Episode 33 Transcript

Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of the other 99%. I am super excited to have my friend Kimberly Piluto here. And I don’t know if Kimberly knows this, but I actually found you like probably in around 2020 on YouTube. And I was geeking out all over your stuff, your training. And yes, you’re with Scentsy, but I always tell people that you don’t need to follow your company trainings. Direct sales is direct sales. Take the information that people are giving you, tweak it and adjust it to fit your business. So I, I did, I listened to your podcast that you had for, for a short time. I listened to all your trainings. I probably listened to every single one of your YouTube videos. And then it was ironic. I seen your name come up in the modern direct sellers Academy. And I said to Becky, I’m like, know who that is? She’s like, who? And I’m like, have you never like seen Kimberly on like YouTube? Like she’s like famous. So I guess Becky was like started creeping you and everything. But yes, I’m just so excited to have you here. I’m so excited to be able to connect with you virtually face to face. But I mean, just so that you know, you have like a fangirl here. Welcome, Kimberly. Can you tell our listeners a little bit about you?

Yes. So before I do that, going back to one thing you said, one of the things that I love is a lot of the things that I do, I have found from other companies. I have like found other trainings and while it didn’t apply to me in my business, I was like, I, this little nugget over here, I can apply this to my business. So yes, I’m a huge, huge supporter of finding these other people outside of your company and see what they have to say. It might not be applicable 100% or even 50%, but there’s always some nuggets of truth that you could take into your business.

So yes, my name is Kimberly Piluto. I’m an independent Scentsy consultant. I’ve been with Scentsy since 2012, so this will be my 12th year. Scentsy is my one and only direct sales company. I’ve never been with any other company. I feel like for me, it was, I don’t know, it was just a happenstance that I came across it and found it and it has been the best thing for me. I always tell people when they’re trying to decide if they should start or not, depending on the company, is I don’t put makeup on every day. I don’t cook every day. I don’t, like, you know, all the other companies, like I don’t do those things every, I don’t clean my house every day, but what I do…do every day is I make sure my house smells amazing. Because that’s the first thing that people think of or remember whenever they go into someone’s house. Does it smell like a dog? Does it smell stale or musty? That’s the first thing people remember for me. So whatever it is that you’re doing, that is the way that you should go because you’re gonna be passionate about it and you’re gonna be excited about it. But anyway, so I have two girls. They are six and eight. other than the Houston, Texas area. I don’t know what else.

I mean, so indirect sales, you said Scentsy was your first direct sales company. How are you even introduced to Scentsy? At the time I was working at Target, I was the human resources executive and my boss had came in and she had this catalog and she’s like, Hey, my sister-in-law is selling this. Do you want to get something? And I was like, Wow, like I’ve never even Heard of this before, seen this before, and this was around 2008. And so I bought a warmer, I bought some wax, and fast forward a few years, and I’m thinking I need a specific scent. And so I’m looking for it, it’s been discontinued, I can’t find it, so I put it out on Facebook, and my boss’s sister-in-law had stopped selling. And so I’m saying, hey, does anyone know where I can find this specific scent? And my friends were saying, we have no idea what you’re talking about. We have no idea what Scentsy is. We can’t help you basically. And so that was my light bulb moment. If my friends don’t know what this is and I think it’s amazing, it should be my job, my responsibility to show them, to help them make their houses smell amazing. And so I felt I was doing them a disservice by not sharing with them. So literally that night, I went on YouTube and I started searching and I ended up finding my sponsor on YouTube. And that night around midnight, I joined and she was like, who is this person? I have no idea who you are. And so that was that. And that reason right there, because I went on YouTube to search, I had never done video before, ever. And so because I found my sponsor through video on YouTube, my thought was, if I found someone that way, someone can find me that way. So literally within the next two weeks, started my YouTube channel, started putting out content. And if I go back to those first videos, they are horrendous. It doesn’t matter. You’re like, you learn along the way. But that was how I was introduced to Scentsy. It was from at work through my boss.

And when you started, did you think it was gonna be like something that would turn into a full-time career for you? No, absolutely not. It wasn’t until I met my children’s dad and I thought I am going want to have kids. I’m not going to want to continue working. I’m going to want to stay home. I want to be sure I’m there for them, drop off, pick up, be the PTO mom. And in that moment, there was a light switch in my brain that went on and said, I can make this happen. I can do this. And so from that moment, I haven’t stopped. The first few years were just hobby, fun, you know, helping my friends. But from that moment where I made that decision, it’s been nonstop since then.

