If you’re looking to position yourself ahead, then you need to be at the top of your game. And while there are many experts in your own field, how can you separate yourself from the pack? Our guest for today’s episode, Nancy Juetten, has the solution: say goodbye to boring bios! Nancy sits down with Susie Carder to share her book, Bye-Bye Boring Bio, and her stories of overcoming life’s challenges and turning them into opportunities. Plus, Nancy tells us some of her wealth-building strategies and how she is transforming speakers, experts, and authors into sought-after podcast guests who speak their way to six-figures and beyond. Don’t miss out on this conversation!
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Nancy Juetten On Transforming Boring Bios, Wealth-Building, And Being Brilliant Podcast Guests
My guest is Nancy Juetten. She transforms speakers, experts, and authors into sought-out-after podcast guests who speak their way to six figures and beyond. Nancy combines her years of public relations agency success and proven online marketing strategies that she’s honed since 2009. She is the velvet boot of accountability to kick clients’ hiney. She’s into empowering sustainable and visible gear. Please, welcome my guest, Nancy.
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Nancy, I’m excited to chat with you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for everything that you do. Tell our students, what is your genius and what is your sweet spot?
It’s fun to talk about this because you only have to ask your clients what your genius is. They tell me that I’m a word wizard. I’m a human exclamation point on steroids. If they can’t find their brilliant way to talk about themselves with a flashlight and duct tape in a miracle, I can find it for them.
There have been many people that have been turned upside down. What I love about this show is we tell the truth quicker and faster. When I look at that, what has been your secret during this whole challenging time, which is entrepreneurship but people say, “It’s because of the pandemic, politics, and war?” You and I have both been through these ups and downs of life, business, recessions, and depressions. What has been your secret sauce to keep us going during this time?
We can check into a pity party hotel, wring our hands, cry in our beer, put our heads in the sand and hope for better days or we can roll up our sleeves, look for opportunities and see how we can add value during these challenging times. That was my secret sauce. I woke up in March 2020 having run a successful PR agency, helped people with their bios, done all kinds of public speaking, and knew publicity the back of my hand and I was thinking, “What method of publicity that’s going to be useful for people who can’t leave their house.”
I put all of my skill into teaching people how to be brilliant podcast guests. When you can get booked on podcasts, speak to the right people and show up brilliantly delivering value with authenticity and spirit, you can have your message carry around the world, around the nation, across the street, and around the block. If people need what you have, they know whether or not you are someone they want to talk to. I have been empowering thousands of people to do exactly that since the pandemic hit, and it has been a sweet spot for me.
There are many people that don’t know how to be on a podcast. You and I both know this. You are like, “Bummer.” Teach virtually because that’s a different skillset as well. Leveraging that and not be boring because you can’t be boring, and you got to have those sound clips.
Being the queen of the sassy soundbite, I have been told that my whole life. It has been such an interesting thing when you discover that there is a medium that exists where you can have your personality, bring your conviction, bring your value, be your inimitable self, and know that it will stand and carry. Those podcast guest spots stay online forever. They can be a mechanism for people to ping pong back into your world. Not now, not next week, not next year but indefinitely. It’s efficient and super empowering.
I would like to tell this story about my dad because he was an actor in Hollywood. The only way that an actor in Hollywood gets booked on shows is to go on auditions and hope for the best. You go on auditions, hope for the best, and think, “Maybe they are going to give me the part.” It’s a disempowering place to stand while you are collecting food stamps and wondering how you are going to get groceries for your kids.
The cool thing about podcast guesting is you can book yourself on two shows a week, come hell or high water, and you can be brilliant twice a week. If you’ve got the right message to share, you can make a lot of magic happen, and people don’t have to leave their houses. If you are introverted and live events are not your jam, it’s a silver lining for all those somewhat introverted people that love to speak but maybe don’t want to go to the 400-person event room and navigate all that cacophony. There’s a lot of value in being able to speak up from your house, your laptop or wherever you happen to be and deliver your wow.
There is so much more exposure versus the olden days, which weren’t olden anymore. You would have to get on a plane, go somewhere, be in front of those people. A 1-hour event could be a 3-day journey. Now, you are like, “I will have 3 to 5 shows a day.” How many audiences do you touch?
I heard Jack Canfield talk up on a podcast. He’s this incredible America’s success coach. He’s written all these books. He says, “We are not looking for the new normal people. We are looking for the new better.” He loves his wife, kids, and walking his dog at night. He can be on podcasts all day long and still be at home to walk the dog at night, have dinner with his wife, call the kids, not have jet lag, and not have to deal with TSA. It’s all mindset.
