Emily  00:00

Hey, my name is Emily Merrell. I’m a taco loving people connector, and I’m obsessed with playing the name game and all things networking. I’m the founder of second degree society, a female focused networking community, as well as a business coach for female business owners, passionate about bringing their business to the next level with the help of events, community and connections. I crave deep conversations and am continuously curious to see what makes people tick, and I’m invested in uncovering their stories with some life lessons along the way. This podcast is aimed to inspire and educate as you tackle your busy day. So join the conversation and tune in for the second degree podcast. I’m your host, Emily Merrell, and today I am so excited to have my friend Dawn Ferguson. She is the founder and CEO of sneakers in kale. Don welcome to today’s show.

 

Dawn Ferguson  00:55

Thank you for having me, and I’m excited to be here.

 

Emily Merrell  00:58

It’s so fun to have you here, and it’s always so fun. I always when I think of sneakers and kale, I just think of like, going on a run and grabbing a green juice. And I don’t know if that’s what you intended when you named your brand sneakers and kale.

 

Dawn Ferguson  01:13

There’s actually a story there. Yeah, oh yeah. But yeah, no, for me, sneakers and kale, the long story short is that they’re just it’s so authentic to me, like when I lived in New York, I used to have a shelf in my office of all my heels, and because I worked in the fashion business, right? And so all my heels literally stayed in my office, like it wasn’t who I was. They just stayed there. And I wore sneakers all over because I walked everywhere, right? I lived in Brooklyn. I’d walk over the bridge to get home, I up and down the subway. And so I feel like, when I was leaving at night and I would take off those heels and put on my sneakers, it felt like I was, like, stepping back into who I really was. You know what I mean? It was like that, like, authenticity moment for me, of like, this is not who I am. Like, I’m not meant to work in this fashion business. I’m not, you know, I’m running around in sneakers all the time, like, I’m wearing a dress with sneakers. Like, that’s me, you know, and I’m just a health nut, and I’ve always, you know, kale has always been one of my favorite foods. I eat twice a day. And people are like, what? So it’s just kind of a natural thing. But yeah, then it works out, because, you know, really, now, like in my business, we’re all about helping people find what’s authentic to them when it comes to social media, so that they can make it more enjoyable. So I always think about that moment of like, yeah, me putting on my on my sneakers, wherever they were that day, and just feeling like I was kind of coming home to me. Oh,

 

Emily  02:35

I love that story, and I love that, that full circle moment I feel like now in fashion, people are more probably wearing sneakers than they are heels, just that, right? But then I also, every once in a while, I have a pair of the stupidest purchase I’ve ever had was 120 millimeter Louis vuittons, no sorry. Louboutins, Christian Louboutins. I like to remember the words anymore, stupidest, stupidest purchase of my life. I call them sit down shoes exactly to that reason I’d put them on, like, walk to my desk, sit down, kick them off under the desk,

 

Dawn Ferguson  03:18

like hobbles. Not functional. Oh, buddy,

 

Emily  03:22

like a baby giraffe, like, sadly, teetering around the office. And yeah, now, now, if I go out to dinner and like, I have to wear a heel, it’s like a booty Yes,

 

Dawn Ferguson  03:34

yes

 

Emily  03:35

or wedge heel,

 

Dawn Ferguson  03:37

but yes, something more functional,

 

Emily  03:39

even that’s dangerous, we don’t need that. Okay, so you alluded to so many things, and I love it. So before we dive too far in, tell us who you are. Dawn like Dawn of New York. Tell us a little bit of Dawn of New York to Dawn of La today. Wow. Is there going to be bad jokes of Dawn just dawned on me. There it is,

 

Dawn Ferguson  04:04

yeah. So I was born and raised in San Francisco, Bay Area in the East Bay. I came out to LA for college, so I left when I was 18. I met my husband in college, 21 years ago, where actually we’ve been together for 21 years this fall, which is crazy. And then, yeah, he and I lived all over LA, mostly on the east side, and then we moved to New York for a while, came back, and now we live by the beach, and we have two kids now, which is crazy, yeah, and living the life we are city. I feel like I’m a city person, but we moved to the burbs, but it’s like, acceptable burbs because it’s a beach town, so it’s fun and cool still, yeah, and I love it.

 

Emily  04:48

I love I love the shame that we like. Just layered on about burbs. We’re like, oh God, burbs, no, I can’t do burbs acceptable. Like a qualifier. You know, people visit me still. It’s cool, totally right, especially being in the city. So Don when I met you, I met you, I think it was 2021 pretty sure it was 2021 or most of 2021 Yeah, one kid at that point. You had just left your corporate world behind, and you had launched iteration one of sneakers and kale. So tell us a little bit about who you were in that corporate world wearing those heels at your office, and then what your iteration one of sneakers of Kale was, and then we’ll come back to what iteration two is.

