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The Level Up Creators podcast is for digital creators ready to take their business to the next level. You'll learn valuable strategies and hear engaging stories from industry pros and digital creators who have walked the path of scaling up.
Whether you're tired of tap dancing for the algorithm or seeking to build real wealth - without the burnout - this podcast offers proven methods and practical advice to help you elevate your business, on your terms. Join us!
Amanda (00:01)
Hey, hey, you're listening to the Level Up Creators podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help digital creators and thought leaders like you turn your knowledge and experience into rock-solid, recurring revenue. And we are so glad you're here. Welcome. Today we're talking about the power of your personal brand specifically on LinkedIn and how to do it with special guest Stephanie Schwab, founder and CEO of Crackerjack Marketing, an award -winning international marketing agency. Stephanie has a notable track record of experience in higher education at universities across the globe, is a multi -time business founder, has held several executive positions at global companies, and has even served as a marketing consultant for the NFL of all people.
So that's pretty cool. And now at Cracker Jack, Stephanie and her team do the heavy lifting to help executives and their teams have an impactful presence on LinkedIn that aligns with their company's overall marketing strategy and goals. And she's joining us from beautiful Barcelona, Spain. Welcome Stephanie.
Stephanie Schwab (01:18)
Thank you so much, Amanda. So glad to be here.
Amanda (00:01)
Hey, hey, you're listening to the Level Up Creators podcast. Amanda Northcutt here, founder and CEO. We help digital creators and thought leaders like you turn your knowledge and experience into rock solid, recurring revenue. And we are so glad you're here. Welcome.
Today we're talking about the power of your personal brand specifically on LinkedIn and how to do it with special guest Stephanie Schwab, founder and CEO of Crackerjack Marketing, an award -winning international marketing agency. Stephanie has a notable track record of experience in higher education at universities across the globe, is a multi -time business founder, has held several executive positions at global companies, and has even served as a marketing consultant for the NFL of all people. So that's pretty
And now at Cracker Jack, Stephanie and her team do the heavy lifting to help executives and their teams have an impactful presence on LinkedIn that aligns with their company's overall marketing strategy and goals. And she's joining us from beautiful Barcelona, Spain. Welcome Stephanie.
Stephanie Schwab (00:57)
Thank you so much, Amanda. So glad to be here.
Amanda (00:59)
I'm so glad to have you. And this is kind of a little bit of a meta conversation, which I'm excited about because you're both the owner of an agency. You have a really strong personal brand and you're a creator, thought leader yourself. So we have like a lot of kind of interesting layers to our conversation today. But let's start by please walking us through kind of the twists and turns of your career that have taken you to launching Crackerjack marketing many years ago.
Stephanie Schwab (01:25)
Great. So I've been in marketing in some form or another since my college days, really. I was in retail for many, many years selling and marketing clothes to women. But I really, when I decided to go back for my MBA, I wanted to focus on marketing. And so since then, I've been really focused on emerging marketing from the early days. I was a management consultant when we were moving.
clients that were brick and mortar retailers over to e -commerce back in the day. like early, early days. And so I was lucky to be in place in the marketing space already when like YouTube was founded and LinkedIn was founded and then brand, then Twitter came and then brands got on Facebook. So I was there at the very beginning and have been doing social media since the beginning. And so I'm just really, I think fortunate to have seen it all.
Amanda (01:57)
Yeah.
Stephanie Schwab (02:21)
and not become too jaded. haven't left yet. I still love it. And so now I run my own agency and I wouldn't have it any other way.
Amanda (02:30)
Amazing. Talk to us about, I mean, you got an MBA, so I see kind of like a natural lead into your university stints, but how did you get into teaching? You've taught at multiple universities, again, like I said, around the world, and now you're in Barcelona, but I think you're from Chicago, is that right? So how did that all happen?
Stephanie Schwab (02:44)
Yep. Yep. I'm from Chicago. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a little bit of a good story. I was teaching in Chicago at Loyola University and teaching locally as an adjunct faculty there. It was fun. And I was teaching colleague there. And one day he called me up and he said, do you want to go to Barcelona? I was like, are you kidding? I mean, he knew I ran my own business and I had a small kid at home, but
You know, I was like, if I can go, great. And it turns out he had been asked to come teach here in Barcelona and his wife was having a baby. Her due date was like that week. So he was like, I need somebody else to go instead. And I got super lucky that I got to come and he's still teaching here. The next year he came and, I'm still teaching here. And so I teach for a university called Harbor space. It's a startup itself. We're coming into our ninth year of students, I think this year.
And we also have a campus in Bangkok, Thailand. And I get to go there twice a year as well.
Amanda (03:46)
So cool. And what classes do you teach specifically?
Stephanie Schwab (03:49)
I am the director of the digital marketing program. And so I teach the first class in digital marketing every year, which is like a survey, like an overview of, you know, what's digital marketing and sort of the foundational basics, as well as we do a week's worth. It's their short courses. They're three weeks long. do a week's worth of personal branding also to kind of illustrate how to get a brand up and running. And then in my second class in the spring in both campuses, I teach social media and content marketing. So, which is what my agency does. It's where my love is.
