Navigating the Challenges of Entrepreneurship | Joshua Ramsey

I was having to get back involved into the ad agency because clients were saying, "We love what you do, but we need something more." They were, you know, I'll use a quick explanation of that. I worked with a fencing company. They did fencing and some other little pieces. And he would say to me, you know, "Josh, you know, I turn off AdWords and my phone stops ringing." Still rings, but it just way lessens. He said, but when I turn it on, it works. So Josh, do I really need SEO? So I sat down and ran the math, and ultimately he was paying about a third of his cost for an SEO lead, and it was much higher for an AdWords. But he cared more about the phone ringing. So when I broke down the math to him, I said, look, you can pay for AdWords, but this is how much you're paying for a lead and a sale. And here's SEO lead and a sale. When he looked at that, he kind of understood it, but he kind of didn't care. But ultimately the conversation came to, can you live without either or one of these?

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Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the internet where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Joining me today is Josh Ramsey of JR CMO Fractional CMO. A special shout out to our one listener in Knoxville, Tennessee. I have never visited your fair city, but it is on my list for next year for the OU Tennessee game. So I hope to enjoy it there. Anyway, welcome, Josh.

Hey, thanks for having me. Glad to be here.

I'm glad you're here too, because it made my day worthwhile. Otherwise, I would have come into the office for no reason. So it being, it being the— I hate the fact that these holidays hit the middle of the week. I mean, it's just so discombobulating.

Yeah, I'm with you on that.

So why not, why don't you, for our listeners, tell us who Josh Ramsey is and what he does?

Yeah, so I always like to date it back to the, to the late '90s where I sold media and I sold the traditional type of media of like billboards, transit advertising, radio, television. And I never could quite understand why my clients would sign up but never re-sign. They would never continue their contractors. They were a one-time and done. So I call that churn and burn, where it's like you're churning them through and they're burned and then they're leaving. And until the early 2000s when I went to work for a top 100 ad agency, that's when it really clicked in my head that there's a difference tactical placement of marketing and the strategic message. And the strategic message has to be wrapped around your unique selling position. What makes you interesting to the market? What makes you better than anyone else without spitting platitudes out? Why should someone like you, work with you, employ you? So that was that huge paradigm shift, probably one of the largest in my life. Understanding that and really moving that direction. And within a couple of years, I moved from a junior project manager all the way up to VP of marketing and sales, answering only to the CEO. And, uh, and I did that within about, within about 2.5, 3 years to, to make that leap. And then in 2009, everyone remembers the economy of 2009, and oh yeah, they had, they had some cutbacks that they needed to make, and I was one of the last to go. But I was asked to step out. So unfortunately, about 30 days before my wedding, I was on the street. Yeah. So good, good way to start a marriage, you know, just living.

Your wife was excited about that, I'm sure.

Yeah, well, we moved into a one-bedroom with two roommates. They were known as Bedbugs and Cockroaches. So we— it was not the best of times, but we made it, you know, we made it work.

She still married you. She did. And you're still married. So, I mean, kudos to you.

Yeah, she puts up with my chaos, so it works. It works. But, you know, you kind of fast forward that story. In 2018, I take what I call a retirement, so to speak. Now I call it a repurpose of my life. But I was able to step out of owning an ad agency. And what I mean by stepping out is that I had created a system and a wheel that would work where I didn't have to touch it all day, every day. I didn't have to take every call and touch every project. I taught people how to do it, and I was able to take a huge step back. And at that time, I got a little enthusiastic and ended up owning about 5 boats, and my wife was not happy with me, saying, "You needed a better hobby. You can't drive 5 boats at once." So—

No, you can't.

