Announcer 0:02
Welcome to getting a headshot. A show for anybody wanting to get ahead in life join conversations between international award winning photographer Lane Hickenbottom. And his clients who while getting a headshot, offer relatable tips and strategies on a variety of topics, and now here’s Lane.
Lane Hickenbottom 0:25
Hey, everybody, I am super excited today. My my guests my first guest is Kim Boltsma. Kim is just an awesome individual. She is a, she’s a partner of Dirt Run Co. that has all sorts of like clothing and accessories for running, particularly trail runners. And she’s also the founder of A Cup Of Content, what A Cup Of Content does is it helps people to put themselves out there to create content so that they’re found better online. And in through A Cup Of Content, she helps educate other small business owners. And she helps them wade through everything that’s online, helps them to kind of do it themselves, but also has a platform where she’s able to provide content to a variety of businesses. It’s just a just an all around Rockstar have a person. So I am super happy that you’re here joining me today.
Kim Bultsma 1:37
Thank you, lane. I am so excited to be here and to be your first guest.
Lane Hickenbottom 1:41
Yeah, that’s right. Yeah, I gotta say that I’m extremely nervous. So
Kim Bultsma 1:49
I know, it’s like, finally we get the guy behind the camera in front of the camera, and he doesn’t know what to do.
Lane Hickenbottom 1:55
I have no idea what to do. Yeah, and I’m having all these technical, technical issues and trying to wade through that.
Kim Bultsma 2:03
But you know, you know, that’s, I think, what’s really hard for people to put themselves out there, especially if they want to go into the video space, or even the podcast space, you know, it’s like, not only is it the lights and the beautiful background, and the microphone and all this stuff, but you know how fast your internet is, and whether later that’s gonna drop, like we were having problems before. But, you know, it’s like, What do you say, you know, right? Yeah, and how many times are you gonna say, um, and, you know, I noticed that I do that a lot when I speak. And I record myself. So I’ve consciously thought about that. I don’t do that anymore.
Lane Hickenbottom 2:43
And that’s one of the, I guess the thing that that you really excel in is helping people who are generally uncomfortable being out there helping them get out there.
Kim Bultsma 2:55
You know, and what’s really interesting, a lot of people I mean, if people who are my childhood friends would know this, I was so incredibly shy. I, I, I didn’t want I was scared to do everything. And I, you’d see me now and you’re like, What? You’ve always been this way. No, I haven’t. I just, yeah, no, yeah, totally. And I just like, to the point where it was almost, like debilitating, like, I couldn’t, I almost failed speech, because I hated to stand in front of people and talk, like, it was the worst thing ever. And now I’m like, I want to speak a big audiences and hold my own convention, you know, but I just, I don’t know, you know, I just had to make that decision for myself to be like, you know, what, I don’t care anymore. Like, I just need to get out there and do stuff and just be me. And if people don’t like me, then they can go find someone else that they like, and but the people who do like me, you know, I’ve been told they love me. So I think that, you know, you’ve got your own audience that you focus toward, and, you know, that’s what you got to go with.
Lane Hickenbottom 4:00
Yeah, so So, like, why bother? Like, why? Like, why is it important that people get out there in the first place?
Kim Bultsma 4:08
You know, we are we’re in a sea of people and businesses and competition. And I really do believe that those of us who put ourselves out there, you know, whether it’s, you know, like making a podcast or doing a vlog or doing a Facebook Live or whatever it is, we’re the ones that are gonna put ourselves we’re gonna put ourselves above our competition because people are getting that initial handshake. You know, even though it’s a virtual, they get to know us before they even hire us. And I think that, you know, when you put yourself out there and you talk about your experience and your skill set and educate people on what you do, I think that’s what people that’s what sells your business. It’s not, you know, hard advertising. Are you going to buy this being that sleazy salesman, it’s I believe that sales is 90% education, you still got to ask for the sale. But you’ve got to educate people and have them build a really, you know, build a relationship
Lane Hickenbottom 5:13
used to be a school teacher, right. And so, so educating people is something that is something you’ve done for a really long time.
Kim Bultsma 5:20
Yeah. And I totally nerd out about it. You know, I did my time I retired from high school teaching, and, but I still love the aspect of teaching, I don’t got to deal with people’s parents and, you know, if they’re, if they’re not going to do their homework, well, they’re the ones paying for it. That’s their problem. You know, I, all I can do is lead the horse to water, you know?
