[00:00:00] Jarrah Brailey
Dropping the ego and being like, yep, I'm a complete beginner here, and I'm embracing that you won't be like that forever if you can embrace it. My coaching with you has been the biggest gift that I've ever given myself. Now I'm at a point where I can make decisions on my own and really back myself in those decisions. I actually can read my numbers now. I have the gift that I can log into the spreadsheet that we've spent years building together and edit it myself, and that felt so unreachable as a goal for me a few years ago.
Intro
If we want to be able to tip the scales towards the favor of marginalized people. We need to understand the secrets to making money in small business. The more we talk about money and the secrets that usually stay at the Gulf. Club, the more likely we are to be able to make money. My mission is to get more money into the hands of good people, specifically good business people like you. This is Money Secrets, the place to learn about the money secrets of successful small business owners. Let's go. [00:01:00]
Acknowledgement of Country
This podcast episode was recorded on the lands of the WRI people of the KO Nation. I'd like to acknowledge them as the traditional owners and custodians of this land and water that I live, work, and play on. I'd like to pay respects to elders both past and present, and note that sovereignty has never been seeded. This always was and always will be. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander land.
Fi Johnston
Alright, well, welcome to the podcast Jarrah Braley. It's so great to have you.
Jarrah
Thank you for having me. I'm so excited to be here.
Fi
My pleasure. Jarrah, you and I have known each other for quite a while. I think we've been working together on and off for pretty much since the start of your, um, yeah. Business, which has been six or seven years now.
Jarrah
Almost, yeah, almost eight years. Seven and a half at the moment. Yeah.
Fi
Yeah. Incredible. So I'm gonna introduce you now and then I want you to tell me a little bit more about you and, [00:02:00] and what you do and who you are and, and why you're on the Money Secrets podcast. So, Jah. Jarrah Braley, who is the founder of Jam Packed Agency, has been obsessed with social media and digital marketing since the age of 10. Um, you wouldn't be able to do that now with the social media bands coming into place. Yeah. But let's, let's let that one slide. Um, but you've been obsessed with social media since long before it became your career, and what started as a creative outlet quickly turned into an expertise in organic social paid advertising and content. That actually generates results. We love that. She leads a team of incredible digital marketers working with global brands across the country. Jira is really passionate about product-based brands and her team have become known as the go-to paid ads specialists and content creators for growing e-commerce and product brands.
Tell me more. Jara.
Jarrah
Oh, what an intro. Love it. [00:03:00] Uh, yeah. So my relationship with social media, it started at a very young age. Uh, I think I got my first Facebook account when I was 10 behind my parents' back. And I just loved it so much. I became obsessed with it, which looking back I don't think was ideal. And I, my parents were. Yeah, concerned about it. I would often get my phone taken off me and, yeah, devices confiscated. 'cause it's just all I wanted to do was just be on social media. And then as I grew up, that kind of turned into all my friends would always reach out to me and be like, Hey, like what do you think of this photo from my Instagram?
Or what should I capture this? And what should I do this? And I, I would be the go-to person in my friend group in my, like with all my cousins in terms of what to post on social media. And I never thought that it would, could be a job. I never considered that at any, at any point during my high school journey. And it wasn't until I finished high school, I was saving to travel and I was working for a local glamping business in the [00:04:00] Blue Mountains where I grew up. And the business owner of the glamping company offered for me to run their social media for $10 a day because she could see that I loved it so much and yeah, it was a no brainer.
Absolutely. I was so excited to do that. And then I, that was when it was pretty easy to grow on Instagram organically, so I grew the account. Pretty big. And then I had more businesses reaching out to me saying, what are your services? And I thought, I don't have any services, so I'll just create a a website on Squarespace and start my own social media marketing.
And then within six months, I think I was still 19 at this point. It was my full-time job. I was full-time freelancing. I was only making. I think it was $700 a week or something, but I was stoked. Pretty good for a 19-year-old anyway. Yeah, yeah. I was stoked that. Mm-hmm. And then, yeah, within six, another six months, I hired my first team member and then we scaled and it kind of got to a point that we needed to rebrand because we were more of a team [00:05:00] then a freelancer. So we. Completely rebranded to Jam Packed Agency. And then since then, it's just been all about refining our service offerings and our systems and the types of clients we work with. And we've really gone from social media managers and paid ad specialists to an agency that really specializes in content production, ad creatives, social media management, content creation across multiple different platforms like TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, YouTube. And paid ads across Meta, Google and, and all the other platforms as well, so,
Fi
mm, I love it. Yeah. And so if I was a fly on the wall and I was seeing how you're all working, I know you don't necessarily all work in the same space, but tell me what does day-to-day look like at Jam Packed?
