The Exit Engine Podcast Episode Forty Seven: Meet Jenny Marofsky!

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Welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast, episode 47. I have always been afraid, and this is a silly thing, but I have always been afraid to use my name in a business name. And I don't know why that is. John, do you? You know, I have some water.

What did you say? I missed it.

I was saying that I have, I have always been loath to use my, my name in, in the last name, first name, whatever, in my, the name of my business. And I don't know what I was thinking about that, and I don't know why it is, but I think, again, it kind of ties back to like My— the notion I had in my head that it was to— I wanted to be the, like, the guy behind the guy kind of thing, like, right, not the king. Which was also— I realized now after I've done a lot of self-work and things like that, that was probably like a way of actually hiding, right?

It sounds right to me. Yeah.

But, but our guest today, no problem with the name. And in fact, here's the best part about her, okay? She's not even using the last name. Right? She is just known throughout, like, our LinkedIn circles as Agency Jen. Right?

Love that. I love that.

And I think that is the coolest thing. So again, you know, we, we're gonna talk with, with her today about, about some really cool stuff. So before we introduce her, let's just get a couple of things outta the way. First of all, good morning, John.

Joe, good morning to you.

Excellent. Thank you so much. Welcome everybody to the Exit Engine Podcast. Today we're going to talk with Jenny Morawski. And Jenny is, again, is the founder and CEO of Agency Jen. She is a fractional CFO, sorry, fractional CMO, Chief Marketing Officer, not CFO, CMO. And she does a lot of stuff with systems and has a very kind of unique perspective in terms of helping The strategic focus of people with their marketing issues and things like that. Jenny Morawski, welcome to the Exit Engine Podcast. Thank you so much for being here today.

Good morning. Thanks for having me. I'm so excited. And I love the entrance of the name. If I could tell you a story about how I got—

Oh my gosh, please. That's exactly what I was going to ask you for.

I think it's perfect for your audience too. So, I've been in business since 2007, and when I started the business, I was in Ohio, Columbus, and I was doing primarily creative work at that time. And I named the business then Presque Isle Designs, and it was my way of, one, manifesting to someday come back to Erie, Pennsylvania, and Presque Isle, because it's beautiful here. And in Columbus, nobody could really say it. So it was very unique. Like I got Preskeely or, you know, like, because everything's Buckeye something. And so Presque Isle Designs was like a nice unique identifier.

Sure.

So when I, you know, we'll probably touch on it, but when I renamed the business about 5 years ago, I went through a business, used a business coach to help figure out what's the next thing. because now that I am in Presque Isle area, everything's called Presque Isle.

Right.

So that's not working. And I don't do design anymore. So what is the next best name? And the big question that really challenged me as an individual, an owner, was what do I wanna do with the business? Am I building it to grow and sell? Or am I building it to grow and be? And if my answer was to sell, I probably wouldn't have put my name in it.

Right.

But since I was kind of like, well, I don't know, I don't even know if I can sell my business or not, doing Agency Jen was almost like a nice compromise between the two pathways. And then to play with Jen with G-E-N. That's, you know, the name of the business is J-E-N, but then I play with things like generate and lead gen and genius and, you know, all the J words.

Sure.

And then fun things like Jen and tonic, right? Or, you know, so then it just became really fun to play with the wordsmithing of Jen and Jen.

But what a great— but when you landed on that, it's obviously like it makes a lot of sense, right? It is you. The business is you. Let's face it, right? And we'll talk a little bit later about the pros and cons of that. But the idea is that, again, it is you and it is your personality and it is you. And the reality is you are not hiding behind the name of the town. You're not hiding behind anything. You're out there saying, this is me, this is what I do. And I think that the big lesson On that, to me is, and you're right, look, in the context of exit planning, right? What we're always telling people to, advising people to do is to make sure that they can separate themselves from the business, right? Because the business goes, you don't, or you go and the business stays, or whatever, however you want to look at it. And that you want to make sure that that business can live on without you and the new owner can take it on and You know, obviously from their perspective, they want it to be as easy a transition as possible, and they want to be able to grow and, and, and make money and all that stuff, right, without you.

Right.

However, that said, that there are a lot of people out there in the world right now that are solopreneurs, okay, or that are boutique-type shops, and the— they, they are not necessarily precluded from growing in the same direction. You said it exactly the correct way. The notion of, am I building this to have and just be me and this is a lifestyle, or am I building it to grow and turn it into something larger that I can then turn around one day and sell? And the cool thing is that the name you picked actually still works either way that you do that. And that's the beautiful thing about that notion of looking out there. But But more importantly is, and I think this is the lesson for everybody out there right now that we are learning ourselves, is you are out there being you, right? You are Jenny Morawski and you are out there. And Jenny, we haven't known each other for that long, but the conversations that we have had so far, right, have been your personality and your thing is a lot of what you are bringing to the table.

