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Jo McKee I The Jo Show: My guest today knows what it's like to work inside Google and have all the marketing skills there, but also has started her own gig. Today will be the comparison of what happens in a big corporate environment and what happens when you're your own business. Ashley, welcome to The Jo Show
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: Thank you so much for having me. It's great to be here.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: something that works at Google scale that would be a complete waste of time for a small business owner. conversely what's something that small businesses can do that Google can't.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: That's a great question. think we have to remember that a company like Google has money. mean, has money, has people. I think when we're talking about marketing budgets, we are talking in the millions. So when you say, OK, I have a $1.5 million budget versus a $1.47 million budget, the difference is relatively negligible. But for a small business, that's $300,000. A lot of businesses in their first year, that's more than they're going to make that year. And so I even think about businesses that are trying to get booth space at a conference or trying to get a ticket to a conference. That can take you out. So I think just when you think about the sheer revenue and the people resources that a company like Google has and is able to allocate to marketing, it makes a really, really big difference. So I think small businesses cannot be, cannot afford to be everywhere and everything to everybody. You know, you really, really have to focus. I think a lot of businesses when they first get started, they're saying, okay, let me get this influencer. Let me get, be on Google ads and then Facebook ads and let me get on TikTok. And then let me try this Instagram thing. And you're trying to do everything without understanding. what's actually gonna drive revenue and what's gonna do that profitably. ⁓ So I think a really big mistake that a lot of small businesses make is thinking about sales by trying to just drive revenue with all these advertising spend and not thinking, okay, how do I do that profitably? And I think I've done that in my small business as well. I had a wake up call where I was spending a ton on Amazon ads. And I was getting a lot of sales, which was great. mean, I was excited. Every time I got a notification, mean, every day we're getting a lot of sales. At the end of the month, when I looked at my P &L, I'm like, wait a minute. My margins are tiny because Amazon takes a massive cut of every online sale. And I had to really be honest with myself and look back and say, the most profitable way I have ever driven revenue to my own business is events. you know, the farmers market, the school sale, the, you know, these mom and pop events that take sweat equity, you know, it takes getting on the ground and spending time with people, spending time with the community. It's not the online ads that are driving lot of revenue, but not doing that profitably. And so I think really paying attention to what drives profitable growth and focusing on that. versus thinking about trying to advertise everywhere and outspend your competitors, which you just can't do in your first one to five years of business.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: you created Primer Libro tell me about it and how you, the ⁓ whole point of what it was about and the mission, because that's so important before you run ad, you know, that positioning and the problem that you're solving.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: Yeah, so I actually created these books for my daughter. So I have a collection of books in Spanish to help kids age three to six learn to read independently. ⁓ I am a crazy, crazy person where I think my daughter should be three, four levels above whatever her grade is. We're doing math problems from like two years old. I'm a little bit crazy in that way. So we actually started doing the foundations of learning to read at a very early age. ⁓ She's now five. ⁓ And I remember we had set a New Year's resolution for her to read her first book cover to cover and really understand what she was reading. And when I first ⁓ started speaking to her, I started speaking to her in Spanish. So from the time she was born, I wanted her to have that under her belt. And I think language is such a gift that parents can give their kids. ⁓ I always say whether you know two words or you're native speaker, that kid better know all two words that you know. It's such a gift. And so when I started teaching her to read, I realized how difficult it was to teach her to read in English when she at the time didn't know English. ⁓ so I was trying to find books to help her to read in Spanish and there is just such a huge gap between bedtime stories and read a whole book by yourself in Spanish. You know, I think that exists in plethora in English. I mean, we have a book that I love called the cat and the hat and the rat. And you know, it has this repetition. It has, you know, similar letter choices and sounds and the kids can easily kind of pick up cat, rat, mat, bat, cravat, you know, over and over again. But I just did not find that in Spanish. And her English at the time wasn't strong enough to go straight into reading in English. And so I felt that even a lot of the books in Spanish had, they were written in cursive or they had a very complex language choice and they were bedtime stories. And I really wanted to create something that filled that gap so that she could learn to read and really hit that milestone and have that confidence to say, I did it all by myself, you know? And that's just the best moment. And so I think when I first kind of wrote the books for her and got them printed and when she finished and she said, I did it all by myself. And I said, that's it, you know? And that became kind of how I grounded the marketing in these kids being able to do something independently and say that phrase. And even now it just gets reinforced
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when parents approach me, message me and say, my kid was so excited when they said, I read a whole book all by myself. And I'm like, that's it. my kid was so excited when they said, I read a whole book all by myself. And I'm like, that's it. That's the marketing. That's the marketing. It comes to you sometimes out of purpose and out of mission.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: Exactly. There's no better feeling is there than when your child reads that first book and it's just a very special moment. love it. You mentioned the Amazon ads. Was that the hardest thing you realized? You know, when you got started, were there things that you didn't expect, I suppose, that proved to be more of a challenge than you thought they would be? And how did you get past that?
