Christina Hooper
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[00:00:00] Stop marketing, quit the marketing thing, go back and get your 10. If you don't have your 10 raving fan perfect clients, then you need to do anything and everything to get your 10 stop, the marketing thing. Stop running the ads. Stop building your funnels. Go get 10, go ask for 10, go do whatever you have to do. Launch your services as a beta product, go talk to everybody. Be humble. Don't be afraid to go have conversations and get 10.
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[00:01:01] We all know that marketing is key to business growth. But should you really be marketing your business when you don't have your first few clients or a proven viable product or service? I asked Christina Hooper, a marketing and sales expert to give us the unfiltered truth about marketing your small business. Christina helps entrepreneurs build businesses that enabled their lifestyle instead of taking over their life.
[00:01:28] She combines a big picture ideas with in the trenches execution to help entrepreneurs create scalable ways to generate profit and create a community of raving fans. In this episode, we debunk the myth that startups need to market their business from the start. And you'll learn when you should stop marketing and what to do instead. Enjoy this episode with Christina Hooper.
[00:01:51] would love to hear a little bit more about how you became the go-to sales and marketing expert.
[00:01:58] I would say that it's a [00:02:00] lot of listening to mentors and taking their advice
[00:02:03] like listening to some of it, not listening to some of it and wishing I would have, and learning to pick and choose the advice. So it's like I did what you're supposed to do. Right. I went to college, got the degree, got the good little cubicle bill job was setting myself to move up the ladder. It was all good.
[00:02:19] Really realized that things are so inefficient and corporate, and that drove me crazy. So there's so much wasted time and energy in these big companies like to do any of these things, turning the Titanic and it was driving me nuts. I actually started hacking around another systems and trying to fix things and racked up like 130 something computer violations,
[00:02:37] and of course I had to be punished. So I was laid off for three days and then brought back in and promoted to computer programming and said, "okay, now you can go fix all the things you were trying to fix before. Now that you've gotten your little slap" and, uh, that's still wasn't enough. It was still so hard to fix things.
[00:02:52] And I think that's one of the things small business owners that we can do that this big businesses can't do. Like we can pivot faster than they [00:03:00] ever could. And so I did that for like six years before I was just like, this is going to crush my soul. If I keep doing this, I can't do this anymore. I want to work with small business owners that can move that can't shake, that can do things.
[00:03:13] So I made the leap, made the leap out and launched my business. And that was about 15 years ago. So this was back when we still had to convince people that you needed a website that the internet wasn't going away and that you needed to be there if you wanted to be found. And so I did websites and then mentor said, well, you can't just do websites because those are projects and you can't scale a business.
[00:03:35] If you're constantly chasing projects. Which is true. It's true. There's some creative things that I found over the years that you can do to, to get around that. But it's mostly true. So it's like, you need to do marketing. And I was like, okay, we'll do marketing. And most web developers either grow into like SEO, retainers or marketing retainers.
[00:03:53] And they just kind of all do. I don't know what it is. I think it's these big companies like HubSpot stuff like that. They're like, this is your path and this is what [00:04:00] you're doing wrong. And they're very good at their marketing. So everybody does this. And then we did marketing. Marketing was great.
[00:04:06] Marketing was good, but I liked working with small business owners. Well, so then what happened is all these gurus said you can't work with small business owners. Excuse me. That's the whole reason I did this. What's what? Well, they don't have the money to pay you and they can't wait 12, 18 months to get results.
[00:04:22] And it's like, wait, you're telling me content marketing is and take 12 to 18 months to get results. Yeah. It's like I'm six to nine months just even get picked up by Google and then they have to do lead generation. Then you have to put out enough content and enough lead magnets and enough and enough and enough and enough and enough that you get enough traffic to even be able to tell what lead magnets are working so that you can do more of what's working.
[00:04:40] And let's 18 months, 18 months, and the three to $5,000 a month retainer. How many small business owners can do that? That's nuts. What? And they're like, oh, well you can do.
[00:04:55] Okay. So that's less, that's like thousand, 1500. I'm like, but then they, they have to go to the [00:05:00] work. You see the problem, right? So it's taken me years to evolve into this. And I think so many small business owners. If they fall into that same trap, right? You hire a marketing agency, they tell you, oh, $2,000, $3,000, $5,000, whatever.
[00:05:15] And they're going to get you all these leads. And so they keep telling you, it takes time. It takes time. It takes time. Okay. But when, right. And so they're not very clear with you up front and not always because they don't mean to me, but because they don't know. I didn't know. I didn't know. Cause all my gurus were telling me this is normal.
[00:05:33] This is how it is. Okay. How it is doesn't mean that's how it should be. So I really became a student of marketing, of sales of how do you, how do you get around this machine of what it should be to still be able to work with small business owners, help them actually do the things they need to do still be a profitable and scalable business yourself.
