From Fired to 6 Figures: Michelle Thames on Personal Branding, AI, and Digital Product Hustle

Speaker A: Hello and welcome to another episode of the Long Game. My guest today is Michelle Thames, who is a self made woman and entrepreneur. She originally started out a blog about natural hair, just documenting exactly what she was doing, which grew to a following which was fortunate because when she got fired, she turned to that for her full time employment. She also ended up working later with a small startup turned multi million dollar exited company and grew their audience to 500,000 subscribers on YouTub Instagram. Michelle is a very multi passionate woman who focuses on digital marketing, but she's also writing a book, she has a podcast, she does consulting, you name it, she's probably done uh, it in the world of marketing. And we go into a lot of what it takes to kind of get started in this day and age. From a business perspective. How do you work as an, uh, independent contractor? How do you balance passion versus revenue and growth? And also where is the role of AI in your world when you're building using as a thought partner? Michelle refers to ChatGPT as chat and has quite the relationship with chat. So I hope you enjoyed this episode, hope you learned something and enjoy. Michelle, you're focusing on digital products, but you've been hustling on the Internet for quite some time. How did, how did you get into this wonderful wacky world?

Speaker B: Oh, you say wacky? Yeah. Because the Internet can be a wacky place. So I was actually fired from my job back in 2016. I have, uh, a bachelor's and a master's in healthcare. I did all the things, went to school, got a job, checked all the

Speaker A: boxes you were supposed to check, check

Speaker B: all the boxes, was working for a healthcare system and I got fired. But luckily for me, I had something to fall back on which was blogging. So back in the day, some people may be listening and I might date myself about being a blogger, but there was a platform called Blog Her Blogger. And I created a blog on Blogger. And I said, you know what? I didn't know and realize that people could get paid for doing this until people started to reach out and say, hey, can I pay you to post a blog post? And I'm like, wow, I really have something here.

Speaker A: I started out and quick question, like just you went quickly over it. But I think a lot of people struggle with like, well, what should I start doing? And obviously maybe blogging is not the answer today, but just the, uh, going from not doing something to doing something is actually not, uh, a small task. So what was it about blogging that or whatever, like what made you actually take action to start something on the Internet.

Speaker B: That's a really good question. I didn't have any hobbies. So back in when I was 20, no hobbies whatsoever. Rather than going to drink and going to the club. And that's like not something that you just will. For me, it's not something I wanted to continue to do. And so my boyfriend, who's now my husband at the time, said, you need a hobby, like you don't have anything that you like to do, rather than like shop and do all this stuff, but that's like not something fulfilling to your life. Right. And so that really made me think and I was like, you're right. And so I started to do my hair online. So I had a relaxer, which is for black girls. My hair was straight and I wanted it to go back curly. And so in order to do that I had to grow out the relaxer. So I didn't know and realized that there were other women online and a whole community of people who were doing the same thing that I was doing. And so I immersed myself in this world and started a blog to document my process. You're right, it always starts with something. And that's initially how I started. And so I just started to share my journey of my natural hair, how I take care of it, different hairstyles, and started posting on my blog. And then it got noticed by people and I said, wow, this is really a thing. People can get paid to write about things that they love. And so that's where this whole influencer world, all the things came into play. And so when I was fired.

Speaker A: That's awesome, thank you.

Speaker B: And I was fired from my job, I said, wow, I could really fall back on this and like focus on this and get better at my craft because I didn't go to school for marketing or anything. I'm self taught. But I wanted to um, immerse myself in blogging, in content creation and all the things. So I did that. And then from there I was able to, when I got fired from my job, I was able to freelance, write, do content creation for a side hustle until I got the opportunity to then go and work for a multi million dollar hair care brand during their marketing with no marketing degree.

Speaker A: That's phenomenal. And so it was really kind of just like you saying, hey, I want to start something, I need to start a hobby. Let me start talking about and documenting. I think documenting is a very key word of you weren't trying to manufacture something that wasn't going on or be someone you were not. You were just documenting your own life and what worked and didn't work with your hair. So I think that's probably a really good lesson to also kind of extract out is it doesn't have to be this big orchestrated thing. You can just be yourself, but then share what you're doing and some group of people will find that useful somewhere on the Internet. That's the beauty of the Internet.

