Avoiding Marketing Fails | Duct Tape Marketing's COO, Sara Nay (Podcast 203)

One of our concepts that we've been teaching on for years and years is the marketing hourglass. And so it's basically how can you get someone to know, like trust, try, buy, repeat, refer you. That gives a lot of focus and purpose to your marketing because from there you can say, okay, what do we need to do in these stages? What is the customer expecting in these stages? Where are our gaps? What's our opportunity for improvement? And then that will help determine, like what channels you should be on with what messaging, because it gives it focus ultimately.

Our guest today is Duct Tape Marketing CEO Sarah Nick. Sarah is also the founder of sparklab Consulting, Scalable business advisor and host of the Agency Spark podcast. With 11 plus years working in a small business space, it's her passion to install marketing and operating systems for small business owners so they can get more clarity and freedom in their lives. Outside of work, Sarah tries to spend as much time as possible outdoors with her daughters and her husband from skiing, hiking, biking and camping. Sarah, welcome to the second Crayon podcast.

I am excited to be here. Thank you for having me.

You are in the sweet spot of one of my current pain points, which is the whole outsourcing and the automation of marketing. How did you get into that whole space?

A lot of it comes down to the fact that we, our focus over the years has always been in the small business world. And so we work with a lot of small business owners who are wearing one hat in terms of the CEO and the founder, but also lots of little hats along the way. So they're doing marketing, they're doing sales, they're doing all these different tasks. And so for me, automating things was always a really important thing when it comes to marketing. A lot of the business owners were doing things like they didn't have follow up campaigns in place once someone filled out a consultation form on their website and so they were spending time writing these custom emails every single time to schedule a call to speak to them. And so a lot of what we do in our marketing work is we look at the whole customer journey and we look at how can we take things off of the business owner's plates and automate them so it makes their lives easier ultimately.

How long you've been working with duct tape marketing? 11 years, three months. So is John your spouse?

He is my father.

Your father?

Yes. Or a family business.

That would have been creepy thinking about as your spouse. I'm a member of our CEO alliance. I said something about, oh, it was so great meeting your husband the other Day. And she goes, yeah, awkward. That's my brother.

I used to get that more recently or frequently. I used to be a Janss. My last name used to be Jan. And then I was married five or six years ago instead. But that question came up all the time. People were like, is it your father or husband? It's definitely my father.

Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about that kind of component as well. What was it like starting to work with your father and working with him in a business and what have been kind of the good, bad and the ugly of that? Because I imagine it hasn't always been easy. There's got to be the typical family dynamics parts and the typical work arguments as well, or frustrations. Can you walk us through some of the good, bad and ugly? That's.

It was one of my first jobs. I was an intern at an email marketing company. I did some traveling after that, and then I came back to Kansas City and I started about 12 years ago now as an intern at Duct Tape Marketing. So I honestly, I was a psychology major, had an internship before that, didn't have a ton of experience at that time. And so I started very slow and it was a great way to understand if working together with my father was even going to work. Took me about two years to really understand marketing and understand everything we had going on. And so it was a great really training period to get up to start feet as well. So I started out as an intern and then progressed over the last two years from things like community manager, marketing manager, got into operations, run our sales, and now I'm essentially the director of our operations and have my hands in a lot of the different areas of our business today. In terms of working with my father, we actually have a very great working relationship. I've heard of this a lot, but he's more of the innovator. He has the ideas and that's where he makes a huge value and impact in our business. And I'm more of the integrator or implementer. I'm very type A. And so I'm able to take these big ideas which I also hopefully contribute to put them into a plan and actually make them work and move forward ultimately. And so honestly, we've had a really complimentary relationship over the years because our different skill sets line up very nicely. The good, the bad and the ugly. We haven't had a lot of bad and ugly. And I'm not just saying that because I'm on a podcast. Like, we have jived, really, we've Been really fortunate and really lucky. We've jived working together very well. Well over the years.

I talked to someone recently and they said, oh, I would never hire anyone who I was related to to work for me. I'm like, oh, that's sad. It seems sad that you couldn't work with somebody that you love or care about. Like that's the way it should be, right?

