Struggling to stand out in your niche? This is the episode for you!
In this week’s episode of the Small Owned Business (S.O.B.) Marketing Podcast, we’re joined by Hailey from Cork and Fizz, whose mission is to make wine fun and accessible for everyone. 🍷
Hailey shares her journey of building a brand that resonates with her audience and how she’s carved out a unique space in the wine education niche. Together, we discuss:
✨ How to define your brand and communicate it effectively
📣 Tips for standing out in a crowded market
🤝 Building a loyal audience by staying authentic to your mission
Whether you’re in wine education or any other industry, this episode is packed with actionable advice to help you establish a standout brand and grow with confidence!
Thank you again to Hailey for joining us! Scroll down to the Related Content section to find more information about Cork & Fizz.
➡️ 𝘕𝘦𝘦𝘥 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘴𝘶𝘱𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘵, 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘩𝘪𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯 𝘦𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘬𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘺?
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Chapters:
00:00 Thank You For Listening & Please Leave a Review
05:14 The Beginnings of Cork & Fizz
23:15 Understanding Your Target Audience
26:26 Marketing and Unique Selling Points
30:19 Community Engagement and Learning
36:59 Overcoming Imposter Syndrome
42:18 The Importance of Experimentation in Wine AND Marketing
48:11 Finding Your Niche and Unique Selling Point
51:50 More About Cork & Fizz
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𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐀𝐓𝐄𝐃 𝐂𝐎𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐓:
Cork & Fizz: https://www.corkandfizz.com
The Cork & Fizz Guide to Wine podcast: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2189095
𝐒.𝐎.𝐁 (𝐒𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐥 𝐎𝐰𝐧𝐞𝐝 𝐁𝐮𝐬𝐢𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐬) 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲: https://www.skool.com/sob
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Hailey: Hello, thank you for having me!
Vivian: Listen, I absolutely love your story. Chelsea does too. For one, Chelsea, what did you tell me earlier today about wine in general?
Chelsea: I feel like wine makes people uncomfortable just because the crowd that it usually brings in is kind of snooty, like "I know what I'm talking about, you don't" sort of thing. I just drink wine that tastes good to me, okay? I don't know anything about wine. I just want to enjoy my alcohol.
Vivian: Yeah, I think that it's very intimidating. Hailey, I know you got your start in 2018, you and your husband went on this great trip. You guys went to vineyards in Oregon. Was it one vineyard or a couple of vineyards?
Hailey: It was the area, you would call it Willamette Valley. So we visited a couple different vineyards and wineries in this kind of larger region called Willamette Valley.
Vivian: Okay, and so that's what sparked your interest, where you were all of sudden you realized, I really like wine and I think I could jump and dive all in. The one thing I will say when I was reading your bio, you have always been, I don't wanna call you a dork, but you said that you always loved learning, but you were always learning for a purpose. Like to get the grade or to get the accomplishment or whatever it is. This was the first time that you really were like, "you know what? I'm learning about a subject just because I want to".
Hailey: My gosh, yes. I think that was the moment. Everybody always asked me, "Why wine? What is it? What sparked it?" I could tell them the story of when it happened and how it happened, but the why was always so hard. I think that was exactly what clicked for me. When I realized crap, I like, I've always loved learning, but in high school it was about getting into a good college and in college it was about getting a good job. I kind of lost that desire to continue learning and trying new things until I found wine, because there was no longer anything attached to it. I was purely learning because I wanted to learn about this.
Vivian: So that was 2018, there was that spark and you're like, wine, I dig it, I want to learn more. You go check out all kinds of books in the library. What do you do to start to get yourself immersed in that?
Hailey: Yeah, so exactly what you said. The first thing I did when I came back, I got this book called Cork Dork, which is very funny. It's a term like for wine dorks, but Cork Dork, it's by Bianca Bosker. It's about her. She basically kind of did a very similar thing where she was a tech writer and then she dove into the world of wine and kind of hit every aspect of it. So that was the first one. Then I went to the library, looked up on the computer. Just give me all the books that are related to wine. I want to read them all. Then I started a wine club with friends because the other way to learn about wine other than just reading and studying and going that way is to taste a bunch of it and to learn about it that way. I wanted to taste a lot of wine, but didn't want to buy all the wine myself. So I started a wine club with friends. It was also a great way to create community. We'd get together every month. Everybody would bring a bottle based on a theme and we would try the wine and, the first part of it would be very much about tasting the wine and practicing that process of tasting it and trying to decipher flavors. And then the end of the night was more about that community aspect after we've had a few glasses.
