Learning from the experience of others is one way to get where you want to go faster, so that’s what we’re going to focus on today. Our special guest Gael Wood transitioned from being a full-time massage therapist to running an online business with multiple income streams in 2016. She is now transitioning again from being a coach & leader in the massage industry to pursue a career in Feng Shui, life coaching, and writing. She is going to share some of the many marketing strategies and tactics that have worked for her time and time again.
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How To Always Have Money-Making Ideas For Your Business
Tim Fitzpatrick: Learning from the experience of others is a great way to get where you want to go faster, and that is what we’re going to focus on today. Our special guest transitioned from being a full time massage therapist to running an online business with multiple streams of income in 2016. She is now transitioning again from being a coach and leader in the massage industry to pursuing a career in Feng Shui, life coaching, and writing. She’s going to share some of the many marketing strategies and tactics that have worked for her time and time again. Hi, I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing, where we believe marketing shouldn’t be difficult. All you need is the right plan. I am super excited to have with me today, Gael Wood with Elevate with Gael. Gael, thanks so much for taking the time to be here.
Gael Wood: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes, welcome. So I’m excited to dig into this. There’s no shortage of money making ideas out there, and I know you’re going to share a ton of awesome stuff from all your experience. Before we dig into that, I want to ask you some rapid fire questions to help us get to know you a little bit. You ready to jump in with both feet?
Gael Wood: I think so, yeah.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay. When you’re not working, how do you like to spend your time?
Gael Wood: I like to spend my time hanging out with my family, decorating my house. I’m into my Feng Shui and decorating. I’m always redoing a room somewhere in my house and traveling. We love to take family trips, go to beaches, go on rock climbing trips. So we’re out of town about half the weekends.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay. That sounds fun. What’s your hidden talent?
Gael Wood: My hidden talent is cooking food for large groups.
Tim Fitzpatrick: I love it.
Gael Wood: I cooked a dinner for 100 people. And I developed these skills years ago working in restaurants and used them at various times in my life. Most recently when my daughter was in high school, I ran a very successful concession stand.
Tim Fitzpatrick: I love it. I had somebody on a while back who I asked this question, and her hidden talent similar to yours was that because she had a very large extended family and she was like, I can make a meal for a large number of people at the drop of a hat with whatever is in my pantry. So very similar. I love that. It’s an awesome talent. What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?
Gael Wood: The best piece of advice I was ever given was actually from a book, and it was to launch your program before it’s ready. Presell it. And I did that with my first online program, which was a 30 day marketing boot camp. And I did that with every program since. I never create before I sell.
Tim Fitzpatrick: What’s the one thing about you that surprises people?
Gael Wood: That I dropped out of high school. I was done with that scene.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Well, it also goes to show you that you don’t have to go to College, you don’t necessarily have to finish high school to be successful.
Gael Wood: Exactly
Tim Fitzpatrick: What does success mean to you?
Gael Wood: Success to me means that I make enough money to do the things I want to do, spend the time with the people that I want to spend time with, and that I have a sense of security.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Where’s your happy place?
Gael Wood: My house.
Tim Fitzpatrick: So would you say you’re an introvert? More than an extrovert. Okay.
Gael Wood: I can happily spend three or four days in my house, and then I start going like, you know, I should probably leave. I want to turn into a weirdo.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. My wife would say the same thing about me. So somebody put this I interviewed somebody, I think it was actually earlier this week, if I remember, who said that he was an introvert, and a lot of people that I talked to say that, and most people would not think that they are, but he put it in such a way that it really resonated with me because it was like, look, it’s not that introverts can’t get out there and talk to people and put themselves out there. It’s just that when we need to recharge our batteries, we don’t go out and talk to a bunch of people and mingle to recharge our batteries. We’re totally good sitting down, watching TV or reading a book and just hanging out in quiet. And I’ve never heard anybody put it that way, but that’s exactly what it is for me. What qualities do you value in the people you spend time with?
