There Is No One-Size Fits All Marketing Strategy | Charlie Sells

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Welcome to another episode of The Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Bethlehem, Connecticut. I think that's, you know, kind of appropriate given the season. I don't know. I— so, so I don't know if you know this, Charlie. My guess is Charlie sells with clarity over everything. But I don't know if you know this, Charlie, but Bethlehem in Hebrew is "bet lehem," which is "house of bread," which I was explaining to some students in the Bible study that I do, that I found that fascinating because "house of bread," and then Jesus said that he was the bread of life. Yes. Very, very fascinating. Anyway, I'm sorry, I digress. Thank you for listening. Our guest today, Charlie Sells from Clarity Over Everything. Charlie, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me, Christian. I am really excited to be here and to dive into all things small business and creativity and hopefully how to be profitable.

Yes, yes. That is the name of the game. I like the name of your company and it stood out to me because I'm a big proponent of clarity. That's one of the things that I think is my superpower, is to help bring clarity to people. And I'm curious why you chose that name.

You know, I kind of adapted it from a couple of leaders in one particular organization that I worked in for about 4 years. If you're familiar with Dave Ramsey and Ramsey Solutions, there was some internal speak amongst the creative team, specifically the content content team. I served on the content team there for 4 years. And, um, when I first got there, a phrase I heard over and over every time was, "Drive for clarity, drive for clarity, drive for clarity." And that sort of became the drum that I beat more than anything else, to say, if it doesn't make sense to somebody like me, uh, you know, who's on the inside, it definitely won't make sense to our customers, whoever we're trying to speak to. And so eventually I just said— I just kind of adapted it and said, I just want to drive for clarity over everything else. Eventually when I launched out on my own, I said, well, clarity over everything. That's what I want to bring to the table, whether that's through copywriting, content, strategy, branding, no matter what. I want to make sure that clarity is, is king and it matters over everything else that you could possibly do.

I absolutely love that. So you worked on Dave Ramsey's internal marketing team.

I did. I worked for two brands while I was there officially and a handful of other projects that I got to be a part of. Uh, I helped to launch, uh, Ramsey+ back in 2020, which was the membership model. Uh, and then I eventually moved over just to be, uh, one of the content leads on the EveryDollar team. So the personal budgeting app, uh, that was a lot of fun because it's not just as simple as you create marketing assets. I was also doing in-product copy, release notes, and, uh, radio scripts and everything that you could possibly imagine, uh, for this little bitty, little bitty budgeting app that, uh, we got to bring to the masses.

I don't know if it's still up because we've done several migrations and iterations, but one of my most popular, um, one of my most popular blog articles was Why Dave Ramsey Is Bad for Business. And I wrote that, uh, over a decade ago. Uh, so I'm like kind of like the anti-Dave Ramsey, although I'm very envious of his success. So maybe I should try to be more like him. Uh, why, why did you go out on your own?

What— what— it's a great question. I loved my time at Ramsey and I loved all the teams I worked with. What I started to realize, and I'm sure your audience and you know, as a creative, there are times where you realize that in a drawer full of kitchen knives, you are a Swiss Army knife and you've got other tools in your belt that could be useful. And if you're not able to use them, starts to get a little stir crazy and, and all of that. So I started to feel a little bit of that tension, if I'm being honest. Of, um, you know, I knew what my role was, I knew how to be useful and effective and all of that, but there were just other things I wanted to accomplish. So I left Ramsey Solutions and joined a really small startup agency for about 9 months, and then when that wrapped up, as some startups do, it's just part of the game.

Wrapped up is a nice euphemism for failed, but go ahead.

