AMY PORTERFIELD: Hey there, Amy Porterfield here. Welcome to another edition of The Online Marketing Made Easy Podcast. I am so thrilled that you’ve tuned in today.
Today we are talking about the need to possibly narrow your niche and all of the questions that go along with that. I have invited an expert on the show today because she really, truly has some great strategies related to narrowing your niche and why you would want to do it.
I know some of you say “neesh” which sounds way cooler. But I’ve always said “nitch” so I am just going with it. We are also going to explore things like how to say “no” more often to not only save your sanity but also to help you not resent when you do say “yes.”
We are also going to talk about running into some of the same challenges again and again. Have you ever had the situation where you came up against a challenge and got past it and then that challenge reared its ugly head again? You wonder why you are there again. You think you are past it.
We are going to talk about that and why it happens and what you can do about it. We are going to cover a lot today and my special guest is Nathalie Lussier. Nathalie is a world-class digital strategist. She teaches people how to define their market niche and build their email list. She is my kind of lady.
Another thing that stands out about Nathalie is her intuition about the future of business. She is such a wise girl. Get this, when she graduated from college she actually turned down a job offer from Wall Street because she had a sixth sense that the economy was going to turn in ways we could not yet comprehend.
The girl was right out of college. Instead, she started her own business. This is not her first business. She was 12 when she started her first business and we will talk about that. Not only did she accurately predict the future of where things were going (so it’s a good thing she didn’t choose the Wall Street job) but her first business grew so quickly that she found herself constantly answering questions about how she did it.
That’s how she started her next business, a consulting and training company that helps people build businesses as big as their ambitions. Nathalie’s tips for marketing and list building have been featured everywhere: Forbes, Business Insider, Fast Company, Life Hack, and I could go on and on.
One thing you might not know if you already know about Nathalie Lussier is that we go way back. I was in a year-long mastermind with Nathalie. There were about 20 of us entrepreneurs, all women, who met four times a year. The leader was Marie Forleo. I think it was Marie’s very first live mastermind, the first or second.
Nathalie and I became really great friends. The cool thing is we have gotten to watch each other’s business grow up. I remember where she was when she was in that mastermind and I was just starting out. She was way more advanced than I was but I have seen her business grow and change into different things even since then. We’ll talk about that during this interview.
I am really excited. It has been a long time since Nathalie and I have gotten to connect so we have a lot of catching up to do as it pertains to all of the topics I talked about earlier: the niche, saying no, hitting the same challenges again and again; we will dive into all of it so let’s go ahead and get started.
Amy: Nathalie, thank you so much for being here today. I really appreciate it.
Nathalie: Yay! Thanks for having me, Amy. I’m excited to be here.
Amy: I’m thrilled to have you on the show because one of the questions I get asked a lot by my students is, “Should I narrow my niche more or am I going to exclude too many people?”
I know it’s at the forefront of many people’s minds when it comes to building their business on line. You say it really starts with uniqueness, finding the niche that only your business can fill, or creating one for yourself.
I know we all want to feel like our business is truly unique but tell us why it’s not just a good feeling to have but what is truly important about finding your specific unique niche.
Nathalie: I feel there are more people starting businesses all the time and everybody can have similar ideas or similar things they want to talk about in their businesses and things they want to create or things they want to teach. I think it is really important to be able to distinguish yourself from the other people who are out there in the marketplace so that when people are looking for a solution to their problems or want to learn from someone they can really zero in and see how you are different and how you are a good fit for them, their learning style, and the way they want to evolve and grow as a human being or whatever problem you are trying to solve for them.
Amy: One thing I always think about with the problem of being unique, sometimes it means you don’t fit into a category that everyone else is familiar with. Steve Jobs has a famous quote, “People don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”
Once a person has identified that unique niche for themselves, what steps can they take to really show their target market that they need you, they have needed you all along but you didn’t realize it, etc. That seems to be difficult to me.
Nathalie: There are a couple of different levels to that. There will be the level of what kind of category you fit in. There are broad-stroke categories that every business will fit under. Some of those I always talk about are getting laid, getting paid, and not dying.
Amy: (laughter) Whoa!