Gael Wood: Wanting to talk about things and discuss ideas so people that are motivated and then just people that I think, people that are aware of what their values are.
Tim Fitzpatrick: A lot of people don’t. Right?
Gael Wood: It’s very interesting. When I start, you can just go on Google and find a list of values and kind of circle the ones that resonate with you and then keep narrowing it down. But when I figured out what mine were, I was like, oh, that explains so much of why I do the things I do. Some of the decisions I’ve made in my life.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
Gael Wood: Once you realize that, you can really use it to your advantage.
Tim Fitzpatrick: A mentor of mine shared something with me. I’m sure it was not an original thought of his. When your values are clear, your decisions are easy. And that’s always stuck with me. It’s like when we have decisions to make, if we can measure them against our values, decisions become pretty easy. Should I do this or should I not so Gayle? You have an interesting path. You’ve done a lot of different things. Tell us more about you and what you’re doing now since you’re transitioning again. Who are you working with? How are you helping them?
Gael Wood: Yes. So I closed my business, Massage and Spa Success, actually, on January 3rd, so I still feel like I’m in a period of transition. I gave myself till April to figure it out, but it will probably not quite be figured out by April. But what I wanted to do was I feel like I have the skills to help people outside of just the massage and spa niche. So I wanted to expand out and help people really take their ideas and build businesses and lives from what they see inside of them. I have a business mastermind for people that are starting an online business. When the pandemic hit, a lot of the massage therapists on my list were like, yeah, we want to have an online business. Will you show us how? So that’s when that kind of started, I have just a monthly challenge club. One of the ways that I like to implement the habits that help move me forward in life is to do challenges. So I’ll be like, well, I’ll do this for 30 days. It’s a great way to kind of hack your mind from telling yourself that it’s too hard. If you’re like, oh, it’s just 30 days. I can do anything for 30 days. So it helps with the things. So I have a monthly challenge club. And last year I wrote six books, and so I’m just moving step by step. I have a new program that I’m planning to roll out when my son goes to high school. I’ve been homeschooling. We’re pandemic home schoolers. So tuition is homeschooling unplanned. So I’m kind of just in a way, I’m treading water a little bit right now, I feel like because I have a big dream for my new business, I also have to take care of myself and not put too much pressure on.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Got it. Yeah. And so your plan is primarily to work with small business owners and help them.
Gael Wood: Yeah, small business owners, anyone who’s like. I say I’m going to do more marketing, but every day I don’t do it again.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yes. How do I do it consistently?
Gael Wood: Now you pass those hurdles. Why do we do the things that we do and how can we make changes that help to be easier to do those things? And like we were saying earlier, with our values, if you know what your values are like, if time freedom is one of your top values and you try to put yourself into a super structured plan, well, you’re not going to do it.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
Gael Wood: Just looking at all these different things. And I love coaching. I’m still doing business coaching. I like it. People ask me, too.
Tim Fitzpatrick: So let’s roll into this. You touched on something about with marketing and being consistent, how can people show up and sell more consistently?
Gael Wood: So one of the best things I’ve done to show up and sell consistently is to create a daily piece of content. And then that piece of content can usually be leveraged in four or five different ways. So I have a daily goal of doing ten sales activities myself. So the first thing I would recommend somebody to do is just brainstorm all of the sales activities that you know how to do that you can do in your business. I kind of look at it like direct sales activities where maybe putting a call to action out there, like click here, check out my thing or sign up for my email list versus maybe you’re working on a follow up email series or a sales page. So I think each day doing some of each type of sales activity, you’ll be moving forward. It just makes logical sense that the more offers you put out there because sales it really comes down to a numbers game. You get enough of the right people to your sales page and the sales will come through. But how are you going to get enough of the right people to your sales page day in and day out?