Jarrah
Yeah, so we are a 100% remote business, and we have been since day one. Before COVID times and before it was a normal thing, but in more recent years it has been, there's been a lot more in-person [00:06:00] stuff because content has become such a big part of our core service offering that often we are going out to our client locations or we are booking locations ourselves and going there to shoot content. So for example, this Friday, we've booked this incredible house in Dover Heights in Sydney, that the team comes through and we have briefs that we're working off all day and we're shooting in the house all day. We're using the bathroom, the bedroom, the kitchen for all different types of clients. And then we edit all of that content, put it into fortnightly content schedule. Tools for paid ads, uh, organic socials. Then we rotate those into your campaigns and your, your platforms. So yeah, we're, we're fully remote and we're slacking each other all day, but we actually do have quite a bit of in-person stuff now as well. I'd say we're doing at at least one shoot a week at this point.
Fi
Yeah, I absolutely love how you consider yourself to be a content house as well as a social media agency. And you know, I know a lot [00:07:00] about your business because I've been one of your coaches for a long time, but tell me like. Why do you think it makes sense to have content and the, the actual content creation and the strategy and the PA paid ads side all being handled in the same team? Because it's a little bit unusual, isn't it, to have content created in the same kind of place. Tell me about it.
Jarrah
I absolutely love that question 'cause it's something I'm really passionate about and something I really push forward as a unique selling point of ours. As an agency, I think it's really important to have it managed under one roof or to, to at least if it's managed by multiple teams. Have the feedback loop really tight within that circle, and everything changed for us a couple of years ago, or probably more than a couple of years ago now, when we started really niching into content production and content creation rather than social media management and having the clients send us the content because one, it meant that we had a [00:08:00] lot more control over. The strategy, it meant that we were able to conceptualize the content idea, then actually execute it and film it, and then edit it to perfection. Whereas when we've had clients in the past where we say, Hey, can you create this and then send it to us? It's okay, but it's never like, it would've been so good if they did X, Y, Z, and just things that we couldn't have done unless we were the ones shooting it. And often relying on the business owners who are being pulled in multiple different directions, they're like, okay, I've gotta film this video. Um, and that it's rushed, it's an afterthought. Or if it's managed by a team that you know, doesn't understand the depths of the platform or the purpose of the content, or even paid ads.
Yeah, it, it lacks that direction and that strategy and the specific things that make a really con, a really high converting piece of content or whatever the piece of content is trying to do, but also from a paid ads perspective, I think it's really important. That the feedback loop is as tight as [00:09:00] possible because say for example, we log in and we look at the last seven to 14 days of results and we can say, oh, amazing. This video that we did last week is performing really, really well. We need to create another three of that to continue that momentum and, and build a momentum with different hooks and different formats and, and that kind of thing. But if we, if we don't manage that in-house, it can be, you know, months that until we end up having that piece of content in there. Whereas if it's managed under one agency or one roof, we have the ability to go, okay, this is performing really well. Let's create something else like that this week. And then within, you know, a couple of weeks we have that rotated into the campaign and, and building off the momentum we've already created.
Fi
Mm. Yeah, I love it. I mean, it's a big, um, it's a barrier that I hear a lot of businesses trying to get over, which is they can't quite get their head around how they're gonna outsource their social media when they're imagining that they're still creating things. And then the social media team is kind of [00:10:00] taking that from there. And I just think it's an absolute no brainer to have the social media team creating the content and. You hear people talking a lot about the glory days of the kind of early Instagram, so back when you were doing the glamping uh, socials for $10 a day. Yeah. And if we think about what it was back then compared to now, content creation is king from my observation as a non-expert.
Tell me more about what's happening with content and why. Business owners who are trying to attract customers and get conversions, why should they care about content?
Jarrah
Yeah. It's definitely become a very competitive space over the last couple of years, and content to me is yet like, like you said, it's a no-brainer. If you're wanting to get your business out there, it gives you the ability to. Not only advertise your products or services or [00:11:00] whatever it is that you're offering, but also to grow a community at a fan base and a loyal customer base around that as well. And also it attracts opportunities and collaborations, for example. There's multiple clients that we've run content campaigns for, that then have other businesses in similar kind of industries that have similar audiences reach out and be like, Hey, let's collaborate. Mm. But that would've never happened if we didn't, you know, put that brand out there and have that unique social media presence. So I think it's not just. Sales and website clicks. Those things are amazing and incredibly value to businesses, but it's also the community you build, the collaborations that become available to you, the things that you learn about your audience along the way. Something that I find really valuable for us to do as a team is to actually be reading the comments, responding to the comments, looking at our dms, what kind of questions are popping up, what kind of feedback is popping up? What's happening in our customers' lives, and how can we speak to that with our content? So that it's not, you know, we're not just talking about ourselves all the time, and [00:12:00] that can make a brand feel really accessible and really approachable and makes people wanna buy from you at the end of the day.
Fi
Mm. I love that it's like, it's not just about getting someone to buy from you, although that is the eventual goal, but building community and building those kind of long-term relationships, that feel two way with your social media audience, actually leads to a stronger brand and making it easier to sell to that person down the track.
Jarrah
Totally. So it makes business sense. Exactly. I think you, a community is one of the best ways to scale a business is by Yeah. Having a, a community of people that really back what you do. And I think social media platforms themselves are, even then they know that and they are releasing features all the time that allow us to. Have more contact with our community, for example, broadcast channels with, on Instagram. You know, brands are now tapping into that where they have a group chat that they can actually talk directly to their customers in. So yeah, it's a, [00:13:00] it's a crucial part of it. Any, any brand strategy.
