Why Share Anything At All

SPEAKER_01 0:25

So when I go to share something, I really have to ask myself, like, first of all, why do I care about this? Like, what is the spark in this thing that I'm going to share? Like, if it's super boring, it's probably not worth sharing, right? And then the second part of that equation is who am I talking to and why should they be interested in this thing? So the way I came about curiosity marketing specifically was I was just kind of wondering if curiosity was like an innate thing or if we could build it as a skill. And then I started discovering there are actually so many different types of curiosity and how we can like weave that into our marketing. So I always think being curious is it is a sk it is innate and it also is a skill. The answer is both. But weaving that into our marketing by asking ourselves, who am I talking to? Why should they care?

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Welcome back to Plan Like a Boss, the space where we celebrate the courage, resilience, and extraordinary second acts of women over 40 who are starting over, rebuilding their lives, and launching businesses after major life transitions.

From Childhood Hustles To Copywriting

SPEAKER_00 1:33

I'm your host, Tanya Lawson, and today I have with me the fabulous Emily Aborne. Emily, tell us about yourself.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Oh, well, thank you. And thanks for having me. I'm excited for this conversation and have been looking forward to it for a long time. Uh, I am a copywriter. I live in New Hampshire, and I live kind of in a nice rural area. So lots of walking and hiking and bird songs. And I guess a fun fact is I just got a new rescue pup named Finch, and he's on day seven today. So he's set he's taking a little nap right now. I'm like, you need some downtime, buddy. How how old? He's two, yeah. And he's a he's a total peach and sweetheart.

SPEAKER_00 2:17

I love that. Yeah, I have a rescue of myself. Oh, what's it their name? Uh his name is Buster. Buster. Cute. Yes. He's been with us for oh my goodness, eight years now? Oh wow. Nice. Yes. He's a sweetheart.

SPEAKER_01 2:33

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:35

So you work in marketing, right?

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 2:39

When did you decide that you wanted to go into business for yourself?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Uh when I was like five years old, maybe younger. I don't know. I was I was the kid, like the original story that lots of entrepreneurs tell. I was the one doing lemonade stands and going. My friend and I like took shoeboxes and would put candy and goodies in there and then walk around the neighborhood and sell it. Like those, like those salespeople that used to open their coats with the watches, but we were doing it with like our little pop-up candy shop. So I was doing all of that stuff from a very, very young age. Um, and I actually opened my, I finally took the leap into my first business in 2014. So that was when I first got like, I mean, I had done like little side things, but this was my first full-fledged entrepreneurial venture.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

Love that.

Curiosity Marketing Without The Hard Pitch

SPEAKER_00 3:29

Now, I know you teach a concept called curiosity marketing, and this focus is my understanding is it's more of an invitation rather than a hard pitch. And I know so many entrepreneurs over there out there, they the hard pitch is just scary. They feel salesy. So can you tell us about curiosity marketing?

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Yeah. So I always say like good marketing in general, it should start with us being curious about what we're talking about, right? So when I go to share something, I really have to ask myself, like, first of all, why do I care about this? Like, what is the spark in this thing that I'm going to share? Like, if it's super boring, it's probably not worth sharing, right? And then the second part of that equation is who am I talking to and why should they be interested in this thing? So I the way I came about curiosity marketing specifically was I was just kind of wondering if curiosity was like an innate thing or if we could build it as a skill. And then I started discovering there are actually so many different types of curiosity and how we can like weave that into our marketing. So I always think being curious is it is a it is innate and it also is a skill. The answer is both. Um, but weaving that into our marketing by asking ourselves, who am I talking to? Why should they care? And then using sort of like a like, I mean, we can get into all the the specifics if you want, but using sort of different cues throughout the way that help to keep people's minds engaged in what we're reading rather than getting distracted someplace else. That's how you kind of like build, you give them enough so that there's like, oh, I wonder what's next, right? I wonder what's next, I wonder what's next. And you don't tell them the whole ending or what they should think or you know what all this means. You kind of leave it up to their brains to keep asking questions.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

I like that. And and I find too, when you give people too much, they just stop reading. Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Exactly.

