IAM1487 – Founder and Author Helps People Navigate the Online Dating World

Erika Ettin is the Founder of A Little Nudge, a consulting company that helps people navigate the world of online dating. Services include profile creation, photo selection and photography, message writing, date planning, and coaching. She is also the author of the book Love at First Site: Tips & Tales for Online Dating Success from a Modern-Day Matchmaker and the co-host of the popular dating podcast So, We Met Online…

A Little Nudge has been featured in media around the country, including The Washington Post, NPR, Good Day Philadelphia, CBS, and Ask Men, and she currently writes a weekly syndicated dating column.

Erika Ettin studied economics at Cornell University and received her MBA from Georgetown. She started A Little Nudge in 2011 (after a seven-year career as an economist). She has worked with nearly 1000 clients and is responsible for relationships, marriages, and the confidence some people simply need to “get out there.”

• CEO Story: Erika knows that she is not meant to be in a cubicle. While working, she goes to attend her business school. Started the idea of dating online and recording the response rate of how she is doing. Then one thing led to another, a friend asked for help and so she decided to turn it into a business since there is none existed. Since then, Erika has grown and helped thousands of people.
• Business Service: Work with individuals, make profiles for them for online dating, do the profiling, and connect with the preferred date, matching them.
• Secret Sauce: The combination of skills. Organized with lots of data/info.
• CEO Hack: Followup then and Boomerang for emails
• CEO Nugget: Working in a co-working space to save time
• CEO Defined: One who runs the business

Website: http://www.alittlenudge.com/

Facebook: A Little Nudge
Twitter: @ALittleNudge
Additional links: So, We Met Online Podcast
https://www.amazon.com/Love-First-Site-Modern-Day-Matchmaker/dp/163299013X

Episode Link: https://iamceo.co/2018/11/22/iam113-founder-and-author-helps-people-navigate-the-online-dating-world/

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Transcription

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00:24 – Intro

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 Harkness 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.

00:50 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Erica Eddin of a Little Nudge. Erica, it's awesome to have you on the show.

00:58 – Erika Ettin

It's awesome to be here.

01:00 – Gresham Harkless

Great, great. Well, what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Erica so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing. Erica Eddon is the founder of A Little Nudge, a consulting company that helps people navigate the world of online dating. Services include profile creation, photo selection, photography, message writing, date planning, and coaching. She is also the author of the book, Love at First Sight, Tips and Tales for Online Dating Success from a Modern Day Matchmaker, and the co-host of the popular dating podcast, so we met online.

A Little Nudge has been featured in media around the country, including The Washington Post, NPR, Good Day Philadelphia, CBS, and Ask Men. She currently writes a weekly syndicated dating column. Erica Eddon studied economics at Cornell University and received her MBA from Georgetown, Poyasaxa. She started a little nudge in 2011 after a seven-year career as an economist. She has worked with nearly 1, 000 clients and is responsible for relationships, marriages, and the confidence some people simply need to get out there. Eric, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:05 – Erika Ettin

Oh, I was born ready.

02:07 – Gresham Harkless

All right, let's do it. So the first question I had was just to hear, I guess, a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

02:13 – Erika Ettin

Okay, well, I think some people know they want to start a business and then backfill what they actually want to do. I was the opposite of that. I had an idea and the only way to do it was to start it myself. So when I started my, I guess, post-college working career, It was never, I never thought to myself I'm gonna be a boss, I'm gonna be CEO, have my own business. Because my parents always taught me to take a stable approach. You take the 1 that might not be as fun but you make money and you live a comfortable life. So I worked for 7 and a half years at Fannie Mae. I know the listeners can't see me, but I am not meant to be in a cubicle. Let me just tell you that I'm wearing all kinds of funky stuff today that you can't see. This would not have flown at Fannie Mae.