 

Dawn Ferguson  05:34

Yes, yeah. So, oh, I spent 15 years working in social media marketing for a lot of big brands. So I first launched forever 21 on social media. Oh, my God, yes. So many answers, yeah. So first launched forever 21 from there, I went to a lot of other different really, like fast fashion, mall brands, like I ran social media, for hot topic, for BB, for Yeah. From there, I went to New York to Century 21 department store, Vital Proteins, Fabletics, is really where I ended my career. I worked really closely with Kate Hudson and a lot of celebrities there. Yeah, I did everything with social media. I, you know, freelance in the evenings. I taught social media analytics at FIT Fashion Institute for Technology in New York for years, I guess, taught at NYU like, I’m kind of like this social media unicorn. You know, I did it forever. It burnt me out. And by the end of 2020, which is a wild year with between quarantine and Tiktok exploded, and Black Lives Matter happened, and so much shifted in our culture that year, obviously, with the pandemic, but beyond that, like from a social media behavioral standpoint, and the way, you know, with Black Lives Matter, you know, the way that consumers demanded new like they we started to demand soul from businesses like we wanted to know, what do you stand for as a business? Who? What do you get behind? What are you right? And so it was just a wild year. It was a really crappy time to be working for a big, profit driven business, because, you know, my CEOs, it was constantly I would be called on the weekends and the evenings to do things. Or did you see this comment thread? Or this is going crazy? Or, you know, just a 24/7 job, and it burnt me out. I had sky my son in 2018 and so by the end of 2020 I was just like, I’m done with this. So I had, when I was living in New York, I went to, I am the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. And I had a, you know, became a certified health coach, and so I had been doing that a little bit on the side, coaching people. And, you know, really, always, always, just been obsessed, passionate about health and wellness and nutrition and that whole world. And so I left my job. I was like, I’m done. I cannot do this for anymore. I can’t work in top toxic, you know, corporate. So I was like, Okay, I’m going to launch a health and wellness business. I’m going to be a coach. I’m going to do this. So I was coaching. I had corporate wellness programs. That’s when we met, and, yeah, and I was doing all of that. And like, six months in, I kept having people come to me for help with social media. And so they were like, friends, like one of my friends, oh, an incredible woman that I had worked with for years, and she was launching an E commerce marketplace for women with breast cancer, and she was a survivor herself. And so she was the first person that came to me. Was like, Dawn, I need your help directionally with social media for my new brand. And so I was like, I cannot help her. Like, this is amazing, the thing she’s doing, right? And then I had this health and wellness e commerce Store reach out to me, like, you know, we need help with the social media thing, you know, you’re and I’m like, Oh, they’re a bunch of functional health doctors that had got together and started this business. And I’m like, yeah, I gotta help you. Like, you know, so I just had all these people coming to me that were doing these amazing, incredible things for the world, and I wanted to help them. I’m like, I have all of this crazy knowledge about social I don’t enjoy it. I’ve never enjoyed it myself. I’ve never if you look at at Don Ferguson on Instagram, you will see how, like, rudely, inconsistent I’ve been, and I don’t enjoy it. I don’t I don’t use social media. Personally, I’m an older millennial, like, it just wasn’t something that it’s not something that aligns with me, but I always did it for business. So my friends have always laughed, laughed that that’s what I do for business, because there’s a lot of irony there. But yeah, so I launched this wellness business, and at the same time, I’m helping all these people with social media. You know, long story short, I ended up building, accidentally, kind of built the social media agency because I kept hiring people to do the work I didn’t have time to do when I was doing this other stuff. And I was thinking, Oh, I’ll do this to kind of fund my wellness business, right? Like, it’ll, I’ll funnel, you know, it’ll, yeah. This will, yeah. And then ended up basically being like, wow, we’ve got, like, you know, this. Great revenue. I’ve got a team of like six, I’ve got a full time employee on top of all these contractors, and I ended up shifting full time into it. And it was, like the best decision I ever made. I Yeah, it just I realized, you know, I thought I was running away from social media. I thought social media was what burnt me out. But really it was toxic corporate, corporate culture, and it was that I needed out of that. I need the freedom and the flexibility of being my own boss. I needed that, you know, and and so. And then I got that. And then I also found that I was doing social media for all these profit driven brands and they at the end of the day, it was always about selling more clothes, selling more whatever. And certainly that’s what it is now for all my clients as well, but, but it’s not, it’s it’s about something bigger. It’s about, you know, they would still be doing the work that they’re doing if they weren’t getting paid for it, because they’re just so passionate and purpose driven. And that’s how I am as a person, too. So it’s, yeah, so that was kind of the long story, long of first sneakers and kale, and then the agency. And so I kept the name and shifted it and again, back to my like shoes in New York story. It felt like it felt very

