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Brittni Schroeder is a business coach and marketing strategist who guides coaches to automate their businesses, establish systems, develop effective funnels, and increase their earnings to six figures and more.
She shares her knowledge on how to make business operations automatic and create funnels that really work. She focuses on building systems that save time and keep you from feeling too tired, explaining the smart steps that help her clients succeed.
She tells us her personal stories about changing careers and how she applies her photography skills in her current role to capture emotions and visually teach marketing strategies.
Watch the next episode on YouTube ‘A Candid Chat About Email Marketing Strategy with Brittni Schroeder‘
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Speaker 1:
Welcome back to the Art of Online Business podcast. My co-host, jamie, is here. Hello, four-ish months as a co-host, 15-ish years as a wonderful wife, and today we are interviewing Brittany Schroeder. So these two episodes. If this is your first time hearing of her on the podcast, she will be back for a second episode. And if you are interested in anything that has to do with selling more of your stuff via email marketing, building funnels, automations, so that you can get more of the thing that you were blessed and gifted to serve people with and help them out there to those people, then you’re going to want to listen to this episode about Brittany, because you’ll hear how she built her business. And then in the next one, we’re going to talk specifically about email marketing and funnels, because she’s a specialist. She’s a business coach and a marketing strategist. She helps coaches automate their businesses, create systems, convert funnels and scale to six figures and beyond.
Speaker 2:
That sounds good right, that does sound good. Thanks for being here, brittany. Thanks for having me. I haven’t even down for this. Thanks for being here, brittany. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1:
Thanks for having me. I haven’t even finished introducing you. Let me finish introducing you. You worked as a high school senior photographer for 10 years. You actually owned and operated a magazine up till 2017. And then you’ve been featured in the Wall Street Journal. You’ve been featured in Good Morning. America, several other publications. Wow, I can’t wait to hear about your current business where you help folks build funnels, automations systems, your business coach and marketing strategist. I would love to know a snapshot of your businesses right now, and thank you for being on the show.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, so my business. Do we want to start from the beginning? Do you want me to tell you where I got, how I got here? Is that what we want to do?
Speaker 1:
Let’s start with your business now, the offers that you have what you love most about, like how you work with people, and then we can go back in time.
Speaker 3:
So now I’m I am a business and marketing coach and I help people. Ultimately, like I look at people’s businesses and I say how can we like streamline this, how can we automate this, how can we build funnels? A lot of entrepreneurs, they come up with this really great idea and that’s usually like their offer and they’re selling a little bit. They sell. That’s exciting because it works, people want it. But then they just kind of get stuck. And that’s where I come in, where I go and I dissect the business and say like let’s automate this so that we can scale. A lot of times it’s not run efficiently because there’s no automations, there’s no systems, there’s no funnels and you can only go so far with that.
Speaker 3:
So I will go in and kind of look at the business. We look at the traffic, like what kind of traffic are you getting towards your, to your business? What kind of funnels do you have set up? What automations? And then how can we scale? Once we I always say like minutes add up to hours, and when we’re spending all this time sending emails and you know the hustle, it adds up to hours. And then that’s why a lot of entrepreneurs get burned out is because they are focusing on the things that don’t help them scale, but they’re just like they’re running their business, they’re doing everything, and so these systems, automations and funnels are essential to scale. You can only you’re only a lot of times, you’re only one person and you can only do so much, and you need to focus on the things that bring you the most revenue. So that is what I do. I know that sounds like really broad, but it is. You know, we we really just like automate systems, funnels do all the things that help you scale your business.
Speaker 1:
Broad, but so needed by most of the folks that I know including ourselves.
Speaker 2:
You’re right.
Speaker 1:
Like all those things just suck up our time. But if it was truly automated and if it was selling like it should be, you know we could focus on let’s call it the CEO tasks more in our business, for sure. All right, so what kind of offers you have that you’re serving folks with?
