Hear from a real live entrepreneur building her business with Ecwid. Akilah created Kissedbyabee.com to help people with skin conditions with her natural products.
We discuss her background and how she got started with Ecwid. We discuss the real challenges of building a business when you aren’t a tech expert.
- Selling offline
- Taking pictures
- Posting on Social
- Instagram Shoppable posts
- reclame pe Facebook – step by step process
- Pixel and analytics
Show notes
Transcript
Jesse: Happy Friday!
Richard: Happy Friday is back again, flying by.
Jesse: I think this is episode number 34, I believe. Correct me if I’m wrong. Yeah, man, we got 34 episodes.
Richard: That good stuff. And I’m super excited. I always love getting to talk to merchants. And today we got another one.
Jesse: Yeah, this is a highlight for us because we are entrepreneurs and dreamers and we love talking to people that are also working on their dream. So yeah, we have more of this.
Richard: Yeah, good stuff. And to all the other Ecwid users out there. Remember you too can put a spotlight on your business. You can get on the show. If you go to Ecwid.com/blog/podcast at the bottom of the page, there’ll be a form, where are you too can get on the show and highlight how you got started, what you do and what you’re up to, and we will be more than happy to push it out to all the other merchants and Apple iTunes and all the good stuff. So everyone can learn about your business. So yeah, let’s get this started.
Jesse: All right, so let’s bring our guest, Akilah Nisa. Are you there?
Akilah: I am, hi, guys!
Richard: Akilah, how are you?
Akilah: I’m doing well. Mulțumesc.
Jesse: And how did I do on the last name? Give us the proper pronunciation here.
Akilah: Oh, actually, it’s my middle name. Akilah Nisa, yeah. My last name is Scott-Amos. I’m hyphenated.
Jesse: I’ll write this down now so I can put in our show notes there. But Aquila, it’s great to meet you. So there’s an interesting title, what do you call the title of your job?
Akilah: I just call myself a creator only because I feel like that encompasses everything that I have to do. I create my products. I’ve created my website. I create marketing, HR, I create it all. De asemenea, a creator is all-encompassing.
Jesse: Minunat, I love the word creator. I think that really describes you well. As far as your business, what do you do for business?
Akilah: For business, I’m an herbalist. So a lot of people are like “What does it mean?” and it pretty much means that I heal skin, that’s my specialty. I’m very good at it. I really don’t do anything internal, as plenty of herbalists. You know, people like to ask, ca “I’m having high blood pressure”. I don’t mess with that. I love skin and I want to heal skin and I’m good at that. So I just stick with what I’m good at.
Richard: It’s the biggest organ in the body. So you still good.
Jesse: And everyone is a potential customer to you, everyone has skin. (laughing)
Akilah: Absolut. That is exactly what I tell people when I’m doing vendor events.
Jesse: Makes sense.
Richard: That’s great. We’ll definitely get into that too. Cuz not only did you do the e-commerce store, but it sounds like you get out and take it from the online world to the offline world too. So we will definitely get into that as well.
Akilah: Cool.
Jesse: da, so people have skin conditions or they just want better skin. Acne, skin conditions, what is the product or what is the solution that you have?
Akilah: My number one product I should say for skin is eczema. I have an eczema buttercream, whatever you want to call it. It’s phenomenal for anyone with mild to moderate eczema. If it is pretty severe, I have not had luck with that. I’m very honest with any client that comes to me. I can only do so much with plants. Sometimes you have to go chemical and that’s okay. But once you get it under control, you can always come back to a plant-based product and that’s where I come in.
Jesse: bine.
Richard: Minunat, if someone’s listening right now again, they’re going to go to KissedByaBee.com and that actually brings up something that we were going to say. One of the things we also like to do is tips for customers, and we noticed that you have the domain but it reroutes to Ecwid domain. So we’re going to see, Jesse could almost… is there a reason you have that or do you want to try to figure that out? Can we help you?
Akilah: You absolutely can help me, and the reason that it’s like that is because I am not very technological. I’ve done the best that I can and Ecwid is so easy. I mean everything is so easy. But for some reason, this brand of mine, this creator brand of mine cannot grasp the concept of actually making KissedByaBee the domain that it goes to, so help me.
