GROW YOUR ONLINE VISIBILITY & AUTHORITY | WANDA TORO TURINI

WANDA TORO TURINI [0:00]

I love it. I desire it. I get this adrenaline, but I don't know if it's worth it.

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CAMILLE WALKER [0:11]

So, you want to make an impact. You're thinking about starting a business, sharing your voice? How do women do it that handle motherhood, family, and still chase after those dreams? We'll listen each week as we dive into the stories of women who know. This is Call Me CEO.

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CAMILLE [0:30]

Oh, the tech world, traditionally run by the world of men. I have a guest who has challenged this status quo and started her own tech business in 2007. Ketchwords was designed to be the gold standard lead gen tool for all experts who love to share their knowledge with audiences. And it was also developed to help solve the problem of anonymous fans that were otherwise not connecting with you, the speaker, or the one delivering the video behind the screen.

She grew her consulting business to $4.2 million and was able to expand her team, hire her husband, and incorporate travel into her business. Best of all, she invested $100,000 into her own infertility journey. In her spare time, Wanda loves to sing in a rock and roll band and is an acclaimed actress in the New York/New Jersey children's theater. What I love most about Wanda is that she really digs deep into discovering your why, your purpose, and giving value to your customer, so that you create a partnership and value delivery for life. Let's dive into her story.

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CAMILLE [1:41]

Welcome back everyone to another episode of Call Me CEO. And today's a special one because we are talking with Wanda Toro Turini, who is the perfect combination of creativity and technology. She is the nerdy entrepreneur extraordinaire and the creator of Ketchwords, which is an incredible way to capture your superfans that maybe lost in the minutia of life. And she's going to show us all about how to use video and speaking opportunities and everything else to create more buzz and visibility around our businesses, which is really exciting. And Wanda, thank you so much for being here. It's so good to have you here today.

WANDA [2:22]

My pleasure. Thank you for inviting me.

CAMILLE [2:29]

You're very welcome. All right. Gosh, I was reading your bio before you sent it over and we started this conversation today. And I was really surprised to read that you had grown up in a trailer home in New York City. Tell us a little bit about your background and how you wove your way through life from pharmacy to tech to motherhood. There's so much here.

WANDA [2:51]

Whoa, what I do want to be super transparent about and I think it's important, Camille, when we talk about our company's reaching multi-millions of dollars of revenue, that doesn’t necessarily come to us. I want to be truthful about that because I think sometimes it feels like a barrier like, "How come I'm not making that?"

When my business is making multiple millions of dollars, there are team members to support and such and there's growth. I'm in the software world and stuff like that, so I'm sharing that one to be transparent and to also help people understand that in general when people talk about six and seven figure businesses, I'd like to put it out there straight, that means your business is making that much. And then, there's how much you decide to pay yourself, which my company has just turned 16 years old a week and a half ago on July 12th.

CAMILLE [3:50]

Congratulations.

WANDA [3:50]

Thank you. And so, that's a journey where we often go back and forth and underpaying yourselves because we see the vision of the business and that's not really that great either for mindset. When you said that, I just felt like I wanted to be transparent to say I am not choosing to take all of that money because I need to keep things running.

CAMILLE [4:16]

Yeah. It's true though. There are so many pieces. When you hear multi-million, you're like, "Wow." But that's to keep the business running too. And I think oftentimes, you hold back paying yourself because you want to keep that engine going. So, it's not like you're in this lavish lifestyle all the time. It's more that you're helping run the ship.

WANDA [4:37]

Yeah. And it's integrating. So, I was born in the Bronx. But around when I was four or five, my father decided to move us up to more upstate New York, which isn't super upstate for anybody who's really from New York. It was an hour and a half, Dutchess County, Orange County area, which is very sensitive to New Yorkers. It's like, "Okay. There's upstate and then not so upstate."

But yeah, my dad worked his butt off all the time. And when he was young, my parents grew up in Hell's Kitchen in New York City before it was like cool Hell's Kitchen when it was Hell's Kitchen because it was hell. So, from his perspective, he wanted to take me at the time and then ultimately my brother, he wanted to make sure that we grew up out of that environment that was their experience. And we lived in apartments for a while, but he really wanted to own his own thing.

From his perspective, he had a grand desire to be the king of his castle. And so, I remember when he packed us in the car, me and my brother and my mom and he said, "I want to take you to see something." And so, we're excited like, "Oh, what is it?" And my dad was super excited. My dad wasn't hanging out with us a lot. We had weekends with him, but he would come home during the weekdays pretty late because he was driving in from the city. So, it could take him two to three hours one way to get home.

CAMILLE [6:06]

What was he doing? What was his job?

WANDA [6:06]

It's interesting. He was a correctional officer. And he's like, "I don't want to work in the prison environment anymore. I actually want to get my college degree." So, he got his college degree while I was five, six years old. He was going to school during the day and working as a correctional officer at night. And then, he became an auditor for New York State. And he always tells me when he was a correctional officer like, "What are you doing, Toro? Are you going to waste your time? You're never going to get out of here. Once you're in, you're in," sort of thing. And he was like, "Oh, no." And so, he worked really, really hard. And could you imagine going to school during the day, working at night at a prison and trying to finish your college degree, so that you can get out of this?