Yes, uh, that iteration of it certainly did. The company is still around. Um, but, uh, yeah, I, I decided if I'm gonna go out on my own, now is the time to do it. And so I thought I was just going to be a one-man content machine and looked up about 6 months into it and asked all of my clients, hey, what do I, what do I do for you? How would you describe this to me? And they said almost nothing about content and copywriting. They said, you help me solve problems, you help me think through things, you help bring clarity, you help me bring momentum and focus and all of these things that I just wouldn't have otherwise. And so I made a pivot about almost a year ago to say, all right, let's shift over and start to do more brand positioning, messaging, marketing strategy. And that's primarily what I do. And I get to help with some of the implementation of that because I work primarily with small business owners and thought leaders who don't have an entire team or can't work with an agency necessarily. And so now that's what I'm leaning into. I do that really in 3 ways, Christian. The first is as a, a thinking partner. And I stole that phrase from somebody who said sometimes people just need somebody to talk things out with. And, uh, and so sometimes small business owners just need to call and say, give me the 40,000-foot view of this thing, uh, and help direct me in an objective and a trusted way. Second way I do it is just by helping give people better data about their brand. Uh, sometimes that is actually looking at SEO and traffic and everything else. A lot of times it's by looking through the lens of, is it consistent, is it concise, is it competitive? And at the end of the day, are you being positioned to win, um, not necessarily against certain competitors, but just You know, in a lot of ways, try to be an industry of one. And then the third way is by taking all of those and packaging it into what I call a clarity and alignment sprint, which means I'll do an audit. We'll get together for a day, half a day or a full day. And then from there, I will help develop a 6 to 12, 6 to 12 week prioritized list of you got to address these things immediately. Otherwise you're going to, you're going to be spinning your tires for longer. And then a 3 to 12 month roadmap about if this is where we want to be in a year, this is what has to be true. And this is a phased approach to get there. That way they can pass it off to an internal team or an agency or somebody else, or I can stay on as a consultant and a helper as well. So that's why I do what I do. And at the end of the day, I looked up and saw too many small businesses were getting screwed over by agencies because they were just throwing a playbook in front of them and saying, this is what you're going to do now, pay us tens of thousands of dollars to do it. And it wasn't yielding the kind of results that they wanted, or those, those particular agencies and companies weren't collaborating and actually moving towards the client's goals. And so I decided, let me come in and disrupt this a little bit if I can, and say, no matter how long you work with me, the goal is for you to have the confidence to go do the next thing and reach into the next season for your company with a lot of momentum and clarity.

There is so much in what you just said to unpack, and I have lots of thoughts. So I'll go back to what I think towards the first of what you said is that when you asked your clients, what do you do for me? And you got an answer that was different than what you thought. And I think that's a reality that I know I experienced, and it took me a lot longer to figure it out. Than it should have. But it's really, I think, a lack of clarity on business owners' part in understanding the problem that they solve. But even if you do understand it, do you understand it the way the customer or client would explain it? Because the feedback you got probably was not that revelatory to you in the sense of like, yeah, that totally makes sense. It's just not the way I would describe it. Right? Correct. Because we tend as professionals, whether you're an accountant or a marketer or, you know, whatever, you, we tend to describe it in, in terms of what we do, the, the, the services or the features and benefits. And like, we're, We're describing it from our point of view as opposed to from their point of view. And their point of view, I loved what, oh good God, I can't believe I can't remember his name. Donald Miller in StoryBrand, you know, he made the statement in describing StoryBrand is like, as the expert, we understand things at a 9 or 10. Level, and we need to dumb it down. Like, and when we do, we usually dumb it down to like a 6 or a 7. But we really need to get down to a 3. And that's really difficult for us from the inside looking out, because it's not simple from our understanding, right? So I'll let you respond to that before I go on to my next thought.

No, it's a great point. And I think Christian, so many leaders get caught in that place. I know it so well, therefore if I just talk about it in my terms, my team will understand it and eventually my customers will understand it. Well, if it's, if it's fuzzy to your team, it's going to be blurry to your customers. And that is the progression that nobody wants to find themselves on because that leads to brand erosion. And nobody, nobody wants to lose money because somebody didn't understand something, right? And this is You know, the question that I love to ask business owners is, instead of saying, instead of thinking, what do our customers say about us? You should instead ask, what is it like to be on the receiving end of our business? What is it like to be on the receiving end of our brand? Well, now you've untapped a whole, you've tapped in a whole lot of things because it's not just, I liked this, I liked that. It's, it provided me with this kind of life change. I didn't know I needed this until you showed me the value. There's a whole lot of layers to that because it's no longer just about, What's the survey feedback tell us about how we're doing? It gets down to the heart and it causes founders and leaders and directors to think a little bit more, a little bit more strategically about how they're saying what they're saying and what they're doing. I did, I did an audit of a website even today where I could tell just by looking at the first page of the website, this person knows their stuff so well, but it's not translating to their target audience. And if they can unlock that, it will unlock a ton of new business and hopefully repeat business for them.

