[00:00:00] Mia Fileman
Are you tired of empty promises and stolen ideas? Me too. Got. Marketing is a podcast for marketers and small brands who want real talk and clever strategies without the bs. Running an online business is hard, but everything gets easier when your marketing starts performing. I am Mia FileMan, your straight shooting campaign loving friend here to talk marketing, running a business, pop culture, and everything in between.
Let's dive in.
Hello, friend. You know that I am obsessed with community, especially in the face of small business loneliness. Community has become just another marketing buzzword, and what we've been left with is synthetic communities or even cults. So to have [00:01:00] a conversation about what it means to really build a genuine community, not just a Facebook group.
I've invited a new friend, Verity Ha is the founder and director of Tradie Wives. Tradey Wives is an absolute force. They have a 30,000 plus strong Facebook community for tradey wives and partners, making it a really rare, supportive space in a noisy digital world. Welcome to Got Marketing Verity. Thank you so much for having me, Mia.
Verity Hare
I'm really excited to be here.
Mia
I was so good to meet you, especially in the lead up of Ripple Festival and our Squarespace Tradey panel, and I think that this conversation is just really timely with Ripple Festival being just 10 weeks away. Absolutely. Yep. All right, so where I have to start today is that you are one of the only communities.
On the planet with its own relationship. Counselor, we need to start [00:02:00] there. How did that come about?
Verity Hare
That's a good question. I think anyone listening that runs a business with their partner will understand It is really difficult when you are working together, living together, often raising kids together. I always kind of say that while you try and separate life and business, it is really difficult and I feel like anything that happens in your relationship flows through into the business. So if you are having a bad time in your relationship, your business is gonna know, and I see it a lot in the community, a lot of the relationship issues coming up from the, the tension of working together and living together and all that sort of stuff. So I think it's really important to have the tools and resources to make your relationship be the best it can be.
So in turn, the business is the best that it can be.
Mia
That makes perfect sense. I also grew up in a family business where my mom, my dad, my uncle, my auntie, they all worked in the same office and just to make things worse, they were Greek. So it was so fiery and so explosive. It was nuts. A relationship [00:03:00] counselor would've made a lot of sense completely, and it is really difficult, and I think that it's sort of not appreciated enough that.
Verity Hare
It's really difficult to work together and run a business together. It's not just something easy that you do and you, you love every minute of it. It is challenging for sure. So I'm super curious to find out how Trady wives began and, and at what point you realized it had become so much bigger than just a, a group chat.
So, I started at about six or seven years ago. My husband's a landscaper and I was sort of watching him, sort of juggling everything. Struggling like. Just missed opportunities. I think because he was so exhausted from being on the tools. The business side fell by the wayside and I think as tradies a lot, they are taught the trade, but they're never taught how to run a business. So I think there is like a huge missed opportunity there. So my background's marketing and advertising and I jumped in to try and. Take some of the pressure off, but I knew nothing about the trades industry at all. So we needed to hire an [00:04:00] apprentice. I needed a new accountant to do the website, all that sort of stuff.
So I started a Facebook group in the Hope to find other women doing the same role, which I knew a lot of them were. To sort of help me learn how to do this new role and it just sort of took off. Everyone was like, we just feel just like you. My, I directly come from hospitality, so I was used to being around a lot of people to being by myself, and it just kind of grew and I, I remember it hitting 137 people and showing my dad and.
My dad was like, oh, I think you're really onto something. And it continued to grow and then organically turned into a business of its own as I saw a need for extra support. That's incredible.
Mia
What a awesome story. So like I mentioned in the intro, community is a word that just gets thrown around these days.
What does it actually mean to you in practice?
Verity Hare
Oh, community is just having, you know, like-minded people who understand all the ups and downs of what you're going through, and people who are just there rallying you on and, and supporting you in everything that [00:05:00] you're doing and, and building you up. You know, to have people that are there and backing you and, and joining in all the highs and lows is so invaluable, particularly when it comes to business because it's a scary and lonely thing sometimes being in business.
So to have community around you who understand what you're going through and and wanna lift you up and support you however they can, I think is just so invaluable. Yeah, I think that's a really good point. And how do you intentionally create a sense of safety and belonging at Tradey wives? Like what kind of rituals or boundaries do you have?
