Never Waste Money on Marketing Again with Estie Rand

Are you ready to create riches in your work and life? It's time for Shedding the Bitch Radio and TV, where you can discuss, debate, and get advice on how to discover and shed the bitches of fear, insecurity, self-doubt, and negativity so you can realize your dreams and life purpose and create and accelerate the riches in life you deserve. So let's welcome your ball of fire host, Bernadette Boas.

Good day, good day, good day everyone, and welcome to another episode of Shedding the Bitch Radio. And you know what, we're just getting into 2022, so we're just getting into some really, really, uh, hot topics, let's call them core topics. And today is no different when— different when we get talking about, you know, not wasting your money on marketing again. Uh, so we're gonna have a deep conversation about how important marketing and branding and sales are. But at the same time, how can you do it without necessarily wasting your money? Because, you know, we don't want you doing that, right? So before I get into all that, let me just— especially as we get into 2022, I definitely have to thank, you know, all of you new and ongoing listeners and viewers. We broadcast on any one of your podcast streaming services as well as on our Shading the Bitch YouTube channel, and we are so grateful for those of you who have been following us for quite a while and you're liking and tweeting and sharing and rating and subscribing to, you know, to any number of our programs, as well as you're then getting new eyes and ears into our community. And so we are so, so grateful, grateful for that. But again, we also need to be definitely thanking our Ongoing sponsors. North Georgia Tax Solutions has been a sponsor of the Shedding the Bits community for a good number of years, probably going on our 8th year, and we can't do it without Debbie Snelling and her team who really support small to corporate size companies in all of their financial and tax services needs all around the country, not just North Georgia. And she and her team are just absolutely fabulous, and they will do a bang-up job for you and your business and/or your individual needs. So definitely reach out to ngtechsolutions.com and tell them that Bernadette sent you, and she'll take great care of you. As well, as I had introduced toward the end of, uh, the year 2021, uh, introduced a new sponsor who's more local to Atlanta and to Georgia, and that's up top Roofing of Atlanta. Jay and his team have been part of my posse, I would say, for a good, uh, 6 or 7 years. And he has been following our, our shows and our community for a good number of years and finally came to me late last year and said, I need to support you and want to sponsor you in your program. So we are so grateful for that and for him. And if you are in the Atlanta and/or Georgia area then please reach out to up-toproofingofatl@yahoo.com and let Jay and his team take great care of you. Alright, well, let's get into our topic for today, because again, you never have to waste money on marketing again. So our guest, ESD Ran, believes that every person can build a professional business doing what they love. Earning buckets of money and having time for their life and family, and proper marketing is the key that unlocks it all. However, in today's works— I'm sorry, in today's works, mastering is largely confusing and misunderstanding. Join us as Esty breaks it down with clarity and direction so you never waste time or money on marketing again. So what we will discuss and what I want you to be listening for is how branding, marketing, and sales are all key to your success comes and key when it comes to marketing. But we're also going to talk about organic marketing, and I know some of you are a bit confused as to really how to make organic marketing work for you. So you'll definitely want to be listening for that. And for Esty and our rest of our community, especially if you're new, I always pose a rich question for you, and that's a question that will ground you in our conversation, will make sure you're are listening for things that actually can impact and change and shift whatever you might be working on or dealing with in your work or life. So your rich question when it comes to this particular subject today is, what is that big struggle that you have when it comes to marketing? And especially if it's where you're kind of investing money and it's going right down the drain. So what is that one big challenge that you're having when it comes to your marketing? All right, now let me introduce you to our guest. Esther Ann. She is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning marketing strategy consultant and speaker. After a long decade-long career in the nonprofit sector as a Chief Information Officer, she left her sweet C-suite job in 2011 to build her company. As the founder and owner of Strand Consulting, Esther helps small business owners scale their business to 6 and 7-figure profits. Utilizing her skills and expertise in marketing strategy and analysis, she brought her business to 6-figure profits in less than 2 years without spending a dime in ad spend. Since 2009, serving as a certified professional coach, she has helped hundreds of micro business owners transform to fully scaled businesses with a 300% profitability, earning her recognition as the winner of Best in LA Business Consultancy 2018. In 2019, her podcast Business Breakthrough was featured on NASDAQ as a top podcast, and she's hosted the LinkedIn Influencer Summit. Wow, well, welcome, welcome, welcome, Esty.

Thank you, I'm excited to be here. That was a very glowing introduction.

Well, you are so welcome, and I, Gosh, I'm going to pull out a lot of things even from that intro that I would love to talk to you about. But first, let us get to know you, Efti, as a woman and, you know, not just the business side of things. Where do you reside? What do you do? And kind of, you know, what gets you excited, especially what gets you excited about the new year?

Sure. So I live in Los Angeles, California. What gets me excited about the new year is this new energy. Right? People have this new energy. There's a new excitement. There's a new hopefulness. You know, you and I were talking right before we got started that so much of all of our accomplishments are mindset. And so I find that the new year brings myself, my clients, my, my students, this renewed hopefulness, this renewed readiness to go after their dreams. Whereas, you know, as 2021 was dwindling and they maybe you know, some people hadn't reached all the goals they wanted to.

Yeah.

