What's In Your Content?

What's in your content? Hey, Polk County, we're back for another episode of the Elevate Polk podcast. Hoping you're having a wonderful week. My name's Chrissanne Long, and I'm here again with my co-host Nate Kendrick, who always helps us tell the unique and personal stories of entrepreneurs in Polk County, Florida. How are you today?

I'm doing well.

Good.

I'm doing well. And I'm excited for this conversation. Yeah.

So we normally talk about the entrepreneurial stories of a lot of other people that have been our guests.

Yeah.

But today we're gonna talk about us.

Yeah.

And I kind of feel a little guilty, but I'm gonna let that go.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Selfless plugs. There's nothing wrong with that.

Yeah. So we named the, we named the, the show, the episode, What's in Your Content?

Mm-hmm.

So pre-show discussion, we were starting to talk about Kind of, I'm starting to move very reluctantly. I have moved into the video production side of the world where I'm creating videos, thanks to Annie, our producer, who makes it possible. But I've been like, I was resistant to video. Like I knew that I needed to do video, but I never really wanted to do video.

Yeah.

And that's kind of on my side, the marketing side, the business side that we're in with Maximize. And my strategic growth coaching business. But your content is actually a little bit different, and I don't think we've talked to our audience about the transition you've taken since you became the host. So I think we'll start there.

Put me on the spot.

That's probably going to be more interesting to everybody.

Yeah. Okay.

What's up with Nate? What's going on?

Yeah, so I, uh, I got involved with a good friend of mine. He started, uh, the business in 20— early 2018, I believe. And, uh, yeah, he, he asked me about a year and some change ago to help him with the operations and the finance and kind of all-encompassing with, with the business. And about a month and a half, 2 months ago, he asked, he said, hey man, can you help full-time? And I said, yeah, absolutely, I'd love to really pursue this business. And, uh, the business is in a very niche market and it just made sense.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

So you, you and I started talking when you were, you are still the Kendrick Company.

Yeah. Yeah.

And you're, you kind of, that was your primary focus. And so you were doing consulting and helping businesses with all of the things that you were helping. And Mike and Mike's, which is the name of the company.

The name of the company. Yeah.

Yeah. Was one of your clients.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and so then you just kind of took the shift away from having a lot of clients to being kind of a full-time And now you're a member of the team.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. It was, and it was a pretty smooth transition. It was just something that I've always been. It's kind of ironic because I've always been passionate about food and I've been passionate about startups. So it just kind of, it was like a perfect relationship.

Yeah. So, so let's tell everybody what the special sauce is with Mike and Mike's.

I can't, I guess I can't go too much in detail, but yeah. So basically the, the business is a vegan. Desserts, specifically vegan cupcakes. I can thank Viviana for that. She is the one of the most important components of that. She has a lot of skill sets, and one of the most strategic skill sets that she has is she has a strong ability to create very unique products that just taste great. So all of the products that we sell are clean from top to bottom, even the colorings in the cupcakes themselves. It's all natural, which a lot of people don't really have the ability to do. So that's just— she just really truly has a gift.

Wow, that's cool. And so we— the topic today, the episode, um, is called What's in Your Content? And so what we were talking about is, all right, so video content and blog content and all the things that from a marketing side of things are my content when I think of content.

Yeah.

But then when we were talking, I was like, well, you know, desserts are your content.

Yeah, for sure.

For the most part, that's what you deliver, right?

Oh, 100%. And it's funny you said that too, because we— that's one of the— that's one of the The first things that we did when I came on full-time is we decided to revamp our website because our content is our food and people, the first thing that people see on when they're going to be landing on the new website is the cupcakes and the ingredients and things like that, because that's what people are buying. They're buying the product. So you have to, you have to sell that up front.

Yeah. So how important is like imagery, photography?

Oh, it's the, it's the number one thing. Yeah.

I find a lot of businesses aren't as invested in that as they should be. When if that's my very first experience with the brand.

Yeah.

And you have shown me this delicious, you know, I need to eat that now kind of photograph.

Yeah.

The likelihood of me converting even just to become a subscriber to your newsletter is much higher. And I don't necessarily think I have stats to show that, but it's like from a consumer standpoint, I mean, you almost have to look at it from If I were the consumer, would this make me hungry?

Yeah.

You know, if it wouldn't, then okay. And I also subscribe to the do what you can now and grow until you get to the point where you can maybe afford that professional photographer, that professional website and all of those things. But at the same time, you've got to also have that in your mind. Like I'm working to have a better, more professional presence for my business.

Yeah, for sure.

And that's the content side.

Yeah, definitely. And we talk about it all the time. A lot of times, new business owners when they're starting a business for the first time, they have a tough time not trying to do everything. And one of the things that I learned very early on is I'm going to have to pay for it anyways down the road. So I might as well pay for it earlier instead of trying to figure it out on my own and realize, wait a second, that's not even close to like the standard, right, in the industry.

Exactly. And it's, it's never going to be.

Yeah. Yeah.

Just keep it, keep it there. I think a lot of businesses spend a lot of time on the front end thinking about their website, but then it becomes a back burner kind of model for them. It's like, it's not a primary focus. I know a lot of restaurants do that because it's foot in the door, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And so in your case, you know, you're looking at investments, you know, you're wanting to convey a level of professionalism that says, hey, we've got our act together. We want to convey that this is a business that we think is going to succeed and we want you to invest in it.

