Know, Like & Trust Factor with Ashley DiMercurio | 105
When you first start your business, it seems pretty simple. You talk about what you sell, and people will buy, right? But there is a lot more to marketing than simply promoting your services or products (actually, it might even be the least important thing you do). If you want to know how to grow your business, you need to think beyond selling.
For this podcast episode, I chatted with Ashley DiMercurio, also known as Your Reading Tutor. Ashley is a former teacher who left the classroom when her toddler was struggling in daycare. She decided to bring her teaching skills into her home by homeschooling her children.
When Ashely wanted to make some extra money, she became a BeachBody coach. But eventually, she felt that yearning to teach again. She took the audience she’d built for her fitness coaching business, which was full of moms, and began pitching online tutoring services.
Through her experiences as a fitness coach and becoming an online tutor, Ashley learned a lot about organically growing her business. She grew her business to a full-time career without relying on paid ads - instead, she built it using organic marketing.
How to Grow Your Business Organically
When Ashley and I were chatting, we talked about a marketing idea that has been around for a while: the know, like, and trust factor. The idea is that people buy from those they know, like, and trust, but exactly what do those elements mean - and what role do they play in how to grow your business?
🧠 Know - People are aware of your brand and who you are as a person.
👍 Like - People like your style, philosophy, and the way you conduct your business.
🤝 Trust - People see you as an expert and trust the skills, services, and value you provide.
Examples of Marketing Organically
During the episode, Ashley gave some ideas on how to grow your business in a way that builds those three areas of know, like, and trust. Sometimes the areas overlap, so this isn’t to say social media posts only build the “like factor” - they can also develop the know and trust. But for the sake of simplicity, we are categorizing things.
🧠 Know - Creating long form content. Sharing tips and tricks on social media. Sharing about your current services and upcoming projects. Interacting with people inside communities or on social media.
👍 Like - Lifestyle posts on social media. Creating stories and polls on stories. Sharing about your personal and family life. Giving a behind-the-scenes of your business and brand. Sharing your business philosophy and “hot takes”.
🤝 Trust - Sharing testimonials. Creating and sharing high-value freebies and long form content. Emailing consistently with high-value content. Show the process of working with you. Share client wins and success stories.
By weaving all of these organic marketing strategies into your business, you’ll be able to slowly build your business and revenue. If you want to learn more about building a business outside of the classroom, grab Ashley’s freebie!
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
Hey there - I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Grow - a podcast created for ambitious teacherpreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility, and ultimately make more money. With weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you, my goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dreams.
Okay, so before we hop into the episode, I just wanna remind you to download my free guide to Facebook Targeting Audiences. It has been created specifically for teacher business owners. And I go through the warm lookalike and cold interest-based audiences that you need to have set up to be running Facebook and Instagram ads.
There are checklists and brainstorming pages so that you know that you have everything. But as an exciting special, I'm opening up some audience audit calls where you can hop onto a 15 minute zoom call with me, and you'll get my eyes on your audiences so that you can make sure that not only you have all of the audiences, but they truly are perfect for your business. So head to marketscalegrow.com/audienceaudit to book your free audience audit Call today. Okay, now into the episode.
Today I'm talking with Ashley DiMercurio. She is a certified reading interventionist, a teacher, a tutor, mentor, podcaster, wife, and homeschooler to her two little ones. That's a lot going on! She also has an online tutoring business and is the host of the Teachers Make Money Online Virtual Summit. She left the classroom to raise her children and she later started her online teaching business to reconnect with what she loved doing, which is teaching. Now she's starting to bring in more income and has scaled her part-time business into a full-time income through multiple income streams, and she launched the Reading Project podcast. Has been featured as a presenter for several different events.
Ashley created the Teachers Make Money Online Summit because she wanted to empower more teachers to use their skills and earn income online. She wants to show educators the possibilities beyond the classroom - which is really exciting.
I'm super interested in learning more about this journey and to chat with Ashley. So welcome.
Ashley: Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I'm really excited too. I love connecting and collaborating with other amazing entrepreneurs - so it's gonna be fun.