That's right. I mean, even if you look at the logo of AgencyGen, it is a left and right brain.

Right.

Because it's ever from being little and being artsy, but also having like a MacGyver dad, right? Like there's tactile and there's creative. And that's how even through art school and through my career, I'm data-driven to fuel creative output. And when I say creative today, after 20-some years in business, it's not necessarily the actual creative production. I don't really even do that anymore.

Right.

But it's the creative approach to how to do marketing to meet a business where it's at and where it's trying to grow. I'm not that person. So when I say, I even hate saying a marketing consultant because I think people wrap around their head, oh, it's just another person trying to sell me a thing which they get commission off of and they want to try to get the most commission possible and it doesn't matter if it fits me or not. I'm like Switzerland in that I want to find you the right thing for you so that you're spending money the best way for you. And so everything is very empathetic and very personal, but also very strategic and intentional.

Well, yeah, and that's what sort of interested me when I was looking at your bio and your LinkedIn page is like, just talk about that a little bit more in the sense of because you are different from the other traditional marketing consultants that I've— most of them, I should say. But talk about like how you differentiate yourself from other, you know, day-to-day marketing consultants that are working on commission or doing those sort of tactical things, because you mentioned the strategic way. But how does that manifest itself in the work you're doing for clients?

Well, one, it definitely hits the verticals in which I serve, right? I don't— I've worked in hospitality. As a director of marketing, and I did not get the feel goods in that space. You know, it was very much heads in beds, butts in seats, and I get it, and we could do marketing that way, but at the end of the day, I didn't feel fulfilled.

Okay.

Right? So there's a fulfillment part of it, emotional fulfillment. There's also, um, I grew up in business. And my parents owned golf courses, and it wasn't necessarily how many rounds we could pump through in a summer, but it was how do we make the best experience of that round for each player. And there was just this level of care from the moment they pull into the parking lot to the first tee-off.

I love that.

When they're walking off. So I, I think I'm just rooted in Caring about people. And so back to that vertical is I really love helping mission-driven, purpose-driven, service-based businesses who are trying to improve lives of others, and they can use me to reach more so that they can serve more. And that's all feel-good, you know, parts.

Yeah. And the fact that you're working with— I mean, you work with, you know, all sorts of companies, but you're focused on health. wellness, education, and interestingly, not-for-profits, because frankly, we don't work with a lot of not-for-profits. So, but we know directly, right, because they're not typically selling themselves. But talk about how that, how that sort of, how you work with not-for-profits and how that sort of fulfills you.

Well, it's kind of hit me at a time where that's really hard, right? So under the current climate, they're all, it's a very fragile space. I mean, I think it's always a fragile space.

Right.

But it's even more so. I mean, I just got off the call before this with a nonprofit who usually has their budgets approved now and know where their funding's coming from and they're ready to grow. They use marketing to grow and they're like, they have to put the brakes on because they don't know what's coming. So right now that whole industry, for at least for the arenas that I've been working with, they're very much in a standstill.

Sure.

So the healthcare and education, they have the same thing, right? They want to help, they're serving people.

So, yeah. So, I mean, when you talk about mission-driven businesses and stuff, they obviously have, you know, some unique kind of marketing needs, as you're kind of pointing out. And obviously, despite where they are right now and with uncertainty, and by the way, you know, the nonprofits are not really different really from anybody else right now. In terms of uncertainty and a fear of, you know, right now with the— not uncertain which direction the economy is going to head, and obviously the politics and all that stuff is out there as well. And so it's a little bit of a confusing time, more than usual. But again, there are some unique things that happen in these organizations, right? So talk a little bit about those unique needs and what you've discovered are, you know, in those verticals are. You know, make them, make them kind of different animals?

Well, if I stay in the nonprofit seat, what I've been watching the past few months is the leadership are social service backgrounds. They're not business entrepreneurial backgrounds. And so I've kind of been taking a business coach seat with them. And saying instead of, or while you're waiting for your state reliant funding to come in, what are lines of revenue that we can execute in order to kind of offset until this stuff figures out?

Right.

Because then when we define those lines of revenue, now marketing is intentional. Great. If you get one person into this line of revenue, that equals $500. How many people can you handle, you know, at the $500 rate? I'm making up, you know, a scenario. Great, that's 10. Great, that's what, I don't know, $5,000. So can we use $2,000 to try to get those leads into the door?