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: Yes, I think the book industry, children's book industry and the education industry as a whole is an entirely different animal. think one of the things that surprised me most is it is a it's the best way to say this, in-person industry, I guess. It's a face-to-face, it's a people industry, it's a get to know you, it's a who do you know in that space, it's... ⁓ getting into the school system, the districts, are you approved by this body that will say that you are actually helping children and things like this? that kind of learning the industry and learning a very manual industry ⁓ was very different from being in the tech space where things happen online, the industry happens on the computer. ⁓ And so needing to kind of build that in person was very ⁓ different for me, I would say. And it's still a challenge kind of learning that industry and the complexities of it, because in education, it's not ⁓ like some countries like France, for example, has a national education. The United States. That education system is different when you walk from one street to the other street. So kind of learning that in different environments is very complex. So that was definitely a learning curve for me. Yeah, I would say that's probably been the biggest learning curve. And I think that impacts your marketing. It impacts your strategy. Like I said, then in-person events become really important. Conferences become really, really important. ⁓ Whereas sending emails or messaging people may not be, you you have to get on the phone. have to, you know, so that was a big learning for me.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: It's a difference too often we think we need to find one champion in a company which would unlock things but you would have to find a champion in each district if you were relying on that method.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: I would say to add a layer of complexity to that, being at Google, when Google calls, people answer. Doors are opened. And I think that was a really big learning for me as well, that when you have your own business, those doors are closed.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: It's different scenario, that's right.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: But that was just an added layer of challenge to learning a new industry for me.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: It's like, damn it, don't you know I'm from Google? Absolutely not. I think in the home schooling market would be a good one for what you do.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: One of first customers was a homeschooler, and that kind of inspired me ⁓ to go that route and look through the homeschooling path as well, yes. ⁓
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: There's definitely parents with initiative who are looking for lots of different avenues for their kids to explore. Across both worlds, know, ⁓ and the small business world, something that does hold true as far as marketing principles go that just works.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: is everything ⁓ I think it holds true in very ways though. spent a lot of my career at Google doing data then at data analytics research things like this ⁓ It's not my primary role, but I think when you work in product marketing, you have to understand the product you have to understand customer and in ⁓ in a company like Google, I'm looking at data from millions of users. At YouTube, think we have like 20 million videos uploaded a day or something like this. ⁓ I can spend weeks doing research, conducting surveys, analyzing product data, just pitch for one feature that could take quarters to implement. It's ⁓ kind of a mountain to climb. ⁓ But our product managers and our engineers all of the really smart people who build things at YouTube. rely on data and insights to make decisions to say, this the right direction we should be going or not and why? And can we prove out that that's going to lead to some massive shift in whether it's revenue, usage, downloads, et cetera? And so data is at the core of that. When you have a small business, you're actually at an advantage in this space because you can personally know your customers. So you don't have to spend weeks and months going through mountains of data, millions of data points. If you're B2B, for example, and you have, say, five solid clients or 20 solid clients, you can know every single one of them. Even if you're in B2C, you can know the top 100 clients, whether that's through revenue, through recurring purchase rate, et cetera. You can follow those clients in social media. You have a WhatsApp community where you can get to know them better. They can commune with each other. You can go to trade shows, farmers markets, talk to them. You can put a flyer in your box and get feedback from a customer immediately. And you can know what's working and fix it within 24 hours. It doesn't take you three quarters to implement that change. So I think between a really big company in tech or a small business, data is everything and a small business has the advantage there.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: I'm so glad you mentioned that. It's actually my starting point. Whenever somebody comes to me, if they've got any clients at all, it's like, my first question is who's your, who are your best clients? I want to know everything I
can about them because then it's just a matter of find more like that, you know, the most profitable clients and it's a very real concrete starting point. And you're right. We have an advantage as small businesses. We can go straight to it. It's I love that you drew that out. Um, with your small business now, are you building a flywheel with all of the usual challenge channels now like organic and paid ads to amplify it and content and email, or are you not doing so much of that and just relying more on the in-person events? Like what does that, I guess, overall marketing structure look like for you at the moment?
