EPISODE 129 of the Boom Your Biz Podcast.
From managing Reece’s Plumbing social media to becoming TikTok famous. Interview with Kim Elizabeth James
Sonya:
Today I am joined by Kim Elizabeth James. And Kim and I actually met about two months ago, now I believe Kim was your very first day going out on your own in business at a marketing meetup in Melbourne, hosted by Muddy Birdcage. And I was sitting there and I looked over and I was like, you look so familiar, you sound so familiar. And then it clicked that I had literally been watching all of your career TikToks. Welcome Kim, thank you so much for joining me.
Kim:
Thank you for having me. Yeah, I've been recognized a bit lately and it's daunting. People are like, "Oh, how do I know you?" I'm like, oh no, how do I say
Sonya:
TikTok famous.
Kim:
... and online.
Sonya:
How good. All right, so before we get to the TikTok side of things, you've actually had a very interesting and varied career with marketing over the years. Can you walk me through a little bit around your background? What did you do after school? What did you go and study? Just basically map out your journey on how you got here.
Kim:
Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely been a journey, but it's one that I love to share online because I think it's really important to communicate that there's not only one pathway to get to where you want. And I think I always love to say to people where I am now, it might look like I've got the beautiful job that does the fun things, but it doesn't mean that I started in that same space as well. So yeah, I grew up on a macadamia farm in northern New South Wales and actually studied locally at one of the local universities there, bachelor of business, finished within that. And although I grew up in a regional Australia, I always wanted to move to the city, always wanted to be the career girly, I wanted the fits, I wanted to go in an office every day.
Sonya:
Amen, me too.
Kim:
Exactly. And I applied for a number of different grad programs, but the one that I actually got in with was Reece Plumbing. And a big thing of that was that, obviously, they're everywhere, they're able to accommodate for me being not in Sydney at the time. Yeah, so I flew down, but I didn't start in marketing, I started in operations management, I was in a store selling toilets in Parramatta. So I always love to remind people that, as I said, where you are now is not always where you necessarily started.
Sonya:
No way. Can I just ask with that? So obviously you've applied for these grad programs, and so just for anyone that doesn't know when you come out of a business degree, there are so many companies that have these grad programs and they're generally around two years, and basically they're designed to get you across all aspects of the business. So it's not necessarily what you studied. So I imagine you had a focus on marketing and then you've gone into selling toilets, which is obviously very important, if you're going to be selling this product, you need to know all about it. And they shift you around the company to different areas, don't they? Throughout these grad programs?
Kim:
Yeah, so now they have to definitely set because they get people that have graduates that have a background aligned to that. So you have an operations grad program, you'll have a tech grad program, you have a marketing one. So I was in operations, but I think a key thing that I learned was I was, again, being an advocate of why I speak about personal brand, I kind of looked at it and said, there's two ways to do this. I could either build a personal brand outside of a business and try to level up or I could get into a business, make a name for myself, and then craft into the role that I wanted, and that's essentially what I did. I went from in the store and then I was in the commercial team and I was doing commercial estimating, which is really funny for anyone that knows me, because I am horrific at maths.
I had a stint there, but I built a name for myself. I kind of changed how they were doing a lot of their operating systems and things like that, so was known as this graduate. But then I met some people from marketing, which was in Melbourne and was like, well, I want to change to marketing. And then had a few interviews, had a few meetings with people, and it was just perfect timing that the day that I flew down to Melbourne for the final interview, someone had resigned. So they were like, "Oh, we actually have now a marketing assistant in irrigation and civil." And I remember so many people at the time were like, "Do you know anything about it?" I was like, it doesn't matter. Just get me in the door, just give me my first marketing-
Sonya:
I will learn.
Kim:
Yeah, because I'd always kind of had connections and spoken to people in recruitment and I knew that that first five years everyone was like, just go get some runs on the board and come back and talk to me. I speak a lot with people younger in their career now and say to them that first five years is the hardest because you need to get those runs on the board for then people to be able to look at that next career opportunity for you. So yeah, started in irrigation civil marketing, but within that we had social media, but there was no strategy, there was a lot of memes, as you can imagine, being in the bathroom industry. And-
Sonya:
Can I ask, what year was this? And what platforms were Reece Plumbing on?