Richard: It sounds like you could do 80% of almost anything. We’ll just help you with the next 20%. How about that?
Akilah: Perfect.
Jesse: I think it’s important, and I wanted to bring it up because I wanted to share with other people because I do see that. I see so many Ecwid stores, I see a lot of them have the subdomain, maybe they renamed it, or maybe it’s still a store 1-2-3-4-5 at Ecwid.com. There’s a setting in there. It’s going to be under Settings and I’m not looking at a screen right now, so I’m going to stop. But I’m going to send a link on where to do it or we’ll leave the how-tos for later. But just to let you know it is very easy to change, especially if you own the KissedByaBee.com domain, which we know you do. For other people listening, ideally you want your domain to be the main store and we can help you do that. What you should do is talk to live chat. So go into your Control panel.
Akilah: Absolut, I love live chat. I’ve used it quite a few times more or so. I should say when I first set up my store, but it was so helpful. They were quick. I didn’t have to wait a long time and I didn’t feel stupid. Didn’t make me feel stupid, people ask questions and you’re like “Oh my God, why are you asking me this?” But I didn’t feel any of that. I wasn’t intimidated, they’ve taken care of everything that I’ve had an issue with.
Jesse: It’s awesome. We’re gonna use it as a quote. I think it’s sort of an overlooked thing with Ecwid that our live chat – they’re really awesome. It’s 24 hours and they can do pretty much. I worked a lot of companies out there. For people in those other companies, I don’t like it in the answer, “We don’t know how to do that, you’re going to have to hire a developer.” And I think it’s very very… They really push the limits on that. They do way more than they should be doing but they just want to help you make it.
Richard: For those who are listening, try to find that limit. (laughing) Ask them as often as you want.
Jesse: Yeah, really push them. Liza, support team, I’m sorry that I said that but we’re gonna let our customers push it.
Akilah: Oh my God, that is a challenge. Hold my beer. (laughing)
Jesse: How did you get started? Kissed by a Bee, did you go to school for this, handed down, how did you get started as a herbalist?
Akilah: That story is very interesting. I’m actually a regeneration herbalist. I say the third generation. There is my grandmother, my company says it was established in 1918. That’s when she was born, and then my father, and then there is me. I was born and raised vegetarian. My mom was not a vegetarian, only my dad. He took care of all the cooking cuz he’s an amazing cook. He’s just one of those guys that whatever he tries, he masters. We all wish we could be like that. I’m definitely not like that. But he’s just that man. So we grew a lot of what we ate. And that’s how I was born and raised. You plan it, you grow it, you eat it, you can it for over the winter and then you do the same thing again in the spring and it was the same with my grandmother. I remember when we were little if we cut ourselves, if we had issues, she would break off a piece of a plant, and she’d make some stuff together. And at that time we didn’t know what it was. “What is she doing?” And she put it together and then she made a salve out of it and she put it on us and then magically we were healed. So that’s just how I worked and that’s just how I grew up. I’m just fell into it. I was born into this. This is my destiny.
Jesse: Wow, and the thing is that story sounds so crazy, but it shouldn’t be. It should be like this is how humans have grown up for hundreds of years and why does that seem like out of the ordinary?
Akilah: Absolut. We’re just used to convenience, magazine alimentare.
Richard: Exactly, and fast food. I mean our family same, we got rid of the microwave I think 9 cu ani în urmă. And it wasn’t necessarily that we were super afraid of microwaves or anything like that. I’m not trying to freak people out. It was really more of if we can’t wait and actually sit and prepare the food with love and take the time to sit as a family like, we have bigger problems. So that was our quick solution to this happy medium like the training wheels towards. Bine, maybe we don’t have the space to plant and grow and wait, but we do like that idea. So that was kind of our family’s happy medium. Just get rid of the microwave, cook it a good old-fashioned way and enjoy it with love.
Akilah: Absolut. I really like that you say that because I tell my clients that. Also because I work with my hands and I grow it from seed to finish. It’s all mine. And I try to keep my mindset. I don’t create if I’m not in a good headspace only because I’m touching it and my energy is going into everything that I’m creating and there is no way I would want something negative to be put on your body. So when I create and when I plant I do everything with love. Same as what you said.
