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Search Results for: marketing matters

MARKETING MATTERS WITH RYAN SAUERS: Mayor Allison Wilkerson and Amanda Leftwich from the City of Grayson

April 25, 2019 by Mike

Jane Bishop, Mayor Allison Wilkerson, Amanda Leftwich, Ryan Sauers

Mayor Allison Wilkerson and Amanda Leftwich/City of Grayson

Grayson is a vibrant “live, work and play” community close enough to the big city for easy access but far enough to experience personalized home-town living. With excellent schools, sports programs, parks, restaurants and shopping Grayson is a popular destination for families. Throughout the year, The City of Grayson offers family-friendly community events including concerts, festivals and movies. Though Grayson is known for the excellent amenities of a sophisticated and professional city, they pay homage to their past with an extensive collection of historical Grayson memorabilia housed in the Arts and History Center. For more information, please visit cityofgrayson.org.

Jane Bishop/Take the Next Step

Jane Bishop, is CEO of Take the Next Step which emerged out of her passion to help others “go for their It.” She helps small business owners, entrepreneurs strengthen and align with their inner core for success by using her coaching and training skills. When you work with Jane you will experience accomplishing your “it,” and be a greater influence to those around you.  Jane uses her E4U system to help clients get to the core faster to create and execute a plan for effectiveness.  Jane is also a professional speaker and published author.  Curious? Reach out and book a complimentary session and see where that leads.

Ryan Sauers/President of Sauers Consulting Strategies

Ryan T. Sauers has spent over 25 years leading and/or consulting with marketing, media, and related companies. He is also owner of two Our Town Gwinnett monthly magazines. Sauers is a frequent national speaker and global columnist. He serves as an adjunct university professor teaching leadership courses. Ryan is a Certified Myers Briggs, DiSC, and Emotional Intelligence practitioner. Ryan is working on his Doctoral degree in Leadership. He is author of the best-selling books Everyone is in Sales and Would You Buy from You?

Show Overview

Marketing Matters is a radio show discussing topics as they relate to marketing, communications, sales, leadership and more. Host Ryan Sauers, a best-selling author and national speaker, discusses how these topics play a role in every aspect of our lives. Each episode shares tangible nuggets of information that listeners can easily understand and apply to their everyday life, whether personal or business. The show challenges listeners’ current state of thinking so they can grow to new heights and see new opportunities in business, which is rapidly changing, multi-generational. and noisy in nature.

MARKETING MATTERS WITH RYAN SAUERS: Marcie Reif with Marcie Reif Photography

April 11, 2019 by Mike

Marcie Reif, Ryan Sauers, Jane Bishop

Marcie Reif/Marcie Reif Photography

Marcie Reif is an in-demand kids, family, and commercial photographer in Atlanta, GA.  In addition to running her portrait business she is also a photography educator.  Marcie is the co-founder of The Photographer’s Retreat, and educational experience for female photographers, and the author of the best selling instructional resource Bringing Home the Story of the Beach.  She started her professional photography career in 2010, transitioning from a hobbyist taking pictures of her own children to begin growing the Marcie Reif Photography brand into the commercial and portrait photography experience it is today. She speaks several times a year at conferences around the country leading other photographers by giving them the confidence and tools to create strong portraits of family and children, as well as motivational strategies on building their photography community.  Her work has been featured countless times by industry-leading companies and has appeared in multiple highly-acclaimed magazines.

Jane Bishop/Take the Next Step

Jane Bishop, is CEO of Take the Next Step which emerged out of her passion to help others “go for their It.” She helps small business owners, entrepreneurs strengthen and align with their inner core for success by using her coaching and training skills. When you work with Jane you will experience accomplishing your “it,” and be a greater influence to those around you.  Jane uses her E4U system to help clients get to the core faster to create and execute a plan for effectiveness.  Jane is also a professional speaker and published author.  Curious? Reach out and book a complimentary session and see where that leads.

Ryan Sauers/President of Sauers Consulting Strategies

Ryan T. Sauers has spent over 25 years leading and/or consulting with marketing, media, and related companies. He is also owner of two Our Town Gwinnett monthly magazines. Sauers is a frequent national speaker and global columnist. He serves as an adjunct university professor teaching leadership courses. Ryan is a Certified Myers Briggs, DiSC, and Emotional Intelligence practitioner. Ryan is working on his Doctoral degree in Leadership. He is author of the best-selling books Everyone is in Sales and Would You Buy from You?

Show Overview

Marketing Matters is a radio show discussing topics as they relate to marketing, communications, sales, leadership and more. Host Ryan Sauers, a best-selling author and national speaker, discusses how these topics play a role in every aspect of our lives. Each episode shares tangible nuggets of information that listeners can easily understand and apply to their everyday life, whether personal or business. The show challenges listeners’ current state of thinking so they can grow to new heights and see new opportunities in business, which is rapidly changing, multi-generational. and noisy in nature.

 

 

MARKETING MATTERS WITH RYAN SAUERS: Ron Weber with Dogwood Pizza

March 28, 2019 by Mike

Ron Weber and Ryan Sauers

Ron Weber/Dogwood Pizza

Dogwood Pizza is a local owned and operated family pizza restaurant that serves beer and wine. They also have wings, hoagies, stromboli, salads, bread sticks and more. They offer speedy delivery and provide catering for businesses and events as well.

 

Ryan Sauers/President of Sauers Consulting Strategies

Ryan T. Sauers has spent over 25 years leading and/or consulting with marketing, media, and related companies. He is also owner of two Our Town Gwinnett monthly magazines. Sauers is a frequent national speaker and global columnist. He serves as an adjunct university professor teaching leadership courses. Ryan is a Certified Myers Briggs, DiSC, and Emotional Intelligence practitioner. Ryan is working on his Doctoral degree in Leadership. He is author of the best-selling books Everyone is in Sales and Would You Buy from You?

Show Overview

Marketing Matters is a radio show discussing topics as they relate to marketing, communications, sales, leadership and more. Host Ryan Sauers, a best-selling author and national speaker, discusses how these topics play a role in every aspect of our lives. Each episode shares tangible nuggets of information that listeners can easily understand and apply to their everyday life, whether personal or business. The show challenges listeners’ current state of thinking so they can grow to new heights and see new opportunities in business, which is rapidly changing, multi-generational. and noisy in nature.

MARKETING MATTERS WITH RYAN SAUERS: Pat Soltys with Smoke Rise Agents

March 14, 2019 by Mike

Pat Soltys and Ryan Sauers

Pat Soltys/Smoke Rise Agents

Smoke Rise Agents Team Lead Pat Soltys has been in the real estate industry for over 40 years, She is an author with over 300 copyrights, speaker and real estate broker. As team lead with 11 agents, she is a listing broker and innovative resource behind the team’s marketing and production.

 

Ryan Sauers/President of Sauers Consulting Strategies

Ryan T. Sauers has spent over 25 years leading and/or consulting with marketing, media, and related companies. He is also owner of two Our Town Gwinnett monthly magazines. Sauers is a frequent national speaker and global columnist. He serves as an adjunct university professor teaching leadership courses. Ryan is a Certified Myers Briggs, DiSC, and Emotional Intelligence practitioner. Ryan is working on his Doctoral degree in Leadership. He is author of the best-selling books Everyone is in Sales and Would You Buy from You?

Show Overview

Marketing Matters is a radio show discussing topics as they relate to marketing, communications, sales, leadership and more. Host Ryan Sauers, a best-selling author and national speaker, discusses how these topics play a role in every aspect of our lives. Each episode shares tangible nuggets of information that listeners can easily understand and apply to their everyday life, whether personal or business. The show challenges listeners’ current state of thinking so they can grow to new heights and see new opportunities in business, which is rapidly changing, multi-generational. and noisy in nature.

Expert Business Advice from Trusted Advisors: Jonathan Goldhill, The Goldhill Group, John Ray, Ray Business Advisors and Business RadioX North Fulton, and Tim Fulton, Small Business Matters

October 21, 2022 by John Ray

The Goldhill Group

Expert Business Advice from Trusted Advisors: Jonathan Goldhill, The Goldhill Group, John Ray, Ray Business Advisors and Business RadioX North Fulton, and Tim Fulton, Small Business Matters (Organization Conversation, Episode 45)

Host Richard Grove welcomed three seasoned business advisors, Jonathan Goldhill, John Ray, and Tim Fulton, to discuss issues small business owners face as they seek to thrive in today’s economy. They discussed the talent shortage and how to deal with it, how to manage inflationary pressures, pricing, organizing your business as if it were a much larger enterprise, preparing for an exit, and much more.

Organization Conversation is broadcast from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta.

The Goldhill Group

Business coaching, mentoring, and consulting to growing companies with 10 to 150 employees in family businesses, construction, and service-related businesses. We guide leaders and owners to grow their businesses and enjoy the journey more using proven processes, systems, and tools that both accelerate growth and guide people to more freedom and fulfillment.

Company website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter

Jonathan Goldhill, President & Business Coach, The Goldhill Group

Jonathan Goldhill, Goldhill Group

Jonathan Goldhill is a masterful business coach and personal strategist specializing in guiding next-generation leaders of family businesses to scale up their business as they take control over the leadership and ownership of the family business.

Jonathan left New York for California at age 20 after his family’s large, privately-held men’s apparel manufacturing company—started by his great-grandfather—sold to a conglomerate in its third generation of family ownership.

Within ten years, Jonathan had established himself as the go-to expert for entrepreneurs looking to find their version of freedom.

Today, Jonathan brings thirty years of experience to his clients, advising, coaching, consulting, training, and guiding entrepreneurial and family businesses.

 LinkedIn

John Ray, Ray Business Advisors and Business RadioX North Fulton

John Ray, Studio Owner, Business RadioX North Fulton, and Owner, Ray Business Advisors

John is a Studio Owner, Producer, and Show Host with Business RadioX®, and works with business owners who want to do their own podcast. As a veteran B2B services provider, John enjoys coaching B2B professionals to use a podcast to build relationships in a non-salesy way which translates into revenue.

John is the host of North Fulton Business Radio, Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Radio, Alpharetta Tech Talk, and Business Leaders Radio. house shows that feature a wide range of business leaders and companies. John has hosted and/or produced over 1,500 podcast episodes.

John also owns Ray Business Advisors, a business advisory practice. John’s services include advising solopreneurs and small professional services firms on their pricing. John is passionate about the power of pricing for business owners, as changing pricing is the fastest way to change the profitability of a business. His clients are professionals who are selling their “grey matter,” such as attorneys, CPAs, accountants and bookkeepers, consultants, marketing professionals, and other professional services practitioners.

John Ray is the host of The Price and Value Journey, a podcast aimed at solo and small firm professional services providers. The show covers pricing, business development, and other key aspects of building a professional services practice, as well as interviews with industry leaders.

LinkedIn

Small Business Matters

With over 30 years of experience, Small Business Matters (SBM) brings a results-based approach to each and every client. Whether your business has been established for 50 years or 50 days, we are passionate about helping you achieve your goals and mission.

Small Business Matters was established in 1994 as an independent management consulting and training practice. The primary goal of SBM is to increase the effectiveness and enhance the lives of CEOs. Since its existence, Small Business Matters has worked with companies such as Lucent Technologies, Carlson Companies, CB Richard Ellis Real Estate Services, Inc. (formerly Insignia/ESG, Inc.), and Georgia Power.

Small Business Matters is owned and operated in Atlanta, Georgia by Tim Fulton. Tim is a nationally-recognized small business coach, consultant, and advocate. He has been involved in the field of entrepreneurship for over three decades as a successful business owner, small business counselor, and adjunct university professor.

Tim is currently a Vistage Emeritus in Atlanta. Vistage is an international membership organization for company CEOs and Presidents that provides a very unique growth experience for its members. In addition, Tim is a former facilitator for the University of Georgia SBDC’s GrowSmart training program, which is designed for growth-oriented small business owners, operators, and executives.

Tim has recently authored a new book, The Meeting, available on his website and where books are sold.

Tim is also the host of the podcast, Small Business Matters, available here and other major podcast platforms.

Company website | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter

Tim Fulton, Owner, Small Business Matters

Tim Fulton, Owner, Small Business Matters

Tim grew up in Miami Florida. He attended college in New Orleans at Tulane University where he earned an undergraduate degree in Economics and a 5 year MBA.

Tim owned and operated several small retail businesses in Miami. He also taught as an adjunct professor and served as the interim Director of the Family Business Institute at Florida International University. After moving to Atlanta, Tim was a co-founder of an internet software company that was an INC 500 company and then sold to a Fortune 1000 company.

In 1992, he started his own small business consulting firm Small Business Matters. Tim was a Vistage Chair for 16 years, retired from Vistage in December 2018, and currently enjoys Chair Emeritus status. In 2008, he developed the GrowSmart training program for the state of Georgia and has trained over 3000 small business owners in 15 different states.

Tim has an award-winning Small Business Matters newsletter, he has self-published three different books including most recently the book titled “The Meeting”, and co-hosts a popular podcast for small business leaders.

For six years, Tim has hosted one of the largest annual events in Atlanta for small business owners.

He has been married to his college sweetheart Remy for 40 years, has two grown sons, and is an avid tennis player. Tim has walked the entire 500-mile El Camino Santiago in Spain on two different occasions and just recently walked the 400-mile Camino Portuguese.

LinkedIn

About Organization Conversation

Organization Conversation is hosted by Richard Grove and broadcast and produced from the North Fulton studio of Business RadioX® inside Renasant Bank in Alpharetta. You can find the full archive of shows by following this link. The show is available on all the major podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google, Amazon, iHeart Radio, Stitcher, TuneIn, and others.

About Richard Grove

Richard Grove, Host, Organization Conversation

Richard Grove‘s background is in engineering but what he enjoys most is brand building through relationships and creative marketing. Richard began his career with the Department of Defense as an engineer on the C-5 Galaxy Engineering Team based out of Warner Robins. While Richard found this experience both rewarding and fulfilling, he always knew deep down that he wanted to return to the small family business that originally triggered his interest in engineering.

Richard came to work for the family business, Dekalb Tool & Die, in 2008 as a Mechanical Engineer. At the time Wall Control was little more than a small ‘side hustle’ for Dekalb Tool & Die to try to produce some incremental income. There were no “Wall Control” employees, just a small warehouse with a single tool and die maker that would double as an “order fulfillment associate” on the occasion that the original WallControl.com website, which Richard’s grandmother built, pulled in an order.

In 2008, it became apparent that for the family business to survive they were going to have to produce their own branded product at scale to ensure jobs remained in-house and for the business to continue to move forward. Richard then turned his attention from tool and die to Wall Control to attempt this necessary pivot and his story with Wall Control began. Since that time, Richard has led Wall Control to significant growth while navigating two recessions.

Outside of Richard’s work at Wall Control he enjoys helping other business owners, operators, and entrepreneurs along their own paths to success by offering personal business coaching and advising through his website ConsultantSmallBusiness.com. Richard has developed an expansive and unique skillset growing and scaling Wall Control through a multitude of challenges to the successful brand and company it is today. Richard is happy to share his knowledge and experience with others who are looking to do the same within their own businesses.

Connect with Richard:

Instagram | Twitter | LinkedIn | Richard’s Website

About Wall Control

The Wall Control story began in 1968 in a small tool & die shop just outside Atlanta, Georgia. The first of three generations began their work in building a family-based US manufacturer with little more than hard work and the American Dream.