Kim:
It was 2016 to 2017.
Sonya:
Oh, yep. That was the meme era.
Kim:
Yeah, big meme era. We were on Facebook, but we didn't actually... We actually had an Instagram profile, but we didn't use it, because it was like, oh, plumbers aren't on Instagram, which was so wrong in itself, we grew so rapidly. And I did a diploma in digital marketing through the Chartered Institute in England because I had a country degree and I was now battling people that had city degrees, I needed to stand out. So I'd done that and I just kind of said to the marketing leader one afternoon... Honestly, the backing that I had of myself at what, 23, 24-
Sonya:
I was going to say, Kim, you were so ballsy going in, in operations, being like, no, we're going to throw this out, we're going to operate this way instead. And then being like, no, I'm working in marketing now, good on you.
Kim:
I was probably more ballsy back then, but I think when you grow up on a farm, you just kind of naturally have that innate self in you.
Sonya:
And I think though as well, it's an element of, you don't know what you don't know. I started my business when I was like 22, 23, I look back on that and I'm like, what were you thinking? You had no freaking idea. But I just backed myself and I feel like I'm more hesitant now because I'm so much more aware of all of the different factors. But how great, good on you, back yourself.
Kim:
I think we speak a lot about how it's very good to be naive at the beginning of starting a business, but there's also that level of naivety when you're in your career because you don't know what you don't know. Yeah, and I was like, what are we doing? We're Reece Plumbing, we're one of Australia's biggest brands. Why are we not taking social seriously? They're like, "All right, we'll work it out. Set a meeting." I was like, "Oh." So I just Googled how to write a content strategy. And granted I had a degree in the background and stuff, but I really honestly Googled a lot of it. Set a meeting-
Sonya:
I still Google things, Kim. I still Google.
Kim:
Google [inaudible 00:06:39]. And then yeah, I had the whole team there, I had the CMO, did my presentation, this is a content strategy, this is a plan, this is what it would look like. And then I left on the Friday afternoon being like, oh, what a girl boss, had a great moment. And then didn't realize that the leaders had actually had a conversation, they're like, "She's right. Someone needs to do this full time." So they asked the other leaders Monday.
Sonya:
How good is that? Do you still have a copy of your presentation for a memory-
Kim:
I wish.
Sonya:
... to look back on? Oh, that would've been so good.
Kim:
Yeah, I wish I had some of that early day stuff. And it's like that many versions of iPhones ago, I don't even have that many good photos from back then. I wish I had more to remember it of. But yeah, that's kind of how it started. And I was like, "What's my job title?" They, what do you want it to be? And my only thing-
Sonya:
Wait, you walked in on Monday and they were like, "We're making this a full-time role."
Kim:
Yeah. They asked the other leaders Monday, and then by Tuesday they asked me.
Sonya:
That is massive.
Kim:
Yeah.
Sonya:
Wow, must have been some kind of presentation. That's incredible.
Kim:
Yeah, no, and then obviously I didn't know how to negotiate anything back then. So my only thing was like, can I get a work phone? Because I was 24 at the time. And I was like, I don't want to accidentally post my Saturday night out on a work channel. Can I two phones?
Sonya:
Oh my goodness, I'm 30 and I still seriously sometimes wake up on the occasional night out I have and I go, oh my God, really hope I posted that on mine and not a clients.
Kim:
Yeah, exactly.
Sonya:
It hasn't happen yet, touch wood.
Kim:
And look, that's the beginning of the story, but it was a learning from then, content marketing back then was, I think social still had an extreme stigma towards it, it was oh, still a little social. Oh, that's not going to go anywhere. Oh, what are you doing? And I'd set these meetings and it was like pulling teeth. People just couldn't see the correlation and the value of it, but it didn't take long for that to change. We grew to 10,000 followers on Instagram very quickly, we built a very strong community from that. We actually had plumbing influencers in 2017, maybe even 2018. We were doing plumbing influencers, we were doing UGC creators back then. We had Snapchat filters for when we had events. We had live. We actually did a lot back then, to be honest with what we had.
