Oh my goodness, it is 2022, I cannot believe it and I don't know about you, but january is a time for me when I'm feeling so invigorated for the year ahead, I'm full of energy, new goals, dreams, excitement, it's a time for me to learn new things and set my intentions for the rest of the year. And with that in mind I love to dig into new podcasts like success story hosted by scott D Clary and brought to you by the hubspot podcast network. This is truly one of the most useful podcasts in the world featuring conversations about sales, marketing, business and startups with super successful people in the industry. So if you're in the mood for some fresh energy, I would highly recommend starting with episode 189 called how to build an iconic brand with Joe foster, the founder and Ceo of Reebok, it is a pretty wild ride. You can listen to success story wherever you get your podcasts, This is Rachel Peterson for female startup club.

Hey everyone welcome back to another episode of the female startup club podcast. I'm your host, Don Rasheen, and on today's show I'm chatting to the Queen of social media, literally, the Queen Rachel Peterson Rachel has built a wildly successful digital agency and an even crazier social media following and the purpose of this episode is to give you a step by step guide to launching your business, Tiktok account and while I've got you here, if you're looking for more nifty tips and tricks, you can tune into my instagram or Tiktok at Dune rasheen, where I post daily quick tips, how to guides and other useful bits and bobs relating to all things business and e commerce feel free to slide into my DMS because I love to chat. And lastly, if you haven't done so already, please do subscribe to the female startup club podcast so you can get notified of our new episodes every week. And if you're feeling particularly generous rate and review the podcast, it's how others find us. And it always brightens my day to read what you have to say. This is Rachel for female startup Club two.

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Just visit clay vo dot com slash F S C to create your free account today. That's K L A V I Y O dot com slash F S C. Female startup club precincts. Hey Rachel, thank you so much for taking the time to be on the female startup club podcast today soon. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here today. Yeah, I'm so glad. So you've got 350,000 followers on Tiktok with almost six million likes. Over six million likes. You have 90,000 followers on instagram 43,000 subscribers on Youtube. You really are the queen of social media. So I'm eager to start with who you are and what you do and how you've done it for sure. So I'm Rachel Peterson, I'm a Minnesota, United States based mom three. I have a nine year old, a six year old and a two year old and I feel like that kind of helps to play into how crazy life and business can be like juggling all of those different things and having my husband and I worked together in business and then also being, you know lovers.

Like there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. It's, it's intense and fun, but I am a social media strategist, I'm really passionate about organic and paid strategies that actually move the needle towards your goals and that's super important. I think sometimes people see social media is like a silo that's separate from like the goals that we have. And so when I dove into organic social, it was a time when people were really poo pooing it and they were saying like there's no power in organic social media and I wanted to say like I don't know about that, let's see what we can do. So I started taking on clients in November of 2015, which was just about five years ago, which is kind of crazy. And now we are really growing into taking on clients in an equity partnership, so it's kind of like a shark tank model. So we went traditional agency route and then started to grow into my dream model which was I want to partner with these people that I'm. helping blow up their businesses and we've had a lot of crazy success and obviously my platforms have grown, but we've helped clients go from 300,000 year in revenue to over three million in just 11 months.

We help the skin care company blow up and they went from $6000 a month to $286,000 a month. And last I heard they were doing like five million a year in revenue now um and got huge investors on board, We turned $25,000 in ad spending to 1.6 million and all of this is done by using organic social to understand further what actually works for paid social media, wow, that is so cool and so impressive. And I really love how you're working with people in a way that incentivizes you to push further and get really great results rather than being paid, say a retainer flat fee and then being like, well, yeah, you know like I'm doing what I can um you've got that real motivation to do really, really well so that it's good for you and your family. You know, I will say it was scary going into this model and I took, I went into this model at the advice of several men, mentors. Roland Frasier is, has always been a mentor from afar and he was like going to the equity game and build businesses like they're yours and then that way it, you'll just never be sad when a business like thrives and when a business isn't thriving, you're going to be more invested in turning it around and jay Abraham is also my mentor and he said this is gonna be really hard and you're going to take a cut to your revenue for a little bit on the agency side.

He said go all in and 10 years from now you will never regret that you did it. And so I was scared going into this, but I was like if out of the six companies that we currently have equity and besides are too, if two of them blow up, it's going to totally be worth it. But I want to ultimately see hopefully all of them succeed. But it's, it's really rewarding, definitely this though. Yeah, it's a really smart, um, definitely a smart strategy to go in at it that way. I really want to talk to you about all things Tiktok, that's what today's podcast is about and I want to learn how someone can go from having no Tiktok and they have a business and you know, go into blowing it up and getting started and what the step started getting there. Oh my gosh, so I just want to share this real fast because I know sometimes we can all feel like we're late to the game or like it's too late or you know, that window is already over. Just this week, I was talking with someone who I helped to grow with my advice. His name is dad life, Jason.

