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The Side Hustle Show - Episode 627: From $30/hr to $300/hr: The Software Consulting Playbook
Episode Overview In this episode, Nick Loper discusses the "Piggyback Principle" in business with Kristi DaSilva, founder of DaSilvaLife.com. This principle emphasizes that filling existing demand is often easier than creating new demand from scratch. Kristi shares her journey from a virtual assistant to a successful software consultant, specializing in integrating tools like HoneyBook and ClickUp for businesses.
Key Concepts and Strategies
The Piggyback Principle
- Definition: Leveraging existing popular products or trends to accelerate business growth rather than starting from scratch.
- Application: Kristi used this principle to build her consulting business around software tools already in high demand.
SWAS (Software with a Service)
- Definition: Combining consulting or services with popular software to provide added value.
- Example: Kristi helps businesses set up and integrate HoneyBook and ClickUp into their workflows.
Building a Consulting Business
- Initial Steps: Kristi started as a virtual assistant during the pandemic, transitioning to a software consulting business after identifying niche opportunities with specific tools.
- Niche Down: Focusing on specific software (ClickUp and HoneyBook) allowed Kristi to charge higher rates and provide specialized services.
Kristi’s Journey
- Background: Began as a nanny and personal assistant in NYC, pivoting to virtual assistance when in-person work halted due to COVID-19.
- Training: Enrolled in "The Virtual Savvy" program, which taught her the foundations of virtual assistance.
- First Steps:
- Gained initial clients through personal connections and Facebook groups.
- Initially offered general administrative services before niching down to project management tools.
- Transition: Successfully transitioned from general VA work to specialized consulting, establishing her authority in the industry.
Client Acquisition Strategies
- Reach Out to Networks: Initially reached out to personal connections and leveraged Facebook groups to find clients.
- Educational Content: Built a YouTube channel to share knowledge about ClickUp and HoneyBook, driving traffic and generating leads.
- Engagement: Utilized visuals (like Loom videos) in Facebook groups to stand out and showcase expertise.
Marketing and Content Creation
- YouTube: Focused on long-tail keywords and problem-solving content that resonates with the target audience, leading to organic growth and sales.
- Instagram: Used to create engaging educational content, with a focus on agency growth and personal branding.
- Call to Action (CTA): Consistently included CTAs in videos and posts to guide viewers towards booking consultations or downloading resources.
Revenue Breakdown
- Consulting Services: Divided between ClickUp and HoneyBook consulting, each contributing about 30% of total revenue.
- Courses and Templates: Also accounting for approximately 30% of income.
- Affiliate Revenue: Contributed to the remaining 10%, primarily through software affiliate programs.
Future Goals
- Kristi aims to further develop her agency, increase her team’s efficiency, and launch new offers like the "ClickUp Agency Accelerator."
Key Takeaways
- Mindset Shift: Reframe thoughts around potential failure with "What if it does work?" to foster motivation and resilience.
- Niche Expertise: Becoming an expert in a specific area can lead to increased demand and higher pricing.
- Content Marketing: Consistent delivery of valuable content can establish authority and drive qualified leads.
Conclusion The episode highlights the importance of leveraging existing demand, focusing on niche expertise, and utilizing strategic marketing to build a successful consulting business. Kristi DaSilva's journey serves as an inspiring example of transformation and growth within the side hustle space.
Resources Mentioned
- DaSilvaLife.com
- HoneyBook
- ClickUp
- The Virtual Savvy
- YouTube and Instagram channels for education and engagement.
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This summary provides a structured overview of the episode's key discussions and strategies, offering readers actionable insights for their own side hustle journeys.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Let's be real. Nobody starts a business for the joy of calculating tax withholdings. That's where our partner Gusto comes in to take the stress out of payroll, benefits, and HR, so you can focus on why you started your business in the first place. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software built for small businesses. It's all-in-one, remote-friendly, and incredibly easy to use. So that means you can pay, hire, onboard, and support your team from anywhere. I'm talking about automatic payroll tax filing, simple direct deposits, health benefits, commuter benefits, workers' comp, 401k, you name it.
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1:16What's up? What's up? Nick Loper here. Welcome to the Side Hustle Show. We're part of the Entrepreneur Podcast Network because you're already an entrepreneur, even if right now your day job just happens to be your own. I've got an awesome case study for you today, one that combines a couple common strategies on the show to build a really strong business. Those strategies are number one, what we call SWAS, software with a service. This is offering help or consulting or guidance or templates that support a popular software product. We've seen lots of examples of that over the years. And number two is what we call the piggyback principle.
1:49My kids will tell you it's a lot easier to get a piggyback ride than to do all the walking yourself. The same is true in business and this strategy allows you to draft on the popularity of that software product to catch that rising tide, get better, faster results with less effort. And in this episode, we learn exactly how to do that in our niche. To help illustrate this is Christy DeSilva from DeSilvaLife.com. DeSilva Life helps small businesses set up and integrate two popular software tools, HoneyBook and ClickUp, into their workflow and operations, earning thousands of dollars per project along the way.
2:27Christy, welcome to the Side Hustle Show. Thank you so much for having me, Nick. I'm super excited to be here. Me as well. Stick around. We'll learn how Christy gets those customers from never having heard of her all the way down to paying customers and what that journey looks like. But this business kind of started in a unique way. So it's 2020. Christy is a nanny and personal assistant in New York City. And as you know, all of a sudden, all that in-person work suddenly gets grinding to a halt. And she's saying, well, I got to make some changes here. Take me back to that time period. My husband and I were both living and working in New York City in a teeny tiny apartment.
3:05So he was working from home remote. And my job was kind of on pause because it was in person. I was just keeping myself busy. And my sister-in-law introduced me to a program called The Virtual Savvy. And I know Abby Ashley has been on this show before. Thank you, Abby, for all your expertise. I would not be here without you today. So basically, my sister-in-law, Thais, was friends, personal friends with Abby. And she told me, she's like, listen, I don't even know what Abby totally does, but it's something with virtual assisting. And I know you're a personal assistant. So I bet there's some correlation there.
