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Jen Liddy

Hey, welcome to today's episode of Content Creation Made Easy. I'm your podcast host, Jen Liddy. 

And if you have been around me for any length of time, you know that I'm always talking about how we can make our content easier for us to create by leaning more into our personality, our strengths, our you-ness, basically. 

One of the elements of that is knowing a bit about where we get our energy from and whether we're introverted or extroverted or something in the middle and how to be in an online world, especially if you're an introvert, is what we're actually gonna dive into today. 

And I'm really excited because I have found that so many of my audience members and most of my clients are introverts and they find content and marketing, you know, it's a noisy place online.

So today I have Tara Reid. She is a business and marketing coach, but she specializes in working with what she calls “Introvert-preneurs”. And we are going to dive in. So Tara, thanks for being here today. 

Really, I'm excited to have this conversation. I think it'll be really eye-opening and freeing for people.

 

Tara Reid

Yay, I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for having me.

 

Jen Liddy

My pleasure. Tell me a little bit about what your background is and how you wandered into this lane of the online highway.

 

Tara Reid

I started a long time ago. It was like 17 years ago now. I started in web design SEO, and then I actually built a handmade jewelry business that I ended up selling and through that I kind of moved into really tapping into helping other people and finding that I really love to do that.

 

Jen Liddy

So when did you sell your, was it an e-commerce business?

 

Tara Reid

Yeah. I think it was 2020-2019. I put it on hold for a year before I sold it, which unfortunately devalued it a little bit, but I finally made that official switch and it's been amazing ever since.

 

Jen Liddy

… to becoming specifically a business and marketing coach? Yeah, so tell me how did you stumble upon this lane of really talking to introverts?

 

Tara Reid

Yeah, it's a really personal lane. I feel like, and most of the introverts I speak to or work with, they're usually where I was at the beginning of trying to be somebody that I'm not. 

I think a lot of times when we talk about introverts, we always talk about it kind of in a negative light. 

I know for me, growing up, I got called shy or people would ask, “Why are you so quiet?” and so I always took that to be a really negative trait and something that I had to change in order to be successful in business. 

And once I realized I don't, there are ways that I can make this work for me. And I think a big piece of that was self acceptance.

To stop trying to change myself to be more extroverted and accept who I am and that I have different strengths than people who are really extroverted.

 

Jen Liddy

Oh yeah, and the world needs both. I didn't understand introvertism and extrovertism until probably about 10 years into my marriage. 

I was in my 30s when I figured this out and I didn't even, I didn't really understand it for a long time. I'm surrounded by introverts, my husband, my best friends, my son, everybody is an introvert, but I'm extroverted.

And I always felt like, “Oh, what am I doing wrong? Why am I…” you know, and so I read Quiet by Susan Cain to help me understand the world of introverts. 

And when I understood how introverts think and work, it made all of my relationships better. And it just helped me understand that it's not that people are being shy or they're being quiet. 

It's just that their way of plugging into the world is a little bit different. Can you talk about what it means to be an introvert versus extrovert in case somebody hasn't done that work yet?

 

Tara Reid

Yeah. So for me, I always say that I feel like introversion has a scale. There's slightly introverted and then massively introverted, which I definitely am. 

I also have a little bit of social anxiety thrown in there, but you, you don't have to suffer from anxiety to be an introvert. An introvert just means that you are more of a thinker. 

You're more in your head. You think before you speak. You maybe are more soft spoken, more reserved. But the really big piece is that you get energy in different ways. 

Like an extrovert, they get their energy from other people. Whereas an introvert, we get our energy from being by ourselves. So you can love being in groups and networking and still be an introvert.

It just means that you need to go away and recharge for a little bit.

 

Jen Liddy

Like plug your brain in? Yeah. 

So let's talk about what we're going to really dive into today is not just what it means to be an introvert online and how an introvert can market themselves, but one of your specialties is how introverts,really it's in their best interest to not niche. 

And I would just love to hear everything you have to say about that. What does that mean to you?

 

Tara Reid

Yeah, so I'm definitely multi-passionate and I think everyone can be multi-passionate, but I've definitely found that a lot of introverts are because we are so in our head. 

We have all these ideas, we want to do everything, we have shiny object syndrome. So when somebody says you have to niche down to one thing, we'll do that because we're told to, like I did that several times.