Richard: That’s great. Quick question before we move on past the three generations. Did the rest of the family have a heavy focus on skin as well or did they think more internally also and you just had that, what was the reason you focused on skin? It’s kind of a two-part question there.
Akilah: Bine, I focus on skin because let’s just be honest. I feel that there are a lot of people, when people are in dire situations, when people have tumors or cancer or things like that. They look for anything to help and I just don’t feel like it’s responsible of herbalist to say: “Oh, ştii, I can heal this, I can do, you take these herbs and then, ştii, the cancer is going to go away or your tumors going to go away.” There are some things that you can do, but it’s definitely not. I just don’t believe in that and I would never want to give any type of false expectation. And so skin — yes. Internal issues like that — no. And I think people are in such a vulnerable state when they’re going through issues like that. So they’re just open to anything and I think a lot of people take advantage of that. I’m not interested in that and I don’t even think my liability insurance cover some of the money. (laughing)
Richard: If you did say it, there’d probably be someone coming knocking it. “Nu, you can’t say that”. So origin story, not all the way back to 1918 because unfortunately, we can’t have the original interviewee here with us.
Akilah: We are only a year and a half too late. She lived for a long time.
Richard: Wow, whole another story, but that’s one of the reasons why I wish more people would do interviews and interview their families and get that documented for their future generations cuz I love passing on stories for my family’s too. That would be great for us to document our past a little bit better and get a whole another podcast. A year and a half, you’ve been started. Where did you get started? How did you find Ecwid? What was the” let’s do this” to you with your husband? “Let’s make this a business.”
Akilah: I’m actually 6 years in. I’ve had Kissed by a Bee around for six years. It will actually be six years in May. I had actually had Ecwid for a while, I think for longer than that. I had another business, I have another business. I think I might be a serial entrepreneur. I had another business and I found Ecwid some type of way. This might have been seven or eight years ago, and I’m logged on, I got an account, but then I decided to go a different direction with that business fast forward to Mother’s Day last year. I needed to do some Mother’s Day boxes. And I was with Square and I just used their web page, but their web page does not give an option. So you can’t do size option. There were no options and I was like, I need options now. I’m like I have that Ecwid account. Let me go in there and see what I can do. I uploaded the boxes. I did options. It was very quick. It took me all of 10 minute. Poze, Opțiuni, I had a link. I was like, Great. I took that link and I posted it on my Square web page so that people could buy it from there and it synched so easily. I was like, this is good and I was like, it’s time, it really is time for me to upgrade. I had purchased another provider’s account. I think they have like a Black Friday sale or something like that last year and I went on and I was lost. I was like, I have no idea what to do. This is not user-friendly. I even bought, I went to Barnes & Nobles. I bought a little “WordPress for dummies.” Evident, I’m a dummy, I needed it for idiots or something. I’m working and I was like, I need something easier and I was like, Ecwid! I just took some pictures, everything was perfect. It had everything that I wanted. The ability to create an app, the ability to put unlimited while I got the highest tier products. Oh, yeah, I can do anything. I can do any and everything and there was help right there, live chat help. It worked.
Richard: When you say you got the highest tier, you bought the unlimited?
Akilah: da.
Richard: So you actually do get more help than just live chat too?
Akilah: Oh. Oh, I should say “oh” like I knew that, dreapta? “Oh!” (laughing)
Jesse: A lot of times people go the unlimited plan because you get free developer hours too. That way if there’s this really crazy problem you can’t solve, you talk too many people locally. They can probably solve it for you.
Richard: So now we feel a lot better about putting the live chat support team to the test because if you do put them fully to the test, you have development hours available to you as well, so they can pass it off and not feel bad. (laughing)
Akilah: bine, I’ve only used live chat because they respond right away.
Jesse: That’s perfect. What I like about this story it’s a lot like other people. You’ve tried a couple of things. You’ve tried different products, you run into limitations and then it sounds like this Ecwid account was probably a free account for like 7 years because of your previous business. You can get back to it and it’s still there and you can do what you need to do with it. So all these people that used it seven years ago, come back. We’re still here. (laughing)
Akilah: Absolut, absolutely come back. And I’m glad I had it. Looks like this is it, this is the solution that I need it and it’s been great. I need something easy.