Yeah. And what I would add to that is people make purchases, they buy what you sell based upon emotion, not logic. And the, you know, if you, if you think it's hard trying to explain it to other businesses, try and explain it internally to a bunch of accountants. Like, they don't really care that the bookkeeping is right or that the tax return is right, like, or it's on time. Like, none of those things matter. It matters how they feel about their money. The transformation from confusion, fear, anxiety to clarity, peace of mind, control. That's what you're selling. And they look at me like, what are you talking about? Like that. I mean, because that, you know, one of their frustrations was like, we did everything right. And then they still weren't happy. And I'm like, yeah, that, yes, that absolutely happens.

Right? Right. Yeah, I can think of a specific example. Of that during my time at Ramsey. And I mean, in my humble opinion, I think it's the most successful campaign that they ever ran, partially because I helped to write it.

Absolutely.

We wrote one of the most visceral and emotional statements that moved the needle in a tremendous way. And it was just a test. We weren't launching it nationally or anything like that. It was just a simple A/B test. And, you know, some of the higher-ups came back and said, 'Hey, that was great, but we can't do it again because it doesn't quite fall within our brand standards.' I was so defeated in that moment, like, just going, we just— we struck a nerve with people and we should be leaning into that. There's a tension that also comes with that too, Christian, of saying, like, you can make a shock value, uh, you know, uh, ripples in the pond type of statement and campaign, but if it feels way too off-brand and off-base, now you're going to lose customers for a very different reason, because then they expect to see this very extreme version, right? The Liquid Deaths of the world, where you always expect the outrageous and whatnot, versus saying, well, there's probably a time and a place to say that, or there's a different way to say it, uh, that's more consistent and still keeps, uh, the kind of customers that we're looking for.

Hey listeners, are you ready to turn your passion into profit? Then grab a copy of Profit First for Creatives. Click the link in the show notes to purchase a copy. And if you're not ready to make that full commitment, you can download a free copy of the first chapter. Check it out right now. Okay, now I'm going to back to your opening statement and I'm going to pick something else and see if I can keep all these things in my head straight. The, the, the, um, statement you made about agencies giving them a plan hand and like, here, here, go do this. What I, I, I have hired and engaged, uh, multiple agencies over, uh, my, my tenure. Uh, I've had lots of them as clients. And one of the things that I, I find in the agency universe is there's— I, I think, I think one of the common problems is you can get an agency that's uber successful because they're very creative, right? But it's real hard to put that creativity into a process. And I'm not talking about processes of doing the work. I'm talking the actual process of the creativity, because I think that's kind of an oxymoron. I don't think you can really process— process— process-tize? I don't know. Systematize.

Let's try that.

Systematize creativity. Right, right. Um, or the agency understands the analytical side of it, the, the procedure side of it, um, but they don't, uh, they fall short in understanding that at the end of the day, marketing is about human behavior, and humans are predictably unpredictable. And even if you do have a process or system that does work, it doesn't always sustain or translate. So like it could work in one business, but you take it over to the other businesses in the same industry and it's like it falls flat or it works until it doesn't work, right? Because people evolve, they change, technology evolves, they change. Sure.

Thoughts on that? Yeah, you and I are probably have very similar ad algorithm. Algorithms where I get fed something every single day that's like, this one system will make you $10,000 a month, uh, or you can be a one-person agency if you will do X, Y, and Z, or whatever. And you're exactly right, there is no, there is no bolt-on strategy that is just tried and true for every business, every industry, every marketing initiative for that, for that matter. And, um, I mean, I think that's the frustration that most small business owners that I work with experience at some level. Um, and, and I can't tell you how many have come to me with a problem thinking this is the silver bullet, and the more we uncover and the further that we dig, the more they start to realize that's not going to do anything. It might move the needle a little bit, but the user experience after this point isn't quite where we want it to be, or we're still not super clear on what the process is to onboard or, uh, you know, follow up with sales or have processes that take some of the burden off of us. And so I think you're exactly right that it's, it's, I think, almost a false positive to say because it worked for this client, it's going to work for this client, or to guarantee every time we're going to get you a 6x ROAS because that's our average for our, uh, for our agency. Well, you got to think about the law of averages there, right? Somebody didn't get a ROAS on anything, uh, and somebody got a 20x ROAS because they hit the, they hit the right thing, and we landed somewhere in the middle, right? Um, that's what— and I love working with agencies. I have, as a one-man, uh, one-man show, I farm out a lot of things to, uh, creative agencies and ad agencies and other marketing and analytics, uh, just because that's, that's a need for a lot of my clients. But at the end of the day, I, I always encourage them, don't start with that until you've got a good grip on your entire brand and your entire ecosystem so that you can take something to them and say, we have everything in place, We just need people to come and see, and that's it.