But then if you're multi-passionate, you're probably gonna find that you get bored after a month or two, and then you feel like you need to burn it all down and start over. 

So I finally realized that I could stop that. I didn't have to do that. I think niching is really helpful if it's easy for you, if it comes naturally. 

If you're really struggling to niche down, then you shouldn't. I think it's fine to niche down each offer, I always talk about value ladders. 

So niche down each ladder, but you can still have multiple ladders. Like I think in my business, I probably have about 10 for different people. 

And it doesn't mean that I didn't do the market research or I don't know my audience. I don't know the offer or who it's for. It's just that I've opened up my main business to not be focused on one thing.

 

Jen Liddy

Can you give us an example of the ladder example that you were talking about from your own business?

 

Tara Reid

Yeah. So I have a lot of freebies on my website and each one is kind of an entry point into a ladder of other offers that kind of work with it. 

So, I have offers around being an introvert and marketing. That one is specifically for my introverted audience. 

And I also have others that are about content creation, one that's about SEO, one that's about blogging. And these are all for different people. I also have one for virtual assistance.

So my entire business isn't, for example, geared towards virtual assistance, but many of my offers in that one value ladder are.

 

Jen Liddy

How did this come to be? Tell me a little bit about the journey because I'm imagining at first that especially when you stepped into the online space, even though you've been here for a while…

You hear a lot about niching and I have opinions about niching because I think a lot of the times people think niche equals demographic and I don't believe in that. 

I think that there's messaging that you can do around really speaking to a specific person that could be considered niching. So I'm just curious when you started how all of this kind of hit you.

 

Tara Reid

Yeah, I was hit with a lot of the niching messaging. [I was] told that I had to niche down. So I tried, I at one point niched down to Pinterest management agency. 

And then I had that fully up and running. We were booked out with clients. And then after about three months, I was like, “I don't want to just do Pinterest. This is boring.”

And even before that, when I was just doing SEO because people kept coming to me for that, but I was like, “SEO, search engine optimization. It's easy for me. It's almost like a second language, but if that's all I'm doing every single day, I just, I can't just do that.” 

It gets so boring to me and I'm also a creative person and SEO isn't necessarily creative. It's more analytical. So that's where I was like, “I need to stop pivoting and stop switching things up all the time.” 

And I just need to create an ecosystem of offers where I can tailor it. I can tailor the messaging, but I don't have to tailor the messaging for my entire business. 

I think that's why I call myself a business and marketing coach too, because it's so broad. 

It's not niched down to “I'm just a business and marketing coach for introverts” because I do have that side, but then I also have a lot of offers that I'm like, “You don't have to be an introvert to want to learn this and this is going to help you.” 

So I think it's just important to know, if somebody is listening ‘cause I have a lot of clients that have dealt with this, I'm working with them on Voxer coaching and every couple months they're like, “Oh, I want to switch to this service. I want to do this instead.” 

I'm like, “You're multi-passionate. You can do everything. You don't need to burn it all down and start from zero again when you have a new direction or something new that you want to move into.”

 

Jen Liddy

So then how do you create content if you're, I'm gonna say this and I don't think this is exactly right, but it's almost like every one of your ladders or funnels has a niche for it or a person that it's for or a problem that it solves, right? 

Okay, and so it's almost like each one of those has its own little niche. How do you market yourself? How do you create content knowing that you've got all of this diversity of ways to serve people out there?

 

Tara Reid

Yeah. So for me, my content is mostly right now blogging. So I kind of look at each topic or value ladder as like a content pillar that I can rotate through. 

And then my second main content creation marketing method is email. So, if you were to peek into my convert kit account, I have like 300 tags to really narrow down who is who, and who I want to send each email to. 

So I really focus on segmenting my audience that way because I know that I don't want to send an email that's talking about, “Hey, introvert” when it's somebody who signed up for something else and is not completely not an introvert.

 

Jen Liddy

I love that. That's so strategic and really great at using the automations and the tools that you have. So you're really using blogging and emails, which makes sense given that you're an introvert. 

That's like your energy can be funneled into writing. Do you use the socials at all?

 

Tara Reid

I was. I actually left Instagram in June of this year and haven't come back yet. 

 

Jen Liddy

Tell me all about what that is like.

 

Tara Reid

It's amazing. I don't miss it at all. 

 

Jen Liddy

Did you delete it from your phone?