Amanda (04:20)
Perfect. So your daughter kind of grew up then in Barcelona, is that right?
Stephanie Schwab (04:25)
We've been here three years, so she's about to be 16. We got her just before her 13th birthday. So she's done all of high school. She did a year of junior high and now it's first years of high school here.
Amanda (04:27)
just three years.
Wow, what a transition and how fascinating. So cool.
Stephanie Schwab (04:40)
Yeah, she's loved it. She thinks she's European now. I mean, she is. We are European citizens, but she thinks we're like never going back. We're like, could we be fine for me?
Amanda (04:48)
amazing. I mean you're in an incredibly beautiful place and so close to so many other beautiful places so that's amazing. And for our listeners what year did you start Cracker Jack?
Stephanie Schwab (04:54)
Yes. Yes.
2010, we just had our 14th anniversary.
Amanda (05:05)
So you've beat out most any business that started in 2010. So it's incredible. I think I come back to that a little bit later, but wow. I mean, your business has really stood the test of time. Did y 'all start out with an emphasis in social media marketing specifically? was LinkedIn founded? In 06?
Stephanie Schwab (05:23)
LinkedIn is 21 years old this year, think. I think publicly 21, and maybe it was founded 22 years ago. And I've been on the platform for 20 and a half of those years. So yeah, for quite some time. Yeah, we started out as social media. I had come from two other agencies where first one was a social media agency, the second was PR, and I was the director of social media in that agency.
Amanda (05:28)
Oath.
Stephanie Schwab (05:49)
So, yeah, so that's what I knew how to do. And that's what I decided that I was going to do when I wanted to do my own business. And so that's the foundation of everything we do. We don't not do social media for any client. But we also do lead generation, lead magnet design and development, email marketing, blogging, know, other types of content.
Amanda (06:12)
Yeah, a whole kind of like digital marketing sphere. Cool. And I you founded a handful of companies and worked at many others at a high level, other than the ones you founded. What are your kind of most important learnings that you took forward when you started Cracker Jack?
Stephanie Schwab (06:15)
Yeah.
Really importantly to me was to hire great people and trust them. That I learned that two agencies before and then the agency in between was not that situation where like they hired me and didn't trust me and it was a really toxic relationship. but part of that I'd been running an agency in Manhattan and New York where I'd lived for a long time. And like to me it was just really important to get the right people in the right seats.
and then let them run. And so that's what I still do today, is find really good people and you can train for the skills that they need on the job. You can't train for sense of urgency. You can't train for ethics. Those are things that people bring with them on their own initiative, the willingness to learn, wanting to learn, wanting to soak things in. You can't train for that very easily.
Amanda (07:26)
Yes, looking for that values alignment and hopefully demonstrable track record of success. But if you have that potential, you're exactly right. You can train for process. But if you can bring those other elements in, your team is unstoppable. And it's a lot more fun also. Micromanaging is the worst. Cool. that's been kind of a, it sounds like a central philosophy that has really driven you. I mean,
Stephanie Schwab (07:41)
So much better. Yeah, yeah.
Amanda (07:50)
My goodness, your company is almost 15 years old and so clearly that has been effective. Are any of your original team members still there?
Stephanie Schwab (07:58)
Let me think. No, I did have a team member that I had brought with me from the other two agencies and she and I parted ways last year. So for most of our run, I did. Now, yeah, there's nobody on my team that's from the original team, but I'm now getting to work with somebody that I started grad school with. We met on the first day of grad school a long, long time ago, decades ago.
Amanda (08:07)
Mm
Stephanie Schwab (08:25)
and she joined my team last year and so I get to work with my best friend and that's just wonderful and amazing.
Amanda (08:32)
my goodness. That's really cool. And I mean, for somebody to stay with you for 13 years, that speaks volumes. That's really neat. Cool. And Stephanie, I mean, you have a really important point of view to share about the importance of having a personal brand for all professionals, especially on LinkedIn, obviously the professional network. So first of all, what's the big deal? Especially if our listeners don't necessarily consider themselves a creator or thought leader yet, but maybe you are an employee working for someone else and don't necessarily.
Stephanie Schwab (08:37)
It was great. It was a really good run.
Amanda (09:01)
on making a career change or making a go at being a creator, why the heck does it matter to have a personal brand on LinkedIn?
Stephanie Schwab (09:09)
Well, I think it matters to have a personal brand, period. And then LinkedIn is just one of the best vehicles to get that personal brand out into the world. think about what happens, maybe you know, maybe your listeners know, like if you Google yourself what comes up, chances are that if you have a LinkedIn profile, that is the first Google link that most people will get. And especially if you have a name like Amanda Northcutt or Stephanie Schwab that's somewhat distinctive.
And, you know, there's a few Stephanie Schwab in the world, but for the most part, I dominate the first page of Google. So, you know, if you have a name that's not too common or somebody looks up your name and your location, perhaps LinkedIn is going to come up first. And so your personal brand is what people see when they Google you, whether you like it or not. And so why not take control of it? Why not make it something that you are proud of that represents you well?
Amanda (09:41)
Hahaha
Stephanie Schwab (10:02)
And not everybody will want to have a website as I do and you do. Not everybody will want to write a blog as I do. But everybody in business, for the most part, will have a LinkedIn profile. And so let's optimize it. Let's make it as interesting and engaging as we can and make it a really good representation of who you are.
