Mimi MacLean:
Welcome to the Badass CEO Podcast. This is Mimi MacLean. I'm a mom of five, entrepreneur, Columbia Business School grad, CPA and angel investor, and I'm here to share with you my passion for entrepreneurship. Throughout my career, I have met many incredible people who have started businesses, disrupted industries, persevered and turned on opportunity into success. Each episode, we will discuss what it takes to become and continue to be a badass CEO directly from the entrepreneurs who have made it happen. If you're renewing your career, dreaming about starting your own business, or already an entrepreneur, the Badass CEO Podcast is for you. I want to give you the drive and tools needed to succeed in following your dreams.

Mimi MacLean:
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Mimi MacLean:
Hi, welcome back to the Badass CEO. This is your host, Mimi MacLean and today I have on Andrea De La Torre and she started Baby Sleep Answers when she was frustrated with the lack of flexibility and personalization in the baby sleep world. She has spent the last five years creating products online that help parents understand their baby's sleep and help them get more out of sleeping. This is the podcast for you if you are looking for a way to monetize your expertise or your passion or your side hustle on a way online using courses, using one-on-one consulting, using your social media. You can find Andrea's company at babysleepanswers.com.

Mimi MacLean:
To get your top 10 tips every entrepreneur should know, go to thebadassceo.com/tips.

Mimi MacLean:
Andrea, thank you so much for coming on today. I really appreciate it. We are here to talk about your Baby Sleep Answers business that came out of a necessity for of your own personal life. I would love to just talk a little bit about how the whole thing transpired.

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah. My background is in education. I thought I was going to be a teacher all my life and I studied for that. I got a great education, I started being a teacher. That's actually how I met my husband. He was the first grade teacher, I was the kindergarten teacher and then we met and he proposed to me in the classroom.

Mimi MacLean:
Oh, sweet.

Andrea De La Torre:
But anyways, we got pregnant right away when we got married. And so I was going to go back to work and I was going to find somewhere for my baby, but then I decided, "You know what, I'm going to be at home with him." This little guy did not want to sleep ever and so I was going insane even as I went back after my maternity leave for a little bit. And then I was just going crazy because we were waking up every two to three hours and I just didn't know what to do.

Andrea De La Torre:
And so I said, "You know what, I'm going to figure it out." And I didn't want to hire someone because everyone seemed so expensive. And we were both teachers so we didn't have a lot of extra money to hire an $800 person to tell us how to get him to sleep. But instead I just sought out, I was like, "I'm going to do it myself. I'm going to get certified. I'm going to figure everything out." If I can pay someone to tell me, I'm going to be that person who could tell someone else. And so I did that and then I started reaching out to other moms that I knew and to try to help them. And so it kind of became like my hobby as I was a stay-at-home mom to just help moms with their baby sleep. And I started getting the reviews and I started getting really good reviews and so I started charging a bit more for each consult.

Andrea De La Torre:
And then it was kind of on the back end. I was just still being mostly a stay at home mom, but I'd have a client or two every week. And that was for about a year. And then we got pregnant again, so we had two kids and then property taxes raised. And so I was like, "You know what, I need to do a little bit more of this." And so I started seeking out more clients. I started going on Instagram trying to grow there and then it all kind of just blew up.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. Do you think it blew up because of word of mouth or Instagram?

Andrea De La Torre:
It blew up because I think I had such great reviews that word of mouth was spreading, but then I got on Instagram and since I was able to grow my Instagram, I was just able to reach so many more people.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. But that's hard to do. You're making it sound easy, like, "Oh, I just grew my Instagram." Look, I've been trying to grow my Instagram. It's harder than people make it sound. What was your trick doing that?

