you control.

You don’t own Facebook, you don’t own Instagram. Zuckerberg could shut down your account at any moment. You don’t control that. So, making sure you’re creating content. I love evergreen content that works for you. So, stuff I put on Pinterest in 2015 still drives traffic to my blog, still builds my email list.

Melinda Wittstock:         Really?

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s amazing. That’s one of them that I haven’t really used. And I think with social media, it can change so fast. You get used to doing these things, posting stuff on Facebook, doing all that kind of stuff. I get some good traction from ads, but to get the user engagement there, yeah, you can get it, but it’s expensive. I find the most frustrating thing, and I think you and I are both podcasters as well, is you grow this huge community on Facebook, but you don’t own them.

Rachel Ngom:                   Nope.

Melinda Wittstock:         And then, it gets more and more expensive to get content in front of the very people you build into a community.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yep. Yeah. That’s why I never recommend putting all your eggs in one basket. You have to diversify. We have our podcast, but we also have our Facebook group, we have our email list, and we’re doing text message marketing, and we have Pinterest, and our blog. We didn’t start with all those. We started with our blog, and Pinterest, and our email list. But making sure you’re not just focused on Facebook, you’re not just focused on Instagram.

Melinda Wittstock:         What are the advantages of Pinterest?

Rachel Ngom:                   It works for you over time. Like I said, we’re still getting traffic from stuff from 2015. My fitness blog that I haven’t touched in two plus years still brings in income, still drives traffic. It’s a search engine, it’s one of the most powerful things. So, if you can understand what keywords your ideal client would be searching for on the platform, you can dominate.

That’s one of my favorite things about that platform is that it’s a search engine. So, figure out what your ideal client is searching for, use those keywords, and you’ll be able to attract your ideal client to you. And it’s a community of buyers as opposed to Facebook. When you’re trying to do stuff on Facebook, people are just there to connect with friends and family, and that kind of thing. People on Pinterest are actually searching for something when they’re in that buying process, and so they could end up stumbling upon you and buying your stuff.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s really, really smart. So, where do you think Instagram is headed right now? It was the hot thing, it is the hot thing, it seems like the hot thing, but…

Rachel Ngom:                   I’m not a huge fan of it just because it’s so much work, and it’s kind of annoying. When I think about how much traction you get from Pinterest when you just create one piece of content and it can work for you years later. With Instagram, you have to constantly be posting, and stories, and all this stuff just to remain relevant, and then like 3% of your followers are actually going to see it.

So, I think if you’re doing something new on the platform, like IGTV or going live, that’ll work better. It’s always going to be better to do the newer thing that is released on the platform, but I don’t put a huge focus on it.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. When I think of it, I think, “Oh, my God, how exhausting.”

Rachel Ngom:                   It is.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s hard to keep up. You can spend… I see so many founders do this… spend hours, and hours, and hours on social media, but meanwhile, they’re not actually working on their business. They’re kind of in it just… Oh, gosh! I think of the amount of time. So, give me a sense of who your clients are. Are they people who come to you because it’s like, “Oh, God, make it stop. I don’t want to do it myself. I could learn it or I could just have it done for you.”

Rachel Ngom:                   We get both. We have higher level clients that want us to take over their Pinterest for them. So, we do Pinterest management on our team as well. So, we have those clients, but we also have people that are new and they want to do it themselves. So, we have a course that teaches people how to DIY their Pinterest, and how to profit from Pinterest.

Melinda Wittstock:         Got it.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah, we get a mixture.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. And so, what’s next for you? Do you see any new social media trends popping up? When you see something like, say, TikTok, or I don’t know, whatever the new thing is. There’s always going to be something new. Are you always looking to capitalize on that?

Rachel Ngom:                   I’m looking. TikTok to me just seems annoying. I get annoyed when new platforms come up, and I’m like, “Oh gosh, not another thing.” For me, I tend to listen a lot to Gary Vaynerchuk, and I see that he always somehow predicts the future of what’s happening and what trends are coming up. So for him, voice is one of the big things that he always talks about. We do have an Alexa Skill in our podcast. Things that I see him doing, like text message marketing, that’s another big thing. I’m not on TikTok now, and you’re not going to see me dancing on TikTok anytime in the future, but that could change. You never know.

Melinda Wittstock:         I agree with you and Gary V. about voice. I think it is the future. It’s just one of the things about podcasting that of all the different things, it’s so intimate. There is this no trust over time, but you have to be patient with it. I think there are a lot of people who want this instant return.

