How to Use Instagram To Dramatically Improve Your Business: “Create your own product” With Jessica Castaneda and Candice Georgiadis


Create your own product. Sponsored work is great, but I’ve learned the well can dry up if not enough brands like what you’re doing. When I started talking about body positivity and self love, a lot of brands stopped reaching out to me because I was pushing the opposite of what they wanted to sell (weight loss). Luckily, I was already working on my own product and was able to replace that income by selling something that I created.


I had the pleasure of interviewing Jessica Castaneda, the owner of Easy Living Today LLC and busy mother of two toddlers. She is a self proclaimed mombie that is using her business to help other mombie’s live healthier lives despite mom life.


Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I vividly remember being seven months pregnant and working 11 hour days at a job I absolutely hated. I had to drive an hour to sit in a cubicle all day and felt like my life was just being wasted away. One day I was on Pinterest on my lunch break and kept reading all of these blogs and was like “you know what? I can do this too. If they can make money blogging, so can I.” The next day I quit my corporate job and never looked back.

Can you explain to our readers why you are an authority about Social Media Marketing?

I actually have a Bachelors degree in Marketing. It has always been a passion of mine, until I was doing it for someone else. When I finally used it to build my own business, and not someone else’s, I began to study it day in and day out. I’ve been able to use my Social Media Marketing experience to sell out products and grow a large following that I consider my tribe.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?

Oh man, so many interesting things have happened! I would say the most interesting, though, was when I decided to create my fitness planner and actually put it all together myself. One day I dropped my kids off at daycare and went to the store, in my pajamas with 0 makeup, to get some supplies to start building my Fit Life Planner. While I was there, someone approached me and was like “Oh my God, you’re Easy Living Today! I love you so much and have been following you on Instagram for a year! Is this all for your planners?” That was the first time I was ever recognized in public and had no idea how to react! I wanted to cry, I wanted to hug her and I wanted to hide all at the same time. It all hit home for me that day, what I was doing was working and my brand was real. At a time where I was considering giving up on my planner, it gave me the motivation I needed to push through.

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

When I first started my Instagram page, I happened to also be on the market for a new house. I was so trapped in this insane social media mentality that I thought I needed a white house that would look good on Instagram. Mind you, I also had a baby at the time and was pregnant with my second boy. I bought the perfect “Instagram house” (you have to know what I’m talking about)… and I just listed it for sale the other day. Those perfect looking white kitchens are not toddler friendly! They are a pain to keep clean and I never want to look at one again. My mistake was living my life for Instagram and not just living my life and sharing that to Instagram. Ya’ll, I bought a whole house because it would look good on Instagram- if that’s not the craziest/weirdest thing to do… I don’t know what is!

Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?

Definitely Instagram! I started a business Instagram profile three years ago as an extension to my blog. However, as time went on Instagram became my business and my blog became an extension of my Instagram page. Due to the following I was able to grow on Instagram, I was able to sell out my Fit Life Planner in just under two weeks! I was shocked, to be honest. At the time, I had no idea Instagram was that powerful or that my followers would even buy anything from me. But at that point we had grown such a bond that everyone was actually excited to spend money on my product.

Let’s talk about Instagram specifically, now. Can you share 6 ways to leverage Instagram to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.