Yeah, for sure.

And so if it's not that put together, put together, then it's not gonna attract the in the investment that you're seeking, right?

For sure. And especially for the wholesale component with the buyers, they want to make sure that you're a legitimate business and that you can keep up with the demand that, that you say that you're going to do if you're going to sell to their stores. And they want to make sure that you're legit. You can't, you know, your website can't look like it was put together with, you know, just two sticks, right? It needs to look professional. So that's, I think that's like, that's one of the things that I've, that I've realized. And I've always kind of known that, but It just took me some time to understand that, hey, I don't need to build a website on Wix by myself and you shouldn't use Wix anyways, but I had to learn that trial and error, you know?

So let's talk about that for a second. I know a lot of the industry marketing people in the community, we're all kind of on the same page on that particular topic. So I'm kind of speaking for some of those marketing people out in the Polk County area, you know, Grant Naidu and Jim Mosher and Stephanie Hoskins. You know, a lot of people in the industry that I, I have respect and work well with.

Yeah.

And you kind of go back to this question of, you know, Squarespace, Weebly, Wix, whatnot. Could you get by with building that from the beginning? Absolutely. Yes, 100%. But what I've found is those that are understanding of the— if you're building it with the end in mind, right?

Yeah.

If you're building it with the end in mind, the end is not what can I get away with today? The end is how am I going to get this to a point where it can scale and it can grow and it can grow with me? And so we're all on the same page. Whenever I have these conversations, I see them on social media. It's like, you know, when will they— when will somebody stop, you know, thinking that the free, cheap and easy web builder is the way to go? But I also have respect for those that are starting from zero, right?

Yeah, for sure.

But in— and you're mentioning it's like, okay, doing the Wix thing, it's almost like I can do it myself. But let me ask you this, like, if you're going to buy a cupcake, are you buying the cupcake that you, you cooked yourself, that you baked yourself? Or, you know, like, I'm going to you because you're— your Mike's and Mike's has this premium product to offer, so I'm going to pay for it, as opposed to going to, you know, Betty Crocker and getting a box and, you know, throwing it into my oven.

For sure.

You know, and so it's the same model that you're building from the business perspective. Yeah, it's just turning it on its end. A lot of businesses, I think, forget to put their consumer hat on and then look at themselves as, as the buyer. As the buyer.

Yeah.

You know, so I love that you're talking about the buyer looking at the website and going, oh well, if I'm a sophisticated buyer and I know what to look for in a business that I'm going to buy from, I'm going to look at some of the infrastructure.

Yep.

You know, I'm going to look at, does this convey that level of professionalism that I know I need because this, if I start to buy from them and they're gone in 6 weeks or 6 months or a year, it looks bad on me. It's, it's bad. You know, that turnover, that churn in my, in what I'm offering to my customers, you know, now I have to explain, yeah, well, that company went out of business. So they're really looking at, is this a sustainable business that they're going to stick around?

Yeah, for sure. For sure. And, and that's the thing. Again, it's, it's, it's being self-aware of that. And it's, it's sometimes, sometimes it's hard to to realize that you're at that place where you do have to bite the bullet and say, okay, we need to spend the money on this, or we need to do these specific things. But we talk about all the time, you get in a place where your business has to grow up. So like, we're kind of, you know, going back to what you were talking about where you were hesitant to do video but realized that it was important component in order to do what you're trying to do.

Yeah, yeah. And so I speak to the resistance. I think there was a blog post that I wrote and I recently published on like the resistance that I have to video. Like when I looked at myself at the time when I was allowing that resistance to hold me back, I would look at myself and I'd see the goofy eyes or the, you know, the sideways smile or, you know, my hair wasn't where it needed to be. Or I would get into the female mindset of, well, I'm not wearing makeup and I should probably look more put together, or I haven't had my hair dyed and I need to look at, you know, all of the little critical things that you to look at when you're looking at yourself from that lens, right? And so it's like, okay, well, and then I would watch a video of some polished expert. And I would say, if someone's 10 years further down the line than I am, probably not a fair thing to compare myself to.

Yeah, hell yeah. Yeah, for sure.

So if I'm looking at like a Marie Forleo or I'm looking at a Don Miller or a Seth Godin, and I'm seeing how their presence of mind and how put together they are in their video, that's unfair to me. So it's the same attitude that I have when I say, start where you are, right? But I wasn't eating my own dog food. So I was saying some things about starting where you are, but I wasn't giving myself the grace to do that myself. Right. So I was like, no, I mean, yeah, every once in a while I would do a Facebook Live and those would be what they would be. And I'd get on Zoom and we'd record those. But that's not the same as actually investing in the process of going and creating video content. That's going to tell the story or be a part of your narrative or your messaging, right? It's a totally different animal for sure. And so recently, because, you know, we've been talking about it on the show and the studio, I'm talking to people about, hey, come use the studio, come use it for video, come use it for podcasting. And I'm not eating my dog food there either, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so I finally said, okay, guys, I'm going to have to start getting on video. And, you know, yes, all of those same criticisms have been part of the process, you know? So I think I also go back to like your Mike and Mike's experience and looking at the development process.

Yeah.

Yeah. You know, it's like you've got to invest in it at the point that you can today. You've got to do something. It's not just something that you can just throw together. And I think where I was struggling was the investment of the time. I've, I often say that if I were just to riff on a video, I could do that. But the ultimate goal is to get the message that I'm trying to convey into a small enough amount of time that someone's actually gonna listen to the video.

