Boss Your Business - The Podcast

Yvonne Heimann [00:00:00]:
How can storytelling transform your business and help you connect with your clients on a deeper level? Today, we're exploring the evolving landscape of content creation. And one of the main issues we're tackling is the challenge of staying authentic while effectively reaching your ideal clients. First, defining your unique brand story can feel overwhelming. Secondly, identifying and connecting with your perfect client avatar takes quite the effort. Lastly, imposter syndrome can cast doubts on your abilities and your worth. Helping us navigate these challenges is Ruheene, a seasoned marketer and content creator. Ruheene's diverse background spans from the film industry to high-profile marketing campaigns with companies like Apple and Amazon. She brings invaluable insights into merging human psychology with strategic content creation. In this episode of Boss Your Business, we'll discuss the importance of owning your brand story, leveraging diverse experiences, and creating authentic content. Tune in to gain a better understanding of how to engage clients and grow your business. Expect to leave inspired and equipped with new storytelling tactics and insights.

Yvonne Heimann [00:01:26]:
And with that, welcome to the Boss Your Business Podcast, Ruheene. And one of my first questions always is, how did you get here? Did Little Ruheene think she's ever going to build a fancy damn awesome AI tool?

Ruheene Jaura [00:01:45]:
No. But little Ruheene did think that one day we would be building something awesome. I just didn't know what it was. I'm an air force brat. My dad is a retired air force officer in India. The best, if I may say so. And so that always inspired me to do something big. He always did big things and I knew I wanted to do something big, but I have a horrible fear of heights and I knew it wasn't going to be in an aircraft, so I knew that much.

Yvonne Heimann [00:02:13]:
I'm not laughing at all. Oh, my God. I didn't know you have a fear of heights.

Ruheene Jaura [00:02:20]:
It's a horrible fear of heights. Yeah. I can't. I can't look down. Everything starts to sweat and my feet and hands are dry. Old lady hands and feet, they never sweat except when I'm looking down from any sort of height.

Yvonne Heimann [00:02:30]:
So that's, that's a little bit. A different way of rehydrating your skin. Let's not do that.

Ruheene Jaura [00:02:38]:
Yeah, let's not.

Yvonne Heimann [00:02:40]:
So tell me, I'm like, I know a little bit of you behind the scenes story. Thankfully, we've known each other now for. Oh, my God. A little bit. It's been a few years now.

Ruheene Jaura [00:02:50]:
It has.

Yvonne Heimann [00:02:51]:
How, how did you get here? Let's give the audience a little bit of background story of what you've done, because they have, there have been some chat bots in your past. There have been some agency days in your past. What has that business journey been to now building Hey Levi?

Ruheene Jaura [00:03:12]:
Yeah. This is always a challenge. My biggest challenge is condensing my life story into a sentence. But, but if there's one thing, you know.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:20]:
We can do five, six, seven sentences, don't worry about it. But, yeah, I feel the pain.

Ruheene Jaura [00:03:36]:
If there's one thing you need to know about me is that I can't sit still. I'm always, I need to be doing something all the time. I need to be doing something that gets me excited. If it's something that I'm doing because it's somebody else's vision, I'm not excited. I'm going to get bored and not do it anymore. But I need to be doing something so I will find something else to do instead. So with that, I have gone through everything from architecture. I have a degree in architecture.

Yvonne Heimann [00:03:53]:
I didn't know that one either.

Ruheene Jaura [00:03:56]:
Yeah, I have. I then went on to do. Get my degree in visual effects for film. I worked eight years in the film industry, working on Marvel projects like Iron Man 2, The Avengers, blah, blah, blah. I have a whole IMDB profile, which is my claim to fame that nobody cares about anymore. And then I was, you know, when I was still in the movie industry, I got loaned out to an advertising firm here in San Francisco. And my first introduction to marketing, advertising, anything like that, was when I got to be a big part of the Apple iPhone 5 launch. And I know all of these things sound so different from each other, but the one thing that got me excited about every single one of these things, from architecture to visual effects to film and storytelling and advertising, is that I have always been really, really interested in human psychology.