So I went to business school at night while I was there, and I still didn't, I didn't even pay attention in entrepreneurship class at business school because I didn't think it was in the cards for me. But then in 2011, or late 2010, I had an idea. So I had been doing online dating for a while. I was a very early adopter. And because my background is in economics, I started a spreadsheet to track my own online dating experience, which is totally nerdy, but it worked. I was tracking my response rate. If I wrote to someone, did he write back? My conversion rate. If he wrote back, are we going on a date? I got pretty good. My friends started asking me for help. 1 thing led to another.

I quit my job, this is a very abridged version. Quit my job, started the business, a little nudge, and that was like 7 and a half years ago. So it was really, I had the idea of what I wanted to be doing, helping people with online dating in some tangible way. That did not exist. So it's not like I was gonna go apply to a company. There wasn't one. I had to make one.

04:08 – Gresham Harkless

That's interesting. I always loved in like true entrepreneurial firm, you kind of have an issue or something that you wanna solve a problem.

04:15 – Erika Etti

Exactly, a pain or.

04:16 – Gresham Harkless

Exactly. And then rather than, you know, like if there was a job that obviously there wasn't at that time, you decided to build your own job, so to speak, it sounds like.

04:24 – Erika Ettin

Yeah. And it's a much better fit for me because I love running a business. I still get to do the math the tracking and the spreadsheets. I Keep a spreadsheet for every client. But I also get to work with people, and I'm a night owl, and I think the corporate world favors morning people. I can work at night now, and that's fine. And so running my own business, just having that freedom to do things on my own time is also something I really enjoy.

04:51 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it makes sense you kind of build it around your strengths and how you work best, which is always important to do. So, when I wanted to kind of drill down a little bit deeper and hear how exactly you help these people who are looking for love, looking to kind of date online?

05:03 – Erika Ettin

Oh, wow. So I work with individual clients. I don't care male or female. I don't care about age, orientation, anything. So I don't have an online dating site. I help you succeed using the already existing online dating sites. So for example, if you were a client, we would talk either in person or over the phone or FaceTime or Skype, depending on where you're located. I meet clients in person in DC and New York, and then everyone else is remote. And I get to know you, get to know what you're looking for. We discuss what online dating sites you might want to try. I then write your profile from scratch for whichever site or site we decide on. I also look at your pictures because it is extremely hard to evaluate yourself when you look at your pictures.

So I am pretty blunt about what works and what doesn't and why. So once we finalize the pictures and the profile, some people, that's all they need. Most people need a little bit more than that. So for some people, I'll actually log into the sites, suggest people they may want to reach out to, and then write their first message to get their foot in the door. Then it's up to them to follow through. And then for some people, I do everything. They just show up on their date. So I actually do manage their accounts for them. I send messages to people. I reply I have to embody this person. It sounds crazy. And when I started the business, I didn't know if anyone would want that. It's my most popular because people love not doing work. Exactly.

06:32 – Gresham Harkless

That would get everything right.

06:32 – Erika Ettin

Exactly. So that's what I do. And then I added within the last few years, a kind of very low-level package where I'll write you a dating app profile for like Tinder or Bumble or Hinge or 1 of those. And that's just less labor-intensive for me.

06:46 – Gresham Harkless

Okay. That makes sense. Well, it sounds like you kind of cover all the gamut of everything that anybody could want. I try. Yeah, and it is great because you have some people that just might want the profile written or some people that are like, can you just help me to kind of reach out to that person and be more credible?

06:58 – Erika Ettin

Exactly, because Some might lack the motivation and some might lack just the, you know, they might just have writer's block but are plenty motivated.

07:08 – Gresham Harkless

So yeah.

07:08 – Erika Ettin

And some might just be so busy that they know they're not going to do it on their own.

07:12 – Gresham Harkless

Right. And do you think fear also plays a big part as well?

07:16 – Erika Ettin

Absolutely. But most people have at least gotten past their fear of trying online dating once they've reached out to me.

07:23 – Gresham Harkless

That makes perfect sense. Awesome, awesome, awesome. So now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce and this is something that you feel kind of disemish you. After that. And set you apart. What would you say your secret sauce might be?