  1. Always remember it’s about quality followers, not quantity. It’s easy to get sucked in to thinking you need to have a certain amount of followers to be successful, but what you really need are quality followers that are a part of your tribe. There was a time I did a big giveaway to attract followers and grow my numbers, and that just let to me being followed by people that just wanted free stuff. Then I had to waste a bunch of time removing all of these people because they were ruining my engagement. Once I deleted all of them, I finally had followers that were my people and started building a loyal following.
  2. Connect with other Instagrammers. I’m a huge introvert, so this was hard for me! But actually putting myself out there and leaving comments on other influencers pictures or even messaging them changed a lot for me. Some of the best advice I’ve been given has been from influencers I wouldn’t even know if I didn’t sneak my way in to their DM’s.
  3. Create your own product. Sponsored work is great, but I’ve learned the well can dry up if not enough brands like what you’re doing. When I started talking about body positivity and self love, a lot of brands stopped reaching out to me because I was pushing the opposite of what they wanted to sell (weight loss). Luckily, I was already working on my own product and was able to replace that income by selling something that I created.
  4. Use influencer marketing to sell your own products. As an influencer yourself, it’s a lot easier to understand and work with other influencers. When I released my Fit Life Planner, I emailed a bunch of influencers (their emails are always in their bio if they do collabs) and offered to send them my product just for feedback. I got lucky and most of them posted about it on their stories and it helped me both sell out and grow my following. I knew I couldn’t afford to pay them at the time, but I also knew I wanted my product in their hands because I believed in it. It worked out very well.
  5. Use Instagram ads! I used to not want to spend money on them because I never felt like there was a large enough ROI. But that was because I was just using ads to grow followers. However, when I reworked my ads and used them to link directly to my products instead of to my profile- the returns were huge.
  6. Be true to yourself. No matter who you are or what your passion is, there are other people that can relate. It’s so easy to get caught in to the trap of wanting to be like other influencers or thinking you need to be doing what they’re doing to grow, but you don’t. There was something about them that people connected with, and you have something unique that people will connect with as well. Listen, I even bought a white house because I thought it would look good in pictures. It was the perfect “Instagram” house. I’m now selling it because, well, a white “Instagram house” is not cozy or convenient at all!

Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

My goal is to inspire women to workout and live a healthy lifestyle for themselves, and not just to conform to society norms of what women should look like. Working out is so good for both your mental and physical health, not just for weight loss. I want women to understand that, that your appearance doesn’t define your health and working out isn’t solely for physical appearance. Exercise can change so much more than the way you look, and there’s nothing wrong with the way you look to begin with!

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

Gary Vee, no question. He is so inspiring and whenever I feel like giving up on my business, I literally take a day to watch all of his Instagram videos. The next day, I kid you not, I am super refreshed and focused working on a million new ideas. If it weren’t for him constantly popping up on my timeline, I probably would have given up a long time ago.

Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!

How to Use Instagram to Dramatically Improve Your Business: “Interact with your audience” With Ashlee Collova and Candice Georgiadis


Interacting: This goes without saying but it is important to interact with your audience. Do not wait for your audience to find you, you can find them. You can source potential new customers by browsing through hashtags related to your market and then liking and leaving comments on photos. We dedicate ten to fifteen minutes a day to interact with potential new customers on Instagram.


I had the pleasure of interviewing Ashlee Collova, a creative entrepreneur and the founder of Ashlee Collova Talent Solutions (ACTS). Youthful, ambitious and perserverent — at 12 years of age Ashlee decided that she would someday run her own talent and casting service, inspired by her experience modelling for a nationwide fashion campaign. Fast forward and nine years later that ambition came to life, Ashlee beginning her business career, with the long awaited launch of Ashlee Collova Talent Solutions (ACTS) in January 2017. Adopting a fresh approach to the way traditional talent agencies work, Ashlee Collova Talent Solutions (ACTS) is a web based children’s talent and casting database, offering an online platform to display talent listings presenting established and emerging child talent to companies and creatives for selection for work across the advertising and entertainment industries. Through her business, Ashlee has provided children across Australia with opportunities to star in fashion campaigns, commercials, television shows and films; and while this is exciting, Ashlee believes the best part of the job is helping young people to grow in confidence and creating memories to last a lifetime. While new to business, Ashlee is no stranger to the world of entertainment, having established and run a small celebrity interview website during her high school years. During this time Ashlee had the opportunity to interview artists including David Campbell, Ron Pope, Cosentino and Rai Thistlethwayte of Thirsty Merc, among many others. When she is not arranging castings, Ashlee can be found in the classroom, having studied a Bachelor of Early Childhood Education and is set to graduate at the end of 2018.


Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

Thank you for having me! I was selected to feature in a fashion campaign when I was twelve years old. This was an enriching experience for me, inspiring me to learn more about the entertainment industry and ever since I have wanted to own a talent and casting business. Eventually nine years later at the age of 21, I thought that I was ready to enter the world of business and I launched Ashlee Collova Talent Solutions, also known as ACTS. Ashlee Collova Talent Solutions is an Australian web based children’s talent directory and we specialise in connecting child talent with casting opportunities across Australia.