Over the past 50+ years, this family business has continued to grow and expand from what was once a small tool & die shop into an award-winning US manufacturer of products ranging from automobile components to satellite panels and now, the best wall-mounted tool storage system available today, Wall Control.

The Wall Control brand launched in 2003 and is a family-owned and operated business that not only produces a high-quality American Made product but sees the entire design, production, and distribution process happen under their own roof in Tucker, Georgia. Under that same roof, three generations of American Manufacturing are still hard at work creating the best tool storage products available today.

Connect with Wall Control:

Company website | Facebook | Instagram

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:01] Live from the Business RadioX Studio in Atlanta, it’s time for Organization Conversation, brought to you by Wall Control Storage Systems. Wall Control gives you the storage and organization you crave. Now, here’s your host, Richard Grove.

Richard Grove: [00:00:22] Hey, everyone. Welcome back to Organization Conversation. I’m joined today by three great guests that I’m really looking forward to having a conversation with. If you’re a regular listener of the show, today is going to be a little bit different. We’re kind of going to shift gears a bit and turn the lens or camera around and not so much on the wall, looking at wall control storage, but talking about or having organization conversations about organizations and small businesses in general.

Richard Grove: [00:00:48] So, we have found over time that our listeners are entrepreneurs, small business owners, business operators, all themselves. So, we thought it would be a great value to them to have some experts on in that space and just kind of talk about what we’re seeing across business, across the marketplace, macro landscape, and just kind of dive into some topics that kind of everybody is curious about, what everybody else is doing.

Richard Grove: [00:01:12] So, all of our guests today, extremely knowledgeable and experienced business coaches, advisors, entrepreneurs themselves. So, rather than going through very long intros on all of them, I’m going to introduce them and kind of let them go into tell them about – tell – tell you guys about themselves and what they specialize in. So, without further ado, I’m joined by Tim Fulton of Small Business Matters, John Ray of Business RadioX, as well as Ray Business Advisors. A little side note, John also produces the Organization Conversation Radio Show. So, if you’ve ever seen pictures, he’s the guy behind the board, you know, making everything sound good. And Jonathan Goldhill so, and Jonathan’s with The Goldhill Group. And yeah, so I’m joined in studio with John and Tim, and Jonathan has commuted via Zoom from Southampton, New York. So, I’m going to kick it off with you, Jonathan, and let you tell our audience a little bit about yourself just because you had the furthest commute.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:02:10] Sure. Well, the commute was really easy, I have to say. The view here in Southampton is pretty nice. I’m normally based in the Los Angeles area. I’m a business coach and have been since 2004. I’ve been small business consulting since 1987. Actually, I got a degree in entrepreneurship, if you can believe it. Some people said like, why would you ever go to school to study entrepreneurship? But, you know, my family, my grandfather and his brother started a clothing business at the turn of last century, and it blew up to a very large company. They sold it 40 years ago.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:02:50] But I’ve always been interested in family businesses. There was a lot of success in my family’s business, and so I’ve been coaching for, gosh, since 2004, and I wrote a book on family businesses and how to scale them. And so, that’s the topic that’s really near and dear to my heart. And most of my clients are people that are in unsexy industries. They’re in construction, they’re in real estate, they’re in property management, they’re in service-based businesses and manufacturing companies. So, that’s pretty much the space that I play in these days. But I’ve worked in a lot of industries over many years, so that’s a bit about me.

Richard Grove: [00:03:30] Awesome. Thanks, Jonathan. John, we can just keep working down the line here.

John Ray: [00:03:33] Sure. And thanks for having me on. It’s – I appreciate the invite, Richard. So, I’ve got two businesses. I’ve got a business advisory practice where I do some outside CFO work, but it’s mostly focused around pricing consulting. And, because I’ve come to believe, and this was a problem once upon a time for me, so I came to believe this. And I see this in a lot of businesses that pricing is their biggest problem, particularly for businesses that sell what’s between their ears, basically professional services.

Richard Grove: [00:04:09] And even us, lately it’s been insane. So yeah –

John Ray: [00:04:11] Oh, sure.

Richard Grove: [00:04:12] I mean, it’s just – sure. Crazy time for pricing.

John Ray: [00:04:14] Absolutely. And, so I do a lot of consulting around pricing and how to price more effectively. And so, that’s that particular business. And then, as you said, I operate a studio, North Fulton Business RadioX, and we help businesses that want to do their own podcast and use a podcast to really move the needle in their business, revenue needle in their business.

Richard Grove: [00:04:42] For sure. And I’m going to jump in and say to everybody who’s here today has their own podcast. So before we sign off, you guys will have to tell our listeners where to find you and listen to each of you. So, yeah. So, Tim.

Tim Fulton: [00:04:54] Well, first, Richard, I’m envious of Jonathan. I didn’t know that reporting from the beach was an option.

Richard Grove: [00:04:59] You could have done that. You see I know where you live. So, I was like, you want to – I didn’t give you the options. Yeah.

Tim Fulton: [00:05:04] But I’m very, very envious. And like Jonathan, I grew up as an entrepreneur. I was one of those kids and, as a young kid, cut neighbor’s yards and deliver newspapers and sell bumper stickers at school, just always looking for different ways of making money as an entrepreneur or I was just always interested in that and went off to school and got a business degree and one of the few kids in my class that didn’t go to work in New York on Wall Street or go to work for an insurance company or a bank. I thought, why? Why would anyone want to work for someone else? Crazy idea.

Tim Fulton: [00:05:38] So, I was an entrepreneur. I had a number of small businesses that I started and grew and sold, and then I’d start over again and did that for a number of years and then found that as much as I enjoyed that, I enjoyed just as much working with entrepreneurs as a coach, as a mentor, as a trainer. And that’s where I spent a good part of the last 20, 25 years. I’ve got a consulting practice, as you mentioned. It’s called Small Business Matters. I’ve got a mastermind group that I chair and meet every week. I’ve got about a dozen business owners that I work with as a coach, as an executive coach. And then, I also have a training program that I do for small business owners. I got the best of all worlds.

Richard Grove: [00:06:22] Yeah. That’s awesome. I’ve enjoyed some of your seminars for sure. It’s been super valuable. So anybody listening, especially if you’re in the Atlanta area, it’s cool to be there in person, but I think you can be there virtually, too. Yeah.

Tim Fulton: [00:06:36] Yeah, sure.

Richard Grove: [00:06:37] Awesome. Yeah, because we have kind of people all over the place, which is nice. So, yeah. So, I think to get things started and we can kind of, and we’ll just keep it conversational wherever we want to go with it. I kind of like to start with what you guys are seeing as challenges kind of at a macro level in the spaces you’re in and kind of, I guess, speak to specifically if you have any – you know, John, you were mentioning pricing – any specific expertise that you offer your clients that might be a good opportunity there. And again, we’ll just go back, Jonathan, if you don’t mind, we can start with you, and then we’ll just – we’ll go down and just kind of everybody jump in. And I would like for all of us to kind of interview each other if we happen to have any questions on anything or want to dive deeper on something.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:07:20] Well, I think I’ll jump in and start with something that’s happening on the macro level. But it’s always been happening for a long time. And I think all of you guys, my panelists, will agree with me on this, which is that if you want to be a leader, if you want to be an entrepreneur, you need to be a learner. If you’re not learning, if you’re not participating in seminars and workshops, you’re not reading books, you’re not listening to podcast, you’re not sitting in CEO peer groups, or you know, if you’re not exposed to other entrepreneurs, then you’re in the dark.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:07:56] If you’re a small business person and you’re trying to figure things out by yourself, I don’t know what size your business is, but if you’re under a million and you’re trying to figure things out by yourself, like there’s a lot of people like us who have gone before you that you need to get in front of. If you’re running a $100 million company and you’re not out talking to other CEOs of larger companies and understanding the challenges that they’re working through in leading and managing people, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:08:27] And so, you just want to set the stage with something that’s so basic. It’s not specific to inflation or pricing or labor shortages. It’s about learning. You will learn about all of those things if you’re in the company of peers and learning in – you’re in the right rooms learning.

Richard Grove: [00:08:45] Yeah. I totally agree. I mean, I can say firsthand, you know, it’s easy for me to just be a guy that’s stuck in a warehouse doing things the way I think they need to be done. And it can be paralyzing. And even if I’m doing the right thing, if I am not confident in that, I’m not moving as quickly as I could. Whereas if I had validation from a peer group of similar individuals, it would help me be a lot more effective and move a lot quicker. So that’s a really, really good point.

Tim Fulton: [00:09:11] And, I want to build on that because I think not only is there real importance in being a lifetime learner as a business owner, looking for opportunities to learn more and to read and attend workshops, it’s also very lonely as a small business owner. I know I felt that way. I didn’t always have someone I could talk to about not only my successes but a lot of failures. And I wish I had. I didn’t have a peer group other than family. And my family got tired very quickly of hearing about my business.

Tim Fulton: [00:09:43] And so, that’s why I’ve always felt the peer groups were really important, particularly for small business owners, for the opportunity to grow, to learn, additional layer of accountability for the business owner. So, I would encourage any of our listeners. If you’re not already involved in some type of peer group, a mastermind group, that would be a great piece of advice.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:10:07] And get a coach too, by the way, Tim, right? People should work. If you don’t have a coach, you’re not being coached, you don’t have a mentor. You know, you can have multiple mentors. You can have several coaches, you know. But definitely reach out, get some help. All right, John.

John Ray: [00:10:23] Yeah. Well, I love the theme here that you guys are on because – when we get around to pricing. I know everybody wants us to talk about pricing and inflation and all that kind of stuff, right? But, for me, pricing is a journey. In fact, the name of my podcast is Price Value Journey, The Price and Value Journey, and that’s name for a reason because you’re always trying to get to the right point. And I think it’s something elusive that you never feel like you quite get to.

Richard Grove: [00:10:55] Iterative over time and, yeah.

John Ray: [00:10:57] That’s right.

Richard Grove: [00:10:57] Micro adjustments, for sure.

John Ray: [00:10:58] Yeah. So, particularly in that part of the business, and I think it’s true in all areas of the business, is Jonathan and Tim have talked about. But in pricing, in particular, it’s true. There’s no like special recipe to get there. There’s a lot of science in it, behavioral science, but there’s an art to it as well. And you’re always tweaking, I think, your pricing and how to get to the right point.

Richard Grove: [00:11:27] Yeah. And I think I remember, Tim, your boot camp talking about just the impact of discounting and how like a 5% discount, like what that does to your margin total. And it sounds obvious when you say it, but I don’t think people think about it sometimes or they just – they go to price match their competitor, but they don’t think about what they’re actually taking off the table for themselves. Even, you know, maybe you convert at a little bit higher percentage, but you’re losing a whole lot more money. And I think it’s very comprehensive, like mental algorithm you have to have when you start looking at that.

Tim Fulton: [00:12:00] You know, John, I’d be curious to hear what you’re telling your clients now around price. I had an interesting conversation yesterday with a client. On one hand, he’s feeling a lot of inflationary pressure. His costs have gone up, his costs of labor have gone up, his cost of materials have gone up. He’s a manufacturer. And then, he said, “Tim, at the other hand, I’m not sure I can raise my prices because I feel like the economy is beginning to decelerate a little bit, starting to slow down a little bit. I’m not sure I can pass on these price increases.” What are you seeing and what are you telling your clients in that regard?

John Ray: [00:12:34] Well, what I tell people generally, and of course, it depends on what business you have. Right? Let’s put that caveat out there. But I think it’s the wrong message to talk about price, potential price increases as it relates to inflation. That’s the obvious way to go to say, “Hey, my costs have gone up and therefore I have to raise my price.” The problem with that is that your clients don’t care what your costs are. They could care less. What they care about is the value that your product or service offers them. They care about the benefits. So, you’ve got to couch your pricing relative to the value that the client receives.

John Ray: [00:13:23] Part of the problem that I’ve seen, Tim, and I’m interested in what you and Jonathan have to say about this, but what I’m seeing with a lot of clients is they haven’t tended to their pricing in years. Right? And so, this little bout of inflation or big bout of inflation, I guess, that we are experiencing right now has really hit them hard because they haven’t regularly tended to their pricing over time. And I think that’s a lesson is that you always have to be looking at that. And so, because they haven’t done that, they’re really caught flat-footed in a lot of ways, right?

John Ray: [00:14:03] But it’s really the customer is going to compare. And if you’ve got to give them the point of comparison and if you’re talking about your cost or you’re talking about the economy or some amorphous kind of concept as opposed to the value that you’re delivering to them, both tangible and intangible, that’s a mistake. And I think that’s where I’m trying to get the clients I work with is understanding what perceived customer value is and pricing relative to that.

Richard Grove: [00:14:34] Gotcha. One question I have for all three of you guys to just to help clarify for our audience. So, John, you were talking about your client mostly between the ears. So, probably consulting services, that sort of thing. Is that what your typical client, maybe not like a widget manufacturer like we would be, but somebody who’s doing something with kind of creating value out of thin air, so to speak, not making a thing?

John Ray: [00:14:58] Sure, sure. But, you know, and let’s talk specifically about makers, right, because the maker community is the listeners here. Right?

Richard Grove: [00:15:07] Yeah. Quite a few.

John Ray: [00:15:07] Yeah. So, a lot of makers have a mindset problem, I mean, and their problem is, is that they think who is going to pay that price. Right? That’s the mentality. And what they don’t realize is that pricing is something of a marketing signal. If your price is too low, your marketing signal is a signal of inferiority. You’re pricing higher, it’s a signal of quality. And I’d love to tell a story about that, if you don’t mind.

Richard Grove: [00:15:41] Go right ahead. Yeah.

John Ray: [00:15:43] So, real-life story. I’ve got a friend of mine, he is a craftsman. He’s retired now and he does wood crafts. He sells – one of his items that he sells are wooden-fret crosses. Well, if you’ve seen these things, they’re very intricate. They take hours to make. And he was out at a craft show and selling these crosses for $40. And he got to the end of the weekend, he hadn’t sold any. And so, he was – time was running out. He decided he was going to mark them down and get them out because if you don’t sell them, you have to take them home. Right?

John Ray: [00:16:23] So, he heard this voice in the booth next to him, “What are you doing?” And it was the lady that was running the booth next to him, and he said, “I’m going to mark these down so I can get rid of them.” And she said, “You’re out of your mind. Let me price them for you.” And he said, “Fine. What I’m doing is not working. So you go ahead.” She priced them at $125. And before he left that day in an hour, he sold three of them.

Richard Grove: [00:16:48] Wow.

John Ray: [00:16:49] He now prices these crosses at $200 plus. They’re probably still too low, but never bad.

Richard Grove: [00:16:56] Yeah.

John Ray: [00:16:57] And he routinely sells out every weekend. He takes these crosses out. So, that’s a real maker story right there. Right?

Richard Grove: [00:17:05] Yeah. I agree. I mean –

John Ray: [00:17:05] Yeah. And so, the problem is, is that when you’ve got a $40 wooden-fret cross that takes hours to make priced at $40, what signal are you sending? You’re sending a signal that this is made in some foreign country or something like that; this is not a handcrafted item by a real wood craftsman like it really is.

Richard Grove: [00:17:28] Exactly. Yeah. And, I mean, the other bit of that, too, is it’s much harder to raise your price than it is to lower your price once you’ve introduced it. You know, I see that with our own product and some smaller brands that I’ll help coach. There’s one, it’s called Wall Works. It’s like a plastic mason jar that goes into our system, works with any pegboard. And it’s like I’ve told him over and over, you can price this higher. Like, we have it priced twice what your retail is on our website and we’re selling a bunch of them. He’s talking talks with Walmart and Home Depot and that kind of thing. And I’m like, “You got to start high. You can always come back down.”