Uh, that's not his name, that's his handle. Let's be clear Dad, like, And just two months ago he had like five or 600,000 followers, but that was already like huge for him. He thought that was the limit and over the last two months he grew by one million followers and he had thought it was too late to pass the one million mark and he now he's at like 1.6 Million or almost two million followers Because of growth that he's had these last two months and I just this past month, another gal, her name is Jamie, she started a new Tiktok and she has soared over 500,000 followers in one month and her how this is insane, right? And I like to share this because if anyone listening to this is like me sometimes you think, oh that's great for other people, but I'm not that funny or I'm not that good at dancing or I'm not as cute as some of the 20 year olds on this platform and it can be easy to think like I can't grow and it's great to see like other real people who aren't the superlatives, uh we're crushing it.

So Jamie's now over 500,000 followers and her Handle is elementary really? But I started on Tiktok about two years ago and it was September of 2019 that I realized, I think that this is a real platform with real legs, like I think this is gonna be a thing. And so at that point I had about 7000 followers in September, it hasn't even been a year since we've exploded and then I started prioritizing it and saying this is a huge part of our strategy, let's make this happen. And we have stumbled along the way. I have learned a lot of lessons. I have truly learned. The hardest milestones are first your 1st 1000 followers. That is the hardest because you're in your head, you're doubting the process, you're nervous, you're seeing what other people are doing and you're really finding your own voice on this platform. And the second hardest is 10,000. Beyond that, he watches it snowballs and now I'm growing between one and 3000 followers per day.

And so there's, it's insane, like there's an incredible snowball that can happen, but I want to be honest with you. Like that 1st 1000 is absolutely the hardest. Yeah, I bet I watched one of your videos about how to get to your 1st 1000 followers and that's how I got my 1st 1000 followers. Um, but now I'm, you know, I'm trying to reach that 10,000 markets are really, really tricky. Um okay, so how do people get started then? How do they figure out what content they should be posting? Especially I think like, people still have that idea about Tiktok, like, you know, it's dancing, it's fun. It's silly, but like how can I make a business Tiktok, like how can I put my business on here and like do stuff totally. So I want to disclaim this because in case anyone looks at my Tiktok. Um I'm at the mrs Peterson, but I'm super goofy. That is my personality. I'm an angiogram seven. I like to dance and I like to lip sync and I like to get a little cheeky not too bad. Um nothing that would humiliate my kids, but a little so like if you see that, that's my personality and no one else has to do that.

You don't have to dance to succeed on Tiktok, you don't have to lip sync and you don't even have to be that funny or creative, which is really, really cool and empowering. And I think that's something that makes this platform different. You don't necessarily have to be a superlative meeting, the best, the funniest, the prettiest, the smartest etcetera. All you have to do is serve some people I personally like for businesses when they follow four categories and these four, our education, entertainment, emotion and engagement. And so things like education, you can think about like the FAA cues you get in your business. What are things that people always ask you like for me, people always say, how can I monetize this platform? How can I monetize this platform? What would you do for this type of company? And so I'll start to create those answers in original content that doesn't even use music or lip singing or dancing of any kind. Now that can help speed up growth. So sometimes I'll dance behind the educational information and that will help a video to just take off initially, but you don't have to, I also like entertainment, you can relate to others that you would want to serve.

Let's say you want to serve moms makes them content. That makes mom's laugh and say that is relatable. Yes, basically someone says I thought I was the only one as they're watching your video, Oh my gosh, you have just won them over with entertainment, make them able to laugh, make them be able to laugh or get mad or something along those lines, entertain them. Right? The next thing you want to tap into is engagement. And so one of my favorite ways to do this is to ask questions and be like, you know, is this you does this relate to you? If so comment below, you can always ask people to comment below but engage your audience and say, hey, I I just wanted to know how many of the business owners watching this are experiencing X, y and z. If that's you. Comic books, I'm really thinking about creating a training series on this or what questions you have about hairstyles. I'm gonna be answering a ton of questions, Go ahead and ask your questions below and that will spur on an entire series. And then emotions a little tougher for me to teach because emotion is something that intuitively some people are great at and others just don't understand that it's not showing up on camera and being a blubber and mess.