3:44You should check it out. And what really got me was the testimonials for the virtual savvy. I was like, if all these people can do it and they can replace their nine to five, they can work from home. I could do this too. Why couldn't I do it? So it was a huge leap of faith. I will say it was the biggest investment I had ever made on myself, kind of feeling like it was a gamble. Whenever you're investing, especially in the beginning of your business, you're like, totally, is this thing going to work. And so I ended up diving in headfirst. I'm like, you know what? No better time than the present.
4:17I'm literally not working. I can dedicate all my time to doing this course, giving it a shot. I totally felt nervous and embarrassed to tell people like, hey, I'm trying out this thing and I have no idea if it's going to work, but I'm going to go for it. Then the first 90 days I ended up replacing my New York City salary with virtual assisting work. Well, that's a really funny connection that I didn't know existed because we met through the 2X coaching program and I didn't know that it went back to Abby. She's been doing the virtual savvy for years and years. We can link up her previous episodes on the show.
4:55I think that's really exciting. So now starting out, are you niched down to these project management tools early on? You say like, or early on, I'll just take whatever clients I can get. I can help you with virtual admin type of tasks. Yeah. So I started in June of 2020 and I started everyone, like as you get into the online business world, as you guys know, there are like so many voices and opinions out there of like, you need to do this and you shouldn't do this. And so as I started like diving deeper, everyone was saying like niche down, niche down, niche down. And I was like, but I don't even know what I like to do yet.
5:27So I took some time and I did a little bit of everything. So I was just a virtual assistant. I did like admin, content creation, systems, all the things. And after about six months, I would say, before the end of the year was over, I decided, you know what, I don't want to do everything for everyone. And that's when I decided to invest in my first business coach, where our first session together, basically, she had me just like word vomit all the things that I loved about my job and did not love about my job. And we very quickly realized at the end of that session that what I was really passionate about was getting people organized.
6:11And the pathway to do that was through systems. So at this point for my clients, I had already set up my two favorite tools, ClickUp and HoneyBook. I've also set up different CRMs and project management tools for people, but I felt very strongly that these were the tools that I wanted to master. And at the time, I'll be honest with you, Nick, I actually didn't see many people in the online space, like just niching down into specific tools and being like pros. They had ClickUp Consulting at the time was a very small group of people. HoneyBook Pros wasn't even a thing. I was one of the first like 12 HoneyBook Pros.
6:54And so it felt like, again, this like leap of faith. Like starting is leap of faith, continuing, you're constantly having to believe in yourself. But then niching and taking such a drastic turn was definitely like a mindset thing of like, I feel like this is the right thing, but I hope that it pays off. And it feels risky because you're like, well, am I going to cut off all this other business that I'm, you know, perfectly qualified to do? I know I can get it done. I can deliver good results for clients. But I think there's some greener pastors over here. And it is challenging. And I like a couple of things that you almost have to go broad in a service like this early on to identify what really lights you up or where do you kind of have your special secret sauce that you can apply and then follow that path or keep pursuing that.
7:45And then the other thing is being on the earlier side. You don't need to be bleeding edge, but if you can be one of the first 12 people to offer this, obviously these are up and come tools now, but you know, maybe this was earlier days. And we saw the same example with Paul Miners doing this with Asana and PipeDrive, you know, in the world of software, a generation ago, you know, different iterations of these types of tools. But if you can be on the earlier side of that, start to create content around it, you can really carve out an interesting space for yourself. Before we do that, though, I think people will be curious because we kind of glossed out, hey, I replaced my income in 90 days.
8:20I'd be remiss if I didn't ask, how'd you get those first customers? There were two main ways that I got my first customers. The first, which feels even more intimidating and scary, is reaching out to your personal connections. And what also feels scary about this is because there are so many MLMs and pyramids out there that you're like, okay, are people going to think I'm a scam? But number one, if you're not a scammy person and you have, I'm reaching out to people that I actually have legitimate connections with. And so just reaching out to them being like, hey, I'm starting this new thing. It's basically just like a personal assistant, but I'm virtual.
8:58If you're interested or you know anyone else that is, feel free to reach out. And so I actually, my first client ever was a personal connection that had a garage door business. And he was my first client. Then a lot of the majority of my other clients getting started came from Facebook groups, which is really ironic because I'm now going back to that strategy for top of funnel, like starting to engage more in Facebook groups in terms of like answering questions. So I would go into Facebook groups. Abby has one that's the virtual savvies and it's a free public Facebook group where like people are literally like I'm searching for a virtual assistant.
9:40So yes, that's awesome because people are literally searching for it. But then you also have to figure out how to make yourself stand out. So there's a lot of competition in there. And then the third way is really just starting having a marketing, a solid marketing strategy and plan from the beginning. And so I would say those were the three main ways. Obviously, the marketing strategy because I was brand new. I'll never forget the day I started to solve a life, my Instagram with zero followers. And it was just something that I had to flex that muscle in practice. And eventually I started becoming a name in the industry in virtual assisting and then eventually in systems and HoneyBook and ClickUp.
10:22Okay. Yeah. Trying to put yourself out there and it's kind of intimidating because at that stage, I feel like I'm personally committed to doing this thing, but it's still intimidating to start to spread the word, tell other people about it. And even if it's not a direct connection, you're trying to plant the seed in your network's mind that this is what you do now, Like your previous identity about what I did for work, you set that aside and say, well, now I need, if I need virtual assistant support, you know, Christy is my person. And maybe I don't need it, but maybe my network's network needs it.
10:52Like, oh, somebody else I'm talking to. Oh, I know somebody. I ought to connect you with Christy. And we've seen that play out where it's like, you know, because it's kind of like to your MLM point. Like, yeah, it kind of feels a little skeezy trying to sell directly to your immediate network. but it's more just occupying a little bit of mindshare and saying like, oh, if I need somebody for web design, or if I need somebody to, you know, wash windows, it's like, well, who do you know, right? It's kind of like this, how the word of mouth can start to spread. So now we're itching down. We're doing the software with the service.