Speaker B: Yes, that's it.

Speaker A: So you transition that forward. You realize, okay, I can make money with this. You start getting paid sponsorships on your blog. You then parlay that into a, uh, proper brand where you're running marketing. Did you feel like a fraud while doing this or was it, Was it like, oh, I kind of know what I'm doing, I can figure this out?

Speaker B: Oh, that's a good question. I know so many people listening feel like frauds. I did in the beginning. But what I realized is, is that we have valuable skill sets that we may have learned from our, uh, nine to five jobs and from just life in general. And you can make money from simple everyday things. And so once I learned that, and also coming from working a 9 to 5 and being an entrepreneur, it's like you always have to be doing something right every single minute of the day. Cause like, your boss is looking at you and if you're not on the computer and all those things. But then I had to flip that and say, well, you could actually do something that takes you 20 minutes and get paid $1,000. It's not as you think. Like, you have to work about outcomes, right? And so I had to overcome that because, yes, I absolutely did feel like at fraud. But then I also went back to results and I said, well, like I mentioned, I got a job working for a startup beauty brand. They were startup at the time, so I helped them to get their following on Instagram to over 500,000 before I left. And so I was like, well, that's not a small kind of thing. Like, you kind of gotta know what you're doing to do something like that. And so I keep going back to my results. And so every time I say, oh, Michelle, you're not qualified for this, because it still happens. And I've been a full, uh, time entrepreneur going on six years this year. It still happens. But then I just go back to say, well, you've gotten people results, and if you can do something that gets somebody else results and solves a problem for them, it's a whole business.

Speaker A: I think it's interesting too that you Know, when you are an employee, there is kind of that time. It's not even time for value. It's just like if you're not doing the time, your boss is probably going to fire you. If you're not doing your 40 hours a week or whatever. It is like you're not doing your job in their eyes. But the minute you flip that to consultant, contractor, entrepreneur, whatever you want to call it, you look at that 500,000 followers. They probably don't care if you were able to get that for them in a week or over four years. But, like, if you got the results and you could deliver those results, they'd probably pay you the same amount of money that you made over the entire time. It has nothing to do with time. It has everything to do with results, which also means your ass is on the line to perform. But it means that you can also get value disproportionate to how much time you put in.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's just a mindset shift. And I know a lot of us, uh, are there, like, you have to work twice as hard. But when I really figured out I don't. And people will pay when I say thousands for your. Just, just your thoughts. People will pay for your thoughts for thousands of dollars.

Speaker A: It's a good space to be in. It's a good space to be in. So where are you now? What. I mean, this is kind of your origin story. What are you doing these days? What's exciting these days? What should people be paying attention to?

Speaker B: Well, I'm doing a lot of exciting things. So this is birthday, a personal brand for myself. And so that's what I help other women entrepreneurs with, especially who are, um, multi passionate. Because I'm multi passionate and most people may think I'm crazy, but I have a podcast, I'm a speaker, I teach, I love content creation, I'm an influencer. And I have a digital marketing agency, too, where we help other brands also develop their marketing and campaigns and events and things surrounding marketing and digital marketing. Um, I do retreats and events, and so that's where I am right now. And writing a book.

Speaker A: So just a few things. Just a few things.

Speaker B: Just a few. I'm all about multiple streams of income. Like, that is my whole goal and that's what I teach other women entrepreneurs, is that you have all these skills and there's different areas if you know that you're. Once I found out I was good at talking, I was like, well, I can start a podcast. Oh, I could start a TV show. Oh, I could start a YouTube channel. So figure out what you're good at. And how can you have multiple streams of income coming in for you where you're not just focused on one thing because that's very stressful to just have one income stream that you're focused on because what if something happens to that?

