Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Sophie Bowman. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Sophie, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

I found my father’s dead body on the way to school one morning. The world as I knew it changed overnight; suddenly I had to fend for myself in a world where I no longer had anyone I knew had my back. None of my friends at that age understood. They made comments behind my back the rare times I spoke about my father’s death that I was using it for attention and similar dumb teenager BS. So I stopped talking about it and focused all of my available energy on creating the legacy he wasn’t able to complete. I came to my senses in spring 2022 when I had a balcony epiphany moment and realized the best way to honor his legacy is to be happy, nothing else really matters. Life is full of sink or swim moments; either we give up and sink, or fight like hell and keep swimming against the current. In summary, I basically blew my entire world apart this spring to put it back together brick by brick to build a better 2.0 version of myself. I have always envisioned success as being able to buy my dream house and a fun AF car. The rest I always envisioned being used for good; I want to build a next-generation children’s home and all of my work moving forward will be connected with a much larger purpose.

I launched the Bat Sh1t Crazy Hotline last week to give business owners and professionals a virtual lifeline to affordable, award-winning ideas regardless of financial circumstances.

Purpose & Meaningful are two very current brand personality traits so highly in demand that no business can survive much longer without incorporating both into its company culture. If we learned from lockdown, it’s that we have to quickly respond to shifting consumer demands and constantly evolve our businesses to stay current (and ahead of) the times. Or risk falling off the face of the earth like Blockbuster – if only they’d stayed one step ahead and got ahead of the movie streaming game…

I evolved convertyourfollowers.com to meet current market demands for brands with purpose and to fulfill my own purpose of creating meaningful social media campaigns that connect with consumers on a deeper level while helping make the world a better place. This is my purpose in life.

Keep your eyes peeled for an upcoming collaboration I’m orchestrating with a fashion brand, charity, and a herd of GoPro-wearing sea lions…

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I was born and raised in London, UK. I started my career when I was headhunted by a leading UK magazine aged eighteen to handle their PR. I went on organize launch and album parties for various brands including John Legend, Kanye West, Mark Morisson, and Jamie Foxx. I ended up teaching special needs kids for many years, but grew tired of the violence and the lack of opportunities to progress. I had a lucrative side hustle selling copywriting, branding, marketing, social media, and PR services via freelance sites. When I was about to turn thirty, I had an early midlife crisis, and relocated to Morocco after an impulse to change my whole life and travel the world while living at low cost during the startup phase.

I won various awards in 2021 for my pro bono efforts to help small buisness owners in America thrive rather than simply survive COVID and beond. I was shocked how many business owners lacked the basic knowledge required to make social media work for their business. While rumors circulated that TikTok could be banned, it made me think; what would happen if a site gets blocked or shut down? What happens to all of our followers, and what about the time we spent on building our social presence and our network? That’s where the idea for convertyourfollowers.com was conceived. After hearing the epic results of my case study trailing my proven process with BALMAIN, I appeared on a sHARK tank edition TV show’ – to I appeared on a Shark Tank edition TV show, and OG Shark labeled my business model ‘marketing holy grail.’ He strongly recommend I convert the process into a book, so I did. I wanted all aspiring and struggling business owners, influencers, and entrepreneurs to have access to the insider secrets without having to pay thousands of dollars a month. My proven process is a solution to the million dollor question; how do you convert social media followers to customers? Followers should be considered hot leads, because that’s exactly what they are. If a consumer takes the time to follow you and perhaps even engage with your content (hallelujah), then they are a hot lead you’re leaving hanging. Move like social media platforms could be gone tomorrow. Start converting fans to customers and easily multiply sales.
I became a covergirl for the first time in Janaury, but the ultimate hoghlight of the year is winning Entrepreneur of the Year 2022, Gold Stevie, at the American Business Awards. Major award and the one I have always had my eye on. It’s an honor, really. The funny part is few people pay any attention to all of my achievements, but when my face was blasted across billboards in Times Square as an example of an inspirational immigrant for the @amer_icanican campaign promoting community, diversity, and tolerancee, people I hadn’t spoken to in a decade or two blew me up to say congrats on this monumental milestone moment. It’s funny how peoples’ minds work and what they perceive success to look like.
Most recently, I was selected to speak at the Atlanta Women Leaders event and was chosen as one of a handful of successful US entrepreneurs to sit on the board to rank the Top 500 brands in China; that’s going to be a big deal next year. I just discovered yesterday that I’m being flown to Dubai and Vegas in December to receive the Honoree in Oustanding Leadership in Marketing award.

Case Study: A makeup contest I launched for the influencer network around my beauty client utilized a voting poll plugin to drive traffic to the client’s site. Within 24 hours, she had 63,000 unique hits on her blog. Influencers (some with over 1 million followers) shared the voting link to win votes from their followers, beast moding user-generated-content. I captured 950 new emails that same first day. I retargeted these subscribers a week or so later via email marketing, and sales of the beauty brand increased by over 38% that same month. The entire cost of the campaign was $150. There is no way you could ever get those kinds of results via ads. I boosted a YouTube video for $150 once, and it received 5000 views. So, as you can see, to get those kind of results via ads you’d have to spend an ad budget of at least $1,800. I lack patience, hate wasting my time, and ensure everything I do is efficient as possible to make the most of my time so I wanted to create a no-nonsense simple service for small business owners to start multiplying their sales.

I’m beyond excited to launch my patented technology swimwear line next year. It’s going to make a lot of noise, and help bring a lot of body positivity and happiness to the world. Purpose-driven campaigns have been my thing for many years, it just happens to be a trend right now.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Relocating to Morocco while building my startup was definitely a challenge, especially as i don’t speak fluent French or Arabic. The entire crazy Morrocan adventure taught me that no matter how bad things get, there is always a solution. Relocating to Miami six years ago, I literally had nothing to my name. I spent everything I had on relocation costs, after an extended trip of Australia. I had to fight to get my own apartment in my name in South Beach without citizenship or any credit rating or history in the USA. Four months rent in advance sealed the deal, but that kissed goodbye to the last of my savings. I slept on an air mattress for weeks without any other furniture while I restocked funds. I ended up hating the overpriced studio apartment as it was basically a dark, damp storage container, but we all have to start somewhere. I think most of my life reflects resilience. Like when I broke my jaw in the accident that nearly killed me, lost weight on a liquid diet, got scouted, and paid to walk the runways of Miami Swim Week 2019. Resilience basically means you train yourself to see opportunity in everything, pivot curveballs, and make the most of the way things turn out.

What else should we know about how you took your side hustle and scaled it up into what it is today?

My side hustle started while I was teaching in London. I had a background in public relations, marketing, and magazine editorial, so I sold copywriting, branding, marketing, and social media services on freelance sites such as peopleperhour.com You can start by selling packages of your services, or by sending proposals for work. I started small by pitching lower than everyone else to start building my rating on the site. As your reputation improves by completing small jobs on the site, you can increase your pricing.

Phase two is converting those one-off clients to ongoing clients. The goal is to sell services on a monthly retainer so that you’re continuously growing and expanding your business. Once you have a handful of clients paying a monthly retainer, you have converted your side hustle into a business.

Phase three consists of adding reputability to your brand. A quick and easy way to do this is to sell a book based on your expertise or become a thought leader in your industry. Podcast appearances, press features, and contributing guest blogs are all powerful ways to build trust in your name.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.convertyourfollowers.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/sophiecbowman

Image Credits
@smithcophotoimages @brotherjoe0710 @justinpricephoto @missbikinius