Speaker 3:
So I have a membership. That’s called the meeting place, and this is for somebody who is more likes the self-paced, like they can you know, like hey, I want to learn how to do this. I can go into membership, watch tutorials, watch videos, get the templates, kind of do that. That is more like a self-tape, somebody who can do it on their own, and that’s called the meeting place. I also have a course called email funnel.
Speaker 3:
I have lots of things, guys. I have lots of things. But I also have a course called the email funnel builders where I teach you how to build and automate a funnel where we go from your freebie, your lead magnet, and how to build a funnel there, how to build a funnel post, post-purchase Once somebody purchases, how do you automate that part of that, and that’s called email funnel builders. And then I also I do one-on-one. If you’re somebody who needs more hands-on, is needs you know somebody to kind of do part of it for you, keep you accountable and move the needle that way, then I offer one-on-one coaching as well. So that is. I have a few other things. You can check it out on my website. Like, I have some templates and a few other like mini courses, but those are my three main ones that I focus the most on.
Speaker 1:
I would love some details on what they like. Which one like? What percentage does each make of your business revenue?
Speaker 3:
You don’t have to share numbers, but so my one-on-one coaching, I would say, is probably my biggest revenue. It’s just because it’s high price, high touch, so I’m very, very hands-on. So a conversation that I might have with a one-on-one client might be like do you want me to do this, you want me to teach you how to do this? Do you want me to do this for you? Like what? What is it? And so, because there’s a lot of high touch, I’m I’m really diving into their business and fixing things and writing things. I have a copywriter that helps me with copy. You know that one is probably my biggest revenue. You know I guess over, like probably. If you look at my revenue over the like the length of my business, they all are probably, they probably probably eventually all kind of it’s pretty balanced, but that my membership and my one-on-one is probably my biggest revenue maker in my business.
Speaker 1:
So Makes sense.
Speaker 3:
How many do you have in your membership Right now? It’s like any membership at, like EBS and Flows, I think right now there’s 30 or so, 30 or 40 in there Active, not 30 or 40, but the ones that come to the calls, you know. So that’s about, like I said, ebs and Flows. Sometimes it’s the same people that show up every week, I feel like, and then there’s other people who are in there that just are in the background watch, watch the replays, watch the videos, use the resources. So yeah, that’s I mean nice.
Speaker 1:
I used to run a membership back in the day for elementary chinese like so yeah, I get it. I mean 30, 40 active folks is right, solid. So now that we have a snapshot of your business, I love the one-on-one coaching.
Speaker 1:
By the way, I just finished up a project with a copywriter to redo a couple of sales pages and an email sequence and so, like the fact that you coach, you can teach someone how to and you also have, like the team it sounds like what you’re saying right To go ahead and do projects. That’s really super helpful. It is, but you weren’t always. You were always helpful, but you weren’t always a business coach and marketing strategist. Take us back to your photography days and what happened specifically that got you to leave photography and start out on this other business journey.
Speaker 3:
Well, you never actually leave photography. So it’s funny because I was like, oh, I was a photographer for this many years, but I still obviously I still take pictures, but iPhone picture right here.
Speaker 1:
I may have just like laughing.
Speaker 3:
Sometimes, when I get the out, the big girl camera that’s what I call my I may have just like laughing Sometimes when I get out the big girl camera.
Speaker 1:
That’s what I call my big girl camera, the big girl camera, right.
Speaker 3:
So no, I started. You know, it’s interesting. I like I remember being younger a little and thinking like I’m going to be a business woman, and then you get to college and you’re like, you know, you’re like forced to like choose exactly what you want to do, and you don’t really know what you want to do. So I have a bachelor’s degree in exercise science and I never used it, so, but exercise, science and wellness, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:
So, but yeah, so I mean I do like to exercise, so there’s that. But career wise, so I, I mean this kind of ages me. But when I had my second son, it was like blogging was really starting to be big and I’m like, oh, I’m going to blog. And then of course I’m like, okay, my pictures are not as pretty as these other, these bloggers pictures, and so that’s kind of where I started my interest in photography. And then I got a camera for mother’s day and and I just I’m, I’m like a, a, like an, a lifetime student, like I love to learn. And if money was money and time wasn’t an issue, I’d go to, like go to school for the rest of my life, like I just love to learn.