11:23Hey, we're going to be your ClickUp specialist. We're going to be your HoneyBook specialist. What happens there? Like, how do you kind of make that transition or start to get customers in that space. Because the other benefit to this too is, well, now instead of just being general admin, I don't know, maybe you're at 25, 30 bucks an hour, all of a sudden by being really specialized, you can command a lot better rates too. Yeah, a hundred percent. And I won't sugarcoat it, Nick, that transition, although I knew it was the right one, it felt like so difficult in the time because like you mentioned before, I had really good relationships with my current clients.
12:04So it honestly felt like it was a breakup when I was telling them that I was moving in a different direction. Now, every single client, because they're amazing people, were so supportive of me and have sent so much business my way as well since that transition. But there definitely was a dip in income as I was making that transition. Obviously, I look back now and the ROI is so much greater. And you're right, you can really expand your services and your offerings. And I know we'll get into that in a little bit about like where we are now and our different income streams. But aside from it being a mindset block of like, you know, are people going to resonate with me now because they loved following my VA journey, but also then having that a lot of people don't talk about the internal battle of when you transition and people still know you as an awesome VA and they're in your DMs being like, hey, I know you used to do this.
13:04I have a client who really needs it. Will you still do it? And when you're in that moment of being like, I don't want to say no, but also I'm trying to go in this new direction. It's hard. As a people pleaser, especially, it's really hard. And so I had to stand my ground and be like, no, this is the direction I'm going in. And so basically how I started was really just becoming a pro at these tools. And I started my rates a lot lower than other people may have been charging because I'm like, I'm not like a top tier expert yet, but I know that I know a lot more about these products than the people that I'm serving and these softwares than the people that I'm serving.
13:46And so I was still able to charge more technically hourly, except a lot of our stuff is flat right now. For example, yeah, making about 30 to 40 bucks an hour as a VA, where now I charge$300 an hour for a strategy session. Like so crazy, that jump. But now being an expert in this for four years, it's really cool to see where we've been able to go. That's worth pausing on. Like that's the power of niching down and becoming an expert on the thing. More with Christy in just a moment, including the free marketing channel that drives the majority of quality leads today. Right after this. Whether you're a seasoned business or you're experiencing your very first Black Friday, Cyber Monday, you need a platform that can handle the rush.
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17:09Let me do a ClickUp build for you. All I had to do was start proving that I knew a lot about these softwares. And then people would trust me and be like, okay, I just learned five things from you by scrolling on your Instagram. Now can you just do this thing for me? And so I started out with a lot of like solopreneurs and smaller businesses setting up their ClickUps, getting a lot of experience. And then eventually it just started getting to bigger and bigger and bigger agencies and companies. There's almost a built-in demand. You open up Notion, you open up Asana, you open up ClickUp. And it's like, I know this is going to be super powerful, but it's kind of like blank.
17:46And I don't know what to do with this. And so then you naturally go to YouTube or like, you know, how to set this up for a content business, how to set this up for an agency business. And you might find educational content like Christie's. So it sounds like that was the initial play there where we just kind of do tutorial demo type of content. Do you have an example of something that hit early on? Yeah. So actually we decided to launch a YouTube channel and that was a huge turning point for DL because YouTube is obviously long form video content and people are extremely problem aware. Like they're like, how do I do this with ClickUp?
18:26How do I do this with HoneyBook? And so our first YouTube video that ever took off, that's still one of our highest ranking, is five ClickUp dashboards that will change your business. It was cool to see like, because the first few videos were like, here's how we can help you. What's the difference between a CRM and a project management tool? You know, beginner's guide to HoneyBook and ClickUp, which those still do well as well. But then the more specific we started to get with it, like, okay, these five ClickUp dashboards that will change your business, even ones like specific ClickUp automations or how to create a content calendar in ClickUp or things like that, how to run your agency in HoneyBook.
19:08Those are things that perform really well because people are searching for that exact thing. Yeah. And once they find you, this person is, is the answer to my exact search query. They're the answer to my prayers. And so they watch your thing, you build trust, and eventually they come and hire you. They say, well, you're kind of giving them the do-it-yourself version, but then maybe it's still complicated enough where you're like, ah, maybe it's worthwhile to just hire Christy and her team. Yep. A hundred percent. And it's so funny. We get the majority of our leads from YouTube. And I will say like probably 80 % of the time people come on, they're like, oh my gosh, it's so nice to meet you.
19:48I've been subscribed to your channels for like two or three years. And they feel like they already know me, even though I have no idea who they are yet. It's funny because it's a huge thing in sales is that like no like and trust factor. And we already solved that piece before we even ever get on a sales call. Yeah. You know, you're showing your face, your voice. Yeah. I build a lot of trust that way. Deciding what type of content to make, any sort of like keyword research tools or search volume that goes into it. I'm just looking at like broad Google searches, you know, 400 ,000 monthly searches for ClickUp and then 60 ,000 for HoneyBook.
20:28And so there's some decent like top level search volume. But then I imagine it kind of goes into that long tail for like how to run your agency in HoneyBook, like more specific type of searches. We actually really love vidIQ. We were using TubeBuddy for a while and then we started getting into vidIQ. They have some really cool things with like AI and their platform is a bit more robust, I feel. And so we look at our channel and we do quarterly content planning. We do yearly at a high level and then we do quarterly. And we try to do like themed content, like themed months. And now we're starting to get into like different series.
21:07And we'll look at what performed best on our channels or like what's ranking highest. Like for example, our ClickUp dashboards video was ranking highest for like a long time. Our how to use HoneyBook and ClickUp like yearly videos, like in 2024, those always do really well as well. So we're like, okay, we'll always do those in the beginning of the year. But we'll look back at our previous content. what's highly ranking, knowing people want more of that. And then we'll really just start doing long tail keyword research in vidIQ, you know, kind of going down a rabbit hole of like, okay, how are these ranking in terms of search volume and things like that?