Lane Hickenbottom 5:45
Absolutely. And so, so talk to me about is like, so I think we’re kind of talking about like a lot of like, maybe small business owners, people who need to brand themselves. Talk to me about some, some suggestions, some tips. Like whatever comes to mind, I guess, whether that be what platforms to go with our, you know, podcast, or video or just blog posts. Yeah, talk to me about getting started, you
Kim Bultsma 6:27
know, and something my friend Lisa and I have been talking about is you can only drive one car at a time. And lane and I always talk about how we have multiple brand disorder and BD. Do you know, he’s a lane weddings, and he is, you know, all these other things on my headshot, you know, and but ultimately, right at this very moment, you can only drive one car, and right now the car that lane is driving is this podcast and this video format. So that, you know, that’s something I think you need to think about too, is where, where are your target demographic? You know, are they on Facebook? Are they listening to podcasts? Are they on YouTube? Where are they? Are they on Facebook, Instagram, whatever it is, start with one platform drive one platform at a time, right. And then once you master that platform, and you’ve got your science down, or your rhythm down to it, then you can branch out to the next platform. And I think that people, you know, a lot of business owners, a lot of Mart, anybody in business can get overwhelmed with all the stuff that’s out there. You know, I’m not really, we post a Twitter for a cup of content. I’m not really actively on it, because it doesn’t bring me a lot of business. But I know from an SEO standpoint, I’m on it. But I also know that a lot of my people are on their podcasting. And lean is I got a I’m re vamping up my podcasts. And I know a lot of people are on video. So I’ve been working, you know, we’ve got all these little things that we’re starting to work on, but one at a time. Right? One at a time.
Lane Hickenbottom 8:05
Absolutely. So so one of the things that that you’re working on here, that’s about to launch is that the weekend website, and we’ll have this in the show notes. But it’s the weekend, that website if for anyone who wants to go to it. And this is part of your education platform, but you’re basically going to help people to really in over the course of a weekend have have a website.
Kim Bultsma 8:32
Right? So a big component of what a cup of content does is we do develop websites for a lot of small businesses. And you know, even once you know, even at $1,000, that’s out of some people’s budget, and they still want to be able to do the work themselves because they are on that small scale. So the weekend website concept is that February 19, studying that Friday, just over the weekend, we’re gonna teach small business owners how to build their own website on WordPress in a weekend. And and I have a lot of background in SEO search engine optimization. So although I’m not going to get into a lot of that because I’m I’m hoping this will springboard into the next course i’m going to offer which is on content writing for SEO So, but learning how to do your own website learning how to make the updates yourself. So at 1147 at night when you’re watching the Queen’s gambit on a Saturday night and you’re like, Oh crap, I forgot I need to put this on my website. You don’t have to wait. Monday morning when your web developer gets your gets your email and then maybe two, three days later it gets done. You can log on five minutes, take care of your content real quick and save it and get back to the Queen’s gambit which is no shameless plug
not getting paid.
Lane Hickenbottom 10:01
But a bad yeah, it was really good. I did not, however, buy a chess board after watching it.
Kim Bultsma 10:08
I know I’m like I need to learn how to play chess.
Lane Hickenbottom 10:14
So let’s go back to the importance of getting out there. conversation that you and I had a long time ago, you were talking about talking about how different brands are using a persona. to, to kind of push the brands, you know whether that that’d be a it’s really easy to see a national advertising with insurance companies, whether it be mayhem or Jake. Jake. Yeah. Wearing khaki. Yeah, but, but, exactly. And so having those personas, like if you’re, if you’re a small business, and by small I mean, like micro business, like maybe one person to, to 1020 people, a lot of times that that person is going to be the owner, right? Mm hmm.
Kim Bultsma 11:14
Right. It is. And, you know, people I know, at least with my business, and I know with yours, too, I mean, they’re not only buying a product or service, right? They’re not just buying headshots, they’re not just buying wedding photography, they’re buying you. And you have to figure out a way out on some grocery thing, but you got to sell yourself, you know, and but it’s finding that sweet spot, what do people like about you? What do they like about your product or service that you can emphasize on? What are those questions? You get asked all the time? Why not turn that into a blog post or a video? Or a podcast? Like what you know, and that’s exactly what you and I are doing, right? Because, you know, we’re talking about how do you get yourself out there. And this is what leads doing, you know, you’ve got to figure out that those things that people are constantly asking you just to kind of boost it just to get it, get over that hurdle of doing it. And then the rest will come easy, because you’ll be like, Oh, that’s a great idea. You know, you got your little notepad or whatever it is you take notes with, I’ll have to do a podcast on that later. You know, like, it’s, it’ll just grow from there. And people give you ideas. It’s amazing once they start to listen, or view you. They’re like, Hey, can you talk about this, and you’d be like, Oh, that’s a great idea. It’s easy crowdsourcing. And it’s easy SEO, I mean, the more content that you provide, the more you’re going to get found in search.