 

Emily  11:13

Yeah, they were able, they were able to still take the same meaning for what your mission was, for the health coaching business and apply it for what you were building with the social media business. And I love the story too, because it sounds like you exploring your own business of creating a health coaching business helped you attract and be magnetic to people who are more aligned with you and with the values that you embody, versus maybe a forever, 21 or a century. 21 a lot of 20 ones in your you know? Is that funny? Yeah, that is weird. Why is 21 such a big number? I don’t know that’s the meaning behind that. So I love that, and I love that you were trying to create this business on the side to fund your coaching business, and then finally gave in, and you’re like, you know what? Screw it. We’re gonna we’re gonna just make this a business. And y’all when, before we talked, before we hit record, Don and I were talking about the word CEO, and you just said something dawn that you had said, like working all around the clock and getting these calls from the CEOs, or getting the calls from the leaders of having to do this, and now you are that CEO, and you also get to be the trickle down effect that you want to see in the world and in the culture so your clients and also your employees get to feel the wellness effects of working with A leader like you.

 

Dawn Ferguson  12:41

Yes, I love that. It’s so true, and I think it’s so important. It really is. And I feel like, you know, if I if I could share one thing with the world, I’m always like, I wish more people would become their own business owners or freelancers and just get that freedom, because there’s something like, there’s so much more than to life, than, like, dealing with that toxicity. But then I’m like, I know it’s not right for everybody, you know? It’s just, it’s not the right thing for everybody to do that. And there’s all whole different, you know, ball game when it comes to that. So I think you’re right. It’s, it’s the fact that I can create that own, my own impact and and impact my team and my clients. Yes, yes, 1,000,000%

 

Emily  13:22

I’m 1,000% with you on that. My less like. The good thing about the pandemic is, my husband now works remote, and we were, you know, we live in Denver and whatnot. But one of the biggest frustrations pre pandemic was trying to plan like, a weekend away, or trying to plan a like, let’s go to Canada for a week, or let’s go to this place. And everything had to be timed around when he could leave his job. Like in thanksgiving, we’d be leaving, like, at the 11th hour of Wednesday night to drive from San Francisco to LA. I was just so frustrated. Versus now, like, we could drive on the hours you’re not working. You could still at work if you need to work, but it can be from LA or from whatever destination we want to be in exactly.

 

Dawn Ferguson  14:07

There’s flexibility. Yes, I love it. Yeah,

 

Emily  14:11

I hated being tied down to to a job and then having that two weeks that you had to, like, thoughtfully, chip away at and figure out, how am I gonna have two weeks of the entire year exactly, and like, your sick days you would never use. You would use them as vacation days, basically, like, strategic, yeah, it’s terrible, terrible, terrible, terrible. So dawn, I love that you said that you hate social media and that your social media is inconsistent, because, as I shared with you earlier, I love events, I hate planning events, and I also love community, but I hate building but I love building community. I hate maintaining community. Yes, I think, I think it’s so ironic that we’re both in these. Industries that are very much focused on the skills that we don’t necessarily love, but we love the clients we serve and like the outcomes that we are able to provide to people. So what advice do you have for people that are just like you don and freaking hate social media and want to check the Instagram app and their phone across the room.

 