Speaker A: So that's my whole thing, the counter argument. I, I also have multiple things going on, but the counter argument that I always hear is that if you do pick one thing, the amount that you'll advance from a skills perspective, from ability to earn perspective, from a, you know, knowledge perspective, is it's going to go a lot faster. Right. If they're, they're. If there's someone else that's fully focused just on their podcast or fully focused on just their personal brand or fully focused just on speaking, they're going to go a lot further than Michelle, who's spread across, you know, seven different things and can only put so much time to each of them. So how do you, how, uh, do you think about that? Why is, why have you gone kind of the, the multiple different approaches versus yeah, there is more risk if you're all in, but also if you're all in on something, it's, you're going to learn a lot more, you're going to be able to drive a lot more results.

Speaker B: That is so true because you're right. There are people who just sell digital products and we were talking about this before the show, who are way ahead of me. Right. I could have been way ahead, but I also think I'm just super multi passionate and I have a system where I can focus on all of these things strategically with the right amount of time. Like, it's not like I'm going super hard in one area versus another. I'm going hard actually in all of them, but having people to help too. So we have, uh, me and my husband have our digital marketing agency and we also have a business partner who we work with to help everything that goes on with our clients. We're boutique though. I don't take like seven clients. So it's also having to understand that is like we have a threshold of how many clients I can take in that. So I have a threshold for like everything I do. But I do agree with you, if I was just to focus on my podcast, which is something that I am doing in this upcoming year alongside of digital products, it's going to grow exponentially more because I'm just putting more time and effort into it. So I agree there's both sides. And then there's also the other side of, well, how do you manage all that? Right. Because most people couldn't manage it.

Speaker A: It's just, how do you manage it?

Speaker B: Google, Google Calendar and ClickUp.

Speaker A: The ClickUp. Tell me more, how do you use it specifically?

Speaker B: So ClickUp is project management. Like, I use it to organize all of the podcast episodes, all of my content that's coming out. I like to plan on Sundays. I used to do batch planning for like months ahead, but then I found that that didn't work for me as much because things change in marketing and things change like with your ideas all the time. And so I don't want to be so far planned into something that I can't necessarily change it. Now I plan my quarters out, but like content from week to week. It's probably like monthly more than just.

Speaker A: And get specifics, like, talk me through. What if we were to take a peek into your ClickUp? What are we looking at for the next quarter? Is it kind of different posts on different days? Is it the ideas or is it actually the full, you know, whether blog posts or social media posts or Instagram posts. Like what, what level of granularity do you have in. In your content system?

Speaker B: It's all of that. So the ideas plus what the actual content is going to be. So I do spend time batch creating reels, carousels, all those things. Batch recording podcast episodes, doing all of the show notes, handing it off to my team to edit and do all those things. So yes, if you go on my clicker right now, you're gonna say, wow, this is a lot of things in here. But everything is organized by quarter. So for example, I have an event coming up in November, but I've already started selling tickets on social media because I know that the way a buyer's process is, is gonna be different. So I have to talk about this consistently from now until it sells out or to November in order for me to sell that event out. Right. And then behind that I'm doing different type of webinars and events. I have a community, so planning all of that out. Scheduling is a main tool that I use scheduling things out in my community. I schedule their emails out, I schedule the content out. It's done. So just spending that time up front doing it.

Speaker A: What do you use for scheduling?

Speaker B: A lot of different tools I use. So circle is where my community is. So I have a community for women entrepreneurs who, um, are multi, passionate like myself, uh, who want to be visible. Right. My whole thing is visibility. How can we be visible using social media and digital marketing and beyond? I want to get people visible so that the opportunities I'm speaking of, that you get those opportunities, that you get those clients from the simple content you create. So when I'm talking about, and we're talking about content creation here, I'm not talking about things that might take you seven weeks and a production team. Simple content that you create with your phone. I leverage ChatGPT to help me with all my strategic processes and laying everything out. And so that makes it easier and I could do it faster. If you don't have those tools, you're going to spend seven hours trying to plan and you're not even going to have anything planned for one day. So that's a high level overview. But you all can come see my ClickUp. It's kind of, it's a lot in there.

Speaker A: Yeah, I feel like our productivity and project management tools are a reflection of our brains. And so anytime you bring some. I use notion a lot. I, I use notion tools as well. It's uh, when I bring someone in, it's like, oh, it all makes sense to me. But whether or not it makes sense to other people, I don't know.

Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of planning.

Speaker A: You, you talked about also moving more and more or, uh, we were talking before we started recording about kind of digital products themselves. So where do you see digital products fitting within a lineup of different revenue streams? And also how do you, how do you prioritize which revenue stream is maybe more useful? Or maybe you say, okay, well the blog's not, you know, producing as much from an ad perspective, so I'm going to start shifting over here or I'm going to monetize my community or my, my newsletter. How do you kind of prioritize where to put attention?

Speaker B: That's a good question. I think you have to look at where people are coming from and like, what's your highest revenue generating thing that you do? For me, that is my podcast. So I need to make sure that that is like the number one thing it drives clients, as you know. Right. You get clients from your podcast, you get people to join your programs, you get speaking engagements, you get known. And so I'm focusing a lot on that. Um, but I like to look at everything from just a high level overview. Like, okay, we know we have this many clients in our agency that's bringing in this amount of revenue you could like, uh, when I looked at and thought about digital products, I said, well, there's this huge space that I have that I'm not fulfilling. Like I've done digital products before but now I'm talking about going all in so that this makes money for me while I'm sleeping. You create a digital product once but you do got to promote it. So don't think it's like some easy thing. Right. But I'm going to create this product once and just sell it on repeat and let it be an uh, entry point for people to enter my funnel. So that way I am m not spending a whole lot of time trying to convince people like one to one. One to one is great and I do it. But also for people that have been doing this for 15 years and are true experts, you know that your time is valuable and I it's just a higher ticket service and I know that that's not for everybody. So to fulfill like an income stream that I know that I want to generate a large amount of revenue from digital products makes sense because I have the skills and expertise I can create this digital product that will be and it won't be. I know we buy some 67. That's how much it's going to be. $67. Right. But you buy something $67 and you're like this is nothing. But for me I want it to be so valuable that when the client is like wow, well she gave this for 67. If I worked with her one on one, what would it be like? Right.

Speaker A: It all kind of fits within the ecosystem.

Speaker B: And so creating a funnel and like a tripwire as well behind that. Okay, well they bought this product, now offer them to work with you one on one in a 30 day marketing sprint which is another thing I do. So having a process and just looking at those different areas and like where could I spend less time to be honest, I want time, freedom. I want to be able to wake up. I mean I do this but just even more wake up whenever I want. Go to, go to the gym, drink my matcha and like read a book.

Speaker A: See the dollars rolling.

Speaker B: And see the dollars rolling. Exactly.

Speaker A: Where does uh, you mentioned chatgpt a little bit. So it sounds like you're you know, you're using as a thought partner but where else are you kind of seeing AI in your long term plans? Does it come into your, your courses or your information products? Does it come into your consulting work? Do more customers and clients start asking about how they should be using it? Um, because obviously it's a very powerful tool but we're, we're early on and everyone kind of figuring out how they're going to use it uniquely.

Speaker B: You're absolutely right. And I've been an early adopter, so yes, I get people coming to me asking, how can they use ChatGPT? And in my one on ones, I do teach my clients how to use ChatGPT to help with an overall content plan. Most people come to me and say, I don't know what to post. But then how do I even post something that gets people to engage, like to engage back with me to send

Speaker A: me a dm, the levels of good posting.

Speaker B: Yep. And So I use ChatGPT as like my little warrior. We're, we're besties and I call it Chad and I. It talks. If you don't, if you all don't know, Chad will talk back to you, hype you up. Like it makes you feel good, which is kind of weird. But at the same time, sometimes you don't have the budget. Yeah, sometimes you don't have the budget to hire a va. And so if you're somebody who can understand how to use this as a tool to help you through thought processes, I mean, it's put together entire marketing campaigns for my clients, and I have clients who are multimillion dollar earners who use ChatGPT on a consistent basis every single day. It was down yesterday. I text my client, she was like, I already know it's down. So it took round four.

Speaker A: Then you gotta start diversifying into all the elements of, uh, Claude.