They start to feel badly and then it starts to feel like, well, why should I bother? You know, the last few weeks of the year, very few people are, you know, some are, some of my people, like they'll push those last few weeks to reach those quotas that they wanted to do. And other people will be like, look, I just feel too far, you know, okay, I'm just gonna scratch this year. I'm gonna start again next year, you know, and no wrongs, no rights, no judgment.

Right.

But everyone comes into new year with this kind of readiness. Now I was at the gym this morning 6:00 AM. And that's— yeah, I'm usually at the gym at 6:00 because I have, I have small children, so I have to get back in time for carpool. And I was at the gym last week at 6:00 too, right? So Thursday morning, I'm at the gym at 6:00. It's rainy. There's no one there, right? It's the end of this— what is it, December? It's end of December. Nobody's there. This morning, I couldn't find a place to sit. Everyone— because it's the New Year.

It's those infamous 2 weeks.

Yes, yeah, I should have been prepared. I should have gone earlier. So everyone's there now. I'm like, all right, all you, now clear out, right? Get my bars back, right, right, right.

Well, that's, uh, that's very cool. And so what is it now? I do want to ask, how does your fitness and that discipline of 6 AM in the morning How would— how does that feed your soul and feed the work that you do within your own business?

Um, so I love to dance. Dancing is actually my fun. I go to the gym so that I can be strong and flexible enough to do my dancing. Um, that's actually— and, and to carry my children. I have a 4-year-old who doesn't always like to walk. Um, and my groceries. I'm a single mom as well. So like, for me, the gym is— it's there's so many elements to it. It's strength and stamina. I start my day by moving. By the time it's like 7:00, 7:30, I'm up. I'm up. I'm like, I'm ready to go, as opposed to be like, okay, hit the news again. You know, I've had many of those days as well. So it served me in my short-term and my long-term goals. The days that I start my day at the gym are better. And I had— there was a long period where I was doing like deep meditation every morning. There was a period I was doing like heavy gym every morning, like 5 days a week. I was there at 6:00, 6:30 3 days a week. And then I couldn't figure out how to get the gym and the meditation into every day because carpool. And someone's like, well, why don't you just do it every other day? I was like, no, my perfectionist nature will not allow every other day. But you know what? I've been trying it and it was a really good idea. So now I'm at the gym like 3 mornings a week, dancing 2, 3 times a week, and deep meditation 3 times a week. I'm like, oh, okay, we're— this might be what they call balance. All right.

Wow, I love that idea because I, I'll be honest with you, Esti, I've been struggling. I, I want to get back to the gym as of today. My plan is to be at the gym today, and then I'm— then mine is meditation/prayer and pickleball are like those two other things that I want to do. Pickleball?

I don't know what that is. What's pickleball?

It's like a tennis, ping pong, badminton type of sport.

Fun.

Yeah, yeah, we could talk about that another day because I want to hear about you, but I love that idea. I love that idea because, yeah, so I am actually gonna leverage that, that I have to do that kind of stuff. Try that.

I'm finding it's really working. My perfectionist was extremely angry at the suggestion. Was like, no, maybe I'll wake up at 5:30. Maybe some days will be longer gym and shorter meditate. And none of that was happening. I was just like hitting snooze the whole morning because the overwhelm of trying to do something impossible was just making me dysfunctional. And this new thing is working. And then I have shorter meditations throughout the day or I'll meditate in the evening. But my morning is solid because I wake up 6 every day and I'm either jumping out of bed to the gym or I'm jumping into like— I'll say I'll meditate for like an hour and a half, like I'll do very deep. Uh, yeah, I do, I do deep meditation. Well, I go psychedelic. I don't, I don't need substances.

Yeah, well, being a single mom and a business owner, you need that deep meditation, I'm sure.

Yeah, yeah, no joke.

Yeah, no joke. Well, let's talk about marketing, and especially let's talk about it in also a way that, being that it is the beginning of the year, um, get kind of helping all of our entrepreneurs out there, even corporate professionals, uh, getting their head on straight about marketing and what they're, you know, what they should be spending time on and what, what they're wasting their money and time on. So how do you define marketing differently? Because you must, in the, in the approach that you have, which we're going to get into. But how do you define marketing differently than other people do?

Sure. So my definition for marketing is 4 C's in one sentence. It's everything you do that creates and communicates value of your product or service to your target customer or client to convince them to buy. So the C's are create, communicate, customer or client, still sees, and convince. And any form of marketing that is missing some of those elements, it just won't work. And I've seen so many people do, you know, 1, 2, 3 of those, right? Imagine someone, their marketing creates value, it communicates value, it communicates it to the right people, but it never convinces them to buy anything. Then what was the point? Or they create value, communicate value, but to the wrong people to convince them to buy, and then they don't buy it. It's the wrong people. You know, or very convincing to the right people, but it never creates the value so the people don't want to buy it, right? And that's, that's what we always think of that, like, you know, like pushy salesmen, you know. So those 4 elements I find are really key. The way I teach marketing, there's a blend of branding, marketing, and sales that really all come together. And I've worked even with some larger companies. My focus is micro businesses, right? I hang out in the like 6 and 7 figure profit space. Once my clients are doing multiple 7 figures profit, I'm like, you don't need me. Like, you can go play with other people now.

Okay, well, wait, hold on a minute. So for those listening— and, uh, you're like me, you talk very fast— but those listening, define micro business again just so they're clear on what that term means.