Nathalie: I also like to throw in spirituality as well because I feel that should also be in there. A lot of times the problems you are solving will fit into those major categories. What you need to do to help people really understand that you can help them is to be really specific in how you speak about what you do or what kind of problems you solve.
Instead of saying you have a generic medicine that will solve all of your ills, you can say you have a headache medicine and when you have a migraine it will solve your migraine in ten minutes. Obviously that is just an example, but whatever your business is, there is a way to get really specific and talk to actual things people are experiencing. That will help them connect with your brand and what you can do for them.
Amy: Do you ever have clients that have a really unique idea and nobody else is doing it? Sometimes a lot of marketers will say that is a huge red flag. Do you ever see that as being a red flag?
Nathalie: Sometimes I do think it can be. I don’t think that if there’s no competition that you should ignore your idea completely. Sometimes you can be one of the first people and there could be other people working on the idea. Sometimes I like to say that everybody gets ideas around the same time and they have a shelf life. You have to use them before they expire because somebody else could be working on it behind the scenes but haven’t launched yet.
Don’t completely ignore good ideas if there is nobody else in the market place. But I do think you need to check whether there is a market for this idea or product or whatever it is that you are creating. Usually that means taking a look at audiences and other blogs or communities around that topic. To see if there is enough of a critical mass of people who are interested in this so that if you were to start something on this idea people would be able to find you – that they at least exist in a community somewhere that you would be able to tap into.
Amy: That’s a really good tip for sure.
On your About Page you have a really great quote, “Simplicity sells. If you can’t understand it or explain it don’t do it.” I absolutely love that. When we are talking about having a unique niche and people maybe not really understanding it just yet, what are some practical ways that people with a unique niche for their business can simplify it both for themselves and for their market?
Nathalie: I’m so glad you asked that. I like to think that a niche (I am going to say “neesh” because I’m French) is comprised of three things: Your topic, what you are talking about; your story; and your audience.
Those three things come together to create what your niche is actually going to be. The very first business I started was all about raw food. That was my topic but until I figured out what my story and audience was I didn’t really have a niche, it was just a topic.
When I got into my story and why I was so passionate about helping people eat more fruits and vegetables I was able to connect with people who could also connect with my story. But when I got even more clear on who my audience was (mostly people like me who grew up eating a lot of fast food and junk food and who were rediscovering fruits and vegetables) it was easier for them to understand me and for me to explain things to them.
With those three things I think you can really define a niche and make it easier for yourself to communicate it clearly.
Amy: The topic, the story, and then the audience. Actually that leads me perfectly into the next thing I wanted to ask you about. I love how you teach story and how that kind of works into everything you do.
Let’s say you are a fitness coach and you overcame a debilitating disease. Everyone who struggles with chronic illness and disease, in particular, is going to instantly resonate with you as a fitness coach. That works out really well, especially with your example of the topic, the story, and the audience.
But what about people who haven’t quite reached the peak yet? Let’s use the same example. You are a fitness coach and you struggle with this disease and you are still struggling with it but you want it to be part of your story but you haven’t yet conquered it.
Another one, I have a client who is a home organizer. Then she had kids and her business started to grow and she said she feels like a fraud because she has a crazy hectic life. How do you work that into your story but still be that expert?
Nathalie: That is such a good question. A lot of times we think we need to have our story finished in order to use it and publish it and to have that happily ever after available to showcase. But I like to think of it more as a spiral staircase.
For those of you who are listening, you can go and download the spiral staircase exercise and we will kind of walk you through this.
Amy: Let’s kind of tell them about that real fast. We are going to go into the spiral staircase and tell you what that model is. If you want to grab it and really learn how to do it in terms of an exercise that Nathalie has created for you, you can go to http:// amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/67download and you can get it right away. So, talk to us about this model.
Nathalie: A lot of times we think our lives should be straightforward and direct from point A to point B, where we are now to where we want to go later. A lot of times I have found it is more of a circular pattern. We might be walking along a spiral staircase.
We can’t really see how we are going to get there but we can see the next step. We can’t see around the corner so we don’t know what the future steps are. Looking back down our spiral staircase we can see we tend to revisit certain things over and over again in our lives.
