Hey friends, it's your host, Ellen Yin. Welcome back to another bonus episode of Cubicle to CEO, the podcast where we ask successful founders the business questions you can't Google. This is one of our last public episodes that we are posting. As far as bonus episodes go on our regular show starting in 2024, any new bonus episodes, particularly ones that are focused on behind the business insights, are going to be moved to a private podcast feed that is only available to our C suite members for listening. So if you have no idea what I'm talking about, I recorded a bonus episode on this announcement with all the details that I'll link below in the show notes.

You'll also find in the show notes a link where you can join us in the C suite at an early, hugely discounted rate if you are hearing this before December 16 all right, so for today's bonus episode, I thought it would be kind of fun to bring you all with me on my trip to California last week. This is more of a true Founders journal entry, founders diary, sort of day in the life, or week in the life, if you will, of a founder of a media business, which is me, obviously. So last week I road tripped down to San Francisco with my husband and our dog for the Honeybook Partner Summit. This was their first ever summit, and they invited some of their top partners from around the world to come meet in San Francisco at their headquarters to show us the product roadmap, some of the exciting innovations and developments they're working on at Honeybook for 2024 and beyond, as well as bring together top partners to share inspiration and ideas for how we can all show up and serve our communities better as honeybook educators, but also just growing that arm of our business, the affiliate side of our businesses, even more.

So, this first part of the episode might be helpful to you if a, you're a honeybook user, if you are a freelancer, a service provider, a coach or consultant who works with clients one on one, and you either currently use Honeybook or you're looking for a CRM system that can better manage the entire workflow of working with one on one clients, from sending out proposals and discovery calls, collecting payment through invoices, all the way through the actual process of delivering the service, and the whole project management behind that, and offboarding the client.

So this first part, I'll kind of focus on some of the key developments that I think are really exciting that are coming to honeybook, but also kind of this larger conversation of how AI and AI driven tools are only becoming more prevalent, especially among tech companies who want to integrate AI tools to allow their customers more time and freedom to focus on the things that they are best at and that they actually want to do, rather than all of our time being spent on tedious, repetitive tasks that frankly don't require as much human involvement. I think one of the things that I do appreciate most about honeybook and other companies that are bringing AI into the mix is that they still believe in the power of the human touch, right? And at least right now, any AI tools that are available in honeybook still require human approval. So it's not like you have no control over what is being put out into the world on your behalf. But I think that if you, like me, like to lean early into new innovations and tools, you'll be really excited about some of the time saving features that are part of their roadmap for 2024.

By the way, this episode is not sponsored. I feel like I should have said this at the beginning. I just think it's really interesting to kind of bring you guys into the rooms where you may not have been present yourself, but you still want to stay in the loop of what's happening in the world of online business and also the tools that many of us use in our everyday businesses. Okay, so just first, a quick rundown of some of the features that I am most excited about that they shared at this summit. Some things are quite simple, but again, just really help elevate the client experience.

Things like being able to include smart fields and emails. Smart fields are anything. For example, like when you're writing an email, you can auto populate someone's information in a specific field so that you're not having to individually tailor each thing. Machine learning automatically can pull that data from their profile and put it into said email or whatever other medium you're communicating to them. And then SMS notifications.

I thought this was great for especially any of you who work with clients in person. Like if you're a photographer, for example, you're able to send text reminders letting people know like, hey, you have your upcoming photo session meet at this place at this time. You can also send sms notifications about payment reminders. So if you have someone on a multi pay installment plan, this would be helpful for them to remember to pay their invoices or to remind them that an auto charge is about to happen for said invoice. Also, another thing that I thought was pretty cool is that they are planning to have this built in out of office feature where not only people who are contacting you through the honeybook portal are notified that you are out of office and taking a well deserved break, but also that some of those email communications or steps in the client workflow are still managed for you on your behalf while you're away so you don't come back to just a huge inundation of tasks that you have to catch up on.