Dawn Ferguson  15:22

Yes, I told yes. I have all kinds of tips. And I first just want to say too that I don’t think it’s just you and I like I feel like most of us, we we serve the people that are like the problems we have the most, right? Or that’s the thing that we work on the most. Like with me and health and wellness, I’ve always been passionate about it, but I’ve always lived a high stress, fast paced life, and so for me, it’s always like, my work is to slow down and like center and and ground and, you know, that’s my practice constantly. So it’s like, oh, yeah, of course, I can help other people with this too. So I think you listening to this right now, like you are probably in the same boat. I’m sure you’re teaching, you’re coaching, you’re supporting people with the same thing that you struggle with the most. And I think when you’re in that seat, you have an incredibly powerful story and to tell your audience and place that you can come from. And so that’s where I segue into social media, which is, you know, if social media doesn’t feel authentic for you, oh my gosh, first of all, you need to sign up for my email newsletter. It’s called anti social, and it’s all about, you know, social media, how to navigate it when it doesn’t feel good or enjoyable to you. So there’s that, but basically there’s, you know, a few different things that I coach people on where to start. And I think the big headline there is really, find what you enjoy about the thing. Think about and play to your strengths, right? So, like, I always ask people when I first start working with a new client, and we’re talking about, we’re diving into doing their content creation. And I’m always like, Okay, so what’s your communication style? That’s one thing I like to start with is, how do you like to communicate with people? Like, if you’re going to go talk to your best friend or your employee or anyone, do you pick up the phone and call them? Or do you pick up the phone and text them? Do you like to write things out, because that helps you like organize your thoughts? Or do you like to talk things out and send them a voice memo? That’s me. I’m like Voice Memo city. I will just pick it up. Yeah, I’ll talk I like to talk things out. So for me, based on your strength, your communication style, how can you apply that to social media? If you’re a writer and you love to write, and that’s how you organize your thoughts, don’t show up on video all the time. Write your stuff out. Write out the content first, and then leverage that in video. Right? You can bring those words in. You can shoot B roll content of yourself and then put your words over it and reach people with your words. If you know that your words are the most magnetic way that you communicate, use those. But then, like me, if you’re someone that’s like, Oh, I’d rather talk. I’m like, Oh, I’m going to selfie mode. I’ll just be walking on the beach, and I’m like, in selfie mode talking to people, and I’ll share that video, or turn that into a reel. Like, I think the biggest thing is just to stop overthinking it too much and go where feels natural to you. And then the other thing I tell people a lot is to document, not create. So if you’re someone that’s like, oh my god, I can’t hold up the phone or set up a tripod and, like, talk to the camera, it’s so awkward. And takes me five hours. I have to cut, you know, I have to do a million different takes, and I’m constantly like, you know, overthinking it, and, you know, and then you end up feeling like crap, right? You feel terrible about yourself. You feel like a failure. And that’s the energy you go to bring to your clients, like, Oh, if that’s the state that you’re in with your social media, please stop, because it’s hurting your business. It’s literally stalling your business growth, right? Because it impacts you in such a big way. So if that’s the case, I say, where are you? Your most magnetic? Do you speak on stages? Do you do podcast guesting like this? You know, can you set up a tripod with your phone shooting you when you’re speaking to your clients, or you’re hosting a group coaching call, or you’re, you know, wherever it is that you feel like you’re in your most powerful you know, where people look at you and are like, Oh my gosh, give me more. Thank you. Yes, you know, happy. Thank you more. Please document that and bring that to social media. So yeah, if those are just a few kind of things to get you started, if it doesn’t feel authentic, but at the end of the day, you need a strategy, and you need systems, and when you have that in place that will help you facilitate. The rest will just become easy. It just becomes like a part of what you do every day, right and then, and then, once you create that, yeah, it all just feels a lot more effortless. And you know what your style is, and you do it in your own way, and you stop trying to do what everybody else is doing, what everybody else. Tell you you should be doing, and you just do you. And that’s when you’ll start to go viral. That’s literally when people will be like, Oh, wait, who’s this? What? Because you show up in that energy, and I

 

Emily  20:12

love that recommendation of like the B roll, and then creating the systems, or even this podcast, like recording while recording yourself on the podcast that you can use as B roll doesn’t have to be related to a podcast, and what you put put it on, and I find, at least for me, that’s something that I’m a lot, a lot more comfortable with than being like, Hey guys, buy whatever I’m offering on this Instagram story or whatnot. It just it doesn’t feel as performative. I think also with Tiktok, we’ve saw the trends of so many people like lip syncing to things, yes, and using the sun, which is so fun, but that makes my heart when I like it starts, my heart starts beating and my brain exploding all at once, like it just is so overwhelming. I’m not an actress. Don’t want to do it. Don’t want to spend an hour like shooting dancing

 

Dawn Ferguson  21:05

on camera, yes, or pointing at the air. That’s my least favorite. Oh, that real trend. I was like, no, no, no, no, cringe. It’s not for me. And yeah, but I just have to say, like PSA, social media like you can social media works when you find what works for you, right? It’s like you don’t have to do what everybody else is doing. And then half the time, that’s why your social media is not working, is because you’re trying to do what people are other people are doing what they’re telling you to do, and it doesn’t feel good to you. So you’re putting this icky, like doesn’t feel good energy out there, and people can feel that and sense that, or they just, you know, scroll right by. You literally have two seconds to capture their attention. So do you focus on what feels good and, yeah, avoid the dancing I love. I always ask my clients when they first sign on like they’ll fill out a questionnaire with us, and one of the questions is, what’s off limits for you? And I always laugh hysterically because people will say dancing or trends in general. And I’m like, Yes, embrace that. I’m the same way. I don’t do any trending sounds. Well, I shouldn’t say that we use trending audio, but I do no lip syncing. Like the lip syncing stuff is not for me. Like that is not not it makes me cringe.

