IAM529- Blogger Teaches Women How to Lose Weight

Lauren is a former CPA turned blogger, and she and her business partner, Alex Nerney, run two successful blogs together. Their first blog, Avocadu, is a health and wellness blog that teaches women how to lose weight. After earning six figures with that blog in their first year, they started Create and Go, where they teach others how to start and monetize their own blogs. She now runs both blogs full-time while traveling the world as a digital nomad.

• CEO Hack: Not having a balance, especially at the beginner
• CEO Nugget: Embrace failure and don't be afraid of it
• CEO Defined: Responsibility and freedom that comes with it

Website: https://createandgo.com/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/createandgo/

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Transcription:

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:30

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Lauren McManus of Create and Go. Lauren, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Lauren McManus 0:39

Thanks so much for having me. Gresh. I'm excited to be here.

Gresham Harkless 0:42

Yeah, no problem. Super excited to have you on and what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Lauren so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Lauren is a former CPA turned blogger, and she and her business partner, Alex Nerney, run two successful blogs together. Their first blog, Avocadu, is a health and wellness blog that teaches women how to lose weight. After earning six figures with that blog in their first year, they started Create and Go, where they teach others how to start and monetize their own blogs. She now runs both blogs full-time while traveling the world as a digital nomad. Lauren, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Lauren McManus 1:15

Absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 1:16

Awesome. Let's do it. So to kick everything off I wanted to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story. What led you to get started with your business?

Lauren McManus 1:24

Yeah, so I have honestly never well, I guess my original dream of being a CEO would have been to be more like a CFO of an accounting firm. That was the only real rule, I guess, dream or thought that I had because I was definitely climbing the corporate ladder. I was doing well with it. I enjoyed it. But then I met Alex Nerney, my business partner and he was the opposite. He was a personal trainer at the time and always wanted to run some online business and have a very different lifestyle. He and I ended up kind of bonding over our passion for health and wellness. Because I had been a vegan for a couple of years. It just got done with that stint in my life and we very much both have a passion for it.

Honestly, we started a health and wellness website and struggled to get it off the ground for the first few months. But then we figured out what was working and that just led me down this whole path of then I guess becoming sort of a CEO of my own business. Something I had never, ever really dreamed up for myself. But the moment I started getting my feet wet and learning more about the online business world and everything that entailed. I honestly loved it, it was a slow pull I would go to work every day as a CPA and just love what I was doing a lot less and less and love more what I was doing when I was working nights and weekends on this new website.

That passion really drove me in either direction, despite not making any money first and leaving my job and my safety net behind because I had actually just gotten licensed as a CPA and I quit my job, I think, a month or two later. So yeah, my parents thought I was absolutely nuts and all my friends thought I was nuts. But it felt right.

Gresham Harkless 3:15

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you for telling us about that. Because I think a lot of times, sometimes you have to go and take that leap of faith so to speak. A lot of times for something that is your passion maybe is your calling, you start to think that not to say you don't love anything else, but it starts to become even more of your passion starts to become more in alignment. I think a lot of times you don't really know that until you go all in on that.

Lauren McManus 3:40

Yeah, I totally agree. I think for us it made it made all the difference. Not waiting until we made money. It was just at that point where we were just doing what we believed in and we weren't making any money and no we hadn't made a cent yet. But it was more about believing in this dream, and I'm going to make it happen no matter what. So it was just about analyzing the savings that we had and knowing that at the end of the day, it was going to be okay, even if we failed, we weren't going to end up in a ditch starving somewhere, we were just gonna have to end up finding a new job again in a year.

Gresham Harkless 4:13

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I think I'm glad you kind of touched on that. I think so many times when we take that leap of faith or even consider taking that leap of faith sometimes, not all the time. But a lot of times, what we can envision as being the worst-case scenario is 30 times worse than what actually could be sometimes you rather would try to do it and see how it works out than live with that fear for granted which lasts forever.

Lauren McManus 4:38

Yeah, absolutely.

Gresham Harkless 4:41

I know I touched on it a little bit. I want to drill down a little bit deeper here a little bit more about Create and Go. Can you take us through exactly how you're working with the clients and what exactly you do?