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: Yes, so I do online paid advertising. I mentioned Amazon is one of them. I've done Google Ads as well. I think for me, the most important though when it comes to choosing what channel mix I'm using at the moment is, like I said before, what's driving profitable growth. And I think a lot of times when you're doing multiple things at one time, it's really hard to isolate what drove that customer to buy. And so we talk a lot at Google about ⁓ incrementality and attribution. So for the listeners who may not be as familiar with this, attribution is really like, If someone who makes a purchase, ⁓ did they at some point come contact ⁓ an advertising touch point that I had? So did they click an email? Did they see an ad, something like ⁓ And then incrementality is, if I hadn't done anything at all, would I have made this sale? ⁓ And so I try to make sure that I am doing things with the intent to track whether or not it drove a sale. ⁓ And so this is extremely difficult to do. ⁓ Whether you're at Google or in a small business, it's really hard, think, especially for small businesses to track incrementality, you need to do an A-B test, you may not have a big enough email alias to be able to say, I want to serve half of them this and half of them that email. You may just not have enough to split them in half. ⁓ So incrementality can be really hard to track. I would say I have tried it all. Like I said, I've done the Google Ads. I've done TikTok. I've done TikTok ads. I've tried YouTube. I've tried all of these different things. And what I have ⁓ I would say I have tried it all. made the most, not made a mistake, because it certainly wasn't a mistake. I think what I've had to do is slow all of that down. And like I said, see what drives the most profitable growth, because we have to have periods of revenue growth. We can't just spend on marketing all the time. We can't just spend on advertising, build partnerships all the time. We have to have periods of time where we say, you know what, I need to recuperate. what I have spent over the last X number of months. So I'm in a period now actually where I am forcing myself to spend zero dollars on advertising for a period of two months and go into kind of hardcore sales mode and just get the sales in, get the sales in and allows you to recuperate back and also pause, plan, know, look and see what worked, figure out how we move forward again. and then move forward again on a period of spending and marketing. But I have a spreadsheet where I keep track of everything. I I have a spreadsheet for everything. My whole life I've had spreadsheets for everything. And in those spreadsheets, I look at what percentage of my revenue is ⁓ marketing and what percentage of my expenses is marketing. I look at both of those and I think there are going to be periods in the business where you're saying, OK, I'm uncomfortable with this percentage being at this threshold. And there's going be periods where you're like, you know what? Over this month or this period of time, this percentage must remain below this amount. And those are your periods of growth and revenue driving. And it's just decisions that I kind of make nimbly throughout the month. And I have a doc as well called like marketing. And I say, OK, in the first half of January, this is my marketing mix. The second half of January, this is my marketing mix. The first half of February, this is my mix. ⁓ I've tried things like ⁓ giving out, there's companies in Spain, so my books are in Spanish, there's companies in Spain that do buconeo, it's like when you give a flyer in a mailbox. ⁓ or like those companies that will just put flyers in people's mailboxes or like on their cars and things like that. Or another example of that is the people who might stand outside of ⁓ a school and hand out flyers to the parents at the school or go to a park and hand out flyers to the parents there. So I've hired those people, for example, and I, when I'm going back to the tracking, I've had different tracking links for... different cities to see what performs better and different tracking links for different styles, whether it's putting it in the mailbox or handing out hand to hand, which one performs better. So everything's got to track back to, can I drive this revenue profitably?