Either you are going to roll up your sleeves and get to work or wring your hands and cry in your beer. We have to decide to do what’s right for our skillset. We have to do something that’s of contribution to the marketplace. If we want to make money doing it, there’s no reason we can’t do it. No matter what the circumstances are in the economy, the world or in our own backyard.
You have a lifestyle business. “I’m the driver of let’s build a seven-figure business,” and that’s not right for everybody. We talked about that in our past conversations. Talk about you creating a lifestyle business. When did that occur for you? When did you decide, “This is what I want versus that’s what I want?” Most people think that’s the dream. Sometimes that dream is a nightmare. I’ve had those nightmares. I’ve built several of them and go, “That was the hardest million dollars I ever created.” Let’s talk about that.
My business is a boutique business that is highly profitable and lean. I wouldn’t have it any other way because I don’t want to be responsible for a large team of people that has to pay their mortgage. I don’t want to be responsible for a whole team of people. That, to me, is a lot of pressure. I want to be responsible for my clients and my own obligations.
[bctt tweet=”When you can get booked on podcasts, speak to the right people, show up, and brilliantly deliver value with authenticity and spirit, you can have your message carried around the world. ” via=”no”]
I’m married to a certified financial planner professional. We have been fiscally responsible our entire lives. We’ve invested wisely in all kinds of things that deliver value and wealth to us in multiple ways. Isn’t it a beautiful thing to be able to do work you love on terms that are right for you, knowing that at this stage and age of my life, I’m not cut out to manage a huge team?
I’m not apologizing for it either because it’s an exciting thing for people who are attracted to me. When you work with me, you work with me. You don’t work with my front-facing person, who’s never done any of this but has been playing from a playbook. You get me. That’s for you or that’s not for you. The people that come behind the velvet rope with me are attracted to working with me and know that’s what they are going to get, and I deliver in spades.
It may not be for everyone but I like being able to keep it lean and real. I put myself in a situation where I can be at my best, doing the things that I’m strong at versus forcing myself to be a team manager and a human resources manager. The whole math, I know you are the profit coach, and there are certain peaks and valleys that you reach where it gets a whole lot easier but there’s a long period in there where you got to suffer and scramble around on going to make it happen. I don’t want to live there.
Most people don’t figure it out until they are in it. They are like, “This isn’t fun.” I was talking to a client this week. She does $5 million a year but she’s only paying herself $3,500 a month. I’m like, “This is not right. We have to change this model.” Paying the team $12,000, $10,000, $7,000. I’m like, “That’s not a sustainable model for you. You get burnout. You are tired. You resent your team and yourself.”
Maybe not even consciously. That’s that unconscious stuff that steals our joy and passion. One of the first things we said when we met, one of the first times, you are like, “I don’t want that.” My girlfriend said, “I don’t want to have kids.” I’m like, “How did you know that?” I thought, “Check, I did that. Check about the house. Check about the seven-figure business.” You go, “How did you know?” That’s powerful.
There’s one other thing that I should say that made it clear to me. Sometimes you look at people’s Facebook Feed, and it looks like everything is wine, roses, kittens, and unicorns. They are having the greatest time of their life. If you live behind the curtain, maybe all is not great in paradise. Right about 2018, a whole bunch of life hit the fan in my personal life. My husband had a minis stroke. My mother was diagnosed with dementia, subsequently declined, and passed away. A close family member got divorced after 32 years of marriage. Our house was burglarized, and everything of value was taken from us, including both of our cars, while we were away at a conference speaking.
When life hits the fan one, right after the other, your whole situation is called into question, and you think about what matters and what doesn’t. My husband and I came to this place of, “Maybe it’s time for more life in our years and less stuff to manage.” Our whole philosophy is how can we put more life in our years? My husband, to who I have been married to for several years, if I almost lost him, I want to enjoy every last minute that I have with him.
More life in our years means keeping it simple, keeping it lean, keeping it profitable, making sure clients get the value that they came for in a bag of chips besides, and making time to enjoy life. I don’t want to get to the end of my life and say, “I worked all the time and don’t have anything to show for it.” People will come and take from your house everything you have and drive away with both of your cars, we have no control. Sometimes life hits the fan.
One of your geniuses is you say, “Bye-bye to boring bios.” Talk about what you see from your experience, and look at our bios. I’m saying, us, entrepreneurs, business owners, and what some hacks we can do to get rid of the boring bio?