Ruheene Jaura [00:04:52]:
Why I never wanted to get a degree in that or never thought to get a degree in that or try to pursue that as a career, don't ask me. Because when I look back now, I'm like, I should have just gotten into psychology. But it's really understanding human experience is what drives us to do the crazy things that we do. Because I grew up an only child, and I could never understand why people behave the way they do. It was always a mystery to me. I never got it. And so I dove headfirst into understanding human psychology just so I could live a normal life in this world and understand the people around me and not feel like I was an alien just born on the wrong planet. So with that, it's really, you know, I mean, with architecture was always about the experiences and the expectations that people have when they enter any space, right? All the baggage and the emotions that they carry with them and how that space goes with that then to filmmaking, which is even when you're watching a Marvel movie, why do we love it so much? We all have some sort of superhero in us, and which character do we see ourselves in? How does that relate to when we watch the movie, after the movie, what are we still thinking about? How does that carry into our lives? Right? And so all of that tied in very seamlessly, if I.

Ruheene Jaura [00:06:13]:
If I can say that, into the advertising world. So when I actually was a part of the iPhone 5 launch, it was really interesting to me because I saw the way I wasn't a part. Apple was our client, so I wasn't a part of the team that actually made the decisions. I was part of the digital marketing team that actually helped them create all the assets to launch the iPhone 5. And so I had first hand information into their advertising material, their marketing material, their messaging, and how they were positioning the iPhone 5 in order to, you know, drive revenue at the end of the day. And so.

Yvonne Heimann [00:06:49]:
Yeah, like, it, it totally makes sense. I'm like, now listening to you, and that also makes sense that you ended up doing, doing your NLP practitioner. And I think that's, how did we meet through Kelly? We met with so many different people, so many different times. But, yeah, I'm like, I can see that pattern, that framework behind it where it's like, it's one of the reasons why I went into NLP. It's like, I feel like some people, it's like, why? Or even myself, I'm like, why did I do this? I know better. How, what the heck is happening in my brain that decides to hang on the couch rather than actually go do the thing that I know I should be doing? How, how do I engage my community? Why, why do some people, me included, at times, work against our own best interest? And, and it's so ingrained in so many different things. If that is marketing and wanting to reach people and being able to speak their language, if it is movies and bring out those emotions and everything makes total sense to me, which now also fits perfectly into what you are doing now because it's still the same framework, it's still the same idea of wanting to make sense of stuff. That's literally why I use AI, why I'm like, I've been, I've been talking for an hour. Can AI please help me make sense of the common thread? Then what did I actually just say? And how do we put this in a way to connect with somebody and for everybody that doesn't know, Hey Levi, do me a favor.

Yvonne Heimann [00:08:35]:
Explain to the audience, what are you doing now? How does AI fit in it and what the heck is, Hey Levi.

Ruheene Jaura [00:08:41]:
So you're a marketer, too. And I don't know if anyone else watching this is a marketer or not, but if you have been introduced to marketing in any shape or form, you probably know by now that simply being consistent and showing up and producing content and writing all the copy is not going to bring in the, yes, it's not going to bring in the sales. It's not as magical as they make it sound. When somebody tells you, sure, Ruheene, just be consistent. Don't overthink things. I'm here to tell you, please overthink things because you don't want to put things on the Internet about you and what you do and your special sauce and your all the magic that you bring to the world without putting some thought into how that's going to resonate with the people you want it to resonate with. Don't do that. And so, Hey Levi.

Yvonne Heimann [00:09:26]:
Fortunately, the days of Gary V of just put it out there. Thousands and thousands and thousands of short and long pieces of content and just hustle and just get it out there. Those days are over, guys. Those days are over.

Ruheene Jaura [00:09:48]:
Yes, there's always little golden nuggets and what everybody has taught in the past. But I will say that times have changed. And if all you're doing is being consistent and using Chat GPT to put something out there, even though you know it sounds nothing like you or your brand or what your customers actually say and do, it's better that you take a step back and don't post for a while until we really understand what it is that you do, what's special about you, what's special about your brand, and how you want to connect with that ideal customer. Because that's when the magic happens. That's when everything else falls into place. No copy is not going to magically write itself, but it doesn't feel like you're starting from scratch at that point.