Yep.

So that you can try to create some revenue.

Yeah, and often, obviously, that's a very different mindset, Jenny, right? For these people, when you're saying that you're becoming like a business coach or you're acting as a business coach to these people, There are a lot of times that I've worked with not-for-profits in a prior life. So it's, they just don't have that sort of, they have the skill set, but they just don't use it very frequently. And they need to, you know, it's like practice, practice, practice. They get better at it. But it's interesting. You need to work with them on that revenue generation side when their revenue is not coming in, you know.

Revenue generating and just even goal setting. Right. Right. Like, it's just they're often in a hamster wheel of just doing the same thing and thriving and surviving or surviving, not to thrive. And so nonprofits are hard.

Yeah.

For-for-profits, the ones that are hard are those that don't have clear goals. And you mentioned earlier about what trends and patterns I'm seeing. And I think, you know, over the years, you know, with the surgence of Canva and all these simple design things and DIY this and DIY that. It's making it very easy for the overwhelmed business owner who has money to spend, knows they wanna do marketing, maybe doesn't have an agency gen yet. And they literally come into my office and say, we're tired of— they, they do this. We're tired of throwing money up and seeing what sticks. And, and they're just overwhelmed. And then their brand's diluted and they don't understand what happens when a brand's diluted.

And Right.

it's just this snowball ripple effect. So What I've heard recently through a handful of arenas is with the insurgence of AI and Canva and all those things, it's making execution, the doing, the production easier. But the gap is still the strategic thing to get the AI and the Canva to do.

Right. To your point, what's the goal? Right. So if everyone can do marketing and everyone's doing marketing through these easy tools, Is it all in service of a goal, or is it just, is it just tactical things that everyone's doing in service of sort of nothing that's clear?

That's the danger.

And making noise.

Right. That's the danger. So they feel this is, and this is, again, this is, by the way, this is a larger thing about business that I have learned. And I, we like to impart to our founders when we're working directly with them, which is that just because you're busy doesn't mean you are actually moving the needle the right direction, right? And so feeling like I'm doing something, right, is not the same as actually doing the thing that matters in the right way, right, to drive the business forward in the right way. And so I think one of the dangers that we're— territory we're in here with AI is without strategy, right, without a mission, without a specific point of view, All you're doing, like you said, is just basically you're maybe making yourself feel better, like you're doing something, but are you, is it a buckshot? Are you just throwing stuff out there or is there a coordinated effort behind it to be able to drive to a specific thing, which is what you want when you're building a business to sell, right? When we talk with people, you know, about their exit trajectory, it's the same thing. It's not a matter, I just want to sell, right, is not really— of course, okay, great, we get it. I just want to market myself. Great. The idea is that you have to— there are certain aspects of things that you have to know, and you have to have a strategy behind it. We have to be able to— you have to figure out some things. You have to do some self-work. You've got to examine your own business before you do anything else, right? But the idea is that— but there's strategy behind it, right?

Yeah, like when the owner is using Canva to create their own marketing, that's a red flag, right? When it's like when the owner is the one that picks up the phone to do customer service, it's like we talk about all the time is, you know, again, you need to work on your business instead of in your business. And all these tools, again, as Jo mentioned, provide the illusion that you're doing something and doing something with purpose. But in reality, what you do, Jenny, is you come in and you say like, look, like Let's focus on the goals. Let's have everyone sort of rowing in the same direction. Is that fair to say?

That's 100%. And as you were talking, I can't remember the book I read this in, but the analogy that they use to describe the same thing is an aquarium. And when you set up an aquarium, you need the gravel, the little rocks along the bottom in order to hold the bigger rocks for the environment, for the fish to live and thrive in. And what I've seen so often, and I'm sure we as owners have done it too, right? We get so fixated on all those little rocks that then we miss the bigger rocks in which the fish really need to thrive. And so as a fractional CMO, I come in and I say, hey, listen, I'm gonna take care of the big rock, aka marketing.

I love that.

And I'm gonna manage all those little rocks that are underneath it so that you can worry about keeping the fish healthy.

It's so— yeah, shout out to Richard Bradley, my old colleague, who used to say What you're doing is you're majoring in the minors, right? They're oftentimes majoring in those things that just aren't moving the needle, so to speak.

That's right. Yep.

The, when it comes to mission, talk a little bit about the idea of marketing with meaning, right? That's an interesting concept. And what I've always, you know, I'm a, as you know, I have an extensive marketing background myself. I've been a marketing consultant, digital marketing consultant, and I think that we, the idea of translating people's missions into these kind of marketing actions, right? Talk a little bit about what you mean by marketing with meaning.