21:48Is there a minimum search volume that is interesting to you or worthwhile to make the video about? It's more like how it scores in vidIQ. I think we're looking over like a 60 or 70 ranking. Which is a combination of volume and competitiveness. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And so we also, speaking of competitiveness, we'll definitely do competitor research as well, because we have like a few competitors. We're very niche, but we absolutely have competitors. And so we'll look at their channels, what's ranking high on their channels. And by no means do we ever just copy their video, but we'll be like, okay, cool.
22:28They did something on this specific topic. How can we do something similar, but have our own spin? And so we'll do that research as well. No, that makes sense. Yeah. And this is, you know, I probably have talked about this before, but I would come up with this content idea and it would be something super broad, like, you know, ways to make money on the internet or something. And then of course, Google that and well, shoot, there's already a dozen people have already written this article. I guess I better go back to the drawing board and come up with another topic. No, no, no, no, no. That's still viable.
22:59You can still get traffic and eyeballs and visitors and customers from this. You just have to put your own unique spin on it. You got to make something that's different and better than what's already out there. And that was a little bit of a shift here. And it sounds like the same thing. Okay, we can look at the competitor channels. We can see what's working for them and say, okay. And just trying to reverse engineer that. And I've followed the same people doing like a software review or tutorial type of videos, like for fill in the blanks. I was like, well, I don't use that tool, so I can't make that one.
23:30But I could do the same thing for this app or this software. It's like, here's a template that clearly worked and kind of fill in the blanks. Exactly. We also will absolutely use AI. So like ChatGPT, when we're content planning, we'll be like, we're working on a series for ClickUp for Agencies. help us grab some like highly SEO ranking topics for these videos. And then it'll spit out a bunch of things. Then we know our ideal client more than anyone. So we can guide it in the right direction, but we'll also just like use it to ideate and get inspiration from as well as super helpful. Do you feel the need to publish consistently or is like, look, we got this stuff out there.
24:10It's evergreen. We've got a consistent lead flow or do you have to keep kind of feeding the machine? Right now, we feel like it's pertinent to keep feeding the machine just so we're like constantly ranking. I mean, we have some videos that are like upwards of like 40 ,000, 50 ,000 views. So those are still bringing in us like warm leads and like hot traffic. Yeah. But what we're seeing now is that we niched into systems and HoneyBook and ClickUp, But we're actually niching a little bit further in the recent months into seven to eight figure agencies. So we have a lot of really good content out there that's serving the broad audience of people looking for ClickUp and HoneyBook, how to get started, things like that.
24:54But now we really want to start focusing our content on seven to eight figure agencies and where they're having their specific troubles and hurdles in their business. and then relating it to, okay, you're having this issue, then how do we solve that with HoneyBook, with ClickUp? And so I think that's where we could still be getting leads from YouTube, even if we stopped our content right now, our content machine, but I think we wanna start tailoring it more to the ideal client that we wanna bring in. And so we wanna start feeding that machine. Yeah, it would be a different, the existing content will still get your business, but it's not necessarily the client base or the target customer that you want to be going after or going forward, if I'm hearing that right.
25:39Exactly. And that's something we've even been working with our marketing agency that we've been partnered with for like over three years is she's like, okay, now that we're, you know, serving this new market and this new ideal client, we have to go deeper. Like we have a lot of really good, like broad topics on our YouTube, but now it's time to like dive deeper into it, start using more strategies and more verbiage that those agencies will know exactly and what they want. Like even in terms of marketing, instead of being like, you know, elevate your client experience with HoneyBook, it'll be like increase your sales conversion from 30 to 55 % by optimizing your client flow in HoneyBook.
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26:22A lot more specific, which I feel like agencies will relate to that content more. Yeah. Well, I know you've got the case studies and testimonials to prove it too. Exactly. Yeah. Here's what we're able to do. A couple things that I wanted to highlight there. Hey, you know, the best performing videos, 40 to 50 ,000 views. We did an episode on like YouTube automation and AI. It's like you really had to hit the viral lottery, where it's like hundreds of thousands or millions of views to make this pay for itself. and the whole model was like, you know, I recognize that a lot of these aren't going to hit, but the one or two that does, it's going to, you know, pay for all the production costs on everything else.
26:59And it's still going to turn a profit. You don't need to go viral in this case because the traffic is so well qualified. Nobody's going to watch, you know, how to run your agency in HoneyBook if they're not trying to figure out how to run their agency in HoneyBook. It's like, it's a completely different YouTube ballgame where, you know, very, very well qualified viewership. The second thing that stood out was, okay, now we want to niche down to these seven, eight figure agencies. Obviously, they're bringing in tons of revenue. So they have more, hopefully, disposable income to spend on a service like DeSilva Life.
27:31And also, as you get better at serving those guys, like the same issues and problems probably crop up over and over again. So it almost, I imagine it becomes faster to deliver the service than it would if you're you know, serving, you know, every type of different business customer or small business solopreneur type of person. So it's like not only command better rates, but you can deliver it faster. So the margins improve. But I want to talk about this, this transition or any, you know, specific scripting or language that you found effective to transition from viewer to customer, like, hey, we just helped you learn how to do this.
28:09If you want to set up a free consulting they call it? What's the progression from a viewer to a lead to a prospect to a customer? We have a lot of different offers in our offer suite. We have our one-on-one consulting services, which is obviously the highest top tier, all the way down to courses. Then we have products and templates. And then we have freebies, on-demand webinars, things like that. So what we have been doing in the past, and I'll be honest about what we're kind of testing and trialing now, is we were told that we should always have like kind of this YouTube like North Star of a call to action.
28:52Like every video, you're sending them towards a specific call to action. So for a while, we were always just promoting our on-demand webinar because then through that, you know, evergreen funnel, then we could be funneling them down to our courses. But now with this new ITA, we're really just focusing more on that call to action being like, okay, so I hope that video was helpful and you learned a little bit about how to manage your employees and freelancers and ClickUp. We've helped hundreds of agencies do this and optimize their agency operations. So if you're ready to do that, let's grab a call and talk about how we can help you.