Fi
Something that I notice when I'm talking with business owners about their marketing is that there's all of these things that are so obvious to the business owner, but they're not obvious to the client. And so what I love about somebody, the idea of having social media experts who understand in your words, the culture of each platform. So you understand the culture of TikTok and the culture of LinkedIn and the culture of Instagram, and then when you are talking with a business owner, so we have a mutual client, for example, which is Cob Lane.
Yeah. The most ridiculously delicious baked goods and. I can imagine that when you came in and started working with them, you wanted to film the how the sausage is made. Yeah. So wanting to go behind the scenes and how do the pastries get made and what do they look like when you break them apart? Mm-hmm. And it's like that stuff that's making the obvious stuff more obvious to your customers. Tell me [00:14:00] more about that, about sort of drawing those stories out of your clients.
Jarrah
Yeah, I think even I as an agency can be guilty of that in that sometimes I'm like, oh, but everyone is talking about this already, or that this is already saturated, and I think you are the one that usually reminds me you need to be talking about X, Y, and Z, because people don't know that you offer that. And I think you're completely right that as business owners, we assume that everybody has all the context about what we're doing and when we do it and how we do it. So. I guess my advice that I'm, I'm also telling people and probably need to listen to myself, is that. You need to keep telling the same story over and over and over again in different ways.
Yeah. Why you exist, um, what you exist for, who you service, how you service them, how people get in contact with you or you know, if you're a product-based business, what, what's important to you? How you came up with the idea for your products, um, what your products can do for people, how they change lives. And to you it might be like, that is completely obvious and it's all [00:15:00] over our website and I've spoken about it so many times. But you'd be surprised how repurposing that concept and that content theme again and again and again. We'll really drill that message into your customers and make sure that you're front of mind.
When they do come to that decision of, Hey, which bakery do I want to go and try today? It's gonna be the bakery that they saw the process behind and the people behind.
Fi
Yeah, I love it. Let's imagine that the people listening to this conversation are business owners and that some of them might be service. Based, and some are product based, they have established audiences, they have established businesses. What are the things that you are seeing them do wrong or the mistakes that they're making on social media where you go, oh, I just wish that I could have helped that person do that differently. Like, where are we going wrong with our social media?
Jarrah
Yeah, I think you, you kind of touched on it before when you mentioned the different cultures of every platform and nothing makes me feel more, I guess, yeah, ed, [00:16:00] when I'm looking at a brand's social media platform and they just, you can tell, they just don't have the understanding of what. Works on that platform. And I think a lot of people are creating one hero piece of content and maybe they're tweaking it very slightly, but it's going out to their Pinterest, their Instagram, their TikTok, their LinkedIn, their Facebook, their YouTube, and they're expecting that to move the needle. And I think that's where a lot of businesses, service and product based are going completely wrong because. Every single platform has their own unique culture, their own language, their own quirks, their own even inside jokes, um, and their own way of engaging in the platform. So every single piece of content needs to be tailored to that audience. And if you are not chronically online, or if you are not, if you don't have a team that's chronically online on those platforms, it's, you're never going to really understand.
Platform. The only way to truly understand the platform is not [00:17:00] by listening to podcasts. It's not by doing courses, it's not by listening to friends. It's about sadly, being on the platforms yourself and being obsessed with them, creating on them, um, interacting with other creators. So if that is not something that you want to do or have time to do, you need to find the team or the person that can do that for you, because otherwise you will be posting content on those platforms that. People who do use that platform will come across and be like, oh, this brand, they don't get it. They don't get TikTok, they don't get Instagram. So yeah, if you do want to be visible on multiple platforms, you need to have a unique strategy that's tailored to the culture of each of those platforms. And if you can't do that, then niche into one or two platforms that you do understand or your team does understand and build the momentum from there.
Fi
Can you gimme an example? Like let's just take TikTok and Instagram. Okay. What's one kind of quirk about TikTok that wouldn't work on Instagram and vice versa?
Jarrah
So branded carousels [00:18:00] can perform really well on Instagram because when you're on Instagram, you are generally speaking to the community that you've already built and the followers that you already have. So they do have that. So it's that sort of middle, middle of funnel content. Exactly. Mm-hmm. So they have already have that context around who you are, what your niche is, what you talk about. Whereas on TikTok, people aren't stopping and kind of reading wordy carousels on, on TikTok. Mm-hmm. Especially not branded ones.
So if you are going to do a carousel, it needs to be photos with. TikTok native text over the top of it, um, telling a story as you go through it. Whereas on Instagram, you can do a branded, uh, a beautifully branded carousel talking about different topics or maybe one specific topic. And that can form really well on Instagram if it's aesthetic. But TikTok, it's all about. The native features on the platform, it's not about branding. It's not about your logo on everything. It's not about your brand colors, it's about the [00:19:00] story you're telling, the entertainment you're providing, the ideas that you are generating in that audience.