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah, basically I knew from the beginning, I didn't want to monetize my kids. I didn't want to be a mommy blogger and monetize them for my business. I wasn't going to do that. And I also knew I wasn't going to pay for followers. I wanted it to be all organic. I didn't want to trick anyone into following me because I had a few people, I was reaching out to people and the marketing, you can grow, you just have to get a hundred, 1500 people from Malaysia to like your page and then people will think you're popular, and that kind of sort of thing. I didn't want to do any gimmicky things. And so I reached out to a lot of friends, like "How, what do you guys think is the most organic way to grow?" And actually my sister's sister-in-law said she saw this Instagrammer who took a course on Instagram and it helped her. And so I took that course and the course, very basic course, but very, I mean you know how most things in life are very basic, but if you don't know what the basics are, you can't do it?

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. But then when you take it, you're like, "Wait, I just paid for that?" But yet it's instrumental information.

Andrea De La Torre:
Oh yeah. I would go back and do it all over again. I would've paid double because of what it taught me was it basically reinforced what I wanted to know, that you have to be yourself. You can't copy anyone else. But you also have to know who you're reaching. And so I went back and thought, "You know what, what did I need when I was someone who didn't have a lot of money and who needed to sleep and was tired of seeing the same." I don't know how much you know about the sleep world.

Mimi MacLean:
I have five kids.

Andrea De La Torre:
Okay. So you know a lot about the sleep world. All you hear is cry it out or co-sleep or Ferber. And that's basically all there is out there and if you're doing it wrong, you're a horrible mom. Whoever you talk to has decided you're doing it wrong, you're a horrible mom either way.

Mimi MacLean:
It's kind of like going to, I always say it's like going to get your hair done. Well, you probably don't color your hair because you're not old enough yet, but when you start coloring your hair, no matter who you go to, they always are like, "Oh my God, whoever did your hair before, it's just terrible. The wrong color." And you're like, "How come everyone says that?" No matter what chair I sit in.

Andrea De La Torre:
Right. Yeah. And there's just so much judgment in the mom community. And so I decided, "You know what moms need? Moms do need help with their baby sleep. But a bigger thing of what moms need is to have a feeling of a safe community where they're not going to be judged." And they also just need practical tips to get through the day.

Mimi MacLean:
And you don't think that existed already on Facebook groups or mommy groups?

Andrea De La Torre:
I think, I mean, yes. But the thing you have to know is you are a unique person who can offer something unique, even in the same thing. You're not already out there. So that already exists, but I wanted to create that new community where people could come to me. Also mommy groups I feel like there are a lot of people with a lot of time in their hands, with not a lot of actual experience or real experience, but no...

Mimi MacLean:
With a lot to say.

Andrea De La Torre:
Lot to say, yeah, I'm trying to be very political. There's people like to talk a lot more than they should. And so that also adds to the mommy shame and the mommy guilt. And so I wanted to come into a new, fresh place where you would find absolutely no judgment. And that's why people keep telling me always. And that's the feedback that I get. It means I'm doing what I want to be doing. That they find me genuine, they find me honest and non-judgmental.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. And I think it was interesting in this where I decided to interview you because I feel like you are a lot of moms that are home that had a special, unique twist on something, like a passion, a hobby, something that you could share with the world and how do you monetize that? How do you empower yourself so that you have your own schedule that you could stay home with your kids and how do you do that? And it doesn't take a lot of money. It's not like you're looking for capital investors or you're buying inventory. You're using your own knowledge and you're going to figure out how to monetize that. And so that's really where I wanted to go with this today is like, no matter what anybody's expertise is, it could be, I don't know, whatever, even how to knit, I don't know.

Mimi MacLean:
How do you take that expertise and that passion and then create a business online? And that's kind of what you've done very well. With the knowledge that you had with sleeping, did you make it your own? Are you copying the Ferber method or did you say "No, no. I'm taking a little bit of everything and then I'm going to put it into a class or I'm going to do this one on one." And then also, I think the other big thing is how do you decide how to charge? Because I think a lot of people, especially women, feel really uncomfortable and what they're worth.