Look at your bio through the filter of I’m looking at myself for the first time and ask yourself, “If you were a host, would you be excited to meet you on that podcast?” Most people are box checkers. They say, “The webmaster said I needed a bio. I schlep one together.” Someone created a media one sheet and submitted it for my review.
I said, “I hate to be the one to break it to you. This is generic that the delete key is coming to get you, and there’s no saving it. Let me point out why this is not working for you. Let me ask you some juicy questions about, ‘What’s your unique and provocative point of view. How did you come about this particular genius? How have you applied it? How long have you been at it? How many lives have you touched and transformed since you discovered this talent? What’s your big mission in life, and how’s it going so far?’”
She hadn’t answered any of those questions. It was the author, speaker, coach, and snooze, you lose. If you are leading with an author, speaker, coach or snooze, you lose start again. How many authors, speakers, and coaches are there across the globe? That sounds like bread, eggs, and milk to me. What’s the heck? Are you an award-winning entrepreneur? Are you featured in major media that we would recognize? Do you have clients with names that we would know that would make your credibility shine brighter? Have you been at it for several years and are recognized for being on top of all the latest best practices that are working in your niche audience? Who is your niche audience?
Sometimes people forget to name and claim who their people are. The person who’s reading it thinks, “I don’t know if that’s for me or not.” I’m like, “Who are your people?” Sometimes people forget. I work with early-stage entrepreneurs. I work with mid-level career professionals. I work with people who want to get out of debt, even if they have been stuck in it for a lifetime. I’m like, “Who are your people?” If you can’t name and claim who your people are, you lose them at hello. The what’s in it for me thing is real. People are screen to screen all the time. If they don’t get the immediate value instantly, you are out to lunch. It’s not happening.
[bctt tweet=”With podcasting, if you’ve got the right message to share, you can make a lot of magic happen, and people don’t have to leave their houses.” via=”no”]
It is true. You are part of the herd versus standing out and being the leader of that. We talked about a couple of different obstacles. We have a similar story. I love your story about the 2008 recession when that one hit. What happened? How did you come out of that?
That was one of those pity party hotel moments. I had been running a boutique public relations agency, working with clients such as Roger Staubach, the football great, Friends Chocolate, Seattle Chocolate Company, and a lot of national food brands. I was having the time of my life. When the recession happened, it seemed like all of my clients disappeared in a heartbeat because publicity didn’t seem urgent at that time, as they were holding on for dear life to save their own companies.
I found myself with a brand new house, the one we couldn’t sell, and thinking that the fear of embarrassment of having to put my house in the neighborhood where we had lived for several years. I couldn’t bear the thought of having to declare failure. A friend dared me. She said, “You are good at writing bios and making them brilliant. I dare you to write a book about it. I dare you to get it done in three weeks or less.”
I didn’t have anything better to do. I wrote this book, Bye-Bye Boring Bio. At the time, I had 1,085 people on my newsletter list, which by internet standards, is incredibly small but I wrote an authentic message. I said, “Were you kicked to the curb by the Great Recession? I’ve hung out your shingle and need to attract clients. I’ve written a book to help you stand out at hello. It’s called Bye-Bye Boring Bio. If you want to buy it, go here and get it.” It was that.
I said a little prayer and hit send. I went and walked the dog. When I came back, there was this slot machine in front of me, “You have an order.” It was enough to pay the mortgage. My husband is in Bellevue, Washington, which is no small thing. My husband says, “I don’t know what you did but will you please do it again?”
What happened is there was an urgent problem. I created a simple but effective solution. The market to message match was right. It created this magic carpet ride for me, not only to help people make their bios better but I started getting invited to speak about how to transform your boring bio from wallpaper to wow, to attract clients now. I started doing training about it. I started exhibiting at conferences about it.
I made quite a name for myself with it. It allowed me to build a whole marketing enterprise because there’s the bio, the Broadcast Your Brilliance Bootcamp, private work with me, and I have all this affiliate stuff that I do that brings revenue, raw-looking good results for me and other people. I built a whole empire around it. Here I am.
By 2022, I’ve done this book three times. The most recent edition was done in 2022. It was completely revamped for virtual speakers, podcast guests, and messengers who needed to speak up without leaving home, and the magic carpet emerged again. It’s a situation where lousy things happen in life, and none of it’s our fault but you can sit there, cry in your beer, check into a pity party hotel, wring your hands and say, “Oh well.” You can take a dare from a friend, create something brand new and see how it could serve people. That’s what I did. We got to keep the house. Finally, we sold the one that wouldn’t sell before and managed to get back on our feet. Here we are still.
