eCommerce Traffic: an Interview with Jessica Totillo Coster

Read through the interview Ciara had with Jessica Totillo Coster in which they discussed eCommerce traffic and quick wins. You can also listen to the episode here.

Jessica has a passion to put more money in the pockets of female business owners. Let's talk about more money!

She has a love for all things eCommerce and marketing, and Jessica really enjoys solving problems and leveling people up. All good things!

Read on for the full conversation.

Ciara: Thanks for joining us today, Jessica.

Jessica: Thanks so much for having me. I'm excited. I can chat about this stuff all day long.

Ciara: And that's great because as we were just getting to know one another, before we started this recording a couple of weeks back, when we were chatting, I told you my ladies want to know about eCommerce.

We want to know how we can sell more, how we get more people to see our stuff. Right? No matter what we have out there in the world, we just want to sell more and have more traffic. So, this is going to be a great conversation.

Let's just start a little bit with your background because you've had brick and mortar. You've had e-commerce. So, just tell us a little bit about who you are.

Jessica: Yeah. Absolutely. So, really, my story starts when I was a little girl and I used to sleep in my new shoes. As I started going down that fashion retail apparel space, that was really no surprise to anyone. I went to school for fashion merchandising because I thought, you know, I wanted to be a buyer because it was gonna be so glamorous! It's numbers and spreadsheets. You know, I love that too, but I can only look at them for so long before I wanna crawl out of my skin. I'm very, like, 50/50, in terms of analytical and creative. So I did work in retail and brick and mortar for years, and that's really where my background is. I had my brick and mortar boutique, which I totally over bought in some categories, even though I was trained to do this. So if that's happening to you, it's okay.

Then most recently, I was working at this company, and originally I was there in their marketing department for their brick and mortar stores. And then we just decided, hey. we're gonna bring eCommerce in house. We're gonna really, we're gonna do this up. Right? We really wanna build this division.

And so because I had some previous eCommerce experience, they put me in charge of this division. I was the only employee for the first three years.

Ciara: Okay.

Jessica: So we had a part-timer who packed and shipped orders, and we did have some really amazing consultants, but what that truly meant was I just had a bigger to-do list. Right? I just had more people telling me what to do. I cried so much at that job.

Ciara: Did you own it?

Jessica: Yes. I was so stressed and overwhelmed, but I think it actually positions me. Like, it wasn't my business, but it felt like it was my business. And so I truly do understand what feels like to wear all of the hats in, you know, running your online store.

Um, and now I basically take everything that I learned the hard way at that job. Right? And then I teach it to entrepreneurs so that they don't have to learn it the hard way. So that's kinda where I started and how I got to where I am now. And, you know, e-commerce is just sort of that perfect marriage of art and science, which is why I happen to love it so much.

Ciara: Yeah. So good. So what do you think is the number one thing e-commerce business owners do wrong?

Jessica: Just one?

Ciara: Just one!

Jessica: Yeah. I think the biggest thing is so many of us, we start an ecommerce business not because we love being a business owner or have a ton of experience in it. Right? It's because we created a product to a problem, or we love clothes and fashion.

So we start a boutique, right, and we forget about the science part of and the data and using that data to drive our business decisions.

So, you know, there are a lot of and this there is room for every type of educator, but there are a lot of educators that really focus on, like, the dream of owning your business, and you can do it, and it's, like, all motivation. But we also have to talk about the fact that you have to understand these numbers and this business if you really want to get to the dream. That's how you get there. Um, so I really love to focus on that. And, you know, I have some things we can dive into if you will.

Ciara: Yes. I am so excited. We're gonna talk about some quick ones, but what you mentioned there was interesting. It just made me think so many businesses, start brick and mortar, or they start by making a product. And they look at e-commerce as a way to just make more money, and I feel like don't take it serious. That it's its own business model. It's its own beast. It can't be like, oh, I'm just gonna have a website, and then I'll sell more of my stuff. It's just another way to bring in some raking some money. No. This is a serious venture.

Jessica: Yeah.

Ciara: Would you agree with that in all, everyone you work with? 

