086: Andy Buyting - Become a Thought Leader

Are you thinking about how to grow your business with near and offshore staffing, but you're also wanting to make sure.

That it's reliable, cost effective and really well done?

I think docsa talent is the way to go. Here's why.

They don't just fill your jobs.

They bring integrity, top talent and a people first approach that's hard to find. I've known the people at Doxa talent for over 20 years now and I say that you can count on them. I have. Talk to Docs of Talent and you won't be disappointed. Go to docsatant.com Bill G. Again, that's doxatallent.com Bill G. One more time. Doxatalent.com Bill G. Check it out today.

All right, you know a lot of stuff. So how come not more people know what you know? How come you're not known for what you know? How come you're not the thought leader in your field? So this show is all about how to make that process easy, how to become known for what you know and the value in doing that. Listen in. Hello and welcome again to the Scaling Up Business podcast. I'm your host, Gazelles Growth coach, Bill Gallagher. On the show with us today is Andy Biting. So Andy and I met through the Gazelles organization. Andy's a, he's a full time CEO of a thought leadership marketing company and he's a part time Gazelles coach and full time dad. He's on the east coast of Canada and we see each other at the Gazelles conferences all the time. Usually one of the first people that I have a drink with and Andy's a longtime user. In fact, the company that he runs today is really a growth of launching your business first with the one page strategic plan. So he first participated in the program as as my old business partner did in in what was called the birthing of giants through the Entrepreneurs organization once known as Young Entrepreneurs Organization. That birthing of giants led to the Rockefeller habits and the scaling up work that we do today. So it's really great to have old timers.

So what have called now Bill and.

He doesn't look at all like an old timer. He looks much younger than me. But so great to have you on the show. You're an experienced hand at this and your current business and your work is a testament. So we're going to talk today about thought leadership marketing and people talk a lot about this. We've done other shows on thought leadership in one way or another, but I think it's a really important topic so before we get into it, let's tell a little bit of your story, how you get into this. Give people a little background on your entrepreneurial journey, will you?

Sure thing, Bill. By the way, thanks for having me on the show. Really, I'm excited about it. It's great. So, yeah, a little bit about myself. So I was born and raised in east coast Canada, son to farmers, but my parents are Dutch immigrants. Moved over and started farming when they first moved over. So I grew up on actually one of the largest carrot farms, if you can believe that, in the country. And so we were put to work at a very early age. Entrepreneurship was all about, you know, that's what we were all about. And it was interesting when I was a kid, when I first learned that one of my friend's dads worked for someone else was something that I didn't quite understand and couldn't wrap my head around. And it was that much, it was that prevalent in our family. So we were born, I was born into an entrepreneurial family, raised on the, you know, on the, on the, on the kind of the strategy or the foundation of hard work will get you further and always take your future in your own hands. So that's kind of how I was raised. We in my father and his partner, his brother, my uncle at the time, they had the farm and they also had greenhouse operations. So we were growing plants in the mid-80s, early-80s. They purchased some property and we actually, our family moved off the farm and moved into the city to run a retail home and garden center. So from the age of about, about 12, 14 on, that was my life and got into retail garden centers. We, I got into that business, went through business university came out and immediately went in and actually I took over the business at the age of 25 from my father and, and it was right around that time that I joined Entrepreneur, your young entrepreneurs organization at the time got into, you know, was within about a four or five year window there, joined that organization, got into birthing of giants, met Vern Harnish, learned the Rockefeller habits. And I thought, I'm going to do this with our business. So implemented all of those processes into our retail store. And it actually, we grew by the time I took it over, we grew 80, I remember it was 86% growth in two years of this retail store that had been around at that time, about 10 years or so. So over. The process works. If you work, gives you a plan.

And it works, that's something I wish more of our folks because it's not Comfortable. If you have read the book and it sounds good, but then you undertake it, okay, we're asking you to change habits. The original work was called Rockefeller Habits and the Birthing giants is really what spawned that and that you're changing habits and that's not comfortable. That's why a coach is really helpful. So you interpret things and do things correctly and find the way that works for you, but is also consistent with the underlying principle of the habit. And I see this, but it really does work. And you're like, well why are we doing meetings like this and why does that matter and how's that going to get me growing? But you go to work on these things and sure enough we look back and sometimes you get an immediate hit or whatever, but you look back a year, two years into the process, you're like, holy crap. But we've grown a whole bunch and our business is saner now and we're more profitable and we have more cash and life is easier and I have more time for my family like that. It's remarkable.