CAMILLE [6:53]

That's really inspiring.

WANDA [6:54]

It's super inspiring. When I was younger, I don't think I appreciated the nuance. It was like, "Oh, dad's crabby because he tells us he spent two, three hours on the road." And I don't even know what that means. Now I'm like, "A 15-minute commute is horrible." So, it's just really, really interesting. But bottom line, that was his dream. And so, he drove us to what essentially was like a junkyard and he drove us to the mobile home.

And it was an older mobile home. And he said, "We're going to paint this and we're going to fix it and we're going to put it on a great lot because location, location, location." I remember him saying that and "This is going to be our castle." And I was mortified because I was a snotty little kid. And I'm just like, "What?" To me, it's better to live in an apartment in an apartment complex. But for him, it was ownership. It was something that nobody in his family had, ownership. And I think my dad bought it for less than $10,000.

So, he found a mobile home park with a corner lot. And he said, "We're going to put it here. We're going to build a garden. We're going to have a fence." And he's telling me all of these things. And I'm like, "Okay." And I remember late at night painting the skirting of the mobile home with him and all of these things. And he was right because he bought it for less than $10,000 and I don't know if anybody knows about mobile homes. They're like cars. They depreciate. They're not like homes that typically appreciate. He sold it for $19.99. And I remember because he's like, "It wasn't $20. I just put it up for $19.999." And he sold it at a profit because of the location.

I had heard this story probably 50 to 100 times before it even made sense to me what that meant, but that was the environment that I was around. My mom always super supportive, they never ever made us feel like we had limits. It was just like, "Whatever you want to be and whatever you want to do, we'll support you and such." And so, that was really, really inspiring, but I know that as a child, I didn't appreciate it. And I appreciate it so much now.

And it's so important for me to reflect upon that and ensure I relay that to my children, but it's hard to relay to your children because I got those messages because my parents were struggling. So, I struggle with how do I have my child experience the struggle and the lesson from the struggle without struggling? One of my drivers is that I said to myself, "I need to make a lot of money because I never want my children to hear me argue about money like my parents did."

And I remember in the mobile home lying in bed and my mom talking about how I should really have a second pair of sneakers. And my dad was arguing with her about whether that was necessary. And I'm crying. I only want another extra pair of sneakers and I felt like I was a burden. And I know that my father wasn't arguing about it because he didn't want to. It's because it was difficult. It was just such a heartbreaking experience as a child and it sat with me. But that gave me drive.

So, if my kids have 10 pairs of sneakers, how do I give them the same drive that I have? And it's hard. I don't have the answer yet, but my children are five and one. I just turned 50. And I had a very, very difficult fertility journey and thank goodness for modern medicine. But at 49, I had a one-year-old. So, I'm early in that stage. But with my five-year-old, it's difficult because she wants another Lego set and if we don't get it, it's like, "Oh, grandparents get it for her." It's totally different than my situation and I don't know. I'm going off on a tangent, but it's an important thing as entrepreneurs.

CAMILLE [11:02]

I think you bring up a good point. And I would just encourage you to involve your children with you as much as you can seeing how you work and how you make it happen because I have children that are older. My oldest is 13 and I see him talking about businesses he wants to start right now. And he has gone door to door selling books for a nickel and he's sold rocks and done a whole bunch of different things.

So, I wouldn't necessarily think all is lost, but more talking about that entrepreneurial spirit as a parent and then talking about how you can pave your own way too just as I did. And so, I'm hoping that works for my kids too, but I know what you're talking about because I am in a situation as well where I have more opportunity for my kids because of where I am financially. And I worry about that too, which another opportunity I really want to afford my children to do is to do service missions in other areas of the world, so that they can see outside of walls that we live in and the neighborhood we live in and see this isn't the norm for everyone to be able to have fresh sheets every night and clothes to wear. So, yeah. I hear you. But I think if you keep that conversation open and turn it into then, "What do you want to create? And you'll do it, that'd be great."

WANDA [12:25]

Yes. I think it starts with an awareness of what drove you and what inspired you because sometimes the pendulum swings and they're just like, "Okay. I struggled so much. My child will never struggle. They will get a new car as soon as they could drive. They will get the five bazillion sneakers. They will get all the things, just making up for what they lost." But without an act of awareness of the fact that those principles, the foundation of why you are who you are was based on some of those struggles.

And then, there are others that are completely aware of that and they still ensure that their children work even though they don’t have to work and all of those things that they are exposed to, service missions and that sort of thing. So, it starts with an awareness of what you're doing. And I think that for me when I reflect upon my universe of parents, I'm a little at a whack because I started really late. So, most of my friends have older kids going into college and such. And so, I do have the opportunity to look at their world, but then also most of them are not entrepreneurs.

So, then I have to learn from my entrepreneur colleagues and my entrepreneur networks that are at that point where they are experiencing the struggle of more financially fortunate than they were previously and see what they do and learn from that process. But I think because I'm an older parent, I also am very contemplative. And I'm super extremely grateful for this honor because I worked so hard for it and I feel blessed. And I feel if I had children when I thought I was going to have children in my mid-20s or early 30s or whatever, that my perspective would be different. Hopefully not too far off, but I definitely know it would be different.