Vivian: I was going to say, I'm so glad you're taking one for the team out there tasting all kinds of wine for us.
Hailey: I know, it's a tough one, but someone's gotta do it, right?
Vivian: So then you spent those two years just educating yourself about it and then COVID hits and everybody's locked down. I know there was this really funny part that I read where you had even taken it a step further where you're like, great, we can do this virtually. We could do virtual wine tastings. Earlier I said testings and Chelsea's said, no, it's not a wine testing, it's a tasting.
Hailey: There's no test, there's no answer key. I have to tell everybody that all the time when we're tasting. There's no answer key.
Vivian: So then you actually, how did you integrate tastings into this virtual aspect? I come from a healthcare world and when COVID hit, we were all, this was pre Zoom being like what it is now, so we had to use these alternative ways to be face to face virtually. How did you integrate wine tastings into a virtual setting?
Hailey: Yeah, so the first one started with that friend group. We had been doing this wine club for a good two years now. I was like, I need to make this happen. So that was kind of my first foray into it. What I did, and these were my friends, so there was no legality worries about it. I went out, I bought wine, poured it into little plastic cups, dropped it off at everybody's door. Then I'm a super visual person, so I created a slide deck. I like to look at pictures, maps, things like that while I'm learning things. So I figured they would too. I got everybody on Zoom, hosted the first virtual tasting, and loved it. I really focused more on that educational piece. I love learning and I also love teaching. So that kind of got to all tie in together. I think having that visual aid as well, something to look at more than, I love looking at people's faces. That's great, but if you start talking long enough, it kind of goes right over my head. I have got to have something to look at. I'm a podcast while driving person, not record, listening to. So that helped. So then, I took that idea. They had a lot of fun, but I was like, let's do this every week, and they said, "Hailey, you're insane. We're not doing this every week". So I created the business around that and started offering virtual tastings to anybody who wanted one.
Vivian: So at that point, that's when you turned into a business in 2020, 2021?
Hailey: Yes, yes. So the end of 2020, I basically took that idea and then my husband and I had this little trip in the woods planned. We were going to go hiking and all this, but it was October in Seattle and I don't know why we thought that that was going to be successful because it rained all weekend. Instead, I took all these ideas that I had and he also helped me and we built a website and kind of started Cork and Fizz. Came up with the name. We had a list of all these wine related terms and were trying to figure out, how do we make something that sounds playful and fun but ties into wine? So everything happened on that weekend and it jump started the business.
Vivian: I think we need to just let everybody know, everyone that's listening, you actually officially call him, is it Mr. Fizz?
Hailey: I call him Mr. Cork and Fizz. I saw somebody do that on Instagram. His name isn't a secret, you'll find it throughout places. But it's just kind of a cute thing and he enjoys being known as Mr. Cork and Fizz. He's wonderful. He does not shy away. I've been so grateful. We've done some fun little blind tasting episodes and he'll jump on a video reel with me and never fights me on.
Chelsea: I love that. Well, Hailey, can I ask you, we're learning right now how you started Cork and Fizz. When did the podcast come in?
Hailey: Yeah, the podcast came in a year ago last June. I'd always wanted to do something a little longer format. As we've kind of talked about, I love learning and then I also love teaching. The way I like to learn is to learn in order to teach somebody else, if that makes sense. I think that works best for my brain and it encourages me and motivates me. So I wanted a longer format way to talk to people and teach them about wine. I also wanted this to be free. I didn't want people to have to pay for it because a lot of things in the wine world are expensive and I wanted there to be a free resource. After looking into options, it kind of narrowed down to podcast versus YouTube, and video editing is really hard and I'm really good at talking. The other option was a blog post too, but I'm terrible at sitting down and writing something down. So, I ended up going the podcast route because I can talk, I can do this stuff, this will work. So that's where the idea of the Cork and Fizz Guide to Wine came about.
