76: How To Use Technology To Create a Digital Strategy

Katrina is an award-winning entrepreneur, speaker, and mentor specializing in communications, technology, and digital strategy.

She is a social impact entrepreneur, and she likes to work on large-scale communications projects that make the world a better place.

In the past, she created a television show to inspire adults to learn to read, a children’s books for families to share, and from 2012 – 2016, a technology company to tell stories of people around the world.

When that company went under in 2016, she was shattered. It wasn’t just the financial loss, she also the feeling that she wasn’t contributing to people’s lives anymore.

As she was picking up the pieces, people started to ask her to help them with digital marketing for their companies.

Now, as she works with clients from tech startups to HR consultants (and everything in between) she’s able to show them ways to use technology tools to make their businesses better.

Today, she works with consulting clients and she’s made her unique process available through her book and video training series, “Action Tracking: Master your Digital Marketing Strategy in Under 30 Days”. She also has a couple of side-hustles, www.CelebrateBald.com and www.LightLeafSolar.com.

She’s also particularly passionate about helping more women use technology in their businesses and start careers in tech. In 2018, she won the International Women in Tech ® Women in Communications Award.

Katie (00:02): Hi everyone. Thank you for tuning into the Hustlenomics Podcast. I’m your host Katie, and today I’m so excited to be talking with Katrina German. She’s an award winning entrepreneur, speaker and mentor specializing in communications, technology and digital strategy. So Katrina, thank you so much for coming on the show today.

Katrina (00:18):Thanks so much for having me.

Katie (00:20):Absolutely. So do you mind going a little bit deeper and telling the listeners a little bit more about you, your background and how you’ve gotten to where you are today?

Katrina (00:28):Sure thing. So I’m an entrepreneur and have been for many years. My main business and I actually have three right now. My main business is digital marketing strategy and I really kind of came to getting to this point through the world of technology. I originally got my degree in history, so it’s kind of a funny path. I moved into film and television for a while. And then I was doing what a social media strategy when, you know, before that was really even a thing before there was a term for that saying, Hey, there’s this thing called Twitter and you can make money on it potentially for your company or, you know, share a big idea across the world. So that was really, you know, really exciting to be in the early stages of social media. But at that time too, I had a business partner.

Katrina (01:13):We were both the social impact entrepreneurs wanting to do some good in the world. And we got together to discuss some ideas that we could be creating. And ultimately we decided to create a technology platform that told the stories of people around the world. So it was called one story and we had people, it was a social impact entrepreneur or enterprise. So we’ve worked with people who were changing the world in some ways. So United nations women used us to capture stories of men standing up for women’s rights. We had, you know, CBC, I use us for capture stories about murdered, missing women in Canada. It was a really incredible experience of really just hearing a lot of really amazing stories from around the world and the impact that a lot of organizations were having unfortunately, that that went under and at the end of 2016 really incredible experience where I got to talk to the communication staff with people around the world who were just really trying to get their ideas out there.

Katrina (02:05):So it’s, you know, going through this and, and, and you know, having a lot of, you know, technology and learning a lot of, you know, communications and social media and how you can structure your online communications to actually see if you’re having a return on investment or, you know, if you’re actually reaching your audience. You know, that really got me thinking. And so I created the action tracking process and I actually just released a book around it too, so that anybody can kind of take it and use it and apply it to their business or to their cause. And the idea being that social media, a lot of people just kind of posting, they’re just kind of tossing stuff up on the internet and hoping that you get some sort of return. And you know, for me, I’m like, Hey, there’s actual ways of seeing what this return is.

Katrina (02:48):And you know, if you just take it, spend a little time measuring, you can actually see that you’re having an impact because it’s all nice to build your brand and share great content. You know, when you get your mom and your aunt, like in your style, but the people you really, really want to be caring for the people who are kind of go to your website and actually either make a purchase or a donation or whatever your goal is on your website. So it all starts with, you know, the idea of how do you do your research and actually go through a testing process to find the messages that really get people to take an action, thus action track and go website. And actually we don’t potentially make that. So yeah. So that’s basically, you know, kind of my, my path has been winding. But I’m really, you know, again, I use a lot of lessons learned from my, my time in technology to apply it to really helping people make a big impact with their businesses.