I sold, sold most of the boats and only kept 2. And I ended up going to the Philippines. I studied a company called Design Pickle, and they had a very clean methodology, a clean focus, and they focused on getting designs done for ad agencies and companies. And they opened in the Philippines first, and I studied what they did and why they did it, and I basically mirrored a lot of what they did. I took my own spin to it, but I went over and started my ad— or my my software development company, a SaaS company over there. So I still have that today. Did the same thing, created the wheel, trained the people, and then was able to step back. So again, I repurposed myself and my new purpose became helping business owners understand the difference in between a marketing person, an ad agency, marketing consultant, and really what is now known as a fractional CMO. Right. So in 2019, I was— only myself and one other company called Chief Outsiders were listed as fractional CMOs online. So if you were to Google fractional CMO Dallas in 2019, 2020, 2021, I owned 8 of the 10 spots of Google. And, uh, what I focus on now is really helping companies understand a new paradigm of marketing.. And that paradigm shift that most people start to open up their brains is by understanding an ad agency sells you what they're good at, not necessarily what you need.

Uh, yeah, I, there's, there's so much to unpack in what you've already said, but I'll, I'll respond. I'll respond to that. I, I was, I, I recently promoted my marketing person internally to my position on the leadership team. And stepped out of that role. And she was going through the process of looking at vendors, you know, creating her accountability chart and who she wanted on her team. And, you know, she kept having all these conversations. And I said, you know, it's like going to the doctor. If you go to a surgeon, they're going to tell you you need surgery. If you, you know, and everything to a hammer looks like a nail. So you have to be uber clear on what you need before you start to have these conversations, because they're going to tell you that what you need is them, and that's not always true, right?

Yeah, yeah.

So I want to go back to you getting fired. Did you start your own ad agency right after that?

Yeah, I mean, I had little to no choice. Um, okay, you know, the market was dead and no one was hiring at that point, so I went to my parents and said, hey, I'm going to be spending my last dollars. We're going to have to cut back on the wedding funds. And we did. And a bunch of my family pitched in and helped with the wedding, which was unbelievable. And it did make a wonderful experience for the wedding. And I told my parents, I said, hey, this is what I'm going to have to do. And they gave me a little bit of extra money for the wedding and said, here, buy a laptop. So I had a $300 laptop, which was top of the line in 2009, as some people may remember. But, uh, started with that laptop, and I drove city to city to speak at different conferences and just try to drum up business as I could. So that's what I did.

So I want to talk about that, that mindset shift, because you were— if my math is right, you were mid-30s.

That's a good question. I was actually 29.

Okay. All right. Younger than that. Okay. So talk to me about that shift from being the employee to being business owner, self-employed. What were some of the challenges that you ran into with that shift besides, besides the usual? Yeah, I got to find a way to make money, like mindset obstacles, things that you ran into.

Yeah, that's a great question. I think for me, a lot of what really hit was I'm a believer in, in God and purpose, and I believe that God really gave me some, some obstacles as I was a senior employee, an executive on a team where I was already leading people and I was in head of sales. So my job was essentially was to work with clients to identify what they needed to do that our agency did, and then bring that to light and help that company grow. So, understanding that, it was a pretty easy transition. The most difficult part is that I am the most terrible accountant and budgeting person that you could probably ever meet. And when I say that, I would take that as a challenge to pretty much anyone out there that I'm pretty stinking bad.

So— I've met some that don't know basic arithmetic. So, if you know how to add, you're ahead of the curve.

I know how to add by saying, look, I closed this deal and I have that much money to spend. I didn't calculate, oh, I've got to spend this also in taxes, and it also cost me this for software. See, that's how bad I was.

Okay, well, I know, I get that.

I get that.

Or when you, or when you take that one sale and spend it multiple times, like, you know, oh, I sold this $20,000 deal but I spend it 3 times.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, so that That was really the biggest thing for me. And then just having to go back and relearn some of the tasks that other employees of that agency did for me. So, I would sell it, I would hand it off, and then they would have to execute. Now, I'm the lead gen, the sales, plus the executor. So, I rode those waves that small business owners find themselves on of work, work, work, work, climb that mountain. Sell the deal, and then you got to complete it. And when you complete it, your sales go down, your effort still has to come up. So it's the opposite of the wave, right? You have your sales part and then your execution part. And that's where I really did find a challenge, and it took me several years to work through that, of how do I balance my lead gen and sales with the execution and finding that balance. And I think that's really where I struggled growing.

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The, the real answer is that I had to increase my prices because I wasn't just living— at the time I was living on what I sold, but I was struggling back and forth. So I had to increase my pricing, which made me uncomfortable at the beginning, to be able to hire someone that could do the baseline work as I supported them, but was able to focus more on sales.