Richard Grove: [00:18:04] And the other thing I’ve learned is if you start low and you keep trying to go low, you’re basically, because of a competitor, you’re kind of commoditizing what you do and it’s going to just be a race to the bottom. Whereas if you hold and then you bring along the brand, the brand story kind of like what we try to do with our podcast and what we do with a lot of this is create the value there. Like, introduce your audience to yourself and introduce your audience to behind the scenes and that kind of thing. Then, you can then you’re not in this never-ending fistfight to the bottom. So, that’s kind of what we’ve learned. So, yeah. So, Jonathan, what’s your ideal client look like?

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:18:43] I mean, my experience is along the same lines, which is, I never have clients who are low-priced leaders because none of them are large enough to fight that battle down, down to the bottom. And I’m always dealing with clients who are selling on quality and selling on value. And so, let’s change the equation to identifying what is it that you do that’s different, that’s better, maybe that’s unique. You come up with what everyone classically calls a unique selling proposition or value proposition and sell the value and sell the service.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:19:20] I mean, for a lot of services, businesses, the only thing that customers know how to discriminate on is price. And so, you know, you have an HVAC repair person coming to your house and what one person is charging 89 for a service call, one’s charging 129. They don’t know the difference between the two. So, it’s incumbent upon the seller, the service company, to communicate that value and to sell that value. And I’m sure you guys all agree. I mean, probably most of us don’t work with companies that are low-price leaders and are trying to play that game. It’s just – you know, it’s too difficult.

John Ray: [00:20:01] Yeah. Can I – yeah, to underline your point, Jonathan, everybody thinks Walmart’s like the low-price leader and they’ve got the lowest – they can put everybody out of business. Right? If you look at Aldi, their cost structure is actually lower than Walmart’s. And so, what does that tell you? It underlines what you just said, Jonathan, that you cannot, as a small business, if Walmart can’t do it, then you cannot get your cost to a point where you can compete on lowest price. You’ll never be able to do that as a smaller business.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:20:39] Yeah. I mean, the data on Costco used to be that 85% or 75% of their profits came from their membership income because their margins are razor thin. So, you know, they’re selling an exclusive value-based service in the membership.

Richard Grove: [00:20:59] Yeah. What about you, Tim? What is your ideal client look like? And what kind of challenges are you seeing in the space?

Tim Fulton: [00:21:05] My clients, they’re all relatively small businesses, growth businesses, but they vary. I’ve got manufacturers. I’ve got resellers. I’ve got service businesses. What they share mostly is a desire, one for their company to grow and hand-in-hand to that is their own growth as well. But part of the biggest issue that I’m seeing now, and the pricing is not, because pricing is a big issue now, is around people, it’s around talent and it’s being able to secure talent. It’s being able to retain talent.

Tim Fulton: [00:21:38] It seems like every meeting I go into, it’s, you know, I’ve got a job opening. I can’t find anybody. I can’t keep anybody. You know, we’ve been through this great resignation where 40 million people left their jobs. And what’s interesting now is I find the labor market is beginning to open up just a little bit what I’m hearing. Some of those people that resigned are now saying, “Okay, maybe I should go back to work. I’ve run out of government money. I’ve run out of this. I’ve run out – now I’ve got to go back and make money.” So, it’s starting to reopen. But there’s still a lot of movement in the labor market. You know, I hear from clients that, you know, somebody was supposed to start on Monday and they didn’t show up, or they showed up and they left on Tuesday. It’s a crazy time.

Tim Fulton: [00:22:20] And then, we’ve got these decisions about businesses that went remote during COVID and now they’re thinking about bringing their employees back. And do we bring them all back? Do we do a hybrid approach? Do we – companies are now talking about four-day workweeks. That’s kind of the new thing that companies are talking about, should we go to a four-day workweek? So, it’s all these decisions around people that are kind of centered on, you know, how can we find the best people, how can we keep the best people. And if I had the answer to that, I’d be a wealthy man. But that’s what I’m hearing probably more often than anything with my clients.

Richard Grove: [00:22:55] Yeah. We’re seeing it firsthand. It’s just – and we’re in a strange sort of kind of holding pattern just to see, you know, kind of sitting in a defensive posture, kind of looking at what’s going to happen. I mean, Wayfair just laid off, I think, 5% of its workforce today or yesterday. And we track very closely with these, the Wayfair’s and Home Depot’s, because we’re selling hardware into that same space. So, yeah, just kind of waiting to see. I think we’re right-sized right now, but it’s like you want to – you know, you want to keep your good people. You don’t want to bring on extra people. I mean, it’s just such a hard – and it’s never been – in my 15 years doing this, it’s never been this difficult to try to predict, you know, what’s going to happen next, even what’s going to happen in the next quarter. You know, like it’s just crazy.

Richard Grove: [00:23:42] So, the volatility and how to read it and what to make of it is such a challenge. So, if you guys have any insight into that or want to chime in as to what you’re seeing or if you have any hunches, please be my guest,literally.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:23:58] So, look, I’m with Tim 100% labor shortages, those issues around hiring. Especially for growth companies, they’re always looking for people. And I think one of the secrets is to build a really great company on the inside. Because if you’re an attractive company, then employees who are looking at opportunities are going to choose yours over other companies, and you do that through culture and building initiatives internally through obviously you have to have a competitive and good compensation program and benefits as well.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:24:34] But, really, culture, challenges, learning opportunities, growth opportunities and you know, getting rid of the C players because they’re toxic to a work culture. So, that’s really, I think, so important. You know, growth sucks cash, I guess, is the kind of the phrase we use in my business. And it’s also challenging with people. So I don’t think there are any real secret answers out there. You know, we’re all, everyone’s struggling with the same dilemma.

Richard Grove: [00:25:12] Yeah.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:25:12] And it’s slowing things down somewhat in terms of delivery and supply chain.

John Ray: [00:25:17] Yeah. Well, maybe one tip, because I’m with Tim and Jonathan. I mean, there are no, like, magic answers here. But I was interviewing a senior executive at CareerBuilder the other day, and what she was saying was that one of the problems they see with employers is not – having qualifications that are too high. So, requiring a college degree when otherwise that potential candidate has all the qualifications necessary for that job. And I think employers need to relook at what they’re requiring for particular positions. Because if you’re looking for someone that’s customer-facing, for example, I mean, you’re looking for somebody that’s client-oriented, you’re looking for somebody that looks out for the business and there are other ways to measure that beyond a four-year college degree. Right? So that’s just one thing. She said that what she sees is that employers that are losing the talent race right now are inflexible when it comes to job requirements.

Richard Grove: [00:26:31] Yeah.

Tim Fulton: [00:26:32] And, John, to build on that, you know, as companies are looking for talent, I find too often they’re looking in the same places they’ve always looked. They’re fishing in the same pond that they’ve always put their pole and hook into. And the best example, I’ve got a client, and, Richard, you might have heard this story that he owns – he is a manufacturer here in Atlanta. His facility is down by Grant Park in Atlanta, been around for a long time, and he was sharing this story. He said, “Tim, I’ve got these three women who came to work for me recently and the best employees I’ve had in a long time.” I said, “Wow, that’s great.” He said, “It’s really interesting. They all live very close to each other. They get on the same bus every morning. They come to the facility. They work hard all day. They get they leave work. They get on the same bus. They go back to the same neighborhood.” I said, “Wow, that’s interesting.” He said, “Yeah, they’re in a federal penitentiary. They’re prisoners, but they’re on a work leave program and they get to get out five days a week to go work.” And he said, “I never would have thought of hiring, you know, federal prisoners to come work in my plant. But the market is such that I had to be willing to look at places I hadn’t looked before. And they’ve turned out to be my best employees.” So to me, that’s an example of we just, you know, John what is saying, we’ve got to be willing to question what we’ve done in the past and ask, is that going to work today or are we willing to change horses?

Richard Grove: [00:27:56] Yeah, exactly. Is it a workforce problem or is it my requirements problem, you know? And it’s easy to say I can’t find anybody. Well, what’s your algorithm for bringing them in? You know, let’s evaluate that for sure. Yeah.

Richard Grove: [00:28:08] So, kind of in an effort to bring value to any business owner listening or any business operator, I kind of want to go through – you know, I know as we’ve grown all control, we’ve gone through, quote, valleys of death where you hit these certain headwinds at certain revenue figures or employee counts. And I kind of want to start with what advice you guys would give to, say, a new entrepreneur just starting out, somebody who maybe they are seeing some headwinds at their own job and they’re looking to venture out? What are some things to keep in mind when you step into that space? How would you advise somebody? If anybody’s got any ideas.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:28:49] We might be a little bit too far away from that space of working with those, you know, 0 to 10 startup kind of situations.

Tim Fulton: [00:28:57] I’ll take a quick stab just thinking out loud. To somebody who’s relatively new starting their business is to organize your business as if you’re a much larger business. And that comes from Michael Gerber who wrote, you know, one of my favorite books, The E-Myth Revisited, and he recommends that, he says, too often, you know, we start off a business and we figure, okay, well, I’m just going to operate this business like I’m a start-up. You know, every day I’m a startup. Versus what he says, just imagine that you’re running $1,000,000, 5 million, $10 million company. Organize your business as if you were a much larger business. And then before you know it, you are a much larger business versus going into it with a mindset of, you know, I don’t have any money, I don’t have employees, I don’t even have customers. And, you know, so, I’m playing catch up from day one. So, that’d be my first piece of advice is just act and design your business as if you’re already a mature business from day one.

Richard Grove: [00:29:56] Yeah, and that goes to designing scalability into it for sure.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:30:00] Yeah, so, let’s talk about design scalability and to that concept, leveraging off of what Tim just said. So you build out an organization chart of what this company looks like at $1,000,000, or if you’re at a million out of $5 million. And you may be sitting in five different boxes on that organization chart, but circle the one that you routinely touch and that you’re willing to let go of next and make a plan in a month, in a quarter, in six months, whatever it is, to get out of that seat. Document in detail the responsibilities of the person who’s going to sit in that seat. Define and describe what are the attributes, the characteristics, the qualities, the technical skills that that person who’s going to sit in that seat needs to occupy, and start to envision, you know, hiring these people and start to think about what’s the next position after that. So, have sort of a picture of a one, maybe three-year plan of getting out of seats that you’re sitting in. And then, once you have other people sitting in those seats, have them do that same exercise.

Richard Grove: [00:31:16] Yeah, that’s really good actionable advice. That’s awesome.

John Ray: [00:31:20] Yeah. And most – talking about pricing, I mean, most entrepreneurs, when they start out, have a – sometimes it’s a fatal belief because it’s fatal to the business that if they keep a low price that will attract clients, that a low price does not attract clients. I mean, just like the example I gave earlier of my friend Hans with his wooden-fret crosses.

John Ray: [00:31:50] A price is a marketing signal and you’ve got to price relative to the value that clients perceive in your product or service. And you’ve got to have the courage to do that. And part of what gives you the courage to do that is to understand your customers. And it’s amazing to me how many people get in business and how little customer discovery they really do, right? I mean, how little interviewing of actual customers that they do. And so, I encourage people when they start out to spend as much time as they possibly can, actually talking to real-life customers, not trying to sell them anything, but trying to understand what their problems are.

Richard Grove: [00:32:32] Yeah, they move into it without any proof of concept. It’s an assumption that people will want this thing I’m offering, be it a service or a product.

John Ray: [00:32:39] Yeah. And, they spend so much time on product development without understanding what that customer really values and they go off on the wrong tangent, and then they inevitably mispriced their product or service.

Richard Grove: [00:32:57] Yeah.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:32:58] So, raising a higher price is the fastest way to increase your cash, in my opinion, in my experience. Running cash flow models of, let’s increase sales volume, let’s reduce gross margin, let’s do all these different things. The top line, the increase in price, a dollar and more, is probably going to have the biggest impact on most clients, in most companies on their cash.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:33:28] So, I think that next stage to get over that next valley of death, if I’m not sure, the listeners will understand what that concept means, but to get to that next plateau, so be it from the million to the 5, or from 5 to 10, or from one person to five people, from five people to ten people, is to accumulate cash. Accumulating cash and having that as a singular focus allows you to grow and do all these other things. People are focused on figuring out and fixing so many other problems in their business, but they don’t pay attention to the cash flow and they don’t understand even the profit and loss statement, the balance sheet and cash flow as a third financial factor. You need to become an expert and learn this stuff if you’re going to be an entrepreneur.

Richard Grove: [00:34:23] Absolutely. And yeah, Tim, I know you have a good insight on that. I mean, just the classes I’ve taken and the boot camps I’ve been in of yours. So yeah. What do you see at that same – and like you said, Jonathan, that’s good to put it. Maybe not valley of death, but a plateau, like you hit this kind of ceiling and you’re just – you’re spinning your wheels how do I get, you know, that 10 million, how do I get to 50? And what do you guys see? It sounds like cash is obviously a very big factor. But what can trigger that next kind of move up?

Richard Grove: [00:34:54] In some – most businesses, I know for us, as we’ve gone through, it’s like when we first started, it’s like, man, how are we going to do a quarter million dollars a year? How are we going to do a half-million dollars a year? How are we going to do it? And it’s like, but once you start breaking through stuff, you kind of sail to that next plateau and then you get there and it’s like, all right, what, what now, you know? So, if you have any insight into that is. Sure. Yeah.

Tim Fulton: [00:35:18] You know, there’s been a lot of research that’s been done on business growth and barriers to growth. And one thing that I’ve seen and seen and the science says this, so to speak, is that only about 4% of businesses ever get to $1,000,000 in revenue. And I remember when I first saw that, I thought, wow, I’m surprised by that. Only 4% of businesses ever get past $1,000,000 in annual revenue. And the biggest barrier to growth at that level, it’s a leadership issue and it’s the inability of the founder of the business to let go.

Tim Fulton: [00:35:52] Because, you know, when I start my own business, I’m doing everything, right? I’m wearing all the hats. I’m the CFO, the CMO, the COO. I’ve got all the C hats on. And I can do that for a while, you know, as a new business. But at some point, I’ve got to be willing to let go. I’ve got to be willing to delegate. And I find for many new business owners, that’s very hard because no one can ever do it as well as I can. You know, nobody can ever sell like I can sell. Nobody can ever do the books like I can do the books. And so, I’m reluctant to hire that first salesperson. I’m reluctant to hire my first accountant, bring in a COO to handle day-to-day operations of the business. So, it’s my unwillingness to let go to delegate. It gets in the way oftentimes of businesses being able to break that million-dollar barrier and then work towards even higher levels of revenue.

Richard Grove: [00:36:44] Yeah. And I mean, perfect for Organization Conversation. I mean, it can – a lot of things boil down to organization and the inability to do that and like you say, let go. And, Jonathan, that’s like to your point about literally drawing out the roles and picking what you’re touching the most or what you want to touch the most and what you’re willing to let go. That’s a great, great spot to start.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:37:04] And you need to get the right people on your team and in the right seats and doing the right things and getting them doing the right things right. I know that’s a mouthful. But it’s about teaching them, it’s about first getting the most effective people and then about teaching them to be efficient. And, you know, I think probably everyone would agree, that’s the ultimate competitive advantage, is having the right people. The right people.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:37:30] I mean, I remember going to business school, and this was many years ago, and they’d say the same thing over and over again that an A team with a C concept would outperform a C team with an A concept. And it was all about the people. So, it’s not about – it’s the right people will figure this all out, basically.

