The Business of WIIM

[00:00:00] Jessy Grossman: I think you have to do some things in your work life, especially if you work for yourself that you just genuinely enjoy regardless of how much it affects your bottom line or not, because it just makes your day to day that much better. So, you know, you don’t have to, but you can make a choice to do that.

[00:00:17] And that’s what I, that’s what I choose to do.

[00:00:27] Hey guys, welcome back to the Wim podcast. My name is Jessi Grossman. I am the founder of this awesome community, Wim and Influencer Marketing, and also the host of this podcast for those of you who are new, giant welcome. So today’s episode, it’s going to be a little bit different. I will be super transparent with you guys.

[00:00:45] I have like. actively avoided talking about this topic for, I mean, the entire podcast, because I did not think anyone would be interested. However, the universe is telling me otherwise, because I’ve had a few conversations with people just in the past, like week or two. And they’re like, how have you not spoken about this topic before?

[00:01:03] This is definitely something that we’re interested in. So I’m giving it a shot. I’m trying to practice what I preach here, which is experiment, try new things. You never know, see what happens. And the topic is. A little bit of behind the scenes about like the business aspect of WIM. I’m here always talking about influencer marketing and our guests and all that.

[00:01:23] And I didn’t really think many people would be interested in this. However, perhaps because more communities are popping up and more folks in WIM are just like, Really business minded and having their own businesses and things like that. I’ll touch on certain things and hope that it resonates with you.

[00:01:42] And if it does, please let me know. I’m certainly happy to talk about this stuff. I’m always an open book again. I was just concerned that nobody cared. So we’ll see if you do.

[00:01:57] This show is sponsored by women in influencer marketing, better known as whim, the best online community for the creator economy. You. You will meet fellow influencer marketers, you’ll meet brands, you’ll meet talent agencies to talk shop, get hired, and even find a mentor. When you become a member, do not forget to check out all of our incredible resources.

[00:02:21] For example, we have dozens of masterclasses from the top voices of TikTok, YouTube, award winning agencies, and women who are paving the way for us all. So if you want the chance to network with a few soon in influencer marketing, check out what it takes. Become a member, make more money and have fun doing it.

[00:02:42] There’s an I am whim. com slash join. That’s I A M W I I M dot com slash join today. And I so look forward to seeing you more around the community. So what is whim? My first. It’s women in influencer marketing. And we started back in 2017. The origins of whim are pretty simple. I mean, my background is as a talent manager and living in New York, there’s never been a lack of networking groups, but the ones that I joined had no idea about, you know, Influencer marketing, which I started in a few years before we started to WHIM.

[00:03:20] So I was sort of looking for something like WHIM and it just didn’t exist. So my advice to anybody who’s wondering is if you have an idea, if there’s something, if there’s like a void, if there’s a white space, something that you genuinely need, there’s definitely an opportunity out there for you. And to totally go for it, I’ll also be transparent about is that WHIM was a complete passion project for years.

[00:03:43] It was a place where I. Could, you know, throw events. And I mean, back in the day, we had our Facebook group that was super active. We’ve since transitioned to Slack, but I used it selfishly to grow my other business, which was my talent management firm and help my clients and get them deals and make more connections.

[00:04:03] I sort of used it as, in my mind, it was always like a marketing tool for my work as a Little did I know that a few years later, I would sell that agency and be like, what the heck am I going to do with my life right now? And, you know, women grown, I mean, we’d given it years, literal years though, of making not a penny, not a dime and only spending money.

[00:04:24] So I just want to be very transparent about that. People like they only see what exists now and like we for years literally made not one set and actually we’re in the negative. So I was sort of faced with this decision after I sold my agency and saying, Well, maybe WIM could be something like, maybe there’s an actual business here.

[00:04:42] It was in the middle of the pandemic, the weirdest time in the world. And it was actually a time where I felt like people needed us maybe more than ever, because people were looking for guidance of how to navigate their careers during this crazy time, how to navigate campaigns during a time when the world felt like it was on fire.