Yeah.

Right? You open up that YouTube video and you see it's 37 minutes and you're like, eh, I don't think I have 37 minutes to watch.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But if you see, oh, okay, this is only 5 minutes, I've got 5 minutes, you know, I wanna watch. You know, so it's like—

Yeah, very strategic.

But I know that if I don't write it down, if I just decide, all right, this is what I want to talk about. I mean, as evident with our podcast, right? We can just riff. We could just talk. So I've been really intentional about writing the script, using the teleprompter and practicing what that looks like as far as creating a professional final product for video. And so it's probably like Viviana. It's like test your content is the recipe. Your content is the output, your cupcakes. And to me, it's like, the way that we see the content that we're creating has to be at a level that we want to be seen in the marketplace.

Mm-hmm.

You know?

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

If we want to be seen as credible and we want to be seen as professional and we want to be, you know, looked at as, as, as in the game, so to speak, we have to convey that we can't just throw one recipe out there and say, okay, this is what we're gonna do.

Yeah.

We gotta know that we're gonna have to iterate for sure and continue to do that for sure.

And that's the thing too. It's not like we're saying don't do an MVP with the minimal viable product, but once you get that minimal viable product out there, you have to refine it. You have to kind of look at the market and say, okay, I know that video needs to be out there in order for people, because you're selling this service and, you know, people need to see your face because you are the service. So you're selling yourself and people need to see that and believe in what you're selling. And they see the content, they see it's professional. They see it's laid out well, the information that you're telling them resonates with them as well, and they buy into it. And it's the same thing with the website and our photos on social media, which we're updating as well.

And all this stuff— people in, right?

Exactly.

Photo of that delicious mouth-watering cupcake.

Yeah.

Makes me say, ooh, where are these available? Exactly. Let me learn more. I need to eat one of those. Oh, that flavor sounds amazing. I need to figure out how I can get one.

Exactly.

And then when you can do that for the buyers and get the buyers to go, okay, the customers are going to love this.

Yep.

You know, then you've got that, that marriage. And the same thing here. It's like, okay, well, how many blog posts can I write and how many, you know, landing pages and, and lead generation PDFs and all of these things can we create and, and not have a video?

Yeah, for sure. For sure.

And again, I have to say, we have to eat our own dog food. You know, we can't just expect people to come buy from us. I think that's the, the other takeaway for me in this content discussion, it's like, all right, so we started talking about content is king, right? 10, 12 years ago when I started in the business that we're in today, content was king.

Yeah.

And everybody was talking about how important blogging was. And back then SEO and blogging was so important because people were commenting on those blogs. Blog comments are no longer a part of your SEO strategy. I mean, they could be, but nobody's commenting on blogs anymore.

It's like nonexistent.

So it's really not a part of the plan. But you still have to be putting out that fresh content and you have to be thinking about what that content's going to do for you as a business. It's not for sure content for content's sake. It's content's sake. It's content with a strategy. Yeah.

It's be purposeful. Yeah.

And it's like, all right, well, what's your keyword strategy from an SEO standpoint? What are you trying to rank for? Why are you— and then what is that blog going to convey? And then the same thing with a video, you know, optimizing that video for search engine optimization as well. So you're putting those keywords or you're telling the story of whatever it is that's a keyword-focused discussion. You know, for me, it's strategic growth coach, right? Right now I'm just trying to get myself known as a strategic growth coach. So I'm putting content out there that's based on strategic growth. It makes sense.

Yeah.

But later on, if you're starting to create content that's wanting to bring keywords in for, in your case, you know, vegan desserts or different kinds of things that are related, then you're going to need photos. Videos for sure, and blog posts, recipes, you know, interviews with Viviana.

Yeah.

You know, all of that part of your content to build the business.

Yeah, for sure. And I think that's part of it too. It's, it's ultimately what are you trying to do? So you build your content around that. And I think a lot of, a lot of the difficulties today is there's so many different social media platforms that people could post their content on. They sometimes get overwhelmed, and maybe they, maybe they're posting content the wrong way, and yeah, maybe they're, they're stretching themselves too thin and putting up— that's, I think that's the most common one. It's like, man, there's so many, I gotta post on everything. It's like, man, you really don't, right? You need to focus. Like, we're mostly on Instagram because Instagram and food are—

they, they go hand in hand, they work really well together.

Yeah, you know, we talked about TikTok a couple times, but with all the intricate, intricate details that goes into this business, that's all that we really have time for right now. And that's kind of what we're focused on.

Oh, I love that you said that because— okay, so in the very early stages of business development, and I would say I'm in the very early stages of a new strategy. So this video is the very early stage. So I was telling you about kind of— I've got a masterclass coming up and I've got all of these other pieces that we're putting together. And that first time you go through the motions of something.

Yeah.

Is the building of the process. Yeah, for sure. Like, a lot of times when you're thinking strategically, you're thinking systems and processes, systems and processes. And so you want to apply a system and process before you've ever gone through it one time. And if you try to do that the very first time, you're gonna be wrong.

Oh, for sure.

Because the system isn't gonna work.

Yeah, there's no system really until you've actually gone through the motions.

You're like, oh yeah, I thought this would take 5 minutes, it's actually taking 25 minutes. So now I've got to go back and figure out how the rest of this whole thing—

the idea always sounds great, it's all about the execution. Yeah.

