ESC Impact Weekly: Subscription Newsletter for Scaling Female Entrepreneurs

This is one of those cross-over posts, like old sitcoms when they do cross-over episodes. This is a mash-up between my business, my co-founder’s OBM business, and the ESC Events brand! The exciting part is that we are all coming together to continue to serve entrepreneurs who are in their growth phases, which is pretty darn cool. For the sake of this blog post, I will split up the speaking parts between myself and Kassie, like a script from a movie. Here goes!

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K: Hey everyone. Welcome to a special ESC Events podcast episode. I am here with Ali, the co-founder of the ESC Conference and the ESC Retreat. Hey Ali!

A: Hello. Hello. Excited to collaborate today.

K: I know it’s, it’s so exciting. We do a lot of this behind the scenes, so it’s always fun when we get to push something out and this will be going live on both of our podcasts. Mine is the Mastermind Mixer and yours, Ali…

A: Mine is The Ali Rae Haney Show.

K: Awesome. So we are coming together because we have some fun things to talk about. So Ali, I’m going to let you dive in and kind of do the little intro to what we’re getting into because I’m super excited to talk about it.

A: Sure. So we’re going to have a little bit of story time first. We hosted the very first ESC Conference back in April of this year. Kassie and I kind of went in, I don’t want to say blindly because we did copious amounts of research beforehand, but we went in not knowing really what to expect from the outcome of the event. And I can say confidently that the outcome of the event was bigger than what we had even imagined. So now that we are a few months out, we’ve really been seeing a lot of ripple effects of all of the connections that were made at the ESC Conference. I have started to keep a list of all of the people that are working together that we were able to bring together at the conference. I think we’re up to close to 10-15 different major business connections and involvements. So that’s pretty darn cool. And for a small business owner, that can be really impactful, which was the whole point of the ESC Conference.

K: Yes, we’ve seen really big connections, but even like I love that whenever I see a post in a Facebook group of somebody looking for somebody, it’s all of our attendees in the comments like hyping each other up. I think that that is so cool. I mean, I personally get DMs from attendees and speakers alike like, “Hey, we saw this, you should apply for it.” Or, you know, all of these different like little just support and like cheerleading happening behind the scene that’s been really cool, too.

A: Yeah, that is so true. I didn’t even think about the Facebook groups, but it’s not a single day that I log on that I don’t see somebody was tagging somebody else from the conference, which is really cool.

K: Yeah, I love it.

A: So we decided that we were going to also create a second event, a fall event, the ESC Retreat. However, looking at sort of the overall big picture that brings us and our community together, maybe eight days out of a year. And we really just wanted to find a way to better serve entrepreneurs who are in our community and those who want to join our community in some way throughout the entire year. We didn’t want to limit it to eight days because we saw the impact that those eight days had. So why not just pile on some more goodness?

K: And if you read or hear the reviews from the conference or you are there, you know that like we love to give like it gives giving is like a low key love language of ours apparently.

A: Or maybe not so low key.

K: I think we did really well with what what our attendees called “the details” and just showering them with every possible piece of information and love that we could. And that’s I think that this you know, what’s coming now is is the trickle effect of that even, you know.

A: Absolutely. So as we were kind of like brainstorming, how can we positively impact this group of women outside of those eight days a year? And suddenly in my inbox pops this email from Ashlyn Carter. It was a video about how she was starting a newsletter. That newsletter had specific things that could help her ideal clients and be able to serve them continuously in their inbox every week. So we took a couple of notes out of Ashlyn Carter’s book. We were like – “Wow, that would be really great for us to do for our business owners that are specifically looking to grow.” And oftentimes it’s either just them as a solopreneur or them plus maybe one, maybe two other team members. So we’re taking my expertise in branding and marketing, Kassie’s expertise and systems and operations and bringing them together and packaging them up. So it’s like you could have a full agency behind you to be able to support you in your day-to-day endeavors of your business.