Amanda (10:23)
Nice. And what can having a strong personal brand on LinkedIn do for you? I mean, both from the employee standpoint and the creator, thought leader, business owner, executive.
Stephanie Schwab (10:35)
Yeah, think it's again, it represents you, right? It's like a business card today. And if people are going to look for you, they're going to find that. So you want it to really be clear on who you are, what you do, for whom, you know, what, your capabilities are, even if you're an employee, that's all still really important because someday you might want to make a change or you might be forced to make a change and you want to build your presence before you need it.
it's much, much easier to build your LinkedIn presence before you get laid off, say, or you decide that you really want to kick that job to the curb. So if you build it now and you have a beautiful profile and it's really clear what you do and who you do it for, and then you start to put a little tiny bit of content out into the world regularly, that will make a big impact on the people around you. And so let's say you are an employee or you're a
marketer at a company now and you want to maybe make a change in a year or two, well you might get somebody reach out to you earlier than that with your dream job because they're like, right, I went to school with her. Now she's popping up in my LinkedIn feed. I totally forgot. That's what she does, right? You just don't know. And it's such a serendipitous, discoverable kind of platform that even if you don't think that you need it, build it because you never know what's going to come as a result.
Amanda (12:01)
Nice. So it's a good, it's like an offensive play, right? You're not laid off. You're retaining optionality if you are out there and people have a favorable impression of you.
Stephanie Schwab (12:05)
Yeah, yeah, it's been proactive.
Yeah, yeah. And if you're an executive, that's a slightly different argument. It's well known, I was just looking at an Edelman study that people buy from people and people buy from companies where they feel like the executives have a strong presence. so LinkedIn is very B2B oriented. And so it makes a big, it's a big difference for B2B executives to be on LinkedIn, but even B2C.
Again, like if you weren't sure about a company and you wanted to go look them up, you'd probably come up with the executives LinkedIn profiles first. And so if those profiles are human and engaging and interesting and talking about values that you align with, then you're more likely to want to buy from them. And so in the B2B world, I'm sorry, the only place to be really is LinkedIn. There's no other other platform that you can be where you can have a presence that shows
your CEO, your chief vision officer, your chief product officer, your VP of development, whatever. It's the only place. so building and fueling that presence with good content can make a difference to people who want to buy from you and your employees and people who might want to work for you. So you hit all of those groups when you're active on LinkedIn.
Amanda (13:32)
like one, two, three punch. All right, I've got like a three part question here, so stick with me. You we talked about in the beginning, you are an agency owner, you're a creator yourself, you have a strong personal brand, you help others with their personal brand. I want to hear about the evolution of your personal brand. I mean, it sounds like you're basically on LinkedIn since its inception. What has your approach been to building a following? I'm sure that has changed drastically over time as the algorithm and, you know, competition has increased, but how did that...
Stephanie Schwab (13:38)
Okay.
Amanda (14:01)
go for you and how have you built the following that you've built?
Stephanie Schwab (14:04)
That's a really good question. So yeah, I've been on LinkedIn since the beginning. I think a while ago finally deleted some of my older jobs off of LinkedIn, know, how we just kind of let them accumulate. so at the beginning there was no feed, right? It was really a resume site. You you would go and network with people or.
Amanda (14:13)
You
Stephanie Schwab (14:24)
That was when you had to make connections to each other. so I would say to somebody, well, if there's somebody in my first connection that you want to meet, I'll send along a request, if you remember those days. And so I mostly maintained it because I was in digital marketing. And I knew that it was valuable and important for me and clients at the time. Then CompanyPages came along. And that became part of our retinue, part of our product offering.
So I kept my profile up, but I wasn't putting too much content into the feed really until maybe the last six or seven years. And that's when I started to understand that it really is like a mini blog. I wasn't blogging as much. I was blogging a lot in the early days and I wasn't blogging as much, but it allowed me to still get my ideas out there and get some feedback on them. And it was really fun and valuable. I've been...
fairly consistent with content for maybe six or seven years, not frequent, but I was putting it out there. And then the last couple of years, I've been trying to get content out there more regularly. I did take almost the whole summer off. So if you go look at my LinkedIn right now, it's, I don't know, iffy. But I was posting every day up to seven days a week for most of the last couple of years. So yeah, and it's...
Amanda (15:42)
Wow.
Stephanie Schwab (15:45)
I've found that it's become the number one lead source for my agency. And so it's well worth doing for me because it turns people into clients. And that's fantastic.
Amanda (15:56)
Yeah, that's a big deal. That's massive for your lead generation, obviously. And I think it's also important to call out that you probably made a very intentional decision to take the summer off. I know you're spending time with family back here in the States and you don't own your own company and your own personal brand so that you can work 24 seven, 365, right? We're trying to work in lifestyle architecture to our businesses and our personal brand. So I'm interested to see if there's any sort of like long tail.
Stephanie Schwab (16:17)
Yep.
Amanda (16:26)
impact on like lead flow for your agency on taking that time off? Or do know if that's impacted lead flow?