So in my head, a micro business is anywhere from a solopreneur freelancer, like a 1 person, to like a 20 person company, and earning anywhere up to like 7 figures and change profit. That's how I see profit. That's how I see microbusiness.

Yeah. And I love that.

Because you can still be micro with a million dollar profit. I have clients like this. Right. They're still micro.

Right.

I once had someone come to me like, we have 30 employees, but a bunch of them are part-time. We heard that you work with companies up to about 20. I'm like, it's okay. I'm not counting your staff. It's fine.

Hey, if you can get more done with, if you can make more with less, Go for it.

I'm not counting your staff. It's fine. We're okay. Right.

Okay, then continue on. I'm sorry, I just wanted to make sure.

No, that's fine. I'll say even in some of the larger companies, one of the big pitfalls is as they grow, they silo marketing, sales, branding, right? So they'll hire a branding firm or agency to do their brand. They'll have an internal marketing department, and then they'll have either an internal or external sales team, and no one talks to each other. And they end up with this huge mess. And so, you know, this— I've actually spoken to some experts whose entire job is stitching together these departments. And in a microbusiness, you don't have that luxury. You are chief branding, marketing, sales officer. You're the BCSR, like, you're, you're it. Um, and even when you have a small company, you have some staff, you've got to take ownership of all the parts. That doesn't mean you design your logo, and it doesn't mean you have to take every sales call You do have to own all the functions and you do have to have a sense of how they all tie together.

Yeah.

Because they do work together. Your brand is that uniqueness of you that makes you stand out among what is now a global marketplace for everything from massage therapy to dinner.

Yeah.

Like your dinner could come from anywhere at this point because your dinner might be some recipe blogger 6,000 miles away.

Yep.

As opposed to the takeout place down the block.

Right. Right, it's true.

You're— instead of getting your local massage therapist, you might end up buying a massage from like a massive spa company based halfway around the world. So there's no— every practitioner is now in a global marketplace. And so what makes you stand out to your people, that's your brand. You know, one of the biggest marketing money wasters that I've seen is people who throw money at quote-unquote branding, right? Logos or business names, taglines, all that stuff. All that is is a reflection of your brand. Your brand is the uniqueness that is you. It's the thing that makes you stand out to your people. And that's your foundation. You can't do any marketing till you know that, right? Because your marketing just has to start communicating that. And part of your brand is defining your people too. So that's foundation. When we teach it in our program, that's always first with my clients, first everything. If we don't have that, we, we have nothing to stand on. Um, and then the quote unquote marketing, what most people think is marketing, and you feel free to stop me if I talk too fast. I do. Um, I talk, I don't, not too, too's a judgment. I talk quickly. I'm originally from New York. California has tempered me a bit, but I am a New Yorker.

I'm from Philly in Atlanta, so I totally understand.

Yeah. So you get that tempering. Like, my, some of my LA friends are like, slow down. So I don't know what you just said. Once had a client from like Orange County, like native Californian, and he was just like, and anyways, as the Iowa was thinking, I'm like, can I, can I, can I record you and play you on 2x? This is hurting me. I can't do that. I love you. I'm just not wired this way. Right, right.

So true.

It's so true. All right, so we have—

so yeah, marketing, most people think of marketing is what I call promotion. It's just getting people's attention, right? Right. And that's what most people define as marketing. And that's the biggest— another huge marketing money waster, number 437. You call it marketing, but all it is is attention. And that attention is only one of 12 key elements of a marketing strategy. So you've gotten attention. Did you get the attention of the right people? Did you get it in the right way? Do you have an offer that they're interested in? Do you have a message that makes you stand out? Do you have a sales path that they're going to follow? Just that attention-getting piece is not enough. I can't count the number of clients who come to me where they've invested money in a website, in a brand, in an SEO person or a social media manager or whatever. They're like, "But I put all this money into marketing and it didn't work." I'm like, "No." No, you didn't even know what marketing was. You put all this money into one element of a marketing strategy and you didn't have the other pieces lined up. Yeah.

So let me ask you a question before we go on. And coming from corporate myself, I totally get the dysfunction between those, you know, those, those what I'll call departments because that's how they set up if you look at a hierarchy, right?

Correct.

So is your recommendation— do you like— because I work with mapping out the hierarchy for even small businesses. Do you map it out to where it is one box of which all three live in? And there— and then if so, um, how do you— how do you manage, even in a micro business, how do you manage the, the inferiority or or superiority that sales has over marketing and marketing has over— I mean, how do you say they reconcile that?