[00:05:54] And that was kind of a long way of saying all of that. So shortest way possible. Cause it's a journey. [00:06:00] It's a big, long, scary journey. Um, but yeah, that's, it just really became a. At what works and what doesn't and what works quickly and what doesn't work quickly. And how can you combine some long-term stuff, some short-term stuff really be budget friendly and not overwhelm yourself as a small business owner.
[00:06:18] it's wild the amount of rules, you have to do it this way. It takes this much time. This is the path. This is the way. And it's like, is it really?
[00:06:26] It circled me back to corporate because like everybody, like I left corporate and went on this whole little journey and then like, you know, it was like eight years later. I'm being told, oh, as a marketing agency, you need to work for corporate companies again. No, that was what, that was what was just so crazy to me that it's like, as soon as people were telling me, you have to go back to these corporations because they have the. No. I refuse. I refuse.
[00:06:53] And I think that was when, like the light bulb clicked for me for the very first time. Cause I was talking with a client that we've been working for and we were doing the [00:07:00] thing would work for them for several months and we're like, okay, it's going to take time and takes time. Organic takes time. You don't have money for ad spend.
[00:07:06] Organic's the way to go. It's going to take time and somewhere along the way, it's like, I didn't really learn to ask how many new clients per month do you really need. And for some reason, I asked that, so you can work with her for like six months. And I asked and they're like, oh, well I only need like two or three clients, period.
[00:07:27] And like a year to really make it where I need to make it where like, I can afford to do this as a business and still have money for like marketing and things like that. It's like, you don't need marketing two to three clients in a year? Come on. Like if marketing actually worked, you wouldn't be buried.
[00:07:47] You know, once your marketing works, all this marketing, you've been working so hard at it and it's generating leads every month, month over month, over month, over month, you're not gonna be able to handle the lead flow. They're like, yeah, that's really only, only need like two to three new clients. And that's when it just [00:08:00] really hit for me that it's like the typical marketing machine is not made for small business owners, because most small business owners don't need a hundred leads a month, 200 leads a month.
[00:08:10] They don't need 10, 20, 50 new clients and they couldn't handle it if they got it. So you have to be a lot more creative and it's like the things that they have to do or that they can do. And it's like, They have to be a little hustley but most small business owners are right. Like if 10 clients is going to change your business, go get 10 clients.
[00:08:30] You don't need marketing to go get 10 clients. You barely, you need a website. It's helpful to have one. So people can at least tell what you do. It's helpful to be on social media, but let's be honest, if you can hustle. You know, you, you don't need any of that to get 10 clients.
[00:08:45] Then there was this one marketing agency, big marketing agency, huge marketing agency, millions of dollars a year.
[00:08:50] Marketing use. They mailed people a 99 cent jar fluff like marshmallow fluff. And so this is the last fluff you will ever get [00:09:00] from us as a marketing agency. And it was like that ad campaign. It made them so much money and it costs them like was shipping packaging, you know, a little note like handwritten little, like, I'd just like to talk to you.
[00:09:13] Here's my name, the number . This was not fancy marketing. This is a handwritten note card million dollar agency they could afford. They could, they didn't fancy swag, you know, they could, they could send a whole little sexy box and be fine.
[00:09:25] The thing that I love that you mentioned was how we compare ourselves to these big businesses. And we assume that the template is the same for them as it is for, for small businesses, but it's not right.
[00:09:35] Yep, absolutely. And I mean it's, and you don't even really want to work with people that like people go for these marketing agencies. Like we worked for Dell, we worked for at and T we've worked for all these big companies.
[00:09:45] That means they don't know how to work with you as a small business owner. And they don't like, you're not ever going to be their most important client. And that's a huge problem. Like the strategies that worked, like if you've got somebody that has a $3,000 a day ad budget. Okay, great. You are [00:10:00] never going to outspend them ever, and you don't ever need to even try, like, there's so many other things that you can do.
[00:10:07] And I mean, I like to talk about just being a helpful human, like going out and doing things and just being helpful. Like this kills me and I don't understand this. People will buy these, like these networking groups, these training sessions. And they will be there and we're on zoom. We're on zoom. You can turn your camera on revolutionary concept.
[00:10:27] Turn your camera on. When they asked us anybody have questions, turn your mic on and ask something. Ask something. It doesn't matter what the something I'm telling you. This changed my life. I had that about two years ago, like I was already a completely remote company, like six months before the pandemic and everybody decided to join the party.
[00:10:48] I was already fully remote. And I had kind of learned this lesson already, but it changed my life. I was part of like the digital marketer, elite coaching group. And I was going to all these, you know, everybody's doing the zoom [00:11:00] events and all that kind of stuff. And they were letting you ask questions. I have got to pick the brain of some really cool people, you know, I mean, Ryan dice, Donald Miller, like I've gotten to ask these people questions and there are people that are sitting in the same room as me with their camera off and their microphone.
