We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kayla Watkins. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kayla below.

Kayla, appreciate you joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I have been fortunate to make a full-time living from my marketing services since I started my business in 2018, but not without some sacrifices and carefully chosen steps. While I did end of making a full-time living at the end of the year, my husband and I did spend the first 8 months of 2018 living with my mom to make sure I could provide the right amount of income consistently that we needed to afford living expenses. Those first 8 months I was taking odd social media jobs outside of Pinterest as well as beginning to create my Pinterest marketing services and was much more apt to work with whatever clients I could find. I wasn’t 100% sure of what my business would end up as, and I think I had to try things and make pivots in order to get where I am, but if I wanted to speed up the process, I may have told old-me to niche right away. It took me until this year to really lean into specializing as a Pinterest marketing agency for bloggers rather than all creatives, and it’s been great so far. It makes me more confident in what I do and better able to train my team.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m Kayla Watkins, owner of Kayla Watkins LLC, a Pinterest marketing agency for bloggers. We help lifestyle, fashion & beauty bloggers make more money and grow their community by strategically growing their website traffic from Pinterest. We completely take the Pinterest arm of their marketing plan off their plate so they can focus on growing other channels and creating quality content. I am really proud of how hands-off we allow our clients to be and how much we can accomplish for them in terms of growing their website traffic and helping new readers find them on Pinterest. Often, the number one traffic source for our clients’ websites is consistently Pinterest which allows them to charge more in brand partnerships, grow their email list and make consistent affiliate sales.

The other part about KWLLC’s package suite that I am most proud of is that we also include custom content creation support in our VIP package. We use what”s trending on Pinterest in their niche and what is performing well for them to come up with blog topic ideas each month so they can create content that will perform well on Pinterest for years to come. It allows them to write blog posts that feel strategic rather than random and makes it a more robust marketing strategy.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

There is so much unlearning in entrepreneurship. Every week I encounter a new story that I’ve created or previously believed about myself, my business, earning money, managing a team, work/life balance, etc. I constantly have to keep myself in check and remind myself what is true and what isn’t.

One backstory that I struggle with all the time is raising my rates. When I get to the point where raising rates is necessary, I usually feel unworthy of higher rates. I have to constantly remind myself why I am charging more and what value we provide as a team to our clients. I’m honestly not sure where that comes from personally, but I do know that I have found myself downplaying my business all the time when I explain it to non-online-business family and friends. Most people probably assume that it’s a small side hustle by the way I explain it when in reality it’s a 6 figure company that truly makes an impact on our clients’ businesses. When I go to raise rates the immediate “how dare I” feeling pops back up because I’m constantly downplaying outwardly.

While I haven’t fully overcome this, I have made huge steps in unlearning it with the help of several podcasts, books and, most effective, hiring a business coach in 2021.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

For me, referrals have been our #1 source of new clients. We have been fortunate to have several clients tell their fellow bloggers about working with us as well as shout us out on Instagram that have brought in steady, new clientele. I am still working on hashing out how best to encourage referrals, but have found that reminding clients about the referral discount they’d receive has been effective.

Our #2 source of new clients is Instagram marketing. I was recently able to change our handle to @pinterestforbloggers which I think has been a great way to build brand awareness and help people quickly know what we do and who we do it for.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kaylawatkins.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pinterestforbloggers/

Image Credits
Karin Maria Photography