Fi
I wonder if there's a speed thing too. Like I wonder if each piece of content gets less time on TikTok than Instagram. Like maybe you're allowed a few extra seconds on Instagram to kind of reel people in. But TikTok, you need to be kind of telling the story right from the first word. Is that right? When I think about how I use both platforms and I use them both a lot, I'm definitely quick to skip something on TikTok if you don't get my attention straight away or if you're talking about something I don't wanna hear about or, yeah. Very quick to skip. So Instagram it's, it is, it is easier to, oh yeah, you do have that. Probably extra couple of seconds to capture the attention. Um, and you can do it with your branding or with the messaging, or with whatever topic you're talking about. But TikTok, yeah, attention spans are a tiny, it's wild, isn't it? To think that an extra two seconds would be a whole different [00:20:00] strategy. Yeah. That, yeah. You don't get two seconds on TikTok. It's less than half a second, and you gotta be making the point already.
Jarrah
A hundred percent. Yeah. Get to the point. That's my biggest advice. Yeah. Look, one of the things you told me ages ago, which I just, I tell to people all the time, is most of us start our videos like this, Hey, I'm fee and I'm having a really great day, and I just wanted to share some information about the fact that when you use dye shampoo in your hair, you should do it like this.
Fi
Right. Yeah. So like what you said to me is most people spend about 15 seconds just fing around talking about stuff that no one cares about, when actually you need to get to the point of this is how to use dry shampoo in your hair. Yeah. And your advice was literally when you make a video, just cut off the first 15 seconds and just see what happens from second number 16 onwards. And it is absolutely gold advice.
Jarrah
Yeah, exactly. I think, yeah, we usually spend the first 15 seconds talking about what we're going to talk about. Yeah. So we'll go, [00:21:00] Hey, today I'm going to be telling you three things that you can do to make your lounge room nicer or something like that. And you just need to start telling them what makes the lounge room nicer or what? How do you dry shampoo? Just get to the meat of what you're talking about. Yeah. And then you can, the text on the video, the captions on the video to say three things. That I'm talking about today or whatever the hook of the video is. Mm. You wanna, you don't need to talk about that. I've already skipped two seconds in you. You've lost your two second intro. Yeah. And now I'm moving on to the next one. Especially if it's on TikTok.
Fi
Yeah. Yeah. You do not have long before the scroll is gonna get you.
Jarrah
Yeah, yeah, definitely. And I'd also say it's fascinating. I'd also say Instagram is definitely favoring content that is a little more elevated, I think.
It's, you know, when I think about face to camera videos, you are on Instagram. Something that would perform better is usually when you're in a bit of a curated space, you are sitting somewhere where the lighting's nice, the aesthetics nice, you've got a microphone set up. That's what [00:22:00] I'm seeing, perform well on Instagram.
Whereas TikTok is very like impulsive spur of the moment. I've just filmed this in my car on the way to work. That's the stuff that performs on TikTok. So it's even little things like that in terms of the setting, the delivery of the message and yeah, the, the vibe that you give.
Fi
Yeah, that sort of more edited or more thoughtful content is starting to come back to the Instagram kind of culture, whereas TikTok is like, drop the microphone in a glass of milk and keep talking while you're riding your bike, and now you're telling us about the dry shampoo and it's chaotic and everyone's loving it.
Jarrah
Yeah, that's exactly right.
Fi
I don't get on TikTok 'cause it absolutely terrifies me. Um, but I assume that's what's happening. That is pretty much what's happening.
Jarrah
Yeah. I I wouldn't recommend getting on TikTok if it's not your, not your job or not something and a platform you want to explore yourself and, and promote yourself on because it's definitely a, a bit of a rabbit hole once you get on there.
Fi
I have seen how addictive the scroll is and that's why I'm choosing to, uh, stay away from it.
Jarrah
Wise choice.
Fi
Alright, [00:23:00] so you've told us about how much you just love social media and it's like it's baked into your DNA. You've grown up with social media, you are chronically online. As you said, you understand all the platforms, you're seeing a lot of content.
You're creating a lot of content. So. For business owners that are wanting to make money. Mm-hmm. They're wanting to grow brands, they're wanting to find customers, build community, and make money. Tell me, how can organic social media, for starters, how does organic social media play a part in being able to make money as a business owner?
Jarrah
I love that. I think organic is definitely. More of a top of funnel strategy. Mm-hmm. Within your overarching marketing strategy. And one of my biggest pet peeves is when you know you are running organic content and then somebody wants to measure, okay, but how much many sales is this getting us? Yes. [00:24:00] It's, that frustrates me because if we're measuring the success of our organic content off the amount of sales that it's driving, we're doing ourselves a massive disservice because that is not where organic makes the biggest impact.
