Transcript Episode 79

Episode 79:Creating a Digital Commerce Business That Works For You with Christina Scalera

Stephanie Skryzowski: [00:00:00] Welcome to the 100 degrees of entrepreneurship podcast. The show for purpose driven entrepreneurs who wanna get inspired to step outside of your comfort zone, expand it to your purpose and grow your business in a big way. I’m your host, Stephanie, Zaki a globe TRO CFO, whose mission is to empower leaders to better understand their numbers, to grow their impact and their income.

Let’s dive in.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to 100 degrees of entrepreneurship. I’m your host, Stephanie and I have Christina sclera on the podcast with me today. So you may have seen Christina all over TikTok. She is blown up over there and you may also know her from her online shop, that contract shop. She’s coined the term eCommerce as in digital commerce.

And she’s like an all around boss. I’m really excited to share with you this conversation, cuz she talks all about how almost any business owner can create an [00:01:00] online digital download shop, just like she has, which kind of blew my mind. And she gives some really great ideas on how to do this in your business.

If it’s not something that you’ve thought of before would even be a possibility for you, which was me. So that was awesome. We had such a good conversation and you know, I had to ask her about TikTok cuz she has gone viral on TikTok, I think like multiple times at this point. And it has not been by chance.

She. Going at this social media platform with strategy, just like she has done with her blog and EO and her YouTube channel. And I just really admire that. I, I was telling her, I always feel like I’m never one that’s ahead of the curve when it comes to social media, I’m always like, Three years, maybe I was gonna say three weeks, no more like three years behind the curve.

And so I always really admire those people that are sort of hacking the latest and greatest, um, social media and really doing well at it. And in a way that is serving her business, like she’s not doing this just for, you know, the vanity followers and whatever. So [00:02:00] anyway, Christina is a boss. She’s awesome.

And actually, let me share with you her official bio, before we get into the. So stationary hoarder and Shopify girl, Christina Scalia is an expert featured in entrepreneur gold Digger being boss. Don’t keep your day job in creative live. She founded the award-winning seven figure store at the contract shop and helps her clients turn their services into best selling passive digital download products sold through an online storefront.

She’s trademarked this. eCommerce selling in her downtime. She is constantly TikTok or browsing Zillow. So again, I think you’re gonna love this episode and really listen in on the eCommerce and the way she explains that you, you really, anybody, any business owner can open up a digital commerce shop. I was.

Totally fascinated. Anyway, without further ado, let’s get into my interview with Christina.

Hey everybody. Welcome back to 100 degrees of entrepreneurship [00:03:00] and I am very excited to have here with me today, Christina, at Scalia, Christina. Welcome. Hi, thank you for having me, Stephanie, can you tell our listeners a little bit about what you do in your business? Yeah, for sure. So I run Christina sclera.com, which is a coaching and consulting company that helps you to create something that I’ve trademarked as eCommerce.

So that’s digital commerce instead of eCommerce where you sell, maybe drop shipping or products that you’re finding off Alibaba, you’re selling that through your own site. Well, instead of that, I. Have another business, my online store, um, called the contract shop where I sell digital download products, legal templates for online entrepreneurs.

And so through the last seven years I’ve been running that, um, more so passively in the last four years than not. And I’ve. Use that time that I now have from the passive shop experience to help other people to do the same in lots of different industries. Right now I’m working with clients that [00:04:00] are therapists that are graphic designers, website designers, photographers.

So all kinds of different industries where they’re taking their service, turning into a, a product, and then selling those digital products through an online storefront, which is really awesome because. Cuts back on all the hassle of having things like funnels and launches and things like that. Um, so it’s a very different business model, um, which is why I gave it the name eCommerce , but that’s what I do now is I teach people eCommerce.

That’s so cool. And you’re just like, you’re killing it. You’re totally blowing up. And I love that you did not start here though. What was your, what was your journey like to get you to where you are? Right. Yeah. Um, and it’s funny, cuz like, I don’t feel like I’m killing it. but thank you. yeah. So I started out, um, as a lawyer and.

