We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Isabel Talens a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Isabel, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with a fun one – what’s something you believe that most people in your industry (or in general) disagree with?

The large majority of online entrepreneurs put their efforts into social media content, believing it is the path to online success. They chase the miracle viral post and significantly struggle with the burden of posting daily.

Creating content is creating valuable assets for your business to grow online organically. Fact. Now, here comes the twist. When online entrepreneurs only publish on social media, they are literally burning that effort in 24h!

Imagine you could print money every day, but at the end of the day, your money burns. That’s precisely what happens with content on social media. After 24h, your content is no longer active on social media, and you need to start again and again daily.

So what is the alternative? Choosing a content search engine platform, that is Pinterest, YouTube or Google.

When you post on a content search engine, your content is discoverable for years, not hours! Your content becomes an actual investment for your future and your growth. Now, YouTube and Google are complex platforms. It can take years to rank in Google, and not everyone wants to create a YouTube channel.

That’s where Pinterest comes in. Fast content to create, easy to rank in, discoverable for years and fantastic traffic generation to wherever you want outside the platform (yes, even affiliate links!). A powerful lead generation engine for online entrepreneurs to grow their audience and leads.

The answer doesn’t mean to stop posting on social media totally. My time is my most limited asset, so it goes where I get the most returns. That is Pinterest, which brings literally ten times more traffic than social media!

Isabel, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi, I’m Isabel! I’m your business strategist and Pinterest expert, founder of isabeltalens.com and agaveaproperties.com. I’m all things Pinterest for you! I help online entrepreneurs, small business owners, and people starting online supercharge their audience growth and create a formidable lead-generation engine with Pinterest.

My transformational online business growth system revolves around four pillars: powerful content creation, simple and fast content platform strategies, intentional multi-stream online monetisation and a limitless mindset.

Everything starts with great content. I’m a passionate content creator who loves transmitting the best strategies that work in today’s short-spam world to create super-fans that convert. But great content can be lost in the wrong platform or without a fail-proof approach to content marketing. Content and marketing only translate into income with clarity on how to monetise it.

My mission is to help entrepreneurs grow successfully online in a balanced way to live the life they want. No social media overwhelm, no launching without an audience.

I’ve combined my 27-years of experience in business strategy, planning, and transformation with my expertise and know-how in content marketing on both Pinterest and Instagram to grow your audience and generate leads that convert so that you don’t have to spend months or years figuring it all out.

Many strategies fail because they go after useless feel-good numbers and long-expired tactics. They concentrate on clicks and hacks instead of a strategic biz system that brings results day after day. I’ll show you how you can bring leads while you sleep.

I offer a range of services and products for online entrepreneurs:
* From Post to Pin, my online course to turn your hard-worked, brilliant social media posts into evergreen content on Pinterest in 10 minutes (or less!) to be discoverable for years.
* The Profitable Pinterest Secrets, my signature online course to eliminate the guesswork from Pinterest to grow your online audience and create a lead generation engine for your business with my easy-to-follow, 4-step system.
* Coaching and VIP intensives, where you can book me for the day and turbo-charge your progress.
* Done-for-you, stop-the-scroll marketing templates to jump-start your launches and marketing results.

Fun fact: I’m Spanish, married to a Frenchman and live in the UK. I looooooove freshly squeezed orange juice. I’m always shooting with my cameras when I’m out and about. The sea is my happy place.

The best place to connect with me is through my blog at isabeltalens.com or DMs on Instagram.

Have you ever had to pivot?

When I decided to leave my corporate job back in time, the only thing I was clear about was that I was doing something I was no longer aligned to, and I needed to find self-alignment to find purpose in my job. I had no idea what to do next.

I had so many competencies and experience: business strategy, marketing, planning, coaching, transformation, commercial analysis, business development, financial investment, product management… But I was really struggling to pick one and find a good reason why.

And then, I came across Pinterest. I came across pins about online business… I was inspired! Oooooooh! That was it!

So I launched myself into creating a photo & video stock service for online entrepreneurs. I spent more than a year shooting as well as creating my website. I convinced myself that my website would build my authority and the quality of my photos and video would do the rest.

The fact is, I created a product without an audience. I also realised that having to create stock to sell was burning me out. Curiously, I remember listening to one of Pat Flynn’s podcasts, where he explained the different types of entrepreneurs. One of the archetypes was the entrepreneur who starts a business doing his passion… but realises that doing it as a business kills the passion. That was me.

I had to pivot. I had made no money. Spent ages pre-building a product I didn’t even launch. And, worst of it all, in the intense process of building my product and website, I had not even taken the time to build my audience! What a massive beginner’s mistake!

All these realisations hit me hard. I had little confidence in myself already. This was not helping at all!

Luckily, during that time, I had heavily experimented with Pinterest for our family luxury holiday rental business, agaveaproperties.com. I had also launched (pretty unintentionally), as an aside, wall art prints and other print-on-demand products and used Pinterest to market them.

I had learned sooooooo much doing that. There was my pivot!

The moment I realised I could show others how to use Pinterest to generate leads. I was committed to my vision of becoming an online entrepreneur. But despite my commitment, the real test was the pivotal moment where I needed to be resilient to start over, admit my mistakes and grow from them.

That is a continuous process in online business. Resilience is one of those precious abilities one needs to keep on nurturing. There are always lows and highs. Finding the resilience to keep on going, as well as developing the clarity to invest in yourself to speed up the process changes it all.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

My education and personality have always driven me to want to get things more than right, to seek perfection, to work hard and to put in hours and hours, without counting, for it to be perfect.

Here comes the conundrum of online entrepreneurs. There isn’t enough time in the day to do all the different things you need and do it all to perfection, in perfect control.

So through these years in the online world, I’ve learned two very important skills: to accept discomfort and embrace simplicity.

It doesn’t mean that I intentionally don’t do the best I can. It means that I constantly challenge myself to keep things simple and yet super impactful.

I’ve also learned that the most significant leaps in progress come from the biggest uncomfortable moments I put myself through. Here are a couple of examples of pivotal discomfort.

I was terrified of being on camera when I started. But I also knew that it was essential to show up on camera to connect with my audience. So I worked on its for days, weeks, and months. Bit by bit, I let go of my mental barriers. In fact, I now regularly hold 5-day live events on video to launch my courses. And that makes the whole difference. And, by the way, I’m still working at it, trying to feel comfier on camera. It’s part of the journey!

Another example is my first online course launch. In any other circumstance, I would have completed it before going into launch mode. In my old-me world, pre-launching without the product done was a complete no-no.

So now I ditch that limiting belief and embrace the opportunity that comes from launching before it is completed. That helps me create a better product. It helps me assess the demand for it before I spend months down a rabbit hole. It helps me implement a continuous improvement approach.

In a nutshell, the next time you feel discomfort in your next online move, go into it with the awareness that great things will come out of it! Transform your fears into excitement.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.isabeltalens.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/isabel.talens/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/isabel.talens.752
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/isabeltalens/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/isabeltalens
• Other: https://www.pinterest.co.uk/isabeltalensm/

Image Credits
Isabel Talens