I help people launch their podcast among other things that I do, and we’ll have prospective clients come to us and say, “Okay, so I want to launch this podcast and I want it to be instantly profitable.” It’s like, “Okay, you know what? You can make your podcast profitable. We help people do that. There’s all kinds of different creative monetization strategies, but it takes time to invest in the best part of the platform, which is the know, like, trust. That comes over time. People getting to know you, getting to know your voice, all of that.” What’s your perspective on podcasting and where it’s going as a podcaster yourself?

Rachel Ngom:                   We’ve had our podcast for almost two years. We have like 130 episodes or 140, I don’t even know now. For me, it’s never been a thing that I’ve been trying to monetize. For me, it’s always been developing that know, like, and trust factor with my audience. We’ve never done paid ads or anything like that. We have used it to get people onto our email list, and so we have like [inaudible 00:17:39] talking about that.

I see it as a form of getting ideal clients who are obviously pursuing some kind of information into your ecosystem to pour into them and add value to them. And over time, that will pay off. Not necessarily result in a sale to you, but maybe that person will be inspired to pay it forward and share it with someone else, and that person becomes a client. You just never know what’s going to happen, you know?

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. That’s what I find. There’s an extraordinary amount of Dharma around it. It’s a great give-forth, because you’re creating so much value. I can’t even quantify the benefits that have come to me from this podcast, wings of Inspired Business. Not only did it inspire other products for women in business at different levels, and high end retreats, and all kinds of things, but it just opened so many doors to affiliate and other strategic partnerships.

And at this point now, I’m actually building a podcast network. So, it led to a bunch of things. And interestingly enough, the podcast network is much more around the audience engagement piece because we don’t know who’s listening to our podcast. Not really. Like we have a theory.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah. I literally have better stats on that, but that’s [crosstalk 00:19:05].

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, that’s what I’m doing, right?

Rachel Ngom:                   Cool.

Melinda Wittstock:         Because it’s so, so important to be able to know who’s listening and what they want. Not just from your content, but imagine if you had really deep audience intelligence into not only demographics and psychographics but their influence, their habits, what they like, what they don’t like, all these sorts of things. Because then, all of a sudden, it is monetizable.

And so, that’s one of the things we’re doing. We’re also gamifying it. Imagine being able to engage your tribe around your content and involve them in that, and involve them in personal growth challenges, or challenges that solve major societal problems, whatever it is. So, so much of like… I think podcasting is actually… I don’t know. It’s like it’s in its infancy. I always like when I have other podcasters on my podcast because we can geek out about podcast trends and voice tech and all this kind of stuff. But I think it’s in its infancy. It’s kind of like where blogging was, like in 2004 or something like that.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah, for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:         And so, when you say… I’m curious about this, your podcast, do you get clients as a result of your podcast?

Rachel Ngom:                   Yes, for sure. It’s just not one of the things that I lead with and say like, “I’m going to start this podcast to get new clients.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. Yeah. No, I totally get it. Neither do I, and yet it happens. Yeah, that’s super cool. So, when we talk about things like voice tech, you’re using things like Alexa, and you’re using… Do you do like Google Home and all that as well?

Rachel Ngom:                   I have an Alexa Skill, and it’s kind of ironic that I don’t use my Alexa. My son does when he finds it, and he loves talking to Siri. Especially when he was a little bit younger because he couldn’t read, and type, and stuff, so he’d be like, “Siri, play the Spiderman song.” It’s so funny. It’s not something that I personally use. I noticed myself using Siri more and more now on my phone. I think Siri just turned on, she heard me.

Melinda Wittstock:         I know. You have to be really careful because we turn on all these devices, and they do listen. They do listen.

Rachel Ngom:                   It’s so funny.

Melinda Wittstock:         But I think it’s such an interesting opportunity for podcasters though to be found. One of my things that I love to do is repurpose content.

Rachel Ngom:                   Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         So, if you think about… And you must be into this too, right?

Rachel Ngom:                   Oh, yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         So, you think of, “Okay this works for… Okay, I’ve got this podcast, I’ll put this on Pinterest, this on Instagram, this here, here, here, here.” And now you add this voice tech component. I think the world hasn’t quite woken up to the potential of that yet.

Rachel Ngom:                   I think it’s the future though. And so, you want to be a visionary in your business and think where are the trends going so you can be one of the first people there?

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. This is always the game of business; to be a leader, not a follower. Were you always entrepreneurial, Rachel? If you go back when you were a little kid, did you have that little entrepreneurial genome there, DNA?