Andrea De La Torre:
No, I had such a hard time charging. I was undercharging for a long, long time. But that's actually what led to the creation of what it is now because I was charging much less than other sleep consultants, basically because my goal is to always be affordable. But then I was having like 10 clients a week and I couldn't do it. And I had two boys at home, I was [inaudible 00:09:36] still was a teacher and I was undercharging and I realized I wasn't able to deliver how much I wanted to deliver to each person coming to me. And so I actually had a mental breakdown because I had so many clients, and sleep consulting is really exhausting because you're talking to moms that are very, very vulnerable. And then I realized I can't keep doing this.

Andrea De La Torre:
And so I took off two months from one-on-one clients and I decided to write down everything I knew from the past two years of working with unique moms, because that's my thing too with sleep. It's not like, "Oh, okay, here's Ferber method. Go for it." It's getting to know each mom being like, "Oh, your kid has this, your kid has this, let's do this method or this combination of these two methods." And so I reached out to a web designer and I said, "Can you do this so that you can basically put me online? Can we put me in a course or someone could fill in a survey and then get a course that's customized to them?" And he said, "Yeah, let's do it." And so we spent two to three months doing that.

Mimi MacLean:
He helped you create the course or did he just help you create the website?

Andrea De La Torre:
Just like the website and the algorithm. So I told him like, "Let's say a mom is co-sleeping and no longer wants to co-sleep, but she wants to go the slowest and gentlest way possible, no crying." Then he made a survey that they can just input that. And when they get their course, they're not going to see information about a baby that's already in the crib. They see information about how to get from co-sleeping to a crib.

Mimi MacLean:
That's cool. I've never seen a course that you actually customized.

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah. Yeah. I'm like looking out to see when people start copying me, but no one else has yet.

Mimi MacLean:
That's cool.

Andrea De La Torre:
But it's been my unique thing for a while.

Mimi MacLean:
How did you figure out how to do that?

Andrea De La Torre:
Just talking to people and that's the hugest thing I think as a mom that you have is time and networking. You talk to someone's wife and they go "My husband does this or I do this and my husband stays at home," and you just network and meet people who do things. And this was actually someone who went to my college. I met him through a Facebook mom group like, oh, or I can do that. Actually we switched from him because then turns out my brother-in-law can do that in a much larger scale. Now my brother-in-law is our web guy and he's been able to add more personalization to it. But that was the basis of this business, creating me into the website so that people could get it for a much more affordable price, because that's always our priority. But I'm not burning out. And now I have time to work with clients, but not everybody needs my time. And then we were able to hire out three more consultants to do that as well.

Mimi MacLean:
And you train them on your method.

Andrea De La Torre:
Right. And so the thing is yeah, my method is not Ferber or cry it out. My method is getting to know the mom and being like, "Oh, you know what it's schedule or you know what it's reflux, here's what we can do." And so I have my consultants follow me, shadow me for all my consults for a month or until they're comfortable. They're also certified. They have that too. I have to make sure they're certified. One of them I paid for her to get certified.

Mimi MacLean:
What do you say, certified, what are they certified in?

Andrea De La Torre:
In sleep consulting. There's a lot of different certifications out there. Some of them are more valid than others because it's just so easy to say that you're good at something and then do it. Or it's so easy to pay someone to give you a brand. One person asked me why I'm not part of the Sleep association of the US or whatever it is, International Sleep Association, Consulting Association. And I said, "Because all I got to do is pay them $300 a year and I don't want to do that because it doesn't add anything to how I can help you. It just adds a little banner on my website and I don't pay that kind of stuff."

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. Have you had an instance where you've not been able to get the baby to sleep?

Andrea De La Torre:
Oh yeah. The thing is, it depends a lot on each parent.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah.

Andrea De La Torre:
Right. And so I'm here to give them information. I'm here to coach them through it. But if a parent says, I actually had a friend who got my course and she said, "Hey, your course worked so well, but I have three other kids so I can't stick to the schedule that you gave me, so I'm not going to do it." So she's like, "You know what? I love that my eight month old slept through the night, but it was not working for me so we're not going to do it." And I said, "Well, you know what? Now you know you have the tools and now you know what you can do, but it's your life. You got to do what works for you best." And she said, "Yeah, you know what? I picked up some things from the plan, from the course that do help me now, but I think when we're older, when the girls are more in school, then I'll be able to implement more of it."