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: like your unique tracking links for different initiatives. even put that into practice for one client for their organic posts. We gave each post a unique bit.ly link ⁓ just to see if we could, you know, ⁓ more a more granular way, track the effectiveness across the different platforms of the organic posts. was a beast of a spreadsheet, but it was a really interesting project and helped a lot. I love sometimes when you have a spreadsheet and you might show, okay, we've spent this much on Google ads, this much. ⁓ on Meta ads, we've got some Klaviyo revenue coming in and know, Google analytics says this much revenue came in, but seeing sometimes the percentage of revenue that each platform claims it generated because as you say, the incremental stuff comes into it and it adds up to more than a hundred percent. And I just laugh and I just go, okay, we're going in the right direction. ⁓ see how, ⁓ which direction things track in and that's the way we roll and it works quite well. But. between
people with privacy settings and states policies that tracking no matter what you do can be a bit interesting, can't it?
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: I mean, and someone could have seen both ads and you know, so I used to when I first started at Google 10 years ago, which is wild. I've been here that long. ⁓ I worked on an API that gives attribution for, ⁓ mobile app, mobile app, mobile app downloads. Sorry. So for example, if someone sees an ad for the Uber app, on Facebook and then two weeks later they see it on Google, they click it on Google to download, who gets the credit? it Facebook or Google? And so with attribution, like I mentioned before, it's where are they seeing these things, you know? And they could have seen it on multiple places, which is why doing some sort of A-B test to understand incrementality is really important sometimes to say, okay, did this actually kind of in the absence of this, what I have gotten this anyways, because otherwise a lot of times you're just burning and eating through your margins for some anyways.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: No small business can afford to do that. It's just, it has to earn its keep, that's for sure. ⁓ So has building your business changed how you see work at Google or how you see yourself as a marketer at all?
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: Right. Has it changed how I do my work? No. And I will say that only because I actually grew up in small business. So my parents have had a small business for over 30 years. ⁓ They always say when I was two years old, I was in the warehouse packing boxes from the time I could walk. ⁓ And so I grew up in that business my entire life. And that fundamentally changed how I came into Google, for sure. ⁓ I think when I came into Google and to this day, I have been ⁓ dedicated how do we drive revenue to the business. That's been something very important to me. how do we do that at a cost, ⁓ at the lowest cost possible? I've done a lot of work on my own that I think we typically would outsource to agencies. And then I think that work at Google has only helped to make me ⁓ better. ⁓ And I would say smarter at what I'm now. when it comes to using AI and things like this, ⁓ so ⁓ I would say it's more the other way where business has, has completely changed how I work as a marketer, but over the last 10 years, not more recently.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: ⁓ were talking to somebody now who's in a corporate job and they're sitting on an idea, maybe a little bit nervous about the what would you say to them?
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: Sometimes you just got try. Sometimes you just have to put yourself out there. And even if it's not perfect, just do it. And do not consult anyone, because that also kills businesses before they ever get started. When you have this idea and you're so excited about it and you dreamt about it and you woke up and you tell people and you want them to be right there with you and they do not have the energy that you have ⁓ about it or they're do
it. And do not consult ⁓ anyone, questioning and it's not always mal-intent. A lot of times they're just trying to understand the idea and they're asking you questions, but you don't have the answers yet and you're just like frustrated and then you drop it. Take that first step that takes. ⁓ your first idea may not be it, but don't stop, you know, don't stop putting yourself out there because I have surely had a plethora of ideas.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: ⁓ I'm looking forward to seeing what else you come up with. So with your current business, it's going to be way too hard to say, do you see yourself in five years? Because the pace of change right now is like, wake up and the world's changed. ⁓ So if we just say years out, where would you like to take it?