Jessica: Uh, 100%. So, you know, typically, a lot of my clients are e-commerce first, right, because that's how I positioned my business, but when I do come across the brick and mortar store owner who created their website to have this other channel, That's exactly it. You know, they're kind of shocked at how hard it is to get traffic to their website and all that. And, look, I had a brick and mortar business, and I paid a pretty penny for my rent so that I could be in a shopping center.

Right? I shared a wall with Starbucks, um, which was not great for my wallet, by the way. But it was great for foot traffic.

Ciara: Yep.

Jessica: So when, you know, you have to think of your online store as if it were a destination and mortar. Right? The number one thing in retail, location, location, location. You know you're either gonna be in a place that gets a lot of foot traffic, or you're gonna be in the middle of nowhere, and you have to get people to your store. Now most of us, we're gonna put ourselves in a shopping center. Right?

Ciara: Yeah.

Jessica: But online, you are a destination. You've got to get the people there, and that is the hardest and most important part.

Ciara: Okay. Tell us how to do it. What do you got for us today? Let's dive in.

Jessica: Yeah. Okay. So the first thing, and this is where people tend to tune out. So I'm just going to preemptively say, please don't do that. If you are driving, you are gonna wanna bookmark this episode and come back because we have to do a little math.

Ciara: Okay.

Jessica: And this is not to bore you, but this is to just, like, really open your mind on what this actually takes. So what we're gonna do is we're gonna do a little calculation that tells us how much traffic we need to our website to hit our goals.

Ciara: Okay.

Jessica: So there's a couple of numbers that you're going to need to get started with this, and that's gonna be either a gross profit revenue goal or a revenue goal. I just tripped over those words. So either a gross profit goal or a revenue goal.

Ciara: Okay.

Jessica: Then we're gonna need your gross margin percentage. Your average order value and your conversion rate. So once you've got those numbers, here's what we're gonna if you're starting with gross profit versus revenue, we just need to turn that into a revenue goal. And I do recommend that you go by a gross profit goal instead of a revenue goal because we know revenue doesn't really mean anything.

Ciara: Yeah. It just makes us feel really good for 30 seconds.

Jessica: Right! II mean, revenue is almost a vanity metric. Right? Because you could have a ton of revenue, but if you have, like, a 10% gross margin, you're not making any money.

Let's start with how much gross revenue do you wanna have? And then what you're gonna do, and I've got some numbers that we're gonna use that are gonna make this all turn out nice and even for this example.

So our gross profit goal is a $180,000 a year. And our gross margin is 60%. So we're gonna take our gross profit and divide it by our gross margin, which means we need $300,000 in revenue to get our $180,000. Gross profit at a 60% margin.

Following here?

Ciara: Yes! So good.

Jessica: So now how do we get our $300,000 in revenue? Right? Well, first, let's figure out how many orders do we need? Now we've got an AOV of $62. 50. So we're gonna divide our revenue goal by that average order value, which me means we need 4800 orders over the year. To hit our revenue goal. Now, of course, you guys are gonna plug in your own numbers here. And just as a disclaimer, we're talking about a full year, but you could do this for any period of time.

Ciara: Okay. Sure. So for a month or for a week.

Jessica: Or a quarter. Exactly.

So now this is where we figure out how much traffic we need. So we need 48,100 orders, and we know that our website converts at 2%. So you're gonna take 4800. You're gonna divide it by 2%, which gives us 240,000. So we need 240,000 sessions a year that convert at 2% to get our, 4800 orders. And since we are talking about a year, let's divide that by 12, and we know that we need 20,000 website visits a month to get.

Ciara: Not 200. Why?

Right? Our people are like, “oh, dear”! You know, because I'll talk to customers or clients and they'll say, “oh, yeah, I have one hundred people a week that visit”. And I'm not “Yeah, those are big numbers”, Jessica. We need a lot of visits.

Jessica: A lot more than we think. Right? Yeah. So, the average conversion rate of a website is 1 to 3%. Which means you need at least 100 people just to get one sale.

Now the more niche your business is, right, the higher that percentage will be, but max, I've ever really seen 5%. And that's, like, unheard of and really good. So I say this not to scare you or make you feel like, oh my god. I can't do this. Right? But just to show you, I wanna arm you with information.