Had a corporate job right out of law school, which is kind of rare. I went in house right away to work on their trademarks and stuff. And then quickly realized that that was not even though that was like literally my [00:05:00] dream job, you know, since college, that was what I wanted to do. And once I was there and doing it every day, I had this moment at like 7:00 AM, as I’m like waking up and I have to be at work in 30 minutes and somehow also shower and be ready and fight traffic.

In those 30 minutes, I just had this realization of. Oh, my gosh, this is what I’m gonna do every day for the rest of my life, you know, weekends accepted, but it just was this, like, I don’t know how to, to describe it, but I, I have described it, vaguely described it like that before. And I know other people have like, been like, yes, I know what you’re talking about.

And other people are like, I don’t know what you’re talking about. So for those of you who get it, you get it. . Um, and so it was at that moment where I started to look for alternatives and I just remember researching day and night, what can I do with a, like a law degree or like, Non-conventional jobs for lawyers, like things like that.

And I didn’t end up finding . I didn’t end up finding what I really wanted to find, but I did find a mentor who I still work with to this day. And she was a yoga teacher, [00:06:00] but she had previously been a business lawyer in DC. And so she kind of taught me how to at the time I was like, I’m gonna do what you did.

I’m gonna follow this path, but do it in Atlanta. And, um, spoiler alert. I did not turn out to. A yoga teacher in Atlanta. Um, I did try, I got certified, tried, you know, had private clients. Um, that was where I first learned about blogging and how to have a website learned a lot of very expensive mistakes.

And through that, um, every time I’d go to like a, like a yoga networking meeting, I would realize that people wanted to, uh, learn more about the legal side of their business. Like if I got outed as an attorney and they had all kinds of questions, like yoga, everyone was like, oh yeah, nice ignored. But if I.

You know, if I, if something came up and, or they found out I was an attorney, somehow they just couldn’t stop talking to me, couldn’t stop asking questions. And I was like, well, if they have questions, I’m sure other people do. So I had this very strange, like legal yoga blog for a while. It probably was.

It’s like everything you’re not supposed to do. But the point I think of that is like, you just wanna [00:07:00] start creating content for the sake of creating content to see what sticks. And if I hadn’t been already blogging about, you know, Mental health and yoga poses and like boring stuff. Not that mental health is boring, but you know what I mean?

Like nobody was really that interested in it compared to the numbers I started to see when I blog about like business and legal. Um, and then from there I was introduced to a couple different people. So long story short that helped give me the idea again, just getting out there, networking. Continuing to create content.

Um, all that gave me the idea for creating contract templates that I could sell online. And that was how, what later became the contract shop? Um, I just sold it under my name originally. That’s how that all got started. And then, um, about that was like 2000. It was 2015 when I started that. And then like 2017, it started to run more passively.

And so that really gave me the idea of like, well, if I could do this passively, what else could I do? And, um, just had a lot of people asking how I was doing it. And so slowly over the next three years, I shifted and created some online courses [00:08:00] about how I was doing it. And fast forward. Um, now in 2022, that’s like the majority of what I do.

Personally, I find it a lot more interesting than like talking about what an LLC is for like the seventh hundred 40th time this year. But yeah, so those are, those are my two businesses and that’s kind of how I got into everything. That’s awesome. I love hearing about people’s journeys because I don’t think I’ve talked to one person who is doing now what they started doing at the beginning of their career.

And so I love that. I mean, I feel like we all have that like breaking moment where we’re like, oh my God, I can’t do this, whatever we were doing before. And, um, that’s so interesting. So this de thing is this for everyone, like, could any online business owner do this, have digital, like a digital shop front, like you.

Online business for sure. I would say the only people I found that it doesn’t work for because you know, people are like, oh, I’m gonna find like, I’m gonna be the one exception that this doesn’t work for. It’s it’s almost like they , [00:09:00] they wanna be that exception. Yeah. I don’t know why, but, um, the only people I’ve found that it doesn’t really work for is people that are in like a very.