Can you explain to our readers why you are an authority about Social Media Marketing?

From the beginning of Ashlee Collova Talent Solutions (ACTS) I have used social media to market my business. Over time I have established some simple yet very effective strategies to use in social media marketing which has helped me grow my business over the past two years.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started this career?

I sometimes have the opportunity to visit the set on projects that I have helped cast. I find these experiences so interesting as you are able to witness the movie magic and meet the cast and crew. I love meeting the families from my database as well. On my very first set visit, I was actually asked to take part in the filming as an extra, which was an interesting experience for me! Funnily enough, my character was a ‘teacher’, and I was studying teaching at the time — so they told me I was perfect for it. I begged to differ!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

It wasn’t funny at the time but I laugh about it now. I had originally planned to launch my business a year earlier and I decided to set up all my business registrations such as my website and emails. In the end, I never got around to launching that year. As a result, I ended up paying for a years worth of business expenses that I did not require at the time! I was just super excited to get things started at the time and so I rushed into it, so from this experience I learnt to take things slow and plan more efficiently.

Which social media platform have you found to be most effective to use to increase business revenues? Can you share a story from your experience?

Instagram has been the most effective social media platform to market Ashlee Collova Talent Solutions (ACTS) and increase our revenue. Our market is generally quite active on Instagram and we allocate a small time each day to interact with our market on the platform.

Let’s talk about Instagram specifically, now. Can you share 6 ways to leverage Instagram to dramatically improve your business? Please share a story or example for each.

Set Up: The setup of your Instagram profile is important. A lot of our leads come directly from Instagram, so people’s first introduction to Ashlee Collova Talent Solutions (ACTS) is through Instagram so our profile should look professional. We use a high quality profile picture and include a brief description of who we are and what we do in the biography section. We utilise the business profile option from Instagram, so that we can add our website link, email and phone so people have the option of contacting us through these channels directly from Instagram.

Timing: Find out what days and times your audience are online and plan to post at these times to increase your social engagement rates. When I first started I would post at anytime but when I started to pay attention to the statistics which you can receive with the business profile, I started to publish my posts according to my peak times. For us, the peak times are 6pm and generally on Monday through to Thursday. The statistics showed us that we do not receive much engagement on the weekends so we do not post on the weekends any longer and focus our energy to marketing mid week only.

Purpose of Post: You need to have a purpose for each post. Before you publish a post you should think about why you are posting this and how it will benefit your business. It is also important to mix the posts up so that you are showing different aspects of your business to your audience; your personality, your values, your mission. We post a variety of work samples, news, quotes and service description posts.

Giveaways: Every now and then a giveaway is a great way to gain exposure and engagement. It is fantastic way to plant the seed amongst new connections on Instagram. We held our first giveaway 6 months into our business and we have seen an increase in registrations since then.

Interacting: This goes without saying but it is important to interact with your audience. Do not wait for your audience to find you, you can find them. You can source potential new customers by browsing through hashtags related to your market and then liking and leaving comments on photos. We dedicate ten to fifteen minutes a day to interact with potential new customers on Instagram.

Hashtags: While you can search through hashtags to help you find your audience, you can add hashtags to your own posts to help your audience find you. It is a great way to gain exposure across different niches and hashtags have definitely increased our engagement rates on posts.

Because of the position that you are in, you are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. 🙂

If I could inspire a movement, I would promote that ‘kind is cool’, and hopefully change the ways in which people treat others.

Some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them 🙂

I have always looked up to talent manager, Scooter Braun. He started young like me, with little experience, and has built an empire. Everything that he has achieved he worked for from the beginning, nothing was given to him. I admire his drive and ambition and his success is a representation of this.

Thank you so much for these great insights. This was very enlightening!

Thank you for having me!

Website and Social Media:

Website: www.MyACTS.online

Facebook: www.facebook.com/ashleecollovatalentsolutions

Instagram: www.instagram.com/ashleecollovatalentsolutions

Twitter: www.twitter.com/ashleecollova