So now you know what your goals are and you can start making decisions based on that. And the other thing to remember is we are speaking strictly about traffic in this equation, but we're talking about gross profit and AOV and conversion rates. Right? So little tweaks in any of those can ultimately help you get to your goal. Right? Focusing only on one will be, like, really exhausting, and you'll probably wanna cry. So The goal is you wanna optimize all of them a little bit, but, you know, the truth is we just need more traffic than we think we need.

Ciara: Yes. We need more traffic, but the people are out there and people are spending. So how do we get more traffic? What do we do? Do we just spend a bunch of money? Do we do that?

Jessica: Please don't do that. It's gonna depend on your business. And any educator who doesn't say that to you, right, and doesn't say it depends “a little bit”. Well, then that's probably not the best nice, by the way, just fair warning. Um, but here are some things that you can think about. So how do we get traffic? Most of us default to social media, which is not inherently bad, but is getting harder and harder.

Right, to get seen, and such a small percentage of our audience even does see us there. You have things like search engine optimization, which is another thing that I talk about a lot, we'll dive into that a little bit. You've got collaboration which is one of my favorite ways to drive traffic, right, partnering with other small businesses and things like that, um, which I think most of us are not doing enough probably because we're too afraid to reach out to people to see if they want a partner.

Ciara: Yeah, me too. We don't like to have to, we don't like the ask. We're too afraid of the ask.

Jessica: Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's just gonna forever be a work in progress for all of us, but I encourage you to just get get out of your comfort zone a little bit. That's where the magic really does happen.

Then you obviously have your paid options, but there's 2 different kinds of paid. So you have paid social like Facebook and Instagram, where you are interrupting that person's experience to say, hey. By the way, I have this thing. Do you wanna buy it? It works. Right? But they are at a very different place in the journey. They may not even really be thinking about your product. Or be ready to buy your product yet. On the flip side of that is Google search or search paid search where you are actually bidding on keywords.And a lot of people will say, well, yeah, but that's more expensive. Well, yes, it is because that person is closer to making a buying decision.

Ciara: Sure.

Jessica: I'll ask you a little bit more, but they're also more likely to convert.

Ciara: So that would be like I'm gonna put my boutique or my store in a strip mall with a bunch of other stores where people are already coming to park, they're already coming to spend money, the rents more, but people are already coming with wallet open versus I'm gonna get the really cheap place around the corner and down the alley where I hope someone finds me, but it's really cheap rent. You know?

Jessica: Yes. Exactly. But you know what, though? Like, your electric bill is still gonna be really expensive there. Like, none of that is going to change.

Ciara: Payroll's the same. Inventory is the same.

Jessica: All of that's the same. So it's probably in the end, not worth it to pay that cheap. Right? Now that's not to say Facebook and Instagram ads don't work. They absolutely do. I see tons of businesses have success with them. But I think very often it's like the only thing we think about. Like, it's our only option, and it's just not. Right? So I just want you guys to be aware.

The caveat there is, and this is the same with SEO, and we can kind of lump them together a little bit is is your customer searching for the product that you sell? If they are, then it is worth it for you to invest the time and energy into these things. Because while especially with SEO, you may not see growth immediately. It can take a minimum of 6 months. Especially the newer you are, the longer it takes. But long term, that's going to serve you, it's not gonna cost you anything. You put all the work in up front, and then you're, like, good to go, which is cool. But it does take some time. But if someone's not searching for what you sell and I, uh, what's an example? Like, squatty potty, Right? Like, people, it wasn't a problem they knew they needed to solve. So nobody was searching for that. Like, how to get a better poop? I don't think people were searching that. So they needed to get in front of a lot of people and educate them that, hey. This was a problem you had. So maybe in that case doesn't really work out. Um, but for the rest of us, 99% of the time, they're probably searching for that. And so you have all of those opportunities.

