The Truth About Blogging With Rachel Thompson (Founder of BadRedhead Media)

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m your host, Shane Barker. Today, I have Rachel Thompson on the podcast with me. She is the founder of Bad Redhead Media, a company that helps authors create effective social media and book marketing campaigns.

In this episode, we’ll take a closer look at her journey from blogging to starting her own company. Before we begin the discussion, I just wanted to let all the listeners know that you can reach out to me and my team for any help related to PR, content marketing, social media marketing, CRO, and more. We offer end-to-end services as well as consultation to help you grow your business. For more details, you can check out my website at shanebarker.com. That’s S-H-A-N-E-B-A-R-K-E-R dot com.

We’ve been going back and forth the last few months, and we’re excited to have you on the podcast today. I figured let’s set the table a little bit. Some people in the audience know who you are and your past, which we’ll get into. For others who don’t, let’s get a little history from you. So where did you grow up?

Awesome. And when we say Northern California—where in Northern California?

Okay, I’m in Sacramento. Did you know that?

I’m literally in East Sacramento. That’s where my home is. I use it as a hub to travel all over. That’s why I was curious—when you said Northern California, I thought, let’s see where she’s from. So are you still in Northern California?

My wife’s aunt and uncle live there. We just visited Sun City up there—beautiful. It’s a nice little spot.

Yeah, yeah. Huge golf courses. Now it’s probably a little quarantined, but other than that, it’s an awesome place to be for sure. So how big was your family growing up?

Gotcha. So give us an interesting fact about your family growing up. Is there anything people don’t know? Any traditions or anything fun?

Yeah, I do. Yeah, I have a son.

Yeah, I think for me, it’s about being culturally aware—that there are other things out there. I was raised by my dad… long story short, I was actually adopted, which is a whole other story. He was Jewish—and still is, now that I think about it. He adopted me when I was four years old.

My family didn’t do a lot of Jewish traditions, but we did celebrate Christmas and such. I’ve done a lot of world traveling, and I love exploring different cultures and festivals. I’m very open-minded about that. It kind of sounds like you are too. Your family said, “We’re not necessarily going to go all the way down this path,” but still kept it as part of your family life and identity, which I think is awesome.

Let me look at my Jewish book. Hold on one second—oh, here we go, look what we have here.

It’s always funny. When I was younger, I went to a church camp, and I remember being from California, the first thing they asked me was, “Do you surf to school?” And I’m like, just because you’re Jewish doesn’t mean you know everything about the Jewish religion. Just like being from California doesn’t mean we all surf to school.

What I would tell them is, “No, Stu, I can’t surf to school—my surfboard doesn’t fit in my locker.” And they’d go, “Oh, that makes sense.” And I’d be like, “Totally, bro. Sounds good.”

It’s funny when people assume things like that. Or when someone says, “You’re from Sacramento? Do you know John Smith?” I’m like, “John Smith? From Sacramento? Shut the front door—how do you know John?” And they’re like, “You do know him?” I’m like, “Do you know how many John Smiths there are in Sacramento?” So yeah, that kind of thing always makes me laugh.

Did you go to college here in Northern California? Or did you do continued education? Or did you just jump in and become extremely smart?

Oh my God. This is so funny—when I interview people, you just never know what they’re going to say.

I went to Sac State as well. I graduated with my marketing degree from Sac State. The campus is literally a mile and a half from my house. We were there yesterday with my wife—we walk our dogs there.

Now, with everything going on, we’re there all the time. It’s kind of nice to see how the campus has grown. When I was there—many moons ago—we won’t go into how long ago that was, but it was a small campus. Now it’s absolutely grown. They’ve got the Welcome Center, all this other stuff.

The football team did well this year, and there’s been some cool stuff. I’ve become more and more proud of Sac State and the things they’ve done. It’s been awesome. So what was your degree in college?

It’s funny, that was kind of the same thing when I went to school. I majored in entrepreneurship. I’d already owned my own businesses and wanted to take classes, and at that time, there was one entrepreneurship class. There wasn’t really a focus on starting your own thing—it was more about training you to work for a company, which is awesome, but I was like, “Hey, what about if I want to do my own thing?” They were like, “What do you mean, do your own thing?” I’d already done it and just wanted to learn more about it. It’s interesting, now they have tons of entrepreneurship classes, and there’s more integration with creative writing, English, and other areas. It’s really flourished.

We’re kind of aging ourselves a little bit, but that’s okay. I know I started college when I was seven, and you were three years old when you started, so we’re still in that relative age—give or take a few years.

So what was your dream job out of college? What were you looking to do, especially with the communications and journalism background?

And pharmaceutical sales—I mean, it’s not a bad industry to be in. Last time I checked, it’s not going anywhere, you know? I have a lot of friends that actually, out of Sac State, went and interviewed and got jobs with pharmaceutical companies, which is a great career. I know it’s gotten a lot harder over the years—the last probably 10 or 15 years—just because before, you used to be able to meet with the doctors individually and bring over donuts and cupcakes and all the other fun stuff. And then they were like, “Hey, you can’t do that, because you might be swaying Dr. Johnson, because he’s high on sugar all the time.” So then they’re kind of looking at, “Okay, what can we do here?”

So that’s interesting. I think pharmaceutical reps—not a bad job. That’s a good Sacramento job. Well, a good anywhere job. Like I said, a lot of my friends made really good money out of college.

It’s a grind though, right? I mean, it’s sales for sure. You’ve got how many gatekeepers in front of that doctor, and you’ve got the receptionist that’s protecting them, and you’re trying to get in there.

So it’s a cutthroat business. But I do think it’s awesome for sales, right? I mean, just going in there and better understanding psychology, how to work with people, how to get around that person, and how to be able to work with people and sell stuff.

I, for a very short period of time, actually worked at a call center. And the reason why I did it—well, A, because my friend owned the call center and needed help, but B, it was also going to help me with sales.

And I knew that—even though I hated it—I mean, it was, I was telemarketing. I was that guy that would call when you and your family were just sitting down to dinner. You’re like, “Oh, this is awesome, let’s go ahead and say a prayer or let’s hang out or whatever,” and I’m like, “Hey, you want to refi your house?” And they’re like, “No, I hate you.” And I’m like, “Cool, thanks for everything, man,” and I’m hanging up. I’ll have to tell you, my numbers were pretty low when it came to calls compared to everybody else, because I hated it.

I didn’t enjoy doing it. But I knew that I would learn something from it, and that was where I learned kind of, you know, sales, and how to talk with people. You’re really calling at the worst time, about things that people don’t want to do, and you’re trying to convince them. You see that, obviously, a lot with Mormons. Mormons are usually great salespeople, because for two years they’re knocking on doors, trying to convince people to change their full religion—or jump. I mean, that’s a huge sale, right? You’re like, “Hey, everything that you know about… let’s go ahead and get you to jump on with me and this guy on a bike and a white checkered shirt.” Like, “I just want to go ahead and have you jump on with my religion.” That’s a pretty hard sale. So yeah—interesting, our backgrounds and how that plays out in regards to sales and how we did things.

So how did that work? Because obviously, you did the pharmaceutical sales, and then you jumped into blogging and writing. Tell us a little bit about how that happened. Obviously, you’re kind of like me—there’s like three venture arms of what you do. So I think we’ll touch on that a bit, but how did you get into blogging and stuff like that?

Trauma, for sure.

Relationship building.

We’ll touch upon that and talk about book marketing in our next podcast episode. We’ll be in touch soon, so stay tuned to Shane Barker’s Marketing Growth Podcast.