Andrea De La Torre:
And I said, "That's awesome. That's all I want." I just want to empower you to know that you have the information out there and that you're not sucking and you're not failing if your baby's not sleeping because that's never my goal to get your baby to sleep. You see a lot of people that say, "Get your baby to sleep through the night in two weeks." And that's not my goal. My goal is to find out what the mom's goals are and meet those.

Mimi MacLean:
You have an interesting proposition for people like, so I was using the example of someone who's a knitting person. It may be a little bit harder to sell a course or something online. You have an actual pain point, right? So when they always tell you in sales find your customer's pain point and be the solution to that pain point. And the bigger the pain point, the more they're willing to pay or the more they're willing to buy. And you have a huge pain point, right? If anybody who's been a parent knows.

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah.

Mimi MacLean:
You're at your wits end. I guess my question is, putting that out, did you have to put advertising behind that? How did you get your word out about the course and your solution to the pain point?

Andrea De La Torre:
No. So I didn't do marketing. People are always like, "How are you doing this?" It really is just showing up on Instagram. And that it's a lot harder than it sounds. But every single day basically for the past four years, I've been on my story talking to people, sharing my reviews. I networked a lot with other Instagrammers and got on their stories and they got on my stories and you just keep networking with other people, trying to grow their Instagrams. And it's just really showing up. There's been very few days where I haven't been on my story constantly sharing reviews, constantly giving them content that they can consume.

Mimi MacLean:
Talk to me about that because I think a lot of people, including myself, is afraid to put themselves out there every day. And they always say videos are definitely better than doing your quote card or static content. Do you plan out? Is it a live? Do you just plan out what you're saying on this story? Or you just turn it on and just start talking about whatever you're feeling that day?

Andrea De La Torre:
I honestly just start talking. When I was starting to grow, part of the course that I took, it said plan out your whole month, make sure you have a pain point every day, make sure you have doing this. And I tried doing that and it helped a lot. When I do that, it does help when you know what you're going to talk about. But I think the more you script it out, you can tell when someone scripts it out and nobody wants to watch a script.

Andrea De La Torre:
And so if you look on my Instagram story today, I honestly went on and someone asked why don't babies want to sleep? And I just use my own humor. I said, "You know what? Babies don't want to sleep because they want to ruin your life." They want you to know that they're the only thing you need to focus on. And having my personality in there I think draws people in and they know that they're safe. And then after that, I usually offer them actual things. I say, "No, no, no, that's not real. Babies fight sleep because this, this and this," which is what I'll do after the podcast. And then after that, I'll say, "You know what? You can take my course."

Mimi MacLean:
And that's three different videos.

Andrea De La Torre:
Different slides. I call them slides on a story. Yeah, there's a few different slides on my story. I usually have like 30 to 40 slides a day on my story. It really is about being there. And sometimes I'll only have 3000 people watching me every day and sometimes I'll have like 20,000 people watching me. But it depends on Instagram and the algorithm that they push out for you. And it's really annoying and it's frustrating for me because people DM me and tell me, "Hey, I haven't seen you on my stories for a while. I'll had to look for you. I think Instagram is hiding you."

Andrea De La Torre:
But you just got to keep on showing up. I would say like when I started, I had a hundred people watching me on my story. And it was terrifying. It is terrifying to put yourself out there. You're like, what if people hate you? You just have to say, "You know what, if people hate me, then they'll unfollow me and I'll find someone who does like me." And it's really interesting because around when I hit 10,000 followers, I had more haters and more trolls coming at me, people telling me stuff like "You dress like you're poor." And I was like, "You know what, I do because I don't care what I look like. I like dressing comfortably."