Katie (03:43):Wow. That’s amazing. I’d love to go back a little bit. So you started a journey, it looks like early two thousands and I’m just curious like when was the first time you started a business on your own as opposed to kind of working with a team?

Katrina (03:54):Yeah, that’s a great question. I think in some ways I’ve always sort of had that little bit of an edge. Like I’ve always worked, even when I was working full time jobs, I always sort of had a little something on the side. So I started a video production company on the side. I wrote a children’s book on the side, you know, and so I’ve always kind of been dabbling and, and you know, playing to try to just see, I guess. I guess it’s sort of more about that intellectual journey. I love learning about how to do these things. And, you know, hopefully getting some sort of return. And you know, I think probably the time that I dove in like the, and really, really made a big splash was with the technology company where it was like, no, let’s really make this happen. We went full time at the beginning and just dove in and then eventually had staff. So I think that’s probably the time where I was really, really committed to just making a business happen.

Katie (04:42):Yeah. And so did you have entrepreneurs around you growing up, you know, people that you could kind of watch and see? Do you just have to kind of trial and error, figure it out yourself when you decided to jump in?

Katrina (04:52):Well, the area that I’m in is quite agricultural, so I have a lot of family who are, you know, farmers and that’s, you know, sort of the, when the earlier entrepreneur ship paths that people could take human history. My parents mentioned my dad was a teacher, my mom was a piano teacher and worked in finance. And so though they weren’t really, I remember my dad saying to me once, like, I work for a living. I don’t understand what what you’re doing. Yeah, you sees it now. You know, I’ve been in deep enough in it now he understand sort of my motivation and my passion. But I think ultimately, you know, I often say this, you know, when you think of what the impact that you have on your kids, but you know, my dad was a builder. And so when I was younger I had an idea for a piece of furniture or something I wanted to change in a room or something like that. You would often build it and build this furniture. So I always had this idea that I could take what was in my mind and created in reality. And I really think that that was probably the basis for that entrepreneurial idea that Hey, I have this idea for a business. I believe I can create that.

Katie (05:54):And it sounds like you’ve got tons of different passions, know you’ve done different side hustles. And that’s something I definitely relate with. I’m a totally multi-passionate entrepreneur and I have such a hard time focusing sometimes because I get so excited about all these different things and sometimes they have nothing to do with each other. So how do you balance that as being somebody who is multi-passionate and you know is still trying to run a focused business?

Katrina (06:16):Absolutely. It is. It’s actually quite a challenge to do and I’m, I’m the same way. Like I, you know, talking about you just get passionate about something. You just dive in and that’s me and I think, you know, life is here to be lived and so if something really captures your attention and your passion, like just go for it. But I remember like even when I had my technology company, I was a little bit judgy about people who had multiple businesses cause I was like, how can you make this happen? It’s such a so hard to make one thing happen. How can you make three things happen? And then sure enough, a few years later I miss all if you don’t in the position where I have three different companies, so admittedly one doesn’t get the love. Probably that deserves the, the, the T shirt company, it’s called celebrate ball.com.

Katrina (06:56):And I’m a local businessman here who’s been bald for years, approached me and he also has cancer. And so he wanted to create a series of tee shirts that we, and, and different products that, you know, could just celebrate people being bald and you know, just being like, yeah, let’s get this tribe motivated and excited and feeling proud because it was, you know, a lot of people out there who were in that case, whether it’s through illness or choice or her Herod heredity. So it’s a really kind of cool niche thing. So that got me excited because I’m kind of giving back to that to, you know, to him, to the community, to, to the cancer research. 10% of our revenue goes to cancer research. The second one is, you know, again, my digital marketing strategy company and that takes up a lot of time.

Katrina (07:40):I really enjoy that. It’s one of my passions and it really keeps me connected to the business community in Canada and you know, in, in my province. And so I really, you know, it’s easy for me to do because I just, I really enjoy digital strategy, you know, just talking about how you can get your idea out there. And the third one is a, it’s actually a solar panel company. So these are all quite diverse. The solar panel company is a really quite neat, it’s called lightly solar and most solar panels or other like a big picture frame or they’re almost like paper that you duct tape down and you know, this is this, these a lot of applications that can’t really use them. So my business partner, he’s a, he’s a really amazing engineer. His name is Rick Retzlaff. He’s Craig created a way to create solar panels that can be made in any shape.