As an exercise, I like to have people look through some of the big life experiences they have had. If it is for your career or your niche that you are trying to figure out you could look at career advancement or interesting things. It could just be a cool course you took online or in college or a book you read that really impacted you. It could be an internship you did or a summer vacation you took somewhere that taught you about something really interesting and all of the experiences in your life that are spiraling.
Sometimes you will revisit similar things. For my own life, I started making websites when I was 12. When I got to college I studied software so that was my next evolution. When I graduated I found myself designing websites again for a while. I wondered why I was back to square one.
Our businesses and lives spiral like that sometimes and come back to what feels like square one. But then I realize all of that experience between age 12 and when I actually came back to web design had taught me so much. I was a much better web designer and business person. Now I am kind of back to another spiral where I help people with their websites but actually have WordPress plugins and things.
I just want to give my example so people can see what their spiral might look like. Also, when you are writing your story or sharing your story with your audience it doesn’t have to be finished because you will keep going around the spiral. You will keep learning new things.
In the example you shared, because she is a mom and things are hectic in her life, she will be able to help other people who are in that space. Before she might not have had that same experience to be able to apply. I think it’s kind of cool to be able to have those to bring in and to show how real you are as well.
Amy: That’s so good. Now, how the heck did you get into designing websites at age 12?
Nathalie: I just liked it. We got our first computer that was connected to the internet and I was really into cartoons and anime. I found out other people could build websites and I wondered how to do it.
I actually called our internet service provider. It was just some guy that lived in the next town and he said I would just pull an HTML file up and learn it online. I would copy other people’s code and change the colors and stuff like that until I finally learned how to code myself. And that’s how I got started.
Amy: That is absolutely amazing. I don’t really know many kids that would do such a thing. You’ve got to love the time where you could call up a service provider in another town and say, “yeah, sure, you can do it.”
Imagine doing that now. It just wouldn’t work that way.
Nathalie: I know.
Amy: That’s fantastic. I love that. I love to hear about little kids who are entrepreneurs like you and what they grow up to be. I am trying to raise an entrepreneur myself but I don’t want to push it on him too much, Kade, my son. This is a total side note, but this killed me. He wanted to sell candy at school. There was a certain kind of candy all of the kids were crazy about.
I don’t even like him eating candy but he wanted to sell it so bad. He put it in a little baggie so that everybody got their own little package. He priced it just below someone else that priced it at school, this was a trend, and I knew he was going to get in trouble. I knew he couldn’t do it but I let him do it. I am terrible.
I let him do it because I wanted him to have that experience. The first time someone got in trouble he shut his whole business down, which I love.
Nathalie: Oh my god, that’s adorable.
Amy: I want to encourage him to do these things but I am thinking that I would much rather him try to create a website than to sell candy at school.
Nathalie: Right. I have a similar – I wasn’t trying to sell candy but when I was a kid when we first got our computer I would ask all of my friends to write stories, collect them, and print them out and sell them back to them.
Amy: No!
Nathalie: I also sold them to my family and to other people so basically it was kind of a little newsletter that I used to publish. I would write stories too and put things together. That was the early days of my publishing empire.
Amy: You were a little busy bee. Are you an only child?
Nathalie: I am, yeah.
Amy: So is Kade. So I like that you guys come up with your own little ideas and just run with it. That’s fantastic. Obviously it has worked for you because you have an amazing business doing so many things. We are going to talk about that a little bit, what you’ve got up your sleeve, because it’s very unique in the sense that we are talking about unique. I think you have cornered yours with some of the tools.
We will talk about those in a minute, but I want to stay a little bit on the idea of the spiral staircase. I love that you used your own business as an example. Basically, just so I understand the concept, when you are going up this spiral staircase and building your business you are going to come up against things and wonder why you are doing them again. You have already been down that road. You question if you are moving backwards.
You are saying to look at those experiences with a new perspective because you are in a different place on the staircase.
Nathalie: Exactly. You nailed it.
Amy: Good. I really like that because it definitely does happen and I’m the first one to beat myself up. I say, “Holy cow, I thought I had gotten past this. Why am I sitting here again?”
I love the idea of a new perspective. You usually do something different with it. You become stronger from it. You get new ideas from it. On top of everything else you will learn inside the spiral staircase exercise we will give you, don’t beat yourself up. It is definitely part of the process and there are some great lessons from all of that.