Jenzaia: I was excited when I saw your name because we both have the whole Italiano thing happening, so, yay!
I know I just gave your intro, but can you give us a little bit more information about your journey as a teacher business owner and how you decided an online tutor business was where you were going.
Ashley: So I was teaching in the classroom when we started our family, and my son was about two years old and we were dropping him off at daycare every day.
And it was really hard. He didn't ever get settled. Like he would cry at drop off and everyone would say, it's okay, it's gonna get better - but it never did. Every day it was the same. And finally we just decided we're not gonna do this next year, so let's make a plan. And at that time, it's funny, I was actually a Beachbody coach, so I was doing like the whole MLM thing and you know, I had enjoyed it and met a lot of really cool people and learned a ton about marketing and social media.
I thought, okay, well I'm just gonna lean into this business and I'm gonna leave teaching and we'll just figure it out. Which is not the advice that I give people when they decide to leave their teaching careers! I don't think I did it the best way.
I've learned a lot since then. But you know, it just really felt right, and I was very motivated to make it work. So that's sort of what pushed me out of the classroom. And at that point I thought, I guess teaching isn't for me and I had the whole identity crisis that goes with leaving the classroom.
So many teachers, I feel like their identity is really wrapped up in the profession. It's so much more than a job. So it took a long time for me to sort of figure out that I actually really missed teaching. I really loved teaching, but I just had some bad experiences and it didn't necessarily mean I was a bad teacher.
So on a whim, I applied for a job teaching for VIP-Kid - before their big fallout recently with a lot of changes in their programming. But it was really big for a while for online teaching. So I was working for them for a while and that was just a stepping stone for me because it showed me that kids were learning online - like young kids, elementary aged kids.
Up until that point, my only experience with online teaching was at the college level. So I really had no idea how that could possibly work for a seven year old, an eight year old…
This was eight years ago. Pre pandemic. So Zoom was really new when I first started teaching online. I had to convince people that this would work.
So that’s the company that got me started with online teaching and showed me that kids were learning online, which got me really interested in the possibilities of being a private online tutor or online teacher.
So I started learning about that, researching it, and I really loved working with elementary age students online. I actually feel like I teach better online than I did in person because I have the whole world at my fingertips. And there's so many authentic learning moments that can happen when I have everything I need right at my fingertips.
I decided to go out on my own. I started connecting with other tutors in the online space, learning from them. I decided to really focus on reading intervention because that's where my passion has always been. In the language arts and reading and writing. And I have a niece that needed help with reading, but she lived in another state to me, so I said, well, you could be my Guinea pig!
It was so amazing to watch her progress and see how effective I could really be online. And it sort of took off from there because I had done the work around networking and building my online presence already through my time as a Beachbody coach. So that's cool how that really helped with both businesses.
So when I talk to people about building an online presence and organic online marketing and networking, I always try to explain to them that I did spend time as a Beachbody coach, like four years building online, and then I took that audience and pivoted and grew it for this business.
But I put in that time of people getting to know me. They already trusted me and knew me from that time I spent as a Beachbody coach. So I always think that's important because social media marketing is a long game. And it's become an even longer game.
There's now hesitancy to buy something from someone. I think almost everyone has had a bad experience at this point. Right now we're all pulling back and so that long game of building that ‘know, like, and trust’ has just become more and more valuable.
So after I had those first handful of clients and I was doing it as a part-time side hustle, my husband was working outside of the home full-time. He ended up losing his job. And we had two kids at that point. We'd already had our second baby and so we had two kids under six and he was our primary income. It was really stressful.
And right away people did try to encourage me to go back into the classroom cuz that's like my experience. I don't know exactly what it was, but I just didn't want to do that. I just really wanted to lean into this business that I was growing.
What I had seen happening was I was getting more and more client inquiries at that point. I was working around my husband's schedule and I thought, well, if I have unlimited availability for tutoring, I could just open up my schedule and take on all these students and maybe I could just grow this.