Richard Grove: [00:37:55] Yeah. All very good. Well, John?

John Ray: [00:37:58] Yeah. I was just going to add to what Tim said. You know, the other thing, when entrepreneurs start out, they get cheap about getting an accountant from the very beginning, getting a great attorney, business attorney from the very beginning. I mean, they go, you know, get legal agreements, you know, off the Internet. I mean, I have seen so many horror stories from that. And great, great advisors, great coaches, mentors, they’re worth their weight in gold. I mean, because if you get the right people that will help you get your business set up and then advise you along the way, you’ll avoid so many mistakes that otherwise you’re almost destined to make because you’ve tried to do it yourself and you think you can keep your way out of, you know, growing your business and it will come back to bite you.

Richard Grove: [00:38:58] Yeah. Well, that kind of is a good segue to I wanted to ask you guys about. You know, we’re a multigenerational family business. Jonathan, you come from a multigenerational family business. What do you guys see? Because I know firsthand that that presents different challenges than if you’re just a solo entrepreneur calling all your shots and doing whatever you want and, you know, 100% equity is yours. That’s a different path. What – I guess speaking to – and again, I feel like there’s a lot of successful private businesses become family businesses just by function of, “Hey, you know, cousin over here needs a job. Can you bring him on?” And you start to accumulate family on your team, which is great, but it does have inherited challenges. And what are your, guys, experience personally or with your clients when it comes to family business?

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:39:49] Well, I think you need to start setting up the organization so that the family has a meeting on a regular basis, especially when it’s multigenerational. I would recommend probably a quarterly or semi-annual meeting where you talk about principles and values and goals, where there’s an understanding of ownership. You also need to have separate from a leadership team meeting, an ownership team meeting, and those are probably the people that are actively involved in owning the business. They’re kind of probably like the board or the executive team.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:40:32] And then, if there are family debates or issues or squabbles, like those should be done in a different room. They should be done outside of the leadership team meetings, outside of the board meetings. They should be done in a separate situation and environment. It’s really important to kind of create that structure where the right conversations are happening in the right rooms because otherwise you can create a pretty toxic work culture and, you know, family and siblings can get – it can get ugly, you know. Otherwise, if it does get ugly, then you’ve got like the HBO’s TV show Succession happening and, you know, you want to avoid that.

Richard Grove: [00:41:17] Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate the insight for sure into, like, having the self-awareness both individually and as a business to wear the different hat. Like, I have my business hat on at this table with my family and then we can go fight about, you know, where we’re having, you know, grandmother’s birthday dinner outside. You know what I mean? Like, don’t bring this – pretend like you’re not family when you’re having the business conversation, you know.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:41:45] Call each other by first names actually. Don’t say mom and dad.

Richard Grove: [00:41:49] Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

John Ray: [00:41:51] Yeah. There you go. You know, I knew of a family who did a family calendar every year and so they had the best family pictures. And the slogan of the calendar every year was we put the fun in dysfunction. Well, the problem with that is, you know, every family has its dysfunction. Right? But you can’t bring dysfunction to the business, I mean, to your points, guys. You’ve got to create culture from the very beginning. I think, Jonathan, you said that earlier, but that’s got to be the foundation of what you build in a business like that.

Richard Grove: [00:42:30] Yeah.

Tim Fulton: [00:42:31] I wrote an article for my newsletter a couple of years ago, and the title of the article was, Is Your Company The Red Sox or The Sopranos? Because I find those are very different cultures, family culture and a team culture. And I think the decision a business owner has to make at some point is which one do I want? Do I want to have a family culture where we’re all doing different jobs, we’re all pitching in? There’s not a lot of accountability. Or do I want a team culture where there’s a high level of accountability and expectations around performance? I’ll have business owners sometimes when we talk about values and let’s say, well, one of our values is that we’re like family. And I think you never visited my family because that’s not the family culture that you want for your business.

Richard Grove: [00:43:22] Yeah.

Tim Fulton: [00:43:22] So, I think companies have to be – I find family businesses tend to be extremely resilient. So in difficult times, like, you know, maybe where we are now with a declining economy, you know, family businesses can be highly resilient because, you know, family members are going to go the extra mile for each other. They’re going to do what it takes to keep the business going. And yet, on the flip side, if I’m wanting to grow a really fast-growing company based on employee professional performance and getting the best people in the right positions, you know, family business may not be the right structure for that business. So, I think the business owner has to be very careful how, what type of culture they want for their business.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:44:01] And, Richard, I think to speak to I don’t know what the challenges are within your own family business, but I work with mostly rising gen, next-gen leaders. And so, they may not yet be owners in that business, but they have an emotional ownership. Right? And they may want to play more like the Red Sox and have a team-based culture. And the parent, typically it’s a father, but it might be a mother and father, they might be typically wanting more of a family-based kind of a culture. And so, there’s that transition that needs to be managed.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:44:38] I find that I play oftentimes in the middle between those two types of those transitions where we’re letting go at the older generation level to the younger generation and to the ways of doing things. And, you know, it takes time. Not everyone’s willing to let go or transfer equity as soon as maybe it could or should. Sometimes let go of people, too. It’s difficult. You know, it’s – you have – if your father hired someone who’s been working in the company for 40 years and you’ve now moved him into six different positions and it’s really not that good of a fit and now they’re not even really a good core value fit, I mean, it’s a difficult situation with that person. I’ve seen it too many times.

Richard Grove: [00:45:26] And you bring up a good point to just kind of getting everybody on the same page because everybody, you know, what do you want for the business? Well, we want it to be successful. We want it to be good. We want it to grow. Like, what does that mean? Like literally, what do those words mean to you? You know, like what – and I think defining that is so important. And we see that. What is – what does success look like to you? Does it look like the whole family working there or does it look like you’re two extra revenue over the course of a couple of years? You know, so, definitely getting that defined and getting everybody on the same page so that decisions can be made, hard decisions can be made to take those next steps, for sure.

Richard Grove: [00:46:04] So, you guys can, if you got any more to add to that, feel free to. But also would like to jump to what – if you have any advice, what would you say to, say, the business owner or the family that was looking to exit the business? What are things to keep in mind if you’re building – say you’re not building a multigenerational business, but you’re building something to sell? What would you say to somebody kind of going down that path if you’ve seen any? Because the hard part is kind of like you were saying, Tim, like you’ve got to do – a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff you, you just kind of groupthink into. And you are like, wait a minute, I don’t know if – I don’t know where the fork in the road was back there, but I don’t think I like the path I’m on. So, I guess before you get down a path too far, if you have any advice for that person.

Tim Fulton: [00:46:54] Yes. Three things come to mind for me, Richard, in that position. One is start early. Most experts will tell you that it takes 3 to 5 years to get your business ready for exit, whether it’s a sale or whatever the case might be. And too many times, someone decides they want to exit their business and they expect within six months to find a buyer and get at it, it just rarely happens that way. So, number one, start early.

Tim Fulton: [00:47:23] Number two, get good help. Get someone like Jonathan, who, if it’s a family business, who works with family businesses, because that’s a whole different animal when it comes to exiting the business and putting together a plan for that exit, for that transition. So, don’t be afraid to get help, to find good consultants.

Tim Fulton: [00:47:41] And I guess the other thing is about timing, and it’s very hard to time an exit in terms of the economy. The economy is up, the economy is going down, but at least be mindful that ideally, you want to exit your business when the economy is on an upswing versus a downswing, and knowing that the economy usually changes every three to five years. So, let’s be mindful of the macroeconomic factors that might impact a successful exit and try to try to plan accordingly.

Richard Grove: [00:48:07] Yeah, that’s really good advice. Like riding the wave, wait till the swell comes back kind of thing. Yeah.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:48:13] Also, be really clear about your intentions. I wrote a blog a few years back that I think was titled, and I get a lot of hits on it was, 75% of owners regret selling their business a year after they sell the business. So be really clear about like, what is your motivation? Are you being – are you burnt out and are you feeling like you’re being pushed out of this thing, you just got to get out of this thing, or are you being pulled to something else? You want to travel. You want to spend time with your spouse. You have another business you want to start. I mean, be really clear about what your motivations are here.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:48:50] And then ask yourself, you know, have I done everything I can to make this the most sellable business? Have I grown it to the size that makes it more saleable? We all know that larger businesses sell at larger multiples because that’s just the fact, you know. Have I built a business that’s got some kind of recurring revenue stream that makes it more valuable because there’s more trust in what someone’s buying, that it’s going to continue? Have I built a business that’s independent of any one vendor or any few vendors or any one customer or a few customers? I mean, so if there’s too much concentration or there’s too much risk there.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:49:35] So, you know, what have you done to really dress up your business and make it the most sellable? And do you have – like, do you have a good team that will run the business once you’ve left? You know, unless it’s at a size where a strategic buyer is just looking, you know, looking forward and doesn’t really care who the people are. But often as you need to think about, is there a second in command that can run this business for small companies? So, those are a few thoughts, things, they need to think about.

John Ray: [00:50:08] Yeah. Just adding to that, I think one particular thing that’s really important is, particularly as you get to a certain size, I mean most of the buyers that are certain size in terms of just numbers are going to be financial buyers. So, we’re talking about private equity funds, roll-ups, what have you. The first thing they’re going to ask for is financials. That’s the first thing they’re going to ask for. So, your financials need to be impeccable. They need to look fantastic.

John Ray: [00:50:43] If you can afford to get an audit, that’s probably a great idea to get an audit as soon as you can do that. And because when you put that on the table, these are all financial guys with sharp pencils. And what they’re going to do is they’re going to tear it apart and they’re going to look for ways to devalue your business based on the errors or what they see that’s not quite, doesn’t quite look right. And so, getting those financials right before you even enter the process is really, really important.

John Ray: [00:51:23] And the other thing I would say is, talking about what Tim said about timing, you’ve got to realize that somebody’s buying the business, they’re looking to grow the business and you’ve got to give them – you’ve got to leave something on the table for them. I mean, you cannot –

Richard Grove: [00:51:39] That’s a really a good point. Yeah.

John Ray: [00:51:41] You cannot maximize –

Richard Grove: [00:51:43] I’ve got it as good as it can be.

John Ray: [00:51:45] That’s right.

Richard Grove: [00:51:45] Here you go.

John Ray: [00:51:46] Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And expecting somebody to pay top dollar for a business like that is just, it’s ludicrous, right? So, you’ve got to have the business in place where it’s probably a little uncomfortable to sell because you think I’m leaving money on the table. But what you’re doing is you’re ensuring by positioning your business that way, that you’re selling at a better multiple.

Richard Grove: [00:52:12] Yeah. That’s a really good point. Leave – if there’s no carrot on a stick, you know, what are you doing? So, absolutely.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:52:19] Yeah. I want to say something about as I was thinking about the financial statements. It’s like, you know, reading a financial statement is like reading a good book. If the first line is, like, really captivating, it’ll get your attention. So, make sure you’re showing, like, a healthy amount of cash on that first line on that balance sheet, because then it’s more interesting to the reader to want to dig a little deeper, you know. So, I mean, there’s obviously a lot of things you could do to have healthy financial statements, but to have a paltry amount of money in your cash position, never a good idea. And your December 31st year-end statements with a healthy cash balance.

Richard Grove: [00:52:57] Gotcha. That’s yeah, very good advice. Oh, come on in.

Tim Fulton: [00:53:02] Just one more quick thing, Richard. Something that I suggest to my clients, if they’re thinking about wanting to exit, sell their business is I’d say, I’d tell them, take a month off, because that does two things. One, many of my clients, you know, serial entrepreneurs have never taken a week off, more or less a month. And so, it’s really hard for them to imagine, how could I take a month off? But when they do take a month off, they find one or two things. Either they enjoy that time off, they enjoy time with their wife and time with their family, timely time traveling, or they’re miserable. And this goes back to what Jonathan was saying that a lot of times people sell their business and they’re miserable afterwards because they don’t know what to do. They’ve not planned on the next step in their lives.

Tim Fulton: [00:53:43] So, for one, it’s a good experiment for the seller to take a month off and see what that’s like. On the flip side, I don’t think there’s anything healthier for a business than the business owner being gone for a month because for that to happen, the business now needs to work, has to work independently of that business owner, and many small businesses aren’t able to operate that way. And yet to a buyer, that’s one of the most important things that they’re looking at, is that if I’m buying John’s business, can this business run without John? And one test of that is to be able to say, you know what, I take a month off and the business ran beautifully. So, you know, take a month off. It’s a good, good test for the owner. It’s a good test of the business.

Richard Grove: [00:54:23] Awesome.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:54:24] You might discover that if you’re half retired, it’s not a bad business to own. It spits out a lot of cash. You can do a lot of traveling. You have a place to go to get away from your spouse because they don’t want to see you all the time because they’re not used to having you around the house anymore. So, it’s a good thing.

John Ray: [00:54:41] You might actually find that there are a few areas of the business that run better without you being around mucking it up. Right?

Richard Grove: [00:54:46] Exactly. Yeah. They’re like, “Thank God he left for a little bit. Now, we can fix all this.” So yeah, that’s a perfect segue way actually into kind of – you know, you guys, you’ve been in industry to the point where now you’re advisors and coaches yourself. What would you – the advice you’ve already given is fantastic. But what advice would you give that entrepreneur who just – it’s kind of like, you know, you’re a type A personality, you’re always getting after it, you’re always taking in business podcasts, you’re reading books, that kind of thing. How do you yourself kind of let go and how do you balance that professional side versus what your hobbies and interests are and how do you know when somebody you’re advising, maybe they’re burnout and they don’t even know it? Like, what are some signs and some remedies to that mind that just can’t stop? If anybody’s got any.

Richard Grove: [00:55:42] I know, I personally enjoy cycling and I know, and running, and I can tell if I look like on my Strava, which is like the app for tracking it, if I haven’t logged anything for a couple of weeks, like I’m mentally in a different place than I am before. And it’s like this kind of – that’s a reset for me where I say, okay, I need to take a step back and maybe shut this down for a little bit and get outside and do this other completely different thing with a completely different group of people that takes me away from it.

Jonathan Goldhill: [00:56:16] Well, Richard, I think my lifestyle and my website have always had lots of images of cyclists, hikers, surfers. So, I think I tend to attract people as clients who are seeing that life balance is really important. Because I’ve made a lifetime decision around that myself. I lost my father when I was two. He was 35. He had a second massive coronary. You know, he was already accomplished. He had a Yale Law degree, was in the family business. I never was going to die before I was 35. So, I have made a conscious effort of kind of leading that kind of a lifestyle. And so, I think I attract people who enjoy those type, that type of a lifestyle. I mean, you know, Tim might have a different experience and can speak more to the hard-driving entrepreneur, but, like, you got to take a break. Otherwise, you’re going to burn yourself out.

Richard Grove: [00:57:22] Absolutely.

Tim Fulton: [00:57:23] And to add to that, I think what many business owners forget or overlook is that they’re a role model for their employees. And so, if they’re working 100 hours a week and not putting time in the family, not enjoying life outside of business, it’s very likely that that becomes the organizational culture. And now, their employees are doing the same thing. And so, they’re not setting a good example. You know, they’re telling their employees, “Oh, you need to take some time off, take a vacation.” And if they’re not doing that, it’s unlikely that they’re – particularly their direct reports are going to do that as well. So, they’ve got to set a good example for other people. Even though they may not be comfortable wanting to take time off, at the very least, they need to set the example for their people.