It is a very open and supportive, safe space. Like mental health is a huge thing as well in the trades industry particularly. We're seeing it sort of more and more, and it's really important for us to have a space where people can be open and vulnerable without feeling judged or silly or whatever. So we are very, very quick on the block button for our group.
There's no second chances if you are not supportive. If you're acting in a way that goes against our values, [00:06:00] there's no second chances for us. Like that's it. You're gone. If you make life difficult for people or if you are just not being, you know, nice and supportive and in the way that we operate, we just see you later.
And we are very strict with that because it just takes one kind of bad apple to upset the whole card. And, and we are very, very strict with moderating and we are very lacking in that. You know, what we have done is built people who are, have the same values and they're all very supportive and it's very, very, very rare.
We remove any nasty comments, which is just so lovely for a group of that size. Yeah.
Mia
I think it takes a certain personality type to want to dedicate their work, their career to their husband's trade, and in effect, it becomes their business too, but. That's a lot of sacrifice that you say, okay, I'm just gonna put my marketing and advertising career on hold.
Mm. And ome and help you do the admin, do the bookkeeping, do the marketing, do the human [00:07:00] resources. Yeah. Be the cleaner. Yeah. For your business and your passion.
Verity Hare
Yeah. Yeah. It is. It is difficult. And I do see that a lot in the community. Like some people do battle with that. For me, I think I saw the potential in his business and I saw his.
Skills and what it could be. And I thought, I feel like this is the way forward as a couple and, and you know, to build on this, but I know, and, and this goes back to having the relationship counselor in there as well, that I know some women. Are in this role and they don't particularly want to be. They just feel like they should.
And with that then comes a bit of resentment towards that. And I always say, if you're in the role because you feel like you have to, don't, don't do it. That's when you need to outsource because you don't wanna be in a role that you end up resenting. Like you want to be in the role because you really want to do it.
And you can see. The future of what you're building together.
Mia
Yeah. That is such sage advice, right? Like I can imagine that that would then come home, that resentment. So I know firsthand that communities [00:08:00] do not run themselves, and my community only has 45 members in it. So what are the costs of running a large membership?
And when I mean costs, I mean time, money, emotional labor, what goes into it?
Verity Hare
Yeah, it's huge. I think people underestimate how much actually goes into it. You, you sort of see like a lot of conversations in other groups, I mean around Facebook communities and a lot of Facebook communities when they get. So big they end up having to, you know, monetize in some way, turn it into a business because it's just not sustainable to be able to keep it free resource.
You know, as it grows, you do need a team. Like, uh, for us, we read and approve every single post. I don't have approvals turned on because I wanna make sure that every post is. Keeping with the way that we do things. So we have to read and approve every post. We like to contribute a bit. So it's, it's the cost of building a team to keep that open.
And it's really important to us to make trade wives a free resource for people. We [00:09:00] really, we really want that to be available and we are very lucky in that when we did. Organically turned into a business that we had partners sort of join us to be able to keep that open. So we have a directory and partners came on board with us to support the community and all their common pain points.So they are the ones that, you know, we can thank for keeping it open. But in terms of just, yeah, a mental toll, like it is quite difficult sometimes because you are reading a lot of. Personal things as well. And you do, you know, I'm quite empathetic, so I read things and I go, oh God, I just wanna help everybody as much as I can.
But I joke, there's sometimes where, uh, I'm a night owl, but I'll be up really late at night and I'll be moderating the group. I was saying to the one of the girls the other day, I was like, oh, I was trying to moderate the group and I was reading a really long post. And then I went to reply and I started like nodding off as I was like replying to it.
So in my reply, I was typing out my dream. I was like, oh my goodness. It's like, and [00:10:00] I was like, whoa, I need to go to bed.
Mia
That's commitment verity. It is. It really is. For sure. So you mentioned sponsorships and partnerships, which I think is just such a clever model in order to be able to make. The community free. Do you have other revenue streams? Like do you have a paid tier of the community?
Verity Hare
Yeah. We've also got a, uh, membership, which again, very organically happened from the main pain points I saw in the group. I saw a need for training because you come into this role, there's no training, you just thrown into work.