Speaker 2:
Okay.
Speaker 1:
All right.
Speaker 3:
But so I started doing photography and then I started just, you know, learning, watching like videos and just like self-taught, just anything I could find on photography. I was like I signed up at the local community college for some classes and I took some workshops and and I’m like, and of course it’s kind of a joke in the photography industry that people say, oh, you have a really nice camera, like that’s why you’re a good photographer.
Speaker 3:
You know, it’s kind of like the the running joke, but it’s like no, it takes a little bit more than that. But anyway, I around that same time people started asking me cause I had a really nice camera to take their pictures. And then at first it’s fun because you’re taking people’s pictures. That’s why, like, okay, like I need to make money. If I’m going to be taking pictures, I need to make money. And so that’s around that same time I decided you know, I’m going to do this as a business. And shortly after I decided it was a business, my husband at the time got a job and we moved to el paso, texas, and if you’re familiar with el paso, it’s on the border. So it’s like texas and mexico is like like a stone throw away, like it’s Juarez.
Speaker 1:
Yeah, Juarez. Juarez is the Mexican city.
Speaker 3:
Juarez, Come on you guys are in Mexico, juarez. Sorry, I don’t know what I was going to say.
Speaker 1:
It’s because, like, I just code switch. If I’m talking to like Americans, I’m just going to say it.
Speaker 2:
American-like.
Speaker 1:
You know less like I’d be like that kind of snooty, that kind of city. Oh, he speaks.
Speaker 2:
Spanish he only says things Okay, juarez. Juarez.
Speaker 1:
Now that I’ve been corrected, there we go Now you know who you’re dealing with.
Speaker 3:
I lived there for eight and a half years, so anyway, but at the same. So I moved there and I said I’m going to do it as a business. And it’s interesting because whenever I’m like mentoring or I’m coaching people, especially new in their business, I always say your business will evolve. What your business looks like now might look completely different in a year from now, and so just keep that in mind. But when I first started I thought I wanted to take pictures of kids and families and I soon realized like oh no, no, I do not have the personality like I am a control freak.
Speaker 3:
I need a little bit more control. I can’t have like the chaos. So I decided that I want to do high school senior photography and when I moved to that area again, it’s on the border, so the medium income was really low because we have the military base Fort Bliss and then we’re on where it’s border, so border town, so medium income was really low. But I had gone in with this mindset that like no, I’m going to make money, like I’m going to charge, like a lot, like I’ve invested. And that’s the thing with photography. Like I joked to my, my daughter, someone this was a couple of weekends ago and she wanted to take pictures with my camera and I gave her my camera and she’d given it to a friend we were at like a wrestling tournament and I said, oh honey, don’t let anybody not anybody, not anybody can use my. I said my camera is worth more than your car, babe. Like don’t be letting people like shoot my camera. So, but it was an investment. So at that time I’m like I’m not going to, I’m not going to not charge, I’m going to charge.
Speaker 3:
And I remember meeting with some other photographers for like lunch and I was new. So they were like you know, get in a filler for me. And and they said, how much do you charge? And I told them at the time it wasn’t even that much, it was like $500. And they’re like there’s no way you’ll make that type of money here. People will not pay that.
Speaker 3:
And I remember I don’t know if I verbalized it or if I just thought it but I’m like, oh, there’s money everywhere, I will find it, I will find the money. So it’s interesting because, like I had never even taken a marketing or business class really ever but it came very natural to me. Like I’m very analytic, I’m very much like a, you know, my dad’s an engineer, so I say that I get it from him. But I’m very left brain, I’m very like numbers oriented. I’m like, oh, I’ll find it, I’ll find the money.
Speaker 3:
And so I started my business there and I did my market research. Like I research where is the money? What schools have the most money? And you can, I did that by test score. Looking at test scores, there’s a direct correlation between income and high schools with high test scores. There just is. That’s the reality of it. And then I asked around and then I started looking for free marketing. I started looking for high school seniors who would do some marketing for me and I had more attractive, more attractive looking seniors right no not necessarily that would be the case.