Richard Grove: [00:58:08] Yeah. And you could speak to what you do with your time off. I know you’ve done some pretty cool walks.

Tim Fulton: [00:58:13] Yeah, I know. I’ve been very fortunate in taking the time off. I’ve walked the El Camino in Spain two different times. Both of those were one-month walks. And last year I went to Portugal and did something very similar and just found for me, it’s great to be able to get away, to disconnect, to think in a deeper way than I’m accustomed to when I’m working crazy hours here. And amazingly, my clients got along just fine when I was gone.

Richard Grove: [00:58:41] Yeah, you probably came back, I mean, better than when you left, for sure. I mean, I’ve read all kinds of stuff about, this is just on a tangent, but just how good walking is for humans. Just through millennia of walking, it’s just crazy. Like biologically, it’s good for business.

John Ray: [00:58:57] Well, I want to add something Tim said. He talked about deep thinking. See, I think folks that don’t do this, take that time off and get away and take a hiatus, a sabbatical, whatever you want to call it, don’t understand the value of that to the business because you come back from that with all sorts of refreshed spirit, lots of ideas, lots of different ways to look at the business that you would never have had if you just stayed at the desk, hunched over with your head down. And I think there’s just a tremendous value to the business.

John Ray: [00:59:41] So, if you really care about the business, you don’t stay in it 12 months, 365. You don’t. You get away, you create. And frankly, folks, the concept is as old as Sabbath. I mean, this is like a –

Richard Grove: [00:59:58] Yeah.

John Ray: [00:59:59] This is like thousand-year concepts, right, I mean, that you get away, you create space and you come back refreshed and better for it.

Richard Grove: [01:00:07] Absolutely. It’s good for the business to be away from the business. I mean, that’s – absolutely.

John Ray: [01:00:12] Yeah.

Richard Grove: [01:00:13] Well, cool guys, I don’t want to take up too much of your time. I want to be respectful of that. But I also don’t want to leave any stone uncovered that we haven’t talked about, you guys want to get to. Is there anything – we’re going to -when we sign off, we’re going to go through and how our audience can find you guys, but any topic or anything you guys want to throw out there that we haven’t touched on today?

Tim Fulton: [01:00:34] We’ve covered a lot of ground.

Richard Grove: [01:00:35] I think it’s good. I mean, I definitely you know, if I was listening, I think there’s a lot of – I’m going to – there’s stuff I’m going to take away from it for sure. And I’ve had conversations with you guys all before. So it’s like, you know, I’ve learned new things today myself. So, yeah, well, anything Jonathan you can think of on your end?

Jonathan Goldhill: [01:00:52] No, I’m needing to wrap up for a phone call that’s about to come in. But I would say that, you know, the importance of clarity breaks and taking those so important, you might find some clarity breaks from listening to podcasts like this. You get them from being in a peer group, from working with a coach, a mentor, from reading a book, from taking a walk, you know, taking a hike, clearing your brain out with, you know, a long bike ride or a swim. So, important to have that so you can come back with a different perspective.

Richard Grove: [01:01:25] Absolutely. Well, that – we’ll wrap it up on that, guys. We’ll go back down the line, Jonathan, one more time. If you want to tell our audience where they can find you, where they can get your books, where they can listen to your podcast, you got the floor.

Jonathan Goldhill: [01:01:38] Yeah, great. You can find me at thegoldhillgroup.com, pretty easy to spell. Goldhill Group. The, GoldHill Group. My book and podcast have the same title. It’s called Disruptive Successor. The book is A Guide to Driving Growth in Your Family Business. And the podcast is for next-generation leaders, folks like yourself, Richard, who are scaling the family business.

Richard Grove: [01:02:01] Awesome. Thank you. John?

John Ray: [01:02:03] So, my website is johnray.co. You can find me there and connect with me there. I do a lot of posting on pricing on LinkedIn. So, you can connect with me on LinkedIn, John Ray. That’s R-A-Y. John Ray. One is my handle on LinkedIn and my podcast is The Price and Value Journey and you can find that at pricevaluejourney.com or on your favorite app.

Richard Grove: [01:02:30] Awesome. And Tim.

Tim Fulton: [01:02:32] Richard, first I want to thank you for having us on today. This has been great. My website is smallbusinessmattersonline.com. I have a monthly newsletter. It’s free of charge and any of your listeners can subscribe to. I also have a podcast, Small Business Matters Podcast, and a couple of books on Amazon, so you can check those out as well.

Richard Grove: [01:02:53] Awesome. Well, thanks again, guys. I really enjoyed it. I’m sure our audience has as well. And yeah, look forward to chatting with all you guys again soon.

Jonathan Goldhill: [01:03:02] Thank you.

Outro: [01:03:03] Thank you for joining us. Organization Conversation is brought to you by Wall Control, a family-owned and operated producer of best in class wall-mounted organizers for your home or business, made right here in the U.S.A. To learn more, go to wallcontrol.com.

 

BRX Pro Tip: The Best Marketing is Results

May 26, 2022 by angishields

BRX-Banner

BRX Pro Tip: The Best Marketing is Results

Stone Payton: [00:00:00] Welcome back to BRX Pro Tips. Stone Payton and Lee Kantor here with you. Lee, in terms of marketing, really, the best marketing is results, isn’t it?

Lee Kantor: [00:00:12] Right. That is the best way to kind of sell your next client is to deliver results for your current client. So, that’s really where you should be investing your marketing time dollars and energy is through just serving the heck out of your client, because the beauty of our business at Business RadioX is we publish all of our work. All of our clients are out there for the world to see. They can see that if a client has been with us for years, all of their work is there. They can see that the list of all the shows that we have in the studios. It’s all there for the public to see. They can see that all these people are benefiting from being part of the Business RadioX network. So, the more successful you are for your clients, the more successful you’re going to be as a studio partner or a show host because you’re going to have a lot of evidence that says that your work matters and that you’re delivering results for your clients.

John Ainsworth With Data Driven Marketing

May 20, 2022 by Jacob Lapera

DataDrivenMarketing

JohnJohn Ainsworth is the CEO and founder of Data Driven Marketing. They help online course creators increase revenue by 4.86x on average.

With 20 years of experience in building funnels and a degree in Mathematics, John has conducted extensive data analysis of hundreds of millions dollars of online business to create the field of Strategic Funnel Optimisation.

Data Driven Marketing has proven this process by helping dozens of online course creators 2x – 5x their revenue, and directly drives several million a year in revenue.

He’s a guest lecturer at Greenwich Business school and has been featured on Forbes.

Connect with John on Facebook and LinkedIn.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • Businesses focus on content and driving traffic and most miss a crucial element of funnel optimization that makes all that work worthwhile
  • Three key funnel optimization strategies
  • Increase revenue per sale
  • Increase percentage of email subscribers who buy each month
  • Increase email subscribers

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:04] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for high velocity radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:13] Lee Kantor here, another episode of High Velocity Radio, and this is going to be a good one. Today on the show we have John Ainsworth and he is with data driven marketing. Welcome, John.

John Ainsworth: [00:00:25] Thank you very much. Glad to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:27] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about data driven marketing. How are you serving folks?

John Ainsworth: [00:00:33] What we do is we work with course creators who’ve already built an audience online that might be SEO traffic or a YouTube audience, something like that. And we help them convert people from in their audience to buying their courses.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] So how did you get into this line of work? What drew you to this crowd?

John Ainsworth: [00:00:51] I used to work in fitness marketing, and what we found was that we’d fill up all of our clients so we’d have kickboxing clubs or gyms or yoga classes and we’d get them full and they wouldn’t need us anymore. So I started looking. It kind of sucked because they don’t need you. They don’t pay you anymore. So I started looking for clients who would have unlimited capacity. So if we did an amazing job, we couldn’t fill them up when we found course creators. We’re just great to work with. They’re experts in their field. They love to share. They tend to have built up an audience through years of sharing free content, but they’re no good at the marketing funnel email marketing side of it, so they’re not making as much money as they deserve.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:29] So at what stage of a course creator do you typically work with? Is it somebody that maybe just left the corporate world and heard about this course creation kind of idea and said, Hey, I can do that? And I have an audience of, you know, me and my wife and, you know, my friends and I want to do this. Is that a prospect for you or is it somebody who’s already kind of been doing this for a minute?

John Ainsworth: [00:01:53] Yeah, someone has been doing it for a little while. There’s definitely a lot of people out there who work with people who are getting started. And there’s some great ones we don’t. We work with people who tend to have been doing it for a few years. They’ve been sharing videos every day, every week on YouTube, or they’ve been writing blog posts for years trying to build up their audience, and they’ve started making courses as well. And that’s the kind of point that someone will tend to be a good fit for us.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:15] And then what audience size is that point? Is it 100? Is it a thousand? Is a 10,000?

John Ainsworth: [00:02:21] We need someone to have an email list size of like ten or 20,000 to be a really good kind of fit to work with us. Some of our clients have got a bit less than that. Some of them have got hundreds of thousands. So in order to get that, they have to have an audience size effects on their website if maybe like 30,000 visitors a month, if it’s a YouTube channel, maybe they’ve got a few hundred thousand views a month. That kind of scale is the kind of people we work with.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:48] Now, do you have any advice for the people who aren’t ready for you yet but would like to be? Is there some things they could be doing to build to get to that level?

John Ainsworth: [00:02:58] I am not an expert in building an audience, but I do know that it’s a lot of work along a long, kind of hard process. One of the things I do know about it that’s a really big deal is choose really carefully what medium you’re going to use, you know? Do you like being seen? Do you like being on camera? In which case YouTube could be fantastic? Or do you hate it? In which case definitely don’t do that. And maybe you should be better off with a podcast, or maybe you love to write, or you really like that process of hiring writers, in which case blogging could be great. So if you want to get into a SEO side of things, build up an authority site, then go to Authority Hacker. They’ve got a great course about it. So like there’s different places to kind of start based on what style is going to fit for you.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:44] Now, early in your career, you mentioned you were able to fill up fitness centers. Did they already have an audience that you were able to just maximize or were you creating this filling them up from scratch?

John Ainsworth: [00:03:55] Yeah, there we were, filling out from scratch. So they already had great classes, but they didn’t have any kind of an audience, really. So what we do is Facebook ads and when you’re running a local business like an actual in-person, honest to God, somebody turns up in a specific place and something happens kind of business. Facebook ads in that area we found to be incredibly effective. So we could manage to fill up a kickboxing club, for example, with using Facebook ads, pointing people to make an inquiry tend to be for their kids. After they made an inquiry, it was somebody would text them and it tended to be in the evening because that was the time when the mums were around to look at what time their kids could do. Then they would get them to come in for a free session and then from there they would sign up. So there it was like we’re creating the whole thing from scratch. But it’s. It’s more expensive nowadays with Facebook ads, especially for selling courses.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:48] And a lot of these courses aren’t looking for a hyperlocal solution. They’re looking for a kind of worldwide solution.

John Ainsworth: [00:04:55] Absolutely. 100%. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:57] So then the strategies have to obviously be different.

John Ainsworth: [00:05:00] Yeah. Yeah. All the principles in marketing always stay the same, but the actual strategies, the tactics, the details of it vary enormously depending on when it is. You know, ten years ago it was different to what it’s like now. And if you’re doing it for courses, it’s completely different if you’re doing it for an in-person business. All of those things vary enormously.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:17] So now when this established course creator is out there right now and then maybe like you said, they’re great at creating courses and they have really compelling information that more and more people should be paying attention to. What’s the pain they’re having? Do they even know they’re having a pain if things seem to be progressing, are they just or is this one of those situations where they could be doing better if they knew some things and they don’t have to settle for maybe the slow kind of growth that they’re experiencing?

John Ainsworth: [00:05:46] Yeah, exactly. So a lot of these people, they don’t realize that this work around funnels and email marketing is the thing that they they could be doing that would make this enormous difference. What they what they do realize is they’re not making as much money as they feel like they should be doing. They feel like something’s not quite right. They tend to have heard of this funnel idea and they know that email marketing is the thing that you probably should do, but they don’t really get how it would work. So what we’re tending to do with these people is show them this is the potential of what you could have. And it’s it’s not generally something in our market that people are searching for. We’re kind of having to explain to them this is the possibility, this is where you could get to.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:24] So that first the first must have in these situations or you have to have an email list at with whether you’re kind of wringing out as much juice from it as possible, you have to have it. And you’re feeling that they’re kind of under utilizing it.

John Ainsworth: [00:06:42] 100%, 100% until utilizing it. Yeah. And generally so we need people to have an email list. We will even help them to build it if they’ve got a big enough audience. So if they’ve got, let’s say, a YouTube channel with a few hundred thousand views a month but they’ve never built an email list will help them with that part. But the email list is where you make the money from these things. That’s where the money’s in the list. And this is a phrase that’s been around for a long time, but not everybody really understands how true it is. And so what most people do is if they even if they have a list, is they will send out a promotion two or three times a year. And when they do, they have a big spike in sales. But they worry that if they do that too often, then they’re going to have their email subscribers unsubscribe, be annoyed and not want to hear from them again. And so the trick is how do you make great email promotions that you can send out that people love to receive, that contain useful content, that are a fabulous, a helpful people like getting them and make sales at the same time. And if you can do that, then you can send up these promotions much more often and you can make a lot more money from your business.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:43] So you help them kind of create that kind of content, or you teach them how they do it themselves.

John Ainsworth: [00:07:51] Yeah, we do both. So we, we work on, we have a group coaching program where we, it’s like a done with you service where we will teach people how to do it and then they have a go at it. They do their best shot, we review it, we give them feedback, help them to improve. And then we also have a service where for bigger businesses, generally, people who are like $1,000,000 a year or something where we will actually do the whole service for them, we’ll write the emails, we’ll write the sales pages, we’ll set up the automation, all of those kinds of things on their behalf.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:20] And like, what’s your kind of personal best success story in terms of they were at X and then we got involved and they were at X plus.

John Ainsworth: [00:08:32] So a couple that come to mind, we had somebody recently who was making a few thousand a month from her co sales, but she had already had a big audience and had a big email list but wasn’t using it. And we got her up to an average of about $60,000 a month within, I guess, four months, something along those kind of lines. And we’ve had somebody else who was doing maybe 20,000 a month and we got them up to 170,000. So the increases are quite fun. You know, it’s quite a dramatic increase from what people are at before.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:03] So it’s just a matter sometimes of just kind of leveraging what you already have. Like you already have what you need. You’re just not communicating in an effective manner to get the most out of it.

John Ainsworth: [00:09:15] Yeah. If you’ve already spent years building an audience, you’ve built trust with them, you’ve made great courses, but you’re just not doing this fundamental bit in the middle of getting the people from your audience into your email list. Get the email list too, by offering them other things that they might want to buy as well. Then you’re leaving most of the money on the table. So those people and there’s lots of them out there, have already done a vast amount of the work, but they just aren’t they aren’t making the most of it.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:39] Now are they’re in this kind of funnel strategies, are there. Kind of some things you can teach the audience right now, or there are some must do’s. Is there some low hanging fruit that anybody could do right now to kind of maximize the funnel that they already have at their disposal?