So those were some of the things that I thought were really helpful that I wanted to share with you all. My most favorite thing though was there was a session again on AI and what they're planning to utilize AI for in their platform. And the thing that I thought was the coolest is this AI meeting assistant that will be able to pull the services discussed in a meeting. So, like, if you're on this meeting and Honeybook's AI tool is recording said meeting and let's say writing meeting notes, that they would be able to look at the meeting notes and immediately and automatically pull services that were discussed in that meeting and populate it into a proposal, or create tasks that were discussed in a meeting and then turn those into action items that are automatically assigned to you or team members. This is incredible.

This is just, again, an example of how things that can become really redundant or tedious can be solved through machine learning if done well. And again, these are all things that they discussed were on the roadmap for 2024. So I don't know when the release of these features will be available, but I just thought you guys might like to know of these functionalities and the fact that they can and will exist in the near future. Another AI tool that I thought was really cool, and this, I believe is already in beta on their app. I haven't used it myself personally, but there were others in the room who had used it and had some great feedback to share.

But the AI composer. So this is for like if a lead, let's say, contacts you from your website and books, a discovery call, or has a question about your service, they can populate certain pre made messages or templated messages. Responses, I guess, may be a better word for answering said questions based on your previous responses to similar questions, and even being able to pull eventually, not currently, but eventually. Their hope is that this AI composer can actually pull the tone of your voice by studying your own personally written responses from the last few months, so that the AI and the way that the tone of voice comes across is more genuine and more authentic to how you would actually personally respond to someone and some preliminary data that they shared that I thought was really interesting. Their users who are already testing this composer in beta have seen 18% higher conversions from these AI responses, like using these AI responses to respond to leads.

So I thought, again, very cool innovations. What an exciting time to be alive, right? So those are kind of the big product features that again I thought would be interesting for you guys to know about since you weren't at the event, unless one of you listening to this podcast, which by the way, I did actually meet a few people who listened to the podcast at this event. My highlight was definitely meeting Megan, who is a longtime listener of our podcast and the sweetest person ever, big time expert in the wedding planning industry. So shout out to Megan if you're listening to this, but that's always my favorite part of events is getting to meet new friends, and especially those of you who listen to the podcast.

It's like the most fulfilling thing in the world when I get to meet you in person and hear how the show or what we share here has impacted your business for the better. So thank you, Megan, for totally making my day at the summit. The next piece I kind of wanted to share was more so on the affiliate side. So some of the key tips that I got from other top affiliates at Honeybook that I think can apply to you whether or not you affiliate for Honeybook specifically. But just in general, if you have tools and products and services that you recommend to your community, how you can continue to evolve and improve upon your own role as an affiliate marketer.

So one of the things that I thought was kind of interesting, and this wasn't necessarily said during an actual session that I was part of, it was more so in an offline or not offline. Well, I guess offline it was in person conversation at the happy hour that night, was this idea that so many people tend to think of affiliate revenue as kind of like the cherry on top, like a bonus payout if it happens to happen. But they're not necessarily very intentional about it. And I will say this is something that I definitely noticed from both attending this honeybook partner Summit, as well as being at Kajabi Hero Live last May, is the through line that all of the top partners had a much more integrated strategy for the products that they recommend to their audience. So they're not doing just like one off posts, one off shout outs telling people, hey, this is a great product or service or tool that I recommend.

Go try it. They really natively build it into either their content plan for the year, or they're integrating lessons or tutorials about said product into their own products. So that it's a stacking effect, right. It's not like you have to work twice as hard to, let's say, acquire a customer specifically for the product that you're affiliating for. Rather, you are integrating them into your ecosystem so that when someone purchases a product of yours, the transition to using a product you recommend is almost like the natural next step of implementation.

So again, that stacking effect, right. And so that was something I noticed was really true among all of the top partners that were at this summit, and something that I think you guys should definitely think on. Because when you approach the products that you affiliate for, from this perspective, I think affiliate revenue becomes so much more than just an extra payout that happens when it happens, but it's sporadic. It really can become a solid revenue stream in your business. And for us, for example, affiliate revenue is a six figure revenue stream in our business.