[00:11:17] Answering emails when they have these opportunities and what's happened is other people started noticing me. I started being helpful and that started generating referrals and I wasn't trying. It's like, I had knowledge in my head that someone else could use. They asked a question. I said, Hey, I, I know the answer to that.
[00:11:35] And just started being helpful. And so like, that's like the stupidest, simplest thing to ever do is just to turn your camera on your microphone on and participate in the things you're already paying for. I mean, we're talking, some of these are expensive things like scalable founder's board it's like $20,000 a year.
[00:11:48] And we will have calls where over half of the people have their cameras and microphones often don't ever see. Like, I thought this was just the smaller investment things, you know, like a $200 [00:12:00] event. And it was just cause it's like, eh, just $200. That's why they're not, no, I'm in things that are like 10 and $20,000 a year, half the people have their cameras off.
[00:12:09] What the heck?
[00:12:11] We're in an age of consumption as well, and we're constantly buying new courses, new systems, new applications, new things to help us. And we're just like stockpiling subscriptions of stuff and consumable. We never actually using, and it ends up being very wasteful, but also feeling super overwhelmed.
[00:12:30] And so many business owners don't really have a like system or method internally for, okay. Go consume, go consume is great, store the ideas don't immediately try and execute on all of them store them.
[00:12:44] But like also again, network while you're doing these things. So get, get the side benefit. Even if you don't implement the thing you're teaching. The side benefit is you've gotten in front of other people in your potential audience, potential referral partners, potential customers. So you've engaged, you interacted, you did things.
[00:12:58] So you get some immediate [00:13:00] benefits right there, but then find a way to stop, follow your ideas. And then like once a month, once a quarter, depending on how long it takes you to execute things, review them, prioritize them, pick however many, like no more than three, one to three that you can do over that timeframe.
[00:13:14] Like you're doing a monthly pick one. If you signed up for a thing that teaches you how to build a quiz, Great this month, all you're going to do is build a cost model. That's your only new thing. That's it? No other new things. The one new thing and have a system like just, you know, it could be sticky notes on a wall and it's so easy.
[00:13:32] And then you can, ICE score your ideas. So impact confidence and ease. Take each of your ideas and on a scale of like one to 10, how big of an impact do you think it's going to have? How confident are you in that impact? And then how easy is it going to be to execute and sort your ideas so that you've got the ones that are the easiest ones to execute that you were the most confident we'll have the biggest.
[00:13:54] And that's your thing, whether it's for the month, for the quarter, whatever timeframe is comfortable for you, so that you're moving, you know, moving [00:14:00] forward that little simple step will prevent you from chasing a whole bunch of Chinese and having a whole bunch of Ryan Deiss likes to call them half-built bridges, where you've gone from like, Hey, I'm going to do it.
[00:14:11] I'm going to do it. And like your work and you stop. And then that's because you found the next thing because you signed up for the next event and you signed up for the next event the next day. And now you end up with this whole little library of half-built bridges and you wonder why you're struggling to get leads.
[00:14:25] You have kind of a radical approach to marketing with small business owners. If you were to tell business owners. Here listening right now who are maybe scattered, throwing on social media posts, trying to write content, popping their face on stories here and there popping in on LinkedIn once a month to try and engage and aren't seeing any results. What would you tell them to do instead ?
[00:14:46] Stop if everything that you're doing and go get, you know, your next 10 clients. Go do anything and everything, whatever hustle that you have to do to go get in front of people, not spend a lot of money and it may be a lot of time, but go find 10 clients go old school. If you have to go [00:15:00] knock on doors, send, you know, make phone calls, send emails, be helpful, be creative, be unique.
[00:15:06] Like I know you don't want to talk to me, but I want to talk to you. And you're like one of my dreams. And if you gave me the time of day, I promise you won't regret it. Like give me like 15 minutes of your time. Don't be afraid to be humble while you're doing this. Like, go say, you know, Hey, I'm new or I'm launching a new thing.
[00:15:21] Maybe you're not a new business, but you're launching a new thing. And you know, don't get so stuck in your products and services. If you know who you want to serve. And this is what happened to me because everybody said marketing agencies do these things. We do these things. This is what we're supposed to do.
[00:15:34] We're supposed to do blog articles, ads, social posts, whatever, you know, if you know that you want to serve a particular. And you know, that you have a skill set that they can use, listen to them and let them tell you what they need. You know, think about how you can scale that, think about how you can build services.