Katrina (08:27):They’re very, very light. They’re very high efficiency and they’re very strong. You can actually like jump on them. So we’re just getting that one started. And off the ground we have two employees, you know, we’re certain to get orders from across Canada. And one of our first orders was a electric boat company that needed a canopy to cover the driver. And also contribute hopefully to the, how long they can be you know, going for with their, you know, for the how long the boat can be out without being recharged. And so we’re creating the rate out of our material because, you know, irregular solar panels are just plain too heavy. And so there’s a lot of just kind of neat applications for it. And that one, you know, when he approached me, I was just so excited about it. I just dove right in.

Katrina (09:08):I was like, this is such a neat thing and I can see the opportunity here, there’d be a good benefit. So there’s a couple of things. Number one, I think you can hopefully hear, you know, I was passionate for these things. I genuinely believe that a lot of these ideas can change the world and contribute to the world in a different way. So it makes it easier every day to get up and, you know, put energy towards that. I live by my schedule. If I, you know, I, all of my businesses and all the people who work for my businesses know that, you know, you just need to book in, you know, and when I’m with somebody and with that company, I’m fully focused on it. I’m really thinking like this is, you know, I don’t want to have a lot of distractions while I’m with, you know, one of my employees for one of the company. That is what is happening. And so I really try to stay focused on people. So yeah, it’s a bit of a challenge but it’s really about scheduling. It’s about, you know, also delegation to making sure that I’m not taking on things that other people can be doing and really trying to stay in the vision for each of these companies.

Katie (10:03):Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned delegating. That’s something that I’ve kind of been on both sides of, I work as a virtual assistant for, you know, different people and I also delegate certain tasks to others that I know I’m not great at. So what was that like? Self reflection process? Like picking out the things that you know you needed to delegate but also the struggle of letting go. You know, cause I feel like that’s hard for most entrepreneurs

Katrina (10:24):Definitely. Cause you have this idea that I’m the only one who can do this. And I think they could, the action tracking process, for example, I have, one of them was talking to one of my business advisors and he was like, okay, so what can we start delegating? So he was kind of challenging me on it and I was like, well you know, I’m the only one who could do these reports. But then I realize like, wait a minute, I’m writing a book to teach other people how to do this. Like that’s not true. You know, we just kind of have it in your mind. You know, that you’re the only one who can do it. And you know, it’s just, it’s a funny thing that we have. And so once you start, you know, realize yet may take some time to train somebody on the way that I’d like it to be done. But they can also be bringing other things right to make that even better. So you know, it’s really about this idea of probably having someone else do it, I’ll make it even better.

Katie (11:09):How do you structure your day and your months? Are you working on all three businesses all the time or do you delegate and structure them in a certain way that they’re a little bit separate? How has that been set up?

Katrina (11:20):So it’s really about, again, you know, making sure I have scheduled ahead of time, but you know, for example, for the light leaf solar, we have Monday morning at 10 o’clock I call them standups, but they’re basically just a half an hour meeting of checking. How did things go last week? How did things go next week or what, you know, what’s coming up for the next week? Really, I try to have a lunch and a four o’clock meeting with I’m a potential client or one of my clients and my digital marketing strategy every day. So there’s some repetitive things in my schedule that I just know are going to happen where that’s just my time to focus on each individual company. And then basically kind of around those times I really tried to walk time to make other priorities happen. One thing I didn’t mention that is crucial is I use a sauna.

Katrina (12:05):I think you need some sort of project management software in order to run three businesses because it just keeps everything organized. I don’t carry a lot of details in my head. As soon as there’s a task that needs to be done, I just pop it into a sauna and you know, I just tried to everyday sort of prioritize what needs to be done for each company, you know, to make sure that I’m not the roadblock for anything or the bottleneck for anything happening. So yeah, that, that project management software is just crucial for me.

Katie (12:30):Yeah. I use Asana as well. It’s been so helpful and eye opening with how much you can do with it and how organized you can be. So that’s awesome. And you mentioned digital strategy is one of your businesses. And I would love, if you don’t mind just kind of explain what that means. There might be some people listening who have heard the word but they don’t exactly know like what it means, what the core definition is.