Richard: And speaking of coming back, you mentioned a little earlier that it was going on for six years and you came in via Square, it was that because you were doing the offline events first and then brought it back to online? Was that the reason for that?
Akilah: Nu, I was always online and offline. Square was working. But again, it’s very limited. All it is just a web page. I mean, you post a picture, you put a price, and that’s it. At this stage of the game I just needed a few more options and I’m in of course a few business groups and everyone talks about some of the other options out there. As I said, I fell into the height and I did buy one of those options and I should have just gotten my money back if I could. I don’t think they would have given it back to me. But again I pay for the option but then I would have to pay somebody to actually built a site so that didn’t work for me.
Jesse: You don’t really need that much. Particularly when I look at your business. We haven’t mentioned it. You have a web page, as your products in your story. But realistically you don’t live just there, you live on social media. You have some great social media profiles and I think in some ways that might be more important for you than vegan fans to your website.
Akilah: Absolut, da. When I talked about Ecwid, I actually have gotten a couple of people that ask me: “Oh, that’s your website, how do you like them?” I’m like “I love it”. I have all of the options, all of them. I love the fact that it integrates with Facebook because I’m very, very active on Facebook. I run ads on Facebook every day. So I love the fact that I can tag my product and it’s right there. De asemenea, have the store integrated on Facebook which is phenomenal. And then Instagram now, desigur, I can tag my products on Instagram and go straight to the Ecwid store and everything, so that’s awesome.
Jesse: I wanna dig in a little bit more to that because we get a lot of questions about people don’t know how to start on Facebook. They don’t have a start on Instagram. Walk us through, what was your last post about? Just walk us through.
Akilah: Oh, my last podcast was “I’m doing a podcast for Ecwid.” (laughing)
Richard: You know what’s funny about that is I want to just give a shout out. We looked real quick at your social media and everything, and not only are you an amazing personality but boy you have some super fans. Wow, this is not just like a regular business. These people are like, it’s like you have a hive literally, your own hive. I’ll just stick with the theme of the bees and it’s literally wow. Just one quick thing before you go into that, I want to say to you since you’re a serial entrepreneur and you talk about it, go ahead. You could sign up for an affiliate code too in it and you can make extra money from Ecwid just passing this on to other people without having to do much. And they don’t have any additional costs. They get the same great deal and you don’t have to do anything really. It’s not like you gotta start a whole new business, but if you want to get started, “Here’s my link and maybe…”
Akilah: Oh, sir, you think I have not? (laughing) Desigur, I have created. Because I wanted to let people know, they need to know that you guys do have that option and yeah, that is phenomenal. I don’t know what other people are doing. But yeah, it’s easy, you just give them your link and boom because you’re signed up, they sign up.
Richard: I mean you’re not only you’re an inspiration with your business, but it sounds like you really believe in business in general and you’re probably inspiring other people to do this. So we covered that little spot there and go ahead. What was the response when you said you were doing a podcast?
Akilah: Oh, I guess some likes.
Richard: Nice. So I take it you’ll be sharing the link to the podcast when it actually comes out too. (laughing)
Akilah: I like that. You know what? I might even have like a bad signal in the sky. Check me out here. I’m here. (laughing) da, da. I’m super excited, this is my first time doing a podcast. I actually just got into podcasts, as I listen to them while I’m working, desigur, I’m into True Crime.
Jesse: Sometimes you have to be entertained too. It’s not all work.
Akilah: I do. This is my first time doing a podcast and I’m so excited and today is International Women’s day and the fact that you guys chose me for today, that’s just “Yay!”
Richard: Minunat. That’s great. So you do Shoppable posts now and what was that experience for you as far as getting that set up and how easy was it, what’s your experience so far with it?
Akilah: Este ușor. If anyone takes anything out of this entire podcast, the only thing I want them to know is that it’s easy. Take that out. I’m not good at and I have ADHD probably like most creative, so I’m all over the place, but it’s easy. It says right there “Do you want to link the product?” You click on it. It has a search button. You start typing in the name of the product. It pops up, you click it. Boom! It’s there, it takes two seconds.
Jesse: I actually want to get the video of your screen on your phone doing it because people are thinking “Oh my gosh, so hard.” But this is so simple and the world lives on Instagram and Facebook. Deci da, why not have your products for sale that you can just tap on and purchase?