It definitely can, you know, someone can find your Instagram and directly go to your website and make a purchase, and that's amazing when it happens. But that is, but it's unlikely. It's not sort of the goal. It's unlikely. And it's also not the purpose of organic social. What I like to say is that organic is for Yeah, brand building, community building, uh, raising awareness of who you are, what's important to you and your brand, what you offer, um, who your customers are, how people can interact with you. And then paid is where you bring in that paid social is where you bring in that, um, scale and that acquisition, and even your email marketing as well. So there's, there's so many pieces of the puzzle. So when it comes to making money off organic social. It's definitely something worth measuring and worth, you know, looking at and, [00:25:00] and tracking, but it's not the be all and end all.
And if I looked at my organic social and saw, oh, we got no, uh, we made no money from our organic social this month. That's not alarming to me because I'm looking, but we drove. 2000 website visits and they potentially turned into, um, email signups that will then turn into clients in three months time. So you definitely wanna be looking at, okay, engagement traffic, dms, shares, saves, followers, all of that kind of thing on organic social rather than revenue.
Fi
I love that. So it's like organic social media is about brand building in essence, and brand building is about many things, but in the context of this conversation, brand building is about making it easier to make money later.
Jarrah
Definitely.
Fi
So it's like, you know, some marketing activities are designed to make money now, and some marketing activities are designed to help making money easier later.[00:26:00]
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Fi
If we then switch our focus to paid social media, you did touch on it a little bit, but I have some thoughts about paid socials. So my thoughts as a business strategist, not an expert in paid ads. I feel that a lot of people [00:27:00] go to paid ads too early. They think it's this kind of waterfall that they just turn on and their business isn't working, so they go to ads and that's gonna fix everything. Whereas what I want businesses to do is start by getting clear about who they wanna work with, what they wanna do for them, understanding what. People want to learn about and know about and what kind of content actually gets them to your website. And once they're on your website, they actually do something.
Jarrah
Exactly.
Fi
And then you can turn on the ads. So tell me, tell me more.
Jarrah
You've, you've nailed it there. I always like to say that. Your paid ads are a multiplier of whatever you've got happening in your business at the moment. So if you have a website that has a very high abandoned cart rate and then you start throwing ad spend at it, the only thing that's going to do is probably increase your abandoned cart rate.
Fi
Um, yes. Just burning money, isn't it?
Jarrah
Burning more money, getting more website traffic, that that goes away. [00:28:00] But if you have a highly converting conversion rate, you have a website that's, that's beautiful. You have a product that people love, you have, um, organic social that's engaging and converting, and people are loving, then your paid ads is only going to multiply that.
But yeah. A, a website that's not working, a product that isn't selling an organic social that's flopping paid ads is gonna do nothing to fix that. It's, it's only going to be you throwing money at the wall.
Fi
Mm. I love that.
Jarrah
And thank God I got it right. Yeah. Because, yeah, that's how I think about it. It's like, let's get the foundations of your business.
Right. And then let's turn on, um, paid ads as an amplifier. I think there's some scenarios where using Facebook ads or Instagram or meta ads early might be. Good for data collection or research purposes, but not if it's being done by someone who doesn't actually know how to do that. Yeah, and it also depends on your goals.
If your goal is I wanna run paid ads to generate [00:29:00] sales and you're too early, then yeah, you can sometimes tie your shoelaces up at the start of the race. So what I would suggest is that, yeah, if you understand that it takes time to, to build that momentum, then you could potentially run paid ads to grow your email list, and then you work on your email marketing to, that's where you're converting customers and your clients and you've got a growing link.
With a, an amazing lead magnet that's getting more people onto your email list, and then they're converting, you know, two, three months down the track, or even a few weeks later, depending on what strategy you've got going on there. So if you go in there with realistic expectations of, yeah, paid ads isn't going to make me a millionaire overnight, and you understand that it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's just one piece of the puzzle and you need other really strong avenues and channels in place, then yeah, it can play an incredible role in your business.
Fi
Mm. So organic social media's job is to build brand, which makes money making later easier. Yeah. And the [00:30:00] job of paid ads is to throw water on the garden or whatever, however you want to explain amplifying. Yeah. Um, growing and sort of helping you to scale. So when people are in the space that they're ready for paid ads, what are the little things that help people to actually. Get results from those paid ads? Like is it about the content, is it about the strategy? Yeah. How, what, what's the difference between a really great ad campaign and one that isn't worth doing?
Jarrah
Hmm. Lots of things, but the, the biggest thing at the moment is the creative. Mm-hmm. Your, your creative is your currency, so that also hasn't always been that way.
I think five years ago you could put together any random ad and your ROAS would be healthy and it was easy to convert. That has changed so much, and now because it's even more saturated, you have to spend even more money to be seen and to compete with other brands. The only thing if you, if you think about it. You are [00:31:00] paying to view this audience? Uh, yeah. Sorry. You are paying for that audience to view your ads, but so is every other business in the Yeah. In the country. So your ad needs to stand out because you're not only competing against your competitors, you're competing against brands that aren't even in your industry.