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
Gael Wood: And that is consistent sales activities, connecting with the people on your list, in your audience, getting new people on your list and in your audience, and then combine that with some paid marketing activities and maybe having a virtual assistant who’s also doing some sales activities, you can really make a big impact.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. And leverage that. I love that. I think a lot of us get out of don’t focus on that enough. My goal is to get ten sales activities done each and every day. This is going to vary by day, but how much time do you typically dedicate on your calendar to get those ten activities done each day?
Gael Wood: I’d say probably 60 to 90 minutes.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay.
Gael Wood: Including creating my piece of content. I’m looking for a VA to help me with some of that right now. But if you just I’ll just sit down, set a timer. I’m going to do 30 minutes. I’m going to get my social media done for the day, get that content out there, and then 30 more minutes, I can put it up on my website as a blog. I can shoot a quick email out to my list. I can do both of those in about 30 minutes. And then one thing I love to do is kind of at the end of the day, if nobody needs me for anything is I’ll do 30 more minutes in the evening. And I’m just like, all right, 30 more minute little hustle. Let’s get some more stuff done. And that might be even just getting on Facebook Messenger and saying, is there anybody who has contacted me that I haven’t gotten back to or who I think might be interested in what I’m sharing this week and looking for those opportunities.
Tim Fitzpatrick: So some of your sales activity, too, is just looking at those people you’re connected with, whether it’s Facebook or LinkedIn or anything like that, and just sending out proactive messages?
Gael Wood: Yeah. But it might be somebody like who I know is in my mastermind and then say, hey, you know what? I’ve got two spots in my coaching program. Would you be interested in learning more about that? If so, let’s jump on Zoom this week. And I’m not just like saying, here’s my line, click on it.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, right.
Gael Wood: And then another thing that I feel like has gotten me so much over the years is doing frequent videos in live streams. So even the ones where you’re like, well, nobody’s watching my live streams.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Who cares? Yeah. Do it anyways.
Gael Wood: I’ll go back and look at live streams I did two or three years ago, and they have thousands of views.
Tim Fitzpatrick: I want to dig into your daily piece of content. Is your daily piece of content video?
Gael Wood: It can be. Usually it’s written.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Usually it’s written. Okay, that’s interesting.
Gael Wood: That’s kind of an extra.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay. Got it. Honestly, I think for a lot of people, if they can get over the hump of doing video or their roadblocks, a lot of people have fears around video. If you can get past that, video is such a fast way and an effective way to create content because you can take it to audio, you can transcribe it. You get a lot of leverage from it. So I love video. But if that doesn’t fit for you, you got to find that content medium that fits because that’s the only one that you’re going to do consistently.
Gael Wood:Yeah. So I love that, too. And that’s something I did a lot of when I was coming up with a new program for massage therapist every month or two is I would think of three supporting maybe three or four videos to support that topic. Like I was teaching learn to teach couples massage. So I did a video Five Places You Could Teach Couples Massage. And then I had that video transcribed. Then I had a blog post by Places You Can Teach Couples Massage. And then that turns into a newsletter.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Got it.
Gael Wood: Some people like to read and some people like to watch video. So there’s no problem with doing your written topic in your video on the same.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Some people might be thinking, oh, my gosh, daily, how am I going to come up with these ideas? What are the best things that you’ve come up with to just keep the idea stream flowing for your content?
Gael Wood: So I love James Altitude and his daily idea generating process. So he comes up with ten ideas every day and he’ll do like random things.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. For him, it’s almost like a stream of consciousness right where he’s thinking. And he just writes down any of these ideas that come to mind as he’s thinking about it.
Gael Wood: Yeah. He’s usually got some kind of theme, like Ten ways I could Get Better at Chess. Can invent. Or he’ll come up with just some topic just as a brain exercise. But I was like, well, that could be easily applied to business. So what are ten things my ideal clients might be worried about? What are ten things my ideal clients could do today to have an impact in their business? Or ten ways to get over writer’s block? One of those ten things I wrote down will usually spark an idea for some kind of video or blog post. And the other thing I do is just sometimes it’s just like, whatever I’m inspired, I read a lot, so I try to read every morning, and that will often spark some kind of topic that I want to talk about.