[00:04:59] So we launched WIM and by we, I mean, Meet me back at the very end of 2020. And when I say launch it, it was like version 2. 0, maybe even 3. 0, but who’s counting and I did everything I hired. I will say who I hired and what they did though. So, cause I didn’t technically do everything I did splurge. And. And hired a website designer and developer to create what exists currently, which has been so much more improved since its inception.

[00:05:34] And that is the membership site. I don’t know that everybody fully appreciates how complicated such a site can be. B. We use WordPress. We found, well, we used to use this terrible plugin on WordPress that I can’t even say their name and somewhat promote because they’re terrible, but we about probably a year and a half later switched from that one to one called member press.

[00:05:58] I think they’re great. Their support is awesome. The functionality is pretty good. So we as members, remember press, that is a plugin on our WordPress site that supports all of the membership functionality. We also have tons of other plugins and like very custom work that’s done on the site to make it run how it runs.

[00:06:17] And we want it to be like a really good user experience. So people can go on our website and. Book mentorship sessions, obviously like sign up for the membership when they sign up for the membership, but unlocks lots of pages on the site that you can’t see unless you’re logged in, you know, signing up for events and getting a discounted ticket because you’re logged in.

[00:06:35] Like all of those things are membership directory. All these things. Yeah. Take technical expertise. I love that sort of stuff. Like I’m very tech minded and I enjoy that world. And so like, for me, it was actually really fun because since I have no formal training in it, it’s one of the fun parts of being an entrepreneur.

[00:06:53] I’m like, I always had a random interest in tech, but like, no one’s going to hire me to work in tech. Cause I have no experience, but like I can theoretically like. Hire myself, quote unquote, and dive into a project and learn so much. So build the website, built the functionality, have a wonderful developer that we hired probably like two years after that, that we still have to this day, who helps continue to build out.

[00:07:18] The website and maintain the website and fix it when it’s running slow and does some pretty complex stuff on the site. I don’t think a lot of people fully under like, appreciate. I don’t think I would appreciate that. Like WIM’s website needs a developer who works for us all the time, but he does. He’s great.

[00:07:35] We have a podcast team shout out to you guys. So we have a whole team of folks who edit the show every single week. We’ve gone through different people over time, but the people that we’ve hired and worked with for the last, like. Probably a year and a half. At least we’ve stuck with the longest and we like them.

[00:07:53] We also have two virtual assistants and we’ve definitely cycled through people over the years. I think the ones we have now, like theoretically, every theoretically, like every hire that you have currently, it should be so much better than the ones that you’ve had in the past. And so I can definitely say that for sure.

[00:08:09] In terms of our VAs, you’ll probably, you’ve seen them in Slack and they’re managing a lot of the community elements. A lot of the behind the scenes, like technical work in terms of like, you know, when, like you have to off board people when they unsubscribe from the membership, you have to onboard people.

[00:08:24] When they subscribe, you have to make sure that people with passwords, login issues, and things like that. People who have issues with any sort can reach somebody fairly quickly and be helped in a really nice way. So we have a couple of people who do that. Well, mainly one person. And then the other VA who we have mostly handles all of our like emails and our graphics and our promotional material or social posts, things like that.

[00:08:49] Um, she’s our newest hire. I used to do all of that myself. It’s been a Cool process, cool, that’s probably not the truth. It’s been a hard process. I should be honest about like letting some of that go because I did it for so long and I am very particular about the way that our brand looks and feels and sounds when it comes to copy.

[00:09:09] So. But once I sort of did relinquish control and like found somebody who works well and we collaborated together, it’s been an insane help to be able to have someone who more or less fully handles all of that. I mean, I certainly give approvals on almost every piece of content, which some could argue is like way overreaching, but.

[00:09:33] It produces the best stuff. So I do, yeah, it’s been great to get that off my plate. It’s been great to have, you know, a right hand person who’s our VA, who does all that technical work that I was describing before. It’s phenomenal. Quick question for you guys. How much do you love redlining agreements? Yeah, me too.

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[00:11:13] That’s I-A-M-W-I-I m.com/k ae a t. I hope you guys love it as much as I do. And now I’m in this position where I’m gonna be going out on maternity leave and I’m like, how is that gonna work? As somebody who like runs her own business and like, sure I have a team, but like I presently. They wouldn’t be able to run without me, right?