But we're seeing ads from them all the time. And the the strong creatives are the ones that are going to be. Rewarded and they're going to scale and you're going to be able to, um, see sales come from them and build momentum from them. So if a client comes to us and they aren't willing to invest in their creative either being created by us or they have an amazing in-house content creation specialist that understands paid ads, we won't take them on as the client because we just know. It's gonna be impossible for us to move the needle with that. Unless you, unless you're a huge brand like Nike or something that has an existing huge amount of brand awareness, you, you can't come in with [00:32:00] no creative and no knowledge of paid ads and, and expect to see any sort of. Worthwhile return.
Fi
Mm, love it.
Jarrah
So we want our ads to stand out and we wanna really think about what is the experience of the person on the other end of the phone or the computer going to be, and how do we make it more interesting than the 50 million other ads that are trying to target that same person?
Yeah, exactly. No pressure. No pressure.
Jarrah
Yeah, no pressure.
Fi
Yeah. Gosh. You know, being a paid ad specialist comes with so many required skills. There's the analytical side, you are spending people's money for them as well, which is a big responsibility. And you are trying to create photos, videos, text, words that actually capture people's attention very fast. So more, more kudos to the ads managers of the world, I think.
Jarrah
A hundred percent. Yeah, it's, and I think, I always say this to my team that an ads manager role has evolved so much in the last [00:33:00] few years and that it used to just be kind of like data analysis and optimizing and understanding the, the quirks of the ad manager platforms.
But now really to be a good ads manager, you also need to be incredibly creative and you need to be able to brief in creatives and, and say, Hey, this, this ad's performing really well. Here's a brief for another one. Just like, and go and create that. So I think, yeah, the best. Ads managers are the ones that also can read the data and they can translate that into a creative brief to give to the content creation team.
Fi
Yeah. And understanding why that ad worked and how to replicate it. That is an amazing skill.
Jarrah
Exactly.Amazing.
Fi
Yeah. So let's take a little bit of a different tack. I think people will be getting so much out of understanding their, or the role of their organic social media and the role of their paid social media. But I wanna flip more to learning about you as a business owner and this kind of. Adventure that you've been on since 19 to to [00:34:00] today. You now have a team. You started $10 a day. Yep. Working for the glamping people. Yeah. So tell me what you have learned about the money side of your business on that journey from freelancer to agency owner.
Jarrah
Oh my gosh, so much. I honestly think finance and money has been the biggest learning curve for me in business. Yes. And something that I'm incredibly grateful for that, that I've learned at a LA young age. Um, mm. Being thrown into entrepreneurship. From a young age, I was really forced to understand tax and how to make a profit and what revenue means, and I didn't even know what GST meant when I started my business. Genuinely, I got like, somebody had to say I needed to sign up for the the GST registration. I was like, what's that? I've never heard of that in my life, so please have. Yeah, I genuinely started from scratch. I knew nothing about it. And yeah, I'd say that the biggest thing that I've learned that I'm always telling you [00:35:00] about is. Actually investing in that knowledge and not just kind of crossing your fingers and hoping that somebody eventually comes to save you. I think that was my strategy. The first couple of years of my business. I was so terrified and didn't know what kind of questions to ask that I just was like, oh, surely someone will reach out to me if. If, you know, tell me what I need to do, or they'll explain it, or they'll just do it for me, like my accountant will, they've got it sorted. I don't need to ask questions, sorting it. That was probably the biggest mistake I made, is just assuming that everyone is caring about my finances as much as I need to care about them.
Yeah. And as soon as I had that realization and reached out to you and I was like, no, I need to learn this. Like the back of my hand, that has completely transformed not only our business, but my relationship with money on a personal and professional level. Uh, and it's taught me so much about what's important, what to look out for, how to, how to make more money, how to charge clients, what, what to save for [00:36:00] tax, how it all works.
Yeah. I've just learned so much from investing in my education around it and getting my hands dirty, getting into Xero, even though I used to find it so terrifying to read a profitable statement because I was like, ah, I don't know what I'm looking at. But sitting down with someone and, and spending that time and money to learn that is.
Crucial for a business owner.
Fi
Yeah, I love it. I think there's lots of things you can learn through experience, but I think finances and money is something that you should just pay for. Yeah. Get the learning and get the experience and get it from somebody who's going to teach you like, which is what I do.
I try to. Give you skills that you can then use throughout the rest of your business. You know, learn how to do social media self. Sure, no problem. But money is just so much easier when you get help from somebody who can actually explain things properly. And I love that you invested in. Both money and time to like get in there and work it out. Like I don't [00:37:00] understand this and it feels weird and I don't know which questions to ask, but I'm somehow gonna work it out anyway. And I hope you've learned that asking questions is a good thing and that Yeah. You should be able to ask any question you want from your accountant, your business coach, your financial, whoever. If anybody listening to this episode feels that they can't ask questions from their finance people, they need to get new finance people because you should be able to ask any question you want about money without feeling silly or brushed aside or anything like that.
Jarrah
Definitely I, I've been on both ends of that. I remember sitting in a meeting talking about my, my tax with an accountant, and he obviously has conversations like that all day, every day. But it was like. We were just rushing through the conversation. I couldn't get a word in everything he was saying did not make sense to me, and I literally started crying in the meeting.