That's what I did. And so I was very motivated by him losing his job. I was willing to really hustle to grow quickly, and I was able to double my client load within six weeks. It just really took off after that.
So once the pandemic hit and everybody went online, I was already the person teaching online. So it exploded again. So it's been a really wild ride and since doing all of that and really looking back and seeing, wow, like this has been such a gift for me to realize as a teacher, I have so many ways that I can use my teacher brain or my teacher skills to earn income online.
Because you know, when I said at the beginning, “I guess teaching isn't for me. I'm never gonna teach again.” That was really sad - I really love teaching and working with kids. So it's been really a gift for me to see there's a lot of ways that I can teach.
I can teach other educators how to do this. This allows me to reach kids all over the country and the world. I love collaborating and networking with other educators, which is why I decided to do the summit so I could bring in other guest speakers and empower other teachers who know more about certain things than I do.
So we can all work together. And I think that's always where the magic was for me.
Jenzaia: It's so cool to see how you've taken that and then molded it with this online business and created something that just reaches hundreds of teachers or thousands of classrooms around the world. And instead of just, and I don't mean ‘just’, but if you're collaborating with one teacher, you're impacting two classrooms. Just the exponential impact that you can create with an online business gives me goosebumps a little bit.
Ashley: Yeah. I hadn't really even thought of it that way. I kind of got goosebumps when you said that too, because I do think so many teachers want that, right? We want to leave a positive impact and we wanna help families.
Jenzaia: The other thing that came up a couple times when you're talking - I recently read an article all about how MLMs like Beachbody are such a great intro to online businesses or being self-employed because you are self-employed, but you have the support and the foundations of a massive company that are helping you.
She was talking about doing basically exactly what you did, like learning the business skills and creating the network with the fallback of the company and the name of the company that people know and trust already, and then they can get to know and trust you.
But then she was also talking about exactly what you did, like pivoting that audience and then becoming fully self-employed. Do you have any additional lessons that people can take? Because I think a lot of people have this negative thought of MLM’s. Can you speak more to the positives and how you can use it to transition into a more fully self-employment model.
Ashley: Sure. Yeah. Another thing that was a big positive for me was around personal development. And you know, before I was a Beachbody coach, I didn't know about personal development books outside of ‘How to Make Friends and Influence People’ or the really big ones.
But they recommend reading for 10 minutes or 10 pages every day. And I have taken that into my business now as well. So building that habit of reading those kinds of books and learning about different kinds of authors. So that's something I continue to do now and, and grow myself that way.
I think that's been a big help. And I never did that before being a Beachbody coach. And then I think another lesson or big takeaway for me is just around networking. When I was in Beachbody, I really thought of myself as a professional friend-maker. You know, like I just wanna meet a lot of people. I learned to not see someone as, you're gonna be my next client, but like you're someone I wanna get to know and who knows where that will lead.
You might introduce me to someone who does end up being a client, or you might have this connection for me. Just having a shift around networking and thinking of it as like, we are all really connected and we can all refer someone. And I just really leaned into that collaboration over competition feeling. And that has served me very well in my tutoring business and also coaching other educators.
Jenzaia: And something we talked about before we jumped on the interview is how you've grown your business exclusively organically through the marketing, the networking, the relationship building. What's the biggest piece of advice for organically growing your business?
Ashley: Well, I don't know who said this first or where I heard this, but I heard the phrase that ‘people do business with people they know, like, and trust.’ And that just really stuck with me and has been a hundred percent true. When you're tutoring online, you could have people reach out to you from anywhere all over.
They might not be connected to you in any way. They're perfect strangers, so to speak. They're looking for a tutor online, which is someone who's going to see into their home. And there's a lot of trust that has to go into that relationship.
So for most people, they need a way to get to know you quickly online so they can decide if they know and like you. And my marketing is like, what am I doing online and in the online space to build each of those pieces?
How are people gonna get to know me? How are they gonna decide if they like me? And how will they know if they can trust me?
Jenzaia: And what are some of the different things that you do for each of those? Like how would you build ‘Know’, how would you build ‘like’, how would you build ‘trust’?