Yeah. I have a very strong passion for what we do. It was part of my childhood. My dad's run this business for when I was a child and I saw that. I saw him running like he took the leap to entrepreneurship around when I was born. And so I saw him go through all of those stages and experiences and how passionate he has been at serving the small businesses over the years. And so naturally I have that in me as well. There's often times that I'm working late at night, early in the mornings, like after my kids go to bed before they wake up. And it's not because he's over my shoulder saying like, you need to get this stuff done, it's more of that. I'm just so passionate about who we serve as well. And I also care so much about our business. I think led to all of our growth over the years.

What's the size of the business right now in terms of the number of employees, et cetera and then who are your typical clients?

So in terms of size of business, we are small on purpose and so there's about 10 of us, but John and I are the main full time employees and then everyone else is part time. But we do a lot of things. We're a little bit different than a traditional marketing agency where we have John, who's an author, speaker, he does a lot of training workshops, webinars. That's one side of our business. We do consulting and coaching. So that target audience are small businesses really in a range of industries. Over the years we typically work with like local service based industries. Another branch of our business is we have a consultant network. And so we have about 150 marketing consultants, agency owners, coaches that are essentially certified in our methodology. And so they're able to use our approach to marketing to go and work with small to medium sized businesses. John launched that about 15 years ago and the efforts or his goal behind that was to make an impact on as many people as possible.

And what percentage of revenue would come out of that third component like the licensing and 100 and some odd consultants.

Uh, I would say about 30%.

It's a meaningful size, part of the business is that the core growth now, is that where you're focusing on scaling?

Scaling? That group is one of our main focuses. It has been for a while. You know, it's not ever meant to be thousands of thousands of people, but we want to continue to see growth and have a really tight knit community. Everything that we do in terms of like creating content and value is always serving small business audiences, but also consultants and agency owners who are also small business owners as well.

And your dad and I have shared the stage before at a group that the entrepreneurs organization ran back at mit. How many books has he written now?

I think it's seven.

Is the book side of it, you know, branding and marketing kind of positioning for you? Is it lead gen? Is it a passion project? Is it a moneymaker as well? What's the thought behind books?

It's absolute combination, I would say of the three. I mean, lead gen is a huge component of it. Every time a new book comes out, gets interviewed on more podcasts, he speaks in more events. Like there's just people read the book obviously and then they reach out to us about working with us directly. It's a passion project as well. And I think watching him write so many books, it has to be passion project, especially when you're running a business. I mean, he's already working full time and then writing a book on the side essentially, so it has to be a bit of a passion. And then obviously money making component as well is a piece of that.

So I'm working on my sixth book right now and I.

Okay, so you can relate.

A lot of freaking work, man. It's a lot of work and it does all of the things it's supposed to do when you use it properly.

When, yeah, every time he jokes at the end he's like, my wife's not gonna let me write another one for a while.

When are you writing a book?

I don't know. That's a good question. I've actually been asked that before. I don't think I'm naturally as strong at writing. So for me I think it would be a little bit more of a hurdle. I'm not saying it won't ever happen. It's just on the radar right now.

My books have all been done by me thinking out loud and recording all of my thoughts and then getting everything transcribed and then editing all the transcriptions. I can't sit down and type anything to save my life, but to just walk around talking and transcribing stuff has worked well for me.

Great Advice. I have hiking trails behind my house, and whenever I need to, like, do some deep thinking like that, I'll just go out and walk. So maybe I'll write a book walking one day.

Maybe there's a tie in with the hiking too. Right? What's not working in marketing these days?

I experience that a lot because, as I mentioned, I lead our sales now. So one of the things that I have the opportunity to do is I get to speak to small business owners daily, weekly, all the time, about their challenges and what they've struggled with from a marketing perspective in the past. And the thing that I hear time after time is they're working with different companies that just promise specific tactics and they dive straight into tactics without understanding the customer journey. For example, people will spend all this money on, like a paid advertising campaign, and then they get traffic to their website, but no one converted. What's the experience after they're on your website? Are you capturing their email? Are you going to continue to nurture them? Are you continuing to build a relationship and trust? And so there's a lot of people promising all these shiny objects. So you should be on TikTok. You should be doing this. You should be doing this. And it's like, does that make sense for your target audience? First of all, what is the message you're going to go at those channels on? And then where are you trying to guide people ultimately? So that's a lot of the work we do. One of our concepts that we've been teaching on for years and years is the marketing hourglass. And so it's basically, how can you get someone to know, like, trust, try, buy, repeat, refer you? That gives a lot of focus and purpose to your marketing because from there you can say, okay, what do we need to do in these stages? What is the customer expecting in these stages? Where are our gaps? What's our opportunity for improvement? And then that will help determine, like, what channels you should be on with what messaging, because it gives it focus ultimately.