Rachel Ngom:                   Kind of. I definitely did lemonade stands. I remember making and selling origami. I was in girl Scouts, and I remember we had a garage sale, and I was the top sales person there. I was able to sell some really big things and I got an award for it. It’s just not something I thought I was going to pursue. When I was in high school and college, I was thinking, “What am I going to do when I grow up?”

My dad actually owns his own company that his parents started, and I guess my brother always thought I’m just going to work for my dad’s company. That never ever crossed my mind, and I never even really learned entrepreneurship from my dad, which is kind of ironic, until recently where he’s like, “Rachel, you need to help us with webinars and stuff.” And I’m like, “Sure, I can help you with that.” I guess it was more out of desperation that I started entrepreneurship, but now looking back at just my tendencies when I was a kid, it totally makes sense.

Melinda Wittstock:         Mm-hmm (affirmative). It does, doesn’t it? It’s funny. I love the Steve jobs quote… And sorry, everybody who’s heard me say this like God knows how many times on this podcast. But you can connect the dots looking backwards. It’s hard to connect them looking forwards. And so, when you look back and you get as old as me, you can see like… This is my fifth business. So, I can look back and say, “Oh, yeah, I was doing that for that reason. It all makes sense now.” All the pieces of the puzzle start to fit, which leads you to think, “Well, look, it’s just a journey.”

And so many times I think we get caught in this self judgment about, “Oh, I haven’t done this yet, or I need to be more, I need to be… I’m not enough.” All that grind. And I see so many women do that. Because I sense you’re like this. At what point did you figure out that, “God, it’s a journey, enjoy the ride?”

Rachel Ngom:                   Let me think. Probably when we started this business and we were actually seeing some awesome results, and our clients were seeing results, and we were profitable. I think when you’re not profitable, like you’re just starting and you’re out of that desperation, you are focused on…

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, you’re in scarcity at that point, right?

Rachel Ngom:                   Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         Because it is literally desperation. In terms of your own story too, coming back from that. So, in a way, that fear and that scarcity can be a motivator, and it works for a time until it doesn’t.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah. Yeah. So, once we had that, we were comfortable and money was coming in, I guess it was not coasting for sure, but not as stressful. But I still continue to push myself and put bigger and bigger goals in front of me to challenge myself to see what we can do.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, that’s it. It’s getting out of our comfort zone. It’s actually being comfortable being outside of your comfort zone.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yes, totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s a little bit of a contradiction, but…

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah. Pursuing the things that make you uncomfortable and being like, “Well, this is a huge stretch. I have no idea how the heck we’re going to pull this off, but let’s go.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, like a couple of years ago I just decided, “Okay, that’s it. Enough. I’m going to play bigger.” And then, when I had these retreats… This year I had these high-end retreats for women with seven, eight, nine figure businesses. And, in our marketing copy and in our conversations, it’s like, “Hey, let’s all play bigger.” And for a split second, I’d see this look of dread in their eyes. I thought-

Rachel Ngom:                   “No, I’m comfortable. Don’t make me do it.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Right? Well, but also, there was this assumption that to play bigger, they had to do more. And I’m like, “No.” Because all these women are like, “I’m doing this, and I’m doing this, I’m doing this. Not, not. I’m doing, doing, doing, doing. I’m a human doing.” And there’s a certain point where you cannot grow if you’re still in all the doing. You have to let go to play bigger. And it sparked such an interesting conversation all year with women who it would spark in them that, “Oh God, am I not enough? I have to do more.”

Rachel Ngom:                   For sure. I think one of the biggest mindset shifts that I’ve made is not having to do more, but how I be more, and who do I need to be to actually make those things happen.

Melinda Wittstock:         Exactly. That’s it. It’s the being, and not the doing, and that’s been a big, big spark. It’s funny that you said 2013 was the year that all this stuff changed. It got bad before it could get good. That was my bad year too. I know so many people who seemed like 2013 was the crash year.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah, I don’t know [crosstalk 00:27:07].

Melinda Wittstock:         I was really curious about that. I don’t know why, but like it’s such a… I’m such a pattern recognition brain. I don’t know what it is about humanity. We get so stuck in this kind of like the life of should; we should be doing, should, should, should, should, should. And something has to happen to make us listen or knock us off our feet a little bit so we can refind it. Now, I know that faith is really important to you. Was that something that you’ve always had or was that something that came into your life as a result of the struggle?