So I knew I needed a place where people could go and go train in their social media or their bookkeeping or whatever it might be. We get experts on that. Do master classes and that sort of thing, and also catch up like once. A month as for a virtual coffee to keep that connection going. So we have the paid membership, we've got the partnerships, and then we also run an annual conference as well. I had our first one last year, so second one's coming up. And yeah, that's kind of the way that we are able to keep it as a free resource.
Mia
Amazing. And that's a really nice balance between monetizing all of this [00:11:00] effort, but maintaining the integrity and the trust with the community. 'cause it was set up as a free group in in the first instance, right?
Verity Hare
Completely.
Mia
Yeah. So you and I trauma bonded over building our conferences or major events. Are you able to share some lessons from your first major tradie wives conference?
Verity Hare
We did trauma bond, and it is difficult, I think. You think it's gonna be such a breeze to organize an event and you're like, oh, it'll just be so easy.
I'll just whip together an event. Uh, no, not really how it works. Oh, look, uh, we left eight months to organize it. I still feel like that wasn't enough. I got COVID at the last minute, which was just shocking. And my poor team were there, like trying to manage it all themselves and they got to a point where they're like, we're never gonna wait for your replies anymore.
We're just gonna do it 'cause we just don't have the time to wait. And I think it's just, look, there is a lot that goes into it. But at the end of the day, the people that come to these events, they're in it because they really wanna be there and they really wanna connect and they really wanna see [00:12:00] you win.
You know, like they really are just happy to be there and be with other people. And what you think you go, oh, that's gone wrong. That's gone wrong, that's gone wrong. But no one notices. You know, it's only you that notices that people just love being there. And that's what I got from it. I, there was just so much preparation, but on the day it was just kind of like, everyone was just so happy to be around and it didn't matter what went wrong and, you know, everything's fixable and the feedback from the day was really great.
I think just obviously being as organized as possible, but knowing that things will go wrong and it's not the end of the world. It, it, it happens and everyone's just happy to be there.
Mia
I think that's really reassuring. Uh, I haven't said this out loud yet, so this could come off terribly. I feel like I am in the active labor part of Ripple Festival, so I'm at the point where I need it to stop. I want it to stop. I'm done. I, I wanna tap out. I'm telling my doctor and my husband. Okay, thank you. I gave it a crack, but no. And that's actually just about, you know, [00:13:00] the time that you are going to birth your beautiful baby that you are gonna be so proud of and love more than anything in the world.
That's where I'm at, and
Verity Hare
I know we're exactly where you're at. And gimme the epidural. We're done. Like, I'm not doing this anymore. It, it's exactly that. It is when it feels like it's the worst, you know, the best is coming. You do get to that point where it just gets too much. You're like, oh, I can't do it anymore.
I can't, you know, we had our, all our merchandise organized. She pulled out the week before and said, sorry, I can't get it through. And we were like, oh God, we've got a week. We've got a week. Um, luckily we found some amazing people that pushed it through for us, but I was just like, I can't take more hits.
And you do get to that point and you're like. It, it's so hard, but you've gotta persevere because you know, on the day it is worth every, it's like having a baby on the it. It's once it's over, it's worth every single minute of the pain to get there. Oh, from [00:14:00] your lips to God sees, mate. I just really hope that's my.
Mia
I, I would love to be euphoric on the day, uh, because it has just been similar to you nine months of trying to do this while running a business with a family and a husband who's away all the time. So I, I really hope that it, it is all worth it. And. I've been in business long enough to know that it generally is.
So I would love to know from you what systems and processes help to keep the community manageable at scale because you are now operating in a just a completely different tier to other people, including myself, you know? Content scheduling, conflict resolution approvals, like what does that look like behind the scenes?
Verity Hare
Yeah, you've gotta have very clear SOPs and, and look, it is changing every day. Like I say, I now, I now have a team behind me, which is amazing, but every day is completely different. And you, you, you put in place all these plans, you go, okay, this [00:15:00] is what we're gonna do. And then the next day it all changes
It's very hard to keep up such a fast paced community, but you've gotta have those SOPs that are just like, if this happens, we, we do this. So if this person acts this way, then this is the the steps that we take, you know? And so it's all kind of documented so we can all refer back to it. We just have all our SOPs in a Trello board just really nice and easy, and we just kind of follow step by. We've got all our programs that we have, like social media scheduling, we've got Trello for our, um, project management and SOPs. We've got Sato for our CRM. We are just implementing pipeline. So having them all. And it is definitely trial and error. Like we've had some where we go, no, it's not right, not right, not right, not right.