Katrina (12:51):Absolutely. So a lot of people when they think of, you know, digital staff, they think social media, but you know, your social media should be performing and doing a job for you. It should be a salesperson for you. And then you know, once you get people to your website then your website is its own, you know, should also be a way, a working person for you. It should be a salesperson converting people either to your newsletter or to buying something or to, you know, just whatever your goal is for your website, it should be doing that. And then the third part that I, that I was including, this is email strategy and a lot of small businesses don’t think about email strategy and what that can mean for, you know, it actually has a higher return a lot of times in social media. And it’s sort of one of those things that people just don’t think about.

Katrina (13:38):And so basically what I do is I work on that digital marketing strategy of those three components to be like, how do we make sure that you’re getting the most bang for your buck and make sure that you’re actually getting people to buy rather than just sort of setting this stuff up and walking away. Digital strategy can also, if people want to be like, you know, what kind of things are they setting up internally to make sure that their sales systems are working well? You know, things like Asana, you know client reputation management or relationship management software. Like I use pipe drive you know, just how do you, you know, with that. And basically what that is is, you know, how do you have a good relationship with your clients so you’re not just keeping track of your sales conversations in your email. It can be really, really hard on your brain. So it just keeps everything really organized where like that yet. So those are the types of things I work with other companies on.

Katie (14:26):Awesome. So someone’s looking into really start crafting a strategy for themselves. If right now they’re just trying to do everything and I feel like that’s tempting to do, cause you feel like you need to have a finger in every pie but then you’re not really having a strategy at all and you’re not choosing what is best for your business. So how do you help your clients kind of narrow down the best platforms for them and where their audience is going to be hanging out.

Katrina (14:47):I love that with this. This is actually all in my book too, but basically it’s, you know, you’re absolutely right. So many people just want to have, you know, 10 different social media platforms running and it is so time consuming and unless you have, and people think, Oh, social media is free, but it’s not just the amount of time that you have to spend searching for content, respond to comments, all that kind of stuff can really add up. Part of the book is like, how do you do that research to find out what people are actually interested in? Oftentimes then to have like, you know, you really have to hone in on who is your market. Like who are you selling to? And you’ll get really specific about that. And you may have three or four different markets, but you know, and then, you know, good chance, you know, that market quite well or you know, several people who are in that market.

Katrina (15:30):So just ask them, where are you getting your information? And you know, there’s also a lot of places that you can go, like the Pew research center often releases just like social media statistics about what type of things are happening in the United States that go take a look at your demographics and be like, Hey I want to be marketing to professionals between the ages of 35 and 55 you know, where are they already, where are the most of them hanging out? And then really try to focus there. So, you know, I often even tell my clients to have a, you know, if you have all the, it’s okay to get those handles ready to get, you know, your, your name on all the different platforms, you know, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, all those different places, whatever makes sense. But you don’t have to fill that with content. You can actually just have a little thing there that says, Hey, we’re far more busy or far more active on this platform. You know, over over here at Instagram, come visit us there.

Katie (16:21):I liked that, I liked that. So you don’t feel like, so pulled in a thousand directions and I’m, I’m glad that you’ve mentioned an email list cause that’s something that I just completely ignored for the first year of my business and I’ve been really trying to grow it and nurture it recently. And you know, finding followers and growing your reach on social media seems to be easier. I don’t know if it is, but it seems to be easier than building an email list. So what are some tactics that you maybe use personally or give for your clients to use to start building a list if they just have no, nobody.

Katrina (16:53):Great question. So the first thing that you want to do is if you have it, you know, sign up for your email, you know, again, coming back to what your priority is for your website, for a lot of people it might be at that time that you want people to sign up for their newsletter, for your newsletter. And so that’s the time to kind of make that a priority on your website. Maybe even having it at the top, you know, in that, in that area where it’s like, Hey, sign up and learn about this, you know, or get this, you know, a lot of people are using lead magnets, they’re called, so get this free something, you know. But basically they have to exchange their email address to get that free resource. So that’s a way that other people are growing their stuff quite rapidly.

Katrina (17:34):If you have an existing list of clients you can add them there as well. The only challenges is, you know, especially in Canada, we actually have laws that called castle laws. We can’t just add people to a list, you know, you have to have their permission and you know, I just think, you know, that’s not only just because of the law. I think it’s just good practice. You know, you don’t, we all know if you just get added to an email list, it’s actually knowing you don’t have a good feeling of what that brand. Whereas if you know, someone’s asked you and you’re getting really, really great content, then that’s, that’s a really great way to move that forward. And ultimately too, that’s the thing I would add is that having that really great content is probably one of the most important things.