The other driving traffic thing that most of us don't think of as driving traffic because it's not necessarily new customers, is email marketing. That is still traffic to your website, and it's return traffic, and it's traffic that's gonna convert better and spend more money. So when you are kind of sitting down and thinking about, how do I drive traffic to my e-commerce store? Right? You really need to kind of put yourself in the shoes of the consumer and think about where are they when they're looking for my product, When do they need to buy my product? Are they searching for my product? And you need to figure out the mix that really works best for you. And then I recommend that you pick 1 or 2 and put all of your energy into them.And once you have your systems and processes all figured out around that, then you can move on to another one. But please don't try and do all of them at the same time because you will do none of them well.

And you'll think they don't work for you. And, really, it's just because we were doing it wrong. And, you know, I say that because I do the same. It's really easy for me to sit here behind my microphone. Right? But it's a lot harder in practice. I do under on that.

Ciara: Yeah.

We don't wanna be, you know, able to do a little bit of a lot of things, but not really anything well at all. That's just frustrating. We spend a lot of wasted time, wasted money, and we just really never know because we haven't done any real good AB testing and given things time.

Jessica: Absolutely.

Ciara: So good.

Jessica: And I think too, you know, we when you think about the journey of an ecommerce customer, They, you know, so many of us think like, okay. So they see a post on Instagram. They click the link. They go to my website and they buy. And that's not at all how that works. Like, very few people are actually gonna do that. More likely, they're gonna see you on Instagram. They're gonna go to your profile. They're gonna poke around a little bit. Maybe they're gonna go to your website. They're gonna sign up for your email. See if they can get a discount. They're gonna read your email, click back to your website, browse your products, then they're gonna leave.

Then, hopefully, they get another email from you. They come back. They see you on Instagram.

Like, that is what the experience is like. So when we are thinking about the experience that we're creating, while I don't want you to try and do everything everywhere. I do want you to think about, am I showing up in these places? And am I getting those touchpoints with my consumer.

Because the fewer touchpoints you're having, the longer it's gonna take them to place an order.

Right? But if you are sending them to your website, they're signing up, they're getting an email.

Maybe you have some retargeting ads go and then you're sending them another email. Like, you're you're pushing them toward that purchase a lot faster.

Ciara: Yeah. That's what I was gonna ask you. Is there a way for us to shorten that? Journey. And that sounds like that sounds like the way. Having some flows and having a system set up. So we don't work so hard to them on the email list and never email them. Or we work really, really hard to see one of our reels in them. We don't do reels for 2 weeks because we're tired of, you know, and then forget we need to start all over.

Jessica: Yes. Exactly.

So do less, but do more of whatever the thing is. So if you are going to send email, send more email. 99% of the people I talk to can afford to send all more email, and you're not gonna annoy your subscribers. I promise they have raised their hand and said, hey, I wanna hear from you.

So don't be afraid of that. You know, if you are gonna be on Instagram because you know your customer is there. And look, if you go look me up right now, you'll see I suck at Instagram.

I am not consistent. I get it. I'm consistent on my podcast. Like, that's where I show up all the time. Instagram, I go in waves, but if you are choosing to use that platform for visibility, right, or the or I almost said “the TikTok”. Okay.

Ciara: For “the TikTok”?

Jessica: I'm old, but I'm not that old. I don't think. Or TikTok or whatever platform you're gonna be on, like, just be on it and be consistent and engage with your people And I know it feels like you are just, like, speaking into this void, this internet ether, and no one is paying attention. But they are. They absolutely are. And the thing to remember is, 1, nobody is seeing every post you may every email you send, nobody seeing it, and their life is not all about your business.

Ciara: Yes, that’s so good.

Jessica: Jobs and kids and families and drama and so or their backyard is flooding. Right? Like, so many other things taking their attention. So one of the ways I like to shift this for people is Stay consistent so that you are always top of mind. When the consumer is ready to buy a product like yours, you're gonna be the first person they think of because they just heard from you yesterday or earlier that week. Right? It's not always about the direct ROI and the direct sale. Even today, I had someone join a program of mine. She's been listening to my podcast for a year.

Ciara: Yeah. I have that all the time. People will email me. I'm sure you too and say, “I've been following. I've been listening to every podcast since the beginning.Do you have anything that would work for me”?

