Alessia Citro 0:02
Welcome to the corporate dropout podcast. I'm your host Alessia Citro. If you're sick of the corporate hamster wheel and looking to feel inspired and empowered to live a high vibe life as your own boss, you're in the right place dare to drop out in 321. Before we start the show, I want to tell you about the business I'm launching. Starting a business can be hard work, but it doesn't need to be confusing too. And that is why I founded Theia collective, a learning community for entrepreneurs. Learn from experts across law, finance, tax operations, marketing, sales and more. And get the blueprint on how to set up and run your own business. Text biz. That's BIZ to 949-577-8709, or head to Theia dash collective.com to learn more.

Alessia Citro 0:51
Hello, friends, I am back today with Keisha Fitzgerald. If you did not listen to our full interview yesterday, be sure to go do that she is amazing. As you're about to find out. She is a multi passionate entrepreneur, a speaker and podcaster. And she is on a mission to help women unapologetically share their voice and message with the world. She's also the host of the top rated podcast empower her with over 4 million downloads in three years. And she is the founder and CEO of she goes company which is focused on cultivating a global community of personal growth obsessed women via live events, and helping women who want to launch or grow their own podcast Keisha, pleasure to have you back on the show. Thank you so much for being here again today.

Kacia Fitzgerald 1:34
Ah, thank you so much. I love this, I'm having such a great time chatting with you. So I'm excited.

Alessia Citro 1:39
We had a lot of fun on the interview. And I cannot wait for what you're going to teach us today. So you're going to talk about cultivating community and how you did that and continue to do that. So with that I will let you have the floor.

Kacia Fitzgerald 1:49
I love it. So first and foremost, I think it's really important to think about with your business with your brand that you're building is to ask yourself the question, how can I make this more a come with me brand or product rather than a look at me brand or product? This has helped me so much growing my podcast growing membership communities growing programs starting to do live events is I asked myself like how can I bring people along on the ride because I truly feel that a lot of us are tired of this like carefully curated, pretending like everything is all together. Like we don't want to root for the people that we don't know them. Right? Like especially millennial buyers, like we want to know the people that we're working with. So asking yourself, How can I pull back the curtain just a little bit? How can I crank up the volume just a little bit on being more the person that I am behind closed doors with your your best friend, your significant other your sister, like whoever it is that you're like laughing, you're goofy, be that version more publicly, and understand that that's what people are looking for. Right? It's the come with me, not pretending like everything is all perfect, but it's like I'm going to take you along, I'm going to pull back the curtain rather than look at me, I've got this all figured out. And what's helpful with that too, is if you do find that you're struggling with imposter syndrome, imposter syndrome implies that you're faking it, right? Like you're acting. And it's hard enough to be a human, like just human through the world and be an entrepreneur. So Don't fake it, fake it less, right, be more honest, and you're gonna find that actually does really help you build a brand. Number two, because I know you want to break this down tactically. So that's number one. Number two, is I would really encourage you to when you're thinking about who it is that you're most excited to serve your business, you also know who you don't want to serve. Because we talk a lot about niche, especially in business training. And and it's so important to know, like, if someone slid into your DMS on Instagram, they're like, I want to work with you, I want to join your product, you know, I want to join your program, I want to buy your product, where are they at in their life? And what is it that you're most excited to help them with? Like what is the problem that you're most excited to solve? And then who are you not for? Because this gives you this really beautiful opportunity to explain who your community who your products programs or company is for so they can then go regurgitate it to their friends to other people that might be interested, right? So a lot of times we think that if we cast our net, so why do we say I'm for everyone that more people are going to come in. But in reality, you're going to build more connective tissue. If you're actually saying like, This is who it's for. And of course, some other people that it doesn't you aren't specifically targeting will be part of your community. But that's been super, super helpful for me and a really fun fulfilling way to build my community. And number three, make sure that the people that are celebrating you, your customers, if you're building a personal brand on social media, people that are sharing your content, people that are sharing your podcast, know that you really care and you go above and beyond to make sure that they're appreciated. At this point. My podcast gets 250,000 downloads a month and we've got a really big community around the show, which means I get a lot of DMS and tags on Instagram and it's actually a have really high priority on my to do list every day to make sure that I'm responding to those DMS personally, the first time that someone takes my podcast, I'm sending them a personal voice note to make sure that they know that I appreciate that they take you to the podcast, because I want them to know that I care about them. And if you are someone who's building a brand, because it helped a lot of women in the podcasting space, when you're giving them like a call to action have something to do. It's reminding yourself that if you tell someone to do 800 things, right, you're like, share this episode with your grandma and with your friend and take it on social media and leave a review, nobody's gonna do all those things, they're in fact not going to do any of those things. So what is the specific call to action and why. And even if you're not a podcaster, this still works with content that you're putting out through email marketing, text marketing, on social media, a specific call to action and a reason of why it actually matters. And then an appreciation for the people that actually do that. Because if people know that you care about them, and that you're truly deeply grateful for them, they're going to show up for you in ways that you would never imagine. So those I think, are the first like three tips that that come to mind for me.