Katrina (18:11):Like a lot of people are, you want something that people, when people get that email, they’re like, yeah, it’s here. I can’t wait to read this. And you probably have a couple of things that you subscribe to that you’re like, yes, I’m glad I’m a part of this. Right? And so you want to be, when you’re creating your own content, also be providing that type of material. And you’re going to know that answer. Like you can do a lot of research like on, you know, Google keyword planner where people are actually asking these questions and it shows up as a Google keyword planner is, is basically, you know, whenever someone types something into Google, it’s a list of all the different ways that they phrase it. So there could be, you know, someone who is like Hey, let’s say podcasts about entrepreneurship that could have 100,000 searches a month or you know, entrepreneurship podcast could have a million, you know, you just don’t know.

Katrina (19:01):These are just us as an example and these searches are for that. But Google will actually show you that information. So you called Google keyword planner and it basically, it’ll, you know, it’ll give you a whole list of blog posts cause that’s the questions that people are actually typing in or asking Google. And so basically you could take those questions and answer them in your email. So that’s one of the thing you can do. Plus you’re, you know, a good chance you’re talking to your clients, right? So just ask them, you know, or if they have frequently asked and you know, just answer those questions before they even ask them and really give really great content on your email. By doing that, you get that the best thing that you could possibly have is basically a referral. So it may not be a sales referral, but an email referral can be just the same as a sales referral, right? Where someone forwards it to a friend says, Hey, you should listen to this, you should sign up here. So that’s kind of the idea too, is that, you know, if you’re providing great staff, great things happen.

Katie (19:57):Yeah, absolutely. I think that’s great advice. And how do you feel about automation? I mean, even when it comes to emails or social media, you know, you hear all the time like do your automation so you actually have time to work on other stuff, but also be authentic, be in the moment. Have you found a happy balance between the two or do you just have any specific opinions about it?

Katrina (20:16):Definitely I am all for automation. Just feel like, I feel like you should sprinkle in live content when you know you have something coming up. But you know, if you can spend two hours at the beginning of your month scheduling your social media for the month so you know what’s going out in when you know that even when you get busy there’s going to be consistent, something showing up. That’s the very best way, you know, cause you’re there. You know the challenges though is it, you know, when I think that authentic piece, you still want the content you’re putting out to be reflecting you in the things that you’re interested in. You know, so you can write your content like that and that sort of authentic way. But just do it once a month rather than try to find something every day. Cause that’s just crazy time consuming.

Katrina (20:56):Again, like if you’re at an event or something and it makes sense to do a live post, awesome. But you know, if you automate then you’re not going to be stuck in this position where you know, you’re like, Oh God, it’s been three weeks and I haven’t posted it. So there’s a lot of really great automation soft area like there is, I use a lot of different ones actually with different clients and and, and even with my own staff. And so hoot speed’s really good. One H O T. S. U. I. T. E. so that’s one meet Edgar is another one. People use buffer. With Facebook you can actually even schedule in a month’s worth of posts easily right into Facebook. So you don’t even need any software for that. Hootsweet does help you with Instagram too. You can pre schedule your Instagram posts as well. So for me, I absolutely believe in automation because you know, not only that, instead of just sort of doing live content, it can be really strategic about the types of content that you’re sharing. Really look at the measurements, like how again, how many people are clicking through your website, how many people are taking that action. And then, you know, from there basically you can start to, you know, continue to provide really great content that people really like rather than just sort of having a crap shoot of like, Hey, here’s what I’m posting today.

Katie (22:05):Yeah, absolutely. I’m a huge animation fan too, but I always like to get people’s opinions cause it’s, you know, it’s always different for everybody. So you obviously are a tech Wiz and you’ve gotten some awards and you know, that’s so impressive. And you know, I like to think that I’m great at technology, but there’s a, there’s always someone that teaches me something new. But for people who are just super intimidated by technology, whether it’s their website or any of these automation tools we were talking about, or even something more simple than that, do you have any like tools that people could use to, to learn all about load, getting a little bit more technology literate, even if that means just creating a graphic online for themselves without having to get somebody else to do it?