Did you just say no? Like trust, try, buy, repeat, refer?

Yep.

First, I have a horrible memory to be able to ever do that. So I'm really impressed that I was able to do that. But I think the reason I was able to do it is the hourglass kind of concept made sense to me conceptually. I saw, like, the top of it was the know, like, and trust, and then the bottom of the hourglass was the try, buy, repeat, refer. It just logically made sense. Is that what you do then is work with clients on each of Those seven stages of that process.

So ultimately when we're doing strategy, which is a hundred percent where we start with all clients, no matter what, is first, who's your ideal client? And then second, what's your message you're going to lead with to attract that client and focus on their pain points and your promises and then it's the customer journey. And so when we start analyzing the stages for someone we haven't worked with, a lot of times they have like a lot going on and no, like they're doing some ads and they're focusing on SEO and they're speaking or whatever they might be doing. But then they don't really think a ton about the like and the trust and the try. They hope people will buy. So they're hoping people go from no to buy and then they haven't done a ton in terms of like how are they going to get repeat retainer type of clients? And then they haven't may they're maybe getting referrals naturally in a lot of cases, but they don't have a referral program in place. And so oftentimes like people will have pieces of the hourglass that they're strongly focusing on but not the full journey in place.

Do you know the brand Cutco?

I don't.

It's the vector marketing. It's a sales program where they used to sell knives door to door. And one of their biggest salespeople was out of Kansas City, a really close friend of mine, John Rulin. But they're so big on referral based selling and they didn't do cold calling, they just networked marketing. It was like network marketing but it was not slimy MLM marketing. It was like clean.

On that note, real fast. The whole referral phase is so important. John's written a whole book on it, the referral engine. But it's so important because if you can get a referral, if we're going back to the hourglass, that allows you to move from know like trust try really quickly because there's already a lot of trust built in and so people are ready to ultimately move through your sales process faster because of the referral. And so that's why putting emphasis on gaining referrals is so important for a business in terms of their existing clients, but also strategic partnerships as well.

Let's go back and walk through the seven. I think that's what we should spend our time on. I kind of chuckle every time you say John did this, John did that. When you're at home like at Thanksgiving Or Christmas. Do you call him dad or do you?

I do, I do. I mean, for 12 years, I've been mainly calling him John because we talk all the time in work settings. It rolls off my tongue now.

My brother worked with my dad for years, but ended up buying my dad's company. And for a dec, he would call my dad John. Same name. And like, five minutes later, we'd be on the golf course. He'd be like, dad, throw me my partner. I'm like, you just called him John 17 times today. Like, how did that even switch? He goes, fuck. We're at the golf course, like so. And he's not trying to call him John or trying to call him dad. It's just this natural separation of state that happens that I think is really powerful.

Yeah, I mean, I would agree with that. When I'm in a work setting, if I'm being interviewed, if I'm talking about it, even if I'm, like, talking to him in front of our internal staff, I'll still call him John. And it just. It's natural in the work setting. But as you said, if I'm at his house and we're hanging out, I would never. Calling him John would feel awkward enough.

Right. There was. I saw Barbara Bush, George Senior's wife, speak one time, and she said that when she would call her husband for dinner, if the whole family was there, like, let's say it was Christmas and she needed her husband to come into the kitchen, she. She would say, 41, get in here. She wanted her son to call. She'd be like, 43, get in here. And she said if she was calling them both, she'd be like, 84.

I love that.

That's so cute. There's no way you were ever calling them into the kitchen. I'm sure you had staff bringing your food.

But.

But it's a cute story. It's a cute story nonetheless. Let's go to the know. So what are the critical things, the critical lessons that we can do to. Is it for us to know our customer or for our customers and prospects to know of us?