Vivian: Well, I was listening to a couple of your episodes. Absolutely amazing. I'll tell you, the way you break it down, because I think wine in general, like Chelsea said earlier, is just so overwhelming. I know one of the things that you were doing in one particular episode was you were breaking down the region and that there was a particular grape, but that the region had actually not used that grape. They used a different grape to make the wine. I think in my head, I know that wine comes from grapes, but I don't always associate that that they are so different because of the grape itself, right? It started to make me think, that's the basis of everything she's teaching.
Hailey: Yeah, I mean the whole wine world, there's so much to it and I think a lot of times it creates this atmosphere of people who are afraid to ask questions. They're afraid to feel dumb and not know something, I give the example to people - if you put me on a basketball court and said "go do a layup", I'd look absolutely ridiculous because I've never done a layup on a basketball court. Why should you have to know how to taste wine and know all of these grape varieties and know that the grape variety in the region impact the wine? Why would you know that if you've never done it or learned about it before? We've all got to start somewhere.
Most of us are just in the "red wine, white wine category, champagne. Those are my three categories", and that's where we start and then we start diving in from there.
Chelsea: Hailey, can I ask you, learning about your process and how you explain and describe wine, did you go into your podcast saying, I'm going to go about this differently, I'm going to teach people differently than other wine experts out there, or did you kind of just stumble into it and notice that people needed more than just, "this is a red wine from this region and the"...see, this is not working because I don't know anything about wine!
Hailey: No, no, you're fine. You're fine. I think that's totally great. I think you're very much onto something of the idea of how to teach about wine because I think, going into the podcast, I did have the benefit of a lot of private tastings that I'd done and I'd learned a lot in those tastings. I've learned how to be somebody who is an expert in something and then needing to teach about it.
I've heard before where some of the greatest players of different sports actually make really bad coaches because they don't know how to teach about the thing they're naturally good at or the thing they naturally understand. I think that's been one thing that, not to be the opposite of modest, whatever that is, but I do think that's my superpower. I think I'm pretty good at explaining things. When I was in college, I was a computer science major and I also perfected, which was like a TA or tutoring for those things. I understood I could hear when other people explain things and it would just go right over people's heads. For me, I love trying to find a way for something to make sense for somebody. I will try three, four different explanations until it clicks for somebody, because there's always some way that something's going to make sense for someone. So I think going into the podcast, I'd had experience from different wine tastings in the past and realizing that I can't just go in and be like, here are the grapes, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, da da. You guys said, you know white wine. You don't know what the hell I'm talking about when I go Sauvignon Blanc, what? Or knowing that Burgundy's a region. It's like, what the heck are you saying? You've gone a step too far.
Chelsea: I did not know that. That was really interesting.
Hailey: Yeah. Recognizing that everybody's at a different step, what's normal to me is not the same for other people because it's that way for me in other subjects. If you started talking marketing terms, I'd be like, I don't really know. I just kind of throw stuff out there and hope it hits. So yeah, I had that experience to kind of go into the podcast.
Chelsea: Not to talk about us, but that also is at the core of SOB marketing too, because when we started the podcast, we decided we want to be different than other marketing podcasts and other marketing experts. You listen to them talk and you have no idea what they're saying. They're just throwing out buzzwords. Half the time, I'm going to be honest, and I'm going to say something controversial. Half the time, they're not saying anything. They're just using buzzwords. So Vivian and I sat down and we very specifically said, this podcast is going to be for small business owners so they can understand marketing. We're going to tell you straight up the facts. We're not going to use big fancy words or anything like that.
Vivian: I feel like the big superpower here is just being yourself. I hate to use the word authentic because I feel like it's been hijacked for like other stuff. I feel like Hailey, talking to you, you don't know how to be anything other than what you are. So that just translates into whether you're shooting a reel, whether you're shooting a tiktok, or you're doing a podcast episode. It's your superpower in knowing how to take a complex subject and break it down and make somebody feel welcomed. Hey, come into this world because everybody's invited here, right?
I think that's where it's the same thing with SOB marketing. Where so much of it is, I didn't go to school for that. Well, great. You don't have to because things change so often. We just want to break it down with you, right?
One thing that I saw that I absolutely loved, and I think this speaks to that. You had a TikToK video that went viral. You got 2 million views, correct?
Hailey: Yes, I do have one that's gone very viral.