29:35And so it's more so like opening the door. And then in our description, we have like, contact us here to work one-on-one. And then we also have like free resources and things to get them on our email list as well. So we're pointing them to the description so that if they're ready to like book a call with us, they can, but we definitely want to get them opted into our free resources as well to get them on our list and continue to nurture them. Okay. So one quick definition, ITA is ideal target audience. Yep. Okay. Initially it was like, Hey, let's go, go check out this evergreen webinar and follow whatever, you know, choose your own webinar structure that leads to clients in sales.
30:19But now there's a shift to maybe our ideal target audience doesn't want to watch an hour long webinar. They just want to get cut to the chase. Like, can you help me or not? And so now you can book a call directly or you can download the lead magnet, opt in. What are the effective lead magnets for you today? We're going through currently like a revamp of our website and everything like that. And so we'll probably be shifting those down a little bit, but we have our free webinars, both for ClickUp and HoneyBook. And then we have a CRM toolkit for HoneyBook. And then we have the ClickUp 101 guide and our simple ClickUp system, which is a free ClickUp template.
31:03So over time, since we've had these rubies out for a while, I think our ClickUp 101 guide is still the highest ranking, but our simple ClickUp system, because it's a free template is definitely probably getting the most traction on a monthly basis. Okay. It sounds like, you know, if they're, you know, a million or$10 million agency, the simple system may not be applicable. It may. Yeah. So that's where this new niche and, you know, target audience we're going towards, we really have to evaluate everything and be like, okay, maybe they don't need that. Maybe they need a team handbook or something different that's pointing them in the direction of ClickUp.
31:47And the whole thing is with this, it gets very strategic because we don't want to overwhelm them. But their systems, what we've figured is simple systems are great for smaller businesses, solopreneurs, et cetera. But agencies, these like seven to eight figure agencies, they need something that's robust, but easy to use. And so that's a very fine line that we're walking of like, how do we not overwhelm them with you could do this and you can do this and you can do this and be like, but we'll guide you in the direction. It shouldn't feel hard. It should be easy to adopt. Do you find that customers are coming in with a project management system or a CRM like already in place?
32:35Like are they already using these tools and they're like, there's got to be a better way? Or are they like, help us get organized? The business has grown so fast. We've got to figure out a better systemized way to manage everything. I would say about 75 % of our clients are already on the system. So they're on HoneyBook, on ClickUp. They come to us and they say, my systems are now the bottleneck. I know that I want to grow and scale this company, but the systems are going to break. A lot of people continue to expand. So can you help us make them scalable? And then about 25 % of people come in and they say, you know, we're doing everything on Google sheets or email or Slack or whatever it is.
33:16And we're ready to commit to ClickUp or HoneyBook. And we want a pro to help us set it up in the right way. So we're not fumbling our way through it. Got it. In the case of the lead magnet freebies, the ClickUp 101 guide, the simple templates. What does the email sequence look like after somebody opts in for that? Yeah. So then we'll put them through our welcome email sequence, which basically introduces them to our offers and our stack of services. So I think it's about six or seven emails. It goes through, you know, who we are as to solve a life. Then it goes through, you know, if you're interested in ClickUp, here are resources.
33:55If you're interested in HoneyBook, here are resources. And then at the very end, it goes through, okay, how does it look like for us to support you? Is it through our free content and subscribing to our YouTube channel? Is it through joining our system school and going through the DIY course? Or are you ready to invest and have us just do everything for you? And so that's kind of the journey that they go through now. I think in the future, as we're kind of fine tuning all of these freebies and sales funnels, we'll probably have certain freebies go towards like promoting the course and templates and certain freebies potentially then promoting like, let's get on a sales call type of thing.
34:40And do you ever lose sleep over what happens when ClickUp goes away and you've built this whole reputation and this content library around this. And then for whatever reason, the company gets bought, the tool gets shut down. I don't know. I could see that being the counterpoint to being like, well, I don't want to marry myself to this one tool because what happens if it doesn't exist anymore? I actually love this question, Nick, because we get it all the time. And even my husband has asked me this question in the past. Are we making the right decision by just niching into one specific thing? And it's actually not about the tool itself and the software.
35:23It's about the system and the framework that we've created to set up the workflows in this specific tool. So we actually have a framework that we've developed over the last four years that if ClickUp shut down today, we could take all of that and implement a brand new tool. Now, would it take a lot of time and energy and probably tears? Yes. But my job wouldn't be obsolete. Like I have all of that information that we can just easily implement in a new tool. Okay. That makes sense. Well, I guess the solution is the same, but the tool that you use to implement it may be different and you can apply the same workflows to something else.
36:07Yes, a painful transition period, but it doesn't have to be like, well, I guess that's it. It's game over. Anything else on the YouTube front here from driving traffic and views to generating leads and customers? Anything else that we missed? Something that is super important about these is you want to know where you're leading these people and you want to have that idea of where they're going and how to capture them. So this is where systems come into play of having yourself organized in the back end, because if you start taking off on YouTube, even if you have like a small following, which we still have, I think, only about like 6 ,000 subscribers, but it's a very strong community of people that are very interested in just what we have.
36:54you want to make sure that you have a place to capture those leads and nurture them and direct them in a specific direction so i would say just making sure like for example we use active campaign to store all of our leads in terms of like freebies and welcome email sequence and nurturing and then we use honey book as our crm for people that are like i'm ready to hop on a sales call with you i know that you're the person that can help me implement this tool and so then we have a place for them to go, book a call, submit their information. So I think that's a huge key piece is like a lot of people, when you're just getting started with a new marketing channel, you're so focused on what does that process look like?
37:36And how am I going to make that content and go viral and do all these things? But you want to make sure that your backend is actually set up to gather those contacts, nurture them, and then handle that growth when it comes. Right. Because you don't need to go viral. If you get a hundred well-qualified people watching this thing, certain percentage of people are going to reach out. But having that consistent call to action and having something in place to guide those prospects into being customers has got to be thought through. This is a weak point of mine. I like making YouTube videos. I like making that content.