It really is. And it gives you the Rockefeller habits enabled us to think more strategically. And we did initiatives, we did investments in the facilities, we did investments in programs because we were very strategic about it. We had for the first time we not only, you know, the way my father got into business, I mean it was just through sheer hard work. Have a ton of respect for the way he did it. He got it off the ground, but he didn't have any master plans. You know, he didn't have, he didn't have a long term goal or you know, a BHAG or even three year strategic goals. He didn't, certainly didn't have quarterly goals as he was going along. He worked from, you know, from experience, from gut instinct, which he did. He had the luxury or the benefit of developing that over 40 some years. Right, right at the time where I was just coming into it, I mean I was quite often tell the story of when I first took over the operations of the company. So I graduated from business school, I knew the business inside now because I grew up in it. I mean I helped build the original building when I was 12 years old on the roof. So I was part of it from the ground up. And my father had a lot of trust in me. So I took over management of the operations and I think in my first year and I asked him since why he let me do this. But my first year, like I just killed his profits. I actually, you know, it was a good small company, quite profitable it was doing on the bottom line. It was putting about 15, 18%. And in one year, I managed to kill almost all of it, bring it down to about zero. I said, why did you let me do that? He said, I learned through trial and error all my life. I knew you'd fix it, you'd figure it out, and if you made some mistakes, you changed course. And sure enough, I went from bottom line. I believe it was roughly 17% and change down to almost zero. But then the next year I went back up to 18, just slightly above that. So you learn quick. But it was an interesting experience. But the rock habits, the Rockefeller habits, once I was introduced to that, then all of a sudden I took more smart bets, more strategic bets, or more strategic investments, and we started growing. And I remember Vern saying, everybody's got to have a coach. Even at the time, he said, tiger woods has two coaches. And if the best golfer in the world has two coaches, as a business leader, who are you to say, I don't need a coach. You need a coach. Even the best of the world need West. Best performers in the world need a coach. So I said, okay, I need a coach. Who do I get? And he said, there's a guy in Toronto. He was the closest guy to me. And I literally called him up. I said, just how much is it? And let's get started. And I actually had a Gazelle coach for like six or seven years. And during that time, so I grew the business myself, self implementing the Rockefeller habits in the early years, grew it by, you know, 80 some percent in a couple of years. And then I took it from there and I grew it another 600% over the next number of years because we really started scaling up and we grew to multiple locations and so on. And, you know, it was. It was a. It was a fun business for sure. Now, one of the things that was really key and influenced me, a huge deal. I've always been a learning junkie. I love birthing a giant. I love going to the EO universities and so on, you know, read a ton of books. And one of the things that was intriguing was this whole thought leadership and brand positioning strategy. And I remember being at birthing giants and Verne saying, you got to own the ink in your industry. And he said, you know, who owns the ink in your industry? And I was like, I don't even know what the hell you're talking about. And he said, whatever your customers are reading, you got to have it come from you. And I was trying to get my Head wrapped around this concept and how I might apply it. And I remember it was, we were having a beer at the end of the day, sitting down with Vernon, I said, what would you suggest that I do? I'm just trying to understand how would I apply this. He said, andy, you guys do retail, home and garden centers. Why aren't you guys publishing your own series of gardening books? Or what if you published your own magazines? Garden magazines, home and garden magazines. And that thought kind of, I let that sink in because at the time, and I was like, oh my God, we're kind of doing it. See, in our business, One of the practices that I put in when I was just still a teenager in my father's business, we started doing quarterly newsletters to our customers. And we've been doing this for about 10, 15 years. It was very expensive, very time consuming, sending it out through direct mail. But it was the most effective marketing we were doing. And I thought, what if I replaced our quarterly newsletter with a magazine? So we took it back to our team and it was interesting. We felt like, I don't know anything about publishing magazines. So we hired a magazine consultant. She came on, she said, you should look to put some advertisers in, because advertisers legitimize your magazine. They actually add credibility to your magazine. One of our young ladies in the office said, you know, I bet Scott's fertilizer would buy that. I bet crocs, we used to sell a ton of those croc shoes. Crocs would buy that