John Ainsworth: [00:09:56] 100%, absolutely. And this is true. Whether somebody is in e commerce or the selling courses or they’re doing a software business, it even works to a certain extent in service businesses, too. And that’s to use two different tactics called order bumps and upsells. And I’m going to talk about it from a course point of view, but you can kind of translate this to work for other other areas. So the order bump is a checkout page thing. So someone’s on the checkout page, they’re putting their credit card details in. And at that stage you have a tick box on that page where someone can get something additional. So if you’re selling somebody a course, a good one to have is an additional workbook that goes with the course. So let’s say your course is $99. The workbook might be $37 something along those kinds of lines. And about 30 to 60% of people will buy the order bump if you do it right, which adds about another 10 to 20% revenue. To that sale. And you can do this across all of your. All of your different products and therefore you increase revenue of the whole business by 10 to 20% just from this one tactic, which is crazy, but it’s true, and virtually nobody does this. It’s built into almost all checkout software, but nobody uses it.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:11] And that. And so this is just something it’s just literally one line of text.

John Ainsworth: [00:11:16] Yeah. Like it might be three sentences, you know, probably three sentences about the most you would need here. And what you’re just saying is this work, would you like to get the workbook that goes with this? It is on discount right now, 40% off if you buy it as a bundle with the with the course that you’re getting. Only time you can buy it at this price. Like that’s not exact copy, but like that’s the kind of thing that you would be saying something along those kind of lines, you’re going to add another 10%, 20% to your revenue.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:46] And it could be something that’s already part of your course right now that you’re just throwing in for free, that you just charge for it.

John Ainsworth: [00:11:52] Yeah, absolutely. As long as it’s not something that’s integral to getting the result, but something that maybe makes it quick or easier or is a nice accompaniment, you could take it out as being a bonus and add it in as an order bump, and that will tend to work really well. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:05] Now, you mentioned upsells. How does that differ?

John Ainsworth: [00:12:08] So upsells is the same basic concept, but it’s done in a different way and it’s important to understand which one is which, so that when you’re setting it up, you know what you’re doing. The order bump is on the checkout page, the upsell is on the confirmation page. So somebody has already put their credit card details in. They’ve clicked submit, maybe they got the order bump, maybe they didn’t. The next page that they see that confirmation page at the top of it, you will say your order has gone through. You’re going to have a great time with this course. It’s going to really help you to get the result that you’re after. The next step after that is going to be X. So let’s say they bought the beginner course. The, the next step is then the intermediate course. Would you like to get the intermediate course now as well? And then that is going to be a discount of 40% off right now. And it’s the only time you’ll see this offer. And about another ten or 20% of people will then buy that additional course. If you have a really good sales page and you’ve set the right offer up and all of those kind of details.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:07] So then so you’re not selling them the workbook, you’re selling them access to the next part of your roadmap for your your customer journey.

John Ainsworth: [00:13:17] Yeah. If you’re selling a membership and they’ve bought one month, you might sell them three months worth. If they’ve bought the basic course, you might sell on the intermediate one. If you’ve sold them a challenge that you do, then it might be buy three more challenges. It’s like whatever the next logical step is after what they’ve already got.

Lee Kantor: [00:13:35] So now as part of your service, it’s not only just kind of maximizing the revenue that you can possibly get from what you have, but it’s also increasing the amount of subscribers because that’s at the heart of this whole thing. Right. And I think this is an important note for the listeners. Your email list, you want to capture as many emails so you can have a personal relationship with all your people. If you’re leveraging a third party app like Facebook or LinkedIn or one of those other places, YouTube even. The relationship isn’t with you, really. I mean, it’s kind of with you, but you’ve got to move them off of that platform into your own in order to really kind of maximize the revenue you can make from these people.

John Ainsworth: [00:14:23] Yeah, 100%. Because if you have it, if you just rely on Facebook, at some point, Facebook is going to change their algorithm. And you’ve seen that many times over the last ten years, the reach that you used to have, you don’t have anymore. You could get kicked off some platform. But also email is where people make purchases from. They tend not to buy from somewhere on social. So it’s not like nobody does it, but it’s it’s a much lower percentage of people who will watch your YouTube video and then go buy something straight from that. But you can get them from the YouTube video onto your email list, the email list to the sales page and going to buy. And that that converts much better now.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:02] We know that these third parties change the rules when it suits them. Do you have any data to for the listener that doesn’t really understand this? Like if I’m on Facebook and it says I have whatever, 10,000 or whatever, 1000 friends or followers or whatever it is. In actuality, when I post something, a thousand people don’t see it. Do you know, like what percent would see anything I’m doing on that platform or LinkedIn or any of the other platforms?

John Ainsworth: [00:15:33] Yeah, I went on Facebook. It reduced and reduced and reduced and it’s an enormous thing. I think it went down from like 60% of people who were following. You would see it if they were on at the right time down to like 2 to 5%. I don’t know if those are the exact numbers, but it’s something in that kind of ballpark. It really is very small.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:54] And that’s the same for pretty much all of them. Linkedin, all those like like you could think that you’re like, Oh, I have all these followers and friends or fans or whatever, but in actuality only a minuscule amount is seeing anything you’re doing unless you pay that platform to get in front of more of your own people.

John Ainsworth: [00:16:13] Yeah, 100%. What they do to begin with is they make it work really, really well to get everybody on there and build the platform and grow the platform and make everybody want to use it. And then after a while they’re like, right when we need to start making money from it and they reduce the amount of people who are going to see your content and less you pay for it. And I think that LinkedIn is is not at the extreme that Facebook is at and, you know, different platforms at different stages with this. But everybody is you know, everybody gradually does go through that process.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:43] Right. It’s one of those examples that if you’re not paying for the service, then you are the product.

John Ainsworth: [00:16:49] Right. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:51] So then you’re going to make you pay at some point for access to the the list that you’ve built within that platform. Unless you take it offline and take control of that yourself and then communicate to these people in the manner you want to when you want to.

John Ainsworth: [00:17:08] Yeah. And the email list is the one that you own. It’s like that belongs to you and not to Facebook and not to Google and not to Microsoft or anything like this. It’s like, that’s yours. So you control that and it’s really, really important.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:19] I think it’s critically important. And I think that’s a misstep that a lot of entrepreneurs make by relying on this third party because they think they’re killing it there, when in actuality they can change the rules whenever they feel like it.

John Ainsworth: [00:17:32] Yeah. Yeah. 100% affect clients who lost massive Instagram followings over some kind of a mix up, a mistake or what have you. And they had to start again from scratch. And now what obviously we do and we’re working with them is make sure we get more of those people off onto their email list so that they have Instagram and they hear from them in email.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:53] Now, do you have any advice for people who want to increase the amount of email subscribers they have on their list? And I’m sure that this advice is good for anybody, no matter the size of their email list is today. Even if you have none, these this kind of information could help them get more. So is there some advice you have like these? Okay. These are the top tips to get more email subscribers.

John Ainsworth: [00:18:15] Yeah, 100%. So what you want to have is some kind of a lead magnet. And the lead magnet is like a compelling offer that someone gets if they subscribe to your newsletter. And so it it should be something that people can get value from very quickly. So one of the best ones that we’ve seen with any of our clients was a company called Paintball, and they teach people digital painting techniques. And what they gave away was some free brushes for in Photoshop. So if you download it, you can just upload it into Photoshop. Now you’ve got the brushes, you can use them whenever you want. You don’t have to read the e-book. You don’t have to take the course to get the value. You get it immediately. So anything that you can come up with or anything that you’ve already got that is going to be useful and valuable to your to your potential subscribers. And they would want to subscribe to our newsletter and get that kind of resource. So that’s the first step. Once you’ve got that, you want to promote that all over your website and all over social media.

John Ainsworth: [00:19:07] So let’s say you’ve got you’ve got a website that’s got a decent amount of traffic coming through already. You will put that lead magnet on the home page and you’ll put it on your blog pages. And if it’s a long blog post, you’ll put it top, middle and bottom, and you’ll put it in the sidebar as well. So you’re putting it everywhere and saying to people, This is the next step to take. This is the thing that is going to be useful to you and is, is there’s a reason why you should subscribe and then you can make a few different graphics that you would then put up. And let’s say you’ve got an Instagram following every 10th post might be promoting that free resource that you’ve got, or maybe you’ve got a few free resources and you don’t just use the same post each time to promote it, but have like different benefits or angles or have you and you make some graphics up about that as well. So put that just in lots of different places. Have a great lead magnet, tell people about it and point to it constantly.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:58] So if you do that on a regular basis, then you’re going to build your list and then maybe you’ll get to the level where you can hire the data driven marketing folks, right?

John Ainsworth: [00:20:09] Exactly. Yeah.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:10] Now, the name of your company is data driven marketing. I’m sure that’s on accident. How important is it to analyze the data that every website is kind of generating and most people are probably not paying that much attention to it? Like, is there a way to use the data to really figure out what is my ideal customer? I might think it’s this person, but the data is going to maybe tell a different story and maybe I can use that data to help me communicate more effectively to the people that are resonating with my message.

John Ainsworth: [00:20:47] Yeah, the 100% is it’s not the simplest process to go through, but it’s very important. To understand this. So one of the things that we do and you don’t even have to do this from your your website’s a little easier to do it from your email list to send out surveys to people. So surveys to customers and surveys to potential customers and to different surveys we normally do. And what we’re looking to do is understand them, you know, what are their problems? What are their pain points, what are their desires? What is it that they if they bought something where they’re happy with it, what did they like about it? Did they tell other people about it and ask all these different questions? And from that, we build something called a customer avatar. And a customer avatar is a. Like a. Simplified version of your your ideal customer of the person, the most typical customer that you have. And it’s a summary of all of those different answers you have. You’re not trying to encapsulate every answer from every survey into the customer avatar. You’re trying to just create a version that allows you to think of this as a person. And then when you’re writing your emails or you’re creating your courses or you’re doing any marketing work in the future, you can imagine you’re talking to that one person. It’s much easier to imagine talking to one person than your whole audience. But if you’ve done the customer avatar, well then by talking to that one person, it will appeal to the whole audience.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:06] Now what is. Do you have an example of maybe the biggest kind of aha moment one of your clients had? Like maybe they thought, Oh, our audience is this type of person, and then you do these kind of surveys and they’re like, Well, yeah, there are a little of those, but there’s a lot more of these over here.

John Ainsworth: [00:22:24] I generally haven’t seen that. It’s much more nuanced with the kind of way that this has tended to work. What will what we’ll do in there is we’ll find out that the pain point that somebody they might understand who their audience is, but the pain point that they solve isn’t the one that they thought it was. What happens for a lot of people who are running businesses is they’re so close to the thing that they’re doing that they understand it so well that they think other people do as well. And really, other people aren’t trying to solve problem X, they’re trying to solve a deeper, more fundamental problem. So, for example, someone’s learning languages. The whole point for them is not getting better at the language. It’s, let’s say, being comfortable in a work environment when they have to travel or it’s being able to talk to the in-laws or it’s not feeling ashamed when they go to the supermarket and actually knowing the right words to say and fitting in. And that’s then the thing that actually matters to the prospect, the reason they actually buy. And once you understand that, then you can talk to that kind of pain point. You can discuss that. You can show how what you do is going to solve it, reassure the customer that you understand the situation they’re in and that you’re going to solve that problem for them. It tends to be that kind of level of stuff that people are learning now.

Lee Kantor: [00:23:38] I bet you got a lot of that insight when you had. We’re working with fitness centers because people don’t necessarily join a fitness center for the obvious reason. There are a lot more nuance to that experience.

John Ainsworth: [00:23:51] Yeah, 100%. So when we were working with trying to fill up those kickboxing classes, for example, what we’re looking at is it’s the moms who are actually doing the marketing, too. It’s not the kids who are going Now, what is it that the mom wants out of it? Why does the mom want the kid to go well, is it because they want the kid to stay fit? Is it wanting to lose weight? Be more confident? Is it they want to get them out of their hair for a little while? Like, what’s the thing that the parents are after in that situation? And that’s what you need to focus on. Is it that it’s a safe environment, that it’s going to be comfortable, you know, and so learning all of those kinds of things allows you to actually have the right message and then and then get the right kind of results from people.

Lee Kantor: [00:24:32] And it’s not asking, like, it’s not the obvious thing. A lot of times you have to go layers and layers deep and you have to ask why a few more times to get to the heart of this.

John Ainsworth: [00:24:43] Yeah, 100%. It’s. It’s really a. All of the top level stuff matters, but you need all of the deeper levels as well. You know, one of the things that we found I’d to work with getting cancer patients into physical activity and what the the technical reason like from a doctor’s point of view of why they should become more active was because if they got more active after they had got cancer, they were more likely to do well through the treatment, through the surgery, and they were more likely to prevent the cancer from coming back. But you couldn’t use that in your marketing for it because if you said to people. If you do physical activity, it’s a chance of it stopping the cancer from coming back. Then people interpreted that as, If I don’t do it, then it’s my then it’s my fault of the cancer comes back. And so it had a really negative kind of PR effect, so you couldn’t say these things. So instead what you had to do was you had to talk about the fact that it was going to make you feel better and give you more energy and some of the slightly lighter things. But you also couldn’t talk to people about doing it during treatment, even though that was the time when it was vitally important that people were active because everyone’s so tired during cancer treatment that they refused and they wouldn’t necessarily they wouldn’t hear it. So we would have to write to them two months after treatment finished and tell them we had some free support for them to come and get active. So all of these little nuances and details about like what actually is going to work for your audience is super important to understand so that you can talk to them in the right way.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:18] Well, if somebody wants to learn more, have a more substantive conversation with you or somebody on your team, what’s a website?

John Ainsworth: [00:26:24] So the best place to go is course profit i-report.com. And there’s a form there. And you fill in a few quick questions. And what we’ll do is we’ll figure out for you a personalized plan for your course business. We’ll figure out how much extra revenue you could make, what step to work on. First, we’ll send you training on how to do it. We’ll do a loom video where we talk you through the whole plan. So it’s not an automated thing someone from my team will go through and actually do that for you. It’s totally free. And then if you look like you’re a good fit to work with us, if you have the right kind of business and the right amount of traffic, etc., then we’ll drop you an email to say, let’s jump on a call and we can talk it through some more. And our whole service is based on only paid, based on results. So we, we’re quite picky about who will work with to make sure they’ve got the right kind of audience.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:11] Well, congratulations on all the success, and thank you so much for sharing your story today.

John Ainsworth: [00:27:17] Oh, thank you very much for having me on. I really appreciate it.

Lee Kantor: [00:27:19] All right. This is Lee Kantor. We’ll see you next time on High Velocity Radio.

Christina Ross With Silverfrog Marketing

December 7, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

ChristinaRossChristina Ross is the President and Marketing Director at SilverFrog Marketing and loves helping businesses with their creative design and overall marketing efforts.

She has spent the majority of her career in the marketing industry, gaining experiences in areas such as website design, social media marketing, TV/Radio broadcast, and Google marketing. While marketing is her primary job function by day, Christina also enjoys painting, yoga, and spending time with her family.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • How to get started Marketing for business/small business
  • Maximize SEO, PPC, and digital marketing
  • Balancing all digital marketing
  • Best tactics for a brand based on industry

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxambassador.com To learn more. Now, here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Christina Ross with silverfrog marketing. Welcome, Christina.

Christina Ross: [00:00:44] Hey, Lee, thank you so much for having me on.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] I am so excited to talk marketing with you. Tell us a little bit about Silver Frog. How are you serving, folks?