K: Yeah. And really it made so much sense when it did come up. And I want to say something about Ashlyn Carter’s approach to the email that you got too, because it very much like speaks to us as well as because she doesn’t gatekeep. So it was really nice to see somebody that’s like, in our opinion, thriving and successful. But she’s like, “Hey, here’s what I’m doing. Here’s the steps you need to take to do it.” And she really like just laid it out where we’re like, “This is what we’ve been trying to come up on our own!” And we just kept feeling like, you know, we had tossed around a few ideas, but nothing felt solid like this is what we should do. So I just love that those with the same intentions that we have, we’re like finding that community amongst others, too, which feels feels really good.

A: Absolutely. So I feel like we’ve teased it quite a bit. Do you want to take it over and jump into exactly what we are launching and announcing and sharing with the world today?

K: Absolutely. So we will be dropping into your inbox weekly with the ESC Impact Weekly subscription. It will be like I said, how many times can I say weekly? You’ll be getting something every week and each week will be themed to different topics that are in our zone of genius. So one week will be operations. Another week will be community. Then a third week will be marketing and a last week will be lifestyle. And just staying true to ourselves, it’s going to be tangible, actionable, you know, impactful.

K: We don’t want fluff in your inbox because that would be really annoying to get every week. We want something that you can actually take and do it that week or do it that month that will help you chip away at the the mountain of of what it means to be a solopreneur.

A: Absolutely. So each month is going to have a different theme. So let’s say for example, the month of October could all be surrounding goal planning or the month of November can all be surrounding business development. But each week we deliver different resources. Those resources could be an email template, a Canva graphic that you can personalize to your business, a checklist, a spreadsheet. And the next week you’ll have a marketing resource. The next week you’ll have a community resource. The next week you’ll have an operations resource. And finally, to round out the month, you’ll have a lifestyle resource.

K: And the reason that we’re doing it that way is obviously like operation and systems is my zone of genius; marketing and branding is Ali’s. Then community and lifestyle really speaks to our attendees and it really speaks to our core values and our mission behind ESC Events and community being networking in the solopreneur world, like not feeling alone. I don’t know how many people have really examined our website to know our values, but one of those is respect. And at the core of that is that we understand that people have life outside of their business.So we’re going to make you break away from the computer every now and again or encourage you to find a balance of sorts and understand how you can have a business and still have a life and do all those things. So that’s where those categories really, really come from.

A: Yeah, it was really funny that we were sitting down to try and figure out what we wanted our four categories were going to be.And of course, marketing and operations, that was that was a given because that’s what we do in our own businesses. And then to round out the rest of the month, we were like, how do we incorporate the values that we set forth for ESC into this? Because those values, that’s something that we didn’t do individually for our own businesses to start out with. And we knew when we were starting the foundation of ESC that that’s something that was a non-negotiable. And now we refer back to those values probably weekly and definitely whenever we decide to make a new offering or make a major decision for the business.

K: Yeah, it’s it’s so true. And I think it encouraged both of us to do that in our own separate businesses because it makes everything so much easier.

A: So as soon as we were like, how do we fill this in? We were like, “Okay, what are our values? Oh, these are values. Okay, we need something that shows them how to build their community and we need to prove that they can have a life and a business.”

K: If you haven’t done that, a hot tip for this episode, go and make your values in your mission statement to have that solid foundation.

A: And it’s so funny that I’m the kind of person that’s like – we have to have actionable. We have to have tangible. It has to be business-related. So when the idea of lifestyle kind of came across the table, I was like, no, just like immediately kind of write it off. And then Kassie was like, “No, no, no. Let’s like dive into this because this directly speaks to our value of respect.” Then she gave me a couple of examples of templates and prompts and other things that she thought would fit really well in that category. And I was like, “Oh, yeah, I need that. I need that.”