38:11But at the end of the video, it's like, subscribe for more money-making ideas. There's not a really concerted effort. Go check out the Evergreen webinar on how not a 10x your side hustle or something. But being upfront and introducing yourself, hey, we are consultant specialists on this topic. And today we're going to cover XYZ. And then at the end, you can also say, hey, if you want to learn more, go download the template. If you want to learn more, hey, let's book a call. Just being consistent, whatever the stat is. People need to be hit in the head with the same message five, six, seven times before they're like, I should really take them up on that and go one step deeper.
38:48You always want to have a call to action on top of being like, like, and subscribe, put on your alerts, like a hundred percent. We say that like two to three times a video, but on top of that, at the very end, it's like, what are their next steps? People need to be guided in the right direction. And so even if that is a, you know, if you want help implementing this in a custom way and you're ready to X, Y, Z, the link to book a call with us is in the description. Gotcha. And that goes through HoneyBook to schedule that stuff? Yep. Okay. More with Christy in just a moment, including the other marketing channels that are driving sales and the different pieces of the DeSilva Life revenue pie right after this.
39:31You mentioned going back to the Facebook well for potential clients. This is like groups of business owners. This is groups specific to these software tools. What's going on there? Yeah. So right now it's specific to the software tools. So what we just started implementing again is going back into the ClickUppers Facebook group and going and just answering people's questions. No call to action like, hey, book a call with me. It's literally just me going in there. I'm looking at their question. I'm creating a 60 second loom video that solves their problem. And they're getting to know me as that person solving their problem.
40:09And so, you know, we literally just started this last week again, and we've already had two people reach out and be like, hey, can I grab a one-on-one call with you? Do you do this like in a custom way? And it's crazy to see how it works where if you go in with the mindset of like, I'm just going to go help people and build that connection with them, you see that return right away. And it's interesting because it's like, yes, I'm answering this one person's question. And it feels like it's really worthwhile to take the time to do that. But everybody else in the group has the same access, the ability to see that answer.
40:45And it's like, it seems like it's one to one, but it's really one to many. And even if it's not the original poster that ends up reaching out, it's like, hey, I saw your answer, you know. So I think that one potentially more scalable than it initially seems. And that is actually what happened with one of the two people that reached out. someone messaged me. I had a message request and they were like, Hey, I saw your Loom video in the ClickUppers group. Do you do this in a custom way? We're looking for someone to optimize our ClickUp. This person was not the person that asked that question. And they just watched my Loom video.
41:17And the thing is too, is what I found in the ClickUppers group, giving away my little secret here, I went in there and realized that everyone, you can absolutely see people promoting their services, which people should be. But in the responses to someone's question, everyone is giving written or screenshot feedback. I'm like, how can I be different and go the extra mile? I'm going to record a 60 second Loom video. And I've already seen that pay off because I'm a visual learner, especially with things like software. I need to see someone do it. For some reason, the text doesn't translate to my brain as quickly.
41:57And so I'm like, let's see if this works. And so far it's been working. So far so good. All right. So we've got YouTube, we've got the Facebook, and then you mentioned Instagram as well. It looks like we're a little over 5 ,000 followers on Instagram. So this is interesting where, you know, I think of Instagram as like pretty pictures or kind of like a day in the life type of stuff, but it's like similar educational content over here. What's going on? What's working over there? We have been doing Instagram since day one, all the way back from the VA days. And it still really works for us. So Instagram, I feel like, is one of the tools that, to be honest, is the hardest to scale.
42:43Because I feel like they're always changing the algorithm. And like, oh, you need to post reels. Then everyone starts posting reels. And they're like, actually, we're doing carousels again. Like, post carousels. And so you have to kind of be in with the trends. but also at the same time, like if you do something that you're known for, you can keep doing that and just like, it's going to work. And so with Instagram, what I've been doing is just obviously educating and doing reels and carousels on different features of ClickUp and HoneyBook. And as I mentioned, going more into the agency route as well.
43:17But then we also have, you know, fun things that that shows my personality or team's personality and goes through our personal journey of scaling our agency as well. So I think that will also really resonate with our ideal client of like, we've been able to scale our agency and here's how we run our agency with these systems. And here's how you can do it too. Okay. Got it. Yeah. We got an example. It's like four things to automate in ClickUp is the carousel post. And there's no call to action in the graphics themselves. The call to action is in the captions in the description. You can drop a comment below or shoot me a DM if you're ready to take your efficiency to the next level.
43:56Let's chat about how we can make ClickUp work harder for you. And so for anybody who comments, is there like a manual outreach? Somebody on your team is trying to engage with these people. What does that look like? Yeah. So most of our call to actions for Instagram are using ManyChat, which is like amazing. I love this tool where you can comment a keyword and then it can reply back. So that definitely boosts the engagement on our Instagram. So at least once a week, we'll have the carousel or caption or whatever say, you know, comment teamwork and we'll send you this week's YouTube video. So then many chat will go ahead and be like, thanks for commenting teamwork.
44:37If you want to dive deeper into this topic, here's this week's YouTube video and it'll send them to them via DM. Got it. So that's your many chat. But definitely when there are ones that are like, if you're ready to take it to the next level, those will then they'll comment and then I'll reach out and then be like, hey, what are you struggling with? Let's chat about it. How can we help you? Tell me a little bit more about your company. So I would say probably 90 % of the call to actions are responded through ManyChat automatically. And then after that, the other 10 % would be me manually. And then another thing I'm considering with ManyChat too is having kind of like a follow-up sequence, maybe like a couple days later.
45:20Like, hey, did you check out the resource? Do you have any questions? And then kind of opening up that conversation again. Yeah, that's a cool way to do it without having to go in and reply to everybody manually. One thing that I think is interesting about Instagram today is you, and it could be good or bad depending on your perspective, but they seem to, if your target audience is people who are interested in productivity and systems, they don't need to be following you to get served up your content anymore. If it has been proven to be engaging to you, maybe a small subset of your followers, Instagram can push it out into the feed of other people it thinks are going to engage with it.