Vivian: This is the thing that is just magical about what you do. It was about a decanter, that thing that people take red wine and pour it into to let the wine breathe and you're supposed to let it sit for like 30 minutes. The one thing that you said in that reel or in that TikTok that absolutely, this is her putting a flag in the ground saying this is my territory, is when you said, I encourage you to do this for your $10 bottles of wine. Then I start reading the comments and I saw a lady that said, hey, I just did this with the wine I bought at Aldi's.
I think what you did there is you said, "hey, if you're not out there spending $100 plus on a bottle of wine, that's okay. This is still something you can do that will help to improve the taste of the wine." The way you explained it, it was perfection. I loved everything about it.
Hailey: Thank you so much. I think it's so important to start where people are at. You're not going to reach somebody if you're like, drink this $30 bottle of wine when I'm used to buying $3 bottles of wine. I'm not going to make that jump. Maybe I can talk to you about, at Trader Joe's there are some $10 bottles that would be great to try. Then once you're there, maybe it's - Total Wine has these great bottles for $15. Then, let me talk to you about this small business, this small producer that I think makes incredible wine. You're going to have to pay a little bit more, but trust me, it's worth it.
At that point, you've been brought up to that and you're a little more comfortable. Maybe at some point you stick around and just stay at the $10 level and that's fine. You can still love and enjoy wine at any level. I'm just going to teach you about all these different things so that you know how to explore. I also loved what you said about it being just you, your own experience you're bringing to the table because that's kind of how I got out of imposter syndrome. I think for a while I was like, who am I to teach people about wine? But the thing is, I know I know about wine and the way I teach about it is not going to be the same way that anybody else teaches about it because they're not me. They simply can't. They don't have my experience or who I am. I'm going to teach it my way and the world deserves to have somebody who can teach it my way.
Vivian: Tell us, you offer three services. You do virtual wine tastings, you do on-site wine tastings, and then you also, is it a community or is it the one where people can travel and meet you and have a whole wine touring experience with you?
Hailey: So I've definitely expanded my offerings. The way I break them down is I do private tastings which incorporate those virtual ones or in person. So if you're in the Seattle area, I will come to you and host a tasting, bring the glassware, everything. You just have to get the wines. Virtual tasting, obviously we meet online. So I cannot bring you glassware, unfortunately, but we have a similar experience, but it's private. You and a group that you choose come and do the tasting.
Then I have this virtual tasting club, the community, it's called The Cork Crew. It's basically a monthly tasting club. We get together, learn about two new wines every month, and then I bring in different people from the community. So that author of that book I loved, Cork Dork, Bianca Bosker, she came in and did a Q &A. I've had other winemakers come in. I call it a community because you're meeting with the same people every month. You get to feel this great connection with people all while learning about wine every month, all at home, which is very comfortable. You don't need a DD. You don't need to worry about getting a taxi home. You can just enjoy some wine and your kids can be in the room next door because you're just tasting some wine, you know, and not having a whole bottle.
Then I've recently expanded into tours and retreats. So right next to Seattle, it's a little place called Woodinville. There's a crap ton of tasting rooms, and so I do little day tours there or I can host you for a full retreat somewhere around here as well if that's of interest.
Finally I have little printables. I'm just starting to get into the world of done for you tasting kits. So you can host your own. My next one is going to be a wine and cheese pairing kit. So it'll have everything you need: shopping list, instructions, checklists, and tasting guides. So you can host a fun little wine and cheese pairing at your house with friends.
Chelsea: That is amazing. Genius. I love it.
Vivian: That is amazing.
Hailey: Yeah, you get my exact tasting notes. I'm going to tell you which wines to buy, which cheese to pair it with, and you're comfortable because you're at home with friends and family and you can explore together.
Chelsea: I think this is a great example of knowing your target audience. You know the people that listen to your podcast, that invest in your community - you know this is the kind of thing that they want. I absolutely would want this.
Hailey: Yes, that's one thing I've had to learn about my target audience, I'm not looking for people that necessarily are me, right? The people who are me are gonna go further, in a way. They're going to probably go beyond even my learning of wine, but even then they still want community. They still want a fun way to learn about wine.
A lot of the times my target audience is somebody who just wants to do something fun with wine. They like wine. They want me to tell them what to buy. Great, I can help you with that. I got some lists, you know, things like that.