[00:15:48] How can you pivot the services you already do to be what they need. And then you'll hear that is you're going to go sell these 10 don't come in with, I have my bag of tricks. You must buy, come in with, this is what I'm [00:16:00] good at. And you're the type of person I want to work with. How can we make. And for your first 10, you know, eventually you're going to have to systemize and you're going to, but you'll know because you'll have talked to your first 10 and you can systemize later.
[00:16:17] We need processes that we can scale. We need to make it as easy as possible because most of us are busy working in our business on top of trying to run our business. And so balancing the two can be really tricky, especially if you're in a place where you're not prepared or comfortable or ready to start outsourcing a ton of work.
[00:16:33] Once they've got those 10 clients, what would you say is the best next step?
[00:16:38] You take the things that are the most boring to you, right? Cause the whole idea is to be in love with your business.
[00:16:43] If you don't love your business, then you're going to stop doing what your business needs you to do. You know, you need to be excited and passionate when you're going and talking to potential clients. And if you've got things that are boring, new things that you don't like doing things that are dragging you down.
[00:16:56] You're going to lose some of your fire. So start by looking at those things, look at [00:17:00] those things that are taking your energy, instead of giving you energy and start looking at, just writing down what you do. Just write down what you do is you do those steps and then start looking at VAs and people that can help taking some of that work off of you.
[00:17:11] Cause usually the things we don't like doing are the easiest things for VA's to take off. I mean, it's something as simple as going through your email box. Like it is so easy to get someone else to go through email box and surface up the things you actually need to look at, or add them to a, to do list or add them to your project management tool so that you can live there and get out of your inbox.
[00:17:29] That's an easy one. They can help you with scheduling your social posts. They can help, like there's so many things, like look at the things that are boring and draining and get those off your plate as soon as possible. Somebody. Is really excited about those things. And they're going to do them better than you.
[00:17:42] Like, I've got things my assistants do. And people on my team do that. I'm like, I'm glad you liked that. Cause if that was my all day, every day, holy no way. There's no way, but they love it. They're excited by it. I'm like, yes. And [00:18:00] that's how you grow your team. As you start taking the pieces that suck your soul out and you give those to somebody else that it energizes them.
[00:18:07] Now, one of the biggest mistakes I see is business owners, instead of focusing on their strengths and outsourcing their weaknesses, as they try and get their weaknesses to be better and stopped doing their strengths and stop focusing on their strengths. And they end up trying to be a whole bunch of like mediocre employees instead of being one incredible business owner and letting other people take on those weaknesses.
[00:18:29] Well, and the other thing I see that happens a lot is we feel like we can't hire someone and train them to do a job that we don't know how to do. And I had the same guy who did the jar fluff as a mentor. Um, and I asked him about that. I was like, there's these pieces that just, I don't know how to do, I can't train someone.
[00:18:43] And he goes, okay, you're looking for a different type of hire. So when you're hiring people, they tend to fall into one of two buckets. You've got people that if you give them a list and you tell them what to do, they can execute it relentlessly. And then you've got other people who can create the list.
[00:18:57] And so if you don't understand the job well enough to hire [00:19:00] someone and train someone to do the job, you'd be very clear, very transparent in your job postings and in your interview process that like, look, this is something that I know I'm not doing well. I know it can be done better, or it's a new service that we haven't done before.
[00:19:12] And I want to add it. And I'm looking for a hire that can build out the systems and processes that can help me put those into place with the intent of eventually hiring some of the people that can just execute. Like you may be leading the execution team at some point. Like, that's your trajectory, but to start with, you're going to be building and executing.
[00:19:32] Does that sound like something you would like, and to the right person they're going to go like, oh yes. You know, cause those are your, those are your intrepreneurs right. They're the ones who don't want the task of owning a whole business and growing a whole business that doesn't feed them energy. But if you give them enough leeway in a particular realm of the business, they will just go, we, and it will be amazing and you will love it.
[00:19:54] And I've done that with my team. And I'm telling you is the best feeling you will ever experience [00:20:00] when they do something better than you and have ideas that you never would have thought of.
[00:20:04] I started off. I didn't like talking to clients, I liked building websites, I liked writing code. I liked designing logos. I like doing, and I was so happy. And to doing that, it was holding the entire business because I kept trying to hire other people to manage the client relationships and it didn't work.
[00:20:22] And I fought it for like the longest, because I am a very introverted person and I didn't like working with clients, but some of that was that we weren't selling the right kind of things to the right kind of clients. Right. And it was some of that journey that I talked about where I had to learn. And so, like, I didn't like going into meetings with clients where I was like, yeah, I know you don't want the six months and you still haven't got leads, but that's how it works.
[00:20:41] I hated that. Um, so that was a red flag. If you're hating your meetings with clients, you have the wrong clients or the wrong services. So that's a huge red flag. Now. I love it. I love going into meetings with clients because like we hop into a meeting with a client and I get fed so much energy because there's like, oh, what are we doing this week?