Time, like not, not product luxury, but like time, luxury market. Like the, the only one that ever sump me was some guy does like history, something or other, like, he, he. Archival history. I don’t know. And I was like, yeah, I don’t think you can do this. But like for the majority of business owners online who are already selling something, especially as a service, there’s definitely aspects or online course owners, too.

There’s definitely aspects of what you are already doing. That can be productized. For example, you know, I got the idea for the contract templates because I was work, you know, I was doing done for use services for people. They were all really impressed that I could send out in a, a proposal in less than two minutes after we got off the phone and it wasn’t, you know, magic.

It was just, I took the time, took 20 minutes to set this process up ahead of time. Um, [00:10:00] and I, I had the invoice and the contract attached and that it just went right off to them. So that was when I. You know that, oh, maybe that’s something else. People would be interested in buying from me. And honestly, I could probably sell the whole like client onboarding process as templates I could sell, you know, the offboarding process, how I work with clients, if there’s any unique Asana boards or Trello templates that people are using, those are always a good find.

Um, now click up and notion are really big. Obviously like if you’re doing any kind of special design that has certain conversion elements, like in a funnel or on a website, these are all things that other people would like to have. And you’ve already done the work of creating this for a client once. So why not take that, tweak it, make it a little bit more simple for a more general audience and then sell that as a product through an online storefront.

So, you know, that’s for, for done for your service providers. If you’re already creating, or you’ve created an online course, this is even easier because you can just pull templates and elements out of that online course. And this [00:11:00] is especially, I’ve had a lot of people who have come through my, you know, my way and been clients who they’ve wanted to create an online course for a long time.

They’ve been working on the templates, working on the modules, but they just can’t seem to like finish it off and put a little ribbon on it and get it out into the world. And so they come to me because I help them turn those courses into digital products that they’re selling instead. To be honest, a lot of people don’t need a full 6, 7, 8 module course.

And nor do they wanna take the time to go through all that they maybe just need one particular part of your process. Like if you’re a social media manager, maybe they just want, what’s working as far as Instagram captions right now, or hashtags or whatever. And you can sell that particular element to them.

Even though that’s been sitting on a hard drive somewhere, you know, collecting dust. Well now it could be making you money. Sitting on a hard drive inside your online shop? Mm oh my gosh. I didn’t even like, I, yeah, I’m just like, I always think how can I apply this to my business? So that’s so [00:12:00] interesting to like, sort of pull apart that online course and sell things all apart.

Um, and so do you think that digital downloads and this sort of like eCommerce economy that you’re talking about, do you think it’ll replace online courses? That’s a good question replace. No, I do think that it’s easier for people to get into because. It’s a much smaller product that you have to create.

And it’s easier in the sense that, so the way that I look at things is, is like backwards of how a lot. I think a lot of people look at it and I wish more people took the approach of like, the container is not what we should be focusing on. And I think this is just a beginner business mistake. So in the beginning of my business, I would be like, okay, I want to create an online course.

And then I would like go and look at how to fill it instead. I wish people would take the approach of. Who is it that I want to help? You know, who, who is it? That seems to be gravitating towards my [00:13:00] content and in my community. And what kind of problems do they have that I could solve for them? And I wish people would look more closely at that because you might see, like, I did that.

They want a quick result. They don’t wanna sit at a contracts, 1 0 1 seminar for two days over their weekend. They would rather just have a template that’s done for them that they can plug and play and send off to their. They’re people. Yeah. At least that’s, you know, in my store’s case, that was the, the thing, but like maybe they don’t want to be a social media expert.

They don’t wanna be a Pinterest expert. They just want the bare minimum that they need to see some trivial result that gives them the momentum and the mojo and the energy they need to keep trying with social media. So what is it that you can provide them at a very bare, basic level that will give them.

More of the results that they’re looking for. And I think that’s the second way that people get really hung up on their digital products versus courses is like, everyone wants to get you from a to Z and your [00:14:00] digital product should be taking you from like a, to a and a half, or like maybe a to B or, you know, like.