Sonya:
Do you know what? It's so funny, I started doing workshops in 2017 and I was coming up against the same things you were with people saying, oh, this is not for my industry, it's only for girly brands and stuff. And so one of the big examples I would use was a plumber. I think I have to go back and look at my old presentation, I feel like it was the Melbourne plumber or I don't know something. And I'm pretty sure that you guys were one of the ones that kind of had not sponsored [inaudible 00:09:25], product placements and things with them. And he had a huge following and I was like, look at this, it's just building trust and yeah.
Kim:
Yeah, 100%. But then also learn a lot during that period as well, because you can have certain plumbers that you have that are influencers and have a presence, but you also then had this huge bank of very loyal customers throughout it as well, so we definitely learned so much about influencer marketing in UGC. But from that, we developed it out into, instead of just being Reece Plumbing, we had all the trade team, so there was someone that traditionally had the bathroom side, but Reece Bathrooms was already on social, I'll never take credit for that. They already had a presence there for that B2C market and with builders, but this was the trade one. And then, then we went inside there, Reece has a creative agency, so we were in there for two years, which it was funny I sent a proposal yesterday to a friend and she was like, "This branding's amazing." I was like, two years in a creative agency. I have learned so much on a deck. So yeah, and then we did-
Sonya:
My God, I'm going to have to send you some of mine over to tidy them up then.
Kim:
But yeah, and then from that, obviously Reece being to the size that it is, there's definitely a opportunity that you get to work with really cool tech company. So then from there, we are actually a client of Hootsuite and I went to Hootsuite as well when I was in 2022 as the strategist for Australia. We met the team in Canada when we were a client and they ran a workshop with us, and I was like, "Who is this team?" You guys get to be strategists with the clients? I'm like, this is sick, I want it. And then again, I've never manifested, but two months later-
Sonya:
What are you talking about? I'm hearing lots of incidents, manifestation in this conversation.
Kim:
Yeah, so then became the strategist for Australia for all APAC and region as well, so it was doing a lot of social media assessments, working with measurements, benchmarking, presentations. Did one presentation to the Singapore government on social for them.
Sonya:
Oh my goodness.
Kim:
Yeah, which was really fun, which was really cool. So yeah, definitely, I think I've always kind of had a bit of a take any opportunity, work it out kind of thing. Everything is... Whose podcast was I listening to? I think it was Grace Beverly's last week, and she had someone that said, everything's figure-out-able. And I thought-
Sonya:
Marie Forleo, where's the book?
Kim:
Yeah.
Sonya:
I don't know, I've got her book somewhere. Everything is figure-out-able, it's a great phrase.
Kim:
100%. And so I just kind of went with that. And then from there, unfortunately we were redundant by about August, but within then I was headhunted for another company that was an Australian company that worked with a lot of government space, beautiful business, and I think as well, because I'd had such a big corporate background, I was really excited to get into small business. When we got made redundant, I wanted to start my own business, but I couldn't see the path then. I think everyone was so excited and being like, "Oh my God, are you finally going to start your own thing?" But I just couldn't see how it would all work, it was too soon. So yeah, worked with that phenomenal business until early this year we worked with government, federal, local, and state, and a lot of assisting them with how the government communicates to citizens online and can really be able to get out key information and help people in the times when they need, so that was a very rewarding experience.
I think I'd kind of been in sell products, make money, and so then to work with government was just a really beautiful time. But yeah, it got to 2024, I was like, well, I can't keep putting it off. I could see probably how I would start a business, what I would do, what people would want to buy from me. And yeah, took that plunge and it's been seven weeks, eight weeks now, I would say, I think on the outside it looks like it's been a long time, but I deliberately didn't rush this period because I've never had a break. I have been going since I was 13, I think the time when I was redundant for four weeks, I worked harder trying to get a job than being in a job.