Christina Ross: [00:00:53] Oh, wonderful. So Silver Fraud Marketing is a full service agency, so at this point, we do everything from websites, SEO, digital marketing into the TV radio space.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:05] So what’s your back story? How did you get involved in your own agency?

Christina Ross: [00:01:09] So I, you know, I’m a serial entrepreneur and through a series of trying my own businesses and really always kind of coming to the marketing part and getting stuck. So going through everything that I had to learn from that I started serving small businesses with just one offs. So like a website here or a PPC campaign here for probably a good five years. And that was going really well. You know, I I did it alone. I started silver frog marketing in twenty fifteen in that method of websites and just getting people found right at that point. 2019, my husband joined me and brought in TV and radio, which just brought a different level of clients. So now we do both, we do the marketing, digital marketing and the TV radio.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:06] So now was that a big shift for you just from the in terms of an ideal client fit? You know, when you’re doing the one offs of websites that’s probably attracting a certain type of entrepreneur? And then when you layer in these larger mass mediums that might attract a different entrepreneur.

Christina Ross: [00:02:23] It does. We definitely found that there’s different clientele that need the TV radio. Those are typically larger markets, more branding, direct response. And then there’s a huge cluster of small businesses, entrepreneurs just getting started that really don’t need TV and radio at all. What they need is a good, solid digital presence, and that goes more than just being on Google or just being on Facebook. It’s really a blend of all the moving digital mediums, and that’s where I kind of developed this. You know, no one I’ve gotten really good at figuring out what works with what and why. Right. And we can go into some tips and details in a few minutes, but there’s definitely a lot of moving parts to be found that I think a lot of small business owners just need to have in place. And they may never get to the TV radio need. And that’s OK. There’s a lot of digital mediums.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:22] Now you mentioned earlier, use the word brand and a lot of folks use media, whether it’s digital or traditional for brand, you know, to create that brand ubiquity so that they see the brand. And then hopefully at the time of purchase, they think of my brand at that moment in time. But smaller entrepreneurs sometimes need more ROI driven marketing where they know that if I’m investing this amount of money that I’m going to get that amount of money plus more back or else I can’t stay in business like they, I can’t afford to just throw it out there and hope that over time, in the long run that this is going to pay off. How do you kind of educate your clients on the difference between the two and to manage their expectations on how both of those kind of perform?

Christina Ross: [00:04:16] Definitely. And that’s a great topic. So consistency is key, right? And I think what you just spoke to is these larger brown brands. They show that right. Their consistency through their brands, their messaging, their marketing, their colors. While small business owners can do that exact same thing, that exact same mindset on a lot smaller budget. And that’s a lot of what I talk about, and a lot of what we implement in our team is the consistency because of the trust that it builds in your consumer. So regardless of if you’re a one man shop just selling out of your home, or if you have a building full of staff and you’re a medium sized company, you definitely need your consumer to have the trust in your brand. So that’s huge.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:05] Now, when you are dealing with the smaller folks and a lot of their rhythm of their life is get a client, got a client, work on the client, don’t have the client better, find a new client, you know, like it’s feast or famine existence, and you were mentioning the importance of consistency. A lot of the smaller folks, the ones that are also doing the work, that they have to be the hunter to get the the client, but they also have to be the worker that’s doing the work of the client. So while they’re working on the client, they’re not saying, I gather, Hey, I got maybe I should be, you know, still doing stuff to get the next client because I’m so busy with this client. How do you help that person?

Christina Ross: [00:05:48] Absolutely. And that’s exactly where I was, and I think a lot of people, especially getting started, have all the hats there, the accounting department there, the service department and the marketing department. So one thing that I tell any small business owner is have a plan. So even if it’s just you, you know, once a month, sit down and think about what you need to do for marketing, but on your marketing hat once a month and create a plan because putting a plan in place, even if it’s just a list of things that you’ll get done over the next month, maybe that’s a Facebook page. Maybe that’s a Google my business page. Maybe that is a website if you don’t have one. All these things don’t cost anything or are low cost, but are very important in terms of getting found online. So I the few things that I would tell people that have no money but a great idea, right? And it’s only them is work on getting a Facebook presence because that comes up when people search for your service, have a website, if you can afford it, there’s definitely cheap options that are still relevant and still work for a lot of businesses. Google My business is actually probably the the number one thing that is going to get you driven on Google. So with a good Google, my business page and a Facebook page, that’s a great start to get yourself out there and to start gaining followers and gaining visibility without necessarily doing much. And again, I tell people, you know, just sit down once a month and implement certain things, and then you get to a point where you can almost set it and forget it with certain marketing techniques.

Lee Kantor: [00:07:30] Yeah, I’m with you totally. When it comes to that, I’m always recommending folks, just put it in your calendar, just block a certain amount of time every week, every month, whatever. But just put it in, make it non-negotiable, you know, schedule around it and just invest some time because there is a compounding effect. If you do this kind of regularly and reliably, that pays off dramatically in the long term, long term, even though it might seem like you’re not doing a lot in any. Given session, it compounds over time.

Christina Ross: [00:08:03] Absolutely. I mean, I’ve seen I’ve seen cases where a client literally just sends one email a month and that drives in a $100000 sale, you know? And again, it’s it’s the planning and the having a good list, you know, so you can do this with your website. You can do this if you’re gaining leads through Facebook. However, you’re gaining leads. Just be aware of it and to your when you’re at the point where you can run email campaigns do it consistently, you know, at least once a month, you want to be touching your customers and not always with a promotion, sometimes just with news about your industry or your growth as a company. Because, again, just the consistency of touching your the client’s email box once a month, that gets you back top of mind if they need your services in the future.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:57] Now, what do you tell the folks that say, You know what, I don’t have to do any marketing. I get all my business through word of mouth.

Christina Ross: [00:09:05] You know, and that does happen, and I say that that’s great. But I believe it will be hard to scale like that. And if that’s working for the person at that point, then you know what? Nothing I can offer is going to help. However, it’s very hard to scale your business if you’re not putting yourself out there in front of other people in front of new people. Referral programs are great. Word of mouth is absolutely wonderful and still a fantastic marketing medium. However, there’s a lot of other things that you can be doing to get new clients.

Lee Kantor: [00:09:40] Yeah, and you have to always be kind of getting ready for that rainy day because it’s going to come and it’s better to have people in the pipeline and a wait list than it is to say, Hey, I don’t have any business, but guess what? Rent’s going to be due at the end of the month. So surprise there. So it’s always good to keep the pipeline is filled as possible if you can can, and a good list goes a long way to doing that.

Christina Ross: [00:10:04] Absolutely. And if possible, a list differentiated between current customers and prospects because you can absolutely do different types of marketing to different types of people in your pipeline.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:18] Now, we talked a little bit about marketing with no budget. If you were to kind of advise people and then they do all those kind of basic blocking and tackling, like you said, the Google My Business page, and they got their Facebook page and they’re doing the stuff that they can control and they’re getting a little bit of traction and they’re getting, you know, things are starting to happen, but they want to take their business, their marketing to a new level. What would be kind of the progression, like, how do you go from this? Do it yourself kind of strategy to maybe do it with somebody like your former firm or a marketing person?

Christina Ross: [00:10:54] Definitely. So that’s an exciting point when you get to your business to the point where you can actually put money into marketing. And so at that point, I think Google and Facebook are great ways to put low amounts of budget in to start gaining the traction, figuring out what types of messaging, marketing promotions are going to work. We do budgets as low as $500 a month, you know, sometimes, especially for local businesses. The way that you target, especially with radius, is around your business. You really don’t need much as long as you do a little bit of research, you know your keywords. You have a good promotional message. You know, maybe it’s a holiday coming up or you’ve got a good new customer message. Those are great. People respond to that. I would definitely do a Facebook campaign or and or a Google campaign.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:47] So even if the business is maybe more B2B, you would still recommend Facebook. Or is that something that is so Facebook to you works no matter what type of business it is?

Christina Ross: [00:11:57] Yes, because SEO and B2B, you’re right is it’s definitely different in terms of marketing. Google, for instance, doesn’t work as well. However, Facebook is still good because of the targeting. So whereas for businesses, for instance, let’s say it’s a payroll provider and they’re looking for small businesses. I can go into Facebook and look for HR administrators, small business owners, you know, people with different titles or people in different industries, HR industries that I can put that message in front of the right person. So even be to be and then be to be. There’s a lot of opportunities with just SEO and blogging to get tips out there for other business owners who are looking for your services.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:47] And then when you’re working with a client. Talk to me about what does that look like from an onboarding standpoint, like how do you get them up and running? Like how much time does it take for you to kind of get the information you need because you mentioned things like keywords or ideal client? You know, to be as clear as possible when it comes to things like that goes a long way because the worst thing to happen is you have a great campaign and it’s aimed at the wrong group of people and then you’re getting you’re not getting the best fit client for the effort.

Christina Ross: [00:13:19] Definitely. So when we onboard a client, you know, we’re doing everything from the website, the SEO to all the marketing. So we do an extensive amount of research first where we’re looking at their competitors, we’re looking at existing Google information. If it’s not on them because they’re new, we look at other industries, you know, we start there, we look at what keywords are converting, what keywords are resonating. That’s a good point. Even existing businesses, there’s a lot of not a lot. There’s a few sites that you can go and get some free data in terms of SEO and keywords. I know Google’s got some great tools. From there, we come up with just strategic campaigns that flow together and are backed up with automation and that goes to planning. You know, anybody can do this where you’re just saying, OK, I’m going to send this email to this group of people, the people who open, I’m going to take this step, whether it’s be to send a follow up email or to notify somebody or to add them to a different list. You know, whatever step that is, you want to make sure that you’re constantly moving people in the pipeline and marketing down the funnel.

Lee Kantor: [00:14:30] Now you mentioned a funnel, a lot of our listeners are business coaches or their coaches, they’re in the coach business. And, you know, so they’re advising people about their business, but sometimes it’s like kind of the cobbler’s children that they are not doing the marketing themselves. Is there any advice for a coach, somebody that sells a service that isn’t necessarily selling a thing, but selling a service for them to kind of get the most bang for their marketing dollar?

Christina Ross: [00:15:01] Yeah, absolutely. So definitely email automation and really just workflow automation in terms of your events that you’re you’re holding any webinars that you’re putting out, keeping so well, like what I’ll do is I’ll send an email out and then I have a structure of auto drips. So if an email goes out, those people are automatically getting weekly drips in those campaigns. So things like that where you understand, I mean, you know, it’s marketing, not mind control, right? Not everybody opens the email, even if they are a fan of yours or are interested, they just don’t have time. So staying top of mind and constantly touching those people, I think, is very important, especially for B2B. And so, yeah, I mean, just definitely email automation would be my my first, my first key there.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:52] Now, can you share a story of maybe before and after somebody that obviously don’t name their name or their company, but explain like the challenge they were having? Then they found you and then you were working with them and you were able to take them to a new level.

Christina Ross: [00:16:06] Yeah, absolutely so. And so I recently had a client. It was one main company and they were kind of an umbrella for four different companies. And now at the time, they had brought in those companies at different points and they kind of had different things implemented. There was no consistency, and from their point of view, they really weren’t getting the leads that they were expecting to be getting from having all these brands. So what we did was we came in and just created consistency throughout with the marketing. With their list, we organize their lists. We developed different messaging in different methods of social media and email and automations that show no one showed the client where people their clients were actually interested in and then helped the client to then better follow up with those visitors by just understanding what they were interested in. For instance, if they got an email and then clicked on a link, OK, now did they fill out a form? Did they bounce off the page? Did they follow it to another link? And what we realized was a lot of their current clientele was gravitating towards one brand. What we were able to do the following month is develop different material for the other lacking brands and put money behind the working brand, and they are seeing a great return on leads coming in from that one brand. And we’re definitely seeing spikes in the other brands. So hopefully that that helps a little bit. But again, just having a plan, planning it out, utilizing marketing and follow ups.

Lee Kantor: [00:17:49] So now in your firm, do you have kind of your own personas of ideal clients? I know you mentioned that with the TV and the mass media, that might be a little different than the digital marketing for the entrepreneur. But can you explain like who the ideal silver frog clients look like? What do they look like?

Christina Ross: [00:18:08] So for digital marketing, for our core package, it works really well with local businesses that need customers to come in. So you know, the hair salons, landscapers, tax shops, those people, they need to be found on Google, they need to be found near me. So a lot of what we do is through Google, my business algorithms and SEO to have just anybody who’s searching for that service. We make sure that our clients come up first. We also work with a lot of specialty medical so allergy centers. We do a lot in terms of TV and email automation that works well, as well as online, just online only e-commerce. So we’ve got some vitamin brands that they sell vitamin powders online only e-commerce, and we do a lot of automation for that as well.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:02] So you can help somebody who has kind of a national business as well as local businesses.

Christina Ross: [00:19:08] Correct? Yes. And honestly, we put them on different platforms. The backend platform systems are different. But again, it matters. It really does matter what systems the business is using, what marketing efforts they’re using to put out based on the consumer that they’re looking for.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:24] And this kind of work is not fully set at. Forget it, right, this is kind of a living, breathing thing that has to be tweaked and modified and and testing different concepts and creatives and offers like right, this is this is not something you just say, OK, I do this once and I don’t have to think about it again.

Christina Ross: [00:19:45] No, no. And I think that’s why, you know, having a one month meeting with yourself is great because that’s what we do with our clients. You know, at least once a month, we’re having a marketing meeting where we’re looking at results. You’ve got to find out how did your marketing do to figure out if you want to do it again or improve on it or do something different. Also, when you consistently go back and touch on things on your marketing, you’re able to tie in new promotions, keeping things fresh, giving your consumers and your audience something new to look at and be engaged by.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:20] Well, Christina, if somebody wants to learn more, is what’s the best way to get a hold of you? Is there a website or is it through social media channels? What can you give us the coordinates?

Christina Ross: [00:20:29] Absolutely. So Silver Frog Marketing is our website, and we are also on Facebook and LinkedIn and Instagram, and I think we’re even developing a Snapchat channel at this point. But definitely. Or just reach me a Christina at Silver Krug Marketing.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:48] Well, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing important work and we appreciate you.

Christina Ross: [00:20:53] Thank you. You, too.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:54] All right, this is Lee Kantor will sail next time on Coach the Coach radio.

Madelaine Claire Weiss With Mind Over Matters, LLC

September 21, 2021 by Jacob Lapera

Madelaine Claire Weiss (LICSW, MBA, BCC) is a Harvard-trained Licensed Psychotherapist, Mindset Expert, and Board-Certified Executive, Career, Life Coach who helps people master their minds so they can maintain and enjoy satisfaction and success in all areas of their lives.

She is a co-author in the Handbook of Stressful Transitions Across the Lifespan and author of the new release “Getting to G.R.E.A.T. 5-Step Strategy for Work and Life.”

Madelaine is a former group mental health practice administrative director, a corporate chief organizational development officer, and associate director of the Anatomical Gift Program at Harvard Medical School where she spoke before the Joint Committee on the Status of Women.

As a corporate trainer, Madelaine designed and delivered programs for such diverse organizations as Harvard Medical School, Legal Services Corporation, and AARP.

She has been featured on NBC, Bold TV, FOX TV, appears frequently as a podcast guest expert including Major, Lindsey, & Africa’s Erasing the Stigma; has written for Thrive Global, Authority Magazine’s Editors List, UpJourney, My Perfect Financial Advisor; and conducted webinars for such organizations as the American Bar Association and Harvard Law School Association-MA.