Chelsea: The number one rule of business is you really need to know your target audience and you need to remember that you are not your target audience. It's also one of the hardest things to do.
Vivian: I agree and I think it's always an adjustment. So you're always having to come...there's the center and then you start to veer off and you have to auto correct, right?
I love that you went into it and you were very strategic about the fact that you knew your educating style was going to be just a tad different. That way it allowed you to attract this whole other audience of people. Personally, I wouldn't follow somebody that was sitting there using all these big words or trying to explain that at any level.
I used to work F&B back in the day. I only waitressed for two days because waitressing was not for me, but I could hostess the crap out of some stuff. These wine reps would come in and I I would just kind of tune out. I'm just here to taste it. That's really the only thing I want to do.
Chelsea: So I do want to reel this back in a little bit to marketing because I do want to say some things in terms of marketing, your unique selling point, who you are. It does not necessarily have to be your branding.
It absolutely can be, Hailey is a great example. Her brand and who her entire business is, is her unique selling point, because it's different from other wine experts. It could also be unique product features or customization. It can be the level of customer service that you offer. It can be how you market yourself. There are different ways to make yourself stand out against your competitors. It is not necessarily about who you are. Now, I want to say for small businesses, that's probably the easiest way to do it because you are you and there's no one else that is like you. If you wanted to go about it differently, if you wanted to focus on, I have unique products, a great example is Dutch Boys. They have a twist and pour paint container. That's different.
For customer service, an example I can give you...when I was in college, they were trying to teach us the exact thing we were talking about right now. My professor was like Starbucks is a great example of providing that extra level of customer service. He was saying he goes to the same coffee shop every single day and they know him and they knew it was his birthday. Now he always tells that story. That's his favorite story to tell to every class. That's knowing your target audience, because if I went to Starbucks and they're like, happy birthday, I'd say I'm never coming here again. Why do you know that? I would be uncomfortable.
Vivian: You know, premium brands, Tesla has never done a commercial. They've never had to because the people they're trying to target are in a different group and they have other ways of reaching them besides paid ads. Knowing your audience affects everything that you're doing.
Hailey, you keep your target audience top of mind, no matter what it is that you're putting out there. So there was a reel that you recently did and it was asking wine enthusiasts what advice they would have for people that are beginning their wine experience. Three of them that stood out to me. There was a person that said, just because you don't like a wine doesn't mean that you don't like that grape, right? Not all Chardonnays for example, tastes the same. The other one was drink what you like. It doesn't matter, if you like it, drink it. Don't change your palate because you think it's cooler to like champagne than it is to like Chardonnay. Then the last one was join a wine club, right? So I think it's interesting because even when you're not directly sharing the advice yourself, you're asking your community, the people that are probably way more knowledgeable, because everyone's kind of on a different tier. You're saying, hey, give the "beginners" some advice. What would you say to them? I just feel like that's so important because you're not just doing it when you're speaking, but you're encouraging that conversation outside of that. So is that very intentional?
Hailey: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's important because for me, it really solidifies my community and my audience. I have really created that and I've done that with my content because I'm not afraid to say when I think something is kind of BS in the wine world. I will put that out there. I'll be like, I think clean wine is ridiculous. I don't know what a clean wine is. I think that's just marketing BS.
I know that nobody following me is going to be like that. I'm very approachable and I make the wine world approachable and I make fun of wine snobs, you know, that try to make wine super fancy and elitist. So I know those people aren't going to be following me. So I know that when I put something out there for others to teach others about it, I know those people who are knowledgeable in my world are going to be very similar to me because why else would they be following me? They would be annoyed by me.
Vivian: Right. I'm sure you take that into your community as well. Like on these monthly calls, I'm sure that the conversation is never stuffy.
Hailey: No, and that's the thing that's great. We can learn from each other, which is really cool. There's a gal in the club who speaks Italian. So, whenever we come across Italian wine, I ask her, how do I say this? Because I don't speak Italian. The only other language I know is Spanish. So, I speak every foreign language with a Spanish accent and it's not right unless it's Spanish, right?