07:36 – Erika Ettin

Well, this is something I struggle with because I am my business. When you go to my website, you scroll down, it's a picture of me. People usually see me when they hire me. Either give a presentation or their friend has worked with me. So maybe this sounds conceited, but the secret sauce right now is me. And the reason I say I struggle with that is I can't replicate myself. So I think it's that I am equally left and right brain so I can think of things in an analytical way I can give you advice based on actual data But then I like to relate to people too when I like to write so Well, I think it's great that the secret sauce is that I have that combination of skills. It's also not because it's not replicable or maybe it is. And I haven't found that person yet.

08:24 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. But I know I do think when I was reading your bio and listening to how you got started, I was like, that's really rare to have somebody that is such a great people person but also can really look at the numbers and it looks.

08:35 – Erika Ettin

So I had an employee for 3 years and she was only about the writing, which is what I hired her for. But to find someone who can be client-facing and do the writing, you know, it's just, it's different. Also, I guess part of my secret sauce is I'm uncannily organized. So if I'm managing 10 people's online dating accounts, like actually logging in, I gotta remember a bazillion passwords and make sure I'm signing the right name every time and remember who their dates are with so that when they call me after, I can be like, oh, how was the date with Joel? Somehow, I keep that all straight.

09:13 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, well no, That's certainly hard to do and definitely you don't want to say the wrong thing on the wrong profile or anything like that.

09:19 – Erika Ettin

Oh my gosh, exactly. Knock on wood, I've never done that.

09:21 – Gresham Harkless

Exactly. Well, awesome. So now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. This might be an app, a book, or an advertising app.

09:30 – Erika Ettin

Oh, I love these.

09:32 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. So something that makes you more effective and efficient.

09:34 – Erika Ettin

Oh, well, this one's easy. And I tell everyone, but I kind of don't even want to because then you're all going to use it and then it's not special anymore. But it's a free service called Follow Up Then. Do you use follow-up? I do. I swear by it. Like Every email I send, I blind carbon copy. So basically, I use it so that I can blind carbon copy. You can use it in a few different ways, but I blind carbon copy a time at which I want to see that email again. So basically, it's something I want to remember to do. So let's say I say to you, I'm gonna follow up with you in a week. On that message, I'll blind carbon copy one week at followupthen.com and it'll send me that email back in 1 week. So that way I don't have to look at it for the week because I also enjoy a nice clean inbox. So follow-up then is a savior. I also use Boomerang for Gmail. Do you use that?

10:25 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, I've heard of that.

10:25 – Erika Ettin

Boomerang, you can send messages later. So I do a lot of work really late at night. I don't necessarily want my clients to think I'm going to answer them at 1 in the morning. So I program it to go out before I wake up the next day.

10:37 – Gresham Harkless

Right, yeah, I love those 2 hacks and that's definitely a way so that you can leverage your best time of day that you work and then still be super efficient and not have to keep everything in your head because it's in your email.

10:48 – Erika Ettin

Exactly. I just like unclogging the email. I also don't like putting reminders in my calendar for things that are just like I need to email someone. So if I use follow up then it just comes back to me.

10:57 – Gresham Harkless

Exactly, exactly. Awesome, awesome, awesome. Now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget and this is like a word of wisdom Yeah, word of wisdom or piece of advice So imagine if you can jump into a time machine and talk to your younger business self, like what would you tell yourself?

11:10 – Erika Ettin

Oh my goodness gracious. That's a good question. I wish I had thought I wish I had worked out of a co-working space sooner, to be honest. I used to meet all of my clients at coffee shops and I found myself traveling to them, which was extremely time-consuming. If I had had an office sooner to just tell people here's where to meet me, it would have saved me a lot of time. So I think that's one.

11:35 – Gresham Harkless

That's a huge one. Just because I think especially as a CEO, entrepreneur, and business owner, you're probably the most valuable resource, if not for everybody, is your time. It's your time, exactly.

