[av_heading heading=’#98. Conquering Business Struggles and Learning Through Mentorship With Cara Leopold’ tag=’h1′ link_apply=” link=’manually,http://’ link_target=” style=” size=” subheading_active=” subheading_size=’15’ margin=” margin_sync=’true’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=” av-medium-font-size-title=” av-small-font-size-title=” av-mini-font-size-title=” av-medium-font-size=” av-small-font-size=” av-mini-font-size=” av_uid=’av-kny9m8y4′ admin_preview_bg=”][/av_heading]
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Cara Leopold teaches English listening skills to advanced speakers through watching and discussing movies. Her students get to practise understanding rapidly spoken English and learn about the nuances of British culture while indulging their passion for films.
What you’ll learn in this interview:
- How a mentor can help you gain perspective in your business
- Repurposing makes content creation less time consuming
- The role keyword research and SEO play in sending traffic to your website or channel
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Cara’s story
Living in France presented Cara Leopold with a problem back in 2007. She needed a job, but “normal” jobs seemed hard to come by for a young Englishwoman in her small, French town. For a few years, she eked out a living with various teaching gigs and finally decided to work online in 2015. She started, as many do, by giving individual lessons but quickly realised that her talents lay more in working with groups.
In 2016 a colleague encouraged her to take advantage of France’s simplified ‘micro entrepreneur scheme’, so Cara established Leo Listening and started learning how to run an online teaching business.
Working with a mentor to narrow the niche
Cara’s first mentor encouraged her to find a unique angle to attract customers to her fledgling business. Luckily, while they were pondering that problem, Cara began working with a client who couldn’t understand native English speakers because they talked too fast. It reminded Cara of how she had tried to learn foreign languages by watching movies and failed because of the dialogue speed.
So, since she loves curling up with a great movie herself, Cara decided to teach listening skills to other struggling movie lovers.
“Having a specific niche makes it easier to find people. In a big market like English, if you go too wide you’re a tiny fish in a wide ocean, whereas when you niche down you’re like a big fish in a small pond.”
Getting help to gain perspective during business struggles
It’s easy to get bogged down with details and fail to see the bigger picture when running a business. Sometimes products start with a flourish, but then sales drop off, and you’re left wondering why.
Cara’s mentor Elena Mutonono helped her clarify, go deeper, define her ideal customers and create valuable products in response to their needs.
Masterminds — both formal and informal — are also excellent ways to get help when you can’t see the wood for the trees, Cara says. Attending the 2019 Langpreneur Language Influencer Summit, she found it easy to suggest solutions to other people’s problems and discovered that even wildly successful entrepreneurs still face difficulties and need help to see their way out.
During these discussions, the idea for Leo Listening’s successful Movie Club was born.
“I think it’s a sign of strength to ask for help and that you’re quite smart if you there is someone who’s further ahead than you and can help bring out the best in you. Why would you not let them help you?”
Repurpose your content to save time and energy
Cara’s all about working smart when it comes to content creation. As well as running Leo Listening, she also has a busy day job as content manager for Olly Richards’ StoryLearning website, so she doesn’t have heaps of time to spare.
While Leo Listening started as a blog, it takes a lot of time to write an article from scratch. When Cara added videos to her lessons, she found it easier to write video scripts and later repurpose them as blog posts. Of course, you can also reverse the process and make a video from the content in your most popular blog posts, FAQs or podcast episodes.
Newsletters take up time too. Cara’s students get a bi-monthly newsletter called Chai Latte News, and she’s recently started writing a different letter to the teachers on her subscriber list, who want to learn how to teach through movies too. The newsletters promote her teacher workshops, which started because Cara decided the easiest way to create content for teachers was to hold live workshops, then repurpose the best parts as products later on.
Keyword research is essential for SEO
After experiencing an SEO audit on Olly’s website, Cara has a new understanding of how keywords and search engine optimisation bring traffic to her business. New customers are less likely to find you online if you don’t rank high in Google or other search engines, so it’s important to write articles that include the words and phrases people are searching for and slant those towards your business and niche.
For example, when Cara found that people often search the phrase “have a conversation in English,” she made a video called “How to have a conversation in English about movies.” Doing that answered the question and promoted her product at the same time.
Including plenty of internal links in your site is another good way for search engines to see its coherence and view you as an expert in your field. Make sure you regularly update and maintain both keywords and links in all your content.
Cara’s tips
Choose the path that most appeals to you
There are many ways to run a business, from a small side-gig right up to the “empire model.”
Organising remote workers is tough
Remote working can be stressful and incohesive. Cara’s used the Basecamp system in her day job and says it has helped the team work well together even though they’ve never met in person.
Be receptive to outside ideas
“The times I got stuck were the times I was resisting help. When I accepted help things got better.”
“If you get the right person or people then you can go so much further and do so much more than you would just muddling along by yourself.”
Contact Cara
YouTube
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