and so on. So we went to some of our suppliers and we said, we're going to launch this magazine, this quarterly magazine. We want you to be part of it as a sponsor. What do you think? And a bunch of them said yes. So our scenario, which was really cool when we rolled this out, and I thought, this is a game changer because nobody's doing this. We went from an eight page, two color newsletter that looked like it was homemade and looked like it was homemade, to a professionally laid out, full gloss, 32 page, full color magazine, like this beautiful product that went out. Our cost for the newsletters went for cost for the programs. Our newsletters cost us $15,000 every time we sent this out. So quarterly it was $60,000 out of our advertising budget. The magazine, in contrast, cost almost 30, but we got $22,000 in advertising sponsorship. So my net cost as an operator, we went from this newsletter to this beautiful magazine. Net cost went from 15,000 down to 8. Thinking this is like beautiful and it Helped us grow our business. And as soon as a small independent company, relatively speaking, as soon as we started publishing our own magazine, all of a sudden it was a game changer for us because people would look at that, think, how do you guys do it? Like this is, you guys are the authority in the marketplace. And that's how the whole concept of authority marketing kind of really how we first started putting it into practice. And then of course, a couple years later, you know, along comes Facebook and online social media and blogs and all this other stuff. And it kind of evolved from there, but that's where the idea first came from. And tell you, the story of the transition was interesting. So I shared this magazine with a couple of people that I knew in the industry. But I want to keep this strategy closely guarded. So I shared with a couple of people, they love the magazine concept and I had a couple of garden centers said, could you do the same thing for me? Can I jump onto a production run? We'll run with a bunch of your content, just change the front cover. Would you do this for us? And I thought, this is interesting. And they were really adamant. So I pushed them off for a year, two years. And I said, you know what, if I could produce a program where a bunch of the content is shared among these different non competing garden centers, a bunch of the content was customized so that we could leverage economies of scale, make it easier for everything, everybody, and so on. And I presented it to our buying group and I thought, you know, if I walk away with four or five or six people interested in doing this, I, I might actually pursue this. So I presented it and I said, who would be willing to do this? Here's the costing model, et cetera, et cetera. I walked out of that room with 12 purchase orders and I thought, hold on here, now, here's an interesting business doing custom magazines. And long story short, but a couple years later, I actually incorporated and we spent a whole company focused solely on custom magazines in doing custom publishing for garden centers. When we first launched that, my insurance guy, I remember him saying that that magazine idea that you're doing, that's awesome. He said, I'm getting bombarded all the time with these large nationals multinationals taking a piece of our pie. Could you do a business magazine to help me grow my commercial insurance business? And I said, sure. Then I came back and said, we got to figure out how to do this. And all of a sudden that took off. And we went from one client partner in the insurance space to like 30, which in a Blink of an eye, you're publishing magazines all over the United States, all over the US and in Canada. And so it's just spawned on from there. Now we're doing it in a number of different industries and we're producing. It's interesting because we're producing massive amounts of magazines because we're not growing by one subscription at a time. When we sign on a client partner, our average client partner distributes twelve and a half thousand magazines. So our circulation is massive. You know, we have three times the circulation as Fortune magazines, you know, four times larger than Forbes magazine in our business magazines. And it's because we're doing leveraging. The way I put it to somebody is that we're kind of organizing the customized magazine, that whole kind of product line and we're organizing that long tail of a lot of small publishers. We're enabling them to do it really easy, really low cost because we're leveraging the economy of scale and so on. But we're getting massive, massive coverage. And it's kind of interesting just the way this company has evolved. And now we've taken what we become good at, which is publishing and managing the publishing projects. And we're doing a lot of digital publishing now as well. But we would not have been able to do this if it was not for the scale up habits now or the Rockefeller habits. We had our one page strategic plan before we incorporated. It's reviewed and updated and we are in this very, very, very, very, very strict quarterly cadence with our planning rhythms and so on. And the whole process has allowed us to grow and evolve in ways that we never would have dreamed of. And it's been a fun ride. So that brings you. There's my history up to today.