I'll usually ask her, "am I saying this right?" You can look it up online and stuff like that, but it's nice to have somebody there who can help out with that. We're all very encouraging. If somebody smells a wine and is like, "I smell this and this", somebody else will say, "yeah, me too. I kind of get a little bit of that, but also some of this" or "no, actually my wine is very different. I don't get that, but I get this." It's never a "you're wrong, I'm right" because we all recognize that we're all having our own experience and we're all wanting to learn about wine in a very approachable way.
Vivian: Going back to what Chelsea reminded me, it's not a wine testing, it's a tasting, right? I'm very curious about that. In my experience, when they would bring people in, they would give us a little bit of wine and they would go around the room and they'd say, what do you taste? I was always scared to tell them what I was tasting, because that's clearly not what anybody else is tasting. Is there something to do with your palate that's different for everybody else? So maybe there are things that I don't taste as prevalent, as somebody else said.
Hailey: Yeah. So most of it actually has to do with your nose, your smell. When it comes to wine and honestly any food, most of the flavor comes from you smelling it. It's why when you have a cold and your nose is all stuffed up, food doesn't have much flavor because you can't smell it. Your tongue can only taste five to six different sensations, sweet, sour, acidic, umami, right? There's only about six of them. But you can smell thousands of things. There's actually proof that we could decipher more smells than dogs. We just don't train our nose to do that. When you're tasting wine, most of the taste comes from your nose and from smelling. Smell is the sense that is most tied to your memory. It's actually a scientific thing. When you smell something, it goes back into your brain and for you to smell it, it goes directly past your hippocampus and one other thing that is tied to memory in your brain. So your own experience and your own memories are going to determine what you smell in a wine. That's why it's going to be different than the person next to you who's had a totally different experience.
Vivian: Yeah, that is so cool. I'm gonna tell you guys the creepiest thing ever. I always tell my husband that there's this weird thing with smell and memory, right? I had a babysitter growing up. I was very, very little. My mom was working at the time. I had a babysitter, and I cannot for the life of me remember her name, but I remember her smell. I guess it was a certain type of lotion that she used. I will be out in public sometimes and I catch a whiff of it and it instantly takes me back to feeling like a kid again. I'll stop and think about it and I wish I could remember her name, but it is the weirdest thing. It has the capacity to make you time travel a little bit.
Hailey: Yeah, and it'll take you to that memory before it'll take you to the name of that smell. That's the thing, right? You weren't trained on that smell. So when people smell wine and they're like, "I don't smell anything" but maybe they're taken back to a memory but they can't name it. You weren't trained to do that. I remember I'd smell a wine and there was one that smelled like my backyard because it smelled like lilac. We had lilac bushes. But I wouldn't know that until I realized the connection. There was one that smelled like my dad because of his cologne. Turns out his cologne had sandalwood in it. That was the smell I was getting. You might not know the name of it until you figure it out, but it could take you to a memory and you know the smell. You just can't name it.
Chelsea: That's amazing. Hailey has sold me. We're going to get into wine now. This is what we're doing later today.
Vivian: Right, that's amazing. I feel like we're doing this monthly wine club for sure. I love it.
What would you say, Hailey, was the hardest thing for you once you decided, I'm going to approach this a little differently. I know you mentioned imposter syndrome. If someone's listening and they kind of feel that same way. Because I'm going to tell y'all, Chelsea sees the struggle with me all the time. I'm a corporate girlie. I feel like we were trained to kind of remove our personality from work, right? That's why everyone says it's just business, right? Somehow you're going to be different in business than you are as a person. So it's un-training myself and allowing myself to be, to show up as who I am and have these opinions. I'm always so scared to have an opinion because I don't want to offend anybody, but I should be okay offending some people because those aren't the people we're trying to attract that could benefit the most from this stuff. I guess I say all that just to say, what would your advice be if someone's like, "I want to show up and I know I have this unique way of presenting this, but I'm scared that I'm maybe going to lose some followers, get some pushback, not be as popular."
Hailey: Yeah, I think the two things that come to mind are that first I've already mentioned is that you are the only you. Nobody can do what you can do and the world needs that, right? Imagine one of your favorite content creators, your favorite businesses, what if they let fear stop them? Wouldn't that suck to not have the thing that they created? You would so miss that. I think kind of putting yourself in those shoes.