Yvonne Heimann [00:10:32]:
And I think one of the biggest struggles, at least I experienced, and I see a lot of other experience, is diving deep into who is that person actually? Who is that perfect client avatar. I'm like, even though most of the time I'm like, 95% of the time we are speaking to ourselves a few years back. Or as I actually had the conversation where it's like, usually I would go back two to three years, but it's like with everything that has happened over the last few years and how everything is happening, I am wording it now into my last stage of up leveling because it always happens in those seasons where it's like you do a big jump and it's like, holy crap, I finally figured this out. This is finally working. You're talking to the last, the last version of yourself. And I think a lot of us being able to just say, I'm not talking to everybody. I've personally, in my copy and in everything, have been really struggling to say I prefer working with women. I want to focus on women, yet I have such a big struggle to just freaking say that and put it into my copy.

Yvonne Heimann [00:11:53]:
I'm still focusing on both genders and I'm like, okay, something is going on here. That's a me problem. Gotta figure that one out in the brain. But even past those limiting beliefs of me really being able to. To concise that client avatar to get that story clear, to do all the things. I think that's one of the biggest struggles entrepreneurs and small business owners have. Do you have the same experience? Are you seeing the same thing?

Ruheene Jaura [00:12:25]:
Absolutely. But to your point of, like, there's something wrong with you because you're not being able to come out and say that there's nothing wrong with you and there's nothing wrong with wanting to work with one kind of person. Because if you are feeling that desire to work with one kind of person, there's a story there. And the reason you're not being able to say it out loud is because you haven't said that story. You haven't relayed that story to yourself and gotten comfortable with your story. Once you can.

Yvonne Heimann [00:12:55]:
Welcome to an on show NLP coaching. You're right. I'm like, it has taken me. Oh, my God. It has taken me a year to be able to say what I envision. Ask Yvi to be so not saying. And I appreciate. So I'm like, you're not wrong, Yvi.

Yvonne Heimann [00:13:15]:
You are okay. There is nothing bad about you. I really appreciate that because we often fall into this idea of, oh, my God, I should be able to. It's growth. It is figuring out what's the limiting belief behind it, what's. What's happening in my head that I have not been able yet to say, you know what? I want to work with women. Period.

Yvonne Heimann [00:13:35]:
Done. End of story. So, yeah, appreciate that.

Ruheene Jaura [00:13:41]:
I think a lot of us just need to understand the stories that our brains have already created in our minds. It's why we feel the way we feel about certain things. But if we haven't embraced that story, we find it hard to explain ourselves. And then we're always worried about what other people are going to think if we say those thoughts out loud. And for me, that limiting belief for many years, and it's something that I still have to actively work on now, is what I just mentioned. Right. Like, I have. I don't know if I have ADD or ADHD, but I know that I need to keep doing things.

Ruheene Jaura [00:14:17]:
I'm very focused as long as I enjoy it, right? And because I've done so many different things, I've always been told that you are a jack of all trades, and a jack of all trades has no actual expertise in any one thing. And so that is my inner dialogue that I've always told myself. And so even though I have a degree in architecture, when I talk to an architect or an interior designer or a realtor or anybody who is in any one of these parallel markets, I keep my mouth shut because I feel like, what can I possibly add to this conversation that's actually going to make me sound like I know what I'm talking about? So I'm going to stay out of this because they're the experts, you know, and same thing, right? And so in the movie industry, it was the same thing. Like, people have been doing this for so many years. Who am I to come in and start, like, telling people how storytelling should work? You know, when I got into the advertising world, I kind of joked, because I got pulled into this whole Apple iPhone 5 project just by chance, and when I got pulled in, I didn't know anybody else at the firm at the time. And so, you know, there are certain things that are similar between the film world and advertising, but there are also a lot of different things that aren't too hard to figure out, but they're different terms. And so I remember this one day where somebody told me when we were sitting at the advertising company, one of the other producers said something about, we need a 32nd spot for this and a 62nd spot for this other project, and it didn't take. It took me, like, barely a second because I'd never talked about projects or deliverables in terms of spots.

