Monica Froese: How to Build a 6-Figure Pinterest Business

Welcome to the Scaling Success Stories series!

If you’re new to this series, I ask online entrepreneurs questions regarding growing and scaling their business.

This is the series description:

You can get your fill of online business tips by reading the other interviews on the Scaling Success Stories page.

Interview with Monica Froese from Redefining Mom

It was my pleasure interviewing Monica Froese of Redefining Mom, a popular blog that helps moms build thriving online businesses. Monica left her 9-5 job to pursue her own business and what she’s been able to accomplish is nothing short of amazing.

Now, she makes over $100,000 on autopilot, primarily from her eCourses and eBooks on promoted pins.

Check out what Monica had to say to my questions!

1. Why did you start an online business and how does your passion still drive your business’ growth today?

Fifteen months after I had my first baby, I was diagnosed with postpartum PTSD. Prior to getting pregnant, I was extremely career focused. I didn’t expect that to change once I had a baby.

I vividly remember looking around at work and feeling like I was the only working mom who didn’t have it together.

I would secretly troll Google looking for the magical answer on how to achieve the ever-elusive work/life balance.

In July 2013, I started blogging as an outlet for my postpartum and frustrations over maternity leave policies in the US.

Fast forward two years and the White House found my teeny tiny blog and invited me to a working families event. I had the chance to meet the President of the United States and share my experience as a working mom with his top advisors.

This event changed my entire life.

I left the White House on fire to make a difference in the lives of other working moms. This is when I started taking my blog serious and wanted to turn it into a real online business.

Over the last three years, my online business has grown in ways I could never have imagined. Most importantly, it gave me the freedom to make my own rules about when and how I spend time with my kids.

My drive and passion is fueled by creating a better life for my family and for other moms.

2. At what point did you realize that your business was “taking off” and that you could really make money from it?

The turning point for me when in November 2017.

At the urging of some close blogging friends, I started a beta course for promoted pins (Pinterest ads) called Pin Practical Promotions.

I enrolled 20 students within an hour into a course I hadn’t even created yet!

This completely blew my mind at the time.

I remember thinking that I finally found my corner of the blogging world where not only did I excel but I was passionate about what I was doing.

3.  At what point did you realize you were living the life you wanted to?

This is easy…the day I gave birth to my second baby in March 2018.

My girls are 5.5 years apart because I didn’t think I could bring myself to have another baby under the same circumstances that I had my first.

I refused to be forced back to work before I was ready. I didn’t want to be away for 10-12 hour days, travel several times a month, and never have a say in when I saw my baby.

While I still struggled with postpartum after my second (this time it was postpartum anxiety), it was not nearly as bad as the first time. I am 100% confident this is because there was no external force dictating the time I could take to bond with my baby. No one could force me to leave her before I was ready.

I ended up funding an 8-week maternity leave out of business profits. When the 8 weeks were over, I hired a Nanny. Now my baby girl is home with me all day long. I am able to chase my dreams and eat lunch with her every single day.

I never want any mom to have to choose between pursuing her passion and having kids. I believe we can do both.

Most days I have to pinch myself that this is my life.

4. One of the biggest fears of outsourcing is trusting the people you hire to run your business the way you would. How did you overcome this and where did you find the right freelancers and employees to help you grow your business?

I am extremely type-A. I love to control everything.

Hiring people is the single hardest thing I have to work through in my business. It’s not something I’ve solved but it is something I am continuously working on.

The first thing I did was hire out tasks I’m not good at. For example, I hired a lawyer, CPA, and graphic designer with no problem. I wasn’t good at what they had to offer so it was easier for me to hand off work.

Second, I started handing off admin tasks I could document in step-by-step checklists. The first thing I managed to hand off that I thought I never would is my editorial calendar.

I created a 50+ step checklist in Trello on how to publish a post on my blog and now my assistant is able to take a Google Doc and see it all the way through to hitting publish.

In order to gain the trust required to let someone else hit publish, we set up a checkpoint right before the final post was scheduled. I would be the last person to review the post. I did this for about two months until I felt comfortable enough to let her publish on her own.

5. A common myth is that as you grow and scale your business, you have to sell your soul to make money, especially when you venture into paid advertising. How do you debunk this myth in your business?

This is a great question considering I built the early stages of my business on paid Pinterest ads!

Here’s the deal…

There is a lot of noise out there. There are thousands of blogs popping up every single day vying for traffic and attention from your target audience.

Paid advertising gives you control. It allows you to decide what types of people you want to reach and then strategically get your content in front of them at the right time.

I’d much rather pay to be in front of the right people than hope that the current algorithm will put me in the right place at the right time.

I certainly do not think paid advertising replaces organic traffic. I do think paid advertising is an extremely effective way to get in front of the people who need what you have to offer the most.

6. Why do you think most people fail to grow their businesses and what advice would you offer them to keep pushing, despite all the setbacks?

Most people think I put my website up and started making 6-figures overnight.

It’s easy to look at where others are and compare your beginning to their middle.

In the beginning, you’ll work super hard for absolutely no money.

Every single night your brain is fried and you’ll likely question why you started an online business, to begin with. How many blog posts can you write when no one is even reading them?

This is not a get rich quick scheme. Blogging and online business take a lot of perseverance. You’re going to work for free for a while and when you do start making money it most likely won’t be much.

The best advice I ever received was earning your first $1,000 online is the hardest. Once you prove that you can make money online, it’s easier to capitalize on your momentum and reach people faster.

7. How important has niching down been (no matter how hard it hurts) to your business’ growth and profitability?

I have mixed feelings about this. I think it depends on your goals and future vision.