That is music to my ears. I love stories like that because that's exactly what I think the— I don't say best, but most efficient answer is, is to figure out what you as the business owner are really good at and then hire people to do the rest of it. And with a lot of business owners, that is sales. Like, you know, I mean, it's a rare entrepreneur who isn't the best salesperson for their company. So, so you, you solved it and it sounds like you continued solving it to the point where it didn't require a lot of work on your part. So talk, talk about that, you know, from, from, from that inflection point where you raised your prices and you added people to help you, that you got to the point where it's essentially hands-off.

Well, it was actually again a little bit of a wave of a story. So I, I grew the company, uh, really started growing in 2011 and 2012, and by 2014 I had approximately 13 people on staff and about 15 to 20 1099 contractors that were significantly engaged in time, but they were not sitting in office on a full-time salary, right? They were more expert in certain fields, and my team would manage them. I thought I had a great structure, but I knew that I needed to improve on what I've already said was my pain point and my worst of dealing with books. So I had worked with my mom. My mom had helped my dad— he was a small business owner years before I was even born— and my mom was going to get involved. And she was essentially the pillar in my life, the, the main person in my life that I, that I looked at, depended upon. And I lost her, unfortunately, in 2014, the end of August. She died in her sleep of a heart attack. And it, it rocked my world so much so that I had my, my, my CEO, my COO and operations assistant. She did everything for me. And she resigned about a week after my mom's funeral, which was devastating. Wow. And right following her, I think my team saw her leave and saw where I was at in grief and thought that the company was just gonna fail. So my CTO resigned about a week and a half after my COO resigned. And then I elevated another, what I would consider a senior staff member. I elevated her with a pay increase, and I think it was too much for her to handle, but I needed the help and I wanted to give her more money because I knew she was already doing the work. And I elevated her, and about a week and a half or 2 weeks after that, she left.

So, shit was unraveling is what you're saying.

Oh, that's a, it's a, that's a smooth way to say it. I, I lost my 3 senior most important leaders in the company, uh, that quick. It was just pop, pop, pop. So that, that became very difficult, and I basically ended up losing, losing quite a few clients. And I went down to my, my lowest, and I went from my, my highest high, and within basically 2 to 3 months, my lowest of lows other than just starting out a company. And I had one employee and they weren't really the greatest employee, but they helped me communicate with clients and try to stay on top of things and keep me organized. And I slowly built it back up. And, you know, one of the interesting things is that I've always been focused on building relationships and not just making sales. And I'm— I always self-acclaim myself and give myself the own award of talking myself out of deals rather than selling just to sell. Yeah, there's a lot of stories behind that, but in short, I'll just speak to one person. I'll give a shout out to him. There's a gentleman by the name of John Graziano. He lives up in New York. And if you're ever looking for a guy that is an engineer that, you know, understands the glazing world and just a great guy through and through, he is that guy. And I met him in 2009. The end of 2009 when I was speaking at a conference in New York. We went back and forth and did a little bit of business together and ultimately became friends. Well, without him really knowing everything that was going on to the deepest level of my company, he called me in the spring of 2015 and said, "Hey, I've got a project for you." And there was a company that was coming from overseas and wanted to open up in the United States And John made an introduction for me and brought me onto the team. And that was another God movement in my world of boom, I got a deal that just basically paid my bills and allowed me to do what I was good at and get back on my feet financially and emotionally and was just massive for me. And then from there, I was able to rebuild in a better way. What I had done from 2011 to 2014. And, and that's again, part of my narrative as I talk about of how I was able to grow and what I've done.

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What was better the second time around? What did you learn in, in rebuilding the team?