Well, I love hearing the scale of it. And you know, I think everyone's noticed the reduced volume of print that's going on out there. So we're seeing newspapers and magazines overall are having less printed circulation going on on the whole. And we have only one or two magazines that show up in our home anymore where we used to have a ton of. On the other hand, the one or two that do show up and the direct mail pieces that come. And I don't get the volume of catalogs that we once got, but the ones that we do get get a little more attention than they ever used to get. So while the online distribution and readership is higher and I tend to read more stuff on my iPad today, the things that do show up stand out. They get my eye. We had one client recently who they and most of their competitors were doing everything email and online like that. We said, you know, why don't you try a postcard? And they did a postcard. And it was like, holy crap. That thing really moved the needle for us so well.

And that's where, you know, I do have a philosophy. And the way that I look at marketing from a strategic standpoint is there really are three pillars of marketing in today's day and age. There's your digital marketing, your print marketing, and your interactive marketing. And if you look at a consumer buying cycle, you need to touch consumer many times in different formats before, for many of us, before a sale is made. So, you know, digital marketing, and we do digital publishing for client partners, and it is absolutely essential. But with digital, you want it for quick messages and you're using it for frequency. Because digital publishing typically has a shelf life of a day. You know, people will either consume it there in the moment or they rarely go back to it unless it's a really compelling piece, but it has a shorter shelf life.

And they don't often. They don't often pass it along either. Right?

They don't pass it along. That's right. The print, however. So the print is there for credibility and for longevity. Deloitte put out a study last year in May of 2017. It says that, first of all, companies that want to stand out as a thought leader, as an authority, if they really want to dominate a market space, they need to build a publishing arm. So they need to build that publishing muscle and be able to put out content like you're doing with your podcast here. You need to do that regularly. And when it talks about publishing, it says, you know, the headline is that digital is pick, it is getting stronger all the time. But print is not dead. And what they found, which is really interesting, is that for every person that would like to read something or consume content digitally, it's almost one to one on average, depending on the type of content. Sometimes it's a little more print, a little more digital, but it's almost one to one that for every one person that wants to consume content digitally, there's somebody who would prefer to consume it in print. And it goes on to say that if you want to create content, digital is great, do that, and you need that. I'm not saying not to do it. It's just as important as print, but print is more believable and it's more credible and it will stick around longer than digital will. So you need the combination of both of them. If you really want to be, you know, have a well rounded strategy and then of course you. For most of us, before we can make a sale, we need that interactive marketing, where it's one on one, whether it's a phone call or in person, to get it across the line.

Well, that interactive, you're talking about almost real time, where it's an actual dialogue, a connection, there's a relationship occurring.

Right, Exactly, Absolutely. Yeah.

Synchronous versus asynchronous. I think that content marketing is thought leadership marketing. That is something that we've all been seeing and hearing about. Whether you're doing it or not, you recognize is that it matters, that it's valuable. And you said earlier to be known for what you know. We all know certain things, but being known for what you know, getting out there, being top of mind for people in that is key. But most of us, that's a sideline to what we do. And it's like you're going to need some help to do it in some way because it's not going to be your primary business that you could go develop, nor do most of us have enough resources. Why did I start doing a podcast? Well, because I used to be a radio nightclub dj. So I started that thing because that fit me, because that really worked and I knew what I was doing there, but I didn't do it alone. And after dabbling with it a little bit and looking at some other people doing it, I got. Well, first I had my assistant acting and then I hired a regular producer. So I have a show producer, I have a production company that does the audio editing, the show notes, that sends it out, that does the. So there's a whole range of stuff to do both before and after the show, beyond just this interview, which is really the only piece of it that I actually touch. And so it took some thinking, some investment and so on to do. And I did this because I have some background in this. But if you don't, you can still, you could still be known for what you know. You can still become a thought leader and use thought leadership in your marketing and be top of mind for it by working with partners and by leveraging some of the tools, which is among the things that. That your business does. Right?