For example, niching down from Pinterest expert to a Pinterest ads expert has certainly proven to be a very profitable decision. It’s super easy for people to recommend me and know exactly what I do.

However, my blog serves both a B2B and B2C audience and does quite well.

I have been exploring splitting my blog into two separate entities in order to create a defined niche for each.

I definitely think it’s possible to grow before niching. I do think it’s easier to grow if you niche down.

8. What do you attribute your success to and how do you explain it? Do you think the same strategies will help you reach your next monetization goals? Why or why not?

I think my experience in corporate (I spent 11 years in marketing at a Fortune 100 tech company) helped me grasp the concepts of running a business fairly quickly.

I had a basic understanding and foundation for how to grow a sustainable business.

Aside from that, it was truly putting my head down and focusing on the activities that would earn the highest ROI (return on investment) the quickest.

I do think in order to scale, I am going to have to step it up a notch.

My current plan involves hiring a full-time assistant, 3x my investment in paid advertising, and upgrading the tools I use to build my funnels.

I do think the bigger you get the more risk you have to accept. This is something I am constantly wrestling with in my head.

9. To scale, you really need to have a systemized business. What steps have you taken to build those systems and how do you optimize them?

I am a project manager at heart. I love documenting everything I do in a step-by-step process. I started doing it purely for my own benefit at first and luckily that has paid off as I hire more and more contractors.

I currently use Trello to document workflows with my assistant.

I am also a firm believer in investing in technology that will make life easier.

For example, I’ve put off purchasing Deadline Funnel for way too long. For years, I’ve been manually redirecting my sales pages at the end of special sales when Deadline Funnel can do it for me automatically.

I’ve come to learn the more you can automate and document, the easier it is to grow. Systems are truly the backbone of how any business works.

Later this month, I will be meeting with a systems expert to optimize workflows even more so I can continue to onboard new contractors seamlessly.

10.  If you could speak face-to-face with yourself when you first started your business, what pearls of wisdom would you impart?

It’s never going to be perfect!!!

I wish I had started publishing content and making connections sooner than I did.

I constantly questioned what I had to offer and what made me unique.

The truth is, I was never going to find out until I started trying and putting myself out there.

I published my site in July 2013, but I hid from it until early 2016. I can only imagine where I’d be now if I had taken the leap to put myself out there three years earlier!

I also wish I understood how much decision fatigue would impact me in the beginning. Even on weeks when I put in the same number of hours as my corporate job, I still felt much more burned out. It was hard to make decisions at home because I had used all of my decision making power in the business.

Running a business comes with a big mental load. No one else is making the decisions for you. It’s like your brain is constantly turned on. I wish I had known this when I started so I could have structured our lives a bit different to accommodate for the additional mental load.

About Monica Froese

Monica Froese is a blogger and Pinterest marketing expert. She has an MBA degree in finance and marketing and blogs at Redefining Mom, a site where moms thrive in both motherhood and business. In 2015, she traveled to the White House to discuss family-friendly workplace policies with the President’s senior advisors and has been featured on several media outlets including Fox News, Scary Mommy, Healthline, and Mom Talk Radio. She provides online marketing education to professional moms who are looking to build profitable blogs through effective sales funnels and Pinterest ads.

Interested in Learning From Monica?

Monica has the eCourse or eBook to help you with whatever you need in your Pinterest obsession right now!

Pin Practical Promotions

Her flagship course, Pin Practical Promotions, is a next-level course on how to strategize, implement, analyze, and refine profitable promoted pin campaigns at a low cost.

If you think…

How can Pinterest possibly help me in my business?

Well, you might be living under the online business rock, but Pinterest is a great way to get beginner blogger traffic.

And, their advertising platform is much less saturated than Facebook’s.

With the announcement of their IPO, they indicated that there would be more of a focus on advertising to generate revenue for their stockholders. 

If you haven’t tried out promoting a pin yet, no worries!

That’s what Monica is here for.

She’ll teach you how to do it for the first time so you don’t end up wasting money and get a terrible return on your investment.

Check out Pin Practical Promotions today!

What Order Should I Take Monica’s Courses in?

Monica’s simplified the process so you can go from zero to hero on Pinterest.

Here’s the order she recommends:

1. Pin Practical Funneling: (FREE) learn how to turn Pinterest visitors into paying customers by creating your first sales funnel with Pinterest
2. Pin Practical Accelerate: learn how to set up your brand/business for Pinterest
3. Pin Practical Masterclass: learn everything you need to know on how to run a successful organic Pinterest strategy
4. Pin Practical Influence: learn how to make money on Pinterest with affiliate marketing sales funnels
5. Pin Practical Ads: learn how to create the perfect low-cost promoted pin
6. Pin Practical Promotions Primer: learn how to run your first low-cost promoted pin campaign the right way
7. Pin Practical Promotions: how to strategize, implement, analyze, and refine profitable promoted pin campaigns at a low cost

If you have any questions about these, comment below and I’ll make sure Monica answers them for you!

Conclusion

Thanks for participating in my series, Monica!

As you can tell, it’s NOT EASY growing and scaling an online business, but there are some things you can do to aid you in the process.

Inspired by Monica Froese?

Now, it’s your turn!

I assembled the Scaling Blueprint to show you how to…

• Outsource Effectively
• Systemize Your Business
• Shatter Your Revenue Goals

After working with six-figure and seven-figure clients, I know the difference between how they function.

Let me help you start scaling successfully.

Get My FREE Blueprint!

Cheers to future success!