CAMILLE [14:36]

Yeah. Well, I think awareness is the first thing. And if you're thinking about that now and how you can instill that hard work and that appreciation and gratitude and humility, that's all you can do and create opportunities for them to work hard too, which can be hard. It can really be hard.

WANDA [14:53]

Yeah. It's an actual effort to create the structure.

CAMILLE [15:01]

Create the struggle.

WANDA [15:01]

The struggle, exactly. You're creating the struggle. It's a totally different world, but I am fortunate to be in this position and in reflection fortunate that I had those struggles to create the drive that I have today.

CAMILLE [15:15]

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that backstory. That's beautiful. It sounds like you had great parents too.

WANDA [15:20]

Yeah. They're still rad and they're still awesome.

CAMILLE [15:23]

Awesome. Well, let's talk a little bit about your journey. I know you went into pharmacy before you went into tech. And I'm curious about how that transition happened and also what it was like to be a female pioneer in the tech world. You created tech that wasn't available with the texting and the brochures. Talk us through that journey and how that happened.

WANDA [15:45]

Really actually great and interesting questions. So, the first is just an unnatural transition, let's say. Bottom line struggling financially, the lesson that we learn is the way you get out of the financial struggle and make big money is to go to school for a really long time. So, that's my father's path. He got a Bachelor's degree, but it was like, "Do I want more? I need to go to school for longer."

So, that was really the main exposure that I had. So, I actually got my doctorate in pharmacy and I was in the process of being a critical care and emergency medicine pharmacist. And so, I loved that, but I was always a problem solver. I was always like, "This process could work better." And then, I'd have the suggestion. And I was learning that I'm a pain in the ass. I always have a suggestion and people don't necessarily want to hear the suggestion, but I couldn’t help it.

Honestly if I were to look back at it, since the day I started working for other people even I worked in a restaurant I remember when I was 16 and I essentially got pushed out. This is the first time I'm actually realizing this, Camille. But I got pushed out because I overdid it. I overdelivered in my job and the owner loved me. And the manager was about to marry the owner's wife and he thought of me as a threat and I'm thinking, "I was 16 years old. What are you thinking?" But the owner asked me, "Hey. Would you like to be a host?" And I'm like, "Sure, fantastic." So, I figured as a host, I'll walk around and ask people like, "So, how did you like your meal? Is there an opportunity for us to improve?" I would take their coats. I would memorize their coats and then deliver them back. I just figured it's adding to the experience.

And the manager did not like that and ultimately pushed me out by hiring people for a lot more money. And I was training them and he made it known that I wasn't getting paid. So, I was like, "Clearly you don't want me here. I get your message." But I didn’t even think about it there. So, I was plagued with always trying to improve processes. And recognizing over time that the way I functioned wasn't how everybody else functioned and my desire to just express like, "Hey. This is how we can improve things." just wasn't really well accepted.

But I always was intrigued by the business world. And so, when I got my doctorate degree, you technically have to do a post-doctoral fellowship and a pharmaceutical company called Novartis Pharmaceuticals, they were launching an oncology division for cancer treatment. And they said, "You know what? It would be interesting if we brought in a healthcare professional that was innovative-minded to help us figure out how to better educate cancer patients and cancer doctors." And so, I was fortunate enough to be the first person to get this fellowship, which was very unique and that was what exposed me to business.

So now, I have my healthcare degree, but I get to learn about how customer continuum and how do you change behavior and how do you educate people to change behavior and all of these things that I was fortunate to learn from super experienced marketers. Because I didn't realize in the pharmaceutical world for you to sell something like cancer product is considered a specialized product that you have to be very experienced and I'm 20 something learning from these super experienced people.

So, I'm going through the process, once again Wanda has all these ideas. I see a problem. I'm recommending technology where there wasn't technology and all these things. And I never felt like I belonged. And I felt like I was slowly progressing. And they chose me for a leadership track and I was being mentored as a leader and I realized that I wasn't happy. And so, my next position was supposed to be through this mentorship. I was supposed to be leading being a director of a team. And I realized that as a manager, you're influencing other people's lives. And if you're not happy, you're going to be a shitty manager and I've experienced that. I've experienced managers that weren't happy and they made my life difficult. And so, I said, "I'm so fortunate for this opportunity, but I don’t think this is right for me." By the way, I had all these ideas in my head that I couldn’t write down because technically the pharmaceutical company could own your idea because you had the idea while you were an employee.

CAMILLE [20:43]

On their watch, yeah.

WANDA [20:43]

Yeah. So, I had ideas that were exploding in my head. So, I told my mentor. I was crying because I felt they put so much into me and she said, "Wanda, I always knew that you were going to be an entrepreneur. My job was to keep you here benefitting us for as long as possible."

CAMILLE [21:05]

Wow.

WANDA [21:06]

And I was like, "What?" So, at least I didn’t feel so bad. It was different because I couldn't transition. I had to wait, stop, be separated from the company, and then start. And that was hard. I saved a year's worth of living expenses. It wasn't a year of salary but I figured, "Okay. The basics, let me save a year's worth." And then, I actually found out that it stretched more than a year because I didn't make money my first year and a half of business. I launched a lot of different things. I also made the mistake of not knowing to just to choose one thing and do it well. I was like, "Oh, I'm going to try this, that, all over the place."