That's right. That's right. Yeah. There's a saying, I remember a quote my father telling me years ago when I was a teenager still, and he said, you know, the secret to success, and he read this quote somewhere, is that you need to know what you're doing. You need to know you know what you're doing. In other words, be confident, and you need to be known for what you know. And it's interesting because, you know, Malcolm Gladwell talked about the 10,000 hour rule, which, by the way, if you were equated back into business, you know, even if you just work full time, just work 40 hours a week, which we know, if you're in business, you probably work a little more than that. But if you just work 40 hours a week, it's roughly 2,000 hours a year. Five years is 10,000 hours. So after five years, really rough math. After five years of working in the industry or in a field, you are an expert. You are proficient at what you're doing, and you know something that 99% of the people out there do not know. And you can add value to 99% of the people out there. But the trick is, how do you become known for what you know?

Well, let me pause that for one second before you finish that thought. The 10,000 hour thing. I think there's actual real truth and merit in it, and I've heard some backlash on it. Let me underscore something. You have expertise, you know, something deeply at that point. It doesn't mean you're the market leader. It doesn't mean you're the dominant one. There are people that put in as many hours as the Beatles did and didn't become the Beatles. There are people that slaved away forever and didn't become Bill Gates. So you'll know something deeply. There's another piece to becoming dominant market leader, et cetera, or even having real growth in it. But we know lots of people who are experts in something who tell you all about it, and they're not winning in it. So just putting in the time isn't. But you now know something, and that's where the next piece that you're speaking to comes in. How can you leverage what you know into that? So talk about that being known for what you know.

Yeah, well, that's where you do, like you had said. So you take your example, Bill, you started doing the podcast. It was something you were comfortable with. You know, something which a lot of people you know either don't know or you know, you can bring on guests to your show. So you're adding value to business listeners, which is. Which is valuable, which is really valuable. Valuable. But you got to get that information out there. And how you do is through that thought leadership, marketing, content marketing, whatever you want to call it. And that's where you really look at the three pillars and you want to focus in on what is going to be my digital marketing strategy that's going to align with my print marketing strategy. So you look at thought leaders as an example. A lot of people you and I know, Bill, have written books. Well, the reason why they write a book is because they have information, they have knowledge that they want to share with the world. Now what's interesting is, you know, the same people who write books may also have a podcast, may also have blogs, may also have, you know, different digital platforms where they're sharing content as well. But it's interesting because, you know, I know several people that have blogs and do videos and those are great for the quick hits, but as soon as they hand you a copy of their book, now all of a sudden, wow, you really are legitimate. Like, you are an expert. And it's funny, North, North American culture, if you're a published author, you are deemed as an expert, period.

It gives you authority.

Yep, gives you authority. So you want to publish and you can publish online, that's fine. But in my mind, you need to publish a hell of a lot online versus if you had one article published in Forbes magazine, that'll give you more credibility than a hundred articles online. Because anybody can publish online. You need the digital for the quick, the reminders, top of mind awareness and so on. But that print will really give you, you the longevity and the credibility long term. Now how you do that, you can do it on your own, like you, you know, like you described your story, how you started, or you can partner with people who can help you with that. Whether that's podcast producers, video producers, work with a, you know, with a copywriter to create blog posts, to create content for, you know, for articles, for press releases and, you know, and even in print for that matter. You know, you can work with people to, you know, Adam Witte with Advantage Media, Tucker Max with Book in a Box. They will help you publish your own book if you wanted to. And what we do with our company is we help, we help client partners publish their own magazine, whether it's twice a year, four times a year, or whatever the rhythm you want or will help them publish online on a regular basis. It's just, it's another way of outsourcing that support.