Another thing I want to talk to you about is list growth. You definitely are an expert in growing your email list with quality leads. If you relate it back to a unique niche do you think someone just starting out should broaden their niche first in order to grow an email list or should they really stay the course on a very unique niche that will be harder to grow an email list with? I see the pros and cons because that list would be pretty dang focused and targeted, but what is your take there?
Nathalie: That is such a good question. That is something people ask me all the time. My take is to start narrow and only expand after you have a strong foothold in people’s minds and the marketplace you are starting off in.
If I go back to my very first business, which was raw food, people got to know me as the raw food person. Then they could recommend me as that. I didn’t start off as the health and nutrition person because that’s too broad, in my opinion.
If you are a health and nutrition person, how can you zero in on a specific thing you help people with or a very specific part of the audience with the topic you are going to cover? Maybe it’s weight loss using essential oils. That is super, super specific.
If it is fitness then maybe it is just kettle bells. I am obviously just making stuff up. But, by really starting narrow I think that’s the best way to go.
I see people thinking they will get bored just talking about one topic or one thing and they wonder what they can do to break out of that. If you can stay on one topic or one narrow focus for at least six to 12 months, once you have gotten that momentum going where people know you for one thing, then it is okay to start adding different topics and different pieces into your business and list building.
You can do a different opt in or whatever it is you are thinking of doing. It will be easier because people will already know you as an expert in one thing so it is easier to add expertise in other topics once you are already established.
Amy: I didn’t realize it, but that is exactly how my business came about. I did start out really general with social media marketing. Nathalie and I were in a mastermind together and I really decided I would go with Facebook marketing specifically. It is still really big but it is a lot less big than social media marketing.
Once I got known for Facebook I finally got the chance to branch out in other things like list building and automation and all of that good stuff. But it was so much easier because I already had a platform. People respected me and knew that I was putting out good content. That makes perfect sense.
Nathalie: Yeah, you are a perfect example of that. Absolutely.
Amy: That’s awesome. The next thing I want to talk to you about is from an article that you wrote that I absolutely loved, Learn to Say No Without Feeling Guilty. So many people listening today really need this lesson because it’s a difficult one.
In this article you mention that saying “no” leaves margin for magic and I love that. Tell me how people can tell the right things to say “no” to versus the things they really shouldn’t pass up. How do they stay away from all of the guilt of saying “no”? As you know, it’s so easy to become the yes machine because you don’t want to miss opportunities.
Nathalie: I can talk about this because I have been there.
Amy: You know from experience.
Nathalie: I would say the best place to start is to start with your goals and aspirations and the things you want to do and really get clear on either a plan or what you are focusing on for the next 90 days, six months, or however far out you want to plan that.
Whether your goal is to get more speaking gigs or more podcast interviews or to create a new product, when you see those opportunities you actually have a filter to see whether it fits with the goals you have in mind. If it does then it is an easy yes and makes total sense. If it doesn’t then it doesn’t mean it is automatically a no. Next quarter you could be doing more outreach so it would be a great time to do a podcast interview or whatever it is.
It is easier to be able to say yes or no when you are already clear on your priorities. I use a a little index card and come up with my top five priorities for every quarter. They are usually for the whole company, not just my own.
Maybe we are launching something and I may also want to work on the systems in the back end. Then I may want to reach X-number of people through list-building
opportunities. If a list-building opportunity or an interview request comes in I might say it is a good fit. If somebody tells me they are a systems expert and they would like to help me with my systems that would also be an easy yes.
But if it is somebody telling me they want to renovate my house I would say that it was not on my priority list this month so I would not do that. I am just kind of making that example up but that really helps you to make decisions.
Amy: That’s fantastic. I recently did a podcast where I did a really simple exercise. In Episode #66 I said to look at the remainder of the year to decide really, truly where you will be spending time and then to schedule that time into your calendar.
If you did exercise #66, reading this article, Learning To Say No Without Feeling Guilty, is the perfect next step because now that you have your plan for the remainder of the year you are very clear about where you are going to be working.
Every opportunity that comes your way it is so much easier to say “yes” or “no” depending on what is already on the docket. That’s huge.