So it's one thing to say you offer a great service and you need to buy it now. It's another thing to say when you invest in this service, it helps you fix a problem you had. you have. And so when I'm building buyer personas or avatars or IP, like whatever word, they're all the same. It's identifying who you're trying to get in front of. Oftentimes I see businesses go right to, I'm offering XYZ and I wanna sell XYZ. I'm pausing that and saying, let's think about the consumer and what are their greatest challenges right now? that they don't even know that you exist and that you have this thing that can help them. But what pain are they having? What challenge? What problem? What struggle? You know, maybe I'm thinking that there's a spa, massage spa that I work with, right? And so one of them, it might be like, yeah, you have lower back pain, but okay, fine, right? You have lower back pain, chronic pain, whatever. That's a pain point. And we could dissect that even more. Or maybe it's just stress and anxiety. That could be another pain.

Right.

Right. So what's the solution? It's not the Swedish massage. It's the, I want to relax my muscles so that I don't have pain. I want to relax my brain so that the stress and anxiety calm down. I need to calm down. I need to relax. I need to chill. I need my muscles to calm, you know, all the That's the solution.

Right.

And so when we can start with the challenges and align to the solutions, then after we build the authority and trust and know, like, ability in here in that zone of brand awareness, then it's, oh, now that you trust me, you should get the 90-minute Swedish massage.

Right.

Gotcha. Excellent. I mean, the fact that— and again, it comes back down to core principles, right? I mean, It's marketing. We talk about like the authentic nature of things now, right? That authenticity is like a huge kind of like buzzword out there right now in the marketing space, right? When we were— when I was trained back in the 1990s, and by the way, John, it was the 1990s, just FYI, not the 1890s.

Good clarification.

Just making sure. That it was, there was kind of this opposite effect, right? The fact that we, what we were taught, what we were doing, maybe we weren't taught specifically, but I think that the notion was that you were trying to create a, you were trying to create a, create an idea, create a personality, create a thing, whether that was your product or you or whatever, right? And that was like a false narrative in a way, right? It was like we were kind of trying to make it be this way. But the reality is that your brand, as in general, right, is basically whatever everybody, your audience, thinks it is, right? Not necessarily what you think it is. And the ability to be able to harness that stuff and turn this around. But we now, now we're in an era where that really is like the mission is, you know, be that first, right? Is that how you're seeing it right now in terms of—

That, and I think even a gap between what you were saying and prior to that, even though I graduated in the '90s, so this would be before me. But if you think of like the Mad Men era, right, right, marketing was you need it, buy it now, and it's on sale, $19.99, right? And then there was the psychology of, well, no, not $19.99, $19.97. Because it's even better than $99.

Better, right?

Yeah. Like that action of you need to buy it now is not today. And I think we've seen that over the last decade, especially with the tool of StoryBrand and that realm. But I've seen companies who are offering $1,000 worth product or service, right? Like let's say web development. Some websites start, can be at $30,000, whatever dollars. And they came to me and Well, we want to do a display ad campaign to generate more website sales. And I'm like, so do you really think the person deciding to spend $40,000 is going to invest $40,000 on a click?

Right, because of the click.

Yeah, exactly.

Right. And you have— you got to back it up. And so that's probably an ex— that's an extreme scenario. But I think folks, businesses should think about what are they trying to get people to do in order to empower that click. So maybe it's just get to know me, get to know the business, or, or, you know, the slow roll, um, of that sales funnel. And so you just really have to think about human behavior, and AI can help guide you on what your target audience behavior could be. But that's where marketing is science and we watch what humans actually do.

Right. That's it. That's it.

Yeah. Yeah.

I was just going to— you mentioned sort of, well, what's in my mind is like branding and like sort of altering sort of what people— what Jo mentioned about perception. Like, I think of it as perception equals reality. So like, can you talk a little bit about your work in branding and how you either shaped a new company to sort of go after a target market or sort of shifted the perception of a brand to go after a different market, even though they started attracting one, but going towards another, if that question makes sense.

Yeah, this is great. And I'm gonna kind of answer it both from a design, graphic design seat, as well as strategy seat, because early in my career, and I have a fine arts degree in graphic design and worked in Columbus and specialized in creative art direction and branding. And so in that era, I hated doing logos. I like, I loved finalizing it, but to get to the logo, I hated. And what I realized was I wasn't asking the right questions because owners or whomever the decision maker is would come in like, hey, I want a logo that says exit and a green arrow through it, and then use green and blue and orange, right? And then I'm sitting like that. No, I'm not. I'm just picking on you.

I don't know.