Stephanie Schwab (16:35)
I've still been doing outbound messaging to prospects. So that's been going fairly steadily. And so I've had a number of new business meetings, I mean, at least one or two per week, even in the summer. So except for a week that I get off. So yeah, yeah, not bad. And that's, know, it's really great to have content in my feed that shows my expertise. And so if somebody...
Amanda (16:44)
this.
Okay, great.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Stephanie Schwab (16:59)
that I reach out to, looks at my LinkedIn, of course I want to show them that validation that I do know what I'm doing and what I'm telling them I'm going to do for them is something that I'm doing myself. But so far it hasn't hurt me negatively yet that I took some time off. So we'll see.
Amanda (17:14)
Good. Yeah. And like you said, it's not like you were doing nothing. You were spending your time more toward the bottom of the funnel, right? People who were hand raisers more likely to purchase. so, yeah, that's a good way to strike a balance and keep the money flowing in. So good on you. All right, let's get into some nitty gritty of how to go about building your strong personal brand on LinkedIn, building a following, things like that. Let's start with rookie mistakes. What are the most common ones that people make when they're starting to kind of...
Stephanie Schwab (17:21)
Exactly.
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Amanda (17:44)
hone in and crystallize their personal brand and hope to build a following. What's some advice to help people avoid some of those pitfalls as well?
Stephanie Schwab (17:54)
I think the biggest mistake that I see people make is being afraid to put themselves out there. Like they might, you know, revamp their profile and it looks really nice and it looks really pretty. They get a new banner, they get new photographs, whatever, and then they don't post anything. And so, because they're like, but everybody's, you know, whatever I have to say, if somebody's already saying it, I'm not that unique, I'm not that different. And the reality is we...
each have a totally different network on LinkedIn. Nobody is following the same people or has the same people following them. And so your audience is unique to you. You know, it's an amalgam of all the different jobs you've had and the followers you've gained at all those different jobs and the connections that you've made. And, know, maybe going back to college for some people. And so you have a unique audience. And so they are interested in what you have to say.
And so not putting yourself out there is like the number one thing. Like just people are held back by it. They're afraid. So that's
addition to the mindset that people have that keeps them from getting active on LinkedIn, once they do get active, they post content that I call billboard content. And that is that content that could go on a billboard by the side of the road. That's like a, I won this award, or hey, I'm going to this conference, or hey, I went to this conference. And if you don't post content that people can engage with, you might as well just buy the billboard on the side of the
Like there's no value in it. And so just posting that thing that you did is just not engaging for other people. All they can say to that is congrats. Hey, good job. Good for you. Right. And that's not meaningful engagement. The algorithm doesn't like that. It's not interesting to your followers. And so I encourage people to post content that has a hook into it that makes it easy for people to engage with that you ask a question at the end of the, of that piece.
to get people engaged. So if I was at a conference and I did want to write about being at the conference, first I would post a few pictures and tag a few people that I was with, tell some stories maybe about or tell a story about something that happened at the conference that I learned from, and then end with, hey, what was the last conference you went to that you loved? And that gives people, it gives anybody an opportunity.
to engage with that content. makes it like, I call it a softball, like an underhanded softball question, right? It's easy to hit. And so posting content that has that built -in call to action that people can engage with and put their own comments in and easily understand what to do back is really, really important.
Amanda (20:20)
Mm
Yeah, and then you responding to those comments like LinkedIn loves that back and forth, back and forth. You're going to get so many more views that way, at least the way the algorithm is right now at the end of 2024. So it's not quite the end. It's Q3, Q3 of 2024. But okay, any other like major pitfalls? And I mean, we could talk about the mindset piece all day. Like, man, is that not, that's the blocker in front of us for just about everything. So.
Stephanie Schwab (20:42)
yes.
Yep.
return.
day.
Amanda (21:06)
What advice do you give your clients about overcoming those mindset hurdles, not only in, or maybe it is primarily social media posting, but that putting yourself out there thing and yeah, how do you coach on that?
Stephanie Schwab (21:23)
Yeah. So to be honest, we don't do that much coaching because we do it for them. And it is much, much easier to put yourself out there if somebody else is doing the writing and the engagement and you don't have to push the button that says send. If somebody else is pushing the button that says send, it's a lot easier. It just, I think for our clients, they feel so much better about it and they're more willing to do it. And then they're like, gosh, you know, and that, that, that was a great piece. And that, that piece came from their head, right? We were just wrote it for them and push the button.
Amanda (21:50)
Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.
Stephanie Schwab (21:53)
So they feel better about it. It's just easier to, to like get it done. I think if you're not the one hesitating. So, mean, we, we eliminate it. I mean, we'll do some coaching, course, on like somebody will say, no, strike that. wasn't a great idea. And we'll be like, no, no, that was, that was a great idea. Let's do that. You know? So there's some of that, course, but yeah, we can eliminate that hesitation because we do it for most of our clients.
Amanda (22:02)
Cool. So Cracker Jack just completely eliminates the problem like that whole entire step.
Hahaha.
Hmm, all right, that's fair enough. All right, well, let's talk about most important elements of a strong personal brand on LinkedIn. I mean, even table stakes down to good photo banner, mean, the whole bit.