Tim Fitzpatrick: I love that. So takeaways here. Daily piece of content, creating a list of all the sales activities that you could do on a daily basis doesn’t mean you’re going to do every single one of them. But having that list and then dedicating the time 60 minutes, 90 minutes each day to do those activities, that’s going to build that sales muscle, get you in the habit. And once you’re in the habit, you’ve got some consistency, you’re going to start to see some traction from that.
Gael Wood: Yeah. And I think if you could come up with a list of 20 or 30 sales activity options for yourself, then you can kind of go with your energy level for the day, because sometimes we have more outward energy and some days we’re more like, you just don’t really want to do it. So you have different things that you can pick and choose from. On days when I’m super inspired and I’ve got my makeup on. Days when maybe I don’t feel good or whatever, that might be more like just making a couple of posts and working on some kind of more behind the scenes things.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, got it. So I know you’ve done a number of collaborations in your experience. How can collaborations help promote our businesses and how do we go about finding people to collaborate with?
Gael Wood: Yeah, I love collaboration. So when I first started in business, I think it was 2015. I saw the first bundle product I’ve ever seen, and it was the Herbs and Essential Oils bundle. And it was like I was like 20 people put in a product and made this bundle for sale. And I thought, that is a really cool idea because if I get ten people together and they have an email list of 5000, then that suddenly 50,000 people that know about my business and all their businesses. So I was like, this is the biggest win win I could think of. So I was like, I’m going to do one for my industry. And that was my first collaboration. I did a bundle. I think I had around ten contributors, and I just reached out to people that I knew in the industry that were also online. Some people I reached out to just kind of cold and said, hey, I have this idea. I’m putting this product together if you’re interested. I wrote it up. This is how it works. And I got a really mixed response. The people that understood it got on board. And then other people were like, I would never give away my product for free. And so I was like, well, they just don’t get it.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. Collaborations can come in many different forms, right? It could be co branding stuff. One of the people who I would consider a mentor in the marketing space for me is John Jance over at Duct Tape Marketing, and he actually put something out a few months ago. It might have been longer than that, but he was in the process of launching a book. He knew two other marketing people that were launching their books at the same time. And so they did a number of co branded online workshops and events where they all jumped on. And there are people out there who would gosh, you’re all in the marketing space. Why are you doing that? And it just comes from a mindset of abundance and openness where it’s like, hey, some of what I do is going to resonate with people, and some of it’s not. And why not just leverage all of our audiences at the same time? And so that’s certainly an example of a collaboration. You gave another great one from a product standpoint where people are pitching in their particular product and sending it out to everybody that they know, or at least promoting it to everybody at the same time. What other types of collaborations have you seen or co brands or things like that?
Gael Wood: Yeah. So after I did my first bundle, one of the guys that participated in the bundle with me said, hey, would you like to host an online summit? So we did the Global Wellness Professionals Marketing Summit for four years together, and that was really great. That’s one of the ways I grew my list a lot. We made money from the summit, but the main thing it did was really kind of get us known as industry experts in our field of marketing for the wellness industry. So again, it’s a huge project, which I love because it’s a challenge, and I love just having a good partner. To do something like that is key to me. He did all the tech side, writing all the emails and working with all the speakers and presenters. So we had a really good balance there, but it’s a great way to network. Now all of those people that have been in my summits, they think of me when they’re hosting summits and events. And so that was another one of my favorite collaborations. A couple of times I’ve done a free giveaway collaboration where we all just put in a free gift on a page, and we all drive traffic to that page.
Tim Fitzpatrick: How have you found most of your collaboration partners?