The, the structure and not having what I call linchpins. So linchpin is you pull the pin out of something and everything breaks, right? Um, how to build the structure better so that way if someone leaves, there's someone able to step into that place and you don't lose the momentum. So I became too reliant on senior executives and not training those executives how to train the person below them. I just was focused on let me train the senior executive and go with that. So now my structure is, as the CEO, I have to limit my time and work with 4 people, including a bookkeeper being one of those.. And then outside of that, I have worked on training my seniors how to train their people and start to structure each division to where they know if they're out of office or they're on vacation, who's their senior, who's the person that's gonna step in and how much do they know what to do, how to do it. So, the structure just really, I use the word maturation a lot, but the maturation down— I have worked very hard even to this day on training and equipping my senior staff on almost to a level being an entrepreneur themself so they can train people below and around them to help them understand you're not working yourself out of a job, you're elevating yourself to find new revenue streams for the company, new opportunities for the company. You're not going to lose your position by training someone. You're actually going to elevate yourself and make yourself more valuable to the company. I think that's a huge paradigm shift for a lot of senior staff members that are thinking with that— take this as a positive— but the small-minded focus of, I'm working myself out of a job. If I train someone else, they're going to take my job and I won't be able to do anything else. And actually, that's wrong thinking, because if you can show the owner, the CEO, that you can do this, you have to open their mind up to showing them you can move across and you can be a better asset to the company across the board, not just in one vertical.

Are you familiar with EOS, Entrepreneurial Operating System?

I'm not. I've heard of it, but I've not studied it.

Okay. Well, we've been using it for I think we're coming up on our 8th year. But one of the tools they have in EOS is the phrase delegate to elevate. And the way it's proposed is exactly what you're saying is to that person, like, if you can't delegate this stuff, how can you ever get any better? How can you ever improve your own skills or move up in the company or whatever it is? If you don't have the ability to teach others to do what you do. And I think, you know, for me, that transition of being able to move from, from a leader to a leader of leaders is, is a key thing too. It's a key inflection point where it's, it's not just Helping them succeed. It's teaching them how to lead others and helping others to succeed. And that's a shift. So there was, let me think here, 'cause I had another point I wanted to pull back.

Okay.

So you got this business running like a top, your ad agency. Why did you start a software company?

Yeah, that's a great question. Bored? I— well, I think a lot of it was boredom. And what I've said up to this date was I retired, and I call it FIRE retire, which essentially is financial independence retirement. And, and what I, what I did was essentially I, I didn't know where I was at in my life journey. I didn't know what it looked like. I had never thought in a million years that I would be able to essentially retire before the age of 40. So, right, I didn't really know what to do, but what I did was I had a VP at the time, and he used to— we had a boat dock, we had two boats, and we had a living room on one and, and a little surf boat, and then we had a, uh, like a houseboat on the other in a kitchen. And we had a hammock out there, and I used to just lay in the hammock, and then I'd come up with an idea and say, oh, let's go do this, or why don't we do that.. And I found that, you know, I kind of started studying more and more psychology, even though that's some of my background from college. I studied more of it and I really kind of matured through that. And I just saw a need in the marketplace that we were using so much software. Why are we not developing it ourselves? Why are we not, you know, working? This is again today, everyone knows, you know, ChatGPT and AI and how to build your own this and that and the other. Well, before that was around, the question was to me, self, self-posed, why are we not doing this? Why are we not building something that we can use into the future to, to increase our productivity and decrease our costs? Would that work? How's that going to work? Then I, as I mentioned, I studied other companies that had moved overseas to different countries. I looked at the tax rate of other countries. So I just started studying these things. And as I studied them, I identified this is kind of a good business model. Here's where I've seen them fail. Here's what I've read them fail. Here's what I don't like about it. I kind of mapped it out and then said, hey, I'm just, I'm going to take this plunge. And I needed to do something, you know, it wasn't going to work for me just to sit back and do nothing anymore. And then I needed to do something. So that's where I, I now I call it repurposed myself. And then the other interesting part was I realized I knew how to build the wheel. So, this is what I do for companies now is I build that wheel that will work and all I'm doing is plugging in a new person to run the wheel. I'm training the person how to run the wheel and I'm teaching the people in the wheel how to operate. So, it just became the same thing where I can do the same motion with just a different product and get the same output.

So your, your second move to being a fractional CMO, was that primarily to scratch that problem-solving entrepreneurial itch? Like, I still need something to do?