 

Emily  22:24

It makes me cringe so much unless you are, like, the world’s best actress, and you can really nail it, I just, I feel like it always looks clunky and it looks, I don’t know it just like, if that’s

 

Dawn Ferguson  22:36

your thing, keep doing it. But yes, for the rest of us that that is not feel good permission slip to let it go and never do it again. Yeah? Let it go

 

Emily  22:46

and let it go. Elsa

 

Dawn Ferguson  22:48

1. Yeah, Elsa it

 

Emily  22:50

also. Side note. My son just started singing, let it go one day, I was like, you’ve never seen Elsa before. You’ve never, like, been introduced to this. I feel like the daycare is letting them watch movies. And I didn’t even know,

 

Dawn Ferguson  23:02

but I don’t, like, do I put on music too? Or put Yeah, yeah for other kids, yep.

 

Emily  23:09

He, like, knows what Elsa looks like. Like, we went to Elsa birthday party. He’s like, Elsa. I’m like, what?

 

Dawn Ferguson  23:15

Oh my gosh. Maybe have little toys, yeah,

 

Emily  23:19

maybe toys, or, like other people might be wearing an Elsa t shirt, there’s little girls or little boys who knows. Um, okay, so I love, I love, love, love, love, love. Those recommendations. What are your thoughts on the feeling and obligation of posting every single

 

Dawn Ferguson  23:37

day? Oh, I love this one. Yeah. So a lot of people come to me, and one of the first questions they’ll ask is, are you going to make me post five times a day? Because that’s what people are preaching out there today. Oh, yeah. What is Gary Vaynerchuk latest recommendation? Sorry, I know. Okay. I secretly love him because I’ve worked with him for years. And did you? Yeah, yeah. I worked with his agency, VaynerMedia, and I just he’s been in the space, you know, as long as, if not a little bit longer than I have, which is shocking, like, not a lot of people have been in social media almost 20 years. But yes, I cannot stand the hustle culture that he perpetuates. So a lot of people, here’s the here’s the fact. Fact is, yes, if you post about three to five times a day, you gain momentum. Like, has anybody seen the social dilemma this documentary that came out? Right? Oh my gosh, so good. It’s older now, but you know the apps, Instagram, Tiktok, they all want to keep you on them like that’s their goal. They’re constantly sending you push notifications because they want you to come spend time in the app, right? They want to continue to serve your content. So they reward you when you spend time in there. They reward you when you post more. They serve your content more. So yes, that is one strategy that can work posting a. Million times a day. And a lot of people embrace that, and a lot of people it burns them into the ground, right? Like not sustainable? To me, that is not sustainable as a mom, as a human that likes to have work life balanced like that is not it doesn’t work. So there are other ways to do it, and you do not have to do that. So for me, what I typically recommend, and I have a lot of clients who are like, Nope, we’re just going to post three two or three times a week. That’s it. And I’m like, that great. That’s great for you, because here’s the number one most important thing when it comes to social media success, if you want to get more clients from social if you want to just get more traffic results, in general, from it, the number one thing you need to do is to be consistent. You just gotta keep showing up like you gotta show up and you can’t show up for one week, you know, three weeks, and then drop off for three months. Like that doesn’t work. So if posting twice a week is all that you can do to maintain long term consistency. Yes, girl, post twice a week. Let it be that. Like, let that be it. And so that’s where, again, where I go to like, you have to build a strategy and systems that are sustainable for you and your schedule. You have to know like, I Okay, I only work this finite amount of hours. I have kids, or I have priorities outside of work that are important to me, and I’m not going to, you know, step over that boundary and so create something that works. Start small. Like, if you think about, you know, I love, gosh, what’s the book called Habits clear. Thank you. Yeah, that idea of like, you know, start small. Start tiny. Like, post once a week. Build that habit first. Once you’ve got that once a week going and it feels easy and you got it, okay, great. Now you can up to twice a week, you know, start there and then if you have help, if and when, if you don’t have help yet and you don’t have budget for it, I still always recommend, like, social media is never something that one person should be doing themselves. So if you have a VA, they should absolutely be helping you with the tedious, administrative parts of it, right ultimately, when you grow your business. So we work with predominantly, you know, businesses in the multiple six figure range, going up to seven figures when you’re ready to outsource and get support, you know, have a team. I recommend offloading your content creation, because that’s the biggest time suck outside of, you know, and you should be spending time engaging, building your community, like talking to people versus like putting around with how to edit a reel, or finding a trending audio or, you know, those kind of things. So yeah, before you get to that place and hiring that more robust help, you can, you can start to dabble and do it in smaller ways. But all that to say, you get to a place where our clients are posting once a day, five days a week. We typically use what we recommend, and then showing up on stories daily is sort of like an ideal goal. I have a lot of clients who have courses who will post twice a day, and they love that cadence because it drives literally more revenue for them. And so then it just becomes, you know, creating strong strategy and systems to get to that place. But it’s not necessary. You can literally make it happen with two posts a week. If that’s what, when you’re saying posting

 