[00:11:37] Like they look to me for direction. So I’m taking the next few months to like, figure that out. And so far, it’s been absolutely mind blowing and like, so cool to see how many people have raised their hand to say, Oh, yeah, while you’re out on that leave, let me cover for you. Like, these are not my employees.

[00:11:56] These are just people as part of the community. And I’d love that. Like, I want to hear from different voices. So people are, you know, doing masterclasses and all these events that I’m scheduling, you know, 10 minutes of force that are recording this throughout the time that I’ve been a, be on mat leaves.

[00:12:09] There’s so many cool events that are coming up. So keep an eye out for that. The podcast, I don’t know. It’s going to be interesting. I’m going to see like how many episodes can I pre record? I guess we’ll see the in person events. We have this incredible ambassador program where we have like, One to four ambassadors in each city.

[00:12:27] That was something that we started this year to see how can we expand and pseudo scale what we’ve been doing, but not have it all be on my shoulders. So we’ve got a team of probably like 20 people in about like 12 different markets or so in the U S and overseas who are spearheading these like in person events.

[00:12:50] And like, they’re the ambassadors of that city’s chapter. And, you know, we’re trying to empower them to just like create these really cool events and they’re at the epicenter of it. You know, like they’re the face of Wim LA, they’re the face of Wim Chicago, Wim San Francisco, all the different cities. And I love that.

[00:13:08] And so being able to span beyond myself and really truly like work to scale a community has been a really interesting process. And I think for a long time, I was really. Like stuck in it, just being too much around myself. And I would never be able to take a mat leave something like a pat leave. If that were the case, I would never be able to take a vacation if that were the case.

[00:13:35] And I know that some of you can definitely relate to having your own business and being like the everything of that business. And that is hard. So I would highly encourage you to like. Start small so you can build upon it. And just that being finding a dream team, finding ways to delegate their, you know, conservative ways of doing it, their economical ways of doing it.

[00:13:58] A lot of our folks are offshore. So, you know, we pay those types of rates and fees. We barter a lot of things, stuff like that. And like, that’s how WIM is profitable. And most, most membership and recurring income communities are, I’ve spoken to like a couple of people in the past year through this like business association that I’m part of who just like, they’re like, we would love to emulate your business for our use case, but the idea being that this like repetitive, so the idea of having recurring income, right?

[00:14:33] A subscription is a really powerful thing and it’s something that you can scale, you can grow and build, you can, you know, rely on. And so no matter what business you’re in, you don’t have to be in the community business, the community like networking business, but let’s say you work in marketing. Oh, this is actually a really good example of this.

[00:14:55] Okay. So we’re having a baby shower in the September and. I’m looking for photographers and I found this one photographer who unfortunately I don’t think I’m going to hire because her rates are out of control. Her work is beautiful, but here’s what I took from her that I think is really interesting for you guys to consider.

[00:15:13] So most photographers, like they charge per hour, they charge per session, whatever. That’s what generally you see. She had a membership and I was like a photography membership. Like how would that even work? It’s Brilliant you guys. So she shoots a lot of like maternity shoots and photos. And so she’s like, well, a lot of women who are, you know, having kids, they don’t just want maybe the maternity shoot, but they also want, you know, the birth.

[00:15:39] And they also want six months and a year because the kid is changing so quickly and they want to capture those moments. So instead of selling one session, she’s like, well, if you buy my membership, we work together over the course of four shoots over the course of a year. And I was like, Ooh, that’s so good.

[00:15:58] That’s like such a good example of you would never think of like a subscription that you would like, what are you subscribing to? If you work with a photographer, well, she can’t like, she showed you that there’s this totally valid. Subscription of sorts membership, she calls it. So I love that. I think that’s something really interesting that all of us can consider in terms of like, how do you create recurring revenue?

[00:16:21] Also, I’ll just be very honest with you guys. Like the pressure it’s so much lower than it used to be. Like, of course, like we have sponsors for example. And so when things go awry, like. There’s pressure there. Like when we have, you know, a sponsor who pays a lot of money to us to exceed expectations or meet expectations, like of course there’s pressure there, but when you just generally have recurring revenue coming in and people who are just like constantly part of your ecosystem, there’s just like.