It was, but again, I saw a bigger need where I was having to get back involved into the ad agency because clients were saying, we love what you do. But we need something more. They were, you know, I'll use a quick explanation of that. I worked with a fencing company. They did fencing and some other little pieces, and he would say to me, you know, Josh, you know, I turn off AdWords and my phone stops ringing. Still rings, but it just way lessens. He said, but when I turn it on, it works. So Josh, do I really need SEO? So I sat down and ran the math, and ultimately he was paying about a third of his cost for an SEO lead, and it was much higher for an AdWords. But he cared more about the phone ringing. So when I broke down the math to him, I said, look, you can pay for AdWords, but this is how much you're paying for a lead and a sale. And here's SEO lead and a sale. When he looked at that, he kind of understood it, but he kind of didn't care. But ultimately the conversation came to can you live without either or one of these? And the answer was no, because AdWords was going to cost him more and he wasn't going to get as much from it as far as his output, his, his gross profit margin, right? Or I should say net. And then his net and his cost per lead, cost per sale on SEO was drastically different. So he needed both. So, right, that was one of those pivotal moments also of just continuing to learn. When I take that times 5, 10, 15, 20. I started to see that trend and I thought to myself, you know, there's, there's still something out there that people don't have, which is how to manage their budget. How do they get what's best for them? How much SEO should they do and when should they stop? When should they plug in AdWords and what date and time should they be doing it? You know, pest control companies reduce your AdWords spend and your costs in the wintertime start to increase it in the spring and then slowly trickle it down, you know, September, October, you know what I mean, depending on your, your area. So those types of things I realized I was very good at, and, and I had just learned that through my career. And, you know, having 20-plus years in marketing of seeing that, doing that, plugging that in, all the way back to even 25-plus years of selling ads and understanding how ad placement works, and then talking to a business owner and just saying, all right, Mr. Business Owner, what are you trying to achieve? What is your goal? And then helping them match their, their vision, expectation, and strategy with the different ad agencies or people or services that they need. That's where I really came in and, and said, okay, this fractional CMO thing, there's nobody out there doing it., and it's a higher level than a marketing consultant because I actually put my hands on it. I actually do it. I write the plan and then execute the plan, and that's where that, that growth kind of came from there on that next level.

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I—

so I have bashed marketers on this show frequently, and, and I don't regret it. But, you know, it seems to me that marketers— and I'm talking about marketers to small businesses, I'm not talking about marketers at Coke. They come in, in two different flavors. They're either creatives, like they, they are the idea person coming up with the messaging, coming up with the, the, the creative elements of it, uh, or they're, they're tacticians, like they're good at SEO or they're good at managing Google Ads. The strategic component of what you're talking about is absolutely absent. And you speak— you, you said words again that were music to my ears because I think that there's this missing bridge in small business. And, and just for definition, I'm going to say small businesses, anybody smaller than the $100 million. So most businesses. What's missing there is that overlay of the finance and the marketing. Like, there's, there's, there's not that communication, you know, internally or even with, especially with the external vendors. Like, to your point, like, what's your goal? And if you're wildly successful as a marketer, what does that do to the company? Can the company handle the growth? Can they handle, you know, what's the staffing look like? What does the profitability look like? Those strategic conversations, which touch a lot of different, you know, elements of the business, right? It touches marketing, it touches finances, it touches HR, it touches whatever the production element is. It touches all of these things. And, and that, that comprehensive look at it is what doesn't occur. Like it's just, well, we want to grow.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah, I mean, again, like you said before, there's, there's a lot to unpack in that. And, but you're right, I mean, I had a call this morning with, with a gentleman that just signed up right before you and I jumped on air. And, and I, I told him a little bit of what I said here on this call. I, I said, I said, listen, I'm great at talking myself out of jobs. I said, but the reason I do that is because I want the expectation to be very clear and for us to be on the same page. And if what I'm offering doesn't match what you need, then I'm not a fit for you. And I don't want to generate a bad reputation for, for not giving you what you need and want. And, and he, he essentially said, well, you know, if you come on board in the first 3 months, we should see some type of increase in business. And I said, not necessarily, because what I really want to do in the first 3 months is track What's working and what's not? What are the specifics and where are we spending the money that we can manage and know that this is now a leverage point? And the leverage point is we can push on something and make it grow or modify something and make it grow. Like, there's a lot to a leverage point, but he and I did come to an agreement on what that would look like, and we came to a meeting of the minds. And you know, as a fractional CMO, a lot of it's interviewing and understanding what the business model is and how I would fit into it and if I am a good fit. It's an interview process. And you know, some, I think it's good for anyone hearing or learning about fractional CMOs, some CMOs come in like fractional outsiders. They come in and they say, you know, hey, I'm gonna work for you for 3 months and then we're done. And then some CMOs come in like CMOX, and all they are is someone that knows SEO really well, and they're going to give you more unique strategies on top of whatever their agency's already doing. And then you have a fractional like me who comes in, learns it, builds it, and then manages it for clients.