It's for your customers and prospects to know of you. Typically, when we're brainstorming the hourglass in each phase, we'll say, for your existing business, I work with a lot of remodelers, for example. That's one of our industries. So let's just use an example. So let's say you're a remodeling company. How are your clients finding you today? Or how are clients finding you know, other remodeling companies today is typically what we ask, like what are the clients already doing or the prospects already doing? And then from there, what should your response be or what opportunity of improvement could you have? A lot of remodelers like, a lot of that comes from referrals or reading, reading reviews online at least. Like they want to see trust, they want to hear from someone else. They ask a family, they ask a friend, they ask a neighbor who had work done. You know, referrals is huge in that industry. And so to me, that means that focusing on a referral program is really important for modelers. A lot of people do turn to Google Search. Even if they've gotten a referral, they'll still look online these days to read more about. So again, they'll read reviews, they'll look at their website, they'll look for other helpful content. So it's basically just asking. Google Ads is another opportunity for a lot of remodelers. But it's just basically asking, how can people learn about you or hear about you for the first time? Answer those questions and then you fill out based on that. What should we really be focusing on from a tactical standpoint?

I agree on the whole the Google review side of things. I've been really pushing my clients to get their, to stack their reviews. It's kind of like launching a satellite that it takes a lot of energy to get the satellite in orbit. And once it's in orbit, it stays forever. But if be calling every single customer you've had for the last five years, asking them to leave you a Google review, and you get 100, 200, 300 Google reviews, those are going to help you for the next five years. I'm astounded by the number of companies that aren't pushing for that.

I agree. I mean, especially local businesses. I have a dentist, for example, and she's in Lakewood, good friend of mine that I'm working with. But one of the first things we did when she bought a practice a couple Novembers ago was like, let's start getting reviews from everyone you see. Because especially a dentist office, they have a lot of volume. They multiple people a day that they can be asking for referral or for reviews from. And so what we've implemented with her is an email that goes out, but also a text message. The text message gets a ton of response because people are literally getting it on their phone. They click a few buttons, they type some things, they send it as easy as possible. And I think that's the best thing we did for her from a marketing perspective because she had got hundreds of reviews and now she has a ton of traffic coming from her Google business profile because of that. It's one of the first things we do with especially our local clients. It's like, okay, review strategy, how are we going to get them? Because it's a huge component.

Yeah, you're kind of like the online girl for the offline world. It feels like a lot of your businesses are the offline service based businesses. Is that right?

Yeah, for the most part. I mean we work in a range of industries, but for the most part, yeah, absolutely. It's people providing services locally is kind of our niche.

And the Google reviews then ties into the trust component as well, doesn't it? Because of the social proof. And yeah, that's a huge trust.

We recommend, you know, in terms of that is having obviously reviews on different sites, so industry related sites, Google, Facebook, different platforms, but also then obviously having reviews and testimonials and stories on your website. And so if you can do case studies, if that makes sense in your industry, like actually having case studies with people's names attributed to them, all of that stuff is such a trust component that highlights success of your clients. And it's not all about just talking about how great you are.

I'm not going to look at it now because I'll get distracted, but I would imagine that your website. Is your website as good as it's supposed to be or is there stuff to work on?

There's probably stuff that we could absolutely work on. We're actually redoing our website currently with a new team member that we brought on. And so ask me that again in like a month and a half and it'll be the model website. I'm sure at that point I'll check.

It in six or eight weeks. And you mentioned the remodelers. I built a company called College Pro Painters years ago and one of my former franchisees started two companies, one called Reliable Remodeler and a second one called Handyman Online. He built both those companies and sold them well over a decade ago for an obscene amount of money. And he was just like a, I guess a resource list of pulling all these types of businesses together. So how do you get to the like part? What's the like in the second step of the hourglass?

So again it goes down to okay, someone's heard about you from the know, like what are they going to do next? And typically that's some of the things we've been talking about. They're going to look you up online so they're going to read your reviews. They'll probably go to your social media channels just to make sure that you're like presenting yourself in a positive way. They'll go to your website, they'll look for helpful information, maybe they'll opt in for something like if you have a newsletter sign up, they'll get on your email list if it makes sense. So those are like the types of actions that really like and trust I think overlap in a lot of ways to me. But those are the types of actions that someone will continue their learning and education to decide if they want to move forward. And so in the like and trust it's really important to as we said, generate reviews, highlight customer stories and case studies on your website, have really valuable useful content. Video is huge in the like and trust. And so if you're a small business, like having a video from the founder right on the homepage, easy to take in, sharing the culture, like all of that stuff, any like awards or associations you're part of are helping with trust building. And so it's just how are you going to demonstrate that you're the best option to work with through storytelling.