And, and in the execution is where you're able to systematize, right? After, after at least one iteration, probably more like 3 to 5 iterations where you can get out the kinks and, and improve the process so that you can shorten the bandwidth required to get from A to wherever you're trying to go. And that's kind of where we are right now. We're like, okay, so we need the videos, we need the top of the funnel. All right. So we've got the top of the funnel content and it's freemium content. You know, we were talking about Gary Vee and Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. It's freemium. It's like, all right, here's content. That is good content. This isn't cheap, you know, throw it out there and see if it sticks content. This is thoughtful, considerate. You know, we've gone through this process. We've created some really good content for you. And then you come down the funnel through, you know, the top of the funnel to the next stage of the funnel to, all right, now I'm ready to figure out how do I want to become a paying customer? You can't get a paying customer. I mean, you, you can, sometimes if you're lucky, but that's not as systematizable because that's usually word of mouth. That's usually a referral. Yeah, it's usually, you know, if your search engine optimization is kicking butt, then you're going to get people in because they're going to come and they're going to need what you have. I have a leaky— I have a leaky pipe with my plumbing and you're the first plumber that shows up. Yeah, boom. Okay. But that's systematizable because that's top of the funnel and it's an immediate need.

Yeah.

But when you're in the service business or when you're in a business that's going to take a little bit longer to cultivate that relationship, you've got to have some talking points that get them through. Hey, first, I've never heard of you. Who are you? Yeah, why do I care?

Yeah.

And that's your freemium top of the funnel content. And then you build them. You're like, oh, oh, wow, this person's interesting. Maybe I'll subscribe to their newsletter. Maybe not. But then an advertisement pops up. Oh, I saw that person. I saw that person. The brand is consistent. And then you start to build and nurture that relationship to the point where they're like, now I'm ready to subscribe. Oh, you got a free class. You've got a free offer. You've got a free consult consultation call, discovery call or whatever. Sure. I'll jump into that. I want to see if you can help me. I need help. And then eventually become a paying customer.

I love what you said. And you said their brand is consistent. Like, can I— can brand consistency is extremely important. And we've been working on that because, you know, again, MVP, you're rolling out there, you're testing the waters, you're testing your assumptions and backing up by real-world data. But then once you've done that, you need to have brand consistency across everything that you're posting or showing about. So when people see your content in different forms, they know that that is you and that's what you represent. And it's like, oh man, these, like, this is really good. This is really professional. Like, I'm going to brag on Chrissanne a little bit. I fell into her funnel and it was really good.

Thanks.

It was a really smooth, landing page. Everything was clean. It was, even the colors were a precise, softer tone. So like it, because sometimes colors can be so bright, it like hurts to look at, but it was very soft. It was very clean. It was easy to look at. And that's, that's important.

Well, that's Amanda. So, well, there you go. It's somebody on my team. I, um, you know, I thank you for that. And I think that's the part of the process again, where I'm talking about eating our own dog food. Like I know what we do for our clients.

Yeah.

but we have not as a marketing agency done a really good job of telling and conveying that story.

Got it.

And so when I started into this, you know, into my new role as a strategic growth coach and using the Donald Miller frameworks to help people become the, you know, the, the guides to help the, the customers become the hero.

For sure.

Which is ultimately what the Donald Miller mindset is with, with, um, StoryBrand. I realized that I was doing the same exact thing that I was criticizing people who were doing it on their own were doing. So I'm owning that. I'm like, oh, oof, yeah. No wonder people don't really know exactly what we do because we don't tell our story. We do rely on a lot of word of mouth and God has been good and we've gotten leads and we've been able to maintain. But at the same time, talking about scale, what ad strategy am I going to utilize? What strategy am I going to use from a search engine optimization standpoint other than just the generic marketing in Lakeland, or marketing, you know, search engine optimization in Lakeland, or website design in Lakeland. You know, like, those are just the generic, like, boilerplate. Yeah, for simple ones. But then there's a lot more to it, like lead generation, and lead generation for a specific kind of business, you know, for early stage businesses or for a particular industry. And so then you get into the— that long tail keyword discussion about how you're actually going to to bring about people who are having more specific problems than I have a marketing question and I want to find a marketing agency in Lakeland. They're actually looking at, you know, maybe creating landing pages and they need help with WordPress.

Yeah.

And that's more kind of getting granular into the keyword stuff.

Yeah, for sure. And I think that's the key thing too. It's like what we're talking about is the service, service and, and the product-based businesses, they're very very different. You have to approach it different ways. You have to structure it different ways. You have to think about the strategy different ways, the content different ways.

Yeah.

And I think that's sometimes some of the things that I see, some of the mistakes early entrepreneurs make is they're treating a service-based business like a product-based business or a product-based business like a service-based business.

And they're probably taking advice from somebody who hasn't made the differentiation themselves.

Exactly.

You know, like if if you're taking advice from a marketing agency that really only does really work with product-based businesses and you're a service-based business, they don't— you can't just apply the same strategies to both kinds.

Yes, not even close.

And, and that's a lot what, you know, a lot of the error is, is, is, is in understanding the kind of content that you need to have. In your case, it's going to be samples, you know, letting people taste it and not just beautiful photos. But how are we going to get samples? Are we, are we doing a are we doing a thing where, you know, whatever that's going to look like, and that's a completely different animal.