I totally— I actually had— I once had a sales guy, um, on my team, and we had this argument, right? Who's it— who's, who's more important, right? Sales or marketing? I was like, well, let's see, you work for me, so you're sales, I'm marketing. That's our hierarchy. Um, it was, it was a fun conversation. Um, so I'll tell you what it is for me. I map out the strategy, right? The framework that I've created over the last decade plus, we actually call the marketing map, right? Because the strategy is just a map to reach your goal. And so when you have a marketing strategy, you have all the moving parts. Now, how that's delegated out, to me it's not a hierarchy. It's a— equality is not the right word because equality already connotes that there's a possibility of hierarchy and we're on the same plane. It's a synergy. Of working together so that everybody wins, where the brand is not a department. The brand could be internal, external. The brand is just figuring out what do we stand for? And that could be everybody, that could be just the owner, that could be hiring someone from the outside to help them identify it or, or figure it out. So the brand just comes, the brand is, and you have to kind of unearth it, right? When someone tries to create a brand, it could be taken away because someone else could create the same thing. So the way I do branding is connected to the essence of what the business actually came forth to bring to the world, right? The marketing and sales, marketing's job is to create the thing that people wanna buy and get attention. Sales' job is to get those people whose attention we're getting to get to buy that thing. Right. Now, if those people are not the same human, and sometimes they are and sometimes they're not, or even the same humans or the same companies, if they're not communicating, you're gonna lose a huge amount of information, of money. They should be talking, if not every day, at least every week intensively. They should be on the same page where marketing is saying, okay, this is the thing we think we wanna sell, and this is the reason why we think so, and these are our people, and this is what we're doing to get their attention. And then sales has to say, oh, well, that attention thing seems to be working because we're getting all of these people, and this is what's happening, and these are the conversations, and this is the feedback. And if there are problems, sales has to come back to marketing. And again, when you're one human, you have to have these conversations with yourself out loud, in your head, doesn't matter. It's you in your office. Um, and if it's you doing the marketing and you've hired a sales agent, you and the sales guy need to be talking daily to weekly if you're actively selling, right? And you need to be getting the feedback of, you know what, people are really pushing back on the price, right? So either we need to change the price, change the people, or change the value proposition. Something's off.

Right.

Those conversations have to happen. And so to me, it's not so much of a hierarchy of marketing or sales. And I know in corporate there's a lot of this that my sales guy has because he came from a corporate space. Um, it's a matter of how do we work together for the betterment of the business, all of us stakeholders inside it, and all of the people that we're serving from it.

Yeah.

Because we're in business— again, I believe in business to serve, right? I don't believe in business to manipulate or to take or to like money is energy. It's an exchange of value and energy. You are putting out energy and providing, and you do a receipt for that, right? I love money. I'm a big believer in that. My motto for all the years have been more money, less headache, right? So money's fantastic. You want to give something, you want to receive something, right? That exchange needs to be there, but so does the exchange of communication and respect, right?

Right. So is So when you say, you know, and the title of the show is, you know, Never Waste Money on Marketing Again, is that because of the fact that too many business owners are looking at only one element of the whole, you know, marketing chain, so to speak? Or is it for other reasons other than putting all your eggs in the attention bucket?

So I would say if we want to give a global reason why, if your marketing's not working, if you're wasting money on marketing, there's only one of two reasons or both. Either it's incomplete or it's misaligned. So either you are putting all your attention on one or just a few things and missing others, so it's incomplete, you haven't gotten all the pieces, or you have all the pieces but they don't match. So you've got a brand and you've got a message, but your salespeople aren't actually using your message and it's your, your attention-getting strategies are actually targeting the wrong people. Because you've decided that Facebook ads are a really good idea to reach 12-year-olds. Like, you just misaligned. You've done all the things, but they don't match.

Right, right.

You know, you brand yourself and your messaging is premium, but then your prices are, are standard, and people look and they're like, this just feels weird. It's misaligned. Yeah, that's— it's typically one of those two things, or both, incomplete or misaligned.

Okay. All right. So, and you say that there's 12?

There's 12.

12 elements of marketing strategy.

Yeah. So I can go through them if you want. We can play.

Oh, sure.

Yeah, sure.

Okay. We start with core brand. This is uniqueness that is you. It's the DNA. It's the everything that you stand for. It's what you come to provide to your people that makes you stand out among everybody else. Then I have what I call branding roots or elements. Now you'll find in my 12 parts, you'll find every possible marketing, salesy, branding thing you've ever seen out there in the world. I will show you where it goes in this framework. Um, so in the branding roots are things like your brand archetype, your USP, your vision, mission, your brand story, all that stuff. These are just elements that deepen and strengthen your brand, right? They're elements that are unique to you and they help define and, uh, amplify, okay, what it is you stand for. Uh, then we have the branding, I guess you call it like the representative branding, the graphical brand, right? So this would be your logo, your tagline, your name, what represents your brand, because this is important, right? How you show up, how you reflect this, that's number 3. Number 4, we have our target audience, and I usually do target before we do the branding, um, the graphical and linguistic branding, but I, it's I have, I have a graphic organizer that I designed for it. So I run through that in my head when I say this to you. I'm not looking at anything. I'm looking at the picture in my head of the graphic organizer that we use to teach it. So that's like kind of the design of it. So the target audience, I call them the ITC, your ideal target customer or client, right?

We go after the ideal.

We accept others, right? But we go after the ideal, right? Uh, then we've got 6 Ps. So we've got product, sorry, positioning first. What's our position in the marketplace, right? High, low, medium, rocky. If you remember that jump rope game from a million years ago. Yeah. Um, you know, where are you perceived? What's your competitive advantage? Where do you fit? What's happening? How are you going to stand out amongst what else is there based on the uniqueness that you bring and all that stuff? Then you have product. What's the actual thing you're selling? Yeah, I've worked with service businesses for over a decade. Uh, my specialty is in microservice-based businesses, although I do a lot of, um, I almost wanna call them soul-based businesses. I don't have a good name for it, but you know, niche fashion and food service and artisans, people who are coming similar to service, you're coming with a thing that's you, right? You have an idea, you have a gift, you have a talent, you have a creation, you have a something you wanna, you wanna business creative, it sounds like. Yeah. So there's a lot of creatives in that space as well.