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: So my mission is super, super clear. I am here to help kids learn to read independently in Spanish. And I think the confidence that it gives them at three, four, five, six ⁓ is ⁓ the start. of their education trajectory and the confidence they have moving forward. And so for me, my vision over the next two to five years, ⁓ I see this building into education company ⁓ right now. I've with four books, but I have ⁓ so many books in my head, know, so many ⁓ ideas for new plots and new ways to help kids learn. I spend a lot of time doing ⁓ math with my daughter as well and trying to teach her math in new ways that aren't maybe being taught right now and bringing those to life through the books. I know it's about reading, but math is complimentary and confidence in math is complimentary as well. So I have a lot of ideas in the math space. ⁓ I have some tech ideas as well. So my vision really seeing this being a true ⁓ education company that has a number of SKUs and product lines behind it ⁓ and is embedded deeply in the education system. ⁓
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: I have no doubt you will do it. And of course, my mind was racing to the tech aspect of what you could create, even though there's nothing beats still holding a book in your hand.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: Right, and I've been really slow to move into that because even though I work in tech, I just don't believe that kids should be on a phone or in front of a TV all day or a tablet. I really wanted to create something that was screen free. So I even have some products used in the works that are kind of games to bring the family together that are physical games, no screen. So I think the tech aspect of it is gonna, I know exactly what I want and I know exactly how to get there, but I'm hesitant because I want to have as many kind of screen free product offerings and games before I move into that space. Cause it's, I don't know if I'm fully ready for what that comes with and the implications of a child learning on a screen. And I know that it's a good thing, but I'm still trying to So trying to get myself out there, you know?
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: Is there anything else that you'd like to leave listeners with?
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: I watch a lot of Shark Tank. ⁓ And you see lot people who I lost my job ⁓ I had to make some money, I had to put food the So I sold this. thing and then now it's like Etsy and I'm a millionaire. I think that desperation sounds negative, there is a desperation there ⁓ that comes losing your job or being forced into a new situation or you're not happy with your job and got to get out. ⁓ So sometimes there's you're put in certain positions in life ⁓ that are conducive to starting a business and kind of force you to get out there. So timing is everything as well. So I would say you can't force it on yourself. I believe you should put yourself out there and you shouldn't allow yourself and other people to stop you from chasing something that you believe is right and true. But that doesn't always mean quitting your job to go full time. You have to fund that idea. You have to, you know, you have to food on the table. ⁓ Sometimes it just means taking that first step of going to a conference in that industry that your ideas and meeting with other like-minded people. ⁓ But the timing is important and you can't, ⁓ we're not God looking down on people and saying, okay, let me kind of put things in, put people in certain positions. We can't see that perspective. But I think I spend a lot of time in prayer. I spent a lot of time asking God, what is my next move, guide by next step? And I think that helps a lot to say, is the timing of this idea right? Or do I need to hold back? Do I need to pivot? And so I rely quite a bit on that. So like I said, timing means a lot in this.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: really good advice, ahead a little bit, building portfolio, if you like, of options rather than allowing yourself to be in a position where you could be backed into a corner and ⁓ seeking wisdom that's a bit bigger than So Ashley, tell me a lot of small businesses just, don't think they grasp what it means to implement AI tools into their business yet. They're probably buying wrappers or got a million subscriptions bleeding their bank account, $5 here, $20 there, all doing one little tiny thing, or think that chatting to chat GPT is using AI. Tell me your take on that right now and what they should be thinking about.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: lot of small stop the AI give me ideas ⁓ or write this ⁓ for me. And that ⁓ the scratching surface ⁓ of what's possible in world of AI for small ⁓ So ⁓ at YouTube, have wonderful minds and fantastic teams who build a lot with AI. ⁓ And so they built, for example, tools that allow you to write SQL scripts, ⁓ to be able to pull data from different parts of the business, to have certain data user insights, to make decisions, to build campaigns. So that has been extremely helpful for me. I took a 10-hour SQL course. and came out still not knowing how to write SQL. ⁓ So to be able to spend five minutes inputting information to get out SQL code for millions of data points was incredible. A huge shift,