CAMILLE [21:52]

Which is the curse of an entrepreneur. It's like the blessing and the curse because you're like, "But this, but this." Yeah. I totally know that.

WANDA [21:59]

Yeah. And you can't do it. And this was 16 years ago. And I'll say I wasn't exposed to any coaches or mentors in the entrepreneurial world. So, I'm here winging it, thinking, "I'm a smart person. I should be able to figure this out." But the principles I had in corporate didn't necessarily apply. If my printer went down, there goes half the freaking day trying to fix the printer. It's not like, "Call IT for the printer." I had to take out my garbage and then pay the bills and all this stuff, so just the awareness of that, that was a big struggle for me. But bottom line I had like, "Oh, I'll launch a process for this and I'll try a software for this." And I did a lot of different things and then I wound up doing consulting work for the pharmaceutical industry. And fast forward a little bit, there were a lot of different ideas that I had launched and made a little bit of money here and there and nothing was really sticking. And then, I was at a major medical conference and I had my little 10 by 10 booth and these pharmaceutical companies had monstrosities.

CAMILLE [23:12]

I've been there, yeah.

WANDA [23:13]

Right. It's like, "Whoa. They're like buildings." So, I'm tearing down my booth with one of my team members. And all of a sudden, they started collecting all of the marketing materials that weren't picked up in the center of McCormick Place, which is in Chicago. It's a huge exhibit center. And it was literally a human climbable mountain of stuff. And my brain I can't help it. I'm like, "This is a problem." And I looked and I said, "This isn't eco-friendly." I asked the gentleman that was literally driving a full-sized dump truck into the building. I said, "Are you guys recycling this?" And he said, "No. It's cheaper to throw them out than send them back to the warehouse of the company. So, we throw out all these materials."

So, when I was in pharmaceutical marketing, we spent hundreds and thousands if not millions of dollars in printing these things, don't know if they wound up in the garbage or in somebody's hands. They're outdated the moment we print the pieces, so there's no way for us to ever go back to that patient and say, "Hey. There's an update in this. No." So, not eco-friendly, not great for the marketer, and not great for us as the person who picks up the brochure because how many times do you check something even though you felt it was good information?

CAMILLE [24:35]

Yeah. Always, you can't hold on to those things forever.

WANDA [24:39]

No. It's like totally inconvenient. So, back then in June of 2007, I said, "I need to solve this problem. It's called ecoFiles. I knew the name. It was an eco-friendly way of getting files of information and it took me two years to figure out how and we settled on texting. We're like, "Wait a second. Everybody has a cellphone and whether you have a smartphone or a clamshell phone, you could always text a code. And if the code was associated with the brochure, then you get it emailed to you. And then as a company, if there's an update, I know who you are. So, now I could send you an update." So excited.

It's like working and I go back to my corporate clients. And I'm like, "This is amazing invention." And they're like, "Wow. This sounds good, but only kids text. Only teenagers text." And I'm like, "But kids are going to text their parents and parents are going to text their grandparents. Don't worry. American Idol, people are texting to vote. It's going to happen." They weren't convinced. Yeah.

CAMILLE [25:51]

It's hard to imagine right now because you're like, "What?" But you had that vision, which a lot of times that's what puts you ahead of the game is you had that vision. That's so powerful.

WANDA [26:00]

Yeah. And it was crushing though because it's like you have the vision of what it could be and even to this day right now, the product, the service isn't sold as ecoFiles because I haven't got enough traction where people really care about being eco-friendly. It's not big enough yet. And I think we might be there because at least I don't have to spend 20 minutes to prove to people that adults text, but that used to be the same thing. But it stayed on the shelf. I was super, super depressed.

And I go on continuing doing the consulting work that I was doing. And then, I had a speaking opportunity. But the speaking opportunity they told me, "Oh, sure. You can get on stage in front of 300 pharma executives that are your prime people, but you need to pay $10,000 as a sponsorship fee." I was like, "What are you talking about? I have a small business." But the other people on stage were Deloitte Touche and PricewaterhouseCooper like these huge firms. So, they could care less about paying $10,000. Yeah.

And I said, "You know how I'm going to make it worth it because I know I've spoken at other things before and I know those people with the glisten in their eye. They're taking pictures of your slides. They're taking notes. And I know that I want to catch that person." If I am able to capture who that person is, it's going to be worth it. And so, I dusted off ecoFiles. And I said, "I wonder if I just offered people my slides if people would respond." And the first time, 25% of my audience texted from my slides. This was workshop format, so the slides had content in it. It was more leads than I had in the previous three years that I had been at that conference. And I was like, "Wait a second." So, I'm a nerd. So, I'm like, "I've got to be able to do better than 25%. Come on now."

And so, I evaluated when should I offer the call to action in the presentation? Should I visually show it? And what should the thing be? Of course, when I offered my slides plus what we would call a lead magnet sort of thing, my slides plus a guide or a checklist that nobody else can access unless it's this way, it got to the point where every time I spoke, 76% of my audience on average would text. Other small businesses that went to these conferences are like, "How the hell can you afford to pay $10,000 to speak?" And I'm like, "I'm using this thing. I walk out with over 200 leads, dude."