11:42 – Erika Ettin

You're trading time for money, and if I'm driving somewhere for half an hour, I'm losing that. So I really like the coworking space environment. It's good for my business.

11:53 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. And definitely have an opportunity to kind of also connect and collaborate with other people who are running businesses.

12:00 – Erika Ettin

Oh yeah, I love that. I hire people who work here all the time for various things. I mean, 1 company shot some videos for me, and another, not to be morbid, a lawyer wrote my will. You can find anything here.

12:14 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, well we all begin with the end in mind because we all have the same thing. So it's important to kind of take advantage of that. So that's a great reminder as well. So now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question. Oh, yes, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we have different quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So I wanted to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you? Well, what does it mean to me or what's the definition to me?

12:37 – Erika Ettin

I guess both. Just mean to me, I haven't really thought about, I've thought about what it means to be an entrepreneur, but I haven't really thought about What it means to be an entrepreneur. But I haven't really thought, about what it means to be a CEO. I mean, in simplest, I just consider a CEO someone who runs the business or someone who is at the top level of the business. Now, for me, I'm the CEO, yeah. I'm also a copywriter. I'm also a trash person. So I haven't given that a lot of thought because if you asked me what I am, I would say an entrepreneur, a founder, and while I am a CEO, and it says that in my email signature, that's not necessarily how I would first identify myself. I think that's kind of a non-answer to your question.

13:23 – Gresham Harkless

No, it makes perfect sense because what we're really trying to do is kind of look at these words, entrepreneur, business owner, CEO, kind of look at what that means, what that doesn't mean. And kind of have a conversation.

13:32 – Erika Ettin 

I mean, technically I am all of those, but I don't really identify, to be perfectly honest, if I were at a cocktail party and someone asked what I do, I would much rather say business owner or entrepreneur than CEO, just because I'm 1 person. That sounds a little pretentious, doesn't it? No, being an entrepreneur. But is every business owner an entrepreneur? I don't know. So, All things to think about.

14:00 – Gresham Harkless

Exactly, exactly. Well, I truly appreciate you taking some time out of your schedule.

14:05 – Erika Ettin

Thanks for having me.

14:06 – Gresham Harkless

Yes, and what I wanted to do was pass you the mic just to see if there's anything additional you want to let our readers and our listeners know, and then of course how best people can get a little view.

14:13 – Erika Ettin

Oh boy. Well, I have 2 things to say to listeners. 1, obviously if you need some help with online dating, contact me. But 2, if you're complacent in your job and dread getting up on Monday morning, it's time to think about whether you should continue in that job or try something else. Maybe it's another job. Not everyone is meant to start a business. But think about if you're passionate about something and if it's worth really pursuing that because it's a much more rewarding life when you do what you love.

14:43 – Gresham Harkless

I definitely agree with that. And it's good for a modern just because, you know, everybody's not necessarily gonna start a business but again try to follow your passion and enjoy as much work as you're doing.

14:51 – Erika Ettin

Yeah, because even if you work more, I work much more than I used to at Fannie Mae. But at least I like what I'm doing, right? The day flies. I could use a 30-hour day.

15:00 – Gresham Harkless

Exactly, you're not in a cubicle, right?

15:02 – Erika Ettin

Oh my god, those cubicles, ugh, yes. I can't even, I was like, it was funny, my mom reminded me that when I started at Fannie Mae, I apparently said to her, I don't think I can do this. And then I said once, and I am a very happy person, so please don't take this literally, I told her once I was going to jump out a window if I had to work in the basement of Fannie Mae, which is ironic because there are no windows.

15:28 – Gresham Harkless

There you go. So that would have been interesting. Well, awesome. If people, want to reach out to you, what's the best way for them to do that?

15:36 – Erika Ettin

You can go to my website, alittlenudge.com. You can email me info, I-N-F-O, with a little nudge. Those are the best ways to reach me. Okay.

15:45 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. What we'll do is we'll have those links and information and the show notes just so anybody can follow up with you But again, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule My pleasure Awesome.

15:54 – Outro

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.