I think, for my business. ⁓ Again, very simple. I used AI to build my website. So just getting the code, the HTML, ⁓ written, the CSS written to build the code. Like that is, again, super simple. I think a lot of businesses don't even think about is using AI for that. ⁓ But AI can do so much more. AI can answer your phone calls so you don't have any more missed calls. It can be an entire customer service team. There's AI that's replying to WhatsApp messages, some that are very, very good, some that are very, very bad at that. ⁓ You can fully code an app end to end. If you say, you know what, I'm going to develop an app that does ABCD, there is AI that can take that idea and literally have you launched app in the app store within five hours. ⁓ So that it's huge. It's incredible. You know,
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: that even internally I've been playing before I wanted to offer things publicly. I've been doing it for my own agency and I used to pay $850 a month for SEMrush for the seats and the features. I've rebuilt all of the SEO just with AI agents. And I've also, ⁓ built my own task scheduler. used to use monday.com. don't need to buy that anymore. I've built my own.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: Yes, yes. guess there's this saying when people say ⁓ hire your weaknesses. And I think AI has changed that so much where AI allows you to actually sharpen or strengthen your weaknesses. And then you hire when it's necessary. So when you've gotten to a growth point where you say, you know what, I can't do this.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: Yes.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: alone with my AI team anymore, or this particular action needs a human to take it to the next level. You hire when necessary. AI helps to really strengthen your weaknesses. It is not anymore hire your weaknesses alone. ⁓ That's definitely a huge learning. But I think a lot of small businesses also get this wrong, where they don't understand the AI enough and will pay for these services. and rely on them 100 % and they're not delivering. So, I mean, personally, I've had so many experiences where I've tried to work with a small business and filled out the form on their website and then got an automatically generated email. And then I replied to the email with a question and then gotten a new AI generated email that doesn't answer the question. And you spend a week going in circles. And I think as a customer. And I think a business owner has to also start to understand how this AI is working, how it's developing for you, being able to edit. So edit code ⁓ a little bit, you know, to read a line of code and say, okay, is this right? Is this going to give me the output that I'm looking for? ⁓ And really start learning that because the human knowledge complements, feeds, trains the AI and make sure it's delivering the experience that your customers expect from you. ⁓ So I would definitely encourage all businesses to use it, get out there, try it, even if it just starts with asking a question, what can you do for me? What can AI do for my small business that sells flowers on Main Street in this city? What can AI do for me to help my business? Here's my website. What can you do for my website? a screenshot of an ad that I did in a magazine or in the local newspaper, what can you do for this? And just to get ideas of what's possible with AI and really start implementing that. So I think AI is super, super important.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: I'm so glad that you touched on that. people want to get in touch with you, is the way the website.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: Primer Libro.com and my email is there. can email it. Hola at Primer Libro.com also on LinkedIn. I I'm, I've started to really love LinkedIn over the last year or so. Um, I, I never liked the word networking. So the idea that it was kind of a networking platform really bothered me. Um, and I've just realized over the last year, how important it is to have. people who vouch for you, people who are supporting you in your journey, ⁓ people you can call on to learn from. So LinkedIn has been huge for that. So I'm always so happy to connect with people on LinkedIn. ⁓ And please feel free to reach out.
Jo McKee I The Jo Show: Excellent. Thank you so much, Ashley.
Ashley Woods I Primer Libro: Thank you so much for having me. Have a great week.