 

Tara Reid

No, I left it as is. I just put up one final post that was like “This is goodbye.” 

And I told everyone, “If you want to stay connected and get on my email list, grab any of my freebies and because that's where I'm going to continue to engage people.”

 

Jen Liddy

I love that. So how often do you send an email?

 

Tara Reid

Usually two, three times a week. And then I have a lot of sequences set up too.

 

Jen Liddy

And then how often are you blogging? Because I think that blogging really well with SEO can… it's a time commitment.

 

Tara Reid

Yeah. I was trying for weekly, one post a week. I've eased off on that a little bit, but I want to get back to one post per week.

 

Jen Liddy

Okay. And one of the questions I really wanted to know is, I'd love to hear how niching down is actually detrimental for business growth for introverts versus what it does for extroverts.

Can you expound on that a little?

 

Tara Reid

Yeah, I think one thing is if you're multi-passionate and you force yourself to niche down, because everyone's like, “I've seen this ad so many times about creating your one thing”.

And I'm like, “I don't want to create one thing” when I see this ad. So it can really hurt you because you're holding back your creativity. 

You're not putting everything that you like, all the knowledge that you have out in the world. So you're not making an impact and helping more people that you could help and with that growing your business revenue and customer base. 

And it's just not going to feel good. 

I think if you're feeling like something is off or you want to continuously change things up and you're never satisfied, it's probably because you're multi-passionate and you don't have that clarity around what that means for you and what that would look like.

 

Jen Liddy

So I'm trying to understand… I understand the multi-passionate thing, I understand the highly creative thing, or even if your brain is neuro-diverse and how does the introvert and extrovert play in here? 

Because aren't there a lot of extroverts out there who also feel like I don't wanna niche down, I don't wanna do just one thing for the rest of my life? Where does the introvert and extrovert play in here?

 

Tara Reid

Yeah, I think there's definitely extroverts who can struggle with that too. I think it's just, I find that it's more so introverts a little bit because we're so in our heads about things. 

We have all these ideas, we're consumers of information. So we take in a lot of information and then it's just in our head unless we do something with it. 

So I know for me, sometimes I just have to do a brain dump just to get everything out there.

And I think even a program that I created, because I was seeing so many people pivot all the time, I called it the Clarity Factor.

So a four month group program to help people clarify their business, their values, their offers in the way that makes sense for them, like with the value ladder thing and having multiple…

And I even put on that sales page, I was like, “Here's what I'm not going to do in this program. I'm not going to tell you to niche down to one thing” because I was like, if somebody hears clarity, like, “Oh, she's going to help me get clarity…” They're probably thinking niche… focus on one thing. 

So I want to make that clear. This is the Clarity Program for multi-passionates.

 

Jen Liddy

So a lot of times in the online world, there's the, “This is the way you do it, mentality that”, or like, “There's a rule and this is the rule and this is what worked.” 

And I wish that people could add a caveat, “This is what worked for me,” or “This is what worked for that person.” 

How long do you think it takes an introvert to understand from the time they start their business, that the way that they're doing it for them is not working. 

Is there a lot of comparisonitis? Is there a lot of struggle in this first part of getting started with a business?

 

Tara Reid

I'll share for me, it lasted about 10 years. And I still sometimes struggle with imposter syndrome, comparisonitis. 

That's why I probably left Instagram. It just felt like I was… I'm a learner too. I love learning so many things. 

I think I have about probably close to 500 courses or resources that I've signed up for or gotten through bundles in my list of things and I've probably only gone through about 15% of them or something but I…

 

Jen Liddy

Mm-hmm. That's impressive. I have to say I probably have that many and I definitely haven't gone through 15%.

 

Tara Reid

Yeah, so I feel like with Instagram, I was just taking in all this information and it was kind of paralyzing. It also led to comparison, like, “Oh, this person's teaching this, they're doing it so much better.” 

And then I would get in my head about it. So even after 17 years, I still have those thoughts. 

But I would say it was about 10 years until I realized and had that moment where I was like, “I need to stop doing it this way because this is what everyone's telling me and I need to figure out how to make this work for me” because I was dealing with burnout, I was overwhelmed, I wasn't loving my business anymore.

And I got to the point where I was just like, “It's either I need to figure out how to make this work for me or I'm going to scrap it all and go back to a nine to five desk job” where at least I know what to expect and I don't have to show up on video every day.