Ultimately your dad or John has received a lot of press from his books and stuff over the years. Does press start to fall into the trust component side as well then?

Yeah, absolutely. So I tell a lot of people, a lot of my clients is podcasting is, is even an easy channel to do. It helps you gain authority, you're able to be published on different people's websites, you get backlinks, you get in front of different audiences. And so yes, press is important, but also just being interviewed in different places and publishing content on different platforms is a great component as well because that kind of goes across from know like.

And trust and then it's kind of the what you can do with that at that point. So then we get to the try side of things. So what's happening there?

Try is dependent obviously on the industry. Try can be a video if you don't really have like a trial offer just so people can experience you further. And a lot of cases for my clients, try can be a consultation of some sort, a discovery call or maybe like if a remodeler goes out to someone's house and talks them through design work as like a first step, you know, if you're like a software company, a free 30 day trial, that's like a very obvious one. And so there's different ways but the idea behind Try is okay, someone's come to your website, built trust with them, they want to experience working with you on some level or what it might be like to then make the decision to move to the buy phase. And so for us, one of the things that we do is actually a strategy session for prospects where we will start mapping out the hourglass with them together to open their eyes and stuff to all the different possibilities and to experience us as advisors or mentors. And then from there we'll move into more of a sales conversation of this is, this is how we can make it all happen together.

Ultimately, what do you charge? How does your company work in terms of the consulting side of things?

We start with strategy always. And so that's a 30 to 45 day package where we map out a lot of these components that we're talking about. Ideal client, core message, customer journey, execution and content calendar, like the biggest components of that. And then from there we go to retainers for all of our clients. Try to stay with clients for years and years. I think John's longest client is like 15, 16 years now a remodeler in Kansas City. But our goal is to stay involved and really be a partner again. Because if you're thinking of these small businesses, they don't have marketing team in place. In most cases, if they do, we can coach them and train them up, but in most cases they don't have marketers in place and they've tried to outsource or they've tried to do it themselves. And so we come in and become an advisor, a trusted partner. And our goal is to really take the marketing off of their plates, but obviously keep them involved in monthly reporting sessions, quarterly strategic planning sessions, as well as.

And what kind of marketing do you take off their plates? Like what kind of tactical stuff do you then do?

We focus on a range. We're mainly digital marketing and so we focus on paid advertising, email marketing, SEO, social media, content production is huge. Website work is huge, getting like reviews and ratings online. And so it's specific to the client and their needs and their customer journey that we'd map out. But those are usually the core channels that we're focusing on. But we do offline stuff as well. So like direct mail pieces, if it makes sense.

And are there areas that you stay away from?

Not necessarily. I wouldn't say there's something that we shy away from. That's really where we specialize in is those core groups. And so if we don't specialize in something that's being brought to the table, we might look for another partner or collaborate with someone else, versus, like, trying to do something that we don't really specialize with. That's really the core areas they need to lay the foundation and grow on. And so we try to stay away from, like, big, shiny ideas and focus on what we know that works.

If a company's out there and they're looking to hire an agency or hire some freelancers, what are the mistakes that companies are making and how can they find those agencies or freelancers easier without kind of stumbling through having to try three of them? And the fourth one works out really.

Understanding what goes into an effective marketing strategy is an important step. I have a client that I've been working with now that we just finished her strategy for, and she was just, like, so overwhelmingly thankful because she had been working with other companies in the past, and they, like, define her ideal client and her messaging. And then they just, like, dove into tactics. I think did, like, the research phase of strategy, but not the actual planning stage. And so she had been really frustrated because her tactics just felt really random, and they ultimately were. And so I think understanding marketing strategy is the initial research, but you also have to have, like, an execution calendar based on your customers. Like, that's the next step that I think a lot of people miss when they talk about marketing strategy. Another frustration that I hear all the time that drives me crazy. His people will hire a marketing company or an SEO company not to pick on SEO companies specifically, but they'll pay, you know, a certain amount, and then per month for a retainer. And then this company just sends them, like, a report of their metrics, and they have, like, no idea what it means. Because SEO can be a technical topic, but they don't have marketing experience, so they have absolutely no idea what it means, what they're paying for, what results they're getting. But they just keep them engaged because they know they need to be doing SEO. And so I think it's understanding a couple pieces, your full marketing strategy, but also the metrics that you should be paying attention to and why will help you ultimately hire someone and hold them accountable moving forward.