I'm like, well, I kind of always say what I have that will work for you, but we forget that that's not their entire life. It's my entire life. To share my brand, but it's not theirs. And people half listen and things come up and yeah. So we usually think about that when we're selling products too.

Jessica: It's yeah, and, you know, obviously, there's a difference between, you know, a product based business and a service or info based business, but there's a lot of things that are the same.

And that is our customer. And remembering that we are not the most important thing in their life.

And so we just need to position ourselves to be there to support them when they are ready.

Ciara: Yeah. Be there when they're ready. I love that.

Um, this is crazy off well, it's not off-topic, but I didn't have it on my sheet to ask you, but I'd love your input on serving people, not just selling them products because I talk a lot about that with my audience, you're selling a solution, you're offering a solution, you're not selling stuff.

How do we have that come across on our e-commerce site? Because it's easy to do that, or much easier in a brick and mortar. People come in. You get to know them. You give them their therapy session, if you will, for a day while they're trying on the jeans. How do we do that online, though? How do we serve people and not just sell them stuff on our website? How does that come across?

Jessica: Yeah. I love this.

And one of the things that I always kind of do when I am looking at someone's website or I'm looking at the copy that they use on their product page or whatever, I'm always thinking, how do I recreate the brick and mortar experience on the internet? So that's your website, email, your social. It's everything. And I think the easiest way to do this is When you're creating copy, which is just the written words on your website, is think about how you would describe this item to that person if they were in a brick and mortar store with you. How would you write the email to them if you were in a brick and mortar store.

So if you think about that experience and not that I have any interest in owning a brick and mortar again, I don't wanna be tied down to a little bit.

Ciara: Me too. Me too. We're too independent now. But if I did, I would have lots of ideas.

Jessica: Yeah. I do know it. Like, I missed that. I loved that part.

But you're not like, hey. Check out these jeans. They have a 12-inch leg opening, and they're tight through the knee and then they flare out. Like, that's not what you say. You're like, oh my god. These jeans, so freaking cute. They're gonna make your bum look great. They come up in the back so you won't get that gap. Really great with a wedge. Put it on with this. Right?

So have those same conversations in the copy the imagery that you use, right, can also convey a lot of that. Even if you’re having a chat, a live chat helps, but don't tie yourself down to a live chat if you can't actually, um, be there to support it. You don't have the time. And then also just educational content through blogs that you can link to, even on the product page, if it's something that people struggle with. You know, I'm it never ceases to amaze me what people don't know.

We take our own knowledge for granted, and we think everybody knows what we know. And I think back to all of those years in retail, and if you guys have a brick and mortar, you've probably experienced this too. People come in, and they're just like, I want what's on the mannequin.

Ciara: Yes. All the time.

Jessica: Right? Cause they don't know how to put it together. They don't know how to pick the So all of those conversations that you would have for people to create that on your website, and it doesn't have to be complicated at all.

Um, there are, as you get more advanced, there's some really cool technology and tools that you can use. Where people can see, like, the size of things or, um, even see it on themselves.

What is, like, virtual reality up. You don't need that right now. Um, just do it in the copy and the images. And if you can show things on different models and stuff like that, that really helps too. But Ultimately, it is just a human. Looking for a product that's gonna solve their problem. Give them a solution. Make them feel more confident. Make them feel sexy. Whatever it is. That's all it's just another human on the other side of it.

So that's my number one piece of advice is just talk to them like the human that they are.

Ciara: That's so good.I'm envisioning right now.

Okay. I also don't wanna website. I don't want inventory anymore. I'll just help save with our inventory. I've touched so many things in my life. I've unboxed so much stuff. But if I had inventory again, and I did it the e-commerce. I'm just thinking, how fun would it be? And challenge me if I'm wrong, anyone listening, I've never been to a website that just talked to me like that. How fun would it be to go to, let's say, an apparel website or a shoe website.

And it's all like, oh my goodness girl, if you are, you know, insecure here with heels. This is the shoe for you. Here's why I blah blah blah. And, of course, you have the details and all the things. Right.