I have always been a yes machine because 1) I don’t want to hurt people’s feelings, and 2) I want to make sure other people are taken care of. I will say “yes” to everything and then I feel really resentful. That is so not fair to the person I say “yes” to. It’s not their fault I said “yes” to a million other things as well.
We kind of have to own it and know that if we are going to say “yes” it needs to be a really strong yes. Nathalie and I have a mentor, Marie Forleo. We were in the mastermind with her and she is always telling us to get on the no train. When you get on the no train it makes life so much easier because you don’t feel stretched in so many directions. Do you agree?
Nathalie: Absolutely! I would also say that what you said is totally spot on when you say “yes” and you don’t really mean it. Or, you say “yes” and then something else comes up and it doesn’t quite work anymore. That becomes kind of a mess.
What that means is you made a commitment but you are no longer “in” it. I really recommend if that is the situation you are in to address the situation with the person head on. Tell them “hey, I committed to this but I can’t do this.” Or, if you still have to totally just get through it that’s okay too. But at least be aware that creating messes depletes your energy and you don’t want to get there.
Amy: I love that, it depletes your energy. And that’s the last thing we need when we are trying to grow a business. That reminds me, this goes into what we just talked about. We are talking about saying “no” and when you say “yes” really mean it and make it part of all of the projects you are working on.
You talk a lot about finding deeper meaning of your business and using that as a guide to growth. People don’t talk about this a lot. I am really glad you go there. Can you spell out a little more about what that deeper meaning really is? Is it all about what you feel your mission truly is as a businessperson? What do you mean when you are talking about the deeper meaning in your business.
Nathalie: There are a couple of things that come up for me around that. The main thing for me is definitely compassion and connecting with my audience and how I am actually helping them. To me that is kind of co-creating whatever offerings I am creating or free content I am putting out.
It is just kind of being able to put myself in their shoes and understand where they are coming from and what their struggles and challenges are and having compassion and empathy for them and saying I know where they are, I have been there (most of the time I have because I have been on a similar path), and I can help them get out of that path or to the next level.
To me, that is a really big piece of it. I think sometimes online we get so caught up in the logistics and analytics and the conversion rate and opt-in rate that we forget there is a human being on the other side of the screen that has their own heartbeat, hopes and dreams, and goals.
When I remember that as I am sending an email, I am not sending an email to my list, I am actually sending an email to all of these incredible human beings. To me, that is the first one. Then the deeper meaning of a business is going to be individually based.
Why you started this business and what you are really passionate about changing in the world really comes in here. For me, I am really passionate about changing the way women approach work and that could be, if you are a freelancer or business owner, there are so many opportunities to be ambitious in your own way whether you are a mom or a younger person or older person who is reentering the work force.
There are so many opportunities because of the internet so that’s a really big part of what I do and why I do it.
Amy: Awesome. It comes out in everything you do, Nathalie. It is very, very clear that you do care there is a living, breathing human being on the other side of the email and that you are going to do everything you can to support them. I just want to give you a shout out that is very clear in all you do.
Nathalie: Thank you.
Amy: That’s so true. Speaking of doing amazing things. One thing you do well is you are very polite. You even have a polite pop-up tool for websites. We will get into that in a moment. But the thing is, you are very polite. You are so good to people. You just love on them incredibly.
You are also not afraid to ask for what you want as a businesswoman either. I think a lot of people that are moving forward in their business think they will get to the day where they don’t have to ask anymore. They feel they won’t need to ask for new clients or new sales. When they do they feel they are on the staircase again where you say, “don’t worry,” it’s that spiral staircase and it is normal.
Could you give us some practical tips on how to ask in a way that feels good to you and gets you the results you want?
Nathalie: People ask me that all of the time. They ask if these opportunities just show up on my doorstep. For the most part they don’t. For the most part it is me asking what I want. For example, being featured in Forbes, I really wanted to write for Forbes. How did I do that? I just looked up how to write for Forbes and found editors to reach out to.
I looked at some of my friends who had done it and saw they were publishing through a specific route so I wrote and email with a pitch and said the topic I wanted to write about and included the bullet points I would include in the article. They said, “yes, let’s do it” so I sent the full article.
I do think you have to remember the other person. For example, if you are pitching yourself, whether it is for a speaking gig or for a podcast or anything in the media you have to question what the other person is looking for. A lot of times they are looking for content. They are looking for experts. They are looking for people to feature.