Yeah, listeners, my repeat listeners will know, not the one in Bethlehem, the one that listened to more than one episode, will know that this is the point where I'm going to talk about the crackhead energy. And the crackhead energy I describe in the small business marketing space is really a reflection on the crackhead, which is the business owner. The marketers are the crack dealers. In that, to your point, there's this like, they want, the business owners don't understand marketing. They don't understand the basics or, you know, the strategy or the tactics. They get very confused. And so they latch on to something that may be, well, my competitor is doing video on LinkedIn. So I need to do video on LinkedIn. Right? Or it's, we're not getting site website visits, like, you know, they fixate on something that they think they need, which they don't really know if they need. And so they say, well, give me this. And the crackhead dealer says, sure, I'll give you that, without ever asking the question, is that really what you need? And I feel like that's what you're addressing as a problem.

Yeah, you know, I toyed with this very early on when I, when I first started to launch out. And I love the sentiment. I don't know that it quite translates to small business owners, but there's an idea that I think too many marketers and too many creatives don't act as brand guardians for the businesses that they work with because it does become shiny object syndrome in a lot of ways, you know, chasing, oh, we could do this and we could do this. Um, you know, one of the most prescriptive things I think marketing agencies get into— it's kind of— I kind of liken it to, you know, when a new head coach comes into a football team, it's very hard to retain the old staff because the new coach wants everything that they, they want. They want their system, they want their people, they want their players, they want to run their plays, and, and, you know, the rest should follow suit, right? I think the same is true with a lot of agencies where they look at a website and go, that's not the way how I that I would have done it. We're going to sell you a new website or, you know, your social— your social is doing something very different than we would do it. So let's do it our way. And I think that's the trap. If you— if you don't have somebody who is looking out for you and going, why don't we just pour gas on everything that is working? I did— I did a test for a client not too long ago. They really wanted to get into the webinar space. And so we built lots of funnels. We did all of the emails and the follow-ups, and some were paid and some were free. Free and everything. The, the, uh, traffic rate was good, the take rate wasn't very high, and the show rate was very, very low. And, uh, and I was like, don't get discouraged because we're just— we're trying to train this audience to, um, to get used to you putting content out, right? So, uh, after a couple of weeks, I put one of the replays in, uh, in an email, uh, in one of their newsletters and said, hey, just in case you missed it, this is the thing. Well, wouldn't you know, everybody wanted that content. They couldn't make it on the day that the live webinar was going on, or they didn't want to pay for it. And so I said, this is something here. People want to hear from you. How can we make sure we do that? And so now we're rolling out a podcast, um, to their audience. You know, it's, it's not a small list by any means. They got 20,000 people on their email list, so they're going to see some, you know, some pretty good results as soon as they launch this thing. Uh, but had we not gone through that, had I been prescriptive as a lot of agencies are, and had I said this is exactly what you should do, or had I said from the, from the get-go— and, and I think this is the other side of that coin, Christian— had I said I've never seen this work for anybody else, therefore we shouldn't do it. That's the other side that I think is really dangerous when your personal experience gets grafted onto your clients and, and you go, yeah, I, I don't want to try that again. Well, that's me not wanting to try it again. You have no idea if it's actually going work for this client or this audience or this product or whatever, whatever the fill in the blank needs to be.

Yes. I, yes, I, I, yes, I'm just going to say yes. Um, okay. And I say that that way because I actually forgot what I was going to say.

Uh, so it's okay.

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Let's pivot. You started Clarity Over Everything how long ago?

Unofficially, like 10 years ago, just in my very brief freelance life helping, you know, pay some bills, uh, officially, uh, 2 years ago.

Okay, so what were some of the challenges starting out 2 years ago that you didn't know, uh, until you hit the ground? Like, what, what if— let's rewind the tape 2 years ago. Uh, this is— this was my challenge that I didn't know that, that was hardest to overcome.