It's letting people just see a little bit of the emotion behind your business. Whether that is sadness or frustration or maybe you're tapping into the feelings that your clients or customers have and relating to people on a deep level, It's very difficult for me to teach emotion. Some people get it. Not everyone does, but feel free to not be scared of tapping into the feelings that either you, your team, your business, your industry or your client's experience. Yeah. And I guess that also comes back to that like relatability of like, hey, I'm just a normal person, just like you, I struggle with things just like you, that leads me to like another kind of element to that, the emotion behind like online haters, How do you deal with people who were just like flat out nasty or flood out? Mean I've had some like, not crazy comments, but just some people who like give me a bit of sass and I'm like, but why? Okay, so this is one thing I didn't expect.

I didn't realize that as I grew, it would no longer become the rare occasion that there was a hater. It was a matter of how many there are on each content piece. Oh gosh, so I'm just letting you know, like it does grow, but I feel like as it grows, you become more and more comfortable with the different coping mechanisms. So I always say there's like three different phases of dealing with haters now today, I can't put up the content piece without at least one comment of hate, whether it's this girl is so annoying. Um her forehead is huge. Uh you're so fake. You clearly had a ton of work done, which isn't true. But it also doesn't matter because if I did that would be my choice or they'll say she has no idea what she's talking about. Yeah right this is a scam. So that comes out all the time now and so I wish I had known that going into business and being able to prepare myself for it. So the first phase is delete and block. Like when you're first learning how to deal with it, delete the comment block the person and you can keep that skill set like that resource available to you forever.

If someone ever crosses the line or is you know abusive, feel free to delete and block and you do not have to justify it. So that's like the first tool that I offered to people, you have freedom to do that. You can delete and block anyone you want. Um the 2nd phase is replying with Love & Grace. This is another tool that you can bring into play because truth be told if someone's hating they've been hurt without a doubt. And there's some of the most hurting people you can find which is kind of sad. Now some people like to just troll on purpose and get a reaction and that's what brought me to this new phase. I no longer even replied to hate comments. I ignore them. My team will sometimes reply on my behalf on like ads and stuff. But I stopped paying attention to them and I was just like, you know what? If I give them attention, they're gonna learn that this behavior just like kids, I see them as like little kids now and I'm like, this behavior is not what gets attention so we just ignore it most of the time. But those are three big tools that can help you with dealing with it because it's not a matter of if anymore. It's when Yeah, that's so true and that's such an important one.

And I'm going to be dipping into that toolbox ASap another really important part of Tiktok is obviously hashtags, is there any specific advice you have? How do people go about finding them? Is it different to something like instagram? What's your top tips? Okay. So instagram has never been my favorite platform and I just want to be honest, it's starting to become one of my faves because of how we're changing the way we're using it, which has been really cool. And Tiktok taught me a lot about hashtags. I think we all believe that the bigger we use, the bigger hashtags we use, the more likely we are to be found. And I get this reminder over and over and over again because every time I don't follow this, I'm like kicking myself, You go small to go big, you relate to one person to relate to 100 or 1000. And so as crazy as this is, there isn't really too small of hashtags. You can go down to 100 uses 1000 uses 5000. It's harder to find those hashtags.

But you want to use as many small niche down hashtags as you can now for people who consistently go viral, you can start tapping into bigger hashtags, but until you have consistent account authority niche down and every time I don't niche down, like I said, I kicked myself, I'm like dang it. I needed to niche down there and I see exactly why my videos don't go viral when they don't Gosh, good one. I think I'm guilty of taking those, those big ones. Yeah, amazing. I just want to ask you before we jump into the six quick questions, what's your one piece of advice for women who have a big idea and want to start their own business? Okay, so spend some time getting really familiar with what the vision looks like, everything you can see and don't share it with everyone. I know that's going to sound crazy at first sit on it, journal on it, sketch out any part of it. You can and only then share it with people that you trust. It's like if you have a brand new baby, you don't hand it to every stranger you meet, you only are going to say like, okay, my family that I trust can hold this baby.

The same thing is true with your vision or your dreams. Don't hand it to everyone who asks And protect it because until you are 100% certain any outside doubt can make you wonder, is this even a good idea? And then outside doubt is waiting to do that. So keep it safe. Journal it nurture it just like a brand new baby and then once it's strong enough, then you can share it with the world. I love that. That's so special. Right? The six quick questions ready to go. Let's do it. Question Number one is what's your, why? Who? So for me the beginning, my why was I wanted to see how far I could push myself. And then once I achieved some big things that I didn't know if they were possible or not, then I realized I need to help other people realize this is possible too. So once I climb the mountain I was like, I need to go back down and help others navigate this mountain. I love that question. Number two is what's been the number one marketing moment that's made your business pop relationships.