Alessia Citro 6:07
So good. So kind of more of like a in the weeds question to what what platform would you like for building community, I think you'd mentioned, you're on a Facebook group, correct.

Kacia Fitzgerald 6:17
So for my podcast, I have a free Facebook community, I actually tried to build a community off of Facebook. But what I found is people are so used to using Facebook, and the live component on Facebook, I really do like and one tip that I'll give for those of you that are wanting to build up your list, because I'm very big on building up lists of things that you actually own by text list is so important to me RSS feed for podcasting. And then obviously, an email list is I try and make this cohesion between all of the ways that people can connect with me. So if they listen into my podcast, I'm going to drive them to my text list. And on my text list, I'm going to drive them to my free Facebook community, I when they request to join my free Facebook community, the only way they can get the link is by entering their email, right. So I'm basically capturing them from the podcast, which maybe they'll take me on Instagram. So then we're connected on Instagram, they'll go to the text list where they get to get my free like little inspiring pump up texts, I call them text from case, and then I'll be able to drive them to that community. So they're, they're basically getting in all these different pots so that I can communicate with them in a way that they're most excited to be communicated with. And as far as text platforms, I've tried a couple of tech platforms. And my favorite personal one is one that's actually called community. And what's cool about it is you can like sub divide based off of like where demographics of where people live. And you can see a lot of data, you can send voice messages, you pay based off of the users rather than the texts. And it gives you a lot of character count, and you can send gifts. So I love that.

Alessia Citro 7:47
Yeah, I'm on there, too. And it's I'm not fully utilizing it yet, because I'm in the early stages. But yeah, amazing tool for sure. Yeah, such a such brilliant advice and ideas. I think, you know, anyone who is just relying on their followers on Instagram, you know, if there's an outage, like there was a few months back, you know, you're you're gonna have a pretty tough day in business. So getting multiple ways, like multiple streams of income, diversify multiple streams of communication. So true.

Kacia Fitzgerald 8:14
And I guess the last little thing that I would share that just like popped up on my heart that I want to share is like if this business that you're building or this brand that you're building matters to you, which I'm sure it does. If you're listening to this podcast and wanting to gain a lot of content to support you. Stop calling it a little business, stop diminishing it and saying like, Oh, it's just my little thing. It's just my little hobby, like, it can be a side thing. And it can still be a very important fulfilling thing. I think as women, we're socialized to want to play smaller, we're socialized to want to like, you know, just downplay our success. But in reality, someone needs to see you showing up in a way that only you can to show them what's possible for them, too. And on top of that, you're going to see that you're teaching people how to treat your business. If you're pretending like it's this little thing that you don't care about. I lead with my podcast back when I had like a couple 100 downloads on my first episode, I was like, Oh, I'm a podcaster. I had this business that was making way more money than my podcast, but I was so excited about it that people started to follow in line with that, right? So you get to decide that but don't shoot yourself in the foot on accident by pretending like it doesn't matter to you because it does matter to you. And you should be so proud of yourself. No matter what stage you're at. You're lapping a prior version of you who was too scared to even try.

Alessia Citro 9:26
Drop the mic on that. So good. Keisha. This was awesome. I just love your energy and vibes so much. I'm so excited for you to getting married next month. And yeah, you just have so many amazing things going on. Before we sign off. Can you tell listeners how they can find and connect with you and work with you

Kacia Fitzgerald 9:41
to? Yeah, thank you so much. So my favorite social media platform is Instagram. My handle is at Keisha kcaa Fitzgerald my podcast is called empower her podcast it's a Monday Thursday podcast comm check it out. You know is DM me? Like I said I'll respond to your DM I promise and As far as working with me, I love helping podcasters start their podcasts grow their shows, if you have an existing show that you want to monetize and skill, though we have two programs for that. And then we're moving into the live event space. So we got a big live event coming up for hundreds of women in Scottsdale in October. So be on the lookout for that. One of my favorite

Alessia Citro 10:18
places in the world to Keisha, this is so great. Thank you for coming back on I can't wait to continue following your journey and just everything that you have coming up.

Kacia Fitzgerald 10:27
Thank you so much. I appreciate you.

Alessia Citro 10:29
This episode was brought to you by Thea collective the learning community I found it for entrepreneurs text biz, that's BIZ 29495778709 or head to Theia dash collective calm. That's THEIA dash collective.com to learn more. Thanks for listening to the show. If you enjoyed today's episode, please help me get the word out about the corporate dropout by screenshotting and sharing this on social. I would appreciate it so much if you would subscribe and leave a five star rating and review as well. And I do this show for you and I want to hear from you. So tell me what is it that you want more of text me at 949-541-0951 or slide into the DMS at corporate drop out official or Alessia Citro with two underscores until next time