Exactly. That's, I mean, that's our biggest selling point. And in every meeting we're bringing samples because that's, again, it's knowing your market, it's knowing your industry. It's understanding that first of all, you have to have a good product. You have to have a great presentation. You have to have a good website. You have to have a relatively decent social media. And then when you're in the meeting, the product has to taste good. You have to tell them that you can meet the demand that they're requiring of you. And then once they taste the product, a lot of times that's the sell itself. It's like, okay, I'm like, this is really good. Can you do all these things? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.

Okay.

We want to have you in our stores.

Yeah.

And so those, those are, those are the pieces of the puzzle with what we're doing. But with what you're doing, there's a lot of other intricacies and details that you have to do. You have to, like you said, you have to have a funnel and the funnel has to be structured a certain way and it has to be structured towards a certain keyword and a certain audience. Right. And within that, The copywriting has to look good and it has to make sense and it has to— certain words have to resonate with the audience that you're wanting to target and really breaking those things down.

Yeah, exactly. It makes me think of like very, very early on in my business experience when I had a hard time understanding people in your— in what you were— what you're doing now, where your, your audience isn't the people, the end consumer. Your audience is the buyer who's going to deliver it to the consumer.

Correct.

And so at the very beginning I was like, oh, well, we can do this and you can do this. And this is some really great marketing strategies. And they're like, no, you're missing the point. The point is I'm not marketing it to the person who's going to eat it. I'm marketing it to the person who's going to sell it to the person who's going to eat it. And there's a whole other step that was being missed. And so it took some time for me to back up and go, ooh, that's a totally different strategy. You know, you've got to close the sale to the, to the group of people who are going to sell to them.

They're like, they're like the gatekeepers essentially. Yeah.

And you've got to, you've got to be on your game, has to be on like, it doesn't matter how delicious That may be because if you don't have all of those other components you just walked through, they're going to say, meh, you know, it's delicious, but I'm not going to be able to sell that because you don't have the collateral, you don't have the assets, you don't have the infrastructure, you don't— you can't deliver whatever it is that I need, you know, on the time frame that I need it.

It's fascinating you're talking about that because that's why a lot of times you go into the— you go into the grocery store and you grab something, it really doesn't taste the best. But I mean, they have the infrastructure, so it doesn't matter, right?

And the quality is, is less important than the infrastructure at that point in time. Correct. We all want to feel like we've got the best product. Yep. But if we don't have a way to market and sell it, it doesn't matter.

Exactly.

You can't get it to the consumer.

Exactly.

Unless you're going direct to consumer. Exactly. And, and then you've got to really have a big budget to be able to do—

sit in front of all those people. Exactly. And that's another layer of content. And again, and I think that's, I think that's the biggest thing that I'm glad we're having this conversation because we had— you have to kind of break apart the pieces and say, okay, I want to be an entrepreneur. And then once you say you want to be an entrepreneur, what industry do you want to be in? And then what category does that industry fall in? Yeah. And then that's going to determine your content strategy, which is basically— it's the life source of your business.

Right, right. And if you're trying to meet the end consumer but your market is not that group, you're spinning your wheels.

Yeah, your messaging's gonna be off.

You're gonna get hit or miss sales, but they're not gonna— we were talking earlier about kind of survival entrepreneurship, right? Like being able to just keep the doors open and make it happen because, you know, the way that your marketing is is just enough to keep the doors open and that survival. But if you're talking about scale, if you're talking about having extra profit at the end of the month, to be able to reinvest in marketing or advertising or whatever it is that you want to take to that next level, there's going to have to be some strategic understanding of who is my target audience.

Yeah.

And how do I reach them? How many different target audiences do I have? Because in your case, It's the buyer. But then those avatars and those different people are different. You know, is it, is it chains?

Yeah.

Is it boutiques? Is it like more of a boutique, you know, kind of standalone?

Yeah.

Or is it like a Circle K or a Target or a Publix? You know, totally different marketing because they've— the Target and Circle K or whatever, they're going to have a department that handles all of that.

Exactly. And then you have to understand your customer. You have to understand, you know, what does Publix look for? What does Target look for? What do you have to do your research and understand what they're looking for and their language that they're speaking? Because every grocery store has a certain language and understand that if you're going to, well, at least from some of the research I've done, like with Publix, for instance, they always say the product is the hero. And so to understand that, and then, you know, what does that mean? And really come prepared and making, making sure that if you're going to present to someone like a Publix, that you do have the infrastructure because they're so great. And a lot, a lot of companies have kind of, uh, got hit hard because they didn't— they weren't able to meet that demand. So have a very strong understanding of that.

Yeah. Well, and then it's also intentionally understanding the individual client. Once you get them, once you get the foot in the door, the, the meeting scheduled right now, it's like you've got to walk in like you know what they want.

Yep.

So now you have to do the market research on, all right, what is, what's Publix's model? What's, you know, business number 2's model? What's business number 3's model? And it doesn't just end there, right? So it's this really, like, you start pulling the, the, the string out of the sweater, right? Yeah, yeah, it just gets, it keeps going, very overwhelming. And so it's like, that's why Donald Miller and so many other, you know, entrepreneurial coach-related content people are saying Simplify, simplify, simplify. I think, you know, a lot of times we try, we think, oh wait, it worked one time, now I can do it again and do it again and do it again. And it's not the same thing. So it, you can't just take one. I, you know, I always say with Bridge Local or Lakeland Business Leaders, yeah, I don't think that I could ever replicate that. People have come to me and said, why don't you do that in, you know, another community or another place? Or why don't you franchise that? Yeah.