Gael Wood: About 50% of them really promote and bring people in, get people signed up, are excited about it. And about 50% kind of just put in their presentation or their product, and that’s it.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
Gael Wood: And I have times where I was really like, why are these people promoting? They said they would do this, and I would get very discouraged. And then I kind of had to shift my mindset on that and be like, well, I’ll just make money off their stuff if they don’t care.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Right. How did you connect with them initially? How did you become aware of these potential people that you could collaborate with?
Gael Wood: Yes. So definitely through industry journals. So there’s massage magazine. So any kind of industry publications or journals, I would see who’s writing articles, whose advertising are they in my niche? Would they be a good fit? And then when I did get a Speaker, I would ask them, do you know anybody else who might be a great speaker? And most people would usually know one or two other people. And then I check out their website, their social media, and reach out to them.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Got it.
Gael Wood: Some people you never hear back from, some people say, no, thank you or hit me up next time. And then you get your people that are on board.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
Gael Wood: You have to be willing to put yourself out there and.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Right.
Gael Wood: Have people be like, no.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Well, the worst thing somebody’s going to say is no. Right. Another one that’s coming to mind in your case. Right. Because you were in the health and wellness space. I love the idea of trade publications, but this can go online as well where it’s like what forums are out there or other influencers podcasts, things like that, like who’s being interviewed on popular podcasts? All of those people that are being interviewed could potentially be good people for you to talk to. So just looking at all the industry publications forums, popular websites, all of that stuff can be a great place to go to try and identify potential people that you might want to collaborate with.
Gael Wood: And then we would just make a spreadsheet.
Tim Fitzpatrick: And start out reaching out.
Gael Wood: I mean, we’d probably reach out to over 100 people to get 20 for us on it.
Tim Fitzpatrick: If you remember that initial outreach message, what is it like? What are you saying in that message?
Gael Wood: Well, we would really try to personalize it. So since I had my business partner, if one of us had a connection, of course we’d reach out to the person we’re more connected with. But just explaining our idea, talking about something that we noticed they were doing. Like I noticed on your website that you share about this, this and this. And we’d love to have somebody for that topic and just really personalize it. Not sending out a form letter that they could tell was copied and pasted.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
Gael Wood: And then I made it very pretty short and sweet. Just kind of it’s a summit. It’ll be in the middle of March if you’re interested, get back to me for all the details. And then I would really just try to get people on a Zoom, just go over everything and see if they were in or not.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Got it. So we touched on a little earlier about all your ideas for how you get ideas to create a daily piece of content. What’s your strategy for getting money making ideas? Is it similar or is it different? Tell me more about.
Gael Wood: It’s similar. What I found is any time you can help somebody else make money, that’s usually a money making idea. But really, when I started teaching and sharing for a massage therapist, it was like, what didn’t I know when I started out? What would have really helped me? And so I kind of taught from that perspective, but it seemed like there would always be a next step. So what’s the next step for your ideal clients? If they purchased product A from you, what would be their next step? And can you make a product around that, or where are they getting stuck? So I was teaching my marketing boot camp. Every six months or so, I teach a 30 day marketing boot camp, and it was going great. I was really encouraging people to do your daily marketing activities. And they were saying to me, yeah, we really want to. But between all my massage clients and my family and everything else I have to do, how am I going to make the content? So I came up with a monthly content club, and I would create a new package of marketing content for my industry. And that has been and I just rolled it out in about three days. I came up with the idea, put it out to my list. Does anybody want a monthly package of marketing content? 70 people signed up for my presale, and I did that for the next five years. That one idea from a little idea generating session I looked the other day, $300,000 in sales.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah, that’s crazy.
Gael Wood: But it was like I found just this little problem that they had. They really wanted to send newsletters, they really wanted to post on social media, but they weren’t graphic designers. They don’t have time to research and write articles on the different topics. So I was like, well, that’s something I could do. And when I started out, I did it myself, but then I outsourced that to professional graphic designers and professional writers. So then I was providing just really high quality content every month for a low monthly fee.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Monthly fee. Interesting. So they were all getting the same package each year.