Stephanie Schwab (22:34)
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. It's, it's a question we get us all the time. I've got a little lead magnet about it, thinking about doing a webinar about it. so there, the elements are both graphic and visual and written. And so if you're not good at either of those two things, get help. That's, that's what we tell people who want to DIY it. Like there are plenty of people out there that will help you, but we'll start from the top with a great banner and the banner should say something about what you do and who you do it for.
Amanda (22:42)
Mm
Stephanie Schwab (23:04)
It's not just a picture of your city skyline, although I had that for a long time. It's got to be something more tangible than that. Maybe it shows like my banner currently does, like some logos of clients that you've worked with or people, jobs, know, companies that you've worked with in the past. Shows off your expertise, gives you some gravitas, and is colorful and interesting ideally, like not just a plain background. Your photo should be with you taking about
about 75 to 90 % of the frame looking at the camera, not like over at the side or looking at somebody on your right or whatever. And if you look at my profile, you'll see that I have some colored background on it that helps brand me. It's in one of my brand colors, blue, and it helps brand me when I'm in somebody's feed, they see that color as well as my face and they start to associate those two things together. So that's a little trick to just help you brand yourself. Even if you don't have like brand colors,
Just choose something you like, choose a color you like. And then the headline in people's profiles, a lot of people think it's their job title and it is not your job title. That's down in the resume section and there's plenty of ways to optimize for that. But the headline should be something about what you do, who you do it for, and the results that you've gotten doing it ideally. And so I help.
Amanda (24:23)
Mm.
Stephanie Schwab (24:28)
X to Y through these strategies, through this process, and I've worked with XYZ companies. Or those are maybe in your banner. One way or another, you're trying to put some proof, some social proof about who you've worked with and what you've done for them. And that's a good headline. And remember that the headline also shows up when you post content. There's like seven to 10 words that show up with your picture in the feed when you post content.
So you wanna make sure that the important things are at the beginning of your headline because that's what's gonna show up all the time.
So yeah, so the next thing is your about section. It should be written in first person. I do this, I've done this. Here are the clients I've worked with. You could put a testimonial in there. You could put a snippet of a recommendation in there that you've already gotten in LinkedIn. You could put that in there. Some numbers, like what have you actually achieved for companies? Super useful.
Again, it's a place for validation and social proof to show that you really do know what you're doing. And it shouldn't be written in chunky paragraphs. It should have bullet points and white space and be really easy to skim and just kind of grab visually the keywords out of it that people are interested in. It's also really important for job seekers because that's where a lot of your keywords come in. And I'm not a career coach, but I have known people to add keywords at the bottom of their about section.
to make sure that they're in their profile. So that's something you could try. And then there's a featured section that you can add to your profile. And so if you're a solopreneur or a coach or a creator, this is gonna be really important for you where you're wanna put your lead magnet, a link to your lead magnet, a link to your newsletter, a link to how to book a call, and you can design a nice little graphic and make a featured section with three, up to three items, show it once.
Amanda (26:01)
Thanks.
Stephanie Schwab (26:29)
And so put your most important links there with graphics that match your brand if you have a brand or your colors and that way people can take some action very easily from your profile. So yeah, those are like the top things that I would look at.
Amanda (26:43)
Nice. Okay. Well, I look forward to looking through your PDF and I'm sitting here wondering, is my about section written in first person or not? I'm not sure. need to go check. Seriously. That's all.
Stephanie Schwab (26:54)
Yeah, yeah, there's there's 10 items in my guide. So when you grab the guide, you'll have 10 of them.
Amanda (26:55)
Nice. Well, I'll my team go through that and make sure we're all up to snuff with Cracker Jack's standards. So that's awesome. Thank you for sharing that with everyone who's listening. I appreciate it. Are there any LinkedIn subscription tiers that you all recommend that are especially helpful in terms of like the building following, building a personal brand to that end?
Stephanie Schwab (27:08)
Sure.
Yeah, so I have a sales navigator subscription. I think it's vitally important if you're going to prospect on LinkedIn. It helps you go, you can go search companies and people at those companies by company size, by industry, by location, by job title, and get lists of those people that you can reach out to. So if you're in sales, you for sure have a sales navigator account. But if you're a solopreneur or a coach or a consultant, it could be really valuable.
to do that and then that gives you all the other benefits of premium. But premium I think is really valuable for anybody who's serious about LinkedIn because it allows you to, well first of all it gives you better analytics and it allows you to put a more prominent link in your profile to take an action. And so again if you've got a lead magnet you want people to grab or you want them to book a call with you or subscribe to a newsletter, like that's, I think it's.
I don't know, $99 a year or something. don't know, the prices might have just changed. But premium's not that expensive. It's well worth it for that kind of exposure and linked to whatever you really want. So we try to get clients to get on premium minimum, but often we suggest that they get sales navigator if they do want to do prospecting.