Speaker 3:
No, it was once. Well, my ideal, my ideal client, was somebody who spent a lot of money, and so I was looking for you know, I’m in Texas, obviously, so I’m looking for anybody who’s into, like equestrian, anything with horses. That’s a lot of money, you know. I’m looking for people who are like in like dance clubs, who are, like, you know, competitive cheerleaders, like people who I knew invested a lot of money on their kids. And so I targeted these schools and there was.
Speaker 3:
I made a list of like 10 schools and in order, and I started targeting them and I started shooting just for free, but in trade, for hey, I’m new to the area, I’ll shoot in trade for it. You have to promote me, you have to do X, y and Z, you have to post on your social media, all these things. And then my, my network kept getting bigger and bigger. And then I would say, okay, do you know somebody at this school, do you know somebody here? And I, just, I just kept doing that and I remember, at like eight, eight, probably like eight months in, I had pushed myself to shoot, shoot every week whether it was free or paid.
Speaker 3:
I remember eight months thinking I’m so exhausted and I’m frustrated, when is it going to happen for me? And literally it was like the next week. I mean, I actually verbalized that to my friend, like when is this going to happen? And the next week I just started getting sessions booked and I was booked out like three months out. I had a wait list, you know, and during that time I with with my, my friend, we decided let’s start a photography magazine again. Like no idea how to do anything, but let’s do it. Sure, we can figure it out. And so we started this photography magazine and it was called Mosey magazine and we were featuring other photographers and it was literally the most beautiful magazine. Like we’re sad we sold it and the person that bought it never did anything with it and we’re like so sad Cause it was like beautiful, like just so pretty, and but anyway again.
Speaker 3:
So I just had a lot of things going on. I was, you know, super involved in a lot of things, but my photography business really like took off. And it’s interesting because you hear like coaches or people in the industry saying raise your prices, charge what you’re worth charges, and there is truth to that. But there’s also a formula and the formula is your experience, you know. The formula is supply and demand. The formula is like your demographic, your ideal client, like it’s not just if you, you know, like, oh, I’m going to charge all this money, I have no experience, no business, it doesn’t necessarily. I mean, it could work for some people, but for most people it doesn’t like. There’s definitely like a formula and it was a supply and demand thing for me where I was like, okay, when I’m done, once I hit this many I actually was like it was every year I raised my prices and I kept getting busier and busier.
Speaker 3:
So I had that supply and demand and I thought, okay, I’m going to raise my prices. Will I lose business? Yes, I’m going to lose a little business, but I’m going to be making the same or more because I’m charging. And by the end of that, that time that I was in El Paso, I started at $500 per session. By the time I left, I was making on average between 1800 and 2,500 per high school senior, per client. Wow, yeah, and so it was. And I wasn’t working weekends. You know, I had built such a strong brand and people wanted to work with me that I didn’t work on weekends. I told people like sorry, I know it gets dark at five, you’re going to have to check out of school Like I don’t do like I built this brand.
Speaker 3:
And another thing that kind of helped the brand is I had the magazine, so I was very well networked. I knew a lot of photographers because I’m I’m getting photographers to work to be featured in my magazine and it just opened a lot of doors for me. I, that’s kind of like, I believe. I believe that, you know, we look at some entrepreneurs and we say, oh, they’re so lucky because this happened to them and I had luck. But luck is usually combined with consistency and hard work and so, yeah, in, you know, I was in the wall street journal and kind of the story behind that is the wall street journal wanted to do a story on this trendy new high school senior photography Cause it was really growing really quick. And they had reached out to a high school senior photographer and, hey, do you know any more? Do you know any? We’re looking for a few to interview. And then they knew me because I, you know I was very well-networked.