Mimi MacLean:
And you're exhausted. You have three kids under four and the last thing you have to worry about is like getting thrown up on some, whatever, you know what I mean? And it doesn't matter.

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah. But it does hurt. And I was like, "Wow, that does hurt me that people are looking at me and judging me." And so I actually went to therapy about that.

Mimi MacLean:
They're just jealous.

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah. Whatever it is, it's just like, why does somebody spend their time being mean to someone I'll never understand.

Mimi MacLean:
Because they feel so badly about themselves they have to make other people feel badly. Otherwise you would be doing something that makes you better instead of sitting there trolling people.

Andrea De La Torre:
Right. Right. I might look like I'm poor, but I honestly don't care how I look. I have realized when I do a little bit more on, if I just wake up and look like this and try to talk to people, no one wants to see that. I do have to focus a little bit on not looking disgusting.

Mimi MacLean:
That's what my next question was going to be, like how, I think a lot of people, including myself get intimidated to do videos, especially lives if you don't have your makeup on or you're not feeling great or you're not dressed up properly. Do you find that, like you said, that people are attracted or do not like more if you are dressed up, not dressed up, like you're yourself, you're authentic.

Andrea De La Torre:
You have to be authentic. You have to feel confident. If makeup helps you feel confident, then use it. But I wouldn't tell anyone to put makeup on just so they look like they're confident. Use whatever makes you feel more confident. But yeah, you have to also see the human psyche, human people don't want to look at someone who just has snot on their face kind of thing.

Andrea De La Torre:
And if your thing is to help people look polished, then you want to look polished. But it has to look genuine. I just skip through people's stories when you can tell they're reading a script in front of their face and you know they put up their hair a certain way because that's in fashion. You want to look at someone who is just being in the moment. And so what I would suggest to someone who's scared of going live, I would just go on their story and say, "Hey guys, I just wanted you guys to see my face. This is who I am. I'm very nervous because I've never gone on here before, but I wanted you guys to get to know me." And then ask a question. Just something like that. Just being very brutally honest that you're nervous to be on a story because that's what people can relate to.

Andrea De La Torre:
People want to relate. That's the biggest thing on Instagram. People want to relate. People want to connect.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, especially now everyone's just kind of reclused and you're not getting out as much as we used to. At what point did you decide to leave your job? I think it's another big question for people, like I have a job, I have this side thing, whatever you want to call it, hustle, company, that's a big step for a lot of people to know that like, okay, I'm leaving my job, my security, my insurance.

Andrea De La Torre:
I actually, I had a part-time job after I was a teacher. I was coordinating an adult education like GED and ESL program that I was running. And then when I had my second kid, it was just too much and I couldn't do it anymore. That's when I quit and that's when our property taxes rised and we were kind of freaking out, but we just went with it and we're religious and so we knew God would provide. You keep doing what you're supposed to do, you keep loving and only doing the right thing and eventually works out.

Andrea De La Torre:
But you got to keep working obviously. But during the pandemic we realized that a lot of people were home. And so we made huge discounts for people who were struggling with sleep. And I think that also helped us take off because people saw that we were genuine, that I was genuine. I really want to help people. But my business blew up in a way that we couldn't have foreseen. And then it just didn't make sense for Joe to go back to work. And so he stopped working and he joined the company as basically the brains of everything, accounting, financials, everything you can do. And he realized how little I had known when I was doing. He was like, "What..."

Mimi MacLean:
That was my next question. How did you figure out everything?

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah, he was like, "What is this mess? What cards do you have this on? Or what bank accounts is this?" He was just so confused and so he had to figure everything out. But how? You just do it. And you reach out to as many people as you can. And sometimes people are willing to help, sometimes people are not, sometimes you have to pay them for help. And so you just reach out and keep reaching out. I feel like college is a really good time for people to make friends. And then after college you help each other with those networking and stuff. But if you don't have those friends and you go out networking and you go out and meet people, not with the intention of using them, but just-

Mimi MacLean:
Creating relationships.