The Sweet Spot Between Too Much

SPEAKER_01 5:37

So if you give them too much information, they tend to stop reading. If you don't give enough information, it can be like, have you ever read a blog where you're going, you're you're looking up something specific. Maybe it's for your rescue dog, right? You want to know something specific about their behavior. And it's just like those super basic high-level five tips or whatever. It does not go into very much detail. That also loses you just as much as too little, too much detail can lose you because you're just not really getting enough to like sink your teeth into it. So you kind of have to find that balance, right? Of giving them enough information, but not too much information and not overloading it with. Um, a lot of people will tell me, oh, that's not how we talk about it in my industry. Like, those are not the words we use in my industry. And I'm like, that's great, but that is the words that your clients are using when they're talking about it. So if I'm not a functional health doctor, medical doctor, for example, I don't know all of the jargon. So I'm gonna approach it like a client. Like, how would a client be talking about this thing? And we really have to use their own words. That's where, that's where you might read something that is, it feels like too much information, but it's actually just lots of complex language and lots of jargon that you're like, I just don't understand this. I need a dictionary to read this thing. Oh, you were preaching to the choir over here.

SPEAKER_00 7:02

I and it it's it's just it's hard when you're in the industry, the jargon's just normal to you. Now, I think I probably got a little ahead of myself with that first question because marketing in general, I know a lot of people we were talking about what to say, but we've not talked about where to say it. And I know a lot of people think they're just told you've got to get out on Instagram, you've got to get out on social media, you fight TikTok, Facebook. But marketing is so much more than that. So, can you give us your thoughts? Do we need to be on social media all the time? What what platform should we be doing our marketing on?

Ditch The Jargon Use Client Words

SPEAKER_01 7:43

I wish there was like a super easy, straight answer, and here's the genie in the bottle. Um, but I think the first question, the first thing to do before even asking that question is to really establish, like, okay, what is my business doing and who is it doing it for? So what service am I offering or product am I offering and who am I offering it to? And then you kind of have to reverse engineer, okay, where are those people? Sometimes they are on social media, and then it's just simply a matter of saying, like, oh great, they're on LinkedIn, or oh great, they're on Instagram, or they're mostly hanging out in Facebook groups. That then you have an easy breezy. Um, but sometimes they're not on social media. And so our clients are going to be more of things like word of mouth or um, you know, somebody that you might like interact with by way of another thing. So you might be like a um a service that is adjacent to another service, right? So you two work together. Um, so there's all kinds of different things you have to ask yourself when you're figuring that out. And I always say, like, you can always test social media. You can test and experiment with things. I typically don't give things longer than like three months. So at the beginning of this year, for example, I was like, oh, I had all heard all this stuff about Pinterest being able to help your podcast, right? So I did all the things right. I was very, very consistent on Pinterest. I like, you know, set up this whole page and stuff, and I started posting there regularly. Now, in hope the good news is with Pinterest, you can't really, you can experiment and you can just step away and be like, forget that, and it's it's okay. Um pretty much anything you can do that with. But so I gave it six months and I was like, this is like not doing anything for me. So I'm not going to continue to waste my time because your time and your capacity are limited. Um, so I always say like give something a good experimental run. And if if you haven't gotten success from it or results from it, like make sure you're not the problem and then and then move forward from there. So you can either ditch it, you can reduce your frequency on it, you can get an outside help to say, you know, can you check out my LinkedIn profile for me and tell me what I'm doing wrong? There's all sorts of things. It's not just like, oh, it didn't work for me, right? Um, but I think it is such, especially when you're starting out, it is such a matter of two things. One, testing to see what is gonna stick. You gotta throw a lot. I've thrown so much spaghetti at the wall. I mean, my room is like wallpaper, didn't it, you know? And the second thing is um not being afraid to use other people as part of your marketing plan. So not not use them, but you know, incorporate relationships into your marketing. I think relationships honestly have been the very best marketing I have had over the course of three different businesses that I've grown. It's all about relationships.