And so, it also changed my approach because now I picked two conferences that were chockful of my people instead of spreading out all over the place. Two conferences a year, used my ketchword, which wasn't a ketchword back then, but used my ecoFiles code, it was called and 200 leads each time. And then the rest of the year, my job was to nurture those people.

CAMILLE [29:30]

Smart.

WANDA [29:31]

Yeah. Well, thank you. I'm like, "Yeah."

CAMILLE [29:36]

You're like, "Yeah."

WANDA [29:38]

It was exciting because we all have this hunch or the industry just says in general like, of course, showing up is an awareness affects your business. Of course, speaking and doing videos and interviewing on podcasts or TV or radio, all of those things move the needle, but we don't know exactly how. They just generally do. But we also know that sometimes we do talks that are charity talks I call them. So, they're like we teach a lot and then we don't necessarily get anything out of it. So, everybody's like, "You're amazing." And you're like, "Yay!" And you have no leads.

CAMILLE [30:22]

Yeah. I want to talk about that a little bit because I've done speaking engagements, but not a lot. And it's interesting because when I was reading how Ketchworks, it reminded me of the Ask Formula by Ryan Levesque. Are you familiar with him at all?

WANDA [30:36]

I am a little, but tell me more about what it reminded you of.

CAMILLE [30:42]

Yeah. So, I actually am just listening to the book right now by chance, but he talks a lot about and he did a huge study on copywriting and how to speak in the language of your buyer and really understanding their needs and wants and desires. But then, creating a formula with surveys that gets them as a lead gen for you and being able to then turn and offer exactly what they want.

And so, when I heard about your Ketch formula, I was like, "Oh, this is like taking it into a speaker formula and then giving them what they want, which you call them Value Bombs. I did my research. I know what they are. And so, yeah. Let's talk about first of all, how can someone get more visibility with getting themselves on a stage or through video and then in turn how have you found the best formula for creating a value bomb that people cannot say no to?

WANDA [31:39]

Yeah, yeah. So, the big thing about visibility in general is if you are and I tend to work with people that are service-minded, impact-driven experts. So, they love to share their expertise. It turns them on. It's exciting for them to be able to share that. They love especially with a live audience to see that twinkle in the eye and to see that excitement. That jazzes them up. But what happens is when you do the speaking engagements, it could be a networking event where a lot of networking groups, they allow you to pay maybe $500 sponsorship and you get to speak for five or ten minutes. There are those opportunities.

Now in the digital world, people have Facebook groups and you could potentially have somebody invite you to speak in their Facebook group or perhaps somebody is running a mastermind. And it's very difficult to run a mastermind and be the host of the show all the time. So, people love having guests, experts come into their mastermind. So, that's a great way also of saying, "Your group seems to be chockful of people that could benefit from my thing. I would love to give a free talk about X, Y, and Z."

So, lately, of course, and especially with Russel Brunson and his brilliance around the Perfect Webinar and going into a sales pitch, there's been a lot of focus on that. But you know what? In the history of speaking, in most cases you're not selling to people. And in most cases, it actually looks icky if you sell to people. So, how is it that you get value out of it?

And so, after a while, you do these things and you're like, "I love it. I desire it. I get this adrenaline, but I don't know if it's worth it." So, we go through these peaks. We're super psyched. And then, we're like, "Other things are driving my business. This isn't." And so, now I’m like, "Ketch and adding this formula to it, it literally allows people to turn those talks into a lead generating machine." And this is even people that are paid to speak because we typically think, "Look. I'm paid to speak. There's no freaking way I could sell anything in that I literally paid $10,000, $20,000 to speak. That would be gross."

I reflect back in my world in the pharmaceutical industry where professionally it's completely unacceptable to sell from stage. But I wasn't selling. All I was doing was essentially saying, "Guys, I wish I had enough time. I could talk about this forever. This is my thing." But you know what? I realized the next thing, if this inspires you, if this resonates with you, if you're the XYZ person I have found, literally call out that person. So, if you are service-minded, if you're impact-driven, you love to share your expertise and sometimes you're just not sure whether it's worth it, I want to tell you, you have anonymous fans out there and it's time to start capturing those anonymous fans. That's what makes it worth it once you start seeing that.

But the next thing I invite you to do is just learn about my strategies. I alluded to them, but I put together a guide on the essential strategies that I use that help grow my consulting business to $4.2 million in revenue because it's not the technology alone that got me 76%. The first time I used the technology, I got 25%. And that was beginner's luck with a little bit of Wanda factor because I did think about it. I did think about it. But the point is the technology didn't change, the strategy changed and that's what got me the 76%.

So, I offer people that strategy. And I'm going to show it as this is how I would do it digitally. But on stage, I would offer it as part of a slide and stuff like that. So, that's the natural transition of saying, "I wish I had enough time. I can't go through the details of the strategy, but this guide talks to you about the strategy that I used to transform my talk into a lead gen machine. If you want to access it, then all you have to do is text LEADS to 411321. Provide your email address. It'll be in your email inbox."