Yeah.

And so, but when you're a service-based business, how do you productize it, right? What is the thing? You're selling? Is it just your time? Is it the result? Is it the transformation? Are there online courses? Which is like, you know, uh, as a colleague of mine said, she's like, online courses are like the cool girls' MLM. It's like, oh my God, come on, we're gonna make an online course, make a million bucks, let's do it! Isn't it great? Like, I love you.

That's a whole other conversation there.

We can go through that. We can go through that. And I've been working in the online information products space intensely for over 4 years. I know every tool, every in and out, every option, every failure, every success possible. I like, cannot—

We're not gonna have enough time. That'll take us like days of conversation.

We can do, we can do another one. We could do another one on that. So you've got product, you've got price, right? Again, these are all things that create and communicate the value, right, of what you're selling to your people. So what are you charging and what are you charging? And each one comes from the other based on who you are and who your people are and what you're bringing to the market and what you want your positioning to be, what your position actually is. Right, when you are brand new, I love this, can I like be, I'm a little bit blunt by nature, you're like a brand new coach, you have no experience at all, but you see coaches who are charging $400 or $500 an hour, you're like, why not me? Why not me? What standing do you have? I'm not saying no, right, but on what basis?

Well, where's the proof?

Where's, where's the value proposition? Yeah, now if you're a brand new coach and you've got 20 years experience in a specific industry and now you're using in this way, please, by all means. Right, right, right. Because you have a value proposition.

Yeah.

But I think you and I and many have seen people are like, they just choose a number because why can't I just choose any number I want?

Yeah, sure.

Yeah, without any, any thought to the value that they're providing behind that number. And so price is a significant factor, but it's got to have a basis.

Absolutely. So what's number 6?

So number 6 is your presence. And I take this as an extrapolation of the old marketing piece called place, which used to refer to retail channels. So now it's your presence, whether it is online, in the physical world, whether it's retail channels if you have a physical product, your social media presence, your web presence. How do people find you when they look for you? When someone looks for you, how do they find you? So this is kind of passive. This is a passive form of your quote-unquote marketing. When people look for you, what do they find? Right. When they search your name, when I go out, one of the first things we do when we analyze our clients' online presence, I go incognito and I just Google them and I Google their business.

I do too.

I did that to one of my people recently. Yep. There was almost nothing there. She's like, oh my gosh. I was like, let me Google my name just for fun. Like I own just like the first 20, 30 pages. I feel bad. I'm actually about to change my name. By the time this episode airs it might be different, which is another story. But it's fine. It'll still, it'll all work. But it's a funny story. Story to choose to change your name when you're a marketing and branding expert. Oh yeah. And the first 30 pages of Google on your name after spending 10 years, 12 years building it. Yeah. Another story.

Another story. Another story.

We have so many. Presence. After that comes promotion. Promotion is what most people think is all of marketing. Promotion is when you get people's attention and it doesn't have to cost money. It can, right? Typically any kind of money spent on advertising is like fuel on a fire. If there's no fire burning, you've just got wet logs and they smell, right? But if there's a fire burning, we'll amplify it. So if you haven't figured out how to get business in any reliable, consistent way, and then you throw money at it, you have not improved anything, right? It's true.

It's so true.

You've just— you've put fuel on a non-burning fire. Get the fire burning. Then please, by all means, throw money on it, get it to burn brighter, right?

Right.

And so I teach a lot of forms of promotion that don't cost money, even if people don't love networking or they don't like social media. Like, there's, there's so many options. I at one point created a guide, um, a few years ago, 167 promotional strategies to grow your business. I need to update it at this point. It'll be over 200 easy. Yeah, easy changing.

Easy. Sure.

And after promotion, we have process. Which is the sales process, which is specifically the sales process.

Okay.

This is the sales process.

So then when you get back into the 12, um, attributes, I think we were on number 7.

So we've got 1, 2, 3, 4, and then 6. And then within the sales process, we break down 3 of them.

Okay.

Um, but it's, it's 2, 3, it's the pitch and the hourglass., which are the last two tools. So your pitch is the verbal or written messaging that guides people through understanding what you do, what you're going to do for them, and why they'd want to buy it.

Is it now— is it— because when people use the word pitch, is it the elevator pitch? Is it a longer, you know, conversation pitch? Is it a— is it all of it and you just take pieces of it?

Depends. So it's a framework. So I teach frameworks, right? So it can be applied in all the settings. So when I teach it, I call it the triangle pitch because I, I'm, I'm I'm very visual, so I use a lot of graphic organizers to teach. And you can use it everywhere from an elevator, if you want to, to social media DMs, to a networking event, to a conference. It can be a short conversation, a long conversation. It expands because it's a framework that you use to introduce yourself and then learn from the prospect, if they're an actual prospect, what they might need from you, what you can provide to them, and then how you might serve them and how to communicate that. So it's a framework.

Wow.

And that framework is a really significant marketing tool. You know, even when I work with business owners who aren't doing their own sales, right, they're hiring it out, maybe to a company or to an employee or a team. This is the framework that the team will use, right? Because you'd be surprised how many salespeople don't have one. I love your face.