Akilah: da. And and the other thing that I want to mention that I didn’t get a chance to that installing the pixel. You literally get your pixel ID from Facebook, and then you’ll find, I’m not exactly sure. I’m sure you guys know exactly where it is on the Ecwid side, and you literally just paste it and you click done and boom, your pixels right there. And you get all your analytics, retargeting and things like that.
Jesse: And how long did that take you including you had to go to live chat or had to go look at a tutorial, how long from beginning to end?
Akilah: It took me probably like one minute.
Jesse: All right. I feel like I gave you notes ahead of time to say, but I didn’t. (laughing)
Akilah: You did not, I’m not getting paid. Nu, no literally my pixel is easy for me to find on Facebook because I run ads every day so I know how to do that. I found my pixel, your copy it and then you go right on Ecwid, you paste, it’s done.
Jesse: That’s awesome and I wanna dive into the making ads because people just don’t know where to start. So besides you did the one for the podcast. What is another ad that you run? And by the way, I’ve seen your pictures, so this is a podcast, this is audio-only everybody, but the pictures are awesome. All the product pictures.
Akilah: Mulțumesc.
Jesse: Walk us through what do you do for a Facebook ad? What’s a version that you think would be helpful for people starting?
Akilah: So a Facebook ad. I’m going to tell you guys exactly what I do because I’m more of DIY-er and I make a lot of things. I make a lot of things and I need to be able to put them on the website very quickly. So I have a little stool that I got at Walmart for clearance for three dollars, black and white. I said, oh, this is cool. And we use this. I have one spot in my backyard against perfect light. I take a product, I put it right on that black and white background. I snap the picture with my Note 8 from Samsung. I just use my phone. And then I instantly go to Ecwid. And I say a new product. It says to upload the picture. It takes it right from my gallery and it’s bam. So easy.
Jesse: I love it. I know people think, they read, there’s a video on this for ten minutes, but it’s really is that easy.
Richard: It literally takes longer to go through the video than it does to actually do it.
Akilah: Oh yeah. I’m pretty sure in that amount of time you could upload twenty products.
Jesse: And so when you do these photos, you do the photos for Facebook, what’s your, do you have like a personality on Facebook or is it different in Instagram? What do you say? So you take this picture, it’s got a product in there. What’s next?
Akilah: I take the picture, I should say I I used to try to do something different on Instagram than what I did on Facebook but that requires me to think too much. I decided I’m just cut that out. I do have Instagram and Facebook and Twitter all linked. So when I post to Instagram, it automatically posts to Facebook and Twitter as well.
Jesse: Good idea.
Akilah: I did find that Instagram is a lot, I’m doing air quotes, “looser”. You have a lot more fun on Instagram. My Facebook clients or my Twitter clients are a little bit more conservative. That’s what I would do. I would just take a picture, come up with some type of copy, and that’s it. If I want to link the product, I will. Instagram doesn’t allow you to boost the post if it’s linked. So I don’t necessarily do it on Instagram. I have better success with ads on Facebook.
Jesse: Linking a product you mean you use the product tag, it won’t let you boost it?
Akilah: Maybe I’m getting that wrong. I might be wrong, but it’s something that doesn’t allow me to do. Dar, ştii, din nou, I’ve not really had much success
with Instagram ads. So I really don’t run into the Instagram ads. I stick with Facebook.
Jesse: bine. Alright, so you have this, there’s a picture. There’s a saying, you take the product and then you boosted it to your people, there are followers, or do you pick other audiences?
Akilah: I pick other audiences. What I love to do is I do a lookalike audience. I have the option of doing a look-alike from IG or a look-alike from Facebook. I can also do people that have visited my website. Și, desigur, it gets that info from the pixel that’s embedded in my website. Sometimes I do friends, I’m sorry, urmași, urmași, and friends of followers.
Jesse: O.K. That’s good. You’ve told before you’re not a computer programmer here, but you threw out a lot of big words there to some people, but it sounds like it was pretty easy to figure that out too.
Akilah: da, it was pretty easy to figure out, but also Facebook has the blueprint which is phenomenal. It’s free education for how to run ads. And they offered me an ads manager and I took advantage of that. I called them and they actually walked me through how to get more deeper into the business manager side of Facebook. So it’s been helpful for me.