You are actually doing them a service to tell them you have a great piece of content they can use or that you would like to be on their show and “here is the topic I would be able to cover.” I do think there is a way to make it win-win so that it isn’t just self serving and being like, “hey, feature me!” It can totally be useful for them on their platform too.
Amy: I think you are really good at being resourceful. I bet there is rarely a time that you feel “we can’t do that” or “that’s not going to work.” I’m going to guess that you are always looking for an angle in order to make something work.
Nathalie: Absolutely! Sometimes it is also about working on your own stuff until you feel confident. When our software first came out we worked on a free version. Before we even sold it or wanted to approach anybody to be an affiliate for it we wanted to make a really awesome free version of PopupAlly to get people to using it.
We worked on that internally. We released it for free. We got tens of thousands of downloads. At that point we realized, obviously, it was good. Then it was easier to say, “yes, let’s approach affiliates” and to get people to write about it and to spread the word.
Sometimes it is about getting something that is really good quality before you fully go out there with it.
Amy: Let’s talk about some of the software you have. There are a few things going on. I want you to tell people what you have created and why you did it because these tools are awesome.
Nathalie: When I was doing web design I realized people want customized, beautiful things for their website. The only downside is that you tend to have to be a developer to really customize everything the way you want it to look – or hire one, and that limits how quickly you can do things.
My business was growing really quickly and my husband was working as a management consultant and I said, “Honey, you really should quit your job.” I was kind of making more money than he was and he was working really hard. I knew he could take some time off and then join me in my company. It took some convincing but that was what he did.
He is actually an amazing developer and he had never developed anything for the web.
Amy: What?? You two are two peas in a pod. That is perfect.
Nathalie: Yeah. I taught him everything I knew about the web and he obviously took it much further. He developed PopupAlly, the first plugin that we released. It is a polite popup, like you said.
I love that it is really customizable design wise. There are some templates built in but you can also design anything you want from scratch without knowing how to code. So that was really our first foray into the software world.
Amy: Timeout. So why do you call it a polite popup?
Nathalie: There are a couple of features that make it extra polite. The first one is exit intent. That basically means the popup will show up when it looks like somebody is about to leave your website. So if it looks like they are about to hit the back button or the little X then it will show up. It can capture people before they leave but you won’t interrupt them while they are actually reading or watching something.
Amy: Nice.
Nathalie: Then, the other feature that no other popup has is the ability to know when somebody clicked a link from your own email or your newsletter. A lot of times people who are already subscribed keep seeing your popup because they are on their phone or computer. We realize they are coming from our newsletter and don’t need to show them the popup again. So that is one of our most polite features that people love.
Amy: That is really cool. What else have you guys created?
Nathalie: Since then we do a lot of on-line courses. I had looked at some of the other platforms that are out there for creating courses. They were good but I had a vision for what I wanted so we created AccessAlly. It is actually just for Infusionsoft but we are building an Ontraport version and other integrations so it is coming soon.
Basically, we brought in all of the features and functionality that we wanted into a beautiful design interface. A lot of times if you buy an online course you have to log into a lot of different areas but we wanted to have all of our courses in one place.
We also built it so that if you have access to it you can just go to it from your dashboard. But if you don’t you will see it grade out and you can buy it right away. That actually increased some of our natural cross selling between our products.
Amy: I bet!
Nathalie: It’s a very non-salesy way to do it. It is curiosity based and is nice.
We also built in these cool gamifications. We have video bookmarks so that if you have a video that is half an hour long or an hour long and you have watched it but want to go back to one part but you can’t remember what part of the video it is, we have video checkmark bookmarks that you can go back to and it will start playing your video at the right spot.
Amy: Oh, that’s a good one. I bet so many people would love that feature.
Nathalie: Absolutely. You can also tract your progress. Once you finish a module you can unlock the next module or have it timed so it releases once a week or whenever. We have also brought in a lot of the annoying things that you sometimes have to deal with as business owners.
We have the payment information so that if people need to update their credit cards they can do that right in that area. If they want to grab an affiliate link of ours they can do it in that area and see how many sales they have made. It is all in one login area. That is just kind of amazing.