Uh, P what is it like S to T you know what I mean? Like, I’m not saying you have to start at the beginning of the journey, but like, you should be giving them that little tiny step forward, because it’s like a hundred percent forward from where they’ve been, which is just like stuck in doing nothing. And I feel like you probably get, um, a much higher percentage of somebody actually using it, um, using the product than you do with somebody actually going through an online course.

I mean, I feel like what’s the percentage of people that actually complete the online courses that they purchase. Probably like, I don’t know, 20% or something, whereas if they’re gonna buy your one product, they’re gonna use it. Right. Right. I think so. Well, and that goes back to the result too, is like, are you here to make money or are you here to help people and have a company that’s built around.

And I feel like the two, like eventually go hand in hand, like if you are helping people, you’re [00:15:00] going to make more money and like, correct. Yeah. Yeah.

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So tell me how your shop works. Does it work without you? Do you have like Facebook ads that are just like constantly just sending people over to your online storefront? Or like, how does it actually work? Are you doing launches? Uh, no launches, no ads, no funnels. so [00:16:00] the way that it works is through organic marketing.

We haven’t done paid ads in over a year and that’s just simply because we were. Breaking even, I mean, you see the back end of my finances, but , we were breaking even on the ad part, but then, you know, to have an ad manager on top of that, we were kind of going a little bit net negative until we would have one of our semi-annual sales.

So we do a couple big sales pushes a year. And I mean, I guess those are kind of like launches, but at this point, you know, it’s the same materials that we’ve been running for every sale. For the last few years. And what we do in those promotions is we actually swap out pop culture references. So, you know, one time it was like a Harry Potter, heavy reference throughout the sales cycle.

One time it was like nineties, um, you know, pop and, and boy bands and Britney Spears pop references. So we just kind of switched that out and that helps keep it fresh because people aren’t looking. I mean, I think we just literally talked about this. Like people aren’t looking at you as closely as, as you.

And so you can [00:17:00] just reuse the same materials by switching out the pertinent elements that they’re gonna remember, which is like, they’re gonna remember your reference to Harry Potter and be like, oh, the same email again, but they’re not gonna remember the fact that you had these three testimonials and like this person talked about this and this person talked about this.

So we are doing, I guess, quote unquote launches in the way that we’re rerunning our semi-annual sales twice a year, like around July 4th, holiday. The contract shop puts everything on 40% off. And then for black Friday, we do a big promotion around that. We have doorbusters, you know, first five, 10, a hundred people all get a special prize.

Um, so it makes it really fun. But generally speaking, I’ve been on vacation the last two, July 4th sales, and I I’m getting married and I’ll be on my honeymoon this year. So like completely checked out during these quote unquote launches. And we just did a sale in may and I was down with coronavirus. Uh, I have, I had no idea what was happening with that sale.

I would just, when I got some energy to open [00:18:00] my phone, I would look and be like, oh yeah, we’re having a sale. um, so it’s, it’s really running completely without me. And probably I’m spending about $6,000 a month on a team. But you know, we’re making anywhere from, it depends on the month, but like the, the sale promotion months, those are six figure months.

Like a normal month is anywhere from like 20 to 30 something thousand dollars. Um, and then those, you know, with those big semi-annual events to bump it up and then every day we’re getting traffic from our organic blog. Oh my gosh. And is that like, are those posts that have been around for a while and they just have like really good SEO that they’re continuing to generate traffic for you?

Or are you like consistently creating new content? Yeah, it’s a good question. So anyone that tells you blogging dead is so full of. Like this is the, it’s the gateway path into your entire brand for someone, uh, because it doesn’t matter what social media platform is blowing up. Like I love TikTok. At the end of the day, where are [00:19:00] people going?

If they wanna find something they’re still going to Google and they’re still typing in how to blah, blah, blah. And so it’s still beneficial for anybody out there to be blogging. And that’s the thing is like, it’s so hard because you get those immediate fast results. Like my talk’s blown up to 30,000 followers and.