Like as a standalone, just by itself, it's a six figure revenue stream. And that has been done and built very intentionally over many, many years of being consistent about recommending specific products that we use and love in our business or our community has used and loved. And I think the key here is to be really wise and discerning about which products you choose to affiliate for. As a media business, we rarely, rarely take on new affiliate partnerships because the way that our business model works, a majority of our revenue actually comes from sponsored content or sponsored campaigns. So by the way, if you have no idea what a media business is or how that business model works, I did record a bonus episode earlier this year all about that.

So I will link that below in the show notes if you're curious to kind of learn more. But basically the way that we work, we typically do not accept affiliate partnerships. However, there are a few key partners that we have developed longtime relationships with over many, many years and whose products we truly believe in and have seen the positive impact on our students, on our clients, on our customers who have decided to use said products. So I think being really intentional. And then for Honeybook, for example, the primary way that we actually worked with them in the past was integrating their product into the tutorials, into the lessons in our then signature program.

Before we retired it, we used to have a year long membership that taught freelancers, service providers and coaches how to make their 1st $10,000 revenue month. And one of the key strategy pieces that we taught was how to create a high converting application form for when people are booking a discovery call with you, how to actually structure a discovery call so that people can confidently make a decision at the end and then also how to set up your contracts and your invoices. So all of those functionalities you need a tool for if you want to do things more efficiently rather than trying to do everything manually through like Google Docs or whatever it may be. So the recommended platform for client management systems for specifically people, again, who work with one on one clients that we recommended was of course honeybook. And so we were able to really natively integrate that into a program that we were already selling.

So this again goes back to kind of that stacking effect that I think is really key to implement if you want to be serious about growing your affiliate revenue. Another key takeaway that I got from one of the speakers, Lainey. Lainey said that you can use your stats for the results you've been able to drive for a particular brand to actually attract competitor brands. So comparison education is actually something that converts very well. I'm sure you all have seen those blog posts before.

That's like, which is the best email marketing service provider? Something like that, right? Where people may compare multiple different brands. Because the truth is, there is no perfect technology or tool or platform for every single user. A lot of it depends on personal preference.

I've always been of the belief that the best tech solution for something is the one that you will actually use. So even though I have my recommended platforms, my favorites that I recommend to people, I always tell them it's not the tech that creates your success, it's you. And you have to find the tech solution that you're going to actually utilize. Right? Otherwise, it doesn't matter how amazing their benefits and features are if you never even open it or know how to use it.

So Lainey's kind of on that same path of like, look, if you have multiple products that you can educate on so that someone can find their best own solution, you win no matter what, right? If you're affiliating for multiple products in the same niche, and you can show and compare how each one might benefit someone more or less in a certain type of situation, then you're able to kind of win on multiple fronts. Also, if there's a brand you really want to work with, you can show up and say, hey, we drove these results for your competitor. Would you like the opportunity to see how we can create similar results for you? Don't be afraid to reach out to multiple brands within the same niche because exclusivity is actually typically a paid upsell in partnerships.

Like if a brand wants exclusivity with you. That is something that they should be paying extra for if you have some sort of partnership with them. So just something kind of like a pro tip to think on within the area of affiliate partnerships, they're not paying you up front, right? This is a commission based essentially role, and so you don't owe exclusivity to a brand just because you have had success with them. Although I think it is great if you find one that you personally really love that you have a go to to recommend to people.

I think that consistency is helpful to your audience rather than you trying to share multiple of the same things all the time. But it's never harmful to have options that you can provide to people if your go to tech tool isn't the right fit for them. Another interesting insight I picked up was from speaker Latasha James, who I actually did a roundtable with back in September for Metrocool and it was a podcaster's discussion. I'll link the YouTube video below if you're interested in checking that out, but Latasha was talking about how as an affiliate, you should really focus on the segment of the market that you can win. So even though there may be multiple educators, multiple partners, all promoting a similar product or tool, if you can really lean into the specific market whose perspective of the world you help to represent or capture or can relate to, you can really still see a lot of success and momentum from that niche market.