I know.

And I have to remember that we're on radio as well, so I have to actually make a noise of shock. Let me just say, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then the hourglass is how you create stable and reliable recurring revenue, self-sustaining, right? So that's how you then take this thing and you make this sales process something that feeds itself, right?

Right. And it's almost as if it's on autopilot at that point.

Yeah, yeah, essentially, yes. And it doesn't mean you just sit back, right? All of these people— I get calls, oh my gosh, too often, too often. For a while they were coming weekly. It was, it was, it was just high season of people who are watching all of these digital nomads on social media with their laptops on the beach going, why don't I have financial freedom? And I want passive income. I'm like, honey, who do you think made that video of her sitting on the beach that you just saw?

Right.

Where did that come from? Right. No, but one of my people called me. She's running like a— she's— I think she did like half a million this year, okay? And she's like, I don't have any passive income. I'm like, okay, do you make money while you're sleeping? She's like, yeah. I'm like, that's passive income. She's like, I don't have an online course. I'm like, okay, you need to have a breath, okay? This is not all these definitions and everybody an expert. And I get very mad.

I do too. I do too. What, what do you see shifting or happening in 2022, um, that, you know, maybe some people are like, oh my gosh, thank God that's over.

I've seen a lot of that. And then I got— someone sent me this meme that was like a, um, it was a GIF of Joey from Friends having this like aha moment. And it's like when you realize that 2022 sounds like 2022.

Oh God. Oh Lord. Oh Lordy me. No, no, no, no, no.

I said no.

We're no, we're no, no, no, no.

I still remember right before the beginning of 2020, we're all like, 2024, Sai. No one's getting excited and glasses. And then, oh my Lord.

Yeah.

But do you, but do you see anything kind of shifting, disappearing, changing?

I see that we're in a stage of amplification, actually. That's what I think, you know. So I'm a big— I think everything's a bell curve. I'm very mathematical, actually, for a marketer. Um, I'm like a weird right-left brain. I was a CIO for many years, so I do database architecture and I speak geek and I do a lot of numbers, and Excel's my favorite toy in the whole world.

Yeah.

So everything's a bell curve. And I think when we come— you know, when I started this really 12 years ago. I've been doing it full-time for 10, and I started a part-time already 12 years ago. Um, I, I thought it was the beginning of the small business boom. Like, that's what I said for years. Listen to interviews I've done 5 years ago, back in 2011, at the beginning of what was a small business boom. I don't think so anymore. I think we're in a small business revolution. I think that the face of how we do work and business has changed irreversibly. Absolutely. You know, through the events of the last 2 years.

Absolutely.

And it's only growing as more, you know, um, a lot of people are talking about like the great awakening, right? And I, I think that we are in the amplification stage of the bell curve right now. I think we're gonna see more and more people trying to go on their own. We're gonna see more and more people, you know, as, as every marketplace starts to flood, right? You have more of everything. When I started doing this, small business consulting was not a thing, right? I met with a McKinsey headhunter who was like, no one will hire you and no one will pay you until you have another 20 years of C-level experience. And no one does small business. I would meet people and be like, but why would someone hire you? Like, small business owners either have it or they don't. If you have it, you make it.

If you don't, you don't.

Like, this idea of a small business owner getting help did not exist, right? Then, no, I had to explain to people what I could possibly— now people meet me, they're like, okay, so what makes you different, right? Right. It's such a thing now, right? I'm like, oh, let's started.

Okay. Yeah. Um, but, but from a, but from a, um, not, not a macro level, but more specifically from a marketing level, like, is social media the, or the form of social media, or the, you know, the type, the fact that everybody was running to groups and to LinkedIn and to, you know, we're gonna see more and more niche.

That's what we're gonna see, because that's what you see every small marketplace expands, right? So when you have a small marketplace and you have a new and emerging marketplace, you have a couple of players who do everything, right? Think of the local general store in a town. They carry everything. As the town grows, more and more stores open up. Each store starts to specialize. You have a big city and the store sells just fuzzy socks, right?

Right.

Why? You have a store that sells just fuzzy— would you ever find that in a little town? No. Right? Because any marketplace, as it expands, gets more specialized. And so I think we're gonna see more and more specialization. Every social media platform has its tools. Um, because I study this and teach it and I, I learn a new marketing strategy pretty much every day, but at least 3 a week. That's like my rule, but usually every day. Even within the social media ecosystem, each platform has a dozen or half dozen reliable strategies anyone can employ depending on their thing. So we're gonna find more and more of these niche businesses, niche practitioners, cuz really when you think about it, I meet, I meet a new coach at least once a day also, um, wherever I am online, offline. And how many clients does a coach or a, or a counselor or a guide need? Not that many.

Right, right.

Right, so each one super specializing with their people and their thing and each marketing tool becoming more specialized for its group and how it's used and what's done. And the only place that people can really trip up is when they think they need to do all of it.

Yeah.

'Cause they don't. You really, you start, you just need one.

Right.