So, what happens is people feel served by that because I put a lot of thought into the arch of my talk and how it develops an appetite for something next. And so, I would work with my clients on figuring out, "Okay. What's the arch of the talk? What do you want to leave people feeling at the end of your 10-minute, 45-minute, whatever it is?" It doesn't matter. You could achieve that objective in 5 minutes. I had a client who paid $500 for a 5-minute spot at a networking event. A 5-minute spot, she gets to stand up. She had always gone to this event but she gets to stand up and do her spiel. And she said, "Wanda, do you think I can incorporate my ketchword?" I'm like, "Yeah. What's your objective? All you have to do is achieve the objective of inspiration in that five minutes. And then, offer the next step, which is your Value Bomb." And she did it. I just laugh. She got 63% of the networking group texting her ketchword in 5 minutes.

CAMILLE [37:07]

Wow. That's awesome.

WANDA [37:08]

And she was just like, "This is crazy. I go to this thing all the time. I would have never thought." So, it's strategy that helped her use that tech.

CAMILLE [37:20]

Yeah. What lead gen or Value Bomb do you see the most being effective for people to use?

WANDA [37:26]

So, it's always some natural next step exercise. I call it the Step 2. So, the formula always goes around where are you going to inspire them to feel in the first part and for you to literally think? And I tell my clients, I'm like, "Let's think. You are Jane. You are Joe. And you're totally jazzed because Camille just made you feel." So, my thing is I want to make people feel like, "Guess what? Visibility can be worth it. Your desire for virility can be worth it." So, what's the natural next step? Okay. Let me tell you how I made it worth it. Let me give you that strategy and by the way it has to be selfless.

So, the strategy that I offer, you don't have to use the technology. You could use another method to capture people. It's just the technology's really the most efficient of connecting with people because when you provide an email address, most people don't email. When you provide a link to social media, what are you doing? You're probably having people who are primed get dumped in with all the other people that are not primed. You have no way of segmenting them. And then, also you're not giving them anything. But in this way, you're giving people something. Now, you could also send people to a funnel, but it's just one of those things here it's really clunky for people. You have to have some really easy way for people to get to the funnel and a lot of people don't do it. So, texting a simple ketchword is super easy.

CAMILLE [39:09]

Okay. Let's talk about this last year we haven't been able to do a lot of in-person events. They're happening again. Let's talk about video and how you've seen people use video in a way that has been effective?

WANDA [39:20]

Yeah. It's the same thing of recognizing the strategy of the video. So, either you're doing video totally just to give and to be charitable essentially. So, you could have a whole video channel where you're just teaching, teaching, teaching, but you're not overtly telling the audience what your point of teaching them that is. You have your responsibility to say, "The reason why I want to teach you this strategy is because it's important for you to recognize that your visibility is worth it. It's important for you to recognize that it's not technology alone."

That's very important for me now because in the past two plus years, a lot of different texting platforms have come up. So, platforms that people could just buy $25 a month and they could create their own keyword or whatever. It's not what we do. What we do is still proprietary because we deliver a text plus an HTML email plus an attachment, so that's different. Nobody does that and it's very difficult to get an attachment through firewall. So, we actually put a lot of work, the tech team and our marketing team to make sure that we have a high deliverability rate.

But in people's minds, people think, "Oh, it's another texting thing." So, one of my objectives has to teach people that strategy is what helps you wield the power of technology. And so, I may have five, 10 different strategy videos, but my main objective is to say, "But remember guys, strategy is what helps you wield the power of the technology whatever it is that you use." And hopefully people will get to know me and trust the way we use technology and say, "You know what? If I'm going to use technology, I may as well work with Ketch and Ketchwords versus traditionally I could just focus on features."

I could be like, "Hey. There's no other texting platform that does it like we do and get into the nerdy like why did we choose an attachment?" But then eyes glaze over and I'm not really teaching. I'm not serving anybody by doing that. I'm serving me by helping you understand how I'm differentiating myself, but I'm not really serving people in a selfless way. So, that's another thing to really try and serve people selflessly and that seems hard, but you could do it with a plan.

CAMILLE [41:57]

Yeah. That's really interesting. I think that it's something that each of us listening to this should think about. How am I delivering selflessly and then how can I turn that into income which is where strategy comes into play? So, that is a big process.

WANDA [42:15]

Yeah. There's a lot of stuff that I can share selflessly that will never warm somebody up to buy from me. So, that's the other thing. When you look at all the content that you put out there, how does it set somebody up to be more warm to your offer? So, this is my Wanda theory, but I think it's been working very well for a while.

But there are two customer types. You have your ideal prospect and you have your ideal client. There's a difference between. The ideal prospect is the person that if you were to hear them in a coffee shop and you hear them talking, you're like, "Oh my gosh. I could totally help her. She's not ready. She's not going to say yes to me, but I could totally help her." She's my ideal prospect.

But then, I have the other person who is my ideal client who had the same pains and complaints of the ideal prospect, but they went through some journey. They overcame certain knowledge gaps or certain limiting beliefs to finally get them to say, "Yes. Take my money. I'm ready and I know that you're the one." So, if we understand the difference between those two people, that's our marketing journey.

And then, all of our education should be to help the ideal prospect mature into an ideal client. That's the most efficient way of using all of your time and your marketing efforts. And if you're going to put out content, all that stuff, just to make sure it's strategically along that, then at least you know that you've chosen content that is along the path and not around. Sometimes we teach people things that actually make them think that they can do the thing without us by accident.