SPEAKER_00 10:43

Oh, I agree 100% with that. And I feel like two people who run businesses that run adjacent but serve audiences in different ways can collaborate really well by sending clients to each other. It is one of my favorite things, collaboration, yes. Oh, absolutely. Now, when when we're trying this out, when we're trialing all of this, like you said,

Pick Platforms By Where Clients Are

SPEAKER_00 11:07

I like that you mentioned three months at a time because businesses run in quarters. So it makes total sense to me to be like, okay, quarter one, we're gonna double down on Instagram, we're gonna see how that's working. Quarter two, we're gonna try our hat at TikTok. Quarter three, we're gonna go into paid ads and really see what's working. And if you find something that's working, double down on it.

SPEAKER_01 11:31

Agreed.

SPEAKER_00 11:32

Now, can there be crossover in that though? So, for example, you really want to try out Instagram and you're creating some reels for it. Could those not also go over to TikTok?

SPEAKER_01 11:47

Yes, it that is one of my favorite concepts. Um some that with with reels, specifically Instagram to Facebook to TikTok, that would be just kind of like cross-posting, right? So you're you're posting the same content in three different places. But I also love the concept of repurposing. So, like, for example, uh, when you and I are done, I'm going to ask you for the transcript for from our conversation. And if you're open to it, I want to write a blog about our conversation, and I'm gonna use that as a blog. Then I can take that and use that as a social media post. Then I can also take when our episode comes out, and I can use that as a social media post, right? So that is called repurposing, and that's how you can kind of test not even just one piece of content, but you can test different formats of the same content. So, like for that would be an another way to example that is if I was doing a video for TikTok and then I was like, I'm also going to put this same script into a carousel on Instagram and see if that works. Maybe then I'm gonna try the carousel or a banner on LinkedIn, and I'm gonna try a video on Instagram, you know, so you can kind of like play with different things in there, and you're saving yourself so much time and energy having to create like 27,000 different pieces of content, you can just reuse the same one in many, many, many different ways. Then your business is working for you and you're not working for it.

SPEAKER_00 13:20

Okay, yeah, I like that. And and what you're saying is not put the same video on TikTok and on Instagram, but instead modify the format of the content to match the platform. Agreed. Yes, yes.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Like I don't know about I I would be curious to know how others, you know, I'm not the best video example all the time because I don't watch a ton of video apart from a few podcasts I might listen to on YouTube. And even then, I'm usually sticking it in my pocket and not watching the video portion. But I have noticed if I'm on, for example, LinkedIn or Facebook, my interest in video is way lower than if I'm on Instagram. Like I'm more likely to watch a video on Instagram than I am on either of those other two platforms. I don't know what it is psychologically, that is just me. Um, but you have to think kind of like that when you're playing around with these different things. Like there's all different ways we consume. You wouldn't

Test For A Quarter Then Decide

SPEAKER_01 14:17

put, for example, I I I guess I don't know this 100%, but you wouldn't put a carousel on YouTube, I don't think. I don't think it would be as effective. Exactly. But maybe it could be a series of like beautiful imagery with words flowing by and you reading the words, you know. So that could be like something that you try on YouTube.

SPEAKER_00 14:39

I like that. I like that making one type of content specific for the platform. Yes. And and really creating a content cluster out of one topic. Yes, yes. Oh, that's like my favorite. I love that. Yeah, me too. I'm all about working smarter, not harder. Now, are there any are there certain things that we need to add to our content to make sure that we are keeping people engaged?

SPEAKER_01 15:07

I would say what we kind of talked about at the beginning of not giving too much information or giving too little, like too much vague information. And honestly, I kind of think that my I think avoid trends unless they're super applicable to your business. Like some, or let me caveat that, or if you just genuinely want to do a trend. Like if that's fun for you, go for it. Um, there's one going around right now, which is like the kind of chic two. And I don't know why, but that one I'm just like, I don't, I don't really like them. And I don't know why. But so if it yeah, so but then some are funny and some are cute, and I'm like, oh, I might try that, you know. But for the most part, trends have done zero for me. They've never made me go viral. I also just don't really have the personality for trends. I'm more of a timeless person. So know that about yourself. Um, and and I I do think the one thing you have to watch out for with trends is they're not like a super curiosity driver because everybody else is doing it. Like, my number one thing when it comes to keeping people curious is being yourself. Like your authentic self is the most fascinating thing another human being could ever encounter. We are all so unique and different, but also so alike. And that's what sort of draws us into other people. Some of my best uh like content has been these super weird, random facts about me, like my absolute love of cinnamon, for example, and people be like, oh my God, I love cinnamon. Like I'm just like, okay, that was just a really random fact about myself. Um, and very specific, but