Emily  28:21

twice a day, they’re posting actually in the feed. They’re not just posting on stories, yeah, yeah, wow, okay, yeah,

 

Dawn Ferguson  28:27

yeah, that’s like that. You don’t have to do that to have

 

Emily  28:30

success. No, I I dig it. And I think, to your point, I think consistency and systems and having support are like three of the biggest takeaways that I just got from all of that. And I completely agree in terms of, I’ll share, well, something that I do, that I think either people either love or they hate, and I’m curious your take on it. But I love sitting down and like being really strategic about my social media a month at a time, and just looking at I use leader.com and I just like, Yeah, I got a vision boarded out. I’m like, oh, oh, this, this event hasn’t happened yet, but I’m going to get pictures back, and I’ll plug it in here, but here’s the writing for it, and I’ll do it in stages, like, I’ll write the captions first, and then I’ll marry captions to pictures and then, and then there will be, like, promo things in there, which I have to let my ego go. They usually don’t do as well. I don’t know if you’ve found, like, the graphics, anything with graphics, or anything that’s even professional photos, don’t do as well as like, the selfie that I took with my

 

Dawn Ferguson  29:32

son. Yep, it’s amazing, right? Kills

 

Emily  29:35

me, but, yeah, he’s cute, but it’s it is funny to see, like, how, that changes, and then just scheduling it takes my ego out of it so much more than being like, Oh, I only have five likes on today’s post. I should delete it. I’m a failure. Well, still engaging, obviously, but still,

 

Dawn Ferguson  29:54

yeah, okay, so I want to back up to I don’t think it’s controversial at all. I think. Think people who are telling you that you shouldn’t be planning your content a month in advance, or people that are telling you I can’t do that because I only create content when the inspiration strikes. Oh, my God, right. Is that kind of the alternative of the what you’re telling Yeah, those people, you must be exhausted. That’s, you tired. It’s like, it’s so tiring. And that’s when people come to me. They’re like, I’m literally doing this every single day. I have one client, Melanie, actually, you know, Melanie, when I when we first started working together, she’s like, you know, I literally post every single day. And this, she’s not the only one. I get this all the time. And you listening right now are probably potentially doing the same thing where you spend you try to keep it to an hour a day, but it can easily creep up to, like, two or three of you created your content in the moment every single day, every morning, right? You deal with that last minute scramble you have to, like, go through it, right? And you’re constantly going, what am I going to post? What am I going to post? Okay, let me scroll through, get some ideas. Let me throw something together. Stressful, if you’re living your life that way, I’m like, I want you to take a nap and go to the spa and then come talk to me, because we’re gonna help you change that. That is exhausting. You’re creating way too much work for you. So my clients that come in doing that, they’re averaging, you know, spending two hours a day. So two hours a day times five is 10 hours a week, right? So that’s 40 hours a month you’re spending on your social media, where, if you start to batch what we do, we put strategy systems in place, you can cut that down to eight. Literally, cut it down to eight hours, two hours a week, or one day a month, and that’s it, right? You when You batch create content, when you get a better mix of content, your content is more strategic. It’s way easier to come up with ideas when you come up with a bunch together, you know. And if that doesn’t feel easy for you, bring in someone to help. We can help you. That’s what we do all day long, you know? And, yeah, lay it out. Your brain doesn’t have to change between, okay, I’m writing copy, but now I’m editing a reel. You know, your brain’s doing you’re making it work too hard, right? Yeah, it’s huge, huge, life changing stuff.

 

Emily  32:16

I Amen and everyone. This is your PSA, to go find help. Stat, if not Don someone Don adjacent, who can help you? Yes, descramble everything out there, which brings me to dawn. How do people get in touch with you, learn about you, work with you all of those next steps,

 

Dawn Ferguson  32:36

yeah, so you can find more information about us at sneakers and kale.com you can follow us on Instagram at sneakers and kale, connect with me. You know, slide into my DMs. I’m there on Instagram. I’m also spend time on LinkedIn, too, if you want to connect with me there, yeah, and sign up for my if you go to sneakers and kale.com/newsletter you can sign up for anti social. I’ll send you free weekly content ideas. So I will break down all these concepts and I share, like, easy formulas or posts, like, here’s how to create, or something really easy. So you can just get some content out and let it be easy. And, yeah, connect with us. So we specialize in we only do two things when it comes to social media. We focus on strategy and content creation. So we can build out a strategy playbook for you to make social media take way less time and create a lot more profit and more get more clients coming your way. And then you know, our process that we do build, you can either be fully self sufficient in your social media, take that playbook with you for life, for the lifetime of your business, and go execute it yourself, and you’ll be fully supported and have everything you need to do social media more effectively. So you’ll actually know what works to beat the algorithm, and you’ll understand and you can do things that are enjoyable to you, and it’ll be sustainable for your schedule and all of that. And then we also support our clients that we build out strategy for with content creation services. So if you’re you know, in that place where you’re like, yeah, it would be really beautiful to have somebody else plan out my entire month of content, write an entire month of copy, edit an entire month of reels for me and create entire month of carousels we got you. It’s our specialty. Oh my god,