I tried really hard not to think that because I was born on second, I hit a double, uh, because I did launch out with a lot of really good clients. I did not have to start from scratch. Uh, in fact, there was a client who was a part of this other organization that approached me and said, hey, we know that our contract is about to wrap up, would you stay on and help? That was a big chunk of business. I had 2 or 3 really great referrals. So I, I really started up— started out at ground level, or maybe even a little a little bit above. But, you know, I didn't have a process in place. I didn't have any, um, I didn't have any knowledge of bookkeeping and write-offs and, uh, you know, any, any of that kind of stuff. All the typical freelancer stuff, right? I think at the end of the day, I realized that, uh, I just wasn't solid on my offer. Um, I knew what I could do and I knew people needed it, but I wasn't really solid on being able to confidently say on call or in a conversation or at a networking event, I would love to help your brand do X, Y, and Z. I wish I would have spent some more time initially, uh, really dialing that in. I had some really great friends and a really great network who said, yeah, just go work with Charlie. And then I would have to spend an hour explaining all of these things that I could do, and then they would have to kind of pick and whittle down and say, well, we only need these like 2 things. Now I can say confidently This is what it looks like to work with me. If you want that, if it's beneficial, great. If not, that's okay. Maybe there'll be an opportunity beforehand.

How did you— or has your offer pricing, uh, changed since you started?

Absolutely. Uh, it changed within 6 months. Uh, and I had a client group at the time, one of them I still work with, uh, that were so gracious. What I realized was, uh, like a lot of you know, freelancers and contract, you know, consulting employees. I was trying to do the hours-based thing with good intention. I know it was a mistake. I know it now. I was trying to do the hours-based thing. And when I went back to my clients and I said, hey, listen, you're worried about hours, I'm worried about hours. I don't want anybody to be worried about hours. I want you to be focused on the value that you're actually getting out of this. So my price is going to go up a little bit. In the, in the short run, but in the long run, you're not going to get overcharged. You're not going to have to worry about if you go over any hours or see additions on your invoices or anything like that. And I was, I was terrified to send that, that communication, by the way, to say like, hey, one of the reasons I'm doing this is to keep my client base small so that I can give you better attention. But the other reason is you don't need uncertainty and I don't need uncertainty. And not a single one of them balked at it. All of them were like, great, it makes sense. You're not going to quit doing what you're doing, that's all I care about. Um, so now that I've— now that I've gotten even more specific about what I do, it's much easier for me to say, um, hey, this is the value you're going to get out of just working one day with me. Uh, and that's really kind of been the focus of my positioning the last 6 months, I would say, um, is, is to go like, hey, sometimes you just need a kickstart, um, to, to your brand and what you're doing. So you can have me come in. You're not going to pay these, you know, outrageous six-figure consulting prices because, again, those people will drop a playbook in your lap and leave and probably cause more damage than they actually intended to. But it's also a really quick way for me to go, you know, I can do this really fast. I've got, you know, the expertise behind it to be able to make really fast decisions and do that in concert with you. And I think that's a key that I unlocked really early on in my, my freelancing career was to say, I don't want to do things for you. I always want to do things with you. It's always going to be, is this the direction you feel most comfortable with? Or here is what the data is saying. And based on my recommendation, this is where I think we should go next. And so having that collaborative partnership, I think, has also given me a lot of confidence to, to say, like, listen, my goal would be for me, for us to work together for 6 to 12 months. But if 30 days of value is all that you need, I'm okay with that too, because I know what I can deliver.

I want to make two statements, so I will, because it's my show. The first is the hourly model and why I boot it. I read a book a long time ago written by lawyers called Firm of the Future, and they were Australian lawyers. They didn't even speak English. And the book really was foundational for me in my business. And I think seeing it from an outsider's perspective, because they were talking about attorneys and legal, I could see it a different way. And the story was, okay, think about your client. Your best day is their worst day. So they get served a lawsuit and they're like terrified and, you know, unsure and know it's going to cost a lot of money. And you on the other side are like trying to be sympathetic, but you're going like ka-ching because now I'm making money, right? And the concept was, how can you come— that puts you on opposite sides of the desk. So how can you structure the service that you offer and the relationship as, okay, you get on the other side and now you're sitting next to them? Yeah. And that's exactly what you just described, right? Because it's now not like I don't want to call Charlie because I don't want to bill. I'm collaborating with him to solve the Problem. problem.

Correct.