[00:16:50] I don’t know. It doesn’t feel quite as stressful running that kind of business. That’s just me. I will always add my own level of stress that like, is just innately there because that’s just who I am. And I always want to strive for more and better. But when I’ve been in other positions and I’ve done other jobs, I have felt so much more stress when I’m constantly chasing the next deal.

[00:17:13] And I’m constantly like trying to appease the next client, the next big deal, the next this, that, and. I just kind of really love having the idea of this like recurring revenue where it just feels very different in terms of the business. I touched on sponsorships. We also do have sponsorships as well, which is something that I don’t know.

[00:17:31] I mean, I don’t know. I never thought I would be on the receiving end of a sponsorship again, like my background is in talent management, so I’ve always managed and negotiated deals for other people. So to know that like people want to get in front of our community and pay us to do so has been like a really.

[00:17:48] Interesting eye opening experience because we’re not doing it also in like the quote unquote traditional way that influencers are like, sure, we have created some social content with people, but like, that’s actually not really our bread and butter. Like our bread and butter in terms of sponsorships is usually events.

[00:18:05] So like we’ll invite a bunch of people to an in person event and they want to sponsor that virtual events we’ve done as well. So that’s been really interesting to sort of discover, like, how do we create the most ROI for our partners? And like, I just, it’s almost like, it’s also just like wrapping my head around the fact that like, this is even something that I offer for my company.

[00:18:25] I’m so used to being on the other side of things, but I would say our revenue is like, Last year, it was pretty split down the middle. It’s about 50, 50 between recurring memberships and membership fees and sponsorships. So they can be pretty lucrative and really interesting to do, but it feels very organic for us because.

[00:18:45] It’s our members are constantly looking for like new companies and tools to sort of solve their problems. And so we try very much, and it’s pretty easy, I’ll say to partner with people who like make sense to get in front of our members. And we feel, we try really hard to do it in like a really organic way.

[00:19:03] And we’re learning as we go to be completely honest with you. And then the last thing, which is like when related, but I have like, this is something that maybe more of you can relate to, which is. That I also have a consultancy. And so, you know, a lot of you guys have gone out on your own and you’re starting your own business.

[00:19:21] And I fricking love that. And I’m always here to support that. In fact, I’m like contemplating how we can add more resources in whim besides just like our freelancer Slack channel and a few things that we have. I think there’s more that we can be doing. So I have a consultancy it’s called tribe Monday. I don’t really advertise it a ton because WIM is really my focus, but I do it because I’m like ADHD and I like having different things to focus on, not just one.

[00:19:48] So it’s really refreshing when I get to do like a little recruiting, you know, through Tribe Monday, which is the majority of what Tribe Monday is. It’s an influencer marketing recruitment firm. Again, I don’t, Advertise it because it’s not my main business, but it’s so connected with what WIM is. So companies, mostly agencies, or like a lot of tech platforms, especially will come to me, management companies, and be like, we’re looking to hire an influencer marketer.

[00:20:14] We’re looking to hire a talent manager. Like, can you help us find someone? And so through WIM and just through like a larger network, It’s like a traditional recruiter, but very specialized in the creator economy. So it’s also interesting. The idea that I want to impress on you guys is like, can you create sort of like sub businesses of a main business to, you know, not put all your eggs necessarily in one basket.

[00:20:36] Like the businesses that I have are certainly related, adjacent to each other, et cetera, et cetera. But like. I don’t know if membership plummets one day and we have an issue with no one wants to be a member of women anymore. Like I sold my consultancy, which is like, again, like it lowers my stress level a ton knowing that I have like backups of backups and just like when we talk about scaling, which I know I’ve mentioned on this website, this website, I know I’ve mentioned on this podcast before that I.

[00:21:04] Can’t stand the word scale. It’s mostly because I don’t think people truly understand what it really means to scale. And I don’t think many business models within the creator economy are built for scaling, but good businesses, you know, and so it’s possible to scale on the creator economy. And I think that like, that’s one of the ways that you can do that is.