A little less than three months, but like my blog took a good two and a half years to get some traction. And so I think it can be really frustrating for, for new business owners because they’re like, oh my blog’s aren’t doing anything. And, but, but that blog post that blew up two and a half years into my business.

It still is the number two visited page on my. Like wow. Since we came out with it five years ago, mm-hmm, like more than the about page. It’s like homepage and this blog post. And, um, we haven’t, we have a third blog post that I wrote it like a couple months after that one. That’s finally catching up to that one.

So now it’s like homepage blog, post one blog, post two. Those are our most visited pages on [00:20:00] our entire website. And the cool thing is that the, the second blog post that blew up, it’s kind of like a, like a tutorial type blog post that walks someone through how to sign a contract. People people stay on that we can see on the back end, they’re staying an average of eight to 10 minutes depending on the month.

Oh my gosh. So they’re like literally walking through it, like getting one of our products, printing it out and going through step by step with their contract right next to them. So that’s really, really cool that we’re able to help them. But also that we have this content that’s continuing to drive traffic to our website organically, which is about 50 to 60% of our leads every single month.

Wow. That’s amazing. It’s a, it’s a long game. And I feel like sometimes people give up before the long game, like kicks in like, oh, this isn’t working. Okay. Next. And they go for the like fun thing, like trying to go, go viral on Instagram or TikTok or something. But, um, it’s, you know, it’s that blogging stuff that’s gonna last.

So are you, how do you divide your time? So you’re [00:21:00] like, you’re blown up on TikTok. I definitely wanna talk about that. How do you balance your time with. You know, creating content on social media, like TikTok and Instagram versus like continuing to pour resources into putting really good content out on your blog.

Like how do you yeah. Divide up that time. Um, I really wish that I was like more disciplined and like, I, I watch. Like I was at my dentist the other day and I just looked at them and I’m like, I realize these people wake up every single day, go to work, work the same hours. You know, Monday through Thursday, they, they take three days off, but still, I was just like, how does someone get up and do the same thing every day?

Like I just, maybe it’s my ADHD. I don’t know. But like, I. Every day is a new adventure. Like it’s like a new what’s gonna happen today. Um, there’s certain things that I will get done, but I know that I can’t have more than like two or three meetings on my calendar per day, or it’s just like, I get nothing done.

Um, so like today I had a meeting this morning [00:22:00] with my coach and then I have this podcast and then the rest is just kind of what I call white space to work on whatever I want. So, I guess the, the, the thing is like there, the thing that you don’t see on the back end is like, I have no balance and I don’t know if this is a good or bad thing, but like I blew my to up really fast because like for three days, All I did was TikTok consume TikTok, make TikTok.

Um, you know, it was like my entire weekend and then like, like Monday bleeding into Tuesday. And then finally my work started to pick back up and I got back into that and like kind of eased off, but it was like that momentum. And then I, I had like another day where I hyper hyperfocused, like two weeks later, and then I had another video that went like F.

Super viral. So it was like those days of hyper focusing and creating like nine tos a day are what blew my TikTok up super fast. And now I can just kind of coast and gain, you know, like 500 ish followers every day, every other day. Um, by just posting a video every, you know, every day or every other day, [00:23:00] And, um, so yeah, there’s like no balance there.

I don’t know that that’s the answer anyone wants to hear, but it’s like hyper fixate on one thing until it’s done and then procrastinate on everything else. And then, um, yeah, that’s, I don’t know. That’s how I live my life and then flip and then hyperfocus on the next thing. And then everything else goes to the wayside for a little bit.

I mean, I think you have a point like really going all in on something and sticking with it, whether it’s for a few days or for, you know, a few months or whatever, it might be like going all in on something and staying focused on it. So for TikTok, do you have, like, do you have a goal or an objective with TikTok?

Like has your. Because I know some people have, um, have basically like hacked virality, like have you studied it and figured out like, okay, how can I go viral? And then you do that. Yeah, for sure. Um, I think it’s really easy to go viral on TikTok by spouting off something that’s quote unquote controversial.