[00:20:56] I'm so excited. What are we doing? Yeah. And they're like, they're pumped and they're jazz. [00:21:00] Yes score. And I don't want to execute anymore because I love being in that space. I love being where I'm educating around answering questions, where I'm making a difference, making an impact. And I love seeing my team get that same energy from our clients, but they like doing the execution work.
[00:21:16] Like they like building the websites and writing the blog articles and building the landing pages and doing the funnels and all that good jazz. They're excited. They come on a meeting with a client. We have great ideas. They go build and I just get to run around and go do stuff like this, and it's fun and it's happy.
[00:21:32] And I get to just be me all day long. And it's like, that's your goal.
[00:21:37] You have permission to be creative and do it differently too.
[00:21:40] Yep.
[00:21:40] When we think of some of the roles that business owners have to play, especially in that early stage game, you know, they have to play operator, they have to play service per rider.
[00:21:49] They have to play the bookkeeper. They have to play the financial planner. They also have to play the marketer and the salesperson. And I know that sales is one of your superpowers [00:22:00] and I would love to know what you think goes into becoming a great salesperson. Even if your ideal situation is to not actually be a salesperson.
[00:22:11] I think like, especially when your ideal situation is to not be a salesperson, the biggest trick is to quit selling, answer questions, like seriously answering questions is so crazy. And if you see some of the, like the biggest gurus that we want to be when we grow up as business owners, and we start looking at the stuff that they're putting out there, putting out questions or putting out answers to questions, they're creating opportunities for people to ask them questions.
[00:22:35] And what that does is it gets people to raise their hand and say, I would want to work with you. What does that look like? And so now you're not selling, you're not chasing, you're not going after people like, yeah, you're going to chase like your first 10 clients. Cause you gotta, you gotta go chase your first 10 clients.
[00:22:52] It just makes sense to do it that way. But after that, then you can start looking at things like what's, what's a talk, what's a presentation that you can give. That's going to help [00:23:00] people with something that you can say that's going to transform stuff, go to your local chamber of commerce, go to your local business development center.
[00:23:06] If your niche, like, if you're like, say realtors, there's realtors, associations, there's manufacturers, associations, there's whatever you like to work. If they have an industry association go to those people and say, I have like three talks that I can do, and you don't have to have these built, do not build these before you go do this pitch, please, for the love of God, do not build days before you do this pitch, because you will take forever, come up with three topics and some bullet points of how that's going to help.
[00:23:32] So for this type of person, listening to this type of topic is going to help them achieve whatever that's your framework, come up with your bullet points and go pitch that say, I would love to do this. I would love to do this for your group. They will mark it for you. You are just going to show up and be brilliant.
[00:23:49] And then what's going to happen to some of the people in the room. You just give them a way to get, get on your email list. Like, Hey, I would love to email you a copy of the slides that I used. So you don't have to tell them that at the beginning, you don't have to scribble furiously [00:24:00] and try and capture, take pictures of all the slides.
[00:24:01] I will send you all the slides. Just send me an email here. You don't have to have fancy email software. Send me an email, send me a text. I will get a copy of the slides over to you. You may be manually at two in the morning sending painstaking little one by one emails or one by one text messages with links to.
[00:24:17] That's okay. It's good. We're grinding, you know, but get them the copy of the slides and just keep their information somewhere on a spreadsheet so that you can do things with it. You know, start a conversation with them, reach out to them two or three days later. Like, Hey, I'd love to get your feedback. Was that helpful?
[00:24:31] Did you learn something and, and that becomes your social content that becomes all your stuff. You stop selling. You just start being helpful. And I know like one analogy I like to use, you know, and everybody's got their analogies, right? All of us coaches and consultants, we have our analogy is for growing a business.
[00:24:49] Mine is a city. Thank you for your business. Like a city. You want to make it really easy for people to understand why they should be. To navigate their way around. Some of them should want to [00:25:00] stay. Some of them should want to being friends. You're in a constant flux of new construction, but you also need to do maintaining your infrastructure.
[00:25:09] And so it's like you start thinking of a business, like a city, your mind immediately going to go to like how all of this starts to fit, how it all starts to connect. You know, if you're going to be doing a live event and you're Plaza. How do people know about it? How do they know that it's going to be there?
[00:25:21] How do they know they need to fly in to come see it? You know, how do they know that they need to like hit their computer and stream it? Or, you know, whatever. Like, it's so easy to think of it. When we start thinking the analogy of like a city, you're building a city, people need to work there. People need to live there.
[00:25:36] People need to visit there and you need to make it as easy to get around as possible and make sure that nothing's crumbling and you don't have potholes because we tend to forget the maintenance. We chase our shiny objects and forget the maintenance. So that's my little analogy.