Speaker B: I was just like, I'll wait to chat. GBT gets back, I'll do something else on my day until I can finish up my project.

Speaker A: You want to chat specifically?

Speaker B: I wanted chat.

Speaker A: Ah, the relationship that you had. Yeah. What, uh, specifically if someone was to kind of get started, do you have any particular prompts or tips or things that are useful when interacting with AI?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it depends on what you're using it for. Right. Because you could be using it for emails, you could use it to put events together. Because I'll be honest, I put my whole entire event that I have coming up, uh, in November. Chat helped me come up with the theme, the overall layout of the event, the sponsorship letters. And I've gotten yeses back already by using ChatGPT to help me pitch sponsorship letters and my sponsorship deck. And so it depends on your goal. Like, again, my goal with my event was I need this event to sell out chat. I need you to act as like, uh, event strategist, multi extraordinaire, to help me put together an event that goes with my brand that people would pay for. And I've sold seven tickets already. And today is June 11th and the event is in November, so congratulations. Thank you. So it works. But again, how are you using it? Like you said, podcast. Can you use it to help you come up with different podcast ideas for the topics you're going to talk about and to write the show notes? Because if you say give me SEO focused show notes, that's going to help you rank better, right when people are searching for your podcast. So I use it in that type of way strategically, not just, I want to say, just feeding it random things. You have to be very granular in order to get the right output either, because you could get a basic output, but the people I know who are using it in the right way, they're not getting like generic stuff. They've seeded it with the information about themselves so much that it knows you and what your business is. So then it can feed you everything you need and you don't have to make as many changes. Now I make changes. I do, because something I just, you know, I make it my own. But you have a good foundation to even use so that you are not spending that time to, you know, keep making. Making it better. Making it better.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think that's, uh, a good point around, like it having context around you. And so I've actually been building my own kind of pretty complex AI assistant that is able to schedule meetings for me and email people, do the normal things with ChatGPT, but also kind of like plug deep into my ecosystem. It can read emails, draft emails for me just automatically in my inbox. So I've gotten kind of pretty far down that path. And what I found is that the more and more context that I'm able to plug in, I have it connected to my notion. I have it connected to actually set it up so then I can do. It can do phone calls and I can text it as well. I can add it into a text thread. So if someone texts me and says, hey, let's catch up, and I say, oh, let me add Evie is what I've named her. Um, let me add Evie. And then Evie can say, hey, let me check Elijah's calendar. Oh, here's some availability. What works for you? And then you pick a time and then it sends out the calendar invite. Um, just having that kind of. It can be everywhere and it can read everything and have that full context, you start getting a lot more towards kind of what a human that you would trust with all your information of a virtual assistant. Or any type of assistant that really knows your personal preferences and your likes and your dislikes and your work email versus your personal email versus your other email. Um, it's cool to see what's emerging, what's becoming a pretty useful tool that I've been building out for myself.

Speaker B: I need this. That sounds really good, Elijah. I might need that.

Speaker A: Well, all right. I'll get you signed up for the. It's very early right now, but I'm starting to get alpha users, uh, for it. So, yeah, maybe you can, uh, try it out and give me some feedback.

Speaker B: I will. That sounds great.

Speaker A: Yeah. I think we're moving towards that world too, where eventually we've lived in a world for so long where we have big multinational corporations that have decades and decades, if not 100 years of research and psychologists and how to manipulate a consumer for buying decisions and how to exactly use the right color schemes at the right time with the right noise to kind of influence us. And I think AI, if done ethically and done properly, it can really represent the best interest of an individual, of a person. And yeah, there are questions of, you know, OpenAI is actually closed AI and where did they get their data from? And is it biased or. Not biased, but AI itself, if you abstracted away from any one company building it, the tool itself can be an embodiment of the Internet that fully represents your best interest. So it knows Michelle. It knows Michelle is, you know, has multiple passions and this is what she wants to focus on. And also she's working on this goal and she's trying to achieve this certain amount of income. And so it can really kind of help represent you showing up into this overly messy world where everyone's trying to buy your attention and, and get your dollars and maybe distract you from something that aligns with that business's goals, but not necessarily Michelle's goals. So I'm pretty, I'm pretty excited to see where personal AI ends up going.