And I put that in quotes because [00:24:00] like, this is, it doesn’t have to be something political or, you know, hostile or anything like that. Like the things that went viral for me, one of ’em was like unconventional ways that I, I blew up my TikTok. So that video went viral. Another one was about Etsy and why I don’t like Etsy as a eCommerce platform.

And so that one’s super viral. I did, you know, a whole series on that when I started seeing the traction there. And so I think it’s just a matter of testing out what works for you and doing more of that, which is a really boring answer, but it works. And then the second thing is making sure that you’re doing controversial.

Takes on, um, common topics, you know, like a good, a good example of that would be like, here’s why Instagram is dead or which is, you know, controversial, but like, it’s gonna be super popular on TikTok because like the other, other on TikTok, because they don’t wanna be on its yeah. Right. So stuff like that, um, you know, I’ve seen a lot of designers do this well, cuz like right now we just bought a house.

And so we’re, we’re kind of redoing some of the things inside. So I’m watching a lot of design [00:25:00] TikTok and they do this really well. Uh, where they’ll say something. As a designer, here’s five things. I would never, like, I would never walk into a house with these five things and you’re like, ah, you wouldn’t even walk into the house.

Right. Right. So it’s like that kind of controversy and, you know, It it’s really it’s. I don’t wanna say it’s a click bait cuz you know, then they list off five things. It’s it’s not like they show you a completely unrelated video, but that definitely is the key. I think to gaining traction and a following on TikTok is like planting your stake in the ground as you know, as, uh, innocuously controversial as it is, you know, saying if you’re a knitter.

This certain type of yarn is the only yarn I’ll use, you know, like, right. It’s silly, but, uh, but people get really riled up about it. And then you start to get a lot of comments and engagement. And then if you can start to reply to some of those comments, TikTok very much favors videos that have a reply and you can even reply to your own videos.

And then like, basically like you make [00:26:00] a video. Go to the comment section, write something like a question to other people, or like a question that you would like people to ask to you, and then you can like click on. And make a response video, like a reply video. So you’re actually just replying to yourself, but TikTok doesn’t really, I mean, their algorithm doesn’t seem to differentiate right now at the time we’re recording this.

And so it’s just a response video generally to a question. And so those will show up more frequently in the algorithm. Um, so that that’s been really helpful. So fascinating this, like, I, I’ve never been the type of person that’s like ahead of the curve on social media. So the, for the people that are just like, oh my gosh, this is so cool.

So are you finding that the work that you’re doing on TikTok and the, the stuff that you’re putting into that are people coming over either to your Christina sclera brand or to your shop? Are they, are they coming over there? Yes. And no, uh, what a direct correlation I’ve noticed is so on TikTok, you have the option to [00:27:00] have your Instagram and, and your YouTube link right now, like directly, you know, you don’t have to add that as like an extra link or anything.

Uh, one thing I’ve noticed for sure is that. When I have more engagement and following and things like that, blowing up on TikTok, my YouTube also blows up and that’s strategic because my YouTube is the only thing linked. I did not link my Instagram. So a lot of people linked their Instagram because they’re still trying to grow their Instagram.

Um, I grew my, or I, I linked my, my YouTube because that’s all I care about growing because I’m so close to monetizing it. And I just, you know, I’d rather get paid than followers on Instagram. yeah. So I, I have definitely noticed that where people are very interested in the longer form video content that’s on my YouTube.

So it’s a natural fit. As far as links go in my bio where I’m linking to, uh, I’m actually linking to a, a freebie or a free webinar or something that. Gets clicked. Uh, it gets clicked a lot, but I would have to look at what our percentages are as far as conversion there. Um, that’s a fairly new thing because I was trying [00:28:00] something else before.

But as far as sales go, we have actually not seen like a ton, but we also didn’t track it very well. So it was just kind of like correlated, not, not caused. And I mean, we did, we did have. Two of our, our biggest months this year in each brand though. And right after some of my videos were blowing up on TikTok.

So I, I wanna say that’s related, but like I don’t have the actual data and numbers to back that up. Um, I just know based on, you know, previous years and other things we should not have had as big of a month as we did, except for, uh, I have two TikTok channels, you know, one for each brand that I have. And those, those had videos that did really well right before we started doing well financially.