So we invest in them, they're not right, we move on. But I think it's just in terms of community. It's just having very clear guidelines of the community and making sure that everybody's on the same page about following them and there's no kind of room to move. Like it is what it is and that's what we all have to follow.
Mia
Love it. I love that. Sticking to the boundaries. 'cause [00:16:00] often the biggest problem with community management is that. You break your own rules because we are deeply pathetic or there's always a, an exception or we feel bad. But then if we don't enforce our own rules, how can we expect anyone else to?
Verity Hare
completely, and it is hard, like for us as well, like we have a general like no fundraising, uh, rule in the community because of the volume that come through for GoFundMe and that sort of thing. And it's heartbreaking when you do see come through. And you think, oh my gosh, I feel terrible declining something like this. But you can't. Otherwise it would just be a group of GoFundMe pages and you can't have that. It's one of those things that, yeah, the, the guidelines sometimes suck, but they're there for a reason.
Mia
Yeah, 100%. If you were going to rebuild tradie wives today, would you do anything differently?
Verity Hare
Oh, that's such a good question. I think I would be a little bit firmer from the beginning with the people that were in there. You know, like when you first start a [00:17:00] community and people kind of. Do things and you go, oh, that doesn't, I don't agree with that.
You know, that doesn't align with me. You kind of go, oh, but you know, I'm just building this community and you know, maybe I'm in the wrong or let it slide. You do kind of do too much where you think, Hey, I shouldn't have accepted that. I shouldn't have accepted that. That person should have gone a long time ago, but you, you nervous in the beginning 'cause you just don't really know what you're doing. So I think from the beginning. I would've been a little bit stricter with the guidelines and people sticking to them. But then again, you, you don't know what you don't know. So it's like, it's all part of a learning process. Like you actually have to, to experience it, to be able to put these things in place, I think.
Yeah.
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Mia
Have you had any like proud moments that you can share and like what made you feel like, oh my God, I, I built this community here.
Verity Hare
Yeah, I have, and one of them, which will be music tutorials, was the conference, the first one that we had. It was amazing.
Like. Just standing there and seeing all the people in the room that were there because of something that you created and were so happy and had like made great friendships and we're all chatting with each other and building connections and networking. And I stopped for a minute and I looked around and I was like, wow, like this is all happening 'cause I created this and people are. Met each other because of a group that I created, and I felt really proud of that. And being able to bring people together and seeing people's businesses improve, [00:19:00] seeing them come in and have all these kind of issues, and this is happening, this is happening to getting the right support from us, having a great community, and then working through their problems and having a better business. That is solving a lot of the problems that they came in to solve. Like that makes me feel really proud as well, that I'm sort of helping people move through really challenging things in their, in their life and their business, I suppose.
Mia
Yeah, 100%. You have so many reasons to be immensely proud if anyone's listening and they wanna build a community as a growth strategy.
What advice would you like to give them?
Verity Hare
Again, I keep going back to it, but being very clear on your guidelines. So setting out those guidelines from straight away and sticking to them. You know, like I know it's easy to go, oh no, but this for this, for this, but you have to follow your gut feeling and you've gotta sort of stick strong on those guidelines because at the end of the day, like I said, one bad Apple upsets the whole cart and it just makes your life easier as well. So when you are moderating or whatever, you know what you will and won't accept. And it keeps the group in that sort of positive [00:20:00] direction that I imagine is what you wanted it to be in the first place. And I think just have fun. Like it is really fun. It's great building connections with people, you know, every day is different.
So yeah, I think that would be my advice. Yeah.
Mia
Is it all women or do you have a couple of women who are the trades person and then the male partner? Or The female partner is the one doing the. Admin side of the business.
Verity Hare
Yeah, so it's, it's all women, but we also have like women who are the tradies themselves.