Speaker B: Yeah, it's like when the Internet started. There's still weary people, but I feel that if you don't get on the train now, you might be a little behind. So just come on over and test it out.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's. It's not going away, that's for sure.

Speaker B: No, it's here to stay.

Speaker A: Unless it ends up taking over the world. But then, then we're going away and it's not going. Yeah, so it's, it's here to stay, one way or another. If, uh, if people wanted to get started on marketing, so maybe They've been doing something, they've got a product or a brand or a community or a personal brand. What's like one or two pieces of tactical feedback that you typically end up noticing and giving out that, ah, could be useful to someone listening.

Speaker B: The first thing I think is clarity. Like clarity around who is this service or item for product or service for, right? Because if you're not clear on your ideal person, then you're gonna be talking to everybody. And that's really hard to market something on social media. And beyond that is you're not clear about who it's for. So I would say that's where we have to start. And most people skip this step, right? You have a thing, right. But then you're not clear on who you wanna sell it to. Because you could say, yeah, women and men over this age, but like, could you narrow that down to really get the right people? Um, of course, you're always, like I say, I focus on women, right. But I always get men coming to me too. So it's just understanding that you're gonna get outliers, but who is your service or product for? So that's the first thing. The second thing I will say is if you're gonna get started, just know that this is a long game and nothing happens overnight. And so there's a lot of people who want 10,000 followers on Instagram, which doesn't even matter because 10,000 followers are not all your people. You have to sift even through those people to find the right people. So are you willing to do that? Are you willing to put in the work? Because being an entrepreneur, owning your business, we got to put skin in the game. And there's a lot of people that may feel, I posted this thing on social media and you expect the people to come, but that's not how it works. You really do have to have a plan on how you're going to get to those people, whether it's through email, through podcasting, through a digital ecosystem, which I like to teach my clients some way that they can reach you. Right. But in a plan, not just throwing a graphic post up on Instagram, which will probably not really do anything. So, um, those are just a few things that I would say, like that you need to get started with that clarity piece is important, but also having a plan and knowing that you're gonna. We're gonna be the ones creating the content unless you hire somebody. But then if you do hire that person, do you know what to do so that they're not getting over on you because there are a lot of people who just post. Like I have clients come to me all the time and say, well, why is my marketing not working well? Did you really explain to the person as well too, like what your goals are so that they can actually get you the results from whatever channel? Because each channel is different and you have to approach it in a different way.

Speaker A: How can you achieve what, what you want to achieve if you can't define what you want exactly or communicate it to someone else?

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker A: That makes a lot of sense. Michelle, this has been a really wonderful conversation. Is there anything you want to leave the listeners with or anything else that you're excited about or that they should check out?

Speaker B: Yes. Um, I'm just excited about the way like you said, the AI is going these days. So I want to tell everybody, if you're been on the fence, just test out AI. I've used it way beyond just business. I use it for my daily workouts, I use it for recipes. If I need to talk, you know, say something in a nice way without sounding like rude, I say, hey, Chad, can you help me, you know, make this sound better? So like use it as a tool and know that if you are a solopreneur, it can act as an assistant to help you get where you want to get faster. But you do have to spend time learning and being a student to all of these things. Because I'm still a student. I'm sure you're still a student. We're still learning things every day, so just keep putting one foot in front of the other. Um, and I'm excited about my event this year. I'm doing an event here in Chicago, um, for women entrepreneurs. A one day conference, um, 40 people. I love intimate events and so that is something that I'm really looking forward to and my podcast and I'll have you on my podcast so listeners will have to come on over.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: To social media decoded. So that's what I'm looking forward to.

Speaker A: Awesome. Michelle, thank you so much.

Speaker B: Thank you. Thank you for having me.

Speaker A: If you enjoyed that episode, make sure you check out this video right here. And if you really enjoyed it and you listened to the end, take two seconds and share the love so someone else might find it by clicking the thumbs up button and subscribing. I appreciate you and I hope you have a wonderful day, but click that button.