So. I, I just, I wanna be as honest as possible, but I definitely think they’re, they’re correlated mm-hmm yeah, right. It’s not like, okay. I went viral on TikTok or like I’m blowing up on TikTok over the past three months, and now I’m like, you know, have like a ton of new, new sales, new business, but maybe it’s part of the.

Long game, if [00:29:00] they’re popping over to YouTube and then they’re following you over there, maybe it’s gonna take ’em a couple months and then they, they are gonna be a paying customer. So yeah, that’s gonna be like so interesting to watch. Do you see, like, I’ve, I’m only on TikTok as a consumer of media, not as a creator, do you see.

TikTok, continuing at the like pace it has in terms of like growth and like, I don’t know. It just feels like everybody’s on TikTok. That’s the place to be. Do you see that continuing? Yeah. Yeah. This is, I mean, I’ve been doing this long enough. This is Instagram circa 2014 15, which I was on Instagram at the time.

What a huge wasted opportunity, you know, I just pitter pattered that. And this is TikTok right now, you know, so that you asked me my goal earlier, I forgot to answer. Um, my original goal was just to get to a thousand and then I did that in like three days. So I was like, okay, well we need new goals. So the next they really fall in line with like what the [00:30:00] TikTok platform unlocks.

Um, so like a thousand, you unlock the link in your bio and you unlock the ability to go live. Um, a 10,000. I unlocked access to the creator fund, I think, which. That’s the whole thing we don’t have to get into today. Um, and then I think it like fit. Oh, I also unlocked, um, well, apparently you don’t unlock them.

It’s just like gifted to certain accounts now, but like playlists, which is really helpful to like organize your content so people can, you know, binge watch a series or they’re called series and Instagram, but like, They’re called playlist and TikTok. And then at 50,000, I think you unlock something else and a hundred thousand you unlock something else.

So I’m really just going by those to like keep unlocking certain features, which is also kind of fun. Cuz it makes it like a game, you know like, oh, like how can I get to this next level? Yeah. But yeah, I mean I just, I think it’s, it’s more than anything. I just try to create content. That isn’t necessarily viral.

It’s more just helpful to the people that I want to be buying my products so that I do get the followers that are the right fit [00:31:00] for, you know, the kinds of things that I’m trying to sell. Um, but you know, in the beginning, I definitely did try to do more of the viral thing. with the controversial tos.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that makes sense, like being strategic about that, you know, about the content that you’re putting out. So it does tie back to the people that you want, because I feel like, um, I forgot who it was. Somebody on Instagram, they posted something and it was whether it was a video or real or something a while ago.

It. And it went viral or some like famous celebrity reposted it. And they got like tens of thousands of new followers. And they were like, I don’t actually want you here because none of you were like my ideal client. This is a business Instagram, like, and so they’re like, I probably should not have posted this thing.

Cause it was completely unrelated to my business. It was more a personal thing and it went viral and then they’re like, now I got these people that are not really what I want here. So. Very interesting. Okay. So, so we’ll get away from TikTok for a second back to your business. Um, if a business owner is like, you know, a service business [00:32:00] owner is like, okay, I’m really interested in exploring this eCommerce idea and creating a storefront.

Like where, where do you stress? They start, like, where do you even begin with thinking about how to add this, like function to your business? Yeah. I’m always going for the minimum viable product or ability to do this. So I always suggest someone start with pre-selling the product ideas that they have, which honestly that’s the most fun part anyway, is like brainstorming new products and things that you could create and having some sort of very simple storefront.

Um, I think that’s, that’s the thing is we’re so used to this beautiful aesthetic. Perfect. Storefront now on most websites or not storefront, but just in general, like their websites are perfect and all that. But when it comes to a shop, at least for the time being, and, and for the foreseeable future, you just need something functional.