CAMILLE 44:09]

Yeah. I love that. The prospect and the client and the difference, I really love that visual. That was good, Wanda. That was good.

WANDA [44:20]

And it takes time. I work with some clients. We try and get a short version of it. In an hour or two, we'll do consulting session. And I have VIP clients where we get into the meat of it and it could be three-month process where we really dig into the journey. We dig into the language that our ideal prospect uses. Because when we're experts, we tend to use our language. And it actually separates the prospect from us. They're like, "Oh, they're there and I'm here. Maybe I'm not ready." So, it's really important for you to understand what your prospects say. My prospects say, "I feel like a one-night stand, you know what I mean. I had this amazing talk and then no second dates."

CAMILLE [45:09]

And then, nothing, yes.

WANDA [45:12]

So, these little things that you're not optimizing your visibility, which is what I would typically say when I'm nerding out with my team members.

CAMILLE [45:23]

And instead, you would turn that into, what would you say?

WANDA [45:26]

That story of saying that feeling when people have that twinkle in their eye and they're taking pictures of my slides and I'm so pumped and everybody's like, "Yeah. That was amazing." And then, you never get invited back. I try and connect it to what the person is actually experiencing. Where to me in my expert hat, it's like, "Your visibility is not being optimized. You're not selecting the appropriate audience, you know what I mean." It means the same thing, but it's said in that colloquial conversational way versus the expert way. And people have to work on that. We have to work on that.

CAMILLE [46:06]

Yes. That's actually in the book Ask. That's what he talks about over and over again. He said for two years he copied down copy of another person that spoke to the audience well and that he had to practice how to actually to speak the language of his ideal client because no one wants to be spoken down to. And that's exactly what you're talking about. So, it's fun to think about what I've been reading with him and then also you with your strategy. It's hand-in-hand. If you haven't read his book, I think you would really enjoy because it's everything you're saying. Yeah.

WANDA [46:38]

Yes. I would love to. Fantastic. It's a human behavior thing. And so, it's really taking the time to appreciate it and I'm just a naturally curious and nerdy person. And so, this was something that was wonderful when Ketch started. It was in live speaking engagements. And what's beautiful about that is you can see the people in the room. So, I was able to witness from the very first time I offered the very first ketchword to an audience, what their faces looked like. Were they confused? Were they not confused? So, I was able to see, well, what could I do to change that to make it easier for them when we go in front of live audiences?

I usually actually have a phone and I show them what it looks like. This is a little bit too much if I had the phone and all that. But I created this during COVID. These backgrounds, I’m saying this in case people are just listening on audio, it's a digital background that I have with my call to action on it. And I created this, so that my clients could feel like, "Oh, just because my live interactions are gone, that doesn't mean that I need to stop using my ketchword." But I found that people need to visually see it as well as hear it in order to have a higher response rate.

And then, when we speak in front of live audiences, I've also found because I'm nerdy that if we gave something to them and I'm holding up a card here I call this a catch card, then they're also more likely to text. So, I'm verbally saying it. I'm showing it in a digital slide and they have something physically in front of them that it feels like they're able to more intimately figure it out instead of look up and look like a dummy. It's like a behavioral thing, but also the catch card has the explanation of what's in the piece. So, for the people that are like, "Do I want to give my contact information for this?" This is like the final sales piece that tells somebody you should.

But all of these things I was able to explore in a closed setting. I was able to say 76% of my audience because I could count. But when you're doing video, when you're doing podcasting, I tell my clients you can't do a percent of the audience because you don't have a finite number. Just even if you know how many downloads, you don't really know how many people even heard your ketchword. They could have listened to the first 30 seconds. So, you don't have those numbers, but what you do know is that you have something for that one person because imagine there's that one person that's your perfect person that's listening. If that one person texts your ketchword and you have the opportunity to know who they are and connect with them and nurture them, doesn't that make it worth it?

CAMILLE [49:29]

Yeah. That's really clever. Circling back to your experience with tech, did you feel like you were well-accepted at being a woman? Was that ever a hurdle that you had to overcome?

WANDA [49:40]

So, I'm glad that you asked that question because I feel like I'm hiding because I am a woman. So, I don't think of myself as founder of a tech company. It's weird. And as I go on more and more podcasts, it's like, "Oh, yeah. I am." My focus was really more about the results and in servicing people with the technology and not being a founder of a tech company. And so, I don't find myself actually exposing myself like that. And I think partly it's because there aren't a lot of women, so I feel like that's not my club. I'm happy that you asked the question because I'm like, "You know what? I need to fix that and own it and maybe be there, so that other women could feel like they could be part of the club." I was one of the first 14 shortcodes in existence ever. When they were registering shortcodes, I got to pick 411321. I wanted INFO-321. Yeah. That was 2007. That was really, really early on.

CAMILLE [50:55]

That's amazing. I hope you know that was amazing.

WANDA [50:59]

It's weird. I don’t feel it and it's not fair that our mindsets would be like that because I know if I was a guy, I'd be like, "Yeah. Go out there and share." It's almost like, "Let me silently just impact people."