[00:25:50] This is just a quick pause to thank you for listening to The Hustle, Less Profit More Podcast. If you're enjoying this episode, I would greatly appreciate it. If you take a [00:26:00] quick sec and give it a five star rating and leave a review. By doing so you're helping to increase the visibility of this podcast so others just like, you can find it online.
[00:26:11] I also wanted to give you a gift. If you're a small or micro business owner, struggling to create content for your business, because you don't know what to create and don't have time to create it. Grab my free content planning playbook, where I help you create less content and convert more prospects.
[00:26:30] You can snag your free copy in the episode description. Now back to the episode.
[00:26:36] It all comes back to that tried and true concept of it's much cheaper and easier and better to just keep the clients you have really happy and increase their value. It than it is to go and chase new leads.
[00:26:52] Yeah. Raving fans versus sales.
[00:26:54] I mean, like even the people that are just in your world, if they never buy, they can still [00:27:00] refer business to you. They may buy 3, 4, 5, 6 years later. Think of the people that we have stopped, like have online courses and have all this other stuff because we would constantly stopping them. Right. And we don't buy their thing for like three years, five years we've been in their world just absorbing and gleaning, and we've talked about them and we've told other people about them and you know, but looking at it from their side of the fence, we sat on their email list for three years, we didn't open 75% of the emails that they sent.
[00:27:29] We may be clicked on 5% of the emails that they sent, but eventually we bought, you know, like I was in digital marketer lab elite thing, you for like two years before I bought digital marketer certified partner. And that was on their email list for like probably four years before I bought lab. You know, and it's like for the daily coaching thing.
[00:27:53] So it's like, I've been in their space talking about digital marketers, talking about Ryan Deiss, talking about their stuff, sharing it out there and being an advocate [00:28:00] for them long before I ever bought, you know, and our customers are doing the same. If you're being valuable, if you're being helpful, if you're putting them before the sales pitch, if you're constantly doing the sales pitch, you're going to turn people off.
[00:28:15] You really should be trying to get them to be like," I'm ready. And what does it look like to pay you money? I want to give you money. I'm confident you can fix me. I don't know exactly what that looks like, but can I afford you now? Am I there?" "
[00:28:31] I love that perspective of seeing people, not just as potential leads, but as advocates, as promoters as people who can grow your business, but just in a different way, I think it takes the pressure of sales off because even if you don't sell in the moment, You may have just had someone who's going to go to rave about you and the experience they had with other people.
[00:28:49] So it's not a fail.
[00:28:50] Yeah. And you think about how you can create that. How can you, how can you get someone to be, you know, to interact with you in some way, shape, form, or fashion and tell you one of the coolest [00:29:00] experiments I've been doing over this last couple of weeks. That is so neat. As I started replying to emails, you know?
[00:29:05] Cause we're on so many email newsletters, right? Where people send out these here's the latest things from our blog, here's the whatever. Most people don't reply. So it's like, go get on your target client's email list and just reply and just say something helpful. You're not doing a sales pitch. You're just like, oh, this is really cool.
[00:29:20] I feel like I got like a really cool client, like a fairly big well-known client because I was on his email list and there was a typo and like, one of the links didn't work because of the typo. And I was like, "Hey, I just want to be helpful. You know, this link doesn't work. I was like, but it's really great content.
[00:29:36] Thank you so much. I'm happy to be on your email." And that started a whole conversation that over a couple of weeks, he started sending things to me to look at, and then we ended up turning him into a client and it's like, it's just a weird little trick, but I'm telling you nobody replies to these email newsletters.
[00:29:50] So just because your clients aren't replying for one, don't assume they're not looking at them. Email stats have been nuts since iOS started making all the changes. So, [00:30:00] you know, don't get overwhelmed to stats and numbers. If you want to know if they're interested and like paying attention to your, ask a question, see if you can get them through.
[00:30:08] And then go start replying start conversations with random humans that are sending out email newsletter lists and are just as frustrated as you are and see what happens. Cause it's, I have met some really cool people and had some really cool conversations, just cause I started replying to their emails that they didn't think anybody would reply to.
[00:30:24] You've literally just positioned yourself there as a helpful human where you're making a human connection with them. And now they know you're alive. Like no paid ads needed.
[00:30:32] You never know where that's going to take you. Like, I know one lady who owns a Facebook ad company and she's just, she's really, really smart gal, very smart, amazingly smart. And she started just like sharing advice and opinions with like Facebook Meta.
[00:30:47] Now they're Meta and like many chat and a couple other softwares. And now she goes and like, does presentations for them? Like they have her come and like speak to their audience and they [00:31:00] ask her advice on new features and things like that. So it's like she's being promoted by these big companies now.