Amanda (28:34)
Nice, okay. And then thoughts on, if most of the people listening, if you do not already, you've been encouraged to start an email newsletter, right? Start building an email list. It's not just the followers that you are sort of, we call it renting on social media because you don't have their email address necessarily. We want to own those leads, have their first name, have their email address, have permission -based opportunities to take up a little slice of real estate in their inbox. So one question that I get asked a lot that I would love for you to weigh in on is,
LinkedIn has a newsletter function, right? And so most creators who have an email newsletter that is gated via email address don't necessarily want to put the full thing up onto LinkedIn's newsletter, even though that may help with the algorithm and exposure, because then there's a disincentive to join their email list. So we have a specific way we answer this question, but I'm very curious about your advice.
Stephanie Schwab (29:33)
That's such a good question. I totally agree with the idea of getting people off of LinkedIn, of all social media, really. mean, everything is rented land and social media networks go away. Like Twitter's kind of gone away for most people. So you just never know what's going to happen. Who's going to buy the platform? What's going to happen with it? So we do encourage our clients to all work to get their names off of LinkedIn and on their email list.
we do that in a couple of different ways. Of course, we have a great lead magnet. and currently the lead magnet and the way what I'm trying to build is I also run a secondary newsletter. We've got company newsletter and we often have a call to action for that. But the last three months I've been running a personal newsletter called the networkist, which is about LinkedIn creators. do interviews with creators every week and how they've gotten big on LinkedIn and what they're doing to monetize. And so that's.
all over my LinkedIn now in terms of links and how I want people to engage with me. So I'm building that list. I happen to be doing it on Beehive, but it doesn't matter. have the list, Beehive and Substack are kind of competitors, but I have the list of people that I get to market to or talk to. And so when I send out an email, I put a little blurb in about our services. We also have our...
company list that we've built over the years and we send out a weekly newsletter on that list as well. So it's really important to use the links that you have on LinkedIn, to use that featured section, to put in the comments of your post, we call it a self -comment, to say, hey, know, if you're interested in whatever I just wrote about and you want more of that, join my newsletter list, click here. And you'll want to the link into the comments section, not in the body of the post.
Amanda (31:20)
Right.
Stephanie Schwab (31:23)
because the algorithm does not like links out. So the algorithm will favor you more if you put the link in the comment section. So move as many people off as you can. As far as LinkedIn's newsletters, LinkedIn of course wants you to have newsletters on LinkedIn. Like they, know, we are the product on LinkedIn as we are on all social networks. So I've seen people with great success on LinkedIn newsletters if you define success in terms of like,
50 ,000 subscribers or more, which is wonderful, but you don't have any control over them. And so if LinkedIn decides to diminish that in the algorithm or take away the capabilities, they seem to be adding capabilities to compete with the substacks and behinds. They just allowed for corporate sponsorship of newsletters. So that's kind of cool. But I still would like people to take people off of LinkedIn in any way that they can.
Amanda (32:15)
Yeah.
Stephanie Schwab (32:22)
So it still seems really important to do. So you could have both. We have a client who has both. I never started a LinkedIn one because I've always had one off of.
Amanda (32:31)
Gotcha. Okay. What we typically tell people to do is if you obviously you have the email newsletter, the full version goes out via email, whether you're using Beehive, Substack, ConvertKit, ActiveCampaign, whatever. But then maybe 50, 60, 70 % of it, maybe 30 % of it, depending on the length of newsletter, how you lay out your content, maybe that percentage goes on LinkedIn and there's a call to action to get the full version or
The full version goes on LinkedIn, but then the calls to action are links to lead magnets that are potentially relevant to what's being discussed in that edition of the newsletter. What do think about that approach?
Stephanie Schwab (33:07)
Thanks
Yeah, I think those are both really good approaches. think either way, the point is not to let them languish on LinkedIn. To find ways to quickly, and as often as you can, suggest that they move over to your owned land and not rented land.
Amanda (33:25)
Yes, yes, own your leads for sure. Cool. I'm going to kind of bring our conversation back around to your leadership at Cracker Jack and your growing personal brand. But before I ask you the next question, I want to let our listeners know, kind of alluded to this earlier, that your business is undeniably successful. mean, Cracker Jack hit a major revenue milestone that only about 10 % of woman owned businesses hit worldwide. And we've already talked about
you know how long Cracker Jack has been around almost 15 years, outlasting 90 % of businesses that started that same year. So that is outstanding. So one, congratulations and just major kudos to you for that. You got a good thing going here. You clearly know what you're doing. So I hope everyone is listening very closely to everything that you're saying. But my question is what are some of the biggest challenges you're facing now?
Stephanie Schwab (34:10)
Thank you.
Amanda (34:22)
with your company and or your personal brand and how are you tackling them?
Stephanie Schwab (34:30)
think my perpetual challenge is spreading myself too thin. And I think a lot of business owners do this. So I'm running the agency, involved with almost all of our clients, and doing my personal brand stuff, which is LinkedIn and this new newsletter, The Networkist, and teaching. And halftime,
because I'm split from my ex -husband, half -time parenting a 16 year old and traveling a lot. And so inevitably something is always like the bottom of the list. And, you know, it's usually not the kid or whatever plane ticket I have tomorrow because it's there already. It's, you know, it's often either my personal brand like the summer that my LinkedIn went by the wayside or...