46:06And I think that's interesting for a small account to be able to grow your reach in that way. And it's seen half, probably two thirds of my feed. It's like stuff that people I don't follow, but it's like, well, shoot, they got me pegged. This is interesting. Yeah. It's like, oh, stop, stop, stop. Get out of here. I did not subscribe to this. right right i guess it gives hope to people with small followings in that yeah you don't necessarily need that early on if you can create engaging content on a specific topic people you know the the algorithm will tend to push that out a hundred percent and even like talking about small following like that is all vanity metrics you could have a hundred thousand dollars and be making like no money per month if it's all just vanity metrics and you're not pointing people in the right direction.
46:51Like you want to know how your content is converting, where these people are coming from and like where it's worth your time and effort. Even in my case, my money, because we're actually paying people to keep these systems and these marketing channels running. Don't get caught up in the small following thing because you could consider me having a small following of 5 ,000 on Instagram, about like 6 ,000 subscribers on YouTube. Do I wish I had a hundred thousand? then yeah, totally. But if I was still making the same amount of money and I'm not nurturing them, it doesn't matter at the end of the day.
47:25At the end of the day, it doesn't matter. On the revenue side, obviously, you've got the done for you consulting, the high ticket, you know, just hand over the keys. We'll build this all for you. And the prices are public on desilvalife.com, which I think is interesting just because, you know, always common to be like, we'll book a book a consultation. And, you know, I was like, well, shoot, if I have to ask, I probably can't afford it. So I like that it's upfront and just kind of pre-qualifies people in a way where it's like, okay, I'm not even going to get on the call if I can't afford that.
47:55But if you look at that and say, yeah, that's worth it to not have to do it myself. Sure. I think that's interesting. You've got some like digital product template stuff that's for sale. And then there's like an online course. Can you give me a sense of the revenue pie, like the breakdown between these different offerings? It gets a little like crazy because we have different services and offers. And then we have two totally separate softwares. And so we have our ClickUp services and we have our HoneyBook services. And then it breaks down for each of these. We have consulting one-on-one services, which are the highest ticket.
48:31Then we have our courses and our templates. So our ClickUp consulting is about, I would say like 30%. Our HoneyBook consulting revenue, like one-on-one is about 30%. Our courses and templates are about 30%. And then that other 10 % is things like affiliate revenue, guest speakings, partnerships, things like that. So it's a pretty even split between HoneyBook and ClickUp Consultings. That's being the biggest driver in revenue generation. Then our courses and templates. And then we have those kind of like other categories. Okay. Are you able to get reseller rights or affiliate partnerships with the software themselves or there's other tools that you're recommending to customers?
49:23Yeah. So we have our highest affiliate driver right now is HoneyBook. They have an amazing referral program. We can get up to like a$300 payout for different people that sign up. And then we have a affiliate partnership with ClickUp as well. And then other tools we recommend too, but that's like a much lower revenue generator, obviously, because a lot of our affiliate revenue also comes from YouTube, which is completely passive, which is awesome. Yeah. And I guess that, you know, if the majority of your clients are already using these tools, this is a little bit higher in the funnel, so to speak, where, you know, maybe it's, you know, broad level HoneyBook tutorial.
50:02It's HoneyBook versus competitor A, HoneyBook versus competitor B, like people who are trying to figure out, is this even right for me? And if it is, I sign up through our referral link. Exactly. What's a day in the life? Like, you know, it sounds like a lot of one-on-one consulting, a lot of client relationships. You mentioned having a team, like how much is it you doing this stuff? I'm obviously a very organized person. I'm an avid time blocker. So every day kind of has a life of its own, but my week is themed into time blocks. So Tuesday, Thursday are primarily call days, like client call days.
50:36And so on those client call days, I could have upwards of like seven, eight calls in one day, just like the whole day stacked. And those could be a mix of sales calls, kickoff calls, training calls, check-in calls, one-on-one consultations and strategy sessions. So those are about the mix. And it could be for ClickUp or HoneyBook. I don't really theme those days in terms of like, okay, Tuesdays is just ClickUp calls. Got it. Got it. Just HoneyBook. But I do section chunks of like, okay, from 10 to 12 will be just sales calls. And then from one to five will be just client calls, whether it's a check-in or a kickoff or something like that.
51:18Okay. Other days, like Wednesdays are my days where I do like deep work for clients. And then Monday, Fridays are really dedicated to team. So we have team calls, we're working on team initiatives, our quarterly initiatives for marketing and building our business, launching a new product, things like that. So does that answer your question? That's helpful to hear that some of it is passive. You know, client flow is relatively automated, relatively hands off. But there's a lot of hours that go into making this machine run. Yeah, 100%, especially right now. So we are an agency, but I'm still heavily involved in certain aspects of certain projects.
51:59Some services are really agency-fied and I need to spend maybe one or two hours total. And then other ones, I'm still more directly involved as we continue to grow those offerings and get me out of the driver's seat. Do you find the expert trap where customers see your face on the YouTube videos? They see you on Instagram. They expect it to be you and you say, well, I'm the CEO here. I'm the boss. I got, I got, I trained my people to handle this for you. Do you get any pushback on that? Oh, all the time. So not really from current clients because, and now let me say this too, for the HoneyBook side, it was really easy to agency-fy and streamline that service because I'm not an expert copywriter.
52:51I'm not an expert designer. And those are two huge things that come into these HoneyBook and client flow builds. So immediately when I brought in the team on that, and we kind of made that agency streamlined, it was really easy to sell that because I'm like, listen, I'm gonna do the strategy and map out your client flow. Then we have an amazing team behind us that's going to do the rest and make it all come to life. And they're like, awesome, cool. So I was immediately able to actually deliver a better product after making that service agency-fied. Now the ClickUp one is a little bit harder because it's so technical.
53:27It's like my brainchild in a way. But again, that really comes down to our clients. They think they want me, but they want my brain. They want my framework. And so that's what we translate to our clients. And as long as you translate that from the beginning of like, I'm still involved in this project right now anyway. I'm still involved in this project and we're going to take care of you. But here are the other two key players in this. and then you start having them answering questions and serving the clients, they all of a sudden are like, okay, everyone can help me here. It doesn't matter who's helping me.