Yeah, and, and a lot of, a lot of what you're talking about, I really think, is just a a lack of clarity on people's parts about what they do, like what value they really bring to the table, as opposed to, I can do it, therefore I'll take the engagement, you know, right? And, and on the flip side of it, the customer having clarity on what they need. And a lot of times they're not sure. I mean, I'm sure you've talked to a lot of people that they don't even know what CMO stands for, right? Like, and wouldn't understand. I did some fractional CFO work and virtually every person that came to me, what they really meant from CFO was not what I understood it or in the industry it was traditionally understood to be, right? And so, there's an education component of Explaining to them, okay, this is what your need really is, and either I can or I can't do it. But I, I think it all comes down to, and, and I see this, I, I saw this in my business and I see it. It's not just creative industries, although I think they struggle with it more than others, is really understanding the problem that you're solving in the marketplace and what its value is. And therefore, how much value of that can you extract? People go around and say, well, I'm doing SEO. Well, what, what does that mean? Right? Like, because me personally, I'm not buying SEO. I don't— I, you know, I know what that— you know what I'm saying? I'm buying leads. That's, that's what I'm buying. And I'm buying leads at a prescribed cost. And I'm wanting them to turn into clients. You mentioned going through that and understanding the margins on those customers. I mean, that's top-tier, brilliant work because that's not what's happening out there.

Yeah. Well, I mean, SEO can be such a huge platitude of a word. People don't even understand. Even people that know how to spell SEO, they still don't even know how to explain it. So I teach conferences, and every conference I teach, people walk up afterwards and they're like, thank you so much for how you broke that down and explained it. I now understand what I'm looking at and why, and how to know and judge a company that's doing SEO for me. And, and I could walk through that if you want to walk through that, but before you might or might not ask me to break some of that down at a high level, One thing that I focus on as a CMO is really building out the funnel of lead generation. People talk about the sales funnel and everyone understands the sales funnel and the pipeline, but I look at the lead funnel where we talk about impressions at the top and then we move down to, you know, first engagement and then, you know, on down until they actually are inbound because you have outbound marketing, traditional, and then you have inbound marketing, which are people already looking for you. And that's more of what I consider an order taker. If you have a salesperson running just leads that are on inbound, you're an order taker. You're not— it's not really a salesperson. The salesperson is out doing the networking events or doing podcasts or being involved. So this podcast here, if someone hears this and goes and Googles Josh Ramsey Fractional CMO in whatever city they're in, 30+ cities, almost 40+ cities. I show up on page 1 if you type in fractional CMO and the name of a major city. I show up in, I think I'm currently at 38 cities: Dallas, Austin, Houston, Tampa, uh, Charlotte, on and on it goes. But, but being in a podcast is more of that brand awareness for a company. So I highly encourage and even built a small software package that puts people on podcasts and getting them on the right podcast with the right audience is important, but that's impressions and it's not gonna show up in your bottom line per se, but some of the strategies in that top of the funnel will result and you can see a pump in it. And if you'll indulge me for just a minute, I'll tell you about my experience of podcasts. I went in, ran podcasts, was on podcasts approximately 2 a month. For a year. I looked at the cost that I was paying fully loaded to do those podcasts. I came back and immediately said what most of my clients say: it's not working, get rid of it, why am I spending this money, it's ridiculous, I could leave that in my pocket. Then I went and I looked back at my notes and my lead gen and my closed clients from it, and I had actually had one of my better ROIs from doing podcasts and people hearing me, hearing my story, hear what I teach, how I work, and people engaging me from those podcasts. A very good ROI. And I was like, for such a small spend, getting that massive result was actually good. And that's again what I bring as a fractional CMO is paying attention to every number, every dollar that goes out and what that return is and tracking that to see should we continue or should we not? Should we, you know, hit the law of diminishing return? Where is that? Where is that diminishing return? And just processing that is huge.