Then the other thing, recognize that your audience is out there. Just like you said, if you say something and it scares people away, they're probably not your audience and that's okay. You probably want to scare them away. When I send out an email and I get some unsubscribes, sometimes it makes me sad. Then other times I'm like, you know what, I wasn't for them. That makes sense. I don't want them on the list if they don't want to hear what I have to say. Recognizing that there are people out there that want what you are giving them. They exist. I don't know why sometimes I'd get in my head and be like, I need to change it up. I just don't think people want an approachable wine teacher that does this and this and this. Y'all are already proving that audience exists.
Vivian: I think the one thing I want to focus in on, and Chelsea and I have talked about this a couple of times. With marketing, we're trying to remind people 50% of marketing is attracting the right people. That means 50% of it is pushing away the other people. Think of it as a funnel. If somebody is not into what I'm doing, I don't want you in my funnel because then I'm spending money to push you down further into it to buy my product and service, then I'm wasting money because you're just never going to buy from me, period.
Chelsea: I have a question that's kind of not on topic, but since you're right here, I'm just kind of curious. What would you say is the most common question that you get from your audience?
Hailey: Ooh, good question. I think the biggest thing is, what should I drink? And there's different forms of that. There's sometimes the really straightforward, I had someone reach out and was like, "I'm looking for a Chablis, which is a Chardonnay from a region in France. I'm looking for a Chablis, do you have recommendations? It's for a friend's giving, I don't want to spend that much." Then other times it's just, "listen, I look at the wine list of the restaurant and sometimes I just like close my eyes and point at something. Can you help me pick something out a little bit better than that?"
Chelsea: I have an embarrassing story. So when I was in college, I studied abroad. We were in Prague, but we decided to take a trip to Italy. So we were in Venice and I was only 19 at the time, but abroad you can drink when you're 18. I just had to show my passport. So I just picked a random wine because I don't know anything about wine. I'm like, this name sounds cool, I want this. The waitress said, "that's a dessert wine. I'm not going to give that to you. You can have it after you have your meal." I was like, forget it.
Hailey: Yeah, probably at that point you were like, okay, now I feel silly. First of all, you can drink a dessert wine whenever the hell you want. Who says that you have to wait until dessert?
Chelsea: You know what? We need to go back and tell 19-year-old me this. Because 26-year-old me is like, absolutely, I would have told her I want it anyways, but 19-year-old me would not.
Hailey: Yeah. Well, even if you didn't know that and she wanted to tell you that, there's a nice way to say hey, just want to check in. That's a sweet wine typically had at dessert. Do you still want it now or would you rather have this or this? Again, I feel like it's that educational piece because all you needed was probably that one interaction. Now you don't want to talk about wine at all anymore.
Chelsea: Yeah, that's exactly what happened.
Hailey: Well, and that's the other thing too. Some people are like, "if they give me a big wine list at a restaurant, I typically just go for the second cheapest, because I don't want to go for the cheapest, but I've heard the second cheapest is the best." I mean, that's not wrong, but also how do I try new wines? How do I find wines that I like. I think a lot of people are afraid to try new wines and get away from the wine they're used to trying because they're like, what if I don't like it?
Well, what if your whole life all you ate was chicken nuggets? Because you knew you liked chicken nuggets, but that was it. I mean, I love chicken nuggets, but I'd get sick of them. Why not have the same attitude with wine? There is a very, very, very low chance you're going to hate the wine. It might not be your favorite, but you're probably going to like it enough to drink it. Why not take that risk to try it? I think it helps to have a little bit of that knowledge about each of the wines.
When you're ordering chicken cordon bleu, you're like, I know I like chicken and I know I like this, so I know I'll probably like it. It's like with wine, if you see something called Burgundy, you can say, I know that that's a Chardonnay and I've had one of those before. So that might be a good one to try. You just want to know enough to be able to choose wines to drink.
Vivian: If you guys are listening to this, I want you to take what Hailey just said and actually apply that to your marketing too. If you are not experimenting with marketing initiatives then you're kind of stuck. I might be working for you, but you don't know if something else might work a little better at a cheaper cost. So I think the experimenting and the being open to trying new things is definitely a big deal.
You said something else that caught my attention and that was you utilize social media, podcasts, all of that to share information, to get people kind of into your community so that they know about you and then your front and center to them. But you also have an email list, which means that you're nurturing that community and that relationship. How often do you send out your emails?