Jesse: Perfect. Take the free resources, dreapta.
Akilah: I’m all about free.
Jesse: I think a lot of times people are scared about Facebook ads particular because to start out it might seem a little overwhelming but you can start and once you spend a little bit of money, Facebook notices that and they start sending emails and say “Hey, would you like to meet with a specialist?” And they will walk you through a bunch of things and Google will do the same too. So both are there to help you as long as you are actually… Of course, they want you to spend money, but you do need to spend some money and you do need to go to work. And actually, blueprint also is awesome. I’ve done a few courses. They’re very in depth.
Akilah: Yeah, and they’re free. Take advantage.
Jesse: And you have to do the work. It sounds like you’re willing to put into work. That’s why everything’s working out for you.
Akilah: Yeah I’m a control freak and I just need to know exactly what’s happening. If I might not totally understand it, but at least just have some type of concept of what’s going on.
Jesse: Perfect. You’re selling on your website, you’re selling on Instagram, and you’re selling on Facebook, on Twitter, you’re selling offline at events and such.
Are you also selling on Etsy?
Akilah: I am on Etsy.
Jesse: You’re handmade, you’re perfect for that.
Akilah: Yeah. I’m handmade. I’m gonna be honest. I just got on Etsy only because for SEO purposes so that it’s another spot for people to find Kissed by a Bee if they’re looking for something. I only have like three products up there
and they’re very expensive actually, in order to kind of boost post and boost your ad. And I did that, I did try it. I try, I think I spent probably maybe a hundred and fifty dollars, and and I probably got maybe four orders or so during that time. So the numbers didn’t quite measure up. I stopped that. It’s up there. I don’t really use it like that.
Jesse: I think that’s actually good advice to people. You gave it a little bit of a shot. But when if it didn’t work, you just left it there. So now if people type in Kissed by a Bee, there’s another spot occupied on the Google search results page.
Akilah: And of course Ecwid ties with Etsy. Oh, I’m sorry, not Ecwid.
Jesse: We don’t do Etsy.
Akilah: I’m sorry, I’m just thinking about ship station that I use for shipping. But yeah, it’s not something that is beneficial for me. It’s just there I can order every now and again. That’s fine.
Jesse: Amazon is a bit of a beast. Do do you work with Amazon at all?
Akilah: I have not worked with Amazon yet. I’m thinking about it though.
Richard: We like the yet part.
Jesse: You’re probably on the right track, but it is a little bit harder than the things you’ve done. Asa de, brace herself.
Akilah: Really?
Jesse: That’s personal opinion. If there’s an Amazon person here, they might be “tisk, tisk” on me. But I think there are just a few more rules to follow.
Richard: Bine, you’re probably doing in the right order. You wanna have your own website going up polished the way you’re doing it. You’re doing this in the right syntax for sure, eventually, there’s also probably nothing wrong with having the number one destination where people go look to buy things also. But you’re doing it in the right order.
Akilah: You’re right. And yeah, like I said not yet. I have looked at it. My brother in law actually works for Amazon, so maybe I should help increase his stock prices. Not that my little Kissed by a bee will have a big impact but it is on my radar, absolutely.
Jesse: Makes sense, makes sense on that and I would agree. How about Pinterest with all these good pictures? Are you on Pinterest as well?
Akilah: Oh lord, Nu, I’m not and I’m not because I don’t have time. (laughing)
Jesse: I understand that.
Akilah: I have a lot to keep up with. Somebody asked me that and I’m like “What?” and they were like “Snapchat”, and then something else and I was like “It’s only me, it is one of me.” I’m not, but I do actually have a Kissed by a Bee, I did set it up. And it’s very old. De fapt, thanks for the reminder, appreciate it. It has some very old pictures on there that I need to update and spruce up a bit.
Jesse: I think that’s actually probably a good thing. You’re not gonna do it as much as Instagram and Facebook but every few months you spiff it up, throw some new photos on there. Pinterest just released the ability to sink a product catalog to it as well. A little pro tip there, it’s not going to be super easy quite yet, that’s coming later but it’s there. If you can do a Google feed and you can get it down to CSV, you can put up in there.