So, no, I love that because I think, I think one of my frustrations over the years as a business owner with marketers is they're, they're very good at producing activity and, and statistics and data. And the, at the end of the day, from my standpoint, I don't care about them. And, and I would equate that to our job, like, as, as, uh, accountants for creative, uh, industries. They don't really care about how we do the, the bookkeeping or the, or the tax planning or the tax preparation. They don't really care. They care about the end result. They don't need to know all the detail behind it. But I find that it gets muddled and confusing, right? Because we accountants start talking about depreciation and amortization and, you know, all these words that people's eyes glaze over, right?

Yeah.

And it's like, I don't understand. I don't care. I don't. And I see a lot of that. In the marketing world too, that, you know, they start saying, well, these impressions are up and this— see, I was like, I, I don't, I don't need to know. Like, that's why I hired you.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know, I don't hear any questions, but I'm with you.

No, no, that's it. That was the question.

Yeah, but, but I will— I, I guess the part that I'll speak to on that, on, on the CMO side, is I, I have to I have to insist that any of my clients come in and they understand about 5 inches deep of the 50,000 feet that I swim in. Because if that 5 inches, they're not willing to invest the time and energy and knowledge into it, it doesn't work. And a quick story, I'm such a storyteller, that's just how I was, how my brain works, and people typically understand it better. But I had a business owner that came to me and he had brick and mortar and he had 7 locations. And he said to me on the front end of the engagement, he said, I want to know that if I do this, I'm going to get more traffic in. So I said, got it, understood. That's one of your main KPIs that you want to hit, key point indicator. So I went to work on it amongst other things, and I started to figure things out in the company. I came back to him and I said, This is your Google My Business. This is one of the things that I gave him. I'm just going to simplify it. So this is your Google My Business. This shows where your stores are located across the city. If you— if we run ads, what I can show you is your impressions go up. And if your impressions go up, then people are clicking more. If they're clicking more, they're asking for directions. If they're asking for directions and they hit start and they go to drive to your location, then you're getting more traffic. And I said, if you take that and tie it to how you're tracking traffic in the store, you're going to have your output answer. But he wasn't tracking people coming to his location very well. However, his biggest argument was, well, if they click go, like start directions, he's like, that doesn't mean they're coming to my store. I said, I do not agree with you at all. But you know what I'm going to do is I'm going to take that as a truth. Right? And, and I'm going to build that as confirmation bias. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go to a local mall near two of your stores, and I took $10 bills and I went in and I had probably $500, and I took a survey and I just asked people, I said, I need less than 10 minutes of your time, I'm going to give you $10. And I'm like, there were 3 of them, I'm like, look, it'd be $30 total. So I'd ask them the question, I said, tell me the percentage chance of you doing the impression, and I gave them the same question again and again. I essentially said, if you go and you're looking for this type of store and you do it in your Google Map or any map, Apple Map, whatever, you do this and you do this, this, this, and you hit go, what are the percentage odds that you would actually go to that store? And it was well over 90% of people. And I, I interviewed, I don't remember how many, but I spent about 3 hours walking through that, that outlet mall asking people to do the survey for me. And I went back to him and he still disagreed. At that point, that's someone that I just can't work with because the logic and the math of the numbers along with a user experience survey that I still spend a ton of money on every month for my clients, and I come back with those results to a client and I say, this is what I found out, this is the— what we did, and this is what we now know. If a client won't adhere to that at some level and say, okay, that makes logical sense that the user experience says they hate our website because they bounce, because they've looked at it, because they don't like the color scheme or whatever else, like, we can't refute that data and that evidence. And, and that's where I, I'm a good fit for clients that are willing to learn that and know that, and I'm a bad fit if they're not willing to work with me and understand that data.