Andrea De La Torre:
Creating relationships.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. And you had mentioned that you did some joint ventures or whatever you call it, relationship building with other influencers. When you did that, is that something that was just a mutual, like I'll post for you, you post for me, was it a paid deal? Can you talk to if anyone else is in that situation, what you did?

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah. What I did was look in the course that I took, there was a Facebook group. And so I reached out to like, oh, you're a child nutritionist. Oh, you're a child speech therapist. Come on my story. Let's be on each other's story and let's hype each other up. And so that's what I did at the beginning and that worked really well. And then I got together with this big influencer and we had a course together. She is a labor nurse. She's big. And she asked if she could white, what's it called? White label.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, so she used your course with her name?

Andrea De La Torre:
Uh-huh (affirmative).

Mimi MacLean:
Did you change it at all? Or did you make it specific for them?

Andrea De La Torre:
This was a different one. This is a newborn course. The newborn course isn't as customized because it's just like, "Hey, you're pregnant. Here's what you can do when they can come out." It's not as customized as the other one. But so she used that. But then after a year or so, I think she realized I was making a lot more money than she was off of that deal and so we parted ways. And that was completely understandable. I was like, "She's going to break up with us soon."

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, but then how do you, okay, so that's a good thing, like lesson for learn for people who are like thinking about doing a joint venture. Did you have an agreement that she can't just take your course then that you wrote and just sell it then, like rewrite it with her and cut you out?

Andrea De La Torre:
No, actually I am too trusting a person and we actually never even signed a contract with all of that. And so that's probably really, really dumb on my part. But at the end of it, she said, "Hey it's not going to work. I am not going to sell your course anymore, but you can have it. It's all yours. You do what you want with it." And so I guess that was really, really lucky on my part and really, really nice on her part.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. Because I would've thought she would've been like, "Okay, I don't need you, but I'm going to rewrite it with my face or my..." And then how do you come up with a joint venture like that with somebody? Is that just a mutual, like what do you think's fair or how?

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah, it's just a lot of talking. A lot of Zoom calls, a lot of 10 minute Zoom calls really because everyone's so busy now. "Hey, what do you want to do? You want to do 50/50? Okay, let's do that. Here's some money to film it. All right. Let's go." And she's doing great. She's amazing. Mommy labor nurses is her handle and she is so, so smart.

Mimi MacLean:
That's great. Any other tips that you have for anybody that wants to use social media or courses to grow their business, their expertise to start a business?

Andrea De La Torre:
Honestly, just reach out to people and keep showing up and don't be afraid to be who you are. You know that phrase like you could be the juiciest peach and there's people who still hate peaches won't like you? That matters. You just have to be who you are and show up and be confident and genuine and just keep doing it. And then if you're not growing, you got to reach out to people. I wouldn't go straight to marketing because if you market on Instagram and if people go to your Instagram and you have 500 followers, they're like, "Oh well, you don't have much for me here."

Andrea De La Torre:
It's just psyche. It doesn't mean that you're not worth it. It just means that's what people are going to see. Focus on growing, focus on delivering a ton. Something I think people forget on Instagram is that people don't want to get on Instagram to buy, people get on Instagram to be a entertained or to learn. You have to make like 80% of your content has to be just aimed at helping people learn something. So let's say you're a knitter. Focus on showing people different kinds of knits, showing people the process of you knitting, showing people your stuff. Don't try to sell all the time. Maybe one every 10 posts tell them, "Oh hey, this is for sale by the way."

Mimi MacLean:
You'd like the course, yeah.

Andrea De La Torre:
Right. Make a community of knitters or make a community of crafters and highlight other people's crafts and people like when you do that so they'll repost you. It's all about really building a huge community on Instagram. And then after that you have people that you can sell to if needed or just people who you like to be around.

Mimi MacLean:
Right. Which course did you take to learn a lot of this in the beginning?

Andrea De La Torre:
It's changed a lot and I can't quite remember, something like Beat the Algorithm or something like that.