Rachel Ngom:                   I was 19 when I became a Christian, and so I was in college. It was another turning point in my life. It was at that point… I played volleyball for 10 years, and I got a full ride to play at the University of Illinois, Big Ten. I played in China, played in Italy. I got injured, and it ended up being a pretty bad injury where I was medically released from the team. It was one of those things where I was like, “What the heck am I going to do with my life? I’m a volleyball player. That’s all I’ve really known.” That was what my identity was wrapped up in.

It was at that same time that I became a Christian, and God told me go to Africa. And I was like, “What? I don’t know anybody there.” I’m like, “Why Africa?” But things just all fell together where I was able to be medically released from the team. I met my professor, and she ended up somehow getting me an internship in Kenya.

I moved there for six months, completely life changing. Ended up going to Senegal, West Africa after that, where I met my husband, dragged him back to America with me. And now we’re starting a nonprofit in Senegal, which is pretty cool. But it all started when I was 19 of just trying to figure out what the heck I was going to do with my life. And God was like, “Africa, this is where you’re going.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, that’s interesting. So you listen to… you get divine inspiration?

Rachel Ngom:                   Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         Literally that. So, you get a [inaudible 00:29:07]. That happens to me when in my morning meditation where I’ll… It’s something like this. It’s kind of like, “You know that I know that I don’t know, and I can’t do this without you.” You being… it could be God, source, universe, whatever your modality, I guess, is of faith. And I get these amazing inspirations. And so, rather than having a to do list now, I have an intentions list, but those intentions are increasingly coming from inspiration. And it saves a lot of time.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah, for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:         Because I don’t want to spin my wheels on stuff that doesn’t matter.

Rachel Ngom:                   No, you have the answer and you just go.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. Exactly. And then, you get synchronicities in your life where the right people show up at the right time and that kind of thing.

Rachel Ngom:                   Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         Isn’t that amazing when that starts to happen? Like I’d heard of that happening to other people and I was like, “Wow, what’s their secret? How do they…” When I felt like I was scrolling on the other side of the looking glass, and then suddenly, something transforms in your life and you’re there, and you’re like, “Oh, yeah, I get it.”

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah. A lot of times I didn’t realize it when it was happening, but then looking back I’m like, “Oh, my goodness.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. And it was happening, because I think we are manifesting all the time, we’re just not necessarily conscious of it.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah, for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:         We can be manifesting bad stuff too, whatever we’re thinking.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yes, oh my gosh. I was listening to a Jordan Belfort training and he was like, “If you think about crap all the time, you’re going to become a crap magnet. So, stop thinking about crappy stuff.” And I was like, “Yup.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s true.

Rachel Ngom:                   Don’t be a crap magnet.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. When you think of people standing around the water cooler at an office bitching about things, it’s just going to bring more of that energy into their lives.

Rachel Ngom:                   Literally though. Because I feel like I’m in such an entrepreneurial bubble where I really put myself into so much positivity with personal development, the people I surround myself with. It’s when I step out of that and I’m in the waiting room at the doctor’s office or something like that, and I hear people talking, that I don’t realize how negative most people’s perceptions are of their everyday life. And I’m like, “Whoa. Just the thoughts that you have, it’s just mind blowing to me.”

Melinda Wittstock:         I think it’s interesting that you say the entrepreneurial bubble because I feel like I’m in that to. I’m surrounded increasingly with just really positive people, conscious people, all of that.

Rachel Ngom:                   It’s intentional though.

Melinda Wittstock:         So then I’m shocked. It is intentional because you want to be around people who lift your vibration or whatever language you want to put around that. But yes, it’s a good thing. But then I am shocked. I’m like, “What!” But people bathe in it, like the news, and just all of it.

Rachel Ngom:                   It’s crazy. Yesterday I was at physical therapy and they’re talking about how they need to meet a millionaire husband, and they need their sugar daddy. And I’m just like, “But you can create that yourself. You don’t need a sugar daddy.”

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, I know. Right. I know. And it really is about stepping into that power because once you realize that you have the mechanism to do it, then… It kind of helps you get out of fear as well because you start to trust yourself more. So, wow, this is a real meeting of minds. I love when this happens on this podcast.

I would be remiss if I didn’t get more of the inside skinny on going back to Pinterest, and SEO, and all these things. What blows my mind, Rachel, is you increased your traffic by 34,000 per month on Pinterest for free. So, can you give us a couple of your hacks for… How did you do that? That’s awesome.