 

Emily  34:26

what a gift. So you not only teach people how to do it, but you also do it for them. So there’s options and ways, different ways in which to work together. Yes, Dawn, thank you so much for sharing all of these incredible tips and your story. Before we go, I would love to ask you some six fast questions. Love it, yeah, changing gears a little bit, shifting, shifting focus. My first question is, tell us an unknown fun fact about dawn.

 

Dawn Ferguson  34:57

Oh, unknown. Um. Um, well, they’re maybe not the most unknown, but I I’m vegan, and I meditate a lot. I didn’t know you were vegan. I’m heavily meditated. Yeah, yeah. I’ve been plant based for 21 years, this year, and since I was 18, yeah, and yeah, I’ve been vegan for seven maybe now, yeah, wow. Segitated and

 

Emily  35:28

meditated. Though I like that. That’s awesome. I was raised vegetarian. I was vegan at a second, and then I moved to Argentina, so the all of it went away, yeah, and I, but I’m mostly vegetarian still, but I love that, um, who would be a dream person for you to be connected with?

 

Dawn Ferguson  35:54

Oprah comes to mind. Her soul. Oprah

 

Emily  35:59

do her social media.

 

Dawn Ferguson  36:00

Yeah, girl, we got you,

 

Emily  36:02

like, Oprah, you can call me all the boundaries I was talking about. They don’t apply to you. It’s fine,

 

Dawn Ferguson  36:07

yeah, I think for me, yeah, it’s like, it’s wellness people like, and when I say, well, well, being like, self development too, like, I’m really into, like, Doctor Joe Dispenza, you know, Brene Brown, like Simon Sinek, like a lot of those, yeah, thought leaders, I just love. And I I’m like, ingesting their content constantly and listening to their audiobooks, and they just inspire me. Yeah, inspiration is really big for me, I love to feel inspired.

 

Emily  36:43

Yeah, I love that, like expanding your brain through listening to their books or reading them. Um, in a different medium, What show are you currently watching? If any? Oh,

 

Dawn Ferguson  36:53

swagger. If you haven’t seen swagger, it’s so good on Apple TV. Um, Ed produced it, Kevin Durant, yeah, um, basketball player. It’s about like, this kid. It starts when he’s 14, and it’s based off, loosely based off, Kevin Durant’s life. So it’s like, yeah, he’s a, you know, basketball player going pro. It’s such a great show. It’s kind of like, it’s got the good vibes of, like, Friday Night Lights, if you watch that oldie, you know, like, kind of good, wholesome, but just incredible, like Coach kids, like coming of age story, and we love basketball in our house, yeah? So that was a really good shakers last night. Oh, blue Lakers. I’m a warriors fan. I

 

Emily  37:37

grew up in Oh, you are okay, okay, yeah,

 

Dawn Ferguson  37:38

I know we’re not in it.

 

Emily  37:40

We’re a warriors nuggets fan now, and so it’s been kind of fun to be like, live in SF as warriors. We’re doing well, live in Denver when the nuggets are doing well, like, totally. Like, where do you want us next? It’s all about us. That’s why we’re, we’re winning. Oh

 

Dawn Ferguson  37:54

my gosh, you’re good luck charm. You really are. I love that. My husband’s a nugget fan too. He grew up in Denver. So, yeah, we’re, we’re in it, watching every game right now.

 

Emily  38:04

I love it. I’ll have to introduce this one to my husband. I feel like every show recently. He’s like, Oh, this is stupid. This is stupid. So this, hopefully will, will wet his palette. Okay, great recommendation. What you mentioned all those incredible books that you’re listening to. Are there any books that you recommend for reading or listening?

 

Dawn Ferguson  38:26

Oh, yeah, a million, okay, or most recent one, most recent for Okay, for entrepreneurs. Dan Sullivan, I told you this the other day too. Actually, 10x is easier than 2x it’s one of the most incredible books I’ve ever read in my life. And it’s just it was like, written for me. I’m just like, if you’re an entrepreneur and you’re constantly, you know, a high achiever, somebody who’s who’s got goals and vision and going places like highly recommend, whether that’s in your personal life or your business or whatever. Highly recommend. 10x is easier than 2x

 

Emily  39:04

and workbook too.