Connect with Madelaine on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

What You’ll Learn In This Episode

  • A Great Life Depends on a Great Fit Between Who We Are and the Environments in Which We Work and Live

This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix

TRANSCRIPT

Intro: [00:00:02] Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia. It’s time for Coach the Coach radio brought to you by the Business RadioX Ambassador Program, the no cost business development strategy for coaches who want to spend more time serving local business clients and less time selling them. Go to brxAmbassador.com To learn more. Now here’s your host.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:33] Lee Kantor here, another episode of Coach the Coach Radio, and this is going to be a fun one today on the show, we have Madeleine Claire Weiss with mind over matters. Welcome.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:00:43] Hello. Hello. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Lee Kantor: [00:00:46] Well, I’m excited to learn what you’re up to. Tell us a little bit about mind over matters. How are you serving, folks?

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:00:53] So I help busy professionals and entrepreneurs find more hours in the day energy, peace of mind, freedom and fulfillment. All those good things maintaining their high performance because people are worried that if they relax a bit, they’ll lose the whole thing. So it’s maintaining that high performance without burning out.

Lee Kantor: [00:01:22] Now, why do you think that that is kind of a common thread among high achievers that everything is precarious and that if they just don’t, if they take their foot off the gas, then everything could tumble down.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:01:36] I think that’s because the kinds of people that I work with are headed to places they may have never been before, which is wonderful because there’s so aspiring and wanting so much to build and create, but because they’ve never been there before. And in some of their cases, no one has ever been there before in the kinds of things that they’re building. There’s so much uncertainty about what the outcomes will be and whether they would be able to manage them or not.

Lee Kantor: [00:02:17] But if if they look at their life trajectory, though, they have a history of success and the history of achieving. Yes, but they still have doubt that the next thing might be the one that, you know, makes all the dominoes fall down.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:02:32] Yes, because they have never been there before, you know, everybody talked so much about the imposter syndrome. And I have, by the way, on my website, I have my blogs there and there’s one on the imposter syndrome. And I quoted an author who made a really good point, which is that when you’re going someplace you’ve never been before. If you’re not at least a little bit nervous, we would worry about you more. Because what kind of arrogance would it take to think that you could handle perfectly something you’ve never handled before? So it’s so normal, and that’s a large piece of what I try to convey to people. And in fact, there’s this wonderful Yale study that says that learning and creating takes place optimally when we are 70 percent outside of our comfort zone. So people are waiting around till they feel comfortable, and that’s like, don’t do that.

Lee Kantor: [00:03:46] So then all you need to do is feel 30 percent certain.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:03:50] No, well, there’s what. What happens is that when we are in our comfort zone, the brain thinks everything’s fine and all the learning and problem-solving centers turn off. So there’s what we need to do is embrace that discomfort rather than shy away from it.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:14] So then the discomfort is almost kind of a good sign.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:04:18] Yes, yes. Because if we’re not uncomfortable, there’s a really good chance nothing is happening.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:25] So when you have that discomfort, you kind of have to lean into it and just trust trust the kind of the process and trust your previous history of success.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:04:36] Yeah, I heard it said the other day, and I love this. We get to choose our choices, but not their outcomes.

Lee Kantor: [00:04:48] Right. And and the outcomes, I think we a lot of times we focus so much on the outcomes. We forget the importance of the process. And if you trust the process, the outcomes are going to come or they’re not. But the process of you have a good one, then you should be OK.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:05:05] Well, I always like to come as close as I can myself to doing the right things right in the process so that when if things don’t work out, it’s not because I didn’t do my best. And that just relieves us of a lot of the pain that people feel when things don’t work out the way they wanted them to. They kind of beat themselves up about that. But if we, as you say, trust in the process and come as close as we can to doing the right things right, we’re spared all of that pain and suffering.

Lee Kantor: [00:05:43] And I would imagine the stress that comes along with this, because if you really work on your process and get that tight and clean and and right, then that takes a lot of the pressure off because, you know, look, I’m just working the process and then the outcome I can if I can let go of the outcome a little bit and just trust the process and work on getting as good of a process as possible, I would imagine stress melts away.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:06:09] Yes. One of my mentors taught me years ago I was working in a large, prestigious institution and everybody was acting nuts. And I went to him. I was in tears about how crazy it all felt. And he said to me, Just do good work. That’s your best friend and your best protection. Just do good work. And I lived by that, and I share that with all of my clients that that’s your best friend and your best protection, just doing and knowing that you did good work.

Lee Kantor: [00:06:51] Now, is this the subject matter of kind of your work and your books and and kind of what you preach is kind of helping folks create that process that’s going to serve them?

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:07:04] And I call it sometimes an environmental fitness reboot. It is much easier to be doing good work and doing right things right and appreciating it and thriving in it at all when it is aligned with who we really are, not who someone else said we should be or who we may have even thought we should be throughout our lives. But the true essence of what it is that we really hold dear and has meaning for us, the closer we can come to closing the gap between who we are and the environments in which we work and live. The more we thrive and flourish and work in life. So that’s the essence of my book if you were referring to that, which is getting to great.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:01] Well, I was referring to the book and your work in coaching and training, yet that it to me, it centers around kind of creating more congruence between the the life you would like to lead and that you were meant to lead and maybe the life you’re leading now. And maybe if you get to the heart and peel back some layers that maybe you think you’re on a path that you were meant to do, but maybe it was someone else’s path, you know, it might. And that’s where a lot of the stress and discomfort comes in is that you aren’t aligned with your true north and the quicker you can identify what that is and put processes in place to align yourself and kind of maximize your talents and your mission, then life becomes a lot easier and a lot less stressful.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:08:48] Right on perfect. Yep.

Lee Kantor: [00:08:52] Now what’s your back story? How did you kind of orchestrate your life to be in this direction to help so many folks?

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:09:01] So when I was 15 years old, my father, who was 42 years old, died suddenly of what the doctors called a cerebral hemorrhage. My mother said that he died of work stress. I started out my career, oddly enough, in a clinical chemistry laboratory. I worked for the USDA Biological Control Lab and Drexel University’s Cardiac Catheter Lab, so I was really heavy into laboratory science and all that sort of thing. And yet there was always this pull toward the people so one foot in front of the other over the trajectory of my life. I got closer and closer to working directly with the people. And now it’s no surprise, really, that I always say if I can help one little boy or girl’s mommy or daddy or anybody at all, for that matter, live a happier, healthier, productive life. I feel like I’m doing what I was put here to do.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:12] No. So now your work is centered around writing and training and coaching.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:10:19] Yes.

Lee Kantor: [00:10:20] Yes. Now, how did you make the transition from kind of an academic background working in labs and things like that to working with individual leaders?

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:10:33] I have to think about that for a minute, Leigh, so I. I’m trying to think when I made the transition from the clinical setting to the mental health setting, at some point I went back to school and got an MSW and found myself as the administrative director and treasurer of a group mental health center. And then because I became an administrator, I realized I really ought to learn something about this. So then I went back to business school and got an MBA, and it was just, you know, I’ve lived long enough by now to have just kind of followed. I feel like if you get quiet enough inside your truth of your direction kind of bubbles up and you can actually hear it and honor it. And that’s kind of what I’ve done. Just one thing after another pivoting they call it now. I didn’t know I was pivoting.

Lee Kantor: [00:11:45] You were pivoting before it was cool.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:11:47] Yeah. Before it was. That guy had no idea I was pivoting. I was just feeling like there. There was another door to go through. And I love, love, love to learn. I’m a learning junkie, so going back to school was always fun for me.

Lee Kantor: [00:12:03] Now how in your work are you kind of delineating between maybe the therapy background, the science therapy background to the coaching background and also to the training background? Because I think there’s some overlap between all of them. But there are some distinctions, right?

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:12:24] So I’m now a board certified executive coach and the reason I made that pivot from. Psychotherapist to executive coach, executive, career and life coach was because of the future positive action orientation of it. So now at the end of every session, there are action steps in therapy. You never did that. I was very classically trained, but so you never get that close to talking with people about what they’re going to do. And now in my work, it’s very much about what they’re going to do because William James said that. Action doesn’t guarantee happiness, but without action, there is no happiness. So I have become very action oriented in my work with people what I tell them during our introductory session because they typically have the question that you just asked me. So what I tell them is in terms of peeling the onion, you know, going back and looking at the family history and all that kind of stuff, only as much as is necessary to get the job done. And the job is not in your past, it’s your present and your future. So if there’s something that we can learn to facilitate your movement forward and your flourishing and your present and your future great, otherwise it has no bearing. Did that answer?

Lee Kantor: [00:14:08] Yeah, I I I definitely see the distinction there, and then your book, like you said, getting to great five step strategy for working life. This is action steps, right? This is not theoretical. This is stuff that has kind of a strategy and steps I can take to, like you said, create that action and momentum in my life.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:14:35] Well, what happened was my clients were doing so extraordinarily well and they were all so different from each other. And my education and experience is also so diverse that I asked myself about a year or so ago, What is it that’s working here? What are these people doing? What do they all have in common that’s getting them from here to there? And so I kind of reverse engineered this process, which I imagine my delight fit into the acronym. Great. So I was I was kind of thrilled by that. But there there is a process that people go through that has those steps.

Lee Kantor: [00:15:20] So your background, I guess this is just maybe how it was meant to be, but your background enabled you to use some sort of a scientific method to look backwards and assess and see what is the commonality of the success. And from that, you were able to then distill it down to the five steps.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:15:41] Yeah, I’m pretty good at synthesizing stuff. They told me when I first started training, they said, Where did you learn to formulate? And I said, What’s that? So there was there was some sort of ability to see something that seems to work well in the work that I do.

Lee Kantor: [00:16:06] So now, can you share what those five steps with green tea stands for?

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:16:11] Sure. So grounding so is G. G for grounding. When people come to me, they don’t typically believe that they can really have a great life. Mostly, they’re just in pain and they want the pain to stop. So the G is for grounding in this belief. That they have everything they need inside of them to have a really great life and that it is very, very possible for them to get there. So that’s the G. The first line of the book is a great life depends on a great fit between who we are and the environments in which we work and live. So to have that fit between who we are and the environments, we need to recognize who we are. Again, not if someone else said we should be or who we may have thought we should be, but who we truly are in our nature and our interests and our values and aspirations and so on. So they are is for recognizing that once people have a better sense of what really matters to them under their belts, they go exploring in the external environments, looking for what is the right fit. So the E is for exploring, so they talk to their present bosses about maybe moving to a different part of their work world or they look at opportunities outside, sometimes opportunities that they didn’t even know existed.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:17:54] Everything opens up now, and or sometimes it was an opportunity they always dreamed about, but that’s not going to happen for me. So the exploring phase has no limits to it. And then we talked about a four hour action. So the A is what I mentioned to you before. We can’t stay in the land of dreaming about the things we wish were. I think the word everybody uses now is manifest. We have to manifest, so we have to take action on those. And then finally, the tea is. For tackling that normal, natural, inherent, predictable, expectable resistance to change that we humans enact when we’re trying to go some place, as I said at the beginning, that we may have never been before. So the brain is really, really good at keeping us safe, and it takes a little more energy and effort for us to go outside of that comfort zone where all the goodies are waiting for us.

Lee Kantor: [00:19:06] So now I know that that spells the word great was the is tackling last because even after you’ve decided to take action, they’re still going to be resistance or.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:19:21] I’m actually glad that you asked that question, because one of the first things I learned very early on in my education was something called prediction and control. So I will very often talk with people on the front end of our work together about when the resistance hits. What’s it going to look like for you? So it may not come right away, but we do talk about it early on so that when it happens, they can have a stance of, oh yeah, that. So it kind of disempowers the hold on us because it’s like, Oh yeah, that

Lee Kantor: [00:20:06] It’s kind of like an insurance policy. You’re kind of letting them know ahead of time this is going to happen. Just be ready for it.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:20:13] Yes, definitely.

Lee Kantor: [00:20:15] Definitely. Because a lot of people have the same kind of saboteurs that they treat as if this is the first time they’ve ever seen them, even though they might be kind of a recurring theme in their life, right? Yes. Now, OK, I’m sorry.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:20:31] No, I was just going to say a lot of people have different ideas on what to do about the saboteur. I just want to throw in there that. What we resist persists and get stronger. Therefore, I typically recommend making friends with it. It’s like that children’s book, Where the Wild Things Are and the Monster comes out from under the bed, and it’s not so hairy and scary anymore. So I tend to recommend getting to know the saboteur. What’s troubling the saboteur that makes it act like that, and maybe even to address that part of ourselves that I got this now. Trust me. Take my hand and come with me. I got this now.

Lee Kantor: [00:21:24] Now, in your work, do you work with a certain type of leaders? Does this work better? Like kind of in like your background, academic? Scientific.

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:21:35] Actually, my. The clients that I’m working with have really morphed over time, and I am really intrigued by it. I have a lot of. Young millennial types who are taking on the world. I have a 25 year old superconductor in who was a Fulbright scholar who’s working in renewable energy already. Around the world, I have people building companies in Colombia, in Costa Rica, and they’re all just balls on fire now. And I didn’t. I’m not sure what the draw is, but that seems to be who feels like they want to work with me and we’re really doing well and having fun now.

Lee Kantor: [00:22:36] Now, congratulations on that. But yeah, thank you. One reason we do this show is to help other coaches learn from each other. Do you mind sharing with our listeners, like how you got your last client? Like how did the last client that worked working with you? How did they come about?

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:22:57] Ok, so most of my clients come through Psychology Today, which? I think you have to have certain licensing to be able to be on that, I get a lot of linked in Pro Finder. So if your listeners don’t know about the Pro Finder, I would highly recommend looking into that. I have taken three extremely high end marketing courses, and honestly, I don’t think that’s where my clients are coming from. I did last hour just talk with a woman I met in a networking group, and she was wanting to know if I could coach her clients, who seem like sometimes she has trouble getting the people who come to her for services. She’s a business development coach and sometimes they don’t do what she wants them to do, and then she goes into a snit about that, and I offered her the option actually to work behind her and lay hands on all of her clients through her while developing her at the same time. So that’s quite possibly going to happen. And so that happened through a networking group. I have lots of coaching colleagues who I’m watching develop their own businesses over time, and there are so many ways to go about how you find your ideal client and they’re all doing something different. So some of them are doing podcasts. A lot of them are writing books. People are doing online courses, so I guess my central message is there is no right way to do this and the right one is probably the one. It’s kind of what they say about physical exercise. The right thing to do is the one that suits you well enough that you might actually do it good stuff.

Lee Kantor: [00:25:16] And that aligns with your philosophy of finding that right kind of true north. And then when it’s all aligned, then life becomes easy or easier. Yeah, yeah. Well, congratulations on all the success. If there’s someone out there that wants to learn more about your books or your practice. And once I get a hold of you. Is there a website that you can share?

Madelaine Claire Weiss: [00:25:36] Yeah. Let me mention, I recently launched an online course that’s at Super Piercy. However, everything is on my website, so if you go to Madelaine Wise dot com, all my social media links are there. There’s a there are buttons for the book and the online course, and there’s also a how to reach me, and I would be delighted to hear from any and all of you.

Lee Kantor: [00:26:06] So and that’s made GLAAD and WUIS. Madeleine, thank you so much for sharing your story today. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you, Julie. All right, this is Lee Kantor. We’ll see, y’all next time on Coach the Coach radio.

 

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