54:05I know I'm going to get helped. Yeah, it makes sense. I mean, from the business owner standpoint, of course it makes sense. But from the client perspective, it's like, well, you know, I thought I was working with Christy. And so it's trying to make, you know, try and get yourself out of certain roles to create more content, to think higher level strategy, to do all this other stuff. We get asked that on sales calls all the time. They're like, okay, so who am I going to be working with? Is it you? And I'm like, I will be leading the project, but you'll also be working with our amazing team and I'll name them and talk about their roles.
54:38So right now, yes, I'll give them that comfort of I'm still involved. Eventually I won't be, but again, it shouldn't be an issue because it's going to be like, we've created this framework that works for hundreds of agencies. Now we're just giving you the key. And especially if you're serving agency clients, they got to understand, hey, this isn't a solo operation either. Yeah. Yep. Well, it's da Silva life.com. We'll link up the YouTube channel as well. We'll link up Instagram as well. What's next for you? Where do you want to take this thing? Next for us is I talked a lot about, you know, like our own agency is really day by day getting me more and more out of the driver's seat.
55:19And we're really working on building our offer suite. We have some solid offers now, but we're actually launching a new offer that we're super excited about called the ClickUp Agency Accelerator. So that's going into beta in the next month or so. And the more and more we get our agency growing, then I'm going to be able to have more time to dedicate to marketing and creating more educational content and stuff like that. So I'm excited for that. All right. So building out the office suite and getting out of kind of the client fulfillment stuff to focus on the higher level stuff. Exactly. Yep. That's the goal.
55:57Cool. Christy, this has been awesome. I'm taking a ton of notes, lots of resources mentioned that we can link up in the show notes as well. Let's wrap this thing up with your number one tip for Side desolation. I want to kind of share my mantra that I have stuck with for these past four years. It was in the beginning of taking that initial leap. And then I carry this through with me on the hard days, on the good days, in these pivotal moments of feeling like, oh my gosh, how am I going to get through this exact barrier in front of me? You always think like, well, what if it doesn't work? Well, I got into this point, but what if I can't go any farther?
56:34but I've been able to reframe that. And every time I think, what if it doesn't work? I then think, but what if it does? What is on the other side of that? What does that dream life look like? What does it look growing this business, being able to serve more people and support these amazing team members? And so if you're having one of those moments, like we all do, just think, what if it does work? And that's what really keeps me going. The important addition to that, because I love that we tend to focus a lot on the failure side. well, what if it doesn't work? Like, am I going to have to, you know, go sleep on a friend's couch?
57:07Am I going to have to go get another job? What if it doesn't work? Like, it's natural to focus on like the downside, right? If you minimize that downside risk, you're like, okay, worst case scenario is not going to be life threatening. What if it does work? And is that going to be a win? Like if I project out three, five years down the road, am I going to be materially better off? Am I going to be in a better place personally, financially? What if it does work? I think it's really important to ask. And we tend to focus on the negative side a little too much. So look at the upside as well and make sure that you're setting yourself up for those wins.
57:41We had Noah Kagan on the show. One of his criteria was like, could this be a million dollar business? If not, why am I even looking at it? Why is it even on the option list here? So that's the number one tip. What if it does work? Takeaways from me. Obviously, we're talking about following the demand, lots of search volume around these particular software tools. Could you find something that you're a relative expert in, could you become an expert in the thing and build that library of educational content, help people out on that and have that consistent call to action. It doesn't take a huge following.
58:14I think that's probably the inspirational part because anybody who's watching this is going to be a pretty well qualified lead. You knit yourself down and become that expert. You take inspiration from what's working in terms of the competitor's content, put your own unique spin on it, lots of inspiring stuff. If you're new to the show, you're wondering what to listen to next, I want to invite you to build a personalized playlist of the Side Hustle Show episodes most relevant to you and your specific situation and goals. All you got to do is go to hustle.show, answer a few short, multiple choice questions.
58:46You can do it on your phone. The little quiz will spit back out this cool curated playlist based on your answers that you can add to your device. You'll learn what works. You can go out and make some more money. That's hustle.show. We mentioned Abby Ashley on the podcast previously. We'll link up her episodes. And Paul Miner is another example of doing this with Asana and Pipedrive, very similar type of businesses. Hey, I'm an Asana consultant, and today we're going to learn how to do blah, blah, blah. Fantastic model. Feel free to blatantly rip this off and apply this to whatever tool, right?
59:15Like it is, the template is here. You know, it is for you to run with. So big thanks to Christy for sharing her insight. Big thanks to our sponsors for helping make this content free for everyone. You can hit up sidehustlenation.com slash deals for all the latest offers from our sponsors in one place. Thank you for supporting the advertisers that support the show. That is it for me. Thank you so much for tuning in. If you're finding value in the show, the greatest compliment is to share it with a friend. So fire off that text message. Hey, you should totally do this for, you know, fill in the blank software tool.
59:46Until next time, let's go out there and make something happen. And I'll catch you in the next edition of the Side Hustle Show. Hustle on.
From the publisher
This episode is all about making use of the Piggyback Principle — why it's easier to fill demand than to create it from scratch.
Just like how kids would rather get a piggyback ride than walk because it's easier.
The same is true in business — this strategy allows you to ride the wave of success software products are experiencing to catch that rising tide and get better, faster results with less work.
To help illustrate this, I connected with Kristi DaSilva from DaSilvaLife.com.
DaSilva Life helps small businesses build success by setting up and integrating two popular software tools, HoneyBook and ClickUp, into their workflow and operations.
This earns her thousands of dollars per project along the way.
Tune in to Episode 627 of The Side Hustle Show to learn:
how to use the Piggyback Principle to build on what's already popular
how to combine software with consulting or services to add value
how to guide your audience with clear calls to action in every piece of content
Full Show Notes: From $30/hr to $300/hr: The Software Consulting Playbook
New to the Show? Get your personalized money-making playlist here!
Sponsors:
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