When you see all the amazing things Codie Sanchez Baker has accomplished, achieved and conquered you will know why she is such an amazing empowering woman! I was so thankful when I came across Codie’s website after seeing her FB live with the We All Grow Latina Network, I found myself with a few pages of notes and a to-do list all from Codie’s advice. As a new blogger/freelance writer you come across people that tell you “Oh, this is really hard” or “You need to invest so much money” and honestly if you’re listening to the wrong people, you may find yourself not following through on what could possibly be the chance of a lifetime. So imagine my surprise when I listened to Codie’s podcast called “The Struggle Isn’t Real” because yes it really isn’t, the tips, mentor-ship and conversations that I’ve had with Codie has completely took me to a place of having a profitable blog, and even more profitable relationships!

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Codie wears so many hats, I honestly don’t know how she does it.. she’s a total rock star. A graduate from Arizona State University, attended Georgetown and now resides in Dallas, TX with her husband. Codie is an entrepreneur that launched Threads Refined – a very profitable start-up company, ran an international investment business, she’s a writer and speaker all while working a 9-5! She’s also traveled to exotic places and experienced some pretty cool things, so all this can make you think about how easy it can be to get where you want to be in life!!! I can tell you from experience, following Codie’s advice that she shares through her podcast, website, and social media, that you will be so much closer to improving yourself and your self worth!

My motto is two fold: what would happen if I always asked for what I wanted, and how would I go about getting it if I assumed it was easy? That has led me to do things early that most wait for retirement to do.

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M: You shared we should know “what is our unique skill that we have & how do we share it?”  I love this advice. It’s so simple. What are some tips that bloggers can use to brand themselves into someone profitable, find their why and share it?

Codie: I was just thinking about this with one of the employees on my team and we were putting together a list of all the things we can do to grow reach and to grow the amount of humans we touch and which ones are most valuable and actually lead to growth. What I realized is anytime you are adding real value and able to touch humans in person and then uniquely capture the contacts of those people that you meet in person, whether over video or in an interview like this, those are the ones that stick! So you can go out and do advertisements or send mass email, but the problem with that is they are not attached to you at all,  and they are not really interested in what you have to say. So I think the best way to grow online presence is actually off-line presence, and trying to speak, engage and create a connection in your market by getting the contact information of the humans you actually meet. Yes, its a slower process, but your growth is so much more expediental.

M: Your work ethic is amazing! You share the advice to “take what you do and what you love and make it profitable” What strategies are the most valuable for bloggers to use keep a consistent and growing blog or online brand?

Codie: One of the best strategies that you are actually using is social proof, connecting with others that have a little more reach than you do,  linking with those accounts and connecting with their followers, that is a smart and quick way to grow your reach. All the little things like SEO, lead pages and subscriber list will add incremental returns but if you are consistently putting out content that is valuable, different and interesting …that is what works. When it starts to go sideways is when people get too promotional and wordy with things by posting all the time, and using content that is not relevant. You determine who your audience is and how you are going to connect and help them through your posts , then you leverage audiences that are bigger then what you have at the moment… I think that is the fastest way to grow online!

M: You have such a busy life between traveling for work, speaking engagements, writing and your job, it’s very inspiring. You mentioned that you like to use apps and life hacks to keep you on track.  From a bloggers standpoint, what are the 3 best apps for bloggers to use?

Codie: One of the things that I think is the most important for any of us but women in particular to understand is… I believe that you don’t have freedom, authority, power, stability or are able to have peace and happiness until you are able to achieve financial freedom.  A lot of us try to skip the financial stability stage and go straight to finding our passion, but I think that life just is a little bit easier if you have a base level of financial freedom. The app that I think can help with that hugely is called MINT.com it’s free, and it does a combination of things, it connects all your accounts, finances, credit cards and you can see everything in one place and it makes it super easy to set budgetary goals, and most importantly it will help you see how much you are spending on your blog. The second one is called AND.CO and essentially for blogging it will help you with invoicing, tracking and it’s also great for tax purposes. Its kind of like having a chief operator in your pocket, it’s really cheap and it will help you once the paid jobs start coming in! The last app that I think is probably the most useful for blogging and social media reach, is MeetEdgar.com it helps with scheduling posts and re-posting your content. This version is a paid app, but you can also use Hootsuite for the same purposes and that one is free. 

I have two philosophies in business; 1) Cash is King- without it you are a charity, not a business.               2) Networks = your net worth.

M: I think the best advice you put out there was to start building your own network aside from social media and build this network with email lists? I literally started doing this the moment you mentioned it. What advice do you have for building these lists?

Codie: For bloggers that are starting out I think the CRM excel spreadsheet is pretty useful and does exactly what you need to start building your email list.  I layer in processes, so what I talk about on my website and podcast I’m not adding them all at once,  over the years I’ve layered them into my business. I really think that you start with one thing, you get good at it for at least 21 days, which is the amount of time they say it takes to start a habit.  So that means you do the same thing every single day and once you figure out if that process is useful or not, then you can move on to the next one. If you try to do them all at once, you are going to have too much on your plate and not follow through with them at all. So pick one or two and put the rest on a to-do list!

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M: You’ve shared that you write down your own values of who you want to be as a person …for your own reference. I love that!  What should we do or not do as bloggers & influencers to stay on our path to success?

Codie: The 2 biggest things that I learned in any business that I ever built is, action is always better, you’ll mess up and make mistakes, but always keep doing stuff everyday. I’m not talking about reading information or just listening to podcasts but constant action, touch-points, reach outs and engagements is going to eventually create something. If your always acting on something, then you are in the right and most people don’t actually do that! I think the second thing is to layer action with a strategy, and that’s where all the stuff I talk about comes in. Before you start doing most of these things, ask yourself…Who are you? Who do you want to be? What do you want your blog to be? What will you and won’t you stand for? And at the end of the day, What kind of human do you want to be and what are those values that you have? It doesn’t have to be a 2-week exercise, just take a few hours and sit down, answer those questions and then everything that happens to you will be so much easier. Once you know your “Why” then you will know what brands you want to engage with and what type of content you want to re-post, your “Why” will tell you what do. So the first thing is action all the time, I think is the best thing you can do and then know why you are acting, if you do those two things then you will be ahead of the population. 

 

Codie’s advice and tips have been so influential for me, I can’t say it enough. Here are a few of my favorite tips that she has shared with me on a personal level as well as on her blog that will be extremely beneficial in any aspect of your life.

  1. “Go to where the game is played, showing up is 90% of the battle” clearly you can apply this at anything you want to accomplish at life, but sometimes we need to be reminded of the simple things we can do to make our lives easier.
  2. “Say Thank you” Showing gratitude is probably the biggest way to connect with someone personally and professionally. Codie uses two apps that help her stay in touch with everyone in her life and doing this extra step can mean so much for those that you are trying to connect with! Check out Feltapp.com and Postable.com for two ways to send “thank you cards” online!
  3. Pay it forward, how many times have you heard this one! Ask “what can I do for you” and follow up with whatever they need. Be invaluable… it will open up more doors that you could imagine!

Don’t forget that most of this advice you can apply to anything you are doing. Direct sales, website, business, your personal job…. when you think about it, this will help with anything in your life! I strongly suggest you sign up for Codie’s Monday Slay,  it’s her 5 things that she shares each week, from tips to what she’s reading, favorite quotes, to what she is thriving on that week! You honestly couldn’t get better advice delivered to you in a nutshell!

I can’t thank Codie enough for her guidance, support and friendship, it’s amazing to be around humans that are completely empowering and as bad-a$$ as she is!

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