And that was revolutionary for me and our business. The second thing that I wanted to say was I was having a conversation to— you said the statement, I knew what I could do. I knew what value I could bring, right? I was having this conversation with my head of marketing today. Internal. And it's— part of the problem is defining the solution in the wrong terms. And this is kind of what we talked about earlier. You have to define it in their terms. And as a professional, usually they can only identify the symptoms. Right? They can't identify the problem because they don't know the problem. It's like going to the doctor. You don't know that you have XYZ disease. You just know that you have these symptoms. And so I think that the key is any good marketer, any good business owner is understanding, yeah, this is where I bring the value, but can you define it in a way that they present the symptoms?

Correct. I did a project for somebody recently along those exact same lines where an established brand, an established business, a lot of growth, a crowded space, especially at the top. They're trying to be at the top. And when I did a competitor analysis for them, I said, you are not going to be these people because out of, out of 5, out of the top 5 in this industry, you're number 5. I said, what you can do though is because you can't turn back time, right? Like you can't do social media for the last 6 years today, right? You got to start today. I said, what you can do though is you can tell a better story. And I think that unlocks something for them where they kind of— it kind of feels like a relief in a way to say, we don't have to be that, we don't have to compete. We just have to be— again, Hormozi says it like an industry of one. Yeah, how can we be an industry of one? And I said, well, you've got this, this, and this that are your unique value props and your competitive advantage. Lean into those, because if you try to do anything else, you will be more noise. If you do something different though, now you're elevating yourself and saying, we're not trying to be in the top 5, we're trying to be over here and make everybody else—

we're gonna be number 1 over here, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Yes. And I talk about that in Profit First for Creatives and talked about this a lot on the show is that your target niche for us, it was, we had a huge problem for 20 plus years. We had the wrong target market. And it's not like we didn't know that we should have a target market, but it was not clearly defined enough. It was too large. And it wasn't until we narrowed it down that we actually saw traction. And so I use this, I use the example in the book of water. And somebody was doing a presentation at an event I was at, and they had, they used as a prop a bottle of water. And he said, what's more commodity in the in the world than water, right? And so like, if you want to be the— I don't even know who the number one— Dasani? Like, I don't know. If you want to be the number one, you're going to have a hard time. But if you can take that, whatever your product or service is, because that's the pushback you get. Well, like, there's no way to differentiate this. Well, absolutely there is, because everything is a commodity if you look at it broadly enough. Can you get down narrow enough that you are distinct? You are that number one. And that's every business.

Every single business. I think we've also, man, I have so many thoughts on that too. Because as soon as you say water, I think about Liquid Death and what they have done in the water business, right?

They— I didn't even know it was water for years. Like, I saw that, I didn't even know what it was.

I'll tell you what, the very first time that I ever had a conversation about it, uh, I was on vacation with my family and we were going to dinner one night, and I just had— this is when they had the tall boys and only the tall boys. And I, I'm going from the— our beach house to our restaurant, uh, you know, I was, I was trying to hydrate because I'd been out in the sun all day.. And my sister pulled me aside and she was like, hey, could you please not drink and drive? That'd be great. I was like, I'm sorry, what? She was like, yeah, could you like that? That was really dangerous. I was like, it's, it's water. Like, that's all it is. It's water with really great marketing and fancy branding. And, you know, the origin story of course is they wanted it to look like that because they were tired of going to parties, carrying around, you know, clear plastic bottles. So, you know, that was part of the ethos behind it. But I mean, what they could have done is they could have released another spring water brand and said like, oh, this is Austrian spring water, right? Right. Instead, they took a very different angle and said, nah, we're going to murder your thirst and you're going to see Bert Kreischer and severed heads and all this kind of stuff. Right, right. And, and it works like they've, I mean, 10x, you know, from where they, where they started in their valuation and everything else. I love, love that aspect of it. But it's, it's so hard to do that these days, right? Like in a lot of ways it's just a viral sensation, but they've also found a way to sustain it. And I think a lot of businesses get in that mode of thinking like we have to, we have to continually do the bigger, the better, you know, whatever, whatever it is. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Part B to that, I think Christian is, I taught a class at a university recently, a friend of mine's a digital marketing professor. Marketing professor, and he brings people from different disciplines in. And just because we've been friends for 25 years, he calls in that favor. And so we get to have lunch, and of course I get to go, go back to school, so to speak. And I had somebody come up to me afterwards, it was a sophomore I think, and say, hey, I'm working for a bowling alley, uh, here in town. How do I do marketing for them? And I was like, just stay local. That's all you have to do. You're not competing with the bowling alley in Memphis.