Mimi MacLean:
Because I've looked at a lot of courses, I'm just curious if it was one of them. There's a lot out there, a lot of courses right now to help you create content or create a lot of marketing, social media marketing courses and you just got to be careful. They're all over the place, price wise and content wise.

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah, and I think most of them say the exact same thing, which is basically show up, note their pain points, give them content, don't try to sell all the time. That's basically it. There's more specific things to it, but I think at the end of the day, if you've taken or seen a few contents, you just have to go for it and just do it and just give people what you have.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah, I was just listening to a webinar yesterday about this and for someone's listening and they're selling something, if it's a drink or whatever, and you're like, "Well, this doesn't really relate to me." It does. Because that's when you should be using your stories and you don't want to hire some cute models sitting there drinking your drink. No, that's when you as the founder gets on and tell your story why and make it real so people know what's behind there. Or get employees on there talking about why they work there and why it's so great to work there and why they love the drink and the mission of the company. It's all about, like you said, being authentic and not just for show and for selling.

Andrea De La Torre:
Right. Because people can tell when you're just there to sell them something and nobody wants to just be a pawn or a client. Nobody likes to be referred to that. There's a little tricks and tips too, don't talk to people as if they're numbers and be like guys, "You're hundred thousand people are here." No one wants to be one of a hundred thousand. On your story, talk to people as a you, "Hi, how are you doing?" Ask people questions, engage with them. And also find your clique. Maybe your niche is not the one you think it is. Rethink about out who you're talking to and find them specifically go in those kinds of accounts. Obviously you don't try to steal followers because people do that to me all the time and I just block them or restrict them.

Mimi MacLean:
How do you realize that they're stealing followers?

Andrea De La Torre:
Some sleep consultants will go in my comments and like everybody's comment on it so that they will see them. Or they will go in my comments and give people advice and be like, "Oh, follow me for more like this." And I really don't like that. That makes me really annoyed.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. If you're going to do that, anybody who's listening, if you're going to do that, go find somebody who's not competition, but the same client.

Andrea De La Torre:
Right. So if you want to like a nutritionist.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. Or if you know that the people who your clients are our all shop at, or all go work out at Crunch Gym, well then go to Crunch Gym or whatever. You know what I mean? Go find them in a different arena even though it's the same customer. Because then it's not being yucky and taking people's...

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah, because I think when you're yucky too, that just doesn't show well for you. That's just not going to work out for you essentially. You have to really just be super genuine to yourself and remember. I remember five years ago, I said, "I'm not going to show my kids face and market them." And I still don't. And I have a lot of people that want to work with me as an influencer, so they'll ask me to use my kids face for their product because that's what people want to see. They want to see happy kids playing with something and that's just a no. I'm not going to show my kids' face using anything because I decided I don't want to monetize.

Mimi MacLean:
Yeah. Andrea, this has been amazing. I really appreciate it. And I love your story of growing because I've had a lot of people say, "Oh, the stories you have on, they need a lot of capital or they had the capital because their husband gave it to them whatever." So I wanted to have a story that anybody who's listening, no matter what their idea or their passion or their hobby, they can do something with it and I think a lot of people don't realize that your expertise in whatever it is can be made into consulting or a course or something online that people can monetize.

Andrea De La Torre:
Yeah. And just my degrees are in English and in elementary education. I don't have any expertise in business or accounting or any of that. I've just truly followed this passion and this goal of helping others and network like crazy. Be likable. You have to be a personable person and you just go for it.

Mimi MacLean:
Thank you so much, Andrea. I really appreciate your time and best luck to you.

Andrea De La Torre:
Awesome. It was great meeting you.

Mimi MacLean:
Nice meeting you too.

Mimi MacLean:
Thank you for joining us on the Badass CEO. To get copy of the top 10 tips every entrepreneur should know, go to thebadassceo.com/tips. Also, please leave a review as it helps others find us. If you have any ideas or suggestions, I would love to hear them so email me at mimi@thebadassceo.com. See you next week and thank you for listening.