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b'The Nitty-Gritty\\n\\n\\n\\n* How Jennifer Johansson started promoting her art on Pinterest* What happened when one of her pins was repinned over 50,000 times\\u2014and why it created a spike in traffic but not in sales* How she regrouped and made a decision to create a online course inspired by her viral pin* The process Jennifer used to create her online course and how her course has impacted her art business as a whole\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\n\\nGoing viral doesn\\u2019t always go the way we planned.\\n\\n\\n\\nMy dear friend Brigitte Lyons is a media strategist and PR specialist. But back in 2013, she wrote a blog post about\\u2026 an unrelated topic.\\n\\n\\n\\nThis was back before blogging always had to be strategic content marketing. And so, when Brigitte had something to get off her chest, she wrote it down and published it.\\n\\n\\n\\nThis blog post started to make the rounds. It even ended up on Reddit and drove crazy amounts of traffic to her website.\\n\\n\\n\\nFor more than 2 years, Brigitte\\u2019s website traffic was dominated by people coming to read this off-topic blog post.\\n\\n\\n\\nIn Google Analytics, this looked good. But for Brigitte\\u2019s business? Well, it really had no bearing whatsoever.\\n\\n\\n\\nBrigitte might have seen this spike in traffic as an opportunity to go rogue and develop a whole new line of business. After all, the numbers don\\u2019t like, right? Thousands of people were clamoring to read this post.\\n\\n\\n\\nBut not every viral sensation is a business opportunity waiting to happen.\\n\\n\\n\\nLuckily, Brigitte stayed the course and has an incredibly successful PR firm today.\\n\\n\\n\\nOf course, sometimes traffic tells a different story. Sometimes an unexpected viral hit can turn into an unexpected product strategy.\\n\\n\\n\\nThis month, we\\u2019re exploring the ways we engage with numbers as small business owners. Often, when we get clear about the numbers, our next steps are much easier to figure out.\\n\\n\\n\\nTraffic can be a tricky number to parse\\u2026\\n\\n\\n\\n\\u2026but when paired with other information and matched with curiosity, we can make better decisions and follow the best opportunities.\\n\\n\\n\\nMy guest today is Jennifer Johansson, a mixed media artist, living and working in Carbondale, Illinois. Jennifer studied art and education in college, going on to teach high school art and art history for 15 years. About 9 years ago, she was able scale back her teaching to focus more on her art.\\n\\n\\n\\nIn an effort to spool up her art business, Jen started sharing her work on Pinterest. And one day, she noticed a particular pin was sending an outsize amount of traffic to her website. Not only that, it was generating comments and emails from interested people.\\n\\n\\n\\nBut they weren\\u2019t so much interested in buying her artwork as they were in learning how to create the art they saw on Pinterest.\\n\\n\\n\\nJennifer spotted the opportunity\\u2014which was distinctly different than Brigitte\\u2019s!\\u2014and started to take action.\\n\\n\\n\\nIn this conversation, Jennifer and I talk about the pin that went viral, the decision to build an online course about her unique style of art, and the nitty-gritty of how she created the course. We also chat about how her business has evolved as a result of pursuing this line of business.\\n\\n\\n\\nHave you changed course in your business because you got real with the numbers?'