Gael Wood: They’re all getting the same package. And what I did is I tried to make it kind of like a lot of variety. So it was kind of a take what you need and leave the rest sort of a thing. So people wouldn’t be all sending out the same thing every week.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah. So they could kind of choose their own adventure, if you will, take what they needed that month. But it made implementation much easier for them.
Gael Wood: And then I did seasonal content. I did all the holiday content. In October 1 year, I was like, you know, I sold a lot of gift certificates in my spa. I think people would want to learn how to do that, of course, called Gift Certificate Sales Mastery. And then all of these courses that I created over time, I packaged up and sold them as home study courses ongoing.
Tim Fitzpatrick: I want to pull out three things because this just kind of flowed off your tone here. And I think it’s easy for people to miss some of these things because you said some really important things. The first thing that you said was if you have an idea of how you can help somebody else make more money, that is probably a very good money making idea. The second thing you touched on was once I’ve given somebody a solution to a specific problem, if you can identify what the next problem that they’re going to have is since they’ve solved this first one, that’s another money making idea, right? We’re just stepping them up. It’s like, hey, we solve this one now. The next problem is going to be X, you solve X, then it’s going to be Y, and you just keep working your way up. And the last thing you didn’t necessarily say, but you listen to what your audience is telling you. If we can listen, we just stop talking, hear what they have to say. They will give us ideas for what we can do to help them on their journey. Did I miss anything?
Gael Wood: No.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Okay. Because that was gold right there. And I think it was easy for some people to miss that. Gail, this has been an awesome conversation. You’ve dropped some serious value here. Any last minute thoughts you want to leave us with? And then we’ll let people know where they can learn more about you.
Gael Wood: I would just say it’s really easy to overthink everything and get stuck, especially when you’re putting content out there and putting marketing out there. You might say, oh, I feel like I’m being repetitive or something like that. But the truth is you do what you do, and so you do need to go out there and repeat yourself a lot.
Tim Fitzpatrick: Yeah.
Gael Wood: So I would say try to not overthink and try to just take action, see what works, see what doesn’t work, see what you like to do, and then lean into those things.
Tim Fitzpatrick: We learn from the actions that we take. And marketing is all about testing. We got to put stuff out there, see what’s happening, what’s resonating, what’s not, and then we can make those course corrections. So that is fantastic advice. If people are interested in learning more about you or learning more about your program scale, where should they be going?
Gael Wood: Just head over to my website elevatewithgael.com I have a free ebook about decluttering your schedule. One thing I hear the most from people is I want to start my side business. I want to do these things, but I don’t have time. So this book will help you to really look at where your time’s going and find the time that you need to work on your business or other parts of your life that are really important to you. And then from there you can check out my blog and some of my videos and things and hop on my email.
Tim Fitzpatrick: So that is Elevate with Gael and it’s Gael so head on over there. Gael obviously has a wealth of experience and if you’re struggling I’m sure she can help you push through some of those roadblocks. So thank you Gael for being here. I really appreciate it. To those that are watching listening. Thank you for tuning in again. I am Tim Fitzpatrick with Rialto Marketing. If you’re struggling with your marketing or not quite sure what that next step should be to get where you want to go, head on over to our website at rialtomarketing.com that’s R-I-A-L-T-O marketing dot com. Click on the get a free consultation button. I would be happy to chat with you and give you some clarity on where you should be focusing right now to get where you want to be. Thanks so much. Till next time. Take care.
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About the Host Tim Fitzpatrick
Tim Fitzpatrick is the President of Rialto Marketing. At Rialto Marketing, we see many businesses battling information overload with marketing. As a result, they aren’t sure what their next marketing steps should be to get where they want to go. We help B2B service-based businesses create, implement, and manage a marketing plan to communicate the right message to the right people so they build results that last. Marketing shouldn’t be difficult. All you need is the RIGHT plan.