Wow. The one thing that I absolutely love about you and you know, the, the interactions that we’ve had over messenger and stuff like that is that you find something or think of something and you just implement. There is no pausing to question or whatever. It’s just like, Oh, I have an idea. This is how I could do it. Okay, it’s done. And I’m like, holy, holy crap. Like, like, here I am, like over processing, like, what do I do this, that and another thing, next thing I know, it’s like, there’s Kimberly on on tik tok. Yeah, we were just talking about like your your fragrance, fragrance flight. Like, I remember that conversation, he goes, Do you know what a flight is? And I’m like, No. And then we went into all that conversation. But then the next thing I know, it’s like, I don’t even think it was two days later, but you had it done. You had it created and it’s growing, going great from what I could see. I mean, yeah, yeah. So whenever I have an idea, if I don’t act on it, it will sit there forever. And it will fester. And honestly, it really wasn’t you. I guess it might’ve seemed to you and it was just like instant, but I’ve literally been thinking about this concept for over a year. I went into this little boutique and this table, huge table with a bunch of different wax samples on it, you pay one price and you can fill up this box. So you can make your own mixes, you can get all of one cent. I was like, how can I do that with mine? We have a lot of policies and compliance in place where it makes it a little bit harder for us to do specific things. And so I went back and forth with our compliance department for a good week trying to figure out how to make this work. And so once I did it, I was like, okay. I’m just gonna put it out there, see what people think. And literally the day I put it out, I had some of my loyal customers like, yes, I wanna try this. And even since then I’ve added other like little things along the way into it to make it even better. So if you have an idea, just start, start messy, start incomplete. And then as you go, you can always change and make it better along the way.

So I guess that leads us into the question Like how do you currently run your business? Like what do you do? Like you don’t do home parties. So how do you get your, find your customers and all that stuff? So with Sensei, we do have a locator. So some of my customers are local because they can go to the corporate website, type in their address, and I end up with local customers that way. But majority of my business and customers come from…99.999% is all online. So some come from YouTube, some come from Instagram, some come from TikTok, Facebook, all over the place. I have my stuff everywhere. But one thing that I personally like to focus on and am proud of is my external website. So since he gives us a replicated website, but that isn’t searchable by Google because, you know. 100,000 other people have the same website. So I wanted to set myself apart. And that is one of the reasons why I loved Becky and her teachings because she definitely pushes that type of training and mindset. So that is one thing that I’m really diving deep into. And I’ve probably had my website about a year and a half now. And these last five months have been my best ever months. And it’s because people are finding me. I just, you know, searching specific things into Google, finding my website, ordering, and they continue to order because I build that relationship with them on the back end.

Yeah, you have an amazing customer service layer, customer follow up system, customer care system, whatever you call it in place. So I mean, definitely one thing to focus on in your business, no matter how you grow your business was taking care of your customers, right? Because you, you have it set up where you’re following up with people, you’re sending them samples, you send postcards even to certain people. So I absolutely love that. Yeah. Well, one thing though about that, I read a book a long time ago, it’s called never lose a customer again, by Joey Coleman. It’s a black book. It has a red balloon on it. And I read that book every six months. So every new, like every season change for us, because every season change I’m in a different mindset. I’m in a different financial place. I have different thoughts about how I can make the process better, but it literally walks through how to build out, attracting those people, and keeping them. So it’s a really good book. I have that book on my Audible just because of you. Yes, I love it. So yeah, I love, I’m just like you. It’s like, I love diving into the books and there’s one, Building a Story Brand that I’ve just recently, this is two, and I think I’ve listened to it from start to finish about five or six times so far. And but now I’m stuck in the implemented implementation stage, right? So I want to get it all done. And that’s what I’m working on right now. But that book’s awesome too. So if you’re if you’re a reader, those two books, I highly recommend them. Yes. After you mentioned it, I went and grabbed it on Audible because I’m definitely. an audio book person and I listened to their podcast. Did you follow their podcast yet? Yes, yes, I got that too. So in listening to their book, I need I’m stuck in the implementation implementation phase two, because I need to go to the website that they mentioned to print out all the things so I can actually document all of the stuff that they’re wanting us to think through.

Yeah, they got a lot of great information. It’s you know, that you don’t often think of, you know, and many of us and I know, coming from Epicure, it’s a strong family business. A lot of us have always started our story with, it started back in 1997 with the founder and her blue station wagon. And in this book, they actually say, you’ve lost 99% of the people as soon as you start that way. Yeah. Get right into the meat and potatoes of how you can help them. And then you can tell the story. And…you know, that’s, that was a big aha moment for me. It’s like, people want to know if there’s no value in it for them, they don’t have that five or six minutes to sit there and find out why. And I, so I absolutely love that. Yeah. All right.