And yeah, so now I'm at a point of building up my own consultancy for both a business offering, helping businesses, being able to really understand content marketing back into their business, which is something I'm very passionate about. But then also helping people build their personal brand because I think we're at a time now where we've seen that social had a place for influencers, now we're seeing that move to creators, but now we're seeing that move to people, professionals in their own industry to be known for who they are. It's something that I've experienced redundancies and life has a lot of changes, but there's an element of you feel in control when you have your personal brand and what you're known for, so that's what we're building out.
Sonya:
Fantastic. So when did TikTok come into play? Why did you get onto TikTok?
Kim:
Yeah, that was last year. So I think a key thing for me is I genuinely believe I can't consult on something without having done it myself. Even when I was at Hootsuite and I was consulting, I would be stressed thinking, oh my God, I haven't been on the tools in six months, how am I going to know these things? So I was watching everyone be on TikTok, obviously, we're having a lot more clients ask about TikTok, even our government clients. So I was like, well, I have to know, I can't tell you how to do it. I knew Instagram and I knew Facebook like the back of my hand, but I didn't know TikTok and I didn't want to lie to people bringing Instagram strategies over.
So yeah, I think it was January 2nd last year, and I just started posting, it was random things. I think I went through a whole discovery of who I was and what I wanted to post, but where I started getting traction was career content, and that was because I had a very predominantly Gen Z team at work, and they would always say to me, "You give really good career advice." And I would say to my friends my age, "Oh my God, Gen Z think I'm really cool." They're like, "You're lying." I was like, "No, I swear. Gen Z really like me." No one believed me.
Sonya:
What a flex.
Kim:
And I think I just organically started saying things from a place of where I've been that just resonated. We talk a lot about, and a lot of what I work with clients now and that business space is that content funnel and that top of funnel, you're either controversial, aspirational and relatable, and I think I hit the nail in being controversial and relatable. I talked a lot about what I'd experienced when I had had massive burnout that took me two years to recover or about what I'd experienced with management, both myself being a manager, and then I think where I had a huge big one that went off and also got into Business Insider was I actually said to people, "I regretted becoming a people manager in my 20s." People were like, "What do you mean? That's the goal, isn't it?" I was like, "Well, no, because I put my technical skills impacted because I was managing others."
I wish that I focused more on my technical skills because I think now that I'm running in business, those years where I was managing others, I lost that element of the technical. I had to bring it back up again because right now I'm everyone. So yeah, I kind of-
Sonya:
It's so interesting you say that because I see a lot of people that leave corporate in their 40s to start a business and they've spent the last decade managing people, not on the tools. And you don't realize that when you leave and you're starting on your own, you don't have a team to sort of coordinate and move the pieces about to make things happen, you have to be the one that's doing it, and you have to have that technical knowledge, and particularly in marketing because it moves so quickly.
Kim:
100%. So yeah, it was just an element that kind of built organically, I think a key thing where I'm at now is I actually love it and I say to people, "There's no failures on social media if you can get a really good lesson from it." The problem that I'm at now is I have left corporate, I am working for myself, I've moved into a new world. I talked about this with a friend this morning, we were voice noting each other, and I was like, I've changed but my audience hasn't. And I'm at a crossroads where I am going in this new venture, but I have built this following of people that connect it into the career content because I was saying the things that they felt that maybe others weren't saying of in your 20s, if you are in a job and you're not learning and growing, then go elsewhere because you need to have that don't stay stagnant. So people are like, "Oh my God, so right."
So yeah, I think a very good lesson in building an audience... Sometimes as well, you can go viral for things that can also skew what you want and what you want to be known for because you build this following of people that followed you for one thing, but you don't always talk about it. So yeah, that's kind of where I'm at the moment is working out how do I utilize this community that I've built when I'm also changing?