Because it's very unique to the city that you're in.

It's unique. I'm unique. The people who started it and got us excited about it and got it to a point where it kind of hit like a market, that saturation.

Yeah.

And now, you know, people are like, oh, this is the place to go to ask for support with whatever it is I need in Lakeland or in Polk County. And that wasn't something that I have a lot of— what's the word you always say? I have a lot of self-awareness to know that I can't just say that that's a win, right? That's not a winning. Model. Yeah, the model doesn't replicate, it doesn't systematize, it doesn't— it's not a, you know, a process that I can repeat. Um, and then with that said, it's like, but we, we got our egos in the way. Yeah, as entrepreneurs, you know, like, oh, I had this great win.

Yeah.

And then the next one flops because there wasn't the infrastructure, there wasn't— you know, we talk about the, the Business Made Simple model with Donald Miller is the 6 aspects of a, of of a business. A business is a machine.

Yeah.

We have to treat it like a machine.

Yeah.

And so you've got like, it's, if it's an airplane, he talks about it like it's an airplane and the 6 aspects are leadership. So that's your cockpit. That's the cockpit of the plane. You need somebody that knows how to fly a plane.

Yeah.

And then you need your sales and marketing, which is your right engine and your left engine. You, you could get by with one engine, but you probably aren't going to go very far or for very long. Right. You definitely need for the long term. And then your wings are your products or services. And then the body of the plane is your overhead, all of that extra weight that you're carrying that isn't really contributing to the plane flying. It's just weight.

Yeah, the extra weight. Wow.

And then your cash flow is your fuel. So those are your 6 parts. And so all of us are kind of in some aspects needing support in some of those areas where the mission statement is needing to be clarified. So we have a more simple understanding of that. What that content needs to be for the mission statement.

Yeah.

And then what the content needs to be for the marketing collateral, the content needs to be for how we're going to sell. You talk about pitch decks a lot. I know when you were doing the coaching, the consulting you were doing, you were working with your clients on helping them with their pitch decks.

Yeah.

Well, that's a sales asset that needs to be perfected for sure for the salespeople to be able to go out and be successful. Right. So all of this content is that overwhelming, like, oh my God, how am I even going to ever grow my business.

Yeah, where do I start?

What do I do?

It's like, I just have an idea, I just want to sell this, that's it.

I just really want to make cupcakes.

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

You know, and that's where you kind of get into this discussion with businesses that, you know, if you've got the capital and you start there and you can start intentionally, you know, start slow, don't, don't start, you know, with too much, you know, baggage, you know, too much overhead, too many expenses. Don't hire too soon, don't hire too fast.

Yeah. And again, I think it's, I think that's why the MVP model is so important because again, a lot of times we can have the greatest ideas in the world and are, I was thinking about this as like, I've tricked myself into thinking, oh, like this is going to go so smoothly because in your mind you can play it however you want.

Right.

But when you immerse that concept in the real world, it becomes extremely different.

Yeah.

And you have to figure out very quickly, okay, this model didn't work. I have to scrap it and I have to start again, or some aspects of this model worked, but I need to add this element. That element is, okay, I have really good marketing, but my sales and closing skills are terrible.

Right.

So I need this component.

Yep.

Or I've gotten to a point where I need cash in order to continue to lift off.

Yep.

And I need cash.

Mm-hmm.

Or I've gotten to a point where I really like that analogy. That's an amazing analogy. And I think it's important, more important, it's important that a lot of people understand that because again, your overhead. If your overhead's too much, it's weighing your plane down and you're like, why am I not lifting off? Well, look in the back and see how much excess stuff that you have that you need to get out.

Exactly. Exactly. And it's balancing the two things for me that I feel like for my journey to like the beginning to now is we tell young people, don't worry about what people think. Right. That's like a message that you have to— you graduate and you hear that message. It's like, go be yourself and don't Don't worry about what people think. Um, but in the entrepreneurial world, you have to balance not worrying about what people think with the marketplace is your audience. And so you have to worry about what they think or you're not going to sell. And you have to position the way that you're, you're marketing the business or growing the business in that with complete awareness of what the market's going to say about it. And so if, if you're not, if you're over-promising and under-delivering, then the market's going to tell you by your reviews or by your return customers, you know, or if the experience wasn't what they wanted, if it's a retail establishment, it's not clean or the prices are too high or whatever, that's going to end up determining, you know, how your sales are going to go.

I think that's one thing that I'm, I'm still learning. I'm still mastering. It's like you have to set expectations for these potential customers or for your market. So when you launch, You've already set the expectations. So that first time that that customer interacts with your brand, whether it's a service or a product, they're more understanding as opposed to it's like, man, they're all over the place, or this was bad, or that was bad, or that, like they're more understanding because you are setting expectations. And again, what you said, putting yourself in the mind of the customer and thinking about the first time you interacted with the brand that wasn't so great, maybe it was because they didn't set the expectations. And you went there and you're just like, "Oh man, the line was just so long. Every time I tried to go there, I couldn't get what I wanted." And now it's, "I don't like it anymore," even though I've never really tried the product or any of that. You just have this idea in your head of—

That one experience, that one memory.

Exactly.

The line was too long, I didn't wait, I'm not going back.

Exactly.

You know?

Exactly.

I know in Polk County, when a new restaurant opens up, it's like the line's gonna be forever.