Right?

You're not competing with, with something up north. You're not trying to get people from 600 miles to, uh, you know, come to your bowling alley, although that would be a great ambition. You're looking for that 6-mile radius. And so how do you stay hyper-local? I think that is the key for a lot of businesses where they think, I have to go do Meta ads everywhere all the time. No.

Yeah, they're focusing on tactics without ever understanding the strategy. Exactly.

Exactly. And, uh, I mean, that's part of my strategy too, is, you know, I, I could say— and, and, you know, to your point, I could have that commodity mindset to say I'm for everyone, right? Every small business could work with me. No, I mean, I've turned businesses away before because I'm like, you're doing what you should be doing, and, you know, you don't necessarily need my help. Or if you were to do this, it would waste your time and waste your money and probably only flatline you know, something. And it's not that they didn't need marketing help necessarily, it's that they were already doing so many things well, they didn't really need to do anything else unless they wanted to expand locations or, um, uh, you know, grow to 6x their number of employees or anything like that. So I, sometimes I think it is just staying local, uh, and, and staying true to, you know, where you are planted rather than thinking I've got to be in the next forest over too.

Yeah, and I think creative business owners, you know, come to the table wanting to, you know, be uber creative, which is great. I, you know, that's why they are good at what they do. The best ones though, the most successful ones I've seen are where they take that creativity and they apply it, that creative energy in a different way. Rather than coming up with custom scope of work or custom problem solving for every new lead that comes in, is can you find a commonality in these things that is a problem that more than one person has that you can create a solution that you can sell more than once as opposed to, you know, custom. A lot of people don't, they just resist that. They don't, they want to be uber creative and I get that. But if you're going to have business success, it's real hard to do if you're reinventing the wheel.

Correct. I get really frustrated with that sometimes. I'll just be honest, Christian, because there have been some industry-specific or proprietary platforms that I have run into and just been flabbergasted that they have a hold in the market. Um, and what I mean by that is like the, the plug-and-play websites of the world, right? Like if you were to go online right now— well, not even just Webflow. I mean, like one, a neighborhood that I used to live in wanted a, wanted a website for their HOA, and there is literally a website, uh, builder that does that. It's, it's bad. And, uh, I mean, it's, it's not good. But who's running HOAs? People who need a really simple solution. Right.

They don't, don't have any money to spend on it, right?

And probably don't have any money to spend on it, right? So if you buy the URL, they'll, they'll do it for $100 a year or whatever it is, right?

Right.

But I've run into others that have claimed to be this very robust system, and they do some things so well, but their customer service is bad, it's not customizable, you have to play by their rules, or, uh, you know, their team just isn't equipped to handle some of the integrations and things that you want. And so I don't have a problem if anybody wants to niche down or use something that they say is just for this industry, right? I mean, I work with clients all the time who are like, this is the gold standard in our industry. And I'm like, great, then don't move to HubSpot, don't move to HighLevel, don't, don't change anything, right? Keep doing what you're doing and let's add a couple of pieces on there that are going to help you optimize versus blow the whole thing up and try to rebuild it.

Charlie, I have very much enjoyed your experience share. Uh, before we, we started the show in the green room, you, you admitted that you were, uh, didn't think you were qualified to be on the show. You were eminently qualified. Thank you for coming on. How do people find, um, Clarity Above Everything and Charlie Sells if they want to know more?

Yeah, uh, I do need to say this. Sells is my real last name. Uh, it's not a moniker. It has been my entire year. Uh, it's nice to trade on and have a you know, a conversation opener like that. So, and I spent most of my life avoiding sales, believe it or not, and now that's, you know, half of what I do as a business owner. So, but yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, it's Charlie Sells, it's pretty easy to find, or you can go to clarityovereverything.com. And I should have said this at the beginning too, my goal for 2026 is to make, is to help 26 businesses. I know that's a little on the nose, but I'm going to help 26 businesses get really clear and aligned and, and have some momentum behind their brands so that whatever the next season looks like for them, they are tightened up and ready to go and really excited about what it can do for their business.

I love that because that's one every other week. It just works out nicely, right?

Yeah, I know. We're getting one of those half calendar, you know, just perfect timing.

So you can get one of the biweekly payroll calendars that works out, right?

Us.

Correct. Uh, listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, please shoot us a message, tell us what you'd like to hear, and we'll replace Charlie. Until then, ta-ta for now.