That's not like really for what? Like I wasn't challenging it. And so over that time I created a whole workshop or a whole development exercise to really understand the breadth of the company and who it serves. And this is great for exiting, right? What are you doing this business for?

Right.

And it goes back into, are you selling it? Are you living it? I liked how you called it lifestyle. And, and really trying to pull that core into it as well as then diving into who you serve. Because then when we have those data points, it's easy to say, John, listen, I know you love blue and green, but that is not gonna be the thing for this company.

The audience.

The audience will relate better to the color psychology of blah, blah, blah, blah thing. Like we make it for the market. or the mass, you know, group that we wanna get in front of. And on top of that, the long shelf life to have that visual identity last with you. I don't know if you can see that 4-inch binder right there.

Yeah.

That is Cardinal Health's brand guidelines back when we used paper for those things. I worked under the VP of Global Brand, and that is our rule book. And when you look at that, sure, it's a logo with wings, but what does that mean and how is it used across all the things from a pen to a semi to a Pixis machine, you know, whatever, right? It's making sure it could be used across a lot of different things and saying the same thing all the time.

And the permutations of it. You know, obviously are again there's a use case for these things, and you want to make sure that there's consistency, constancy, right? What were the four C's? I'm trying to remember the marketing. But anyway, the you know the idea of it being it's this isn't just a your brand will be created whether you do you do it or not. So if you intent you can intentionally create your brand and do the things that are going to resonate with the audience. research and figure out what those things are, or you can have your brand created for you by your audience. Exactly. Which one would you rather have, right?

Well, yeah, and it leads back to like what we— when, when my old company, when we created a logo, we had a great idea for a logo and it was— it ended up being a sail in it. And someone critiqued it and we asked for feedback and they're like, you guys are an information company, what's with the sail? Like, you guys aren't selling marine products. And we all just sort of turned and looked at each other and like, they're exactly right.

Oops.

Right. And that's where sometimes owners want to be gimmicky and cutesy and, you know, and try to make up that gimmick. And it's like, well, wait, what are you trying to do? Right? Because maybe the sale for that thing would make sense to the mission and purpose of the business. So there's a lot of depth of questions that's going down into those little rocks of the aquarium. Right down into where the logo is placed on things. Because often business owners are like, I'm so tired of this logo, we gotta change it up. And I'm like, how long have you had it? Oh, like 2 years. I'm like, no, no, you hold on to that for at least 5 years and you make sure you are bored with it.

Because the minute you are bored with it, maybe people are just Well, it's so funny because, like, and it goes back to what you were talking about, about like the goals, right? The goals need to drive everything, right? And just because coming up with logos is fun or perceived as like, oh, we want to have a— we want to have it be blue and green or whatever that, you know, whatever it happens to be. If it doesn't align to the strategic goals, it doesn't help the business forward. Sorry, move forward. What's the point?

Right. That's right. And that's where strategists can come in, right? Because you don't know what blue and green psychological color means together. Or we all know what red, white, and black means. I mean, we've seen that throughout history.

Orange is the color of humanity.

Right. And so like, all kinds of things, you know, I rebranded that massage spa company. She was very earthy and whole, like they are holistic, but it was just very earthy kind of bohemian vibe in the location she was in for a really long time. But she got this opportunity to move down to the bayfront in a heavy tourist area connected to a hotel. And I challenged her and said, are you still going to be the earthy bohemian brand that you were? And she's like, no, it's time to evolve to match to the business plan, not necessarily the plan, right? But to the vision of the growth of the company where we're tourists, we're right on the water, we're elevating to spa features as facials and wraps, like all these other things. And so we went through a color journey, kept the same maca or loca, but changed the color palette. So it went from earthy bohemian to elevated spa tourist level.

Right.

That's so cool.

That's so great. And it was a simple color change.

What, and what I love about this, Jenny, is that we're using the brand here as an example, like the logo as the example of the brand, right? But obviously, people need to know that, you know, your brand is way more, right?

It's the experience that people have with you.

But it's a really good microcosm and a really good way of explaining the fact that your brand does matter, the thought, the thoughtfulness behind it, and when it is aligned with your mission, right? And the idea of your mission. And those are kind of larger principles about what you're about and what you offer. And at a glance, right, that's what the logo is supposed to do. That brand is a— that logo is an at-a-glance situation where you can look at this and go get the— and get the— get a feeling, right? And then— and that's the starting place. That's just the starting place of your brand, right? So now that you've got that, you know, you've got the logo there and you've got some— you've got some— you're obviously starting from a place where you're saying, what is your mission and what are your values and what are the things that you're trying to achieve and who are