Cross-Posting Versus Smart Repurposing

SPEAKER_01 16:47

it kept people curious in what I was going to say next. And lots of like personal stories and personal examples because they're relatable and we're all like, Well, that's super weird, but also I do that, right? So that's kind of the balance we want to strike there.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

Absolutely, because there can be a thousand people out there who do what you do, but you are the only one that does it the way you do it. And that's what people are gonna relate to. Now, are there anything? You kind of touched on this with the trends, but is there anything else we should avoid in our content?

SPEAKER_01 17:21

Yeah, and I'm gonna do one right now, but only in the way of sharing what I think you should avoid. Um, I don't like to tell people what they should think or what they should do when I'm creating a piece of content. So as a copywriter, I obviously have lots of opinions, and I also have a certain way that I do things, right? I I actually this recently came up with a client. She was reading the gut check. I sent everybody kind of like a gas pedal break pedal, and she was reading it. She's like, Well, I don't want to address the audience directly. I don't want to say you to the reader. Now, me, my personal viewpoint and professional opinion is that you should say you and you should address the reader consistently throughout your copy. So we had kind of a divergence there. And I was able to, I simply told her, here's my professional thoughts, but at the end of the day, it's up to you to make the decision. And she made the decision that she wanted to make, and that is fine. And that's how I think we have to also treat our content is I don't, I'm not trying to be prescriptive to people. I don't want people to be like, well, Emily Aborne said, right, and then I have to do this, or you should be doing this, because that just feels like pressure and more protocols and more regimens and more do's and don'ts that people have to track. And I don't know about you, but I'm a little do's and don'ts out at this point in life. Like I'm like one more do and don't, and I'm gonna snap. So really just leaving people open to make their own decisions, I think, and not putting it's it's almost like not putting the period at the end of the sentence.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

Yeah, and I think at the end of the day, you have to go with your own intuition. Yes, and my intuition has never failed me. And every time I've gone against my intuition, it did not go well.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 19:19

Because you know your business, you know your audience. So I love that you you bring that up, that it's yours. And and I personally do use the word you all the time in my copy. Me too. So, you know, to each their own. Now, let's talk about the blank cursor. You're sitting there, you're about to, you're ready, you know, you've got to create content, whether it be a blog or an email newsletter or Instagram post or a YouTube script, and you're just staring at that blank, that blinking cursor, and you cannot think of anything to do. Do you have any tricks for coming up with new content ideas? Uh, lots and lots.

SPEAKER_01 20:03

Some of us need deadlines and timers. So some of us need that. Like, I'm sure you know this from you know your work. Some of us need to say, okay, I'm giving myself 15 minutes and I'm going to write this page or I'm going to come up with this post. Some of us need to step away from our computers and go outside for a walk, or go listen to someone inspiring, or go read something that has nothing to do with business, like go read a romance novel, you know, or play with your dog or your kids. So there's those kind of different tools you can use. Um, I like to, when I'm doing creative work, I like to kind of put my brain in a different, so the I I block schedule my day. And so when I'm doing something creative, I have certain cues in my actual environment. I turn on a special light, I light a candle, I have nice music playing, and I kind of like put myself into like, you know, I'm in a more relaxed state. And if nothing is sometimes you start something. My best advice is just start something. And it does not matter if it ends up being the final thing, but start something. Tell, tell, start writing about your last trip to the grocery store. It doesn't have to have a moral, it doesn't have to have a point, but just start there and kind of see what starts coming to you. Usually, or just sit there and write, I don't know what to write, I don't know what to write, I don't know what to write. Um, and usually something does come up. But if you're like, I need to think of something now, I typically, like you, follow my intuition. And I'm like, okay, here's what's happening in my life right now, or here's what feels relevant to me. Here's what I wish somebody told me five years ago when I was in a similar situation,