Amanda (35:10)
you
Stephanie Schwab (35:19)
My team is amazing and they can pick up a lot of the client stuff for me, especially when I travel or teach. But yeah, it's hard to juggle. It's very hard to juggle. And I think that's true for so many entrepreneurs and business owners and especially we women. think women have it even harder. We just carry a higher mental load than other people. so yeah, there's always a lot to do. That's my biggest challenge.
Amanda (35:35)
Yes.
Yeah, so spreading yourself too thin. mean, how do you handle that and how has your approach to that evolved over the last 15 years with Cracker Jack? I mean, I'm really big on, like we talked at the beginning of our conversation about like hire good people, trust them. Obviously you are equipping them to be successful, right? So process, standard operating procedures, checks and balances, accountability. mean, how do you, what is your management style in that regard and...
If you could move anything else off your plate, like how would you do that?
Stephanie Schwab (36:15)
Yeah, well, I'm trying to move more client work off my plate. Like I, I'd like to the agency in a couple of years. And so I don't want to be so embedded with clients that people would expect that I would be there all the time. I really want my team to shine and be the leaders of their clients. So, so I'm trying to do less and less client meetings. do very little client work these days, which is great. I've really moved most of my client work.
to other people. And so now I'm mostly just showing up for meetings, but I'm even trying to reduce that. So like when I go to Bangkok and most of those meetings are gonna be in middle of the night for me, clients won't see me for three, four or four weeks and that'll be okay. that's what I'm trying to do is get out of the day to day of the agency as much as possible and just really, again, like trust my team, give them the right tools.
Amanda (36:53)
Right?
Stephanie Schwab (37:10)
Make sure that they know that I'm available if they need me. I'm not, you know, I'm just a slack away. But that, yeah, that I really trust them to do the right thing. And they do. They really do.
Amanda (37:20)
I bet so. And is Cracker Jack fully remote?
Stephanie Schwab (37:25)
Fully remote since the beginning. We've never had an office. Yeah. All over the globe. Yeah, yeah. We are in seven or eight time zones amongst the 13 of us.
Amanda (37:26)
Nice. And you have people all over the globe or high concentration. Nice. I love that.
my gosh, wow. So what are your favorite tools at Slack, Zoom? What else is helpful?
Stephanie Schwab (37:43)
Yes, we've been on Zoom since it was in beta. So we went from Skype to Zoom. We were on Skype at the beginning. Zoom's been amazing for us. We taught all of our clients how to use it during the pandemic. That was fun. And how to use like a virtual phone system and all of that that we've been doing for a long time. We have Dropbox, although we really increasingly moved to Google Drive.
So like kind of legacy client information is in Dropbox and occasionally we have to put something in there, most of everything is on Google Drive. And then Notion is our brain. Like Notion is everything. We have a...
dashboard for every client, editorial calendars are in there, client content is usually in there for almost all of our clients, maybe at Google for some, but mostly at Notion. All of our tasks are in there, that's where we live. So if it's not in Notion, it doesn't exist. That's what I keep telling my team. Like it has to be in Notion.
Amanda (38:37)
Hahaha.
Yeah, our entire business lives in Notion as well. We're like Zoom, Notion, Slack, and Loom. We really love Loom. I know Zoom now has Loom's functionality. So that's very interesting. But yeah, it is so incredibly feasible to run a global team at this point. But yeah, thank you for sharing that. And just a couple more quick questions. So you've been in this game at Cracker Jack for almost 15 years. How are you continuing to get better and
Stephanie Schwab (38:49)
yeah.
Amanda (39:09)
Smarter and like stay at the top of your game staying relevant. I mean that is a hard thing That's a mountain you have to continue to climb as your company ages. So how are you doing that?
Stephanie Schwab (39:21)
I'm a big believer in paying for coaching. And I have over the years paid for three years of social and emotional intelligence training. I did like a major program to do that. And I think it changed my, it changed my business, but it changed my life. I've paid for numerous coaching programs, group coaching, mostly some one -on -one, but mostly group coaching in sales, in...
Amanda (39:23)
Mm
Stephanie Schwab (39:50)
way back when in video, in some aspects of content creation. So I've done just a whole bunch of coaching and a whole bunch of programs. And every one of them has changed some aspect of my business. I really take a lot from those programs. And I'm now working with you, Amanda, in Level Up Creator School, which is really fun. Very excited about that. And...
I just started working with a sales coach as well, because I realized that I was leaving money on the table because I feel like I can't handle objections. like, I have a lot of, hey, let's get back together in September meetings that are on my CRM, or people who said, I'm so interested, let's schedule another meeting. And then they go to the second meeting. And I want to know, I want the tools to fix those things, right? I might not get them all, but I know that there's techniques that I don't know.
And so I'm working with somebody to help me learn.
Amanda (40:47)
I know you and I have another call book tomorrow. We're going to have to sidebar on sales. I've been in sales since I was 16. I have a very, very deep love for sales. I would love to nerd out about sales with you a little bit as well, in addition to your coaching. That's really cool that you're doing that. So you're just continuing to learn, continuing to, I mean, I like, am aware of my gaps in knowledge and like the broader umbrella of business. And each year I systematically
Stephanie Schwab (40:58)
Wow, that's awesome.