And if you want, if you're like me and you like having backup, great too. Right, but once you've mastered one, you can master the next one. Yeah. It's not haphazard. You don't trip over it. Figure it out, you strategically set it up, and then you run it, and then you test it, and you iterate it, and you perfect it, and then you build the next one. Marketing is not a— what's the phrase? I forgot. But it's basically, it's not haphazard, right? It's not like you're supposed to get it to go on, you hope something sticks. That is not marketing. It's just how so many people do it. Right now, there's also no guarantees. A marketer that tells you they will guarantee you something, they're either stupid or lying. There's no guarantees, but there are strategies. There are reliable ways to do things. Yeah, that when you do them right and you monitor them, they will bring you results. They will guide you on the path towards finding the thing that works to reliably and steadily and then self-sustainingly bring you money.

Yeah. Now what do you find to be the biggest mistake, uh, business owners are making when it comes to The blending, but like, let's look at all of it as if it was one. What is the biggest mistake you're finding out there that, that business owners, as they go into a new year, need to get addressed if they want 2022 to be prosperous for them?

So I'm going to say the biggest mistake is when people go against their gut and go against their own nature and against what they know they need to do or should do. Because they've been convinced by a friend, a colleague, a business partner, a blog post, an ad, a whatever, that something is the thing.

Right.

Every time I sit with a business owner, you know, one of the things we do in our program is we go through what I call the SWAN strengths. Every business owner has one of these 4 strengths and you leverage your strength to choose your strategies. And every time I meet someone who talks about how they've wasted money on marketing, 'cause these are the conversations I get into, it's always 'cause they've gone against their strength. They've been like, "I didn't think I needed to do that, but my this person said, and that person said they did, and so I tried it, and it didn't—" Of course it didn't work for you. You knew it didn't. You knew it wasn't a match to you. You felt this tremendous resistance toward it. You either didn't have the funds and you borrowed them in the hopes that it would work. You hated it, but you went anyways. You didn't like that person, but you invested money with them because your friend did and she was successful, but then of course you weren't. Every single time. You gotta listen to yourself. You gotta look. Yeah, of course. I'll raise my hand too. I've been there. I've been there. Yeah. I, before I mastered LinkedIn, I hired a LinkedIn expert and it was a huge waste of money. It was an absolute— so I've done the same thing. Yeah. I did the same thing. You know, that's part of why, like, I, we have a LinkedIn program that I sell really, really cheap because I just want people to understand how to use the tool. Cause they don't need to hire anyone. And if they do, they can hire someone to do it for them in the way that works. Right, right. But they have, you know, I, I hang out on TikTok a little bit, market research of course only. Sure, sure. And I'm very, very diligent about it. And so I got hit with a LinkedIn ad on TikTok yesterday. I saved it because it's trying to make LinkedIn cool to the young people and it did a reasonable job. I'm not going to say it did a perfect job, but it had, you know, it was like, It was, it was very expertly done. It was very clearly targeted at the like 20s, early 30s, like hip, cool, on the edge, colored hair, styled people of like, this is the new professional kind of a feeling. And I'm like, ooh, I just, I will save cool bits of marketing. I have like files of ads and now I do digital campaigns when I'm like, I save the really bad ones too. But I, I especially saved the ones that I'm like, yes, spot on. Like that was well done. That was well done. Um, how did we get here? Oh yeah. Wasting because you went against what you knew in this like vain hope. You know, we all know when we get to that place of like, but I don't know. Okay, I, I'm gonna try this. No, that's never it. That's never ever it. Cuz when you come from that frenetic energy, that's all you're gonna get back. Right. Right. Sit down, learn it, learn yourself. There are so many options and so many tools and so many things you can do to grow your business. Pick the one that does speak to you. Pick the one that does fit your budget right now. Pick the one that does feel like a right start for you. Yeah. And go with it.

So I get a lot of, um, because being a business coach myself, I get, but I, I don't, um, touch the marketing space, but I get a lot of people that are like, I'll sit there and say, 'Sue, you need to go and find a marketing strategist and get all your marketing kind of tightened up, right?' And she's like, 'I just want to know how to make money. Tell me how to make money.' And what, you know, and what do I—

how you make money.

And I'm just like, 'But you have to go over here first. I can, I can tell you how to structure your business and how to set yourself up as a CEO and how to lead your people, blah blah blah.' And all that's going to lead to also helping you you know, build a business and to make money. But, and, uh, so what—

it's that tactic glorification. Like, that's— I think if I were to put what I was just saying into another sentence, it's that glorification of the marketing tactic that's going to unlock it all. I just want to know how to make money. I just want to know what thing I should do to make it work. But it's not a thing.

Yeah, but the question that I would have is, so there, you know, so the So especially if they're new, although I work with businesses that are like 3, 5, 7 years, I don't work with start brand new businesses, but I have many of them that will reach out to me and they wanna make money like today, like I don't wanna work on all that stuff or I wanna at least make money while I'm working on that stuff. So does your, and when someone's listening to, you know, these 12, you know, areas of their marketing strategy and then there's 7 Ps within, you know, and they're sitting there going, oh my God, this thing's going to take me forever in the day to kind of create and compile before I'm even making money. So what, like, kind of what is your approach and what— how would you answer that question about the amount of time it would take for them to kind of get their marketing strategy laid out, nailed down? Um, so in the last couple of minutes that we have, what would you share about that? Sure.