Lauren McManus 4:50

Yeah, so the main thing we do is we sell online courses and Create and Go as a blog. So we do write blog articles, but we have three different courses that we sell to help our students create their own online business. So it takes them through everything from where we were. Really the the premise behind these courses is, that they're all the strategies that we use to take that first health and wellness blog to earning six figures in the first year. All the mistakes that we made and the successes that we had are from those that we created, these strategies. That's the premise of what we teach on creating go. It's everything from our target customers, really someone who hasn't even started their blog, yet, we have three different courses.

It depends on where you're at. But really, they walk you through, not having even started selecting what you want to start your online business, your blog all the way from getting visitors and creating an email list to creating your own products and services to sell your own online courses. We have a course on Pinterest, that's the primary way that we've actually driven most of our traffic to both of our blogs. So that's the primary traffic driver that we teach about. But yeah, that's the gist of it, the three different courses that we sell, and then we also sell a bundle of all these for people that haven't started and want to get everything at their fingertips.

Gresham Harkless 6:12

Yeah, that makes so much sense. I imagine that and I don't know if you hear this a lot with people that go through your courses that they don't really know where to start and how to begin or even they have this vision of what they hope to do, but they have no idea how to get from A to probably what feels like Z a lot of times. So how to navigate that and to go through the courses and glean from your expertise and understanding probably helps out a tonne.

Lauren McManus 6:36

Yeah, and it's the funny thing is, that's actually what happened with Create and Go is how it started, as we created, the first course that we created was just on Pinterest traffic, because that was the big turning point for our first blog, or our Avocadu blog was all that Pinterest traffic that we got. We thought we had to share this with others. So the first course was on Pinterest, and the next course will, be on how to create your own products because that was how the main reason that we were able to monetize the first blog. Then we ended up we were starting to travel.

We realized we were actually attracting this readership that said, they felt like they wanted to make this money, but they had no idea how to even get started. Then we took it a step back and began to teach from ground zero how to first start that blog begin building that audience and then monetize your blog.

Gresham Harkless 7:25

Yeah, that makes sense. So it sounds like you were definitely dialed into, what everybody was looking for in your target market, as you talked about. Once you start to understand that, then you feel like there was maybe that missing piece or the missing plank, or I guess you can say, where you wanted to add that in so that people can accelerate even more.

Lauren McManus 7:41

Yeah, connecting with your audience is so important. Your audience, your customers, whatever business you're in, it's so important to get that feedback to be able to improve what you're doing and keep moving forward.

Gresham Harkless 7:55

Absolutely. So I appreciate you for sharing that with us. I wanted to switch gears why wanted to ask you, I'm sorry for what I call your secret sauce. And it could be for you or your organization, but what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Lauren McManus 8:07

I think that for Alex and I, in our business, I honestly think it's our transparency. That's a word that we've actually gotten from our audience. It's not one that we came up with, but we do have a YouTube channel and our videos are very unpolished and just kind of go with the flow. A lot of them are actually just reading blog posts, but talking about our story and what we've been through and it's Alex is in most of them, and he's got surfer hair from our travels in Nicaragua. Just very unpolished. But a lot of the comments that we get on our blog, and in our YouTube comments are just how transparent we are.

I think that people are so used to seeing all these very polished CEOs and polished professionals, and it makes them feel a little bit like, I'd like to be there, but I feel so they don't, I don't think it's it says relatable. I do think that Alex and I using this approach of just not being perfect, but just getting the information out there as quickly as possible because it helps our readers so much. I think that that has set us aside a little bit more from some of our competitors.

Gresham Harkless 9:18

Yeah, absolutely. That makes so much sense. I think I always say like, when I was younger, I wish I knew that there was an actual process that it took to actually become successful because a lot of times you think people just wake up and then they're just successful. But that's there's a process that goes that happens with it.

Lauren McManus 9:32

Yeah. A lot of people see the final product, right? They see this polished look, and they don't quite understand that process. So I think that we've done a bit better job at exposing that process. Really accidentally, it wasn't like we did it on purpose. It's just that's what was the end result. I'm very thankful that we've learned that lesson.

Gresham Harkless 9:51

Yeah, absolutely. I want to just switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be an app or book or a habit that you have, but what something that makes you more effective and efficient.