Ashley: So I think ‘Know’ and ‘Like’ are kind of similar. A lot of the things you can do for those areas are your lifestyle posts, like sharing a little bit about who you are.
We homeschool. So I share that. Even though that's not really anything I offer necessarily when I work with homeschoolers, but I share that I homeschool so people know that about me. And I try to share some of my personality, like drinking coffee or what book I'm reading, or when we go out for a hike.
So any of those like lifestyle posts and things that you can share about yourself so people will start to feel like they know who you are. Like how do your friends know you? If your best friends were to say three things about you… make sure those three things you're incorporating into your posting and your social media so that other people are getting to know that part of you too.
Things like sharing your likes and your dislikes and doing the polls on Instagram where you can say… at my house we like Hawaiian pizza and that's a very controversial! So asking ‘does pineapple belong on pizza - yes or no?’
Actually recently, we moved to a new area and we were out at a community event, and someone came up to me and was like, oh, I've been following you for a long time. I love what you're doing! I feel like I already know you.
So in some ways it makes you think about what you share and how you share it. But also, that's exactly what we want to happen, right? We want people to feel like they know you, so, I think Instagram stories is a great place to share about your life and let people get to know you. Show your face, show pictures of what you're doing in your week.
I think stories are a great way to share that. And then in terms of getting people to decide whether or not they like you, that has more to do with your teaching style or your business style.
So that's where you're gonna have to share a little bit more about who you are as a business owner. How do you do business? What is it like to work with you as a tutor or whatever your business is? So using freebies is a great way people can download your freebie. They get into your email list, so then they're getting your regular emails.
They can decide if they like your philosophy. I do a lot of games with my online tutoring students and I like to have fun, and that's not for everybody. Some families want really strict learning, so someone who's fun and silly and plays a lot of games - that's not a good fit. So I think it's important to help people see who you are as a business owner when you're doing your social media posting.
Jenzaia: I feel like a lot of those things you said could also fall under trust, like the email getting on your email list.
Ashley: And I think for me, the trust piece has come in through creating long form content that has a longer shelf life, so to speak. Like it lives in the online space for longer than 24 hours. So things like blogging. I launched the Reading Project podcast. So that's where I do some episodes myself and then some episodes with other educators to highlight their expertise. And that's been really amazing because then I can say, if someone's interested in what I do, you can check me out here on my podcast.
As you know it’s a great way to get right into the mind of your audience, right? Like your voice is going into their ears.
Jenzaia: I'm imagining you often deal with moms. There are definitely dads that are involved, but it typically is the mom who's more involved in these things. And they are often busy driving kids around to activities, doing the house stuff. So being able to put your podcast in their ear, or in the car as they're driving places, is a lot more accessible than reading a blog or watching a video. And so it's knowing who your audience is. And creating that content that's right for them.
Ashley: Yes, absolutely. That's a really good point.
And I did try blogging. I dabbled in different things. I have a YouTube channel, and I did some live videos on my Facebook page with other educators.
And so I dabbled in a lot of the different ways to create that long form content before I sort of settled on the podcast. And now we're on season three of the podcast and it's been great. So we're almost closing in on 10,000 downloads.
Jenzaia: And sometimes it does take those trial and errors. Going live on Instagram and Facebook is something that I can do and I enjoy, unlike YouTube where I felt like I needed the perfect background and I needed my hair done and my makeup and I'm not that kind of person.
Whereas going live, I feel like there's so much less pressure. But I think it's really important to hear that you might not stumble on the right long form content right away, and the first one you try might not be right. And once you've decided what really feels good for you, then you can take what you're creating there and use it on your social media platforms. You can repurpose that long form content into short posts.
For a lot of us, the podcast is where we give a lot of value. That's the free content and a way to build trust because you keep showing up every week and you're helping them - you're serving your audience, you're giving them advice, you're giving them tips.
Or if you're talking to another educator, maybe I'm bringing in something like a discount to their Teacher Pay Teacher store, or I'm really just providing value. It’s l like compound interest almost.
Ashley: Yes. There's a great book, The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy.