 

Dawn Ferguson  39:07

No, actually,

 

Emily  39:08

okay, I was just looking. I have on the waiting list for it, but I’m just going to order it right now because get

 

Dawn Ferguson  39:17

it on Audible. The guy, what’s his name? Benjamin, the guy that wrote it with him, okay with Dan Sullivan. Um, he reads them. And then in the audio books they do, he interviews Dan at the end of each chapter. So you get this fun. So, yeah, they’re all on Audible. Yeah, I recommend 10x is easier than 2x gap in the game is huge. Another one of their books, and then, who not? How? Incredible, incredible concepts. Yeah, I’m still, Oh God, I’m

 

Emily  39:48

still on the wait list for 10 weeks. Okay, I’m gonna just buy it yes, in seven weeks for audio. So annoying. Gosh, Jordan, did you? Do you ever use Libby? Libby? Yes. Like. Yeah, here we go. Okay, my next question for you is, what is your favorite emoji, or most used emoji?

 

Dawn Ferguson  40:08

Most used emoji? Oh, I’m trying to think I probably have to go in and look. I love the this face, yeah, with the teeth, the smile with the teeth, yeah? Like, kind of nervous, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, probably the one I most use is the like, hug celebrating blushing face. One a lot, like, yay. You know, I use that a lot with my team. And, yeah, that’s and I love this. Celebrate, the one with the Yeah,

 

Emily  40:43

the party word, yeah, the party face, party face.

 

Dawn Ferguson  40:47

I like, and then the upside down smile too. Probably, I do that a lot. Yeah.

 

Emily  40:51

There’s so many that just like, encompass the mood that you’re experiencing. You’re like, yep, this, this nailed it. This is perfect.

 

Dawn Ferguson  40:58

Yeah, melting face.

 

Emily  41:01

I use that one a lot in modern concepts, yeah, yeah. I’m like, How are you doing today? I’ll just send that. They’re like, okay,

 

Dawn Ferguson  41:08

one of those days,

 

Emily  41:09

do you need water? Okay, my final question for you today Dawn is, who, what permission Do you want to give our listeners today?

 

Dawn Ferguson  41:19

Oh, yeah, permission to be yourself and to drop what other people are telling you, and especially when it comes to your marketing and social media, marketing is service, you know, I always like to think about I work with a lot of predominantly service providers, and when you know you can shift the way that you look at marketing, and you see it as this big, scary thing, and if you can shift that and just think about it as serving, you know, if you’re an expert in what you do, you’re a coach, you’re a consultant, you know, you’re an expert of some kind, get out there and teach people about what you do. You know, use your marketing to just teach and give value and give tips and do what feels good to you, and when you can do that, you will reach and impact way more people than you’re already doing right now. And you’re also going to build your thought leadership, and you’re going to build right in the process, and it’s going to benefit you and your business, but it’s also just going to feel good. So stop like permission to stop doing what everybody else says to do and do what feels good to you, if that’s showing up like me with messy hair and no makeup on the beach, because that’s the only time in your day that you have to set aside to show up, do it and a lot, let it be like. Don’t worry about what you look like. If you’re spitting value and you’re giving people value, they will, okay, I will also add to that. A lot of you come to me and they’re like, Don like, I just filmed this 62nd you know, they’ll send me this video, like, I’m teaching this concept about what I do, but it’s so dense and it’s a whole minute long, nobody’s gonna watch a minute long video. Guess what? I posted a 20 minute long video, and I was like, I did this as like, we weren’t we weren’t able to go live because we had tech issues. We posted a 20 minute long video auditing, you know, someone’s account, and multiple people, clients and non clients, told me they watched every single minute of it. They watched it to the very end. Why? Because it was constantly giving value. I was just giving tips after tips. I’m I’m teaching. I’m talking about what I know and I’m good at and what I know really helps people, and they listen to every single word. So stop trying to edit yourself if you’re trying to edit yourself because you’re trying to fit it into this little 62nd 92nd reel. Stop. Be you. Be you. Give the value that you give and trust that the people that need you are going to be listening to your every word, and not only that, but they’re going to want more. They’re going to be like, six or seconds wasn’t enough for me. Give me more.

 

Emily  43:51

I love more of you. I love that. I love that recommendation, and I completely agree. And I’ve totally been guilty of watching those 2030, minute videos. I’m like, oh, I’ll just click, click around, and then here I am ingrained. Well, Dawn, thank you so much for everything, for sharing your tips, for sharing your learning, sharing your journey with us, and being on today’s podcast. Oh my gosh, my brain just melted being today’s guest on our podcast.

 

Dawn Ferguson  44:20

Yeah, it’s absolutely it’s my pleasure. Thank you for having me and listeners.

 

Emily  44:24

If you like today’s podcast, go follow Dawn, check out her business and share this episode with your friends, and we’ll see you the next time on the second degree podcast with Emily Merrell. Have a great day, everyone.