Rachel Ngom:                   Create really good content that adds value to your ideal client. You have to do this… For you, it’s your podcast, so take that podcast, put it on your blog, transcribe it so that people from Pinterest, they want to come and scan it. They probably won’t listen to it, maybe, but they’ll want to come and scan it. Create a really great image using Canva. It’s free. And they have a Pinterest template that you can use. It can’t get any easier now. And upload it to Pinterest.

When you upload it to Pinterest, make sure that you’re using keywords that your ideal client would be searching for. If you go to the Pinterest tool bar, you can start searching, Pinterest has an autofill feature. It tells you what people are literally searching for.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s like Google.

Rachel Ngom:                   Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s how we reverse engineer SEO, right?

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Because you type something, and with a space, and a prefill, and you can see how many people are searching. You’re like, “Okay, I can answer that question.”

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah, same kind of thing. You want to make sure you’re using specific long-tail keywords. I wouldn’t just use like weight loss in my pin description, I would use like intermittent fasting for women would be a more specific long-tail keyword. And I would use that into the pin description. That’s the most important part that you want to put it, but you can put keywords everywhere on Pinterest. You want that pin description to be conversational, you don’t want to just keyword stuff. Have it be conversational because humans are reading it. Leave in your keywords, and then have a very specific call to action telling them what to do. So, pin now and come check out this post, or pin now and come get my free cheat sheet, or whatever it is.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s amazing. Okay, so you’re also an SEO maven as well, right?

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Again, great content, all of that. And so, presumably repurpose.

Rachel Ngom:                   Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         Repurposing is vital. It’s just smart, and it’s very entrepreneurial. Because we’re always looking for leverage in our business. And profitability, it speaks to margin, all that kind of stuff, if we’re going to geek out about the numbers side of it. But what are some tips for how people can repurpose? Because not everyone’s brain works that way. Mine naturally does, but I find a lot of people are like, “What? How?”

Rachel Ngom:                   I actually have a repurposing content master class, and when I teach that, people’s minds just explode. And I’m like, “You didn’t know this? What?” So, start with a blog post and take that content, and it should be at least 1,000 words for it to rank well on Google, ideally more like 2000. We had Neil Patel on our podcast. So, if you want to learn more about SEO, and Google, and blogging, check out that episode with him.

So, take that content and then you could turn that into… if you have it broken up into five steps to do something, like five steps to profit from Pinterest, I could take that, and each step could be a Facebook live video. I could turn that into a YouTube video, and then put that on Instagram TV. We could break that up and turn it into different Instagram stories.

That could be separate Facebook posts. That could be separate Instagram posts. We could take that and email it to our list. I could text message our texting audience and text them the link to the blog, turn that into a podcast. The sky’s the limit there.

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. I love this stuff. And then of course you’re using all this to build your email list.

Rachel Ngom:                   Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         What do you recommend about email right now? Because the open rates are so low, oh, my goodness, for most people.

Rachel Ngom:                   I have a few different hacks that we do that increased our open rates quite a bit. One of the things that we started to do recently is we changed our sender name. So, it’s no longer our name, and we just use our initials. And for whatever reason, that increased our open rate just because I think people are curious as to who’s sending this? So, that’s one thing.

Second thing is we segment our emails and we send them in two waves. So, we first send our email to our warmest audience. This could be like your clients are people who clicked on your email in the past, like couple of weeks. And then, we send it in wave two to the rest of our list. Those are some of the things that we do.

Other thing that we do is we actually send out the same email twice, and we just change the subject line. So, there’s different hacks and things that you could do to definitely get around it. And then another thing that we did, we started emailing a lot more. And so, instead of emailing like once a week, we email five times a week.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wow. Okay. So, that doesn’t saturate your… Yeah. Okay, cool. And how long do your emails tend to be?

Rachel Ngom:                   Short and sweet because that’s who I am. If you’re going to send me a long email, I’m rarely going to [inaudible 00:37:36]. Get to the point. That’s how most of my content is. It’s just super, super to the point. People can read it, get a key takeaway, and then move on.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. Because people are super, super busy. Well, this is awesome. So, Rachel, how can people find you and work with you?

Rachel Ngom:                   Yeah, so we have the She’s Making an Impact podcast. You can go check that out. You can download our free Pinterest cheat sheet. Just go to pinwithrachel.com. And then our blog is shesmakinganimpact.com.

Melinda Wittstock:         Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Rachel Ngom:                   Thanks for having me.