Lauren McManus 10:04

What I think made a huge difference. Really? Yeah, a massive difference between Alex and me in achieving success so quickly, I think we both felt like we were always going to do it, but are always going to achieve it. But having done it so quickly, was honestly not really having a balance. Everybody wants to tell you to have this balance in your life, a balance between work and life, and everything else. To be honest, I don't believe that when you're starting, especially when you're working a full-time job, or you have a family, you have other priorities. I believe that you can do much of a balance and still succeed, at least as quickly as most people want to succeed, right? People take online courses, or they have these ideas to start their own businesses, and they all want to succeed as quickly as possible.

But honestly, what worked for Alex and I was not having a balance, we told family and friends, no, we couldn't see we'd stopped hanging out with people on the weekends, we worked full-time jobs, and we worked every single night and every single weekend until we got us and honestly well until we got our business off the ground, we even moved to across the country to Seattle, to an empty house that Alex's dad wasn't using for the winter because we didn't have any friends up there and we hold ourselves up in that house. We plugged our computers every single day until we turned a profit on our website. And we even weirdly ate this eggs and rice diet for a while to save money and to make our lives easier.

For us, even the decision to go to the grocery store and cook all these different meals every day was all time that was spent away from our business. I know it sounds a bit crazy, but I think that whether you're starting your own online business or really any kind of business, I just think even as a CPA, before I did this, I was I worked 80 hours a week during taxes. During tax season, even though my boss was like, you should work a little bit less, because I was trying to prove myself and I think that it just I see a lot of people say that they want it, but they don't put in as much time as humanly possible into it. I think it kind of boils down to how badly you want it. And if you're willing to put in that much work for it.

Gresham Harkless 12:18

I appreciate that. Now when it asks you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this is a word of wisdom or a piece of advice and it could be related to blogging, or if you can happen to a time machine, what would you kind of tell yourself or even tell more one of the people that are taking your courses?

Lauren McManus 12:31

Yeah, absolutely. I think this ties into what we talked about at the very beginning of this podcast, honestly, I think some of the best advice I could give is to just embrace failure and not be afraid of it.

Gresham Harkless 12:45

Awesome. Now I wanted to ask you my absolute favourite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO and we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Lauren, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Lauren McManus 12:57

Well, I had to think a little bit about this, especially because of my background in the corporate world because to me, see, oh, it just strikes me as so corporate, and I don't really consider myself a CEO. Although to be honest, thinking about it now it makes me it doesn't make me feel proud. Because it was always that thing, that very hard-to-attain place that I always saw in the corporate world someplace that I might never reach. The fact that I technically am CEO of my own company now, it's pretty exciting. To me, it automatically feels like responsibility. But I don't really like that word that much. It sounds kind of negative.

I think it's more about the freedom that comes along with that responsibility because I now do have employees and I have a company and responsibilities, but it's the freedom to be able to run this company and run my business the exact way that I want. For me, I'm now recording this from Valparaiso, Chile, and I've been traveling for a year and a half straight now. I can run my business from anywhere around the world. So yeah, to me, it's just being able to have the time and financial freedom to run my business and my passion the way that I want it to.

Gresham Harkless 14:13

Yeah, absolutely. No, I love that perspective in that definition because I think a lot of times, we have a set definition of this exactly how we want it to be but I think that the ability to be able to have that freedom to be as I usually say, like an artist and have a paintbrush, and you can paint the picture however you want it to be painting. That's the ability, the thing that you guys are doing, and then of course that you help so many others do as well too. So I definitely appreciate you for doing it yourself, but also for helping so many others do it as well.

Lauren McManus 14:43

Thank you.

Gresham Harkless 14:45

Awesome. Well, Lauren, I truly appreciate your time. What I want to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and listeners know and then of course how best they can get ahold of you. Find out about all the courses and all the awesome things you guys are working on.

Lauren McManus 15:00

Yeah. My website I have two different websites like you mentioned before, if you're interested in weight loss at all avocadu.com is where we sell online weight loss programs. But our main blog is createandgo.com. We also have a YouTube channel where you can find us as well.

Gresham Harkless 15:18

Awesome. We will definitely have those links and information in the show notes so that everybody can click through and follow up with you and subscribe of course. But thank you so much again, Lauren, and I hope you have a phenomenal day.

Outro 15:28

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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