[00:21:24] By like building upon a business idea and like, what else can you add to it? And what else can you offer? You know, if you have like a viable customer who’s sitting right there and they’re like, yeah, I like you. Like I want to buy your stuff. Like how many things can you sell them? It’d be nice if you could sell them more than one.

[00:21:39] So the recruiting is another part of my business. It’s been really interesting. I’ve been doing it now for probably three plus years and like it’s big pops of money. I love it. Cause I feel like I make a huge impact. It’s really cool to be able to get someone their next job, like the next step in their career.

[00:21:57] I mean, that is really rewarding for me personally. So I love to be able to do that. And then the other part of, you know, Tribe Monday, I’ve been hired to do all sorts of consulting work, random things, like really random that I won’t even get into. But the other more consistent thing is. The coaching. So I’ve been doing coaching for some for creators, but rarely basically like acting as like a interim manager, you know, I mean, that’s my background.

[00:22:22] Right. But I’m not mad. Like I’m not negotiating their deals. I’m giving them all the strategy that I would give my influencer clients. So they pay me on an hourly basis for coaching. That’s rare though. I definitely worked with some creators, but for the most part, I worked with talent managers because that’s.

[00:22:41] The majority of my experience. So I’ve worked with some agency owners who want to build their agency, perhaps to sell, perhaps to just grow and like, and, you know, streamline their businesses and their teams and get everything buttoned up. I’m like a nerd when it comes to execution. So we’ll have regular weekly or biweekly sessions and talk about stuff like that.

[00:23:00] But I’ve also, for the most part, been hired to actually work with the managers directly. So the owners of the agency will say something along the lines of, we have these two managers and they’re like, they have so much potential, but for some reason, like they’re not booking what we would want them to be booking.

[00:23:15] Can you work with them? And it’s really nice, I think, from everybody’s perspective at that company to have like a third party. Neutral, new, fresh blood, fresh eyes to come in and just like talk to them. Like it’s like a business therapist. People have equated it to that when they worked with me, it’s really fun because I get to like in real time solve problems with people and like really get people to work at their.

[00:23:39] you know, highest and best capacity. So it’s really been fun to do that. Is that the most lucrative use of my time? Hell no. But I charge the lowest rate that I usually charge is a couple hundred dollars an hour. And it goes up from there. So it’s certainly not nothing, but like I usually make more money doing other things in my day.

[00:23:57] Why do I do it then? Cause I genuinely really enjoy it. That’s the truth. So you can make the argument that maybe I should drop it. Yeah. But I do, I think you have to do some things in your work life, especially if you work for yourself that you just genuinely enjoy, regardless of how much it affects your bottom line or not, because it just makes your day to day that much better.

[00:24:20] So, you know, you don’t have to, but you can make a choice to do that. And that’s what I, that’s what I choose to do. So that is the core of like the behind the scenes of like. Business, you know, there’s certainly more to it. This is absolutely the abridged version, but I got a few questions from people in the last couple of weeks, like I mentioned, who were like, I’d love to hear a little bit more the behind the scenes of WHIM and the actual like business behind WHIM, behind your consultancy, et cetera, et cetera.

[00:24:46] So I hope this was interesting and I’m more than happy to talk more about it. I mean, I’ve got I’m happy to share everything because I think that it’ll just help other business owners or aspiring business owners to be able to build their own thing. And so I love talking about this stuff and I’m happy to do it more.

[00:25:04] So if it’s something that interests you, what I would say is send us a DM, send me a DM on Instagram. It’s I A M W I I M. That’s I A M WIM. On Instagram and tell me your thoughts. Tell me your takeaways from this conversation. I hope it was helpful. I hope it was insightful. And if you want to see or hear more about it, let me know.

[00:25:25] All right, guys, have a great rest of your week and I will see you next time. If you enjoyed this episode, we got to have you back. Check out our website for more ways to get involved, including all the information you need about joining our collective. You can check out all the information at I am wiim.com. Leave us a review, a rating. But the most important thing that we can ask you to do is to share this podcast. Thanks for listening. Tune in next week.