Authenticity Beats Trends For Engagement

SPEAKER_01 21:47

and now I can see I'm navigating it differently. Um, there's all those sorts of questions we can ask ourselves. I mean, you can Google or ask an AI tool, you know, for some prompts, things like that to get you started. But my other advice is go back to something you've already created and see what you can lift from that thing. And then you saved yourself, you know. I love doing that. I'm like, oh my gosh, I totally forgot when I wrote this fantastic story about this thing. I and half of my audience wasn't around then, so they haven't heard it or read it. And I'm just gonna reshare that thing. So lots and lots and lots of tools. You have You have to start, you know, learning what motivates you. Some people I love like a chocolate reward after I'm do after I do something hard, you know, like two-hour work sprint, chocolate. That always gets me going. Um, so you have to kind of think of what those things are that really motivate you. And then other people get ideas from bouncing like verbally off other people. I've watched a lot of my friends where they share like ideas with me, and I'm like, wow, I am just not that person that like asks somebody else for idea generation, but a lot of people are. So you want to learn those things about yourself. I think all that to say, there's no one right answer. Um, I've there there are tons of writers that will tell you the best way to get over a blinking cursor is go vacuum every room in your house. And so for some people, that is true.

SPEAKER_00 23:16

And I like that you just gave us a ton of different ideas for what we could do. But I especially love the part where you talked about going back and looking at your previous content because the average person needs to hear something probably 40 times before this point. And not everybody let's just use Instagram, for example, because it popped into my head. People are scrolling Instagram, they don't always see your content. So you can post literally a different post about the exact same topic seven days in a row, and chances are nobody's gonna see both of them or any. Yes, just one. So I think that's a great way if you need to get something out. Pull something out that was old and just rewrite it.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

And if they have seen it, maybe you're saying it in a slightly different

Avoid Prescriptive Content And Pressure

SPEAKER_01 24:11

way. They're at a different point in their life. You know, that's the great thing about content. It's just communication. And we're always, we're always going to interact with communication in a different way. Like I read a book this past winter that I was reading it and I was like, oh my gosh, I read this 10 years ago, and I totally forgot that I had already read it. But I read it in a totally different way because I am a completely different person. Same words, same pages, different person reading the story. And I just like it, it blew my mind with how fantastic it was this time around. And I do not remember that being the case last time. It was like the chills kind of situation, you know? So just remember that. Like people are always we're we're like running on these timelines and they're all different. And so somebody interacting, the person interacting with your content today is not the same, even if they're the same exact person, it's not the same person that they're going to be tomorrow.

SPEAKER_00 25:06

Yes. Now, Emily, many of our listeners are rebuilding from scratch after a major life change, and they're redefining who they are professionally. And I know that feels really daunting sometimes. And you you kind of had your own transition, right? Many. Two. Two of them. How did you find the courage to make those transitions?

SPEAKER_01 25:31

Well, the first, okay, so when I jumped from my job job to entrepreneurship, it was a no-brainer. It was super easy. I think we call that naivete. I was 28 years old and I was just like, yeah, let's do this. So I, and now this was the biggest one because we had got, we had to get a business plan together, we had to get a loan from the bank to the tune of six figures, we had to renovate an entire building, we got a truck, like we were in business. I mean it was a retail business. So it was a serious with deliveries and all of this kind of stuff. Um, that did not scare me at all. Like, not one bit. I had no iota of fear. When I, when we decided we were going to close that business after five years and um transition into my next thing. I didn't know if I was gonna get a job or become a realtor or, you know, start a marketing business. I had no idea. I was just kind of like, I'm following the threads. I started taking on clients and I knew everything that I was doing. Like I kind of started doing um newsletters and blogs and