Let’s talk about your wealth strategies. You are blessed to have someone that understands it in your household. I know you do as well but having someone in that industry is amazing. What has been your guys’ strategy to build your own personal wealth?
We have been fiscally responsible since the moment we met. That means that we always invested. We are the millionaire next door. We have a real estate portfolio that’s quite impressive. We own our primary residents outright. We had saved for retirement consistently, even before we were pregnant, we were saving for our kid’s college, and we saved for him to go to college the whole time.
Real estate, fiscal responsibility, and being the millionaire next door. That means driving a car that’s a few years older than the one that’s hip and cool now. That means not blowing money on a designer bag or designer shoes. I dress well. I show up nicely. We live well but we live far below our means. We’ve invested wisely in real estate. We’ve gotten lucky.
Being married to a financial advisor is interesting. My husband’s dad was the youngest of eleven kids, and he worked for general foods for a million years. One week before he was supposed to get his pension, the company fired him, and he didn’t have the benefit of all the years of service. That was a horrible experience that my husband had as a young man seeing his dad at the end of his working life, denied what he should have had.
My husband ended up going to work in employee benefits communications, at the point that ERISA, the law that was passed that was going to protect people from suffering from that fate. He spent his whole career in employee benefits communications and caring about saving for the future and making sure you do the right things.
We have saved for the future. We have done the right thing. We have invested in real estate. We have been conservatively investing. We are not Bitcoin people. We take a rather conservative approach but it’s a nice place to be at this stage because he sold his company for a multiple of its value as of now, and that was the last thing.
[bctt tweet=”Sometimes, you look at people’s Facebook feed, and it seems like everything’s wine and roses, kittens and unicorns, and they’re having the greatest time of their lives. But if you live behind the curtain, maybe all is not so great in paradise.” via=”no”]
Honestly, he started this company because he wanted to have a job that would free him up from the day-to-day workday of you are here now, fire tomorrow. He took responsibility for creating a firm that turned into something meaningful. We have been fiscally responsible. We’ve invested in real estate. We’ve saved deliberately. We’ve lived the millionaire next door lifestyle. That gives us a lot of choices. I wouldn’t change a thing and don’t regret any of the shoes I wear or any of the handbags I carry. I’m never embarrassed to show up at an event wearing something that looks great but may not have a label. I feel good about how I can sleep at night, knowing that we are okay.
Nobody knows what the label is unless you are flipping it upside down. The red bottom shoes, you do know that but I’m sorry. They hurt my feet. When you look at, “Isn’t it worth it?” I love that because that’s our philosophy as well. I met a financial advisor early. I was 23 or 24. She made me put that 10% aside, “You put that aside first. You pay yourself first, different than your paycheck. I need you to pay it for the future.” That account has saved me many times in you being able to borrow from it to buy a house, launch my first book or pay for college and pay myself back. I’m not borrowing money from an institution.
Sometimes, there’s a silver lining in an unfortunate situation. I mentioned that our home was burglarized. It was a violating thing. They drove away with both of our cars, shattered glass everywhere. We are sitting in this beautiful home in a high-net-worth neighborhood. Our son has already graduated from high school. He’s off to college. We look at each other and say, “Do we need to be living in this ZIP code to have a life that we can enjoy?” We ended up selling at the peak of the market. We bought in a different city at a steal of a market and got out from underneath a mortgage payment that was suffocating.
There’s a whole other way you can live well when you don’t dread the first of the month. You’ve got to find a way to crack that nut. I didn’t realize if that’s what you’ve always done all of your life, and you’ve never experienced anything different. That’s the way it was for me until several years ago. Now we have a beautiful home in another city that we like but no mortgage payment. That gives you a lot of choices.
I love not having a mortgage payment or a car payment. I’m like, “Let me pay cash for stuff.” In my first divorce, we had to file for bankruptcy. It was humiliating, and it taught me if you don’t have cash, you don’t buy it because, in bankruptcy, you have no credit. I lived that way for several years, and it became a habit. I heard, “You can’t get credit for seven years.” I didn’t know you could get credit but I walked around like, “I can’t get credit.” It gave me the discipline that if you can’t pay cash, you can’t have it. My motto is still that way.