Lane Hickenbottom 12:47
You know, I’ve been fortunate to get to hear you talk about this a little bit. I love and I’m going to ask you to talk about taking, like, perhaps a blog post, that’s maybe a larger blog post. And then really getting a lot of mileage out of that.
Kim Bultsma 13:07
You guys, if you’re gonna do the work of doing a podcast, doing a video, doing a blog post big content is what I call it, if you’re gonna do all the work of doing that big content, you have got a ton of little snippets that you can pull out of that, and use on social media. I mean, you we could take this segment right here that I’m saying right now, and we could take it and cut that video out, and just use it as a video on Facebook, with some subtitles. and away you go, you’ve got a piece of content that came out of this giant, you know, this big content. And it people don’t think of it that way. They that’s why I was told, you know, people in our private membership, like, focus on that big content. Yeah, it may take you a couple hours to do it. But then maybe that extra hour to pull all the snippets out, schedule it out on social media, you know, send an email out about it. It’s all because of that one big piece of content. So it people have to rethink. I think, you know, a lot of us we think like, I know, I’ve had that problem too. Like, you know, okay, the weekend website. I am like, here are all the things I have to do down here. Right? I don’t look at it up here. This is the big part of it. Once I get the big part done, it all trickles down to all of the other easy stuff. Sure makes that stuff easier,
Lane Hickenbottom 14:35
right? Yeah. So I’m going to ask you to get specific and really I’m just going to, to use this as an opportunity to get free advice from you. So, so you know, and also just a real quick plug like part of a cup of content. Kim has a really cool schedule there. for social media schedule. And there and so, but let’s say, so today where you and I are sitting down, and I’m creating this big content as you refer to it. If, let’s, how would you if you were to give advice to me, how would you take this big content real specifically this interview and, and use it.
Kim Bultsma 15:26
So, once it’s done, Lane is gonna, you know, stop the record button, right. And he’s going to plug it into his podcast after he, I think you said you’re gonna clean up some audio and stuff, right? He is gonna, so once it’s done, okay, you got this big piece of content here. I, if it were me, I would make sure that, you know, I’m putting it out on my podcast, I’m taking the video putting it on my YouTube channel, right? Making sure that I’ve got transcriptions for all of it, you could use temi, it’s t m, I think.com. Tommy will transcribe it for you. And then you can embed this video or the podcast as well, onto a blog post with the transcription on it. So now you not only have you have three ways for people to, to consume the content, you’ve got the video, you’ve got the audio, and you’ve got they could read it. So that’s one way to do it. Right you’ve got so now you’ve, you’re available on YouTube, you’re available on Spotify, and Apple podcasts, or whatever it is. And now they’ve seen it on this blog posts, like Oh, I didn’t know he had a YouTube channel, subscribe. Oh, he’s on Oh, he’s on Apple podcasts. Alright, I’m gonna go and subscribe. So now you’re just from that one piece of content, you can grow your audience in a couple different avenues, then what you could do is we could take, you could take this segment right here again, right? Take this segment, edit out this video, or edit out the audio or whatever, and make a little video of it that you can share on Instagram, and that you could share on Facebook, right, just a snippet of this, you could actually take the audio or video and share that you can take any and then with that share, you know, check us out on Apple podcasts and Spotify. We also have a YouTube channel, check that out, you know, or whatever you can shamelessly plug your other areas where people could get the full content. And that’s what you want to say is, you know, want more of this, you know, subscribe to our podcast on whatever check it out on, you know, maybe you’ve got a URL I always come up with, like I’ve got content Explorer, podcast comm that I’m working on. So you know, they’ve got a URL they can go to and you can make it if you want to hear more of this context for
Lane Hickenbottom 17:54
podcast.com shot.com
Kim Bultsma 17:56
getting a headshot.com slash one, you know, episode one. But you’re using it to kind of share it in all these different areas where your your people are at. And whether it’s a screenshot of what we’re doing right here. That’s a photo post with like a quote from either you or I, you know that you’re sharing his social media, all those things, there’s so much content right here that we’re creating, that you can take snippets of it and just promote the heck out of it everywhere. Yeah, and so and then when you send that email out, Hey, guys, I just had kimbolton here in the studio. And we were talking about all sorts of crazy stuff because Kim is crazy to you know, he maybe you’ve got a screenshot and we like
Lane Hickenbottom 18:50
you’re gonna get that I know you are. I’m just thinking is you keep talking cuz I’m gonna, like he gave me the idea. I’m gonna shoot a selfie of this whole thing going.