I think the thing to. So a book is a, is a little bit of a high bar, right? There's a, there's an investment, there's a level of effort, and that lends it more credibility. And it's an important one in the larger picture. But it's not always the first, first thing that you go do. But there's a lot of power also in consistency. I did my first show for this podcast and we chose a really great, compelling guest for the first show, Bob Bloom, talking about the inside advantage. So really well known, compelling, credible guest for the first show. But in the beginning, nobody listens and nobody's paying any attention even if you do some launch hype and stuff around it. But over time now a couple years into doing our show, doing it every week, week in and week out, like, oh, there's a big following to our show. And I spin off, people come to me asking for who should I talk to as a coach. And I don't work all over. Well, I do actually work all over the world, but I do. But I can't work all with the vast majority of people. I only work with about 10 clients at a time. So most of the people that reach out to us, I'm passing to other coaches and I'm saying, hey, great, here's somebody in Adelaide and you should talk to a coach there, like wherever. So I'm handing folks out so it becomes something that's really bigger. But that didn't happen overnight. It happened with some consistency over time. And that repetition and the credibility is as valuable as the one time thing.

Yeah, you hit one of the key strategies when it comes to any kind of publishing consistency. Content is king, consistency is queen. You need both of them. You need great content or you're wasting everyone's time. But you need it to be going out consistent because, you know, consistently, whether it's a podcast that's released the same morning, you know, at 10:00am Pacific every week, or it's the same videos that are uploaded every week, or it's a, it's an email newsletter or, you know, an email campaign that goes out with our client partners in the digital front, where I'm hugely adamant that, you know, once we get into that cadence of delivery is, you know, if you're going out the second Tuesday and the fourth Tuesday of every month in the mornings between, you know, 9:00am and 11:00am Eastern Time, that is it. Like, don't deviate from that, work backwards from that. People know and it is unbelievable, you know, you think people won't have a clue. You know, what if they read your email newsletter on a Tuesday at lunch and then all of a sudden every other Tuesday it starts showing up in their inbox at lunch? They'll start to develop a habit. We've heard that Word before habits are good. Same with, you know, if you're doing a magazine, and we do a lot of quarterly customized magazines, you know, we'll pick. Okay, is it the. It's going to be targeted. You know, you can't target right down to the day, but what you can say is it's going to go into the US Post system on the last week of the last week of the first month of every quarter. So January, the last, last week of January, it's going up. Last week of April, it's going up. Last week of July, it's going up. And being very, very consistent with that is really powerful as well. And it's something that's often overlooked. But yeah, and to your point too, Bill, it's interesting. We hear from client partners over and over and over again. When it first goes out, there's a bit of a novelty. Whether you're doing your first magazine, your first podcast, your first videos, whatever. A bit of a novelty. Some people will, you know, your existing clients or customers will get a kick out of it. You know, your team will. It'll engage your team and so on. But the real power comes in. So I was doing a presentation to a group and I gotta remember, our company's only four years old right now. And I did a presentation about a year ago and it was with one of our. Actually I think it's our second client partner we ever signed on was in that room, there was a third. Sorry. And they asked him, they said, okay, you know, what is this magazine program done for your business? He said, you know what, in the beginning, it was just kind of a cool new thing that we were doing. And then he said, it's amazing. Now, three years later, he said, people are recognizing it, they're anticipating it, they're looking forward to the next issue. And he said, what's interesting is that now that they've gone out there several times, you know, it's not a direct. And you'll know this with any kind of thought leadership marketing piece or content marketing piece. Most often it's not a direct response marketing program. It's not a flyer. You know, buy today and get saved 25% to midnight tonight or whatever. It's nothing like that. So people don't. I always tell people, they don't pick up your magazine and call you right away. But what they do is the next time they need your services, they'll be like, ah, you know that Kane Insurance, they're a big outfit. I get their magazines. And this one guy that was in the room when I was doing that presentation, they asked him, what's the benefit? What's doing for you? He said, well, before we did this, you know, years ago, we were trying to break into the oil and gas industry and trying to do some work there. And he said we would make 10 phone calls. Calls and maybe get one or two meetings. He said, now our sales guys, when they make 10 phone calls, they're getting seven or eight meetings. Because the people on the other end of the line say, oh yeah, I know you guys. Yeah, I think I've seen your magazine around here somewhere. You know, it just gives that legitimacy.