Sonya:
Exactly right, and I think we had initially spoken about how you were considering starting a separate TikTok for this separate audience, and then you're like, oh, no, it's going to be too much work. It's really interesting that now you've tried for eight weeks, you're creating a content still, but yeah, the audience is not that product market fit. So I think people have got to remember as well with this whole thing of being aspirational or relatable, it kind of does need to be semi-related to what you're doing still. I had a TikTok that was talking about Mona in this women's only exhibition, and that went absolutely viral. It's got nothing to do with my business, I've got no inquiries off the back of that because it's not relevant. It's absolutely not relevant. Whereas the career stuff that you were talking about that was relevant to that audience, you built it off that.
I'm actually really curious the content, and I will link your TikTok so everyone can go and check it out, it's absolutely incredible. But the content that you are posting on TikTok, obviously a lot of it is your face, you're telling your stories. How do you think the content needs to differ between Instagram and TikTok for a company? Where do they fit? What's your take on it?
Kim:
Great question. There's two really key parts, I think there's one that is very well known, but there's another one that is completely different conversation that we're not having. I think everyone knows that Instagram grew up aesthetic, we used to take photos with DSLR cameras and edit them to their life's content in Lightroom. Instagram still has that level of aesthetic content, even though... So what I took from TikTok, I actually utilized this year and I was like, oh, I'll post it on Instagram. I got 15,000 followers in three months. I was like, oh, that's crazy. And a lot of it did come from two key reels that really sat at the top. But even in then that I was supporting that community by doing these aesthetic career quote content, people would message me being like, why did that career quote content get 800 likes? And I was like, because it's still aesthetic. We still love Instagram for that. We haven't left from that.
And it was funny, that green screen notes app that we love on TikTok, I'd post that on Instagram, it would get 20,000 views. I post that on TikTok, it would get 400,000 views. So the aesthetic part is still absolutely there. I think as well, we are very naturally aware that we're getting sold to on Instagram, because we've always had to that. The second part where I think we're really seeing that big divide is that no one knows you on TikTok. TikTok is top of funnel. You don't a community on TikTok. People might comment if they're comfortable commenting publicly, but they don't DM you, they don't message you anywhere near as much.
Sonya:
Oh, I hate the DM function on TikTok, it's so bad.
Kim:
Yeah, and you have to approve it, it has to come in, you're not doing stories, it's not off the cuff, they can't just like your story. TikTok is top of funnel. It is people that don't know you, anything if you want to grow on TikTok, you can't speak about I, it has to be about you. And any pieces of content that I had gone off is when I said you and spoke at people as well. And that's not to say that people don't continuously see it. On TikTok, you get the breakdown of if people are new or existing followers and if they've actually seen your content or not. So I can still see that there is a still significant chunk that have seen my content that are getting my new one, which is why it's not resonating because I've started a business and moved on, but they haven't. But whereas on Instagram, it's relationship building, it's building that community. It's like I did a post last week of, I did a whole lot of head shots from my new business. I had so many people-
Sonya:
Oh, and they looked amazing.
Kim:
Thank you. And I had so many people and engage with that there that really loved it, that don't know me, but they feel like they do because it's the relationship. So TikTok is very good, I know Maddy Birdcage talks about this of the Insta-Tok funnel of having TikTok as that top of funnel, but bringing people into Instagram to build that community, which is extremely strong. So that's something that I've definitely learned is that when talking about with building a TikTok presence, it's a lot harder to get people to relate and build that community, it's really that top of funnel. So in this last month where I've been like me building my business, me, me, me, me, it's not related to you, people care what's in it for them on TikTok, they're there for content curation. They're there for getting content they're not there for... It's not a social media platform.
Sonya:
And they're there learn. They're there to learn as well. I think that is such a big point, don't talk about yourself on TikTok.
Kim:
Yeah. And the last few months have definitely shown that, whereas when I've talked about this journey a lot more on Instagram, I have built connections with others that are in that same space that have that kind of connection, so it's definitely why we talk about having a content strategy and a platform matrix, you shouldn't just be on one platform, put all your eggs in one basket. Also with someone that I got banned on TikTok last month for a few days because the app thought I was underage.
Sonya:
Oh, that's flattering.