He's like, oh, what? What's wrong? Like, are you okay? I'm like, I don't understand what you're saying. I'm so confused.
Fi
Yeah, you're overwhelming me.
Jarrah
I'm [00:38:00] so overwhelmed. And yeah, definitely. Spending the time with and finding the right people that, and I guess something I loved about working with you and love about working with you is you are slow and you explain things in plain English and you don't assume that I know things and no question is ever off limits. And you might say, oh, do you know this? And I will never feel any shame to be like, no, I've never heard of that before. And I, no, I don't know how to read my profit and loss statement in my business. Like a lot of people can feel shame that, oh, I've been running my business for five years and I. I actually don't understand how to save for tax or how to forecast my profit and my revenue, and people can feel a lot of shame around that. But if we just remember that we didn't come into this business with finance knowledge or passion. Of course. Yeah. How are you supposed to learn? Yeah. So I think it's definitely just dropping the ego and being like, yep, I'm, I'm a complete beginner here and I'm embracing that, and you won't be like that forever if you can embrace it.
Fi
[00:39:00] Yeah, I love it. I have this little kind of visual for myself and that I talk to my clients about, which is a young person on a skateboard, so like a 3-year-old learning to skate. They fall off, they get on, they fall off, they get back on, they fall off, they get back on, and three year olds are not embarrassed to be a beginner. But as we get older, we start to get really shy and embarrassed and awkward about being a beginner at something. Yeah. When really we should just approach things like we're learning to skateboard and it's okay to fall off and then get back on you. You are safe.
Jarrah
Exactly. I would say my, my coaching with you has been the biggest gift that I've ever given myself because yeah, now I'm at a point where I can make decisions on my own and really back myself in those decisions. Or I can forecast if we're going to do well next month or if we're not gonna do well next month, and then make decisions based around that. And yeah, I think the, the biggest benefit I got from coaching was definitely having a soundboard to make decisions about. It got to a point this year where you were like, you [00:40:00] can make these decisions on your own now. Like you're, you're fine. Yeah. And that was something like, oh, like I actually can read my numbers now. Yeah. And decide whether we're ready to hire and how much that's gonna cost and what kind of revenue we need to be bringing in to support X, Y, Z team. And I used to never feel confident enough to make any of those decisions.
I would wait, you know, until our next call was, for example. Yeah. Whereas now, yeah, I have the gift that I can log into the spreadsheet that we've spent years building together and edit it myself and create things in there myself, and that that just would've felt so unreachable as a goal for me a few years ago.
Fi
I love it. And yeah, you can, you can make your own decisions and I'll always be here to help you if you need. But yeah, I think for any business owner, having the ability to make financial decisions just makes you a more successful business owner. 'cause you can just do it faster, definitely, without having to wait for somebody else's approval or what have you.
[00:41:00] You can just make decisions and keep moving forward.
Jarrah
It's made me a way better business owner. Yeah.
Fi
I love it. Um, a little question I wanna ask you about the money side of things. This is the thing that I find is always the biggest turning point for a business owner from not being as profitable as they want to be to all of a sudden, wow. Now it seems so much easier. That's price pricing. Yeah. So tell me about what you know about pricing your services or any thoughts that you had when we were working together around fees telling me that I need to charge this, and I don't know if that's gonna work. Tell me a bit more about it.
Jarrah
Yeah. I think pricing for me is always gonna be something that.
I never feel like I've 100% nailed. I think because yeah, the world moves so fast that you can, you know, you might have, feel like you've got solid pricing and then 12 months goes by and you're like, oh my God, we are, no, we're not charging anywhere near as much. Yes. So for example, in the social media world, [00:42:00] the amount of effort and time and resources that it took to create content five years ago was maybe 20% of what it takes now to create good content. And I found that when we. Increased our prices. I think we've increased them by like 10 times what we used to charge. Yeah. I think, and if we compare them to my 19-year-old days, I was, yeah, $10 a day and then it went to $30 an hour and now it's like, yeah, full on retainers where we're managing those businesses up to about 10 k usually per month.
That has not only meant that, yeah, we are more profitable and we're attracting. Cool clients that are fully aligned with our team, but it's meant that the level of quality of work we're able to deliver. Yeah. Makes me so much happier and prouder as a business owner because we have the time and the resources to actually, uh. Spend time creating that content and coming up with the ideas and measuring its results and trialing things and testing [00:43:00] things and being agile. Whereas if we had multiple clients on smaller pricing and we're stretching a million different directions, all we're focusing on is ticking a box and being like, yep, the deliverables are three a week. Here's your three posts. I haven't proofread them. I don't know, you know, whether they're gonna work. But that's ticked, that box is ticked and we've done, yeah. Deliverables. Whereas yeah, as we've increased our prices, it's like, oh, we can actually take a breath slow down. We're not focusing on ticking boxes and deliverables.
We're actually focusing on output and quality and content.