But you'd wanna shop that. I, you know, I think we just get so robotic in all of the stats and everything and having the right picture and having enough products. That we forget that, yeah, it's just a human on the other side that's a little nervous about giving you their money because one of them doesn't work. Um, so, yeah, I think that'd be so much fun to change that the course of that conversation on our e-commerce sites. And you could do that with furniture.

You could, I mean, you could do anything.

Jessica: Absolutely. And like you said, you know, you still have. You have the features and the dimensions and all that stuff. You just don't lead with that. And, like, I'm not coming to buy a pair of jeans or even a top because it has a 12-inch leg opening. Like, Right? Like, that's not why I'm doing it. And so I think too, one of the other trick There's a couple of tricks I can give you guys to help you with this. Is 1, anytime you are, like, writing out a feature about a product, just ask yourself why. Who cares? How do they care about this? What is the reason behind that? So and now back I mean, gosh. So I've been in LA 12 years, which means my brick and mortar was at 13 years ago. Oh my gosh. Time just freaking flies by.

But back then, it was jeans and going out like, that is what everyone bought. And Jay Brand was, like, real big, and it was all about the plain denim in all the different Lego openings and everything like that. Um, so but it was about, like, you know, this is really great if If you've got, like, a skinny little ankle, but you wanna wear these chunky platforms, do, like, the 4 teen inch leg opening because it will add a little width and balance you out versus if it's the 12, it's too tight on your ankle.

But it wasn't about the 12 or 14. It was about how that balance is on your body and what it works for. So just ask yourself, who cares? Why does this matter to them? And then the other thing is, especially with email, if you struggle to write content, speak it instead.

There's something about sitting down and writing things out where we, like, lose all of our personality.

Right? And it gets like robotic and corporate-y, and we're like, we polish everything a little bit too much, and you don't usually speak in proper grammar. Most of us. Like, I say gonna all the time. Right?

Ciara: And I say yep. Yeah. Yep. There you go.

Jessica: Exactly.

So use that in your with you. So I and a lot of my stuff, and I literally write out g o n n a, gonna because I never say going to. Like, who says that? Yeah. Um, so if you do struggle with that, just start. Even just on your phone, you can record it, or there's tools that will actually, um, take your audio and transcribe it for you so you could do something like that until you just kinda get in the groove of ultimately just right the way you talk.

Ciara: Yeah. So good. This has been so helpful.

So I know there's gonna be a lot of people listening that are going to want a little more help from you to dive into your expertise a little more. Tell us how we can like, what do you have going on? How can we connect and work with you?

Jessica: Yeah. Absolutely. So first, if you just wanna look me up, and see what I'm all about. You can find me at eCommerce Badassery, b-a-d-a-s-s-e-s-e-r-y, in all of the places. So that's the website, the podcast, the social media that I'm not really active on as much as I should be, but I do post there if you wanna check it out. And then I do some done for you one on one stuff, but where you can really get, like, the best holistic support is in my membership, the lounge. It's we do all the things in there, and you can get direct access to me, and it's super cool and affordable.

Ciara: I love that. And I like the name. How fun is that? Yeah.

Jessica: I spent a lot of I'm I do you know, I have a marketing background. I love some cheeky branding.

So it's called the lounge, and then our Q and A calls are called Happy Hour.

And then we have quarterly bottle planning, um, service and red pellet rope calls, you know, like, oh, I just how to get into it. It was funny, though.

Like, you really do have to know your audience when you do that kind of stuff because when it comes to e-comm, guys, by the way, when talking about, like, naming your products or SEO, clear over, clever. Always, please. Clear over clever.

Um, but for this, I did have when we first launched it. Someone asked, like, what does booze have to do with business? And are we, like, getting drunk on these calls? And I was, like, No.

Just a cheeky exercise and branding. So, you know, you are gonna confuse some people. That's okay.

Ciara: Yeah. Yeah. No. That's good. I love that. Clear over clever. Let's not get so clever with what we say that people have no clue what we have to offer. Yeah. We wanna be clear with that.