Out the window, right?

For the first 4 or 5 months.

Yeah, exactly.

So you gotta get past that part, but hopefully when you go, and then that's another thing I've seen a lot of launches, you know, businesses launching specifically retail restaurant, that kind of thing where the anticipation of this new business opening was so exciting and so great. And the delivery of whatever that experience was, was mediocre at best. And so then everybody who's like, oh my gosh, this is so great. We have this really cool new business in Polk County. And it flops or it doesn't make it very long, or the audience that they wanted doesn't exist, isn't the audience that actually comes and keeps the lights on. You know what I mean? It's like if we're trying to market this craft experience and the crafters are disappointed, then you've got the group of people who aren't truly the audience of, I appreciate good craft stuff. It's more of the pretenders, like the people who like, hey, I want to pretend like I'm into craft, but I really am not. And that's not who the business owner or the mission statement was created for. You know what I mean?

And I think it's funny you said that because I think a lot of business owners come to this point and I have too. It's sometimes you're like, man, am I compromising? Am I, am I having to change my mission? Am I? But then again, you have to think about when you were first forming it, you weren't really putting it into the market. It was just formulating into your head. And until you put it into the market, you really don't know. You, you may have an idea based on what you believe, right? But then again, you have to prove it. You have to prove it. You have to actually say, let's go into the market. Let's see what happens. Again, with when Mike and Mike's first started, when they launched in Miami, had no idea if any of the products would sell, but they went to the market and the demand was so great. They were just like, okay, we have something. It wasn't just like, oh, we think we have something. It's like, no, we have something. Let's really put an infrastructure behind it and really build this thing as opposed to, oh, we're going to break— I've seen a lot of businesses, I've heard of a lot of businesses raise all this money and have all this market research going to the market and nobody buys it because it didn't make sense. It made sense to all the high-level people that brainstormed and talked about it, but when they went to the end customer, right, that they thought was 27 and went here, here, and here, they're like, I don't like this.

And then you have to ask, like you said, do I compromise? Do I now start to cater to the wants and the wishes of the palate of that group of people that I didn't really want to build this for, but those are the ones that are paying for it. Yeah. And if I want to make them happy, they're keeping it, they're keeping the lights on, you know? And I think that there's an important distinction between the conversation we're having about this entrepreneurial challenge of the content, but also I'm listening and I'm thinking, I'm thinking about those businesses that start that are more of a, um, that, that, that generational poverty that we've been talking about in other episodes where it's like, I'm creating this business to get out of a problem that I'm in. I'm not necessarily creating this business to be entrepreneurial or to scale or to— I am in that. So if I can just make my ends meet from month to month to month, I'm good. That's a, that's a success for me.

Yeah.

And, you know, I think that that's also a consideration that we probably should have another episode just specifically about, you know, what that means from the marketplace, what that means from the entrepreneurial ecosystem standpoint.

Yeah.

And not shaming people into feeling like they have to build their business to scale.

Yeah, for sure.

Because if the business is just about, you know, feeding the family and keeping food on the table and the lights on and all of those things that, that that, that business was created to be. If they can manage to do that, that's success in their eyes. The success grid from yours and my perspective is, you know, I really want to be able to, to, to scale. I really want to be able to do this X, Y, Z, 1, 2, 3.

Mm-hmm.

But we can't apply our success grid to everybody.

To everybody. Yeah. And that's the beauty of entrepreneurship. Like you were saying, I think the biggest thing is, you said it earlier, self-awareness, just understanding what you ultimately want out of what you're trying to launch and do. So if you're literally just trying to get out of your situation and say, if I can just replace my income and work my own hours and be my own boss, I'm happy.

Yeah.

And if that looks like you starting a lawn mowing business or a car washing business or detailing business or delivery business or whatever it is, then, but by all means, start, start that and build.

Right. Start it and build. Don't cut corners.

Yep.

Do it right. So that you can, you can do it for the long term. You know, it's again, beginning with the end in mind. If the end in mind is I want to feed my family, I want to replace my income of my full-time job, plan that, you know, figure that out, but don't cut corners. I asked the question on social media the other day and it was, um, you know, if you have a kid who is considering starting a business, a summer job, let's just say a lawn mowing company or whatever, do you teach them how to go through the process correctly? Or because ultimately at the end of the day, they're going to start to feel that experience of being an entrepreneur, of making their own money and doing all of these things. And they're going to remember that when they started that business with their parents, this was the process that they went through. You know, they didn't pay their taxes. They didn't pay credit card fees because they cut corners with Venmo or some of these other apps that are not designed to be business tools specifically for you to invoice your your, your customers or clients that way. Yeah, they didn't get their property or their business tax receipts. You know, these are all these steps that eventually become part of the culture of entrepreneurship that the second generation, the third generation, and the next generation starts to create. So totally went off on a random tangent away from content today, but just thinking about all of those different layers of what the definition of entrepreneurship is. You know, you ask a Gary Vee or a Richard Branson or an Elon Musk or, you know, whoever the definition of entrepreneurship, or, you know, maybe even the Shark Tank, you know, crew, they're looking at scalability, they're looking at investability, they're looking at that lens. But that doesn't mean people who have a different approach to why they started a business in the first place are any less of a business. It's just not the same Success Grid.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I agree. And that's, that's why I love, I love entrepreneurship so much because entrepreneurship is not, it's not cookie cutter. It was never supposed to be cookie cutter. It's, it's, people are trying to form that, but that's not what entrepreneurship is. It was always something that was different.