Akilah: That’s not bad. bine, now see, you said something that I know about though a little bit.
Jesse: Be prepared for a little bit of, it’s not going to just work like magic the first time but it is there and so there’s more to come there. I’m gonna solo teaser for the future.
Akilah: Great. If there is anybody out there that does that, have dollars, will pay. (laughing)
Jesse: Yeah, everybody, you know how to get to Akilah.
Akilah: Exactly.
Jesse: Yeah. Hooking up interest, I think is gonna be a cool thing, it just got released last Friday. Asa de, hint, hint. All right, what’s anymore? I don’t wanna get stuck on Pinterest, but I think it’s a great platform for anybody that has in your market, good photos are important.
Akilah: da, I’m on it.
Jesse: Is there any tips that you’d like to share with people? There’s a lot of people listening or probably in your shoes or you know trying to get to where you’re at. What type of advice can you give?
Akilah: Oh, man, that’s funny. That’s really funny. As I told you guys before, I really just, I wing it, just throw it out there and hope for the best. I’m trying just like everyone else. I don’t know anything about business. I absolutely don’t. I’m winging it as I go. I’m learning just like everyone else. My best advice is that if you have a business idea, if there’s anybody that has a business idea right now, and you just don’t know where to start, my advice is just to start. Just do it, get your Ecwid store, take some pictures and put it up, and then use Facebook to promote. It all syncs in, and it’s easy. Tine minte, that’s the take away from the whole podcast. Este ușor. Just try. I really rely on friends and family because I don’t have all the answers. And I do not have a business degree and I have people I can lean on thankfully. If I have a question, they’re experts in X, Y, and Z, so I can ask them because I’m trying just like everyone else. I’m just here.
Richard: Nu, that’s great. I mean, it literally is as if we did talk on something prior to say, like Oh, say it”. That’s what we’re hoping that people get out of it. Just get started, give it a shot, adjust accordingly, and just keep going through the loop. Right? You learn something new. You learn what doesn’t work. It’s ok. You don’t bury the hatchet just because it didn’t work that time. You take another move on. I love it.
Akilah: And keep going. Everybody thinks entrepreneurship is, ştii, social media has people, they hype it up. And they think that entrepreneurship is easy and it’s not, it’s like a graph. Sometimes it’s up. Sometimes it’s way down. If I don’t get orders in a couple of days and I’m like “Oh my God, what’s going on? Let me freshen up my resume, I need a job. Oh my god, what did I decide, why did I do this?” And then you know you have your good days. There are good days and bad days. But it’s hard work. It’s a twenty-four-hour job. But it’s super rewarding.
Jesse: Minunat. I think that’s great advice, it is a great encouragement for everybody listening. În general, follow Akilah here.
Akilah: Oh, follow me. I will follow whoever follows me. I’ll follow you back. (laughing) I need some help from you. So I’m going to lean on you as well. That’s what entrepreneurship is about, just connecting, networking and helping each other. That’s what we should do as humans. Just in life. În general.
Richard: I love it. Literally, I’m bringing it back to the hive again. That’s what it sounds like. Your whole thing is for the collective good, the best you can be and there you go. Before we say goodbye to you, what’s the best place for people to follow you, to get your products?
Akilah: The best place to follow me is KissedbyaBee.com. And right now when you go to KissedbyaBee.com, it takes a second and then it goes to my Ecwid store. But trust me, by the time this broadcast you’re just gonna go to KissedbyaBee.com.
Jesse: We solve problems here.
Akilah: da, it’s such a mystery. And on Facebook Kissed by a Bee Organics. On Twitter, I’m KissedbyaBee.org, and on Instagram somebody actually had Kissedbyabee and she does nothing with it. But that’s okay. Om Instaham I’m @kbyab. K-B-Y-A-B.
Jesse: All right, we’re going to get that all in the show notes on the page. Minunat, Akilah, love having you on. Richard, this is awesome.
Richard: Yeah, this is great. We get more of these. Definitely remember, listeners, if you are interested, please go to Ecwid.com/blog/podcast. Go to the bottom of the page and fill out your form, so we can spotlight you and all the good you’re doing for the world.
Jesse: Minunat, Akilah. Thank you so much.