Oh my gosh! Um, sometimes people will say, how did you get so lucky to connect with so and so or so and so why did these people comment on your stuff and I still some, I think everyone back in time. I'd be like pinch me if I saw the legends that comment on some of my stuff and it's like normal now. Um but I really nurtured those relationships without ever expecting a single thing in return. I just showed up consistently for them. So nurture the relationships and the relationship nurturing happens in the DMZ. Good one. I've seen some really nice um relationships that you have with some crazy people online. It's incredible! So amazing. Question # three is where do you hang out to get smarter? Mm hmm. Right now I'm a part of a really cool mastermind and this is weird because I'm the baby of this mastermind. It's been a while since I've been the least successful in like a group And I am by far the least successful in this group. The people in this group have anywhere from $150 million like okay, um so I, I just entered a new room where I'm the least smart, least successful person and it's gonna be really cool to see the growth trajectory.

Um but this is a private mastermind that's totally free and it was invitational. That's so cool and I guess it would be really humbling to be around all those people. What kind of things do you learn in those groups? Just a quick side note here. Like what, what happens, How does the mastermind work like that? Yeah. So usually what happens is like everyone introduces themselves on the first call and you share the high blows, what things look like in your business. One of the things that is shocking about these kind of masterminds that I never expected is how truly supportive everyone is. Like when someone shares a big win or something that's working, everyone's like, that is amazing and there's not an ounce of jealousy and in fact that was one of the precursors for this group, jealousy is not allowed and if it happens, those people will be removed. But usually people take turns, whether it's week by week or hour by hour on these calls, they present an issue that they're having and the whole group comes together and they say, hey, here's what worked for me or hey, I see a different solution and everyone just comes to the table and serves and it's really powerful to see.

And even if you aren't the one having an issue worked through, you can learn so much from everyone else. Gosh, it sounds incredible. Congrats question number four is how do you win the day? And that's around your AM and PM Rituals? Morning, I did this thing called the five archetypes and it's Chinese medicine, like your personality. I love it, it's so cool and I am a fire architect and that explained why I don't do well working out in the morning. I don't need more fire starter activities. I actually need cooling and calming in the morning. So that helped me to solidify exactly what I was always feeling like working out did not help me win the day in the morning in the morning. So I started out and I go in my workout room and I sit and I do meditation and I'm quiet and I sit with my thoughts and sometimes I'll write a couple notes in my journal. It has to be quiet, I can't touch work, I can't be aggressive, it means to be chill. It's a quiet chill routine in the morning, which is so different than I think a lot of people and then in the evenings is when I go into my natural fire energy.

So I'm like, I'm gonna work out, I do an hour and a half workout every night after the kids go to bed and that is so great. Um and then I am super lazy with like my skincare. I do like a baby wipe, take all my makeup off, throw some lotion on my face, like do a dry brush on my skin and then I go to sleep. Oh, that sounds amazing. I'm gonna, I'm gonna do mine after this question, Number five is if you only have $1000 left in your business bank account, where would you spend it? Right. I would build an email list with a specific offer And then create 1000 more. So I would probably build an email list. Get somewhere between 200 and 1000 emails. Uh and then I would offer them all something that was a no brainer price point, Probably between $20 and $50 and then offer a higher ticket product. Yeah, that's probably what I would do. That's a great answer. I love that.

And last final question is how do you deal with failure. Mm hmm happens all the time. I feel like it happens every day lately. So um you just realize it's a part of the journey and a failure doesn't reflect who you are unless you let it define you. So I've redefined what failure means. It just means I discovered something that isn't the right path and then we pivot to finding where the right path is. Thank you so much for being on the show today. I absolutely loved our chat. And if anyone's wanting to find sort of your best resource or the best place to find you, where shall we direct them? My website has like 16 different free resources on like the homepage Rachel Peterson dot com es. And d in my last name. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me Doon. Hey, it's just me here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the female startup club podcast. If you want to hear more, head to my instagram at Dune rasheen to see my filmed interviews with incredible female founders like Erica from fluffy Beauty Greta from drop bottle and Sammy Leo from breeze bomb.

And if you like what we're doing here, visit our website and sign up to female startup Club dot com to get all of the good stuff delivered straight to your inbox and lastly subscribe to the female startup Club podcast.