Amanda (41:14)
tackle or relearn or level up in some specific area. So I'm very intentional and methodical. It sounds like you kind of do a similar thing. You're just constantly challenging yourself and learning new things, which is great. I I think that's a testament to why you've been so successful and why your company has lasted. Some people are so, they get complacent. They think everything's going to be fine and it's not. And it won't be.
Stephanie Schwab (41:37)
Yeah.
It, everything changes, everything changes. So, and like, you know, a couple of years ago, I had a few really big clients. I wasn't doing nearly as much sales. Now our sales, because we're doing more LinkedIn work is there's smaller ticket. And so there's more of them. And so some place I've really got to focus. And so, yeah, I try, I try, I try to see those blind spots. It's not always easy, but yeah. Yeah.
Amanda (41:41)
Mm -hmm.
That's why you work with coaches, right? I mean, that's awesome. Okay, I gotta ask you about travel, because you and I have talked a lot about travel. What are some of your, maybe top five places on the globe that you recommend everybody has to see before they kick the bucket?
Stephanie Schwab (42:18)
Yeah, well, of course everybody has to come to Barcelona. It's just the most amazing city. I could live anywhere in Europe and I choose to be here. I've been to every city in Europe, obviously, but I love, love, Barcelona. It's just 300 days of sun, temperate weather in the winter, amazing modern Easter architecture. I live in a gorgeous building with stained glass windows and a beautiful little round cupola in the front of my apartment. And like, it's just, it's wonderful.
Amanda (42:43)
Gosh.
Stephanie Schwab (42:47)
So come to Barcelona, it's beautiful. My second thing, second place would be Tokyo, which I just visited for the first time this year. I've wanted to go to Japan since I was a little girl and my God, it lived up to the expectations and more. just, can't wait to go back to Japan. I was only in Tokyo for a week and now I want to like explore more of Japan. I keep going back to Bangkok because I love it so much. It's like the polar opposite of Tokyo.
Amanda (43:11)
Mm.
Stephanie Schwab (43:14)
Tokyo is like all orderly and clean and very homogeneous and very polite. And Bangkok is a riot of like craziness and like gorgeous brand new skyscrapers next to total slums. Like it's this weird contrast. And yeah, but the people, the ties are so amazing. They're just so wonderful and warm and welcoming. And it's a lovely, lovely place to visit. I'm so lucky that I get to go there twice a year.
And then other European cities that I love. You were just in Vienna. I love Vienna. It's a beautiful city. I was just in Rome for the first time in a long time and so much fun. So yeah, I'm a, love Europe. I've been to a few cities in South America. Buenos Aires is beautiful. Bogota is really interesting, although a little scary, like hard to get around, a little dangerous.
Amanda (43:53)
Yeah.
Stephanie Schwab (44:13)
So yeah, and then, you know, there's so many places I haven't been in the States. It's hard. What do you choose, right? Where do you go? Like my kid just said she wants to go back to New York, she hasn't been for a long time. And I was like, yeah, we'll get there someday. But there's so many other places to go visit.
Amanda (44:15)
You
Yeah, have you been to Florence? Yeah, that's.
Stephanie Schwab (44:31)
Yes, yes, a long time ago. I would love to go back.
Amanda (44:33)
So my favorites. What about Edinburgh?
Stephanie Schwab (44:38)
A really long time ago. Yeah, I'd love to get up to Scotland. I've just heard that the whole country is just filled with beautiful things.
Amanda (44:38)
Okay.
So cool. mean, like up in the Isle of Skye and even further north in like Ulaipule, I think is how you say it. It's like otherworldly. I mean, it's a totally different experience. Edinburgh is so cool. mean, university town. The food's amazing. Obviously, global cuisine. People are so kind and helpful, very walkable, incredible. So I love speaking with fellow traveler, fellow founder, amazing woman. Like, thank you so much. This was such a fun conversation.
Stephanie Schwab (45:14)
This has been great. Thank you so much for having me.
Amanda (45:14)
Yeah, do you have a quick parting shot and where can listeners find you online?
Stephanie Schwab (45:21)
You can find me first and foremost on LinkedIn, but if you Google Stephanie Schwab from almost anywhere in the world, my website might come up first or second and LinkedIn will come up either first or second, depending. My website's Crackerjack Marketing is my agency and my newsletter is called The Networkist. And if you type in The Networkist, you'll find that. And I'll give you the links, Amanda, so you can put them in the show notes.
Amanda (45:42)
Yeah, definitely, LinkedIn top 10 list and everything like that. And your agency branding is incredible. It is so fun. Everybody needs to type in crackerjackmarketing .com right now and go look at the unbelievable branding. It is so fun and engaging and light and warm. mean, man, you guys knocked that out of the park. So way to go.
Stephanie Schwab (46:07)
Thank you. just, just redid it. We just launched in July. I'm so proud of it. It took us a long time and it was so worth the wait.
Amanda (46:11)
Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Stephanie, and thank you listeners. We know that your time is precious, so thank you for sharing yours with us. We help creators like you at levelupcreatorschool .com where our team becomes your full stack team of advisors and also includes things like no fluff creator courses, a vibrant creator community, and more, all on a subscription basis.
resources, and we'll see you next time on the Level Up Creators podcast.