It seems to be a huge pain point for so many companies, and it often feels like they're taking the first referral they get as well. I think we're often hardwired as humans to help everybody. So if somebody says, hey, I need a PR firm. Oh, I know a PR firm. You should use them. But I've never used them before. I don't really know much about them. It's like I heard of them, they end up just hiring that first firm that comes along, right? Or the first SEO firm or the first paid search firm.

Well, and another thing that I see all the time is then they get locked into like year commitments. And so I also think like, unless you really feel good about the company that you're going to work with, I would shy away from signing a year commitment until you know that they're going to be able to get you the results that they're promising. And so for us, like I said, we try to work with our clients for years and years. They can give us 30 day notice to cancel at any time. So I think that gives a lot of flexibility and people being able to start working with us, experience us, but then not be locked in. Because I'll hear from people all the time like, well, I have six, four months on this SEO contract, but they're not performing. It's like we probably shouldn't have gotten into that situation.

I'm, I'm leaving the marketing agency that's been trying to help me for the last 18 months. Just not getting the return and not getting the results we're looking for. It's been super frustrating and I want a month to month so it's easy to leave. But I have felt for so long pot committed because I'm like, I've been giving them this time and giving them this time and it's like, maybe next month it'll get better. And it's finally, it's like it's just not getting any better. I feel like I've now I've wasted a bunch of time and money in that process as well, which has been been hard. So then we go from buy and the repeat. Any big lessons for us there it.

Starts with making it as easy as possible. So for us, we're selling strategy first to begin with our engagement. So we have an agreement that is already built in a proposal software. And so it takes me two minutes to put in someone's name, send it over, they can click and sign. We also send a payment link with that they can click and pay. First of all, making it as easy as possible, when someone says I'm ready to buy, I think is a big piece of the puzzle you can't forget about after they buy. So that's where we see a lot of opportunity for clients that we work with is what does your onboarding process look like, no matter what industry you're in, like, how are you going to Communicate right away what the next steps are. Are you going to send them a welcome gift? How are you going to surprise them? You know, because right after they purchase something, especially if it's a big investment, that's where you're kind of most at risk for them to have fears about the commitment they made, really the buy stage isn't just about collecting money. It's how are you going to blow them away from the very beginning.

Do you know the name Joey Coleman?

Yeah. He spoke at one of our events a few years ago.

He's a great guy, Great guy. I just spent time with he and his wife down in Antarctica. I've been friends with them for a decade. His whole first hundred days. The customer journey is amazing. Let's go back on the ops side of the business for you. So where do you struggle right now in terms of operations? What are your kind of the day to day pain points for you?

We are onboarding a couple of people, a couple new client managers at once. I feel like we've done really well over the years in terms of documenting processes and systems, how my mind works. But bringing on two members at once that have different background experiences as project managers and different ways of working like gave me a lot of insight on how we can document our processes more efficiently. And so I think the challenge is, you know, when you bring on someone new. For us, when we bring on someone new, there's so many different parts of our business. It's how do we get them up to speed efficiently and get everyone on the same page. And so that's a lot of what I've been working on lately. I think that is one of our biggest challenges.

What are you using to document your processes? Right now are just doing stuff like in Google Docs, are you using Suite Process or Process street or anything?

We used to use Google Docs. Right now we're using Notion as a tool. Everything that we do from like a day to day project management, client management, all my tasks are mapped out in Monday.com as well. So it's a bit of a combination between notion and Monday.com it's interesting.

I think the key with that is to understand the basic framework of it. Like if you can document a process on a piece of paper, then you should be allowed to use Google Docs or Google Sheets. And then if you're, if you can do it there, then you should be allowed to use Monday and Notion. But the people that jump right to the software solution and don't understand the basic process or how to do Something that's when it all seems to fall apart.