CAMILLE [51:16]

No more, Wanda. No more silent Wanda. You've got to shout that Wanda vision. Have you seen that show?

WANDA [51:21]

Yes. I love it.

CAMILLE [51:23]

Well, that's so cool. And I hope everyone that's listening especially so many more girls, I actually just did a partnership with Nintendo. They have a new coding game that kids can code their own games and it's super fun. My daughter's obsessed with it. And I am so thrilled to tell her that today I spoke with a woman who started a tech company and that she's changing the way we communicate and the way we share information. I want you to own that and shout that from the rooftop. That's really cool.

WANDA [51:55]

I appreciate it very much. I do. Thank you.

CAMILLE [51:58]

Oh, you're welcome. I really appreciate you being on here today. One last question because I like to ask this to the mommas is how has being a mother and a business owner entrepreneur affected the way that you work?

WANDA [52:14]

Oh my gosh. It's everything. If I go first to one of the main drivers, I did say, oh, I'm going to be a crappy boss because I'm not happy or whatever, but actually the thought process around it was I saw the high-level women executives in the pharma industry and I didn't feel that they were really connected with their kids because they were traveling a lot. We would have events where the kids would come and it just was like there's something not what I wanted. I don't want to say not right. It wasn't what I desired in a relationship and I did feel like reasonably if you're travelling all over the place, how could you have a good relationship with your kids? Sure. I could afford a nanny, but that's not who I want raising my kids.

So, it started with that. And my desire was like, "I'm going to build something that's going to be able to feed me and give me money, so I could spend more time with my kids." I'm still on that journey. I'm still on that journey because even if I desire to do that, I get frustrated that sometimes I'm in the office until 8 or 9 o'clock at night and my wonderful husband is putting the kids to bed. And I get pissed at myself. I'm like, "I need to change that." Actually running out my calendar where I allowed people to book late and so in two weeks, that's it. My day ends at 5. And I finally just had to say, "No. I don't want to do that because I did all this to spend time with my kids and then now I'm not."

For me, I was an entrepreneur before I met my husband. So, he was aware of my goals and such and so together I knew that my match was going to be somebody that would be highly involved in family. That was critical for me. But because I was so aggressive I would say in career, I think that that's also the reason why I didn't find my husband until I was 40. I didn’t get married until I was 40. So, all of these things like being a woman, it just flipped everything around because if I was that 40-year-old that was running the business and found my perfect match, there's a much lower probability that I would be the one having problems having the kids. And then, I decide that I want kids and I go through my fertility journey. And I'm taking all these injections and stuff like that and I become a percentage of myself. And there was probably several years where I felt like I was 20%, 30% of what I was when I was 35 and how the hell am I going to run this business and being in tech where if I don’t do this fast enough, somebody else is going to do it?

And the first time I saw another texting technology even though it wasn't texting for content, it was just texting. I was pissed because I was like, "You know what? If I was a guy, I wouldn't have been taken out of the game because I wanted to have kids because I chose to go through a fertility journey. I wouldn't have been at my 20%." So, I know I would have had this in front of everybody much earlier. And it's this balance I chose to have family because I love it. But I also recognize that as a male, if I chose to have family, it wouldn’t have taken me out so much and there's this struggle.

CAMILLE [55:47]

I've never quite heard a percentage of myself. That's a really, really real way of saying it. It's like you're there, but you're not at full capacity because your body is in service to someone else. We go through that as moms. We're a percentage. That's really fascinating. Well, I think watching what you've done and with the years that you have, I am so inspired by you. I know so many people listening will want to follow along with your journey and I applaud you creating those boundaries for yourself and finding that path. You're awesome. Please tell our audience where they can connect with you and help support you.

WANDA [56:24]

Sure. Well, you could definitely follow me and my crazy life on Facebook. I do have an open public page so you could find me at Wanda Toro Turini. I'm the only Wanda Turini around. So, find me there. And that's just for me personally, but I do want to take that moment if you are that service-minded impact-driven entrepreneur. You're the expert that loves to share your message. You're choosing to speak in front of physical or digital audiences. You're choosing to do the videos, the lives, the podcasting, the TV, all that stuff. There are anonymous fans that are out there.

And so, all that I do is welcome you to start thinking about how you can strategically change your approach just to make it better and that is by texting for this guide that I put together, how to transform your talk into a lead generating machine. And all you need to do is text LEADS to 411321 if you're in the U.S. and I also say if you're not in the U.S., you could text it to +19097411321. The message is still LEADS. You provide your email address and you'll get this immediately. And hopefully it'll serve you and give you something to think about for that next option. Of course, you can look up ketchwords.com and hopefully I'll be able to help you there if you're interested in using tech. Not everybody is.

CAMILLE [57:55]

Well, that's awesome. I think that you're a pioneer making awesome things happen. So, thank you so much for being a guest today.

WANDA [58:03]

My pleasure. Thank you for the invitation.

CAMILLE [58:05]

You're very welcome.

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CAMILLE [58:12]

Hey, CEOs. Thank you so much for spending your time with me. If you've found this episode inspiring or helpful, please let me know in a comment in a 5-star review. You could have the chance of being a featured review on an upcoming episode. Continue the conversation on Instagram @callmeceopodcast. And remember, you are the boss.

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