A preview of the 2nd Annual Vegan Visibility Summit

How much do the words we use influence an opinion, perspective, or way of life? According to Sandra Nomoto aka The Content Doctor, words are the difference between lukewarm results and resistance or having a great impact.

Kathleen Gage: How important is the written word? How important is the spoken word? Well, in today’s podcast episode, we’re interviewing Sandra Nomoto, and why I say we is my business associate and co-producer of the Vegan Visibility Summit for 2022 is VLynn Hawkins, and we are doing a dual interview with each of our experts, and our expert today is Sandra, who is the [Content Doctor]. She is going to share with us the number one challenge people have in writing copy, what she’s going to talk about during the summit, and some other great insights. So stick around. You’re in for a great treat.

Well, I am beyond excited again today. Today, VLynn and we have an amazing guest expert who is going to be sharing certain strategies that will help you to gain visibility and grow your vegan business. I’m Kathleen Gage. I am the host of the Vegan Visibility podcast show, and I have with me my business associate, good friend and colleague, VLynn Hawkins and VLynn, please introduce yourself and your show.

VLynn Hawkins: Hi everyone. I’m VLynn Hawkins. I am the vegan crowdfunding hacker, and have been in the crowdfunding world since 2010 the Obama JOBS Act opened it up for businesses to do crowdfunding differently, and before that, I’ve been in the grant writing world and business as a corporate executive and all of that good stuff. But today I’m so excited to be here as co host and someone to help introduce Sandra Nomoto. Sandra, welcome.

Sandra Nomoto: Thanks so much. Glad to be here.

KG: So we’re doing things a little bit differently with these interviews. We’re actually co-hosting the episode, and this will go up on the Vegan Visibility show, and it’ll go on VLynn’s show, and VLynn, the name of your show, please.

VH: It’s The Health Wisdom and Wealth Show: Powerful Conversations for Living Your Best Life, using lifestyle and food as medicine.

KG: Love it. And what we’re doing is we’re getting double traction for one effort. And that’s really what we’re going to talk about with Sandra today is how you can actually take an action in your business, with copywriting, with marketing and Sandra, you just had a huge success before we talk about that, it has to do with your book. You’re a one of a kind expert with what you did. Tell us a little bit about yourself and what your expertise is, sure.

SN: So my background is in public relations. I ran my own agency for just over 10 years, and after that, I didn’t think I wanted to stay in the marketing field. I wanted a good 10-foot pole away away from the practice. But yes, that the year I closed that business was the year I went vegan. And so I have been paying attention to what was happening in the space, and realized that I’m going to be a writer forever, you know, whether it’s professionally or personally, and decided to put those two things together. So I started a new business as the content doctor at the start of 2020 with the goal of working with vegan businesses to help them raise their profile and improve their marketing, because these are really the businesses that are solving our world’s biggest problems. So that’s the business that I run today.

KG: Well. And what’s interesting is that you’ve really targeted and narrowed in on the vegan market, and you’ve done so with an incredible strategy, which is the book that was recently published, the Kindle version came out, and the paperback will be soon available. So you really are doing what many people might think about, but they don’t have the wherewithal to do it. So what made you decide to do the book and tell us a little bit about the book, and it’s an anthology. And what? What made you decide to do that?

SN: Yeah, so Vegan Marketing Success Stories is my second book. My first book was about public relations and it’s funny. So I didn’t know I was going to write a book in 2021. I went to an intuitive around the time of my birthday, as I usually do, and she said, you’re going to write a book, and you’re going to work on it when you’re not working with clients. So I went, what? Okay, but I just kept thinking about what, what I could possibly write a new book about nonfiction is, is definitely my jam. Fiction is not, and I thought about, well, I’m. Really interested in how vegan businesses market themselves. I’ve always been interested in marketing. And realize there is no book about this. The closest thing to it was Katrina Fox’s Vegan Ventures, which she published in 2016 and so, of course, I read her book and her formula was exactly the type of style I was thinking of doing for my book, so interviewing a lot of vegan businesses, finding out what their marketing secrets are, and putting that all into a book. And so, so that’s what I did, pretty much for the fall, the last three months of 2021 and yeah, and that’s the book that I released this year in 2022.

KG: Awesome. VLynn?

VH: Well, you’ve done this amazing book. Tell us what was your biggest challenge as you were pulling this together, you know, stories from various authors, and what was your biggest challenge there?

SN: Well, yeah, I guess it was the fact that, you know, I was aiming, I’m aiming for 50 case studies, right? And so I figured if I reach out to 200 companies, I’ll get that 50. Not so. So I ended up reaching out to almost 280 companies, and if I didn’t hear back from a company, or if they said no, I would just go on to the next one, and that’s why it was such a big number that I ended up contacting.

And I didn’t quite reach that 50. I have 47 stories in total. But what I did because I wanted to really talk about the gambit of marketing tactics you could possibly do, and I wanted at least one example of a vegan business that uses that so I just went out online, I did some research and found at least one example, and I’ve got and got their permission to use it, and so it’s not so much a challenge as something I didn’t expect that I needed to do. I just had to put a little bit more effort in terms of getting all of the examples that I wanted, and I was also hoping to get a range of solopreneur businesses all the way up to the big corporations.