I think actually the other speaker, Lainey, is a great example of this. She is a stationary designer, so she's really leaned into kind of taking an inventory of all of the products and tools, both online and offline, that she uses in her day to day shop. Right? Printers, paper, materials, inks, stickers, all of the things. Again, physical, actual products as well as softwares and tools that she uses online to be able to run her business and has really leaned into that unique perspective to educate on those products and services and tools.

So that is kind of the final word I'll leave on. As far as my favorite takeaways from Honeybook, I know my time there was short. There were two full days and I'm sad I missed the second day, but I did have an important event to get to. So my dear husband actually road tripped all the way back home with our dog from San Francisco. And then I actually flew from SF to LA the next morning and landed in LA, got picked up by my longtime friend Laura, who also happens to be the founder of Lotza, a functional beverage mixer startup that I am an advisor for.

So we got together and actually met up for the first time in person. Even though we've been friends since 2018, which is wild, it did not feel like our first meeting just because we've known each other for so long, but we got ready together and then headed over to Jacqueline Johnson's house for the Cherub X Trust fund holiday mixer. So Cherub is another company that I am an angel investor for, and they're a really cool fintech platform. So they work in the financial technology financial services space where they are creating a marketplace to match founders with funders. So think bumble vibes, like think a dating app, but not dating.

Not creating romantic relationships, obviously, but creating relationships between founders of early stage startups. So far, from what I've seen in the marketplace, a lot of these brands are consumer brands. So they're creating physical products that they're selling. But it's not just specific to only physical products or consumer brands, right? It's just founders of early stage companies that are looking for funding and maybe don't have the access or the business model to go after VC funding, venture capital funding, but they want to be connected to individuals, angel investors who bring strategic prowess and knowledge and connections, as well as money as well as capital to the table.

And this is really a unique product or platform that is allowing funders to connect with founders and vice versa. And I'm so excited to be an angel investor in this company because I think it really bridges a gap on both sides, right? It bridges that gap for founders that are traditionally underrepresented in funding. We've all heard the dismal stats before. Women in general make up less than 3%.

I think recently it actually went down for the first time in a year over year progression report. So I think we're actually closer to 2% of women receive all venture capital funding, and then it's even less for marginalized communities. It's very hard to get VC funding if you are a woman or a woman of color. And so I think that creates a lot of barriers, especially for startups that require a lot of investment. So, like, if you're starting a tech company, if you're starting a consumer goods company, that requires a lot of inventory and product formulation and manufacturing and shipment and all of these things that quite frankly, as an online business owner, I've had the privilege not to think about, right?

The startup costs for an online business are so low. It's your time, it's your brain, it's your resources, your energy, but it's not so much having to think about the logistics of like where do I host all of these products in a warehouse? Or like, how do I pay a product formulator to help create this thing and so many other factors. So it really solves a problem on the founder side, connecting them again with people who have capital, primarily the angel investors on cherub or women, which is really exciting, but also not just angel investors. Similar to any of you who may be familiar with Shark Tank.

People go on shark Tank not just because they need funding. Like many times they can maybe walk into a bank and get similar terms or deals, right? But they're looking for strategic investors who are bringing to the table something more than just money. Maybe they're bringing connections, maybe they're bringing experience in a certain industry. It really is that kind of mix between advisor and angel investor, and that really bridges that flip side of that gap, which is women like myself who are really interested in helping other startups, maybe even startups that are outside of the niche or the industry that our main businesses operate in.

And not every angel investor is an active entrepreneur as well, although there definitely seems to be a huge cross section between those two roles. But I think it's really exciting that Cherub is helping other women like myself also connect with emerging startups that have a lot of potential, have a lot of opportunity for growth, and really are taking care of that deal flow for us. Right. Helping curate and find these types of startups and then matching them to your interests, your unique expertise, and also the dollar size of the checks, quite frankly, that you want to cut. And I will say, just from a financial perspective, that angel investing is inherently risky.

Like if you're thinking about building long term wealth, there's many ways that you can go about that. There's many places that you could pool your funding and something that my wealth advisor, Caitlin Carlson, who many of you have grown to know and love through our podcast this year in our community. Founder of Theory Planning Partners, shout out know. Caitlin talks about as far as her own exposure to private equity, if you will. So like not investing in public companies that are traded on the stock market, she chooses to focus entirely on any extra money that she has to invest in the private equity sector.