So I would say like this: sometimes when I start to work with the clients, when someone comes into one of our programs, within the first week or three something that they've learned unlocks them, they're already earning more. My motto's always been more money, less headaches, right? So if you're not earning anything, you need to get started. Mm-hmm. And if you have that mindset of, but I have to set everything up first. So yeah, it will take you longer. Right. But for me, I also work mostly with people who've been in business for, you know, 1 to 20 years. Um, and probably most often 3 to 7 is a, is a, is a solid like core group. And, uh, so Once you come in, if you're coming because you wanna be earning more money, something I'm gonna tell you, something you're gonna learn here from the beginning is gonna unlock you. It's gonna already change things. So it's not a matter of, well, it's gonna take us weeks and months. It will take us a few months to rebuild the entire strategy so that you're on the track to be earning whatever you want, right? Our new program is called 10K Months. So steady $10,000 a month profit. That you can rely on. That doesn't happen overnight. Might you close a new deal tomorrow? Most of the time when we're running these like 6 and 8 week group programs, I had people closing massive deals before the end of the program. Yeah, right. So it's not— but we're— my goal is not to get you a quick win. It's like a microwave versus an oven, right? I can heat you up really fast. I could tell you what to do to earn money tomorrow. I could. I could tell you what to do, you could earn money tomorrow if you need it. But that's not going to be a lasting strategy, right, for you to sit on for the next 6 months. So if you need money tomorrow and you need it tomorrow, no problem, let's talk, I'll tell you what to do. But don't think you can repeat that, right, and build a reliable business on it. And my, my passion is not for quick fixes because I like to be dispensable. If I was a quick fix dispenser, you would always need me. I'd be a dispensary, right? Right. Constantly. You have to— I have clients I work with some of them for a full decade. Yeah, because they're constantly earning more and their business is growing. They're opening new locations, all different things. But I don't need to be needed.

I'm— I want to empower you.

I can't empower you with a quick fix. If you need it, I can give it to you, and there are parts of it that will unlock you immediately. But if you want to build a real business, that's how real businesses are built. And all the people that come and they think there's just this one little trick or one little hack they're missing— it's not. If that's all you were missing, someone would have given it to you.

And that is the one thing that I'm hoping will go away from 2021 in this new year is just all this hype of the fact that these individuals— because you're right, there's going to be more and more and more and more and more people.

And then you have more and more people trying to help them. Yeah, but it's the blind leading the blind, right? I'm not even talking about people who are malicious.

I call them the MEGs, right?

Oh yeah, you've got 3 things out there, and then there's people like me and you. Um, so you've got— MEG stands for Morons, Experts of Industry, and Genius Taxicians, right? So the morons— sounds too good to be true, they usually are, right? They took a course in Google Maps off of YouTube that taught them that Google Maps is the key to unlocking local business and they'll tell you their marketing services and you don't need anything else. Thank you very much. Like, you just don't even know what you don't know, right? Like, it's not— you're just a moron. Yeah. Um, then you've got experts of industry. They know one industry really well. They don't know anything of how that interfaces. And if you're not exactly like them, it doesn't work. They have a genius tactician. That's the tactic. So they'll come with that Instagram hack, that Facebook group hack, that SEO, this— like, each. And if you have all your other stuff in place, it'll work. Right. But if you don't, don't— right, listen, it worked for their other client, must be you, not them. That's awesome.

Okay, so I would expect that everything that someone would need to know to reach out to you and connect with you and get their marketing strategy in place for 2022 and beyond can be found at sdran.com, correct? Correct.

And I'd even like to offer a free gift if they go to sdran.com/free-gift. At the moment. There is a 3-day marketing success challenge there which outlines some of these principles a little more in depth, have worksheets you can actually work through some of these things on your own. Um, it is free. We're going to be putting it behind a paywall, we're going to be replacing it with something else, but hopefully not just yet. Um, so for now, if you go to sdran.com/freegift, they can get that and reach out to me with pleasure. Happy to help. Awesome, awesome.

All right, well, this has been awesome. I mean, Lord, talk about an absolute, uh, not even an overview, I mean a deep dive into marketing. I mean, you're gonna have to go back, everybody, and watch this multiple times and listen to it multiple times. But at the same time, go to estherann.com, reach out to Esty herself, and, um, and look into investing in getting the foundation and the core of your business, uh, in place before you go running off trying to do, you know, what it is you think you need to be doing when you might find out that you don't need to and you're going to be wasting money and time. And she wants you to never waste money on marketing again. Thank you so much, Essie. I so appreciate you being here. This has been fabulous.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm honored.

You are very welcome. And for everyone, I hope you thoroughly took notes, and if you didn't, grab a notepad and rewind and, um, listen and/or watch this again. And thank you so much for joining us today and every Tuesday at noon Eastern time, or wherever you might, uh, get your podcast streamed, or your, uh, YouTube at Shedding the Bitch TV downloaded and watched. We appreciate it here in the Shedding the Bitch community and look forward to having you right back here, um, next Tuesday at noon Eastern time. Take care, everybody. Bye.

Thank you for taking part in Shedding the Bitch Radio and TV with Bernadette Boas. We would love to know what your biggest takeaway was. Go to Shedding the Bitch on Facebook or YouTube and leave a comment. You can also subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts and YouTube so you don't miss a single episode of the show. And with your input, we can help other powerhouse women just like you find the show and decide if it's right for them. Learn more about Bernadette at balloffirecoaching.com. See you next week.