Lady tradies, and they're running their own business. But then we've also, majority are the partners in there. Yeah. But just women. We've got none of the men. I did start a group called Trad Men for the partners to join because everyone was like, oh, my husband. Would love something like this. So started trading men, got a few people to join and no one talks to each other at all.
Yes, it's crickets. So yeah, so just the women, we love to chat,
Mia
which is why we have a men's mental health crisis in the world right now. A hundred percent. Yeah. If they could just talk, uh, 99. [00:21:00] Problems would be solved straight away.
Verity Hare
Completely. And I think that that's something we definitely are trying to encourage, but it is definitely a huge issue.
And that feeling of like, I can't admit that I'm struggling, that still stigma still sticks around and it, you know, it needs to be shifted
Mia
Totally. So you mentioned that you experimented with the tradie men. Are there any other exciting plans or expansion plans for the community?
Verity Hare
Yeah. You know, obviously we've got the, the next event, but our next kind of thing is we have like a directory, like for all our trades businesses.
So we really want to kind of, we're just working out ways at the moment to kind of build on that because we know that there is such a gap in the market of lead generation and that kind of stuff for tradies. Like there's a few platforms out there that people kind of are struggling with. So we were like, we'd love to, we know that all the trad eyes wanna support each other, and while they are tradies, they still want to find other tradies.
You know, like my husband's a landscaper, but we, we often need a. Plumber or an electrician or whatever it might be. And we know in the group everyone's [00:22:00] like, I'd love to support another fellow trade wife. So we are really trying to build on this trade directory at the moment so that that people can continue to support each other and generate work within the community, which would be really lovely to see.
Mia
Yeah. Is that public facing? Because like I would love to have a look and see if there's any tradie wives members in Darwin and get my next plumber from there. Why not?
Verity Hare
Yeah, it is, it's currently on the web. Site that you can find the trade directory. So we're just trying to build on that and, you know, our messaging is going to really be around, you know, supporting family run trade businesses and, you know, you're not just, you are supporting a trader, but you're also supporting a, a family dream, which I think is really nice.
Mia
Yeah, it is really nice. So is there anything else important that I haven't asked you that the listener should know about? The building and the growth of TRA wipes. I think that it's just like, I mean, if you are doing something like this yourself, if you want to build a community and do you know, something [00:23:00] like this for your business is like a growth stepping stone.
Verity Hare
I think it's going into it knowing that it's not easy, but. It is completely worth it. Um, there are oftentimes, to be honest, where I go, oh my gosh, what am I doing? I wanna give up. And I know that we talk about that, like with the conferences as well that we're in and the events that we organize. You get to that point where you're like, Ugh, no, I wanna give up.
But then you have those amazing moments where you think, this is why I am doing it. And I think it's. Just, yeah, when you have the community like know, it's gonna be hard, but think outside the books. Like think about how you know you can build on those partnerships and you can get other people in to support you as you grow your community and how they can integrate as well.
Because when you are doing these partnerships, like it opens up so many more opportunities. That you probably never even thought about. And yeah, the partnerships for us, we've met so many incredible people and so had so many incredible opportunities come to us from our partners. So, you know, having that kind of support to then continue to grow your community is, is really incredible.
Mia
[00:24:00] Yeah, it would take so much pressure off and I love that. Truly a partnership and not just the ATM that we tap, you know?
Verity Hare
Yeah. We, they're, they're very much an integral part of the business and we just have such wonderful relationships with us, and there's such a mutual, you know, respect. Like they're, they're part of the team in, in our eyes.
Mia
Yeah. Well, it has been such an absolute pleasure chatting with you today and being part of this conversation. It has really shown me how trady wives is this case study in how having the niche like trade partners. And then building trust and safety within that community with really strong boundaries is actually a really good playbook for longevity and community success.
So thanks for showing us that formula. Yeah, of course. And it was so lovely to chat. The event's gonna be amazing and it's. All going to be worth it. Awesome. Well, I'm looking forward to meeting you in person there and hopefully getting as many of the tradie wives members along to partake in the two days, but also to come and check [00:25:00] out the Squarespace tradie panel.
Verity Hare
Yeah, absolutely. It's gonna be amazing. Thanks for your time and your generosity today, Verity. Thank you so much, Mia.
Outro
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