Hailey: Yeah, I've changed it up a little bit recently. When I first started the mailing list, I sent out a weekly email and I never had anything super strong. It was just, what are we going to talk about this week? Great, let's throw it out there and see what happens. I've moved to about twice a month. Usually I send one that's just about one of my offers or my story or something like that. Then one's a monthly roundup, what's going on in my life. I think this is a great part of marketing. This is an area that I've always been like, I have this mailing list. What do I do with it? I want to make sure people feel nurtured and they feel like they're getting stuff from me. I've always seen it as just taking it up to the next level above what social media gets, which I think is a good intro way to get into it. I've been slowly trying to create workflows and connect them to my lead magnets. I've been working on building those so that people come in and then I direct them to things that they would like. I think right now my email marketing is very much just, here's what I do.
Instead it'd be, "you bought my 15 wines under $15. You just want me to tell you what wine to buy. Great. Did you know I also am building this wine and cheese done for you at home tasting kit? You're gonna love that too." They're probably not somebody that wants a private tasting. They just want me to tell them what kind of wine to buy, right? So long story short, it's still a work in progress, but we're getting there.
Chelsea: That is exactly what you need to do with your email list. You are segmenting your audience and making sure that you're delivering the information that they actually want. We don't want to send messaging out to people who don't really want to hear about that part of your business. Vivian and I have a course called Rock Your Fair. It is about how to participate in vendor markets and craft fairs. Okay, you would not be interested in that. We're not going to tell you anything about that. We're not going to waste your time. We're not going to waste our time, because it's not something you would be interested in and that's perfectly okay. We can send you to a different segment of what we have going on.
Hailey: Yeah. I think an important thing, at least for me, and you guys tell me if I'm wrong, I think you're the experts in it. One thing that overwhelmed me when it came to mailing lists at first was, I felt like I needed to do that from the get go. And then I was terrified of how to do it. I was worried that I'd never be able to have that unless I started with that and then when it kept me from doing it. I've now learned to take the approach of, this is what I'm working towards. Do I have that yet? No, but I'm working towards having that eventually. In the meantime, I send out these emails and people have stuck around quite a bit, so I think it's working okay. There's always something I can go to, it doesn't have to be perfect right away.
Vivian: Well, and I think that's the thing that keeps most people from doing or starting any initiative. They don't want it to be messy. I'm sorry to tell y'all, it is messy at first. How do you expect it not to be? You've never set something up or done something, you just got to get your feet wet in order to then feel comfortable and know the full capacity of the platforms you're using and the downloads you have. I'm with you. It was interesting when I started the email list, it was very basic. And then I wanted to do a welcome sequence. So then anytime someone comes in, I send them a set of two or three emails. If they like this download, they'll like this, they might be interested in the course. That's all stuff that you build over time. You never build the machine first. You have to put the parts together and then it starts to all fit.
Chelsea: Love.
So Hailey, to wrap up this conversation, I'm going to ask you a very loaded question, I'm sorry. For the small business owner that is struggling to find their niche and their unique selling point, what is one thing they can do today to start that journey?
Hailey: That's a good question. The first thing that comes to mind is honestly ask people. My business started with my friends and family supporting me and I think I was in business probably three months before I had my first virtual tasting booked where I didn't know the person ahead of time. Those friends and family who are supporting you, they are true customers and they are seeing you from the outside. To me it kind of helped hearing an outside perspective. What did you like about this tasting? I mean, obviously you want to do some of it internally. You don't want it only determined by people from the outside. But I think it's a good place to start, because a lot of people want to be humble. They don't want to brag about what they're good at. So hearing from other people might help you kind of pinpoint what that is.
Vivian: I love that too, because I think there isn't enough separation as a person. What people do is something that comes naturally to them. I'm naturally curious and I'm going to dive head first into something and come up with all these slide decks and do all that because that's just who you are. You're not, you're a natural dork. Like you just like diving head first into stuff, but that's your power. I think that's where it's nice to have a group of people that sometimes are like, no, no, no, this is definitely the one thing that sets you apart.
Hailey: Yeah, and then combine that with what do you like doing? I think that's so important as a niche and especially in starting your own business. You didn't start your own business to do stuff you didn't like to do. You might experiment and try some things.
You can find Hailey at corkandfizz.com. She also has a podcast, Cork and Fizz.
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