Speaker 3:
I, you know, I had a magazine. I was going to like workshops, I’m extroverted, I’m a talker, people know me. And they had reached out to a few high school senior photographers to interview. And she connected with me and said oh, I want to, you’re the one, you’re the one I want to interview. And she flew out from New York and did this whole piece on high school senior photography. And then, good morning, america picked up the story and there was like my 15 minutes of fame. But it definitely, definitely helped my brand because it was all over in El Paso. Then, I think the El Paso news picked it up. They did a story on me, so it was like it was really big but it just kept building my brand and I was able to charge more.
Speaker 3:
So, yeah, so it was. It was like a really cool. And then I, and then I was getting asked to judge like Miss New Mexico, miss New Mexico, usa and Miss El Paso teen and all these pageants. I was getting pageants, so it was it just kind of that was. That was like a lot of like my growth, you know it was, but it was consistency and I hustled and I worked and was there luck? Yes, but there was a lot of hustle and a lot of like consistency.
Speaker 1:
I think that luck is preparation plus timing, maybe a bit of chance. Like sure, opportunities out of our control can come across our path and they do right. But like have we put in the preparation to take advantage of those? Like for sure it’s hard work. The listener has to be wondering by now, as I am and Jamie is where does? This story end Like you’re just growing this great business.
Speaker 2:
So how did you transition to yeah, All the?
Speaker 1:
cred you know you’re on Good Morning America, the Wall Street Journal, and then connect the dots to becoming a business coach and marketing strategist.
Speaker 3:
So around that same time, like what had happened is in addition to like all this other stuff happening I was speaking at a lot of like photography conferences and I was always asked to speak on the business part, and I say a lot of times like my, the business part came really naturally to me. The creative side was what I had to like really work at, because I wasn’t naturally. I mean, I am creative, but it didn’t come as natural as it does to some, and so I always just like loved business. And around that same time, I was my, my, my husband at the time gets another job in a different place and we’re moving and I was like, oh man, do I want to start over another location based business? Do I want to? Like you know, and I was also moving, we were moving from El Paso and I owned the market there. There wasn’t anybody who did it the way that I did it, because it was a whole experience. It was hair and makeup and it was like swag and it was like I was picking out their clothes, like it was a. My model was really like unique in the area and I was like, ah, I don’t want to. I want to be able to have the flexibility of living it like working wherever I’m at. I want to start over, and when we moved from El Paso to Houston, I had a lot more competition. It was, it was more saturated, there was a lot more photographers, and I was just ready for a change and I’m like, ah, I’m getting old. I mean, I still feel like I’m 16, but I’m not. So there’s that. So, but I was like you know what? This is a good time to pivot around that same time.
Speaker 3:
I didn’t I missed, I kind of skipped over this part but I have worked in nonprofit, the nonprofit sector for like 15 years and I was doing a lot of nonprofit work. I was going to Haiti and I was doing a lot of nonprofit work. I was going to Haiti and I was doing a lot of PR. And then, in 2017, I started my own nonprofit where I’m putting these like compassion clubs in schools, and I ended up getting certified as a life coach. Just, I wanted I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but I wanted these skills, you know.
Speaker 3:
And during that time, I’m in this like cohort with the other life coaches and are starting off and I’m like, oh my gosh, they need so much help with their business. Like they are just struggling and I’m helping them with their business and I thought, you know what, this might be a good time to pivot. And I was helping other photographers, I was mentoring other photographers with their business, so I knew that definitely was a strength of mine. So I’m like you know what. This is probably a good. Maybe this is the time to pivot Cause we were moving.
Speaker 3:
I dabbled a little in photography in Houston but I was like no, I, I really like this business. I, if I’m going to do anything, I want to help people with their businesses because I’m good at it and I’ve done it before. I’ve built six figure businesses before. Like I, I want to do this. So that’s at that time. And then COVID hits. So then we’re like, okay, like you are stuck at home, like what can you do at home, you know? And so it was just, it was just like a good time for me to pivot and do business and marketing and I and I love it and super.