She's going to invest into her own business, invest back into herself, because she knows that she is the most control over what happens in her own business. Right? And being able to invest back into her business is going to, in her viewpoint, grow her the best returns than taking that money and investing in other people's businesses, which I totally respect and think is a very valid point for probably 99% of us. I do think though, if you are someone who likes to play with risk, likes to kind of explore outside of your own business, if you understand that inherently, if you invest in other people's companies, you may find a unicorn that does really well, but you may also find that your investment is never returned or that there's so many factors that can impact whether or not a startup is successful and you're not in control of all of those things as an investor or even as an advisor that has more of a strategic input into the business. But I think what excites me so much is I am someone who, you know me like you understand.

If you listen to this podcast, behind the business type interviews or experiences are my absolute favorite. It's why we structured our Monday case studies around behind the business operations, launches, campaigns, products, strategies. Right? We want to know what our real time founders and real time entrepreneurs actually testing and doing in their business that's working and how do we break that down and distill it into actionable items that other people can test in their businesses as well. So I think that's what excites me about being an angel investor and advisor, and why I feel like I'm coming into my angel investor advisor era is I love getting to peek behind the curtain at other people's businesses that I don't have a hand in running the day to day up, that I'm not literally working in the business or as an employee or whatever it may look like, but that I can still have some sort of involvement in, whether it is from the funding side or whether it is from a strategic input side.

I feel like I learned so much from getting outside of my own industry, outside of my own niche. This is something I talk about all the time, even if you're not using money necessarily to practice that behavior. I think there's so much value in looking outside of your own industry norms to find new ideas, to find new approaches to business. There's so much to be learned from people in other sectors. Which is why I also was very intentional when we were creating the C suite that we wanted it to be the premier destination, the premier membership and community for small business ceos everywhere.

So small business ceos of all industries, all stages of business. There's so much we can learn from one another when we crowdsource our unique lived experiences and pull them together. Right? So that's kind of like my why for why I'm so excited to learn and grow from these opportunities. And you've already heard me talk a little bit about angel investing in a previous bonus episode.

I can't remember the exact title, but I was like weighing two different investment opportunities. And then I shared with you kind of like my investment thesis. That was for my first angel investment, which was in Soursop nutrition. It is the world's first ever gummy form of soursop, which is this superfruit with superpowers. There's so many healing properties of this fruit, but Soursop is the first soursop nutrition.

Specifically, the company is the first company to be able to offer that to the masses where this fruit is not typically available. Like, you can't just walk into a grocery store and buy soursop here in the states, but we're providing it in a gummy form so that you can just take it as a supplemental nutritional gummy along with your multivitamins, along with whatever you do as part of your health routine. So that was my first angel investment. I know I keep referencing a lot of bonus episodes. Can you see why these are so juicy?

And we're moving them to a private podcast for you next year? Anyways, I digress. That link will also be below in the show notes if you want to catch up. But that was my first investment, so now I have three. If you go on my Instagram profile, you can see all three tagged if you're curious.

But I am an angel investor in Soursop nutrition. I'm also an angel investor in cherub, and then I'm an advisor in Lotsa. And you guys kind of already understand the angel investment side. From what I've just know, you are providing funding to a business in exchange for equity. And then on the advisor side, it's kind of a similar concept.

But instead of trading money for equity, you're trading your time and your skills and expertise and strategy and connections. All of the things, any sort of value that you bring to the table as an advisor, you are trading that for equity. So I do have equity in all three of these companies, but the structure, the deal structure and the terms look a little bit different for each one. We could spend honestly, and I'm still at the precipice of learning this entire world. So I am by no means an expert, but I have learned a lot in the past few months, most of it thanks to my amazing attorney, Mary of New wave law.