 

Jen Liddy

Yeah, I give you so much credit for being in it for 10 years before saying, “Look, I'm going to do it this way.” 

What strategies can people put into place to shift and scale a multi-passionate business without a niche?

 

Tara Reid

Yeah, I think the offer value ladder is the big piece. It's the overall strategy. And then once you have that, and I mean, you can start with two, you can start with one and then add in more. 

Like some of my offer value ladders, they have two offers. They don't have five offers per ladder yet, but eventually I'm going to continue to build them out. 

So I think starting simple and knowing that you can add things, you can flush things out as you learn more about your audience, what they need and how you work the best as well. 

So for me, I have a membership for introverts and I discovered, I think it was last year, I changed it. 

I used to do a monthly group coaching call and a monthly training and monthly content. And I was really struggling to create this monthly content. So I took a look at the numbers and I was like, “The members aren't even really looking at it the month that I put it out.” 

So I really dug into “What do they need? What do they want? What's going to feel better for me?” So I added in two Voxer office hours per month. And the introverts love it, I love it. 

It's so much easier and easy for me to manage my energy by doing Voxer responses. I could just type them out if I don't feel like even recording my voice. 

So anything you can do to ask yourself, “Is there something that I can do to make this simpler and make it feel better for me?” Because like you said earlier, just because something works for somebody else doesn't mean that it's going to work the same way for you. 

I tried that. I tried to do Reels at one point when they first came out and everyone's like, “Oh, you have to, video is king. You have to do video. You have to do a reel every day.”

Yeah, I tried that and they were horrendous. They were awful because it was super obvious that I was really uncomfortable and I went back and looked at them and I was like, “These are just awful.”

So I was forcing myself to do this. I was getting really anxious about it and it was burning me out and then it didn't result in anything because it was so obvious that I was not enjoying myself. 

 

Jen Liddy

Yes. Your energy wasn't in it. Right. You know, I remember when Reels and TikTok first really hit big in 2020 when everybody was stuck home and I don't really love being on video. I love having these conversations and I love talking to a person. 

I hate having to talk to nobody. It just depletes me. And I refused to do them for a long time. And I did it after a year and I still refused to do the trending audio or to lip sync or certainly not dancing and pointing. 

And now here we are in 2023 and the world is kind of catching up with what I was saying I was doing, which is I'm not doing any of that stuff, but if you wanted to, that's good for you, but it was never going to be good for me. 

And I feel like the more that we can lean into saying, “No, I don't like this.” What I'm hearing you say, Tara, is like “I don't want to be on video, so I want to write blogs. I'm going to write really SEO rich blogs and I'm going to strategically lead them to something that gets them into my world so I can nurture them.”

And I think if we are so focused on getting shit done to just cross it off the list, like, “Oh, let me make this reel so I can cross it off the list,” especially for introverts, it's like you're on your way to Burnoutville, the fast train to Burnoutville.

 

Tara Reid

It's really interesting too. I'll share that when I finally made it official and left Instagram, I had wanted to for about six months before that. 

And just because I'm a content creator, I had six months worth of content already ready to go, it's like, “Well, I don't want to waste this content. So I'm going to schedule it all out. And then once it's done, I'll make a goodbye post.” 

But what really made me make that final decision and tell me that what I'm thinking is the right decision [is] I went in and looked at my stats. 

How many people are actually coming to my website from Instagram? Yeah, maybe they're commenting, they're engaging, they're watching stories, which is fine, but that's not what really matters to me. 

I wanna get people to my website. I wanna get people on my email list. And looking at those numbers, I was shocked to see that I was spending 10 times the amount of time on Instagram than I was on Facebook. 

And Facebook was actually getting me 10 times the traffic. So that was like, “Okay, yeah, I can let this go.” I can, because it's also like, everyone says you have to be on Instagram.

And I know that is where a portion of my audience is, but that's not a good use of my time. My time is much better spent on blog content, optimizing my website, doing keyword research, creating new sales funnels, emails and all of that.

 

Jen Liddy

I love that. Can you talk a little bit about having a multi-passionate brain and an introverted personality? 

How do you keep things simple with, for example, you have 11 kinds of ways that people can come in. How do you create a multi-passionate business and not get overwhelmed?

 

Tara Reid

I think a really big piece of it for me is automations. Anything that I can automate and get out of my head so I don't even have to think about it. It's already set up. 