[00:31:06] Simply because all she did was start replying with advice. Like really good, very well thought through advice. Like she would create loom videos, letting them know kind of what the user experience was and how they could improve it. And like, this is a cool new feature, but here's some things maybe one, one to know, and they started inviting her to test things and, you know, started like she got to get higher and higher up the food chain.
[00:31:24] And now she's meeting like high up people in these companies. 'cause she just replied.
[00:31:32] It brings marketing back to its original purpose, right? The whole goal of marketing is to make clients both want and need what you've got to offer. Like that's it it's to set up the sale, but it doesn't have to be facebook ad and like, right. Like it doesn't have to be in this weird online space in order to do that, you can reverse engineer your sales process to see what are the things that make clients ready to buy. And then how do I just do that in a whole bunch of different ways? [00:32:00] How do I set that up for success?
[00:32:02] Yeah. And that's the kind of stuff we look at with our clients. It's like, what are you doing this taking a whole lot of time and not getting a whole lot of results. What could you be doing instead? Maybe it takes the same amount of time, but it's going to work a lot better. You know, how can we think outside the box?
[00:32:14] How can we, you know, we spend a lot of time just kind of getting their positioning, right? So if you look them up, they look really good online, but not a whole lot of energy in the typical marketing tactics. You know, cause a lot of them just don't work and it's like, and we see the success stories and it does work for some people.
[00:32:31] So I don't want to say that like some people are going to come up with the one funnel away. They're like one funnel away from generating a hundred thousand. That's great. That's good. More power to them. That is not most of us. I built funnels for a living, I have yet to come up with one for myself that has just generated me a hundred thousand dollars in sales.
[00:32:50] I can do it for other people occasionally, but doing it for myself as a whole nother.
[00:32:56] You know what that great brings up a great point because we, we all get so entrenched in our [00:33:00] own businesses. This is one of the reasons I'm a copywriter. And one of the reasons why I try not to write my own copy and because you're, you're in the thick of it, you're in the storm trying to see through it, to see your client and their needs.
[00:33:11] And it can be really hard to take yourself out and get that like 30,000 foot view of your business and be able to make smart decisions that aren't just time sucks.
[00:33:23] Yeah. That's such a good example. I'm going a student, a copywriting. We write copy for people all the time. I help people clarify their messaging, their positioning, their branding, or messaging. I've done the MDN StoryBrand certified guide thing next week, but I've been doing StoryBrand for awhile. Yup. And it's. But I was sitting there the other day, trying to rewrite my speaker sheet. This is one, one page, right? This is not, and it's what I speak about.
[00:33:47] Think about how many topics I just talked about on this podcast right now. And I'm just trying to identify like three that I could put on a speaker sheet that I could be like, this is something your audience will find valuable that I can talk about. I am telling you [00:34:00] the amount of time.
[00:34:01] It's like three topics and a sentence per topic that took me an hour and a half. And I still don't like it. And it's like for our clients, I can sit down with them and oh yeah, you do this, this, this, and this is why someone needs to hear about it. And we're like 10 minutes later done an hour and a half.
[00:34:20] And I still don't like, I got so frustrated. I went and I asked one of my favorite clients, the one that like, if I could clone her and have like all of her. And that was all I ever had, I would be like on cloud nine. And I was like, what are three things that I could talk to you about that you would be like, yes, three.
[00:34:36] And I've got it from her an hour and a half later. There's something about doing it for yourself. That again, go back to these groups and turn your camera on. Turn your mic on and ask for input. Like I'm changing my whole blogging strategy just from advice I got some people to tell stories instead of just.
[00:34:53] Yeah, connect with other people. If you're relying on social media strategies and ads and content from [00:35:00] your humble spot, isolated by yourself, you're not going to get that perspective from other people. Your network in adjacent industries can give you so much insight in the way that you're being seen by your clients.
[00:35:11] And even some of their like bad ideas, ideas that don't resonate can help you clarify what is a good idea, too.
[00:35:18] And it doesn't undermine us either. I think we're afraid to ask questions sometimes because we want to be seen as an expert and to ask questions lets of people into the, like, maybe we're not as good as we think we are.
[00:35:29] And you kind of have to get past that because people want to help and what ends up happening? Not just so like, it can be a helpful human, but providing advice, but you can also be a helpful human by letting other people give you advice. Because sometimes they have epiphanies so great helps them. Sometimes you have a epiphanies these great helps you, but you still built a relationship.
[00:35:49] Like I can tell you, I have gotten clients from doing this where like I've went into communities where I know my target audience is, and I have a new thing and I'm not sure if it's great for them, but I have an idea and I just want to test it. So I'm [00:36:00] just like, "Hey, I'm putting something together. And I just would like some advice from the really smart people in.