K: I really do believe that outsourcing doesn’t have to live within your business. I think that you can outsource things in your life, too. So that’s where I kind of got my inspiration when you were like, okay, I have this day that I can work and it’s awesome. But like, I feel like I should be doing laundry, like we feel like we should be like meal prepping, like all of these things. So how can we get, you know, things within the newsletter and in the subscription to help people figure out how to do all of those things?

A: Absolutely. And like we already mentioned in this episode, it feels like we’re wearing like so many hats all the time. A lot of times that whole like house management kind of falls on our shoulders, too. So having the ability to outsource those things at a very low cost is so valuable.

K: Well, and that’s another thing. Ali and I are very different when it comes to like taking the financial risk to hire out and seeing that like Ali is so much bolder than I am. I’m a lot more conservative about where my money goes. So coming up with a subscription like this really spoke to both of us because the low price point, which we’ll get to in a minute, it’s in the impact. So the impact that I spoke about earlier that she really prioritizes and then me feeling like I’m getting like an agency of branding and operations and like a life coach all in my inbox is such an easier way to move forward. And it makes me more comfortable. So I think that that was a really cool thing to see come to life between the two of us as well.

A: One of the main pain points that we feel like a lot of our attendees have, they’re at this like messy middle point of growth where they are needing extra help. They now have the sales coming in that they need to make a sustainable business, but they’re not quite at that point of being able to hire like a full time employee. So, of course, the next thing you think of is – okay, I’m going to hire a contractor. But it’s also hard to figure out how to onboard a contractor, for lack of a better term, be an employer and teach them all of your standard operating procedures, how you do things. So we are trying to fill in that gap and make a bridge between those two feelings of being so stretched thin as a solopreneur and being in that spot where you can actually hire somebody. That’s where this subscription, this newsletter is coming in to bridge the gap.

K: I’m so excited and I am going to throw it your way because I do feel like this is a little bit of your baby too. So like, tell us the pitch. Give us when it’s happening, what’s happening, how we find out about it.

A: Absolutely. So our open cart week is August 7th through August 13th. So when these episodes, both on my podcast and Kassie’s, go live, it will be the time that you are able to purchase the ESC Weekly Subscription so that you can build your business. If you purchase during that week, you will actually receive one full month free. So you’re going to receive four newsletters during that one month period throughout each of those categories one time so that you can really see what it’s all about to see if it is a good fit for you. So if you purchase during that period, you get that full one month free. And after that, it will be $12 a month for the ESC Impact Weekly subscription.

K: Yeah. And I also want to note that like that 30 days is just like a full trial. Like we know that this is going to be so amazing that we’re like, you can try it for 30 days. And like, I don’t know how you’re going to turn it down after that because we’ve put a lot of energy and a lot of time to make sure that it’s not fluffy and that it’s not, you know, smoke and mirrors of where we say like, this is what you should do, but we’re not going to tell you how to do it. Like we are giving you the thing that you can do right then to move forward, which I think is so great.

A: Absolutely. And as if that wasn’t enough, we are also hosting two webinars between this week and next week. The first webinar is on August 7th. But if you happen to catch this episode a little bit later on Kassie’s podcast, we also have one on August 12th at 1 p.m. Eastern time. We will put in the show notes a way to sign up for that webinar. And that way you can kind of get into the ecosystem. You can understand what we’re all about, that we are very, very clear in our actionable strategies and how to employ those. The name of the masterclass is Eight Steps to ESC, Escape the Grind, Actionable Strategies for Female Entrepreneurs. We are excited to be able to give you even a sooner glimpse into what will be the ESC Impact Weekly subscription. So we would love to see you there. And like I said, sign up will be in the show notes.

K: I am so excited. It’s happening finally. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. As always, Ali and I are always open to DMs. You can find us on Instagram, respectively, at Kassie Layne and then Ali Rae Haney. You got it. Lastly, in the ESC account, so find us online! If you have any questions in the meantime, sign up for the webinar and then join us for our ESC Impact Weekly subscription.

A: Thanks, guys!