So shout out to. I mean, there are just so many very nuanced industry terms that you just wouldn't be exposed to if you're not playing in this world. So I do know I feel like more than the average person now, but I'm not an expert by any means. However, if you have questions, if you're interested in angel investing, I definitely think the best place to start is actually sign up for CHERUB. Get sent the Dealflow newsletter because that's where some of the best new emerging companies that are joining the cherub marketplace are being featured.

And you can learn a lot just from reading that free newsletter. And you can join when you sign up for the waitlist because it's not officially launched yet, still in beta, but the plan is to officially launch cherub at south by Southwest next spring. So spring 2024. And for the time being, when you sign up for the waitlist, that adds you to the newsletter. But you can select to join as either a founder or a funder.

So funder obviously being you have money that you want to deploy to companies, founder being your company seeking investment from angel investors. So anyways, that's my pro tip. Go join Cherub. I'll link that below the website where you can join and just start getting familiarized with this. If this is something you're interested in from a wealth growth perspective, if this is something that you want to invest your time or your money into, and there are so many other learnings too that I could share here, but for the sake, for the brevity of time, I think that's where I'll end it today.

My one last thought that I just want to contribute is I wish I had known about this world earlier in my journey. In some ways it might have harmed me because I don't think until now I would have been in a position where it would even make sense to invest money in an outside company instead of my own. But at the same time, even if I wasn't ready to take action on it yet, I wish I had just known about this world earlier, involved myself in this world earlier, because it is something that I feel like is an unpopular opinion. Or maybe I just perceive it that way as being an unpopular opinion. Maybe many of you agree with me, but the truth of the matter is the quickest shortcut to actually getting in the room where the conversations, where the magic, where the collaboration, where the relationships are happening is to pay for it, right?

People, I think, often underestimate the power of if you have a mentor on your vision board that you really want to work with, or you have someone that you really want to get in front of, you can pay for those opportunities to get in the room with them, pay for a ticket to the event that they're speaking at, pay for the containers that they're hosting, whether they have a mastermind or a program, pay for. I mean, it could look a variety of ways, but you know how, and this is kind of how I'm relating it back to this concept of why I wish I had known about this sooner. So many people spend tens of thousands of dollars a year on really expensive, high level masterminds, which I don't knock at all. I think there's so much value in masterminds. I've invested in high ticket masterminds.

But I think what a lot of people don't realize is those types of high level relationships or connections, or being able to tap into a network that you really want to tap into is able to happen not just within the container of a mastermind. Like if you angel invested in a business who has other investors on the cap table who also are other individuals that you really want to connect with, that's another way to get into their sphere, into their ecosystem. Right? And the cool thing is with that, you actually have ownership, too, and what is being created. It's not like you're just joining an experience that has a defined start and end date.

You actually are part of that journey. And that's just something that's a realization that I think if I had come to earlier, it might have changed the way that I thought about growing my networks and my relationships. So I don't know if that's helpful to you guys at all, but I just thought I would share what I'm learning in real time. As a founder, what else do I want to say here? I mean, the party was amazing.

The mixer. I don't even think I finished explaining what the mixer was, but it was, like I said, a party co hosted by Jacqueline Johnson and then Sophia Amarusso, very well known entrepreneur in our space. She was the founder of Nasty Gal. She found a girl boss. Now she's running this venture fund, trust fund, which is obviously kind of like, she even said so herself.

It's like a. Because, you know, we all talk about trust fund babies. She is not one, but it's kind of like a little cheeky reference to that self made journey, I guess. Anyways, the party was incredible. Met some really awesome humans, really awesome entrepreneurs that I've loved and admired from afar for a long time, as well as people that we've been Instagram friends but haven't actually had the chance to connect in person.

So that was really fulfilling. I created a whole reel kind of recapping that event. So if you are curious, if you want to take a peek, that Instagram reel will be linked in the show notes as well. All right, that is truly all I have for you today. I keep saying, all right, we're going to wrap it, but truly, that is what I have for you today.

I hope this was interesting, insightful. If you like these more founder journal entries, founders diary type solo episodes, please let me know if you'd like to see more of this type of content either on our public podcast or more likely in our bonus episodes that go on our private podcast next year for the C suite. I will catch you all in Monday's episode. Talk soon.

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