Ever feel like you have too many ideas for your business? Or too many ideas in general? Some people agonize over needing to pick just one thing to focus on at a time, and act like what they are doing now is what they will be doing long term. The truth is that few people these days stay in the same job or have the same focus for longer than a few years at a time. Having a few different income streams in different areas can help you diversify and stay afloat when things change in your main area of focus. I know this has helped me over the years. For instance, back when my husband and I were still running a cattle ranch out here in AZ, there were some years when cattle prices dropped and our already thin profit margin basically disappeared. During those times it was great to have the income from our record label or my online business, freelance writing and affiliate sales. Now that we are no longer ranching, we are nurturing all of our other income streams to help make up the difference.
I wanted to find someone who really knows a lot about this topic and was so pleased when I connected with Meliss Jakubovic. When I asked Meliss what she does for a living, I got the most amazing reply. Her main online business of the moment is Meliss Marketing which runs Facebook ads for coaches, business owners and people who run ecommerce sites. Her Facebook business was born from running her own Health and Lifestyle blog and a coaching business called My Coach Meliss. As she learned how to run FB ads for her own business, she realized how many other coaches could use FB ads, but either feel skittish about running the ads themselves, or simply don’t have the first clue about where to start.
But before Meliss became My Coach Meliss, she trained in and taught yoga. She was also an Israeli Folk Dancer. And a DJ. The most amazing part of this story is she still does ALL of these things - the blogging, the yoga, the folk dancing and the DJing, while coaching and running FB ads for other businesses. Oh and did I mention she is the single mother of two young boys who dance, do yoga and most of the other stuff right along with their mom?
Now I tend to think that I'm a pretty busy women with a couple of businesses that run out of my home and caring for special needs kids to boot, but when I heard that Meliss still has a hand in all of these businesses I had to ask, do you ever sleep? How do you manage to keep all of these plates spinning?
Meliss told me that she is very structured with her schedule and sticks to her calendar as best she can. Meliss Marketing is front and center right now, so she tends to spend the bulk of her working day on that. Yoga is part of her own self-care, but the fact that she gets paid to teach yoga classes on evenings and weekends means that her self-care is also an income stream. From what she told me the folk dancing is mainly a hobby, but she does still do choreography for certain shows which she makes a priority leading up to and during the shows, and lets fall back down in priority until the next one comes up. The DJing fits in around all the other things when and if someone wants her services. Oh and did I mention that she has also authored a book along with a companion journal to go along with it? Talk about driven.
Because I've been struggling with learning how to run Facebook ads myself lately, I asked Meliss to share a few tips to help someone like me (who feels like I have only thrown money away on FB ads up to this point) to start to get a handle on how FB ads can really help my business grow. Here are a few of the tips she gave me:
- If you don't have a business page yet, set one up. You need one to run FB ads.
- Make the best possible use of the business page real estate. Pick a really good profile picture for your business page and use the cover photo to let people know what it is you do and how you can help them. Or use it to feature a product or service so people get used to seeing it!
- Plan out your content. Curate the content, give them plenty of value and make sure you aren't only posting to sell. Facebook exists for engagement first. Being too salesy too soon can turn people off.
- As you plan out your content, plan it around the launches or sales that you want to make throughout the year. Find and create content that logically leads into the services and products you want to sell.
I've always loved the idea of planning well ahead of time, but I have honestly never done it outside of planning out content and emails that revolve around a single launch. Sitting down and figuring out what I want to share for a couple of months at a time is something that inspires me. Meliss even suggests planning around holidays and seasonal events. It may take a bit more time up front, but the payoff in consistency and always having content to post is totally worth the time investment.
The best thing about this? Planning your content and finding the right customers for your products using FaceBook ads can benefit all of your hustles and side hustles alike!