Unfortunately, those big corporations, again, did not, you know, they said no, they don’t have time, or didn’t respond to me. But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, because that ended up, or the book ended up being very much one focused on the startup founder or the small to medium business. Size. Yeah, size of company, and yeah, as Kathleen and I have talked on her podcast before, you know, maybe there’ll be another book, and that’ll be about the big corporations. Who knows? But yeah, this is very much for the small to medium business.

KG: Wonderful. Well, you know, there’s a lot to unwrap with what you just said, and one is that you didn’t give up. And I do know that you went very public with the fact that you were working on this book, which is a strategy for success. It’s like you’re either going to end up with, I would say, egg on your face, but as vegans, we don’t do egg, so you’ll end up with mud on your face, or you’re going to be successful. Another thing you said is you had targeted to have 50 people, and you got 47. And so often people, they don’t set specific goals and or they beat themselves up if they don’t hit that exact number.

And your book is phenomenal. I actually am one of the contributing authors, so thank you for that. And I want to remind people about the summit that’s coming up, and we’re going to talk about what you’re going to share in the summit, your presentation. And to join the summit, it’s absolutely free during the launch, you go to VeganVisibility.com/summit2022Sandra. That’s VeganVisibility.com/summit2022Sandra.

And it’s S, A, N, D, R, A, some will say Sandra. Some will say Sandra. So I’m from the west, so Sandra and so VLynn, let’s, let’s talk about the summit. Tell, if you could tell the viewers and listeners a little bit about the summit and why they should attend as a vegan business owner, or soon to be big vegan business owner.

VH: It’s fascinating, Kathleen, and that’s a great question, because we’re in a time where you know the new, the newest big buzzword, is plant-based, and vegan is being redefined to its original definition of caring and compassion for the animals and the planet and the environment, water, and all of those things that we care about, but that we may not have brought closer to us, or in fact, identified our businesses as being vegan owned businesses.

And so we’re reaching into this market right now to really help vegans who have not identified their businesses as vegan businesses or vegan identified businesses to grasp the strategies that successful vegan businesses have used, and be able to, in knowing them, apply them to their own businesses. We’ve seen the statistics, and I want to direct you to our page, VeganVisibility.com/summit2022Sandra, to find more information, like the incredible statistics around how many vegan businesses there are currently, but the thing that we also know is that many will fail in the next two years if they do not have some of these strategies. And that’s what this summit is all about. How can I grow my business? How can I be more visible in the marketplace? How can I do more with working with other vegan-owned businesses, and so join us and hear more about what Sandra is going to contribute, as well as our other experts. And we just look forward to having you there.

KG: Well, on that note, I want to let people know. We have Katrina Fox. We have Mitali, The Vegan Publisher. We have VLynn, of course, we have myself. We have Sandra. We have Will Saunders, who is a branding expert. We have Trevor out of the UK, who is a business development and mindset expert. And so Sandra, give us kind of a tease of what we can expect from your presentation during the summit.

SN: Yes. So as somebody who helps begin businesses with written content, I’m going to be sharing some content strategies that help you close deals. And so everybody’s got to do marketing, right? But a very important part of marketing is your written content. And so if, if your written content is not as best as it can be, if it’s not speaking on behalf of your brand voice, if it’s not speaking in the way your audience will resonate with it, then you’re really losing out.

And so I’m going to share some of the strategies that I use with my clients, and that I’ve picked up in the last, you know, two, two and a half years, that will hopefully help you in your written content and help you with your marketing.

KG: Wonderful. And what I’d like to know before we wrap up here, because these are short interviews, and we just want to kind of entice people to join in the summit. And again, it’s absolutely free. During the launch, you’ll have access to 13 experts, which is amazing. At no cost. We have just everything you can imagine to grow your business. I’m going to be talking about podcasting on both sides of the mic. VLynn is going to be talking about crowdfunding. Sandra is going to talk about copywriting, and what is the number one mistake that you see people make with their copywriting?

SN: Oh, I think it varies a little bit, but one that I see is just that simple spelling and grammar, which I know, you know, even I make typos sometimes, right? But if you’re doing that on a consistent basis and not even realizing it, your audience is thinking, this is, does this company even really care, right? So that’s the number one thing I would say. And then I would look at the length. Like, you know, some posts are too short and they should be a little bit longer. Some are maybe a little bit too long for what you need to say and should be condensed down. So I think it varies by business, but those are some of the top two things that I see.

KG: Wonderful. And to get the full presentation, all you need to do is go to VeganVisibility.com/summit2022Sandra, and we’ll have that URL available for you. So with that, VLynn, what are your closing thoughts?

VH: My closing thoughts are, I am so excited, and as someone who’s been in the visibility space, because with a crowdfunding campaign, it goes nowhere if you aren’t that person that is willing to write and speak and be the front forward face of your project, nothing happens. And so everything that these speakers, these experts, are going to bring to the table are going to be how the house around growing your vegan enterprise, and I’m really excited about it. Sandra, thank you so much for bringing us this information and really helping us to invite the world to join us.

KG: Wonderful Sandra, thank you so much, and look forward to hearing your full presentation. This is Kathleen Gage, and we encourage you to join in the Vegan Visibility Summit. You will not be disappointed. You will be ecstatic with all the great information. Have a great day and live consciously. Bye for now, everyone.

Note: This post contains Amazon affiliate links.