Katrina (22:43):Yeah. The cool thing is actually, you know, you spoke with that award. I’m extremely passionate about getting more women into careers in technology. And a big part of that is also just helping women in business use more technology. There was a startup Canada report that came out about two years ago two or three years ago. Both women were 20% less likely than their male counterparts to use technology in their business. Not just drove me crazy cause I was like, it just puts us at such a disadvantage. You know, if, if you’re spending eight hours doing your book, being in someone else’s, doing it in an hour because they are automating something. So it really became a passion of mine to be like, how can we encourage more women and you know, when men to just to feel comfortable using tech. A big part of that really is just, you know, YouTube is gonna be one of your best friends in, in that situation.

Katrina (23:30):Almost anything that you need to learn. Someone has done a tutorial about it on YouTube and it’s free. And you know, you can go and watch and find it, you know, check out the ratings, you know, check how many views people have had, all that kind of stuff. And then I’ll give you a good idea of whether it’s worth time to watch that video or not. But yeah, if you just have an idea where you’re like, I want to try this, Google and YouTube are your very best friends because it’s, it’s someone else’s had that idea and written a blog about it.

Katie (23:55):Yeah, definitely. I’m an avid user of YouTube university for sure. You’ve mentioned your book a couple of times and I love if you would, you know, shared the title and a little bit about what the book’s about.

Katrina (24:06):Absolutely. So the book’s called action tracking, measure your digital marketing strategy and under 30 days. And really again, you know, it’s about, I had created this process to actually see if I put $100 into my social media, can I get, you know, $500 out in sales and a actually be able to measure that and find out where the problems are in my digital strategy and fix them. So that I can have like the smoothest, highest converting process possible and actually be able to see here’s how much you know you can get out and return. Yeah. So basically the idea is that, you know, you just go through the process for the very first thing you do is research. You know, and find out here is what people are actually searching for. Here are the terms I should be using. From there, you take a bunch of messages and you know, and, and marketing messages and you take them to Facebook and you test them there and you test 10 at a time and you don’t have to put a lot of money into it, but it just gives you an idea of who’s actually, you know, what messages are going to get people actually to your website.

Katrina (25:08):And you can learn a lot. You can learn about what kind of photos get people there, you know, what you know, what are the messages after you have this sort of ideal message and you know, you know, it takes me a dollar to get someone to my website from there. How do you test your website, you know, and walk through these different steps of making sure your website’s actually doing its job, bring people to sales. And then again, the third part is how do you use the information that you’ve learned from the process to do your email strategy and really have some, some great results. And so it sounds like a huge, huge, huge process. But the idea is I wanted to say you can do this in under 30 days. Like it sounds huge, but it’s, you know, it’s just step-by-step, you know, how do we need elephant one bite at a time and it’s, so it’s really one of those, you know, I’ve, I’m getting really cool returns of, of different companies and and actually get a couple of my friends who’ve been going through it without my guidance industry giving responses of like, this is really working.

Katrina (26:08):Like we’re really seeing this return and it’s so exciting for me that, you know, people are able to apply this outside of me doing it and actually seeing that benefit for their companies.

Katie (26:18):Yeah. That’s awesome. So is it an ebook form or is it an actual physical book? How can the listeners find it?

Katrina (26:24):Yeah, you can find it on Amazon and in both ebook and physical. And you can also go to my website at Katrina, german.com or action tracking.ca.

Katie (26:33):Awesome. Was this your first time writing a book?

Katrina (26:36):You know, years ago I wrote a children’s book, but it was a very different thing. This was before self publishing was, you know, what was real actually had huge pallet show up from China. It was, it was a really big, big process. It goes about 15 years ago and that, you know, now this is my first time writing and self publishing, you know, recently with all the tools we have available. And even though again, I’m quite comfortable with tech and, and you know, had thought, Oh, I’m just going to sit down and write this book. It still took me a year from beginning till end to, to get it done and launch it. But, you know, I’m, I’m really happy with the return and I’m really glad that I did it.

Katie (27:13):That’s awesome. Was the process something you enjoyed? Did you find it really challenging? What was it like?