Amy: It is because I do a lot of affiliate marketing and clicking here and going there and trying to figure that out or this out is very frustrating at times. I love that you have kind of brought everything under one roof. That is awesome.
Nathalie: The way we are thinking about it, and I kind of see it as the future, the membership area becomes almost like a full website and people want to spend as much time there as they do on your main site. That is kind of what we are building towards and kind of what the AccessAlly concept is.
Amy: That’s so very smart. So you have the PopupAlly and this software you just told us about. Do you have anything else yet? I bet some things are brewing.
Nathalie: We are working on something called LaunchAlly. That will help people run their launch campaigns whether they are live launches or evergreen launches. Let’s say you have three pre-launch videos and a webinar happening, and a sales page with an early bird. You can have a countdown for those things and unlock them automatically on a timer based on when a person opts in or, if it is a live launch, on specific dates.
We are really excited about that to be able to create that kind of experience in a really easy way so that people don’t have to be developers and don’t need to hire tons of teams to help them.
Amy: Oh my gosh! That one is going to be so very valuable to so many people. Many people want to launch but there are so many pieces involved. If you are able to bring them all together this is fantastic!
I will tell everyone listening now that one of the greatest things about Nathalie, since I have known her for so long, is systems and processes run though her blood. You are really good to see where things fit together, how the flow will go, and how to make it so much easier. I feel that is how you have always run your business.
I have seen your business soar over the last few years at the most amazing speed ever. I know it’s because of the skill set you have about bringing things together in a seamless way. I think that skill has made its way into everything you have built.
I’m excited for people to check that out. Where can they go to get some more information about the popup and all of the other stuff you are working on?
Nathalie: They can go to http://ambitionally.com and you will see the products page and the blog with tons of tips on creating great popups and increasing conversions and all of the stuff that we like to talk about.
Amy: Cool. I will link to it in the show notes at http://amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/67. One more thing, you also have a podcast. What do you talk about on your podcast?
Nathalie: My podcast is Off the Charts. It is a business podcast. It is really short, five to ten minute, audio clips of very specific things. For example, Learning How to Say No Without Feeling Guilty is really quick and easy to digest. I also have one about the live events we have had and how we have organized them.
We have had some about my husband and I working together and making that work. We go into all different topics about how we run our business and how we can use some of our lessons and hopefully trial and error so that you don’t have to go through some of that.
Amy: I like how it is short and sweet and really good snippets to learn from. That is good stuff. Definitely go check out Off the Charts podcast and then AmbitionAlly as well.
Nathalie, thanks so much for spending this time with me. I truly appreciate it.
Nathalie: Thanks so much for having me, Amy. This was so fun and I just love you and your people.
Amy: Likewise. I can’t wait to have you on again. I hope you have a wonderful week.
There you have it. I hope you have enjoyed this interview as much as I have. There are so many great key takeaways that I want you to think about in terms of narrowing your niche and what you are saying “yes” to that you wish you were saying “no” to and how you can change that.
The whole spiral staircase is such an interesting topic. We didn’t get into it as much as I wanted to so I am really excited that the free PDF of this podcast is the spiral staircase exercise. We talked about some of it but I wanted to give you the spiral staircase analogy that Nathalie talks about and why it’s so important for you to download the free giveaway.
Again, the free download is the spiral staircase exercise. You can get it at http:// amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/67download or you can text the phrase 67download to 33444.
Just to give you a hint, this is what Nathalie said about the spiral staircase, “What I love about this spiral staircase is that it allows you to set your goal or ideal direction (for most of us that means going up in an upward spiral) and then all you have to do is take the next step. You don’t need to see around the corner to know where you are going or if you are going in the right direction. You don’t need to have everything planned out to a T. You can just do it one step at a time and you know you are on your way.”
That is just a little hint of what you will discover in her free PDF giveaway at http:// amyporterdev.wpenginepowered.com/67download. Make sure to grab your free PDF giveaway so that you, too, can be in the right direction going up that spiral staircase not having to have it all figured out but still meeting your goals.
That sounds pretty nice, right? I can’t wait for you to download it and tell me what you think. Until we talk again next week, make it a wonderful week. I can’t wait to connect with you again soon. Bye for now.