You don’t need something that’s super aesthetic, or like, you know, where the elements are all moving around. As you scroll through the page, like you don’t need any of that. And actually that, that kind of hurts you when you have a shop. So I [00:33:00] would just go for the minimum viable shop, which is. You know, most of my clients throw up a, a Shopify light site, tie it to their show it or a Wix or a Squarespace site.

Um, I started on Squarespace. It is like completely. Dummy proof like you cannot, you can’t break it. It’s, it’s just, it’s cheap. It has everything you need as far as like commerce and it’s, it’s just, yeah, I love square space to get started on. And so, uh, I would try to have my website in my shop all integrated at some point, but a lot of people have to start just because it’s easier.

They don’t have the tech background. You know, I’m not a developer designer. So I, I started this way where I just had the square space site and that was where my products were. And then eventually I moved onto Shopify because. More of a learning curve on Shopify, but yeah, that’s where we get started with the products they wanna pre-sale.

And again, thinking about the products, just think about the products you might already have that we talked about earlier, or the products that you could easily create for people by getting them those small [00:34:00] results. Again, like we talked about before. Yeah, I like that. I’m definitely gonna be thinking about this because I feel like if you’ve been in business for more than a couple years, like you were saying, you probably have a whole bunch of templates, a whole bunch of things that are collecting like digital dust basically.

And there are things that people, like you said, kind of clean it up and, um, maybe refine it a little bit. There are things that people could use that you could, you know, really help them out in their business. So. Before we wrap up, I really always like to ask, like, what do you like to do outside of work?

What helps you disconnect from work? TikTok? Just kidding. yeah. Right. I mean, that’s where I’ve been spending a lot of my time lately. Um, I, uh, I really like being outside. There’s just something you like, even when you don’t think it’s working, there’s something biologically speaking about being outside.

That’s really, really helpful for us and like our nervous system and all this other stuff. So I have horses, I try to spend time with them and [00:35:00] I just try to go hiking as often as I can, every single day. Like every single day I take a walk and. It’s like in the middle of Denver, but there, I see all kinds of wildlife because it’s kind of a little preserved.

So, you know, lately I’ve been seeing a beaver family and I’ve been seeing all the, like birds with their little babies and you know, the other day I saw deer, I always see Fox. Um, one time I saw porcupine in the tree, so I just try to like, Really disconnect at least one hour every day with this walk. Um, and it’s really not the easiest thing to do, but it, it definitely is like a hard reset at the end of the day, which is so helpful.

Yeah. That’s so important. I agree. Didn’t know there were beaver in downtown Denver. I didn’t either. I just learned that I, I was like, what is that? What is that animal I’ve never seen before? Yeah, they’re huge. Like, they’re way bigger than I thought. Yeah. I’m thinking of like a little Groundhog, this like rabbit dog.

No, they’re like, they’re like, like I thought it was a dog when I [00:36:00] saw it, I was like, oh, someone’s dog is loose. And then I was like, wait, that dog has a flappy tail. that is a weird looking dog. yeah. Oh my goodness. Where can our listeners find you? Tell us like all the places for your contract shop, because that’s super important.

If you need any like contracts for your business. Right. I know I completely screwed myself over in the beginning of my business, cuz I had Googled cobbled together contracts that lost me a lot of money. So yeah. Where do we find you? All the places including TikTok. Yeah, sure. I am Christina Scalera everywhere and I’m also the contract shop one word every.

Dot com on TikTok, all that. So I’ve made it really easy for you guys to find. Yes, that is super easy. Awesome. Well, Christina, thank you so much for being here. Thanks for sharing all of your wisdom in this industry that I feel like you were like one of the creators of this, and I mean, you coined the term eCommerce, so you are definitely one of the [00:37:00] OGs.

So thank you so much for sharing everything with us. Thanks for having me. This was so fun. Thanks for listening to the 100 degrees of entrepreneurship podcast. To access our show notes and bonus content. Visit 100 degrees consulting.com/podcast. Make sure to snap a screenshot on your phone of this episode and tag me on Instagram at Stephanie dot S K R Y.

And I’ll be sure to share. Thanks for being here, friends, and I’ll see you next time.