It's already running in the background, it's on autopilot, is the best case scenario. And I think one other thing that I do is I plan my business quarterly. 

And so some offers are value letters. I won't actively promote them for several months, I kind of rotate through. 

And I find that works for me. Like, what do I wanna focus on this month? What is something I wanna create or that I'm excited about? And then, I focus on that topic or maybe a couple ladders, but I don't promote everything all the time.

I think I have 50 digital products right now. So I'm not promoting them all at once. Some of them I've never actually promoted. They just live on my website.

 

Jen Liddy

Can we talk about, I'm so excited about this idea of the digital products and having it live on your site and like cycling through with intention and strategy. 

How do you know what to focus on? Is it like you're planning it out quarterly, and these are the things that people need right now or these are the things that are like time wise in the business year? How do you make those decisions?

 

Tara Reid

So usually both. I look at if there's something time wise that makes sense, but then I'm also really big and this is essential for me. 

I found as a multi-passionate and as an introvert is what I call following my energy. So I love to plan things quarterly, but if a month comes around and I'm looking and I'm like, “Oh, I plan to launch this program, but I'm not feeling it.” That's okay. 

I can do something else. So I make plans, but they're not set in stone and I really need that flexibility. 

 

Jen Liddy

So it's being flexible with yourself too. I love this, this is so much great information. Do you have any other little nuggets that people should take away, especially if they're introverted? 

But I really think that extroverts can benefit from everything you're saying because a lot of the philosophy that you have in your approach speaks to somebody who's creative and multi-passionate. 

But do you have any other nuggets for us today?

 

Tara Reid

I think the best piece of advice I could give to anyone who's listening and is like “Yes, this is me,” is just to really make note of what you're doing right now in your business. 

Really look at the things that you're doing, how they're making you feel, if they're actually getting you results. And then you can start to figure out, “Okay, is this something that I can stop doing? I can ditch?” 

Like, I just recently decided that I'm going to be closing one of my memberships because it no longer lights me up.

It's just for several months now, I've been really dragging my feet to do the monthly stuff. So I've realized, “Okay, I've given it a few months. It's not just a one time thing. I really feel like I need to change this up and let this membership go.” 

And I think it's also going to allow you to really find your own path because the basis of everything we've said is that what works for one person is not going to work for you. 

So I think being open to testing different things, trying things out is really the only way you're gonna figure out what's gonna work for you the best.

 

Jen Liddy

Yeah. And I know that you're anti-niche or you're not like niching, but there is a niche in what you're saying, like people who are introverted and multi-passionate and want to have a diverse array of offerings. 

Those are your people, right? Versus somebody who's like, “No, I have one signature program and I want to do talks.” 

And your person is the person who kind of got this huge map in their brain of all the things they could do.

 

Tara Reid

Yeah, definitely ideas people.

 

Jen Liddy

I love that. Ideas people. So how can people get into your orbit, Tara?

 

Tara Reid

Probably the best place is going to my website, TheTaraReid.com/Everything. So that's my everything page, every offer, every freebie. 

And if you sign up for any of my freebies, you'll get on my email list, which is where I send the most valuable content and fun things.

 

Jen Liddy

Great. Did you tell me that you had something that you really thought that my audience would love to download? Or is it on the Everything Page and they should go there?

 

Tara Reid

Oh, yes. It is on the everything page, but I'll mention it if it resonates. So I do have a free webinar called the Four Marketing Methods for Introverted Entrepreneurs. 

So I cover email, blogging, Pinterest and social media, but in a less social kind of way. It's more focused on content creation and attracting people. 

And I go a little bit deeper into each of those four methods.

 

Jen Liddy

Perfect. And then I also wanted to say that you have your own podcast. Can you talk a little bit about that?

 

Tara Reid

I do. Yeah. The Introvertpreneur podcast. It's actually, we're kicking off season three in February and we're actually going to two episodes per week, this season instead of one.

 

Jen Liddy

Wow. Bravo. I know what a lot of work it is. So bravo. That's wonderful. Tara, thank you again for coming on. 

I think that the more people can lean into understanding where they get their energy from and where they're spending their energy. 

And you've given us a lot of specifics like analyze where you're spending your energy and analyze what's working for you. So thank you for that message today. 

 

Tara Reid

And thank you so much for having me.

 

Jen Liddy

Okay. Thanks everybody for listening. I'll see you next week. Bye.