Kim Bultsma 19:02
I’ll make sure I don’t look too goofy. Proper. No, but I mean, you know, you can, this piece of big content that may seem like a lot to create a lot to produce or whatever. It’s worth it in, like for a month, you can make an entire month’s worth of content out of this one thing, I promise you, you would probably fill up the entire every day, you could make one post and you’d be like, gosh, I don’t have enough room. You know, like, that’s where you can go with it once you start getting into that habit, but it’s the habit that you got to do. You have to schedule time into that into your calendar and don’t schedule over it. I know with Lance a little bit different because when you get a headshot gig, you get a headshot Gagan. But if you have to reschedule it, reschedule it, don’t just schedule over it and forget it. You’ve got to make that commitment to your business to grow it and you’ve got to put this kind of effort into it.
Lane Hickenbottom 19:58
Great stuff. While I’ve gotcha Is there anything that you think I should be asking you that? Anything you should put on the spot a little bit?
Kim Bultsma 20:12
I told her I’m training for a 50 miler.
Lane Hickenbottom 20:14
Oh my gosh. So, you guys, Kim is just she does. I don’t know where she finds the time she has so many different things and just on top of it, yeah, I’m just gonna train for a 50 miler. Like it’s a five K.
Kim Bultsma 20:30
This is no five K,
Lane Hickenbottom 20:32
no, five K. Yeah, that’s an M is a 00
Kim Bultsma 20:40
meters with snap meters smiles. No, but, you know, I one thing that I think as business owners, I think that we do need to concentrated on is ourselves. Because, you know, when you’re a micro business owner, or small business owner, you are in your business a lot, a lot. It’s you. And if you don’t take 30 minutes a day, just for yourself, you’re not gonna be able to be there for your family, you’re not gonna be able to be there for your business. You have to concentrate on you. And that’s not selfish. It’s self care. Right? You have there has to be an element of self care, and especially with COVID I know, we all feel like we’ve been self care and all for 2020. But
Lane Hickenbottom 21:29
you know, drinking.
Kim Bultsma 21:31
Man, wild basin has got me those hard seltzers No, but you know, you know, but it’s good to unwind like that, too. But I think I was spending so much time putting effort into everybody else in my life that I wasn’t putting effort into me. And it lane knows Gosh, I was a wreck. And I just like, Kim stop. You’ve got to put some focus on yourself. I needed a goal. So I chose a 50 miler, but that’s besides the point. I’ve run it I run 50 K’s before. So I’m not saying this is like a walk in the park because I’m slow as molasses. But we’re gonna do it and we’re gonna get a buckle for doing it. And I’m gonna wear it. I want to wear it. I don’t even wear it on camera like doo doo doo
Lane Hickenbottom 22:22
doo doo. I don’t know how well a buckle go with your your Superwoman shirt.
Kim Bultsma 22:29
Maybe I could use it as like the big the big thing to class my cape.
Lane Hickenbottom 22:34
I love it. I love it. That’s fantastic. So this has been just a delight and thank you so much for for easing me in and for dealing with my technology difficulties and, and all the advice over the years. I really appreciate all your tips.
Kim Bultsma 22:55
Same with you. And oh my gosh, you guys seriously, I’m going to shamelessly plug lane because you know if you’ve if you’re getting married, that’s that’s a whole nother separate thing from this. And he could help you out there and those photography, photography, but his headshots and his branding photography. Spot on. I mean, I’m pretty sure you’re going to show the results of the headshot that we took. Yeah, had a good time. Yeah, and I mean, oh my gosh, but that stuff is really important for your business, too. You know, people are like, I’m, I want to lose 20 pounds before I get a headshot. Well, I need to use I need to lose the COVID-19 y’all. And it doesn’t matter. I got a headshot lane made me look amazing. And that is I I posted. You know, if you post those things on Facebook, it’s kind of people are gonna be like, Oh, you’re gonna feel so good about yourself. But it’s important for your business to for people to know who you are and what’s behind the business. And Lane is the guy to do it. And he’s gonna make it so painless. He’s even funny. But
Lane Hickenbottom 24:08
But seriously, my kids don’t think so. I but that’s what are they?
Kim Bultsma 24:13
What do they know? Yeah. 10 give them like, when they’re 25 and their brains have fully matured then they’ll realize dad is the best guy ever. But yeah, thank you so much for having me on. And I am so excited to watch you blow this up because this is gonna be I this is gonna be my first podcast I listened to. Because I think this is gonna be fantastic.
Lane Hickenbottom 24:41
Thanks. I’m just looking forward to using it as an excuse to get tips and pointers from from people way smarter than me. Thanks, Kim, so much. Thanks.
Announcer 24:59
Thanks for listening. To the getting a headshot podcast, recorded inside the Omaha headshot company studio to support the podcast, share it with others post about it on social media or leave a five star review to learn more go to getting a headshot.com. We look forward to seeing you next time.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