Yeah.

It was always something that was unique. It was always something that had, had been approached in a different way or, or it's, and, and, and, and a lot of times the way I think about it is especially now because it's trying to become cookie cutter and it's like, oh, entrepreneur is a tech person. It's like, no, an entrepreneur is someone that works for themselves. The people that solves a problem for others, solves a problem for others. If you, if you own a small bakery, you're an entrepreneur. If you have a small salon business, you're an entrepreneur. There's a, there's a, there's so many entrepreneurs even in our city that a lot of times people overlook, but it's like, no, they're building a legitimate business.

And they're contributing to our economy.

Exactly.

And exponentially, right? We might have one unicorn, right?

Yeah.

In Polk County, maybe, you know, in the history of our whole wide world, right?

Yeah.

But we're not really all about the unicorn.

Yeah.

I mean, the unicorn is that special, you know, almost, you know, you're just looking for these, the people that have all of the things, check off all of the boxes. Oh my gosh, look, here's all of this great stuff. But what we have is a bunch of people that aren't like that. And so if, if, if we could influence content and strategic growth and finding a way to build the business like a machine, not because you want to scale, but because you want to be sustainable.

Yeah, that's the key.

You know, it's a different discussion. You know, if, if I was, you know, say it's like the upward and to the right, you know, if you're— if things are going upward and to the right, that's good. If they're plateaued and things are good, that's still okay because you're still— I mean, if you're, if your overhead isn't changing, if you're not bringing on new people, I mean, if you're going to bring on a new person, you're going to need your sales to increase so that you can offset your overhead, the overhead offset. But, you know, I think at the end of the day, the sophisticated label that many people want to place on entrepreneurship needs to be revised. You know, we need to kind of relook at it in the 21st century and post-COVID. And recovery, you know, because businesses are getting started with a totally different mindset.

I agree.

And we have to kind of address that as a community. So we'll have to have another episode.

Yeah, we will.

Where we talk that through, because that's a completely different animal. But I think, you know, anything you want to say as we wrap this, this What's in Your Content episode up?

I enjoy this conversation. I always enjoy the conversations when we're able to kind of riff and talk about what we were thinking about. And I think it was important to talk about because Again, a lot of people can look at what's out there and see all of the different social media platforms and almost get overwhelmed and just realize that, like we were saying a little bit earlier, or like I was saying a little bit earlier, just understand who your customer is and who you're trying to reach and the content that you're trying to create and build your content around that. And don't be worried about getting on every single social media, social media platform.

Yeah, that's a big question. I think we'll probably have to dice that one down.

Oh, for sure.

Like on another discussion, just on that discussion of being on all the channels, but also where you're spending your time and how you're spending your time. I wanted to ask you where people can find out more about Mike and Mike's. You said you're on Instagram.

Yeah.

And you've got a website.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The website's being revamped, but yeah, you can follow us at mikeandmikesdesserts.com. And we started doing the farmer's market, so we're going to be there and we're going to be at the Buena Market. On the 17th.

All right. Awesome. I think I'm going to be there for that.

Oh, nice.

We actually talked about maybe doing a live podcast broadcast from downtown.

Oh, okay.

I don't know if we've got the, I don't know if we've got the tech set up yet, but that's right around the corner. So maybe we need to hurry up and figure that out. So yeah. And I wanted to just share on my end, strategic growth and the content that I'm creating. I'm kicking off a masterclass, a free masterclass actually this week. So, The podcast comes out on Wednesday and the masterclass is on Thursday.

Nice.

So if anyone is interested, um, we'll put a registration for the free masterclass in the show notes. We'll put Mike and Mike's and their Instagram feed in the show notes as well. And you know, at the end of the day, the process of creating content takes work. And I am one who wants to try and I'm just taking— I'm being honest. The content that comes out of my mind sometimes is good enough. Like, I've always kind of just said, okay, I'm just going to write this blog post. And I'm working on now narrowing that down a little bit more to be a lot more polished and a lot more sophisticated. So I'll let you know how that goes as the journey goes. I mean, we've— I think we've completed 6 videos.

Nice.

We kicked off a 3-day challenge. I think Annie can also put I'll put the 3-day challenge in the show notes as well.

Okay.

You guys can check out those videos. I'd love your feedback, but don't be super critical because I'm not Donald Miller. I'm not 10 miles down the road. I'm on mile number 1 and I'm taking it from where I am. And I think that's the message I wanted to convey today. Create the content that you can, given what you have. Use Canva, use the free resources, do the things that you can do the way that you can do them, but do something.

Yeah, for sure.

And then once you're ready, but realize that that's not the end all and be all. You've got to polish that. You've got to improve that. You've got to constantly be working on making it better. And that's really, you know, what we wanted to convey in our content conversation today.

Yeah, for sure.

So cool. Well, thanks for being here with me, and I hope everybody enjoyed the livecast. We'll say goodbye as we wrap up.

Bye, guys.

That's a wrap. Thanks for listening to this week's show. If you'd like to help us get the word out about this podcast, check out the post on our Facebook page, share it, or better yet, comment with your favorite part of this episode. We're looking forward to learning what you loved about this conversation. And if you have some ideas for upcoming episodes, we'd love to hear from you. And we'll see you next week, Polk County. Bye, everybody.

Bye, guys.