Here, here. I’m sorry. No, no. After I listened to that, there was a section there where it talks about your website. And so I went back and It says like, what is above the fold? Above the folds, yes. How can you catch them above the fold? So I went and I changed my freebie, my offer at the top. So instead of saying like, grab your stickers, it says like, make your home smell amazing for fall. So like, how can you be the hero? You can make your home smell amazing for fall. And then it goes, they can get it. And I have shortened like taking down sentences, make it really, really short, not too wordy, but yeah, good book. I know, and I opened my website on mobile and it drives me crazy. So I have to go and fix it because the first thing you see is a picture. I’m like, okay, that’s, it looks tasty and everything but that’s not what I wanted to see. So definitely something that I’m working on. I’m just not as fast as you. I wish I was, but it’s like.

All right, I want you to share some, like even one or two tips for the. consultant ambassador out there who really wants to get their business going virtually. So one thing that I tell everyone is, where do you go to search for something? So a lot of people are utilizing TikTok as a search function. Some people use Instagram as a search function. I use Google. So wherever you go to find more information about something, how can you…be what populates when someone searches about your company on that platform. So like, again, for me, I use Google. And so when I search for my company or specific things, the first thing that comes up, of course, is the corporate website, but then it’s external blogs, websites, and it’s YouTube, because YouTube is owned by Google. So how can you be in those places? So like for TikTok, for Instagram, making sure that you have specific keywords, like search engine optimization, the SEO in your description, because it’s not really hashtags anymore. People are using it as a search function. So making sure that you’re putting that in your description. But one thing that I feel has been taught for so long is find your platform and stay there. Don’t deviate. But one thing that I have found that has brought me a ton of new business is I love video. I love short form video. So if I’m doing a reel, before I post it, download that reel, and then I can share it, Facebook shorts, or Facebook reel, YouTube shorts, TikTok, I can put it on all of the platforms, the same piece of content, I’m not working harder. I’m literally taking the same content, same description, copy paste. And so that way that video is reaching how many, like 10X more potential customers. And you’ve only get the work once.

Yes, I absolutely love. Yes. That’s great. All right. So I want to know you’ve been in business for 12 years. What are you most proud of in your business? I know this is going to be very not what you were expecting me to say. But I am, I am proud that this has made me do video because otherwise I would not have my other job without Scentsy. So whenever I started my YouTube channel, I’m doing all these Sensei videos. I did one video, a how-to video on how to integrate PayPal with JotForm so people could take pre-orders. That was back in 2017. And then fast forward to 2021, I get an email from the head marketing person at JotForm like, hey, we want you to shoot some videos for us. So, and then that turned from freelancing into a full-time salary position with benefits, all that kind of fun stuff. Even though that is my full-time income, it’s technically, that is my side gig. Scentsy is my full-time business that I put majority of my focus on, but I would not have that other stream of income if it wasn’t from me doing Scentsy and doing videos. Yeah. I love how that all works together because I don’t have a huge success story like you yet, but I mean, I, because of what I do and how I do it, I’m like now working with the modern direct seller doing like website training and stuff like that. So I could see how it all rolls into one piece, you know, it started somewhere. It started because you did something. And I love that. I love that you’re working with JotForm too. That’s so exciting.

All right, so I want you to give a quote that you think every direct seller should hear. This might sound rude or like in your face, but it is something that I have carried with me or forever is figure it out. So I’m an only child, so I’ve never had to have someone else work with me or like, how should we do this? I’ve always had to just figure it out. So if there is something that I am doing, that’s the first thing comes to mind, like how can I, you talking about it, it’s already implemented, but that’s just how my brain works. Like, how can I get this started today? What do I need to do? to work through this problem. Can I do it by myself? Do I need to bring other people in? Do I need to watch a YouTube video or listen to a book? Like what do I need to do to make sure that I can get through this so that I can figure it out? But everything is figure-outable. Like Maria Forleo says, right? Yeah. Everything is figure-outable. So how can I figure this out? I love that. And I love that you do it yourself. It’s like, you know, it’s really up to us as independent business owners to figure it out ourselves. It’s not up to our upline. It’s not up to our company. We need to take that ownership. And I find that some people struggle because they don’t take the ownership. So once you once that light bulb goes off and saying, you know, if you’re not getting what you’re what you’re looking for from your upline or your company, it’s time to go and figure it out yourself. And I think that’s what I did in 2020 that completely shifted my business. I went from relying to saying, nope, this I’m going to do it my way. I’m going to figure it out my way. So I love that you’re sharing that. Yes. All right. So where can listeners find you? Now, this should be an easy one. Yeah. Everywhere at Wickless Kimberly. My website’s wicklesskimberly.com But yeah, everywhere except Twitter because Twitter wouldn’t let me use that one. It was too long, but yes, everywhere at Wickless Kimberly. Awesome. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to be here. I love this and I know that our listeners are gonna love hearing what you had to share, but again, thank you so much. And thank you to everyone else for joining us on another episode of The Other 99%. And we will see you again next week. Take care. Thank you.