Um, and then think about the brand and does it make sense? I sometimes I see some brands, and I think, well, that's really interesting. I don't know. I'm so confused by that brand. And what do you sell? We don't want our consumers to be thinking about that. We wanna make it really easy. Business is hard enough. It's hard enough to get the traffic. Let's not train them away with names and cleverness.

Jessica: Yes. 100%. And there's a story. It's not my story, and I Gosh. It was so long ago. I don't even remember who the story was, but there was someone who was selling kind of, Uh, like, when you send your kids off to college, right, it's kinda like a care package.

And on her website, everything was “survival kit”. You know, like a care kit mom’s could send.

Well, what was happening was from an organic perspective, she was getting a bunch of, like, doomsday preppers. Oh, dear. So, you know, clear over clever for your ecommerce site. So use the words that your consumer is using to describe the products that you sell. So, Yeah.

Ciara: So important. Oh my goodness, Jessica. Well, it was really fun to chat with you. Um, I'm gonna spring a question on you at the end here.

What is one bit of advice that someone's given you along your entrepreneurial journey, maybe a mentor or someone you looked up to that has really stuck with you that you can leave with us today?

Jessica: Don't let your drama get away get in the way of your dreams. So if you are someone, and the way this really hit me was about showing my face. Right? Like, I come from product.

And, yes, being, you know, in a store and talking to customers, obviously, I have a face. Right? Um, but, like, it wasn't me on video on the internet or doing things like that. And so that was something I really, really had to get over with this business because being a service provider, Right? People are buying me.

Um, so I had to overcome that, but I think there's so we hold ourselves back and so many ways because we're uncomfortable or afraid or what are people gonna think, or how do I look, or, oh my god, I look stupid we're, like, afraid of looking stupid or feeling stupid. I feel stupid all of the time. I'm, like, recording reels in my living room. And, when my husband came home one day, and I was like, oh, and I just stopped.

Ciara: I know.

Jessica: Not he would, like, He doesn't think anything of it. He wouldn't laugh. He wouldn't say anything, like it just is. This is her running her business, but, like, I just, for whatever reason, don't wanna do it in front of him. Which is dumb. So I'm working on that too.

But, yeah, you just don't let your own drama get in the way of your dreams and where you're trying to go.

Ciara: Oh, and that's so good. And we could take that so deep. It's just such a good thing to think about. Other people's drama, drama you create in your mind that's not there.

Jessica: Like, most of it.

Ciara: Yes. Let's not do drama. Let's do the work. Let's do the right work instead.

So alright. Thanks for having this conversation with me and for sharing all of your knowledge and expertise with our guests. I'm really excited. So we'll put all of your info in the show notes so everybody can find Jessica. And, um, I know you and I have other projects going on. So you guys have not heard the last of her.

Um, she has said that as soon as I get her the schedule, she'll connect with my mastermind gals and help them. So We're gonna keep you in this network now because you have a lot of good things to offer. Thanks for having the conversation.

Jessica: Thank you so much for coming. And I do have one last gift, but I own for you to mention is if you go to eCommerceBadassery.com forward slash Ciara, There's a gift there for you. I'm not gonna tell you who it is because I'm a marketer, and I need to leave some mystery, but you can go check that.

Ciara: And, She wants some traffic to her website. See all the fun little things you can do? I love it. Yeah. So throw my name in there, um, forward slash Ciara. We'll put that in the show notes as well, in case you guys are driving, and you need to click on it later. That's awesome. And it will also go out in the email when we remind everybody to listen.

Jessica: Beautiful.

Ciara: Giving everybody something free. We all need some fun gifts in our life. 100%. Love it. Alright. We'll see you later. Thank you.

Jessica: Thank you.

Ciara: Alright, everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in today to this great conversation.

I hope you took a lot away from this. I know that all of us have some type of e-commerce business going on, whether that's your main focus or you're trying to ramp up, or maybe you're thinking about adding it in. So, like Jessica mentioned at the beginning, bookmark this episode, come back to it, take little nuggets away, use them as you can, make sure to check out all of her resources and that fun, free, gift. I'm really curious about that. So I'm so glad she's giving that away.

Until next time. Have a great week. And enjoy your business. Talk to you guys later. Bye for now.