Fi
Yeah. Look, you've just given the perfect reason why somebody should consider putting their prices up. It's like you end up with better quality clients. You can do better quality work, and you can run a profitable business where your customers are actually happy with the work that you are doing. So tick, tick, tick. Those are all the reasons why having premium prices is a really good idea for most businesses.
Jarrah
Yeah.
Fi
Yeah. So we're running [00:44:00] out of time and I don't wanna keep you forever. So I just wanna ask you a couple of last questions. The first one is, what advice do you have for people who are wanting to either work, um, more on their social media, or maybe they're working in an agency or a business like yours and they're wanting to work out?
How the hell do I make more money through my business?
Jarrah
Oh, I think from a marketing and social media marketing perspective, kind of what we spoke about before in that. Really thinking of your social media and marketing strategy as a funnel and the different platforms and channels and where they sit in the funnel.
If you are approaching your social media as your main sales source and you're putting up graphics that aren't super engaging and it's just salesy and talking about your product constant, constantly. Instead of talking about things that are relatable to your audience or inspiring audience or telling a story to your audience, it's just gonna flop.
You're not gonna see much movement there. Whereas if you did put [00:45:00] paid ad spend behind a salesy graphic or a salesy video, that's where you would see probably more results from that because you are. You know, you are at that middle of funnel, bottom of funnel stage at that point. Same with your, your email marketing. You know, having those stronger call to actions in there, um, still with the storytelling and things like that, but getting really clear on which channel sits within which stage of the funnel, what mindset your customer is in at that stage, and how you can speak to that and what stories you can tell what, um, as a collective your, uh, customer base is actually going through. At the moment. Um, and an example that I wanna give about this, I use her all the time, but Brittany Saunders. So we're currently at the time of recording Mid Black Friday, and I've been, yeah, just loving, looking at everybody's Black Friday strategies and how they're executing it. And the way that Brittany Saunders has done it for her company fate. The label has been so. Wildly impressive. She created an ad that basically tapped into the fatigue we feel [00:46:00] as customers from Black Friday ads. Mm. And it was so entertaining. It was a two and a half minute, almost three minute video about their Black Friday sale. Wow. I watched right to the end because it was so entertaining and so relatable as the customers that she is targeting about the fatigue around Black Friday, and I think that is what makes. An incredible piece of content that actually sells is when you're thinking about what does my customer actually want to see from me? What are they experiencing at the moment? How are they feeling and how can I speak to that? Not what do I need them to know and what am I trying to sell?
Fi
Yeah, I love that it's like seeing your clients in the context of their life and what's happening for them right now. Yeah. Rather than it just being all about you. Yeah.
Jarrah
Yeah. It's not about you, it's about your customer.
Fi
Love it. So Dara, I know that you have a very coveted, um, like everybody wants to work with jam packed and you only work with so many clients at a time. Yep. You are the absolute go-to people for. Brands that [00:47:00] understand that their content is everything and that they wanna work with absolute experts who understand the culture of all of the platforms can create amazing, creative, uh, strategic, understand all of those platforms and actually know how to.
Grow your brand and make money, how would somebody get in touch with you or when would you have any availability to take on new clients?
JarrH
Ooh, definitely not this site of Christmas, but gets from January onwards. We will definitely have capacity. Please reach out to us through our website. You can even DM me on Instagram.
As I said, I'm chronically online so. Get back to you there, um, or LinkedIn, or feel free to listen to our podcast. That's also kicking off in the new year, the Jam Packed podcast.
fI
Tell me a bit more about the Jam Packed podcast. So this will be season three or four. Yes. Tell me why I, why people should listen to it.
Jarrah
We're actually doing a complete, not rebrand, but restructure of the episodes next year. [00:48:00] So up until now, it's been me predominantly doing solo educational episodes, and now I'm pivoting into having seasons. So we'll have one season per month at this stage. Each season will have three episodes, and I will have a different co-host for every single season.
So we sit down, we do three episodes together with me and the co-host, and we talk about different topics to. To do with marketing, uh, and to do with digital, the digital space content and that kind of thing. So yeah, it's gonna be, it's gonna be really fun.
Fi
Sounds great. Alright. So people might be lucky enough to get into your agency if they contact you via your website.
Yes. Uh, jam packed agency.com. Okay.
Jarrah
Yeah. Jam packed agency.com au. Yeah. And go and listen to the Jam Packed podcast, which has lots of juicy information there already and more seasons to come in January 20, 26.
Fi
Jara, it's been amazing talking with you. I love working with you. I love how you've taken your, the financial side of your business by the reigns.
[00:49:00] And um, yeah, thank you so much for being here.
Jarrah
Oh, thanks for having me, and thanks for teaching me Yeah. Everything I know about finance.
Fi
It's a pleasure. Thanks Tara. Thank you.
Outro
Thank you so much for listening right up to the end. I hope you enjoyed this episode of Money Secrets, where we talk about the money secrets of successful small business owners.
If you enjoyed the episode, I'd love it if you subscribe to the podcast, but leave us a review or share this episode with one of your friends. I hope you learned something. I hope you got a new perspective and I really hope you enjoyed the listening experience.