[00:36:05] If this is something that would actually make sense, how would you change the wording?" And some of them won't be like, oh, "this is what I needed. This was the perfect moment. How did you know this got right in front of me?" And so we've got clients just from asking for advice. Like you just never know. I mean, like if you can get an offer, most people are like, if I could just get somebody to listen to me and listen to what I do, then I know I could sell them, like, okay, well think about what would get them to listen.
[00:36:32] It might be giving you advice that might be when they listen to what you do, because to give you advice, what do they have to ask? What do you do? What do you sell? Oh, oh. Or it might be like, I was just talking to someone the other day that you would be a perfect fit for if they just went to your website or saw social posts like that never would have happened, but they had a conversation with you because you asked for.
[00:36:57] Yeah, it's just so crazy. It's like anything you can [00:37:00] do to have a conversation with somebody, whether they're going to be a target client or not, because you don't know who somebody knows. Is it like an old adage from back in my BNI days when I was doing BNI, like sell through the group, not to the group.
[00:37:10] Yes. You know, it's like some of the same buddy's been in BNI pick out that like themed into your head. Cause there's only like 10, 20 people in the. If you're trying to sell to them, you're just not going to get your value out of this. You need to go to the people that those 10, 20 people know, and you have to say it in a way that, you know, they can be like, oh yeah, yeah, you got to talk to Mickey.
[00:37:29] She is awesome copywriter. If you're trying to put some copy together for something like, oh, Mickey's your person. You know, it doesn't matter if you do 50,000 things. If people can get to know you for one thing, So it becomes your marketable service, your marketable product that keep doing the 50 things.
[00:37:44] That's fine. Market the heck out of like one thing that everybody wants and then earn the right to prescribe the other things.
[00:37:53] That is such good advice. Don't make it hard for your customers to know what they need to buy, give them the one thing, and then you [00:38:00] can prescribe the next.
[00:38:00] Most of us don't want advice we ask questions, but we're tired. We get advice all day, right? We want someone to listen to us and validate that what we're doing is right or that we're being heard. And by asking questions, you're being a good listener and validating the person on top of giving yourself more information to give better advice down the road.
[00:38:19] Yep. And that's why things even like, like you can replicate that from marketing. That's why quiz funnels work so well, because you're doing the same thing. You're being like, Hey, you're trying to figure out the answer to this. And you need some specific advice, but maybe you don't want to get off a phone call and you're not quite ready to do that yet.
[00:38:37] So like, I've got this little quiz that you can like answer a few questions and by the end of it, it's going to give you some advice and it will help point you in the right direction. And it's based on the actual empathy you give. So there's, there are some marketing ways to replicate some of those in-person things, but if you don't have your first 10, like really happy raving clients, Yeah, go get, go get [00:39:00] those.
[00:39:01] I love to drop the marketing things. Quiz funnels are cool. Don't get me wrong, but give it your 10.
[00:39:09] Priorities. If you could give the listeners one actionable tip one piece of advice after they turn this podcast off and go to do something, what's the one thing you would tell them.
[00:39:21] I would say, look at your, look at your current clients.
[00:39:23] Look at who you have, like
[00:39:24] I
[00:39:24] love dash marketing agencies.
[00:39:25] If you ask them how they get. Word of mouth and speak. That's how we get our clients. So why aren't we doing that for our clients? You know what I mean? Like how can we, how can we help them do more, like speaking, do more, you know? And that may be how you get your 10. Is to just go, go be a helpful human go teach. Two group of people go in person, go to your local community, where it's easy for you to head down to your local chamber.
[00:39:51] Local chambers and business development centers are always looking for people that can help. Like always like you're going to get a lot of other small business owners. Maybe not have a whole lot of money. That's why [00:40:00] they're there, but you're going to learn and you know, they may be working for some of your clients and you guys might have a great connection and you just never know.
[00:40:10] You just got to get out there.
[00:40:11] So for the audience who want to learn more about you find you online, see how they can maybe steal some of your amazing super powers, where
[00:40:19] can they find you?
[00:40:20] Uh, the easiest way is to go to superpowers into sales.com. So we actually have a quiz that will help you determine what type of entrepreneur you are.
[00:40:29] Like, what level are you at right now? What type of superhero are you and give you some actionable advice on some of these steps that you can take based on where you are now. What are some of these things that you could do that would help you scale up your business? Get those 10 clients, things like that.
[00:40:42] So it's a really cool quiz. Um, that's kind of my, my sweet spot is I like to work with people that have superpowers that do want to be a little bit different, that aren't afraid to think outside of. Yeah. And let's help them scale their business the smart way so they can actually enjoy it.
[00:40:58] Thank you so much, Christina, for [00:41:00] joining us today,
[00:41:00] uh, thank you so much for having me. This has been great.
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