And we've gotten huge with our processes. This has been a learning of resilience. Like all of our processes now are a video of someone doing it. Like a loom or whatever. That's a video. You can watch the video once, and then below it is literally a checklist of the steps that you don't want to make any mistakes on. And so that's been really helpful is like having it visually displayed and then quick checklist. So the third, fourth, fifth time you do it, you can just go through the checklist.

All right. I want to go back to your growth in terms of you growing as a CEO, you growing as a head of ops. So where have you had to grow over the years? Where have you had to work on yourself as a leader?

There's been a lot of growth. I mean, I started as an intern with not a lot of experience, so I've learned a lot, and I've learned a lot about different elements of our business. To start, you know, I had no sales experience. Now I lead 100% of our sales, and I absolutely love it. I think sales is a lot about providing value, having conversation, talking about pain points, providing solutions. At least that's how we approach sales. But I've had to practice, you know, over the last 12 years to feel really confident in where I'm at today. And so that has been a whole evolution, because if you would have told me 12 years ago that I would have been in sales, I'd have been, like, terrified. So that was a lot of growth for me. I think my mind works well in systems and processes, but I hadn't really had any official training on that component other than what I've read, what I've learned from John over the years and all that stuff. But I did join the Scalable Business Advisor program, which you mentioned when you introduced me earlier. And that is all about the operations side of a business. And so I've learned a lot more through that training. And what drew me to that was obviously working in our business in terms of operations, but also I'm able to now provide that opportunity to clients as well. Some of our clients over the years, we've gotten them the growth, we've gotten them the lead generation, but then they didn't really have processes to serve the volume that was coming to them. So I was ultimately creating a different problem for them in some ways. And so now we're able to come in and. And obviously generate growth, generate leads, lead conversion. But then Also look at the operational side of things. But it all ties back again to the customer journey. Not to touch on that again too much. But you know, the know, like trust try, like that's a lot of marketing and sales within the buy and the repeat and the referral. A lot of that's operations and automation and serving clients. And so you really have to have both, I think, to be successful.

Yeah. One of our former COO alliance members was the second in command for Alex and Layla Hermozi. I don't know if you know Alex Hermosi from Jimlock. They're like a hundred million dollar marketing agency just for gyms and fitness locations. And they had ridiculous success at helping gyms like double and triple and quadruple their volume of clients. But he said all of a sudden they had all these clients and their business started breaking down because they didn't know how to service them, they didn't know how to take care of them, they didn't know how to like bring them in and onboard them. And he had to add that whole component as well. He's like, it was pointless to just be great at marketing because it was going to kill their business if you didn't help them succeed on the operations side.

I mean, that's when you start like getting bad reviews and stuff publicly because you're not able to serve them on that side of things. And then another piece on the operations and service side of things is oftentimes small businesses aren't thinking about like how they can repeat customers, how can they sell more to their customers that are already fans of theirs and so how can they continue to provide value as well? And to me that's a bit of an operational thing, sales thing. It's the full piece of the puzzle. It's not just about generating new leads or business is. It's about taking care and selling more to the people you already serve.

All right, I want to go back 11 and a half years ago back to the intern, Sarah Nay. What advice would you give yourself back then when you were just kind of starting out in your career? Maybe advice that you know today to be true but you wish you'd known back then.

I think back then I was young, I was still just figuring out like, do I want to be doing this? Should I pursue this? And I didn't have the confidence in what I was doing as I do today. Obviously that comes with a lot of experience. But I work with a lot of other consultants and agency owners and when there's just getting started a lot of people have. We actually just talked about this yesterday on a Mastermind is Imposter Syndrome. And so you don't feel confident in what you're doing because you don't have the experience to back you up. But one of the things that I have learned over the years is I've surrounded myself with really smart people that know a lot and I've learned a lot. And so even if I don't have the answer, I still have confidence that I will be able to get a solution worked out for the person that I'm speaking with. And if I was speaking to my younger self, worry less about the confidence piece. You'll continue to learn and evolve and grow over time. Time.

That's amazing. Sarah Nay, the COO from Duct Tape Marketing, thanks so much for sharing with us on the Second in Command podcast. Really appreciate the time.

I've always really wanted to be a part of like the people skills and helping people. He has always been very busy. I mean that was his job before myself. In my eyes, it's got to be two different jobs and for me to be able to choose between the two, why make him change what he's good at that and I can do the other part.