Katrina (27:17):Definitely. Yeah, so writing a book for me there was, you know, there’s three different kinds of ways that you can go. You can get the traditional publisher to do a lot of that work for you. This can be quite kind of time consuming. Oftentimes, publishers also still expect you to do a lot of your own marketing and they, you know, they take, they take a cut to of course, and, but they do a lot of that work for you. For me, I thought this is about digital strategy. I want to get it out as soon as possible because you know, digital things change. And so I didn’t want to wait until the idea was obsolete. I wanted to get it going. So I was feeling a bit of time pressure to, to do it. So I went this the second way that you can get published, which is hybrid publishing and that’s where companies will kind of take you, do the writing and such and they’ll kind of take parts of it and do for you like maybe the marketing or you know, the actual physical publishing of the book.

Katrina (28:06):Again, oftentimes you have to pay, you know, tens of thousands of dollars and they still take royalties. And for me, you know, when I had reached out for a few quotes, when I looked at, you know, kind of the service they were going to provide, I thought, you know, this is something, I often do several of these things for my clients. I’d like to just take this on myself. So because it’s self published before two, I decided to just dive in and make it happen. So I got a couple of editors I just started writing. It went really well. There’s a really great program online called Reedsy, R E E D S y.com. And they really, you know, it’s a great place to go to be connected to people who are going to, you know, do your interior design of your book, the exterior design of your book and people who can edit all the pieces that you need.

Katrina (28:53):And so I really found that a really great service to, to move through. And then, you know, when it came to the launch you put on, you know, you do have to kind of be thinking through how your launch is going to go. So I had some digital strategy components of course. And also I hired a publicist for the traditional media component of it. And so that went really well. I actually got to the international show here called the social, which is similar to the United States, the view. And so it was really exciting to get on a national show and talk about digital strategy and it was just a great way to launch the book and kind of make a splash.

Katie (29:26):Yeah, that’s very exciting. Well, some authors that I’ve talked to are like, yes, I’ve got this first one under my belt. I can’t wait to get started on the next one. And some people are like, ah, I need about two years off in between books. So are you interested?

Katrina (29:40):Yes. I’m actually probably going to start another one next spring. I do need a little break cause it was a big focus and I want to focus on my businesses too for a little while. But I think by next spring I’ll be ready to do my next one. And what I’m working on right now is I’m putting together a group of women who, you know, I think one of the things that’s missing from the women’s movement is having really strong women experts and leaders in media. And so I’m working with a group of women coming this fall to create as part of a group to just help people get their names out there a little bit more. Like, how do you get on national TV? How do you write an op ed that can be seen nationally? You know, how do you, you know, figure out your own digital strategy for your personal brand, you know, things like that to really get people women’s expertise out there.

So come the spring. Hopefully they’ll have some really great case studies of women who really, you know, taken their, their career from one level to the next and really shared things more publicly and their knowledge and expertise more publicly. And so hopefully I’ll be able to put that into a book and in the spring. That’s my plan for now anyway.

Katie: Very cool. How exciting. Well, you’ve mentioned some amazing resources already, including your, your own book, but is there anything else there out there that you would recommend to the listeners, whether that’s a, a course, a podcast, a website, a tool, anything out there that they might be helpful?

Katrina (31:01):Well, the podcast hustlenomics is amazing, but yeah, no, there’s, there’s a lot of really great, you know, I think that, you know, ultimately you just want to find the thing that’s right thing for your industry. Like find out who’s doing what in your industry and doing a good job of it. One of my favorite podcasts and video training series is from a fellow, he’s Canadian, but software as a service. And so if you’re, you don’t have any technology products that you’re planning on creating and how do you get that out and sell it? He’s just got this amazing training series that’s just really, really, really good, great place to learn. You know, I listened and read all, you know, to probably get, listen to podcasts, read books constantly and you know, you’re just, Oh, that’d be it. I guess it’s just, you know, nothing specific for, for titles, but mostly, you know, just keep earning because there’s always something that can apply to your work.

Katie (31:49):Absolutely. And I know everyone’s going to want to follow your journey and check out your book and everything you’re doing. So can you tell the listeners how they can find you online? Absolutely.

Katrina (31:57):So I’m at Katrina german.com or you can find me on Twitter at Katrina vision. I’m also on Facebook. I’m on Instagram is at Katrina vision and you know, LinkedIn, you find me a lot of places, but probably most active on Instagram and LinkedIn.

Katie (32:13):Perfect. Great. Well thank you so much for coming on the show today. It’s been so nice to talk.

Katrina (32:18):Yeah, I really enjoyed it too. Thanks so much for the invitation.