Yeah. So time, exposure, all kinds of things can give you legitimacy and is a little investment, sustained, consistent investment in the area of thought leadership can make a real difference. One quick tip for folks that I talk to a lot as a coach and in our workshops, they say, well, what should I be known for? What am I really good at? And it's hard because we don't walk around with a mirror everywhere to sort of see ourselves in a holistic sense. So go ask your favorite customers, your most loyal, long lasting customers, what do you most value in us? What are we best known for? Where do we stand out? How are we different from our competitors? Your favorite, best, most loyal customers will tell you the things that you ought to be promoting. If you're not sure where you should be the thought leader or what you're most credible in. And then, and then you just want some partnership or some support to actually manage it over time. Whether it's a magazine, whether it's blog posts, whether it's a social campaign, whether it's doing a book, whether it's recording podcast or doing this video series, you're going to need some help to manage it and you're going to want to invest for a period of time. I would say for the first like six months of doing a weekly podcast, it was like crickets. And I often wondered, what am I doing? And as I got to the nine month mark, I looked at our costs and things like that and I'm like, wow, is this thing really worth doing? And this cost me a lot to produce this thing. And at a year it really started to do stuff. Two years in, I'm like, holy crap, I'm really glad I stuck with that investment.

Yeah, right, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, that's so key. But you do need to stick to it long term. And by mitigating the workload, you know, I think of even, you know, when we, when we even talk to Potential client partners for the first time. The big things that people will look at and say, oh, it's going to take too much time, going to cost too much money. And, but if you, if you dig into it and with programs like we offer or if you use like you do an outside producer for your podcast, you could do a lot of that. This stuff with surprisingly little time invested. And, you know, whether it's, you know, like us doing magazines or booking a box, doing a book, like you can, you know, they're, they're right. We have writers that will even create your content for you so you don't even have to, you know, I had one client partner on stage with me in San Antonio about a year ago or a couple years ago, and he said, listen, I, I didn't even touch a keyboard and I put this magazine, he said, how cool was that? So you work with the right partners, you can get this stuff done. And it doesn't take a huge investment of time, which is everyone's biggest limiting resource.

So your clients produce stuff. And whether you work with a company like Andy's or elsewhere, with some time, with some consistency, you can see significant differentiation and advantage over your computer competitors. By being known for what you know and owning the share of mind out there. You want people to think of you first when they think of this. You want to be the one that comes up in their searches. You want to stand out in their mind in a variety of ways and being known for what you know, thought leadership marketing will get that done. And it's just not that hard to do if you're willing to commit to it. So the company, Andy's company is Carly Publishing. We'll put the link in the show notes and the book is how to Win Clients and Influence People. You'll find that on Amazon. We'll put the link to that as well in the show notes. How to Win Clients and Influence People on Amazon by Andy Biting Carly Publishing. And you can go and look for that. I want to thank you so much for being on the show with us today and giving people a little content. And I want to remind our listeners that if you love this show, go ahead and subscribe. Pass it along to someone that you think could benefit from it as well. We're here every week with tips and tricks and tools. You'll find us@scalingupbusiness.com Scalingupbusiness.com is also a place where you can download free tools and tips and things for getting your company started in the scaling up process. Thanks again. So much for being on the show with us.

Thank you.

Thanks again to Andy Biting for talking to us all about thought leadership marketing. You know it's not hard. It takes a little investment. It takes a little commitment and consistency, but it pays big dividends in time. If you're willing to create and launch a thought leadership marketing strategy and stick with it. I want to give a special thanks to our show producer Nio Bade, Audio production to Podfly Productions. Our show is edited by Albert Burge and show notes are written by a Codena and proofreading done by Tim McGowan. If you got some value from our show, please share it with somebody else and let us know what you love. Drop us a line scalingupbusiness.com thanks for listening and keep scaling up.

Are you ready to turn your goals into daily wins? You should check out our Scoreboard software powered by Align. It's the official software for scaling up. With Scoreboard, you'll get an AI driven coach for priorities and KPIs and it'll help keep your team focused on what matters most. With Align, you can track your goals in real time and you'll even see results on the go. With their mobile app you can rest easy knowing that Align has world class onboarding and support to set your team up for success. This is really more than just software, it's what I actually use to manage growth in our scaling up client teams. Unlock clarity and results with Scoreboard by Align. To try it now, go to aligntoday.com Bill Gates one more time. Aligntoday.com Bill G that's aligntoday.com Bill G Check it out and try it now.