It is like, “If that bill comes in, can I pay that off? Do I have money left over?” It allows me to accumulate. By the time you have that money, you are like, “I don’t want that thing.” I’m not going to spend $2,000, $4,000, $10,000 or $100,000, whatever that thing is. I’m like, “I don’t want that. I don’t want to pay that.” It gets to be fun accumulating. People don’t realize that accumulation is more fun than spending, to me. I like to see that.
I said, “We have been smart, but we have been lucky.” The man I married, I still love as much as I loved him the day that we met. Divorce is expensive. Divorce is disabling and crippling to a lot of financial lives but that is not something that we have had to contend with, and that’s luck and work at the relationship. I’m grateful for that because 50% of marriages don’t succeed.
Even in business, I’ve gone to plenty of live events. I’ve networked with some of the most successful people on Earth. My husband has come with me to all these events, and while some of the people are throwing down tequila shots and dancing on the ceiling, I’m tending to my husband and making sure that he’s happy and that we are spending quality time together. I have been teased about it but I don’t regret that for a second.
How many more tequila shots do I need to down to prove that I’m good at what I do? I don’t need to take any tequila shots down or dance on anybody’s ceiling. I’m good at what I do. I’m proud of how I do it. I have a good marriage. My kid is healthy and happy. In terms of wealth, to be healthy, happy, and satisfied with who I’m sharing my life with that’s plenty of wealth for me.
That’s the biggest wealth. Money helps, and money gives us choices. I can not have to work hard. I loved when you said, “I have a highly profitable business.” Not just a profitable business, you all, I want you to read highly profitable because that’s the goal. It’s supposed to give us a lifestyle that in job cannot. I appreciate your honesty, candor, and willingness to share. It’s transparent because that’s what this show’s about. It’s like friend talk. Let’s talk about the real stuff.
When I started this, I was like, “I want to have my clients hear these stories because I have some of the most amazing people on the planet around me.” I feel selfish, and you are one of those people. I feel blessed to have you in my circle, tribe, and community. How can people, Nancy, play with you? How can they get a hold of you? I know you came bearing gifts.
I lead a fabulous Facebook group. It’s called the Raise Your Voice – Make YOUR Impact as a Podcast Guest Facebook group. If you want to explore how to make that world payoff for you, I would love for you to hop on over to GetKnownGetPaid.com/group. We are 3,300 members strong. We are highly engaged. There are some movers and shakers in there. I can’t wait to have you be a part of it. If you feel the need to make your bio a little bit more brilliant, you can go get my Know Like Trust Report At First Glance at GetKnownGetPaid.com/klt. In one quick report, you are going to get some a-has to put some pizazz into your bio so that you will stand out, shine and attract more of what you want straight away.
You want to be in Nancy’s community. She is one of the givingness people I’ve met. She’s a love bucket. She walks her talk, her tongue in her mouth or tongues her shoe going in the same direction. Thank you, Nancy. Have an amazing day. I appreciate you. I look forward to many more conversations with you.
Thank you. It has been a pleasure.
Important Links
- Nancy Juetten
- Bye-Bye Boring Bio
- Broadcast Your Brilliance Bootcamp
- GetKnownGetPaid.com/group
- GetKnownGetPaid.com/klt
- www.Twitter.com/NancyJuetten
- www.Facebook.com/NancyJuettenPersonal
- https://www.LinkedIn.com/in/nancy-juetten/
- https://www.Instagram.com/nancyjuetten/
- https://www.YouTube.com/c/NancyJuetten
- https://getknowngetpaid.com/bye-bye-boring-bio-2021/
- www.MediaOneSheetNow.com
About Nancy Juetten
Guiding successful service based entrepreneurs to book themselves on top podcasts — without hiring an expensive booking agency or letting overwhelm or technology take them out.
Leading the Broadcast Your Brilliance Boot Camp is my favorite way to guide clients to get media ready, media savvy, and on message to pitch and win with finesse, confidence and conviction.
You can learn more about it at https://getknowngetpaid.com/byb
Virtual Trainer & Speaker/ Online Marketer/ #1 Amazon Best Selling Author of the Bye-Bye Boring Bio Workbook. I am a dog lover, word wizard, and connector who leads with generosity first.
The next Podcast Visibility Live Lab starts June 6-14, 2022. Claim your virtual front row seat now at www.podcastvisibilitylivelab.com.
No business owner losing sleep because his or her bio is boring, but many are laying awake and wishing they were being invited to step up to new and better opportunities.