Kim:
It is. They thought I was under age, I had to prove my age. And I think as someone that kind of went through that, I was like, oh man, I'm so glad I don't have all my eggs in one basket, because you're playing poker with the weaker hand against social media platforms, you should have an element where it is a very nice cohesive strategy of bringing everything into one, sort of all eggs in one basket.
Sonya:
100%. Okay, so you started Tangerine Tango, talk to me about that. Who's your target market? What's your offering?
Kim:
Yeah, absolutely. So there's two different parts, there's for individuals and there's for businesses. For businesses, it's honestly something that can be really crafted into the business itself. At the moment. I've been working with my friends that have a phenomenal French Parisian bar here in Melbourne, and that was really a great opportunity for me to be able to build that skillset. But I would also say I've worked corporate, I've worked government, I've worked in majority of industries. So it is something where what we do is elevate you and your content through psychology-based content marketing, and it's actually bringing it back in-house because no one knows you, your business and your customer better than you do. I think a lot of it for me is I've been in-house and I've been an agency and I strongly believe that fully outsource results is rented results. And I know businesses that have to... They turn on the doors of their business, but then they work with four other different agencies, and I'm like, well, that means that you don't have your cost of doing business, you have to pay all of them to get it.
The thing is, we're moving so much into where people, they're hiring a social media manager in house and they're having that, but they've still got half out in an agency, half in themselves, they're keeping the lights on. I say to people, "If you go and get that person's salary and then divide it by the amount of times that you post, what is that number? Because is that piece of content you're keeping the lights on worth it?" So yeah, what we do is we come in, we write you a whole new content strategy, it is phenomenal in what I've developed out. I feel very proud about it in the last two months, but we've created an audience strategy, we get really deep into who your audience is, their pain points, their level of transformation, and then we actually build out your content strategy. We go, who is your persona? How do you show up online?
And then we actually build it into a content marketing funnel. We go, "Okay, well what is your top of funnel? What is your middle funnel? What is your bottom?" We build the messaging out from that and also provide examples. A lot of what it is actually things a lot of brands have, I was in branding agency, so a lot of these pieces that are in this strategy are actually traditional brand strategy, but the problem is these two sit completely separate. So I would work with people and ask them, "Do you have this?" They'd say to me, no. They do, it's just a strategy that's sitting collecting dust that people aren't looking at. So we build all of that out. Then the next thing for me is I was very much aware that I've learned a lot throughout the years and I wanted to create something where people could have access to my brain when they need it.
So I build a library of my entire brain in the last eight weeks, it is everything from crisis comms to content brainstorms, to how to run them in corporate to video hooks to different types of Instagram content, and I will continue to update that, then clients get the opportunity to then purchase coaching hours because strategy is only as good as we implement it. I think a lot of businesses right now at a position where they might have a lot of team members that know their brand extremely well, but they might not know social. So it's that opportunity for us to have a certain amount of time on a monthly basis where they can purchase coaching hours, we might do co-creation of content, we might go through the measurement together. We might build your measurement framework, but we get that opportunity to implement into the business.
And then on the flip side, for building people's personal brands, that's for, I'd like to say time poor, ideas rich career professionals. At the moment, I've launched it with a one-to-one offering, and that's where I actually help with people that have a lot that they want to speak about, but maybe don't have the time to be able to purchase a course and set it. So we actually do a one and a half hour strategy, who are you? What are your intentions? What are you known for? Your knowledge, your skills, how is that differentiating? How can you show up and build that? Which platform should you be on? We do a workshop, I write the strategy, give it back to them, they get access into a knowledge library, and then they get 30 minutes every week to implement it in and have me to go, this is working, this could be better, and those... I do hope to offer a more kind of cohort course version for people, that's another price point, but that's what I've done in the last seven weeks.
Sonya:
Oh, amazing. Sounds absolutely incredible. And look, I will link to all of that below in the show notes, including your TikTok as well. Kim, thank you so much for taking the time to join me today.
Kim:
Appreciate it, thank you.