Jenzaia: Once you start doing these pieces for the know, the like and the trust, how do you know when you're successful?
Ashley: One thing for me was that first client that wasn't like a friend of a friend.
It wasn't like a referral. It wasn't anybody who really knew me. This person found me on Facebook. They watched my live videos. They watched my posts, and then they hired me to be their tutor. And like some of those clients I've worked with for several years. So I think that was a really big win for me.
And I also when you're not having to explain as much about your prices. For example, if someone is not sure if they wanna work with you, then they might wanna negotiate your price.
But if they've been following you, they like you, they trust you, they get that you're good at what you do. You're gonna say what your price is, and it's fine.
I think when you've done a good job building your online presence, they've already decided they want to work with you and you're getting on the phone with them just to confirm that you're gonna respond to them right away. That it feels good to them.
And I think testimonials too, which I forgot to mention before, are a huge part of developing trust as well and getting to know you as a business provider. It's that social proof that your past clients can provide. When you have one or two moms that sing your praises, or one or two clients who are willing to tell everybody they know about what you do - your funnel is gonna be flooded.
Jenzaia: For anyone listening that would like more on this topic, the episode following this one will be focused on relationship marketing and building your network.
What are your thoughts about relationship building and using that as a marketing tool in your business?
Ashley: I have more than one example of where this has really come into play for my business, like on Facebook groups. So for example, if you're in a Facebook group as a mom or any business owner - you're in there and you're sharing about you.
You're posting and you're commenting and you get to know the community. This group in particular started as a local group when I was living in Vermont, so a lot of the people even actually knew me in real life too, and it has really grown beyond that at this point. Now they accept moms from all over the country.
There's a lot of people in there that knew me when I was a Beachbody coach and then they watched me move into this business. And even if I haven't done business with them now, if there is a post of someone needing a reading tutor, I don't even have to see the posts and people are tagging me. They did that marketing for me. That is extremely powerful.
You can't be afraid to put yourself out there a little bit and help people to see you as a whole person. You know, not only the successes, but you're also sharing sometimes where you have struggles and also things you are working on.
I love how a podcast is free content that you can share in a lot of groups. So you can say, oh, I just did this great podcast and think it would really help moms of kindergartners. So that's another reason to create a long form content as well.
Jenzaia: That's cool. I never thought of doing that before! Great tip. So if anyone wants to find you afterwards, what's the best place? And I know you have a freebie to share as well.
Ashley: Yeah, absolutely. So if you are a parent or caregiver of a school age child and you're looking for a reading or language arts tutor, you can find me @yourreadingtutor on Instagram or my website is yourreadingtutor.com
And then if you're a business owner and you have a teaching background and you're interested in the Summit or my Mastermind, you can find me @ashley_dimercurio on Instagram.
So right now my freebie is all about building your online presence. And then also some ideas for sharing on social media around whether or not you wanna create like a Motivational Monday or Tip Tuesday. Or just thinking about the kinds of content that you can share more than once to help people get to know you and your business.
I think people forget that not everybody sees every post you make. So it's okay to post certain things more than once. We don't wanna annoy people and we don't wanna upset them, but we have to think about a couple things.
The first one - Do people even see it? Do they actually consume it and are they retaining that information the very first time that they hear it?
And then you also have to take into consideration that you are likely promoting yourself to adults who have the ability to unfollow people that are annoying them. And if they are choosing to unfollow you, unsubscribe, or remove themselves from your community, that's good. They're self-selecting out. So you're not marketing to someone who doesn't want your stuff anyway.
So yeah, keep pushing your message out there. Keep pushing yourself and your brand and your business out there.
Jenzaia: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the podcast and I had a great time chatting with you.
Ashley: Yeah, me too! Thank you for having me.
Thank you for listening to this week's inspiring story. If you'd like to share your story with us, then head to marketscalegrow.com/journey and complete the quick application for then head to our community at marketscalegrow.com/community. So you can join our group of inspiring Teacherpreneur who are working on growing and scaling their businesses too.
See you soon.