Speaker 3:
But even my business and marketing, my business, has evolved because when I first started at coaching, I’m teaching them how to market, I’m teaching them social media, I’m teaching them this and I quickly learn like gosh, like I can give people all these tools they have to. They have to do the work, and that’s a frustration with a coach, with being a coach for a business coach. I can teach you everything that I know how to do, but you got to put in the work. There is no easy button in running a business, you know, and so I posted something not too long ago that said, if you find a business coach that tells you that it’s easy to grow your business and you’re going to make all this money, they’re not a good business coach, they’re a good scammer. Because it’s not. It’s a lot of work, it’s not as easy as sometimes people try to make you think it is. It’s definitely you have to put in the work. The time it’s, it’s it can be challenging.
Speaker 2:
So do you prefer the the title of business coach or marketing coach?
Speaker 3:
Well, it’s tricky because they kind of go hand in hand. You know what I mean, like because it is marketing. But you got to have the foundational parts of your business. You know you got to have the automations, the systems. You kind of have to have that. So I’m overall looking at their businesses, but at the end of the day, every business owner needs traffic to grow their business.
Speaker 3:
You have to have traffic and funnels is you know the way that you know the traffic is what you need to get in your funnel. So they kind of go hand in hand. So I like the marketing part but a lot of it is like technical parts of setting up the foundations in your business. You know, Right.
Speaker 2:
Good answer.
Speaker 1:
Good answer, good answer. What’s one thing that you would leave with the listener before we finish the episode and possibly tease your upcoming episode about building funnels and email marketing, which we are very interested in, since we’re doing right now? What’s one thing?
Speaker 3:
that I would leave them with is oh there’s, there’s lots of things that one is like that’s the hard question. I think one of the things is don’t compare your beginning to somebody else’s middle. So I think that it is, you know, invest in in thing, invest in people that can help you. But and and consistency, consistency and time management are just so important. So I don’t know, that’s hard because there’s so many things. Grow your email list. Grow your email list.
Speaker 3:
That will lead us into the next episode because I think people focus on social media too much and not enough on your email list. So yeah.
Speaker 1:
I mean, I’m very excited for the next episode. Also, your lead magnet that you have yourself, that you’re using to grow your email list, is very, very enticing, because we’re writing sales funnels right now and it’s called the high converting sales funnel guide. You want to tell us a little bit about that and we’ll link it up in the show notes below.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I mean, it basically just kind of starts you out on what is a funnel, why do you need it and all the elements that you need to build a funnel. Again, here’s the thing is it’s marketing. You have to test everything, but this gives you, like, the tools of. This is how you set it up, this is what it is and this is why you need it in your business.
Speaker 2:
So okay.
Speaker 1:
All right is and this is why you need it in your business.
Speaker 1:
So, okay, all right. Last question, surprise question oh, in photography, what constitutes a photo? There’s like a spectrum that I read about on the internets. Right, one is like a true photo. A true photo, a real photo, one is as the camera captures it or very close to that, you know, and the and the other side says well, the photo is more the memory. So it’s definitely okay to be able to use like AI to edit out people from the background and change this and change that and use filters and all this. Which do you believe is the true photo?
Speaker 3:
Oh, I mean, when you start out you’re just kind of like you’re just trying to figure it out and things are might not look good, but if I would say straight out of the camera, like when I first started, I would take probably 500 pictures and I’d maybe have 10 to 15 good ones. Now that I know how to use, like my, my, my camera, the tools that I have, I mean, it takes me a long time to narrow it down to my 60 to 70 best ones. So I, I think, and I think it’s subjective, it’s art, it’s subjective Right. And so for me, I am a, I am a lifestyle photographer.
Speaker 3:
I like to capture emotion. I don’t I will take like the pose pictures, but to me it’s like the, the capturing the moment, lifestyle, more natural, looking, more emotion. So it depends on who you’re talking to Like. For me it is I like the candid, I like the emotion, I like the uncurated images. But we all tweak, we all edit a little bit, we all enhance images. I mean not everybody, but I would say a majority of photographers do so it’s I guess you talk to because it’s subjective, art is subjective right yeah, all right with that.
Speaker 2:
Well, thank you for being here until you see us or hear from us next time. Be blessed, and we will see you in the next episode. Bye, goodbye.