Ruheene Jaura [00:15:56]:
That's not something that we do in the film world. But obviously, I knew what she was talking about, and I decided to try and be funny and break the ice, and I was like, what's the spot? And that joke did not land. And I swear I looked like the biggest idiot. And that's what I carried with me through that whole thing. I just stayed in my corner and I just told myself I'm an idiot. Everybody knows I'm an idiot now because I asked that question, and they know that I don't know what I'm doing here. And so I was always, talk about imposter syndrome, right? And these are, these are the things that we keep telling each other. I said that one thing, those people may have forgotten about it.

Ruheene Jaura [00:16:30]:
They've moved on with their life, but.

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:32]:
Chances are they forgot five minutes later and we regurgitate this thing years later. Oh, yeah. I feel this so deep because it's like I'm similar to you. It's, yeah, if I love something, I will bite my teeth into it. And I'm so, so hyper focused. I forget to eat, I forget to do anything else, but there is different things, and they make sense. In my head, they all connect. They all connect.

Yvonne Heimann [00:16:58]:
All of the things that I have done in my life, which are just as vast as yours, they all connect. They all make sense on. On a level, and I'm pulling from all of those to help my clients and my community. Yet still, often enough, I'm like, oh, you're jack of all trades. You are not supposed to be a passion. Passion based business. Passion based businesses don't make money. You're gonna run out of your passion.

Yvonne Heimann [00:17:24]:
I'm like, screw you. I've had this passion for 42 years. You think this is gonna run out just because it manifests in different ways? So. Oh, my God. Yes, girl, I so feel you on that one. Oh, my God. But it's like, now you do exactly that. You are pulling from all of those experience, from all of those different things you have done and putting it all into, Hey Levi.

Yvonne Heimann [00:17:54]:
To support business owners like me to be better in our storytelling.

Ruheene Jaura [00:18:00]:
Exactly. And that's. It's really magical what storytelling can do for you as a person and your belief in yourself and also for your business. When you understand what that story is, it's not your origin story. It's not like how you started the company. It's your why and how that fits in with who you want to work with and their why. And once you can connect that bridge and understand the story, then you can tell that story better. And now you don't feel like an imposter anymore because you know your why.

Ruheene Jaura [00:18:29]:
The other person gets your why, and suddenly you don't care if something that comes out of your mouth isn't maybe factual. Obviously you want to fact check yourself. I'm not saying just talk about stuff like, you know what you mean, and if you don't know what you mean, but you know what I mean, like, it helps you get out of that whole "what are people gonna think, I'm just an imposter? Everybody knows better than I do". When you can own your story, it really changes everything. And yes. Hey Levi, was that awakening for me personally, where I realized everything I could now pull together to help business owners, marketers with all of their marketing and sales strategy in a way that actually makes sense and isn't scary. And that's my story.

Yvonne Heimann [00:19:13]:
So, yeah. And for, for everybody listening or watching, Hey Levi is integrating, and if I use the wrong terms, please fix my english. Hey Levi is integrated and how I use it with High Level, and it's an AI platform. It's an AI platform that allows me to get clear on my story. To get clear on my client avatars, to get clear on my sales pages, my email sequences, literally everything around what I do. What Ask Yvi is what are we selling? Promoting all of it. I'm like, you guys have grown this into holy cannoli.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:00]:
And I'm just seeing, it's like even, we even have video sales letter now in, Hey Levi, it's like you've been busy.

Ruheene Jaura [00:20:11]:
Yeah, we have. We have a lot. But all of that is, is driving from that strategy piece, which is, which is the one thing that I don't see any other app doing or doing very well is the fact that we help you tell your story, help you tie that in with your business. What is your brand narrative? How does that lead into your customers journey with your brand? How does that tie in with your unique positioning and value propositions for each product and service that you sell? How is that actually, why does it matter? Who cares about that value proposition? Why does it matter to that person? And then taking all of that strategy that the AI is helping you create for you and saving in your account, then it takes it into every piece of sales and marketing copy that you need.