Blank Cursor Fixes And Content Prompts

SPEAKER_01 26:40

website copy for people, but it was just kind of like, yeah, sure, I'll do your social media for you. I'll do that for you. Like it was no big deal. It scared me so darn bad when I announced to the world that I had started this new venture and and like here I am, this is what I'm doing. And I think some of it was because like it was right, you know, putting out that I was a writer, I was like, oh my God, what are people gonna think? What if my writing is not good? Like this thing that I've been doing since I was literally three years old. What if everybody thinks it's terrible and awful and sucks? And it was the scariest thing ever. So I often think that that fear, it was also the most meaningful thing to me. Like it's not that the retail shop wasn't meaningful to me, but it wasn't like my life's dream to sell the products that we were selling. This was like my life's dream. So when I sat really, really close to that dream, it was incredibly scary. Now, I think the closer you get to what is true for you, like what you have to do, it gets scarier and scarier and scarier. And if you can sit with that, I wouldn't even say push through it. I would say build up your tolerance to be able to sit with it because it doesn't always get less scary. So you have to really build your own strength to be able to sit with the fear. This, the, the second time that I experienced that was I had started a second business, which was like um a membership with a community of women entrepreneurs, and that had been running for four and a half years, I think. And what I was finding in that membership is I just was not really being, first of all, I was burning myself out because I was running two businesses. And second of all, I was really like hiding behind it. So I was not really being myself. I was doing a lot of people pleasing and a lot of twisting and bending and contorting, and I just was not being myself. And I could have kept going, but one of the things about it was I wasn't really extroverted in that way, and I was having to be that way all the time. So I transitioned out of that and had to close that whole membership down. And that was also really scary in a different way. That was like a what are people gonna think about me? Everyone's gonna hate me. This was a lifeline for a lot of people. You know, what's am I gonna lose all these friends, lose all these relationships, lose all this? And it was more of like a worry that I was going to be losing everything. But I can tell you that the people who were worth like me staying connected to and me staying close to, they did not, but they were like, we love you more now. Like we love you more because there's more of you to be available to love. And it was the most it was a really good way to see like who really was there supporting and who I was just doing, you know, going through the motions for basically.

SPEAKER_00 29:44

So making that decision was was smart and it it really benefited your business, even though it was terrifying at the time.

SPEAKER_01 29:52

Yes, both both were very terrifying and they were both very beneficial. Best decisions I ever made. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 29:59

I love that. Now, if you could go back, so as we kind of wind all this up, if you could go back

Fear, Transitions, And Inner Safety

SPEAKER_00 30:07

to a very much younger version of yourself and give her one piece of advice with everything you know now, what would it be?

SPEAKER_01 30:17

I this is gonna sound like uh not business-y, and I hope that's okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Totally fine.

SPEAKER_01 30:24

I would have given her like uh the tools to be able to find like peace, calm, and inner safety within myself because I looked for those things outside myself. For I mean, I still fall into it sometimes, you know. I'm not by any means having mastered this, I'm living it live. But I really wish I had learned that a lot earlier, like even as simple as just grounding myself before getting on a podcast interview, for example. Um, because then I would have been truer to myself and not look to every single other person to tell me who I was, what I should be doing, how I should be peaceful or calm or, you know, using other people basically for my own regulation. So that's what I would say. The ability to self-soothe.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

Yes. Absolutely. And that's important. That's that's important in life in general, not just in entrepreneurship, but I think that ties directly into business.

SPEAKER_01 31:23

Yeah. And I always say if you don't, if if you can't have a sustainable lane, you know, if life isn't sustainable, then your business isn't going to be sustainable.

SPEAKER_00 31:31

So 100%. You have to take care of yourself. So, Emily, you've given us a world of value today.

Where To Find Emily And Closing

SPEAKER_00 31:42

If someone wants to wants to reach out and get in touch with you, how do they find you?

SPEAKER_01 31:47

Uh, so the easiest way to find, you know, I'm on a lot of platforms. I'm not on all the platforms. So you can find me at emilyaborn.com and then just find whatever platform you like. They're all there. Um, and I also, while you're listening to a podcast, you may as well hop over to mine too, which is small business casual. And we have lots of similar conversations to Tanya, but not the same and not like Tanya does. So you're not, you're not abandoning one for the other. And thank you. For all of us out there, right? Exactly. Thank you so much for having me. This was lovely.

SPEAKER_00 32:23

Oh, it's been a pleasure. So, as you guys are listening to this, remember it is so important to be able to ground yourself, first and foremost, because that is your way to success in business and in life. And until next time, keep planning like a boss.