Yeah, I think business owners, all of us need to know enough. We don't need to be the experts, but we need to know enough to communicate with the people that are doing the work, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

And a similar disconnect that I can relate to in our business is we had someone call and was talking to our account executive and they're like, This is a couple of months ago and they're like, well, I just started the business this year. I haven't made any money yet. I need to know if I need to buy this piece of equipment for the end of the year. It's like $5,000 piece of equipment. And I said, that's exactly the wrong question, because if they're not making any money, they need to be asking the question, do I need this piece of equipment? Like they were completely backwards in their thinking. You need a profitable business to even owe taxes. And once you have the business intent behind your decision, I need to buy this piece of equipment for whatever reason, then you, then you start asking the tax question, right? But if someone can't make that connection, if they're just hyperfocused on never showing any profit, not paying any taxes.

Yeah.

You know, I can't help them, right? Yeah. Because eventually you're not going to have a business if you don't make money.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%. I mean, I, I kind of go into markets a lot of times testing the theory before investing in the theory. So I created a program a long time ago called Test Before You Invest, and essentially what it is is you dip the smallest amount of money possible to see if you can get the maximum return, because that's what we all want. We all want to put in the least amount of effort and make the most amount of money. Like, human nature, that's what we want. So in, in logic of marketing and business that I approach is, you know, I put a lot out there of let's test this and here are the KPI and benchmarks we look for. So for instance, in SEO, I can look at anyone's website that has a semi-legitimate website that has been running for at least 1 year, and I can tell them where their dips were, where they're up, and I can tell them 9 times out of 10, I can look at it and say, you did something around this month, and therefore these next 2 or 3 months actually gave you a better result. And then you stopped doing it here, and you can see these next few months went down. And then I explained to people, your keywords— so when we did go back to SEO, the KPIs of SEO simply are get keywords ranked in the top 100. If you can get a keyword ranked in between 50 to 100 which is page 8, 9, 10 of Google, then you're actually doing good because you can't get to page 1, position 1, unless you show up on page 10 first, right?

Yes.

And you've got to continue that, that elevation. So you can't— people go, oh, well, you can't judge SEO until 6 or 12 or 18 months. And that's not true at all. There are specific KPIs that you can go through that will tell you what the output's going to be within 30 days. There's very specific things that you can do within 30 days to know if someone's doing their job or not.

So, Josh, I feel like you and I could talk forever and we'll have to have you back on the show for sure. Tell us how we can find you to learn more about your fractional CMO.

Yeah, absolutely. So my main website is jrcmo.com. So it stands for Josh Ramsey, Chief Marketing Officer. And you can find me online also by typing in, again, most of the cities, fractional CMO, and then whatever major city that you live in or nearby. Austin, I'm number one. Dallas, I'm number one. Houston, I'm number one. Tampa, I'm number one. I'm in the top five of cities like Denver, Boise, Charlotte, and New York. So my SEO is pretty strong out there. So you can find me pretty easy anywhere you are in the country. And, and really, that's the best way to go. And then I would say that I offer a free 2-hour consultation. So, uh, the purpose of that is really— I don't believe in 20 minutes you can know enough about a story of a business owner, the timeline of what they've done and how they've done it, and then still give them some insightful feedback of what they should consider, what they should do, why they should consider it and/or do it in a 20-minute consult. It just doesn't work. It's not feasible in my opinion. So, so I offer a 2-hour and then I have some starter plans in there that are, that are reasonable with some clear KPIs and, and results that we give that videos on my website. I also have the world's largest SEO library, so if people wanted to learn SEO, they could go to my website click on the educational tools and, and read all about different parts of SEO and how they work and why to integrate them and, and so forth. So a lot of free information on my site.

Perfect. Well, thank you for your time and your experience share. I appreciate it very much. Listeners, if you like what you heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you heard, uh, let me know and I'll replace Josh. Until then, ta-ta for now.

And that's a wrap for today's episode of The Profitable Creative. Until next time, you money lovers. And don't forget, Profit First for Creatives is live via Amazon. Link below.