Yvonne Heimann [00:20:51]:
Yeah, I'm literally just scratching the surface still with, Hey Levi of really getting clear. I'm like, it. It was an interesting timing on us. I'm like, we've always been connected, but more actively reconnecting again with, Hey Levi coming on the market because I've been diving deeper into, really, my language. What do I stand for? What do I want to accomplish? How do I connect with my community better? How do I talk with them rather than just at them and all the things and you have and still are making it so much easier to do all of this now, building something like Hey Levi. How has this impacted your business from coming more of an agency setup to more of a SaaS setup? Building a tool, developing a tool. There is a lot of coding behind this.

Yvonne Heimann [00:21:53]:
There's a lot of, there is a lot of stuff happening. How has that changed you, your life and your business?

Ruheene Jaura [00:22:00]:
I don't see it as a huge change, to be honest, because like I said, once I got into the advertising world, yes, those were like consumer tech products versus SaaS. So I was on the Apple iPhone 5 launch, went back into the film world. Two years later, I was a part of the Amazon fire phone launch, which is the exact opposite of the iPhone 5, which is a story for another day. But I love talking about how the two products were positioned and why one actually succeeded and why the other one even though it was actually packed with innovative features. Just failed and died a miserable death. There's a really cool story there as well, but really going from there to my next path, actually, I'm going to go back to my original story, which is all the things that I did. I took a break from all of that when I got pregnant. And so when I had my son, I was wondering how I can still do something that I'm passionate about, make some money and not just not work anymore, because I have to keep doing something.

Ruheene Jaura [00:23:00]:
And so I decided to take photography. It's something that I've always enjoyed doing. And so I started a photography business for a couple of years, learned how to do newborn photography, and I did that for a couple years. So the interesting part for me there was I knew how to do photography. I was comfortable holding a newborn at that point because I had my own. I learned all the camera angles and how to, like, bundle them up in certain ways and all of that good stuff. But really, the challenge there came with, how do I get myself out there?

Yvonne Heimann [00:23:29]:
Yep.

Ruheene Jaura [00:23:30]:
Right. As a solopreneur, you find out really, really fast that you can be a genius at what you do. If nobody knows about that genius, they're not buying from you because they just don't know.

Yvonne Heimann [00:23:42]:
Unfortunately, build it and they will come does not work. It would be great. But no matter how awesome you are, if people don't know about you, they're not gonna come.

Ruheene Jaura [00:23:53]:
Exactly. And so I had to pull in everything that I knew about marketing and advertising, which at that point was only for bigger companies like Apple and Amazon. And then, like in the film world, for companies like Marvel. I didn't have any solopreneur small business experience at all, but I had to pull in everything that I did know and figure out, okay, how do I do this with a non existent budget? How do I still create that? And so that was my own learning and trying to translate everything that I knew about marketing and advertising and storytelling into something that I could use to bring in clients for my business. I figured out Facebook ads, I figured out marketing. I figured out I already knew about positioning and messaging. That was always my forte. I figured all of that out, how to put that together, and through trial and error, was able to sustain my business.

Ruheene Jaura [00:24:40]:
It never became like a million dollar business, but I was able to sustain myself and bring in enough money to keep doing it for a couple of years until I realized I didn't want to do it anymore. Because really, what I was enjoying doing is the marketing. And I needed to go back to that. So that's what I went back to. And then the pandemic hit. We moved to Canada. I have a very dear friend and her husband who have a very successful bagel franchise here in the Bay Area. And they were opening up their second one, and we were in Canada, and the world had shut down, and suddenly their business was on the brink of foreclosure, and they had spent a few hundred thousand dollars on getting the second one all done up.

Ruheene Jaura [00:25:17]:
And it was a very painful time. And I remember my friend giving me a call and saying, it's all over. We're shutting it down. And I was like, not on my watch.

Yvonne Heimann [00:25:28]:
I love it.

Ruheene Jaura [00:25:30]:
And so even though I knew nothing about restaurants, I knew nothing about the food industry, and I didn't know anything about small mom and pop shops at all, I was like, there has to be a solution. And I spent four nights. I also got sick right that night, which was weird. I don't know if I had Covid or not because I never checked myself. It was really early Covid days, but I was sick. I had a high fever, all of that. And I just stayed up through the night trying to figure this out. And that's how I ran a few Facebook ads for them.

Ruheene Jaura [00:25:59]:
Kind of helped them come up with something that they can post in the group to let people know that they're still open for business, continue bringing in some sort of money. That's also how I got into Manychat, helped them with putting a chatbot, because that was the one big thing that helped so many local businesses at the time. And so that's how I got into chatbots for a couple of years after that as well. But really, all of that has just translated into problem solving for businesses. What is the problem at hand? What do we. Where are the holes? What do we need to fix to bring your customers to your door? That's really all the problem has ever been, and it continues to be that today. I don't know that answered the question. I know that was a very long answer.

Yvonne Heimann [00:26:40]:
That's literally what Hey Levi does. So we are coming back around to. Even though it showed up and it manifested in so many different jobs and so many different things you've done, again, behind the scenes, the framework is the same, the passion is the same, the goal is the same, and I'm like, I freaking love it. And that's. That's one of the things where I'm on a mission right now, where I'm like, people. It's like, we get to be multi passionate. We get to do all the different things because that's just how it shows up. It in our passion and what we do and what we care about can show up in so many different ways, but it doesn't change within us.

Yvonne Heimann [00:27:27]:
It just means cool. At one time, you're a photographer. At another time, you are in a marketing agency. At another time, you're something completely different. Heck, I started out as an electrician, and now, really, it seems to be completely different.

Ruheene Jaura [00:27:42]:
Wait, is that really, is that true?

Yvonne Heimann [00:27:45]:
I went to school to be an electrician. I was daddy's girl and started out with that where I always loved building things. So now, rather than building houses, I help women. Ha claiming it. I help women build their business to sustain their life, to support their life, to build freedom of choice. I'm still building things. I've always built things.

Ruheene Jaura [00:28:13]:
That is super cool.

Yvonne Heimann [00:28:15]:
So same thing. It shows up in life just differently. But being behind the scenes, we have the same common thread that goes through everything where it's like so many coaches telling us to not follow our passion. It's like, it's not a passion. Like, I have a hobby and I like doing something. No, it's a passion is the deep seated passion of building something. That's it for me, as you have your passion and it's like. And you can see the thread going through everything.

Yvonne Heimann [00:28:48]:
So with that, for everybody that is struggling with their passion, that is struggling with translating what's all going on in their head into something that connects with their audience, because honestly, if I need a translator, I need AI for all the things that is happening in my head because there is so much happening. Where can people find you? Where can people learn more about, Hey Levi. And yes, we will be popping High Level into it, too, because you guys know all of my platform is moving over to High Level, thankfully. Thankfully, because I got Levi straight up integrated with everything. And there we go. Yvi is going back off on a rant again. Where can people find you? Where can people learn more about Hey Levi?

Ruheene Jaura [00:29:33]:
Well, you can find me personally on Facebook as Ruheene. There aren't a lot of Ruheenes out there, but Ruheene Masand Jaura is my full name. You can find me as @saasy_marketer on Instagram. That's SaaS, of course, instead of S A S S. But if you want to check out, Hey Levi. It's just, HeyLevi.AI right now, it is a white label for High Level. We are working on releasing a standalone app that will not be a High Level version.

Ruheene Jaura [00:30:02]:
It won't be a white label version in about a month. So that will change. That page will change. But right now it is integrated with High Level. Yes.

Yvonne Heimann [00:30:10]:
In just a month, which means, yeah, by the time it comes out, we might already have it, guys. So all the links, as always, are going to be in the show description. Ruheene, thank you so much for joining me today. And I am excited to see where you are taking all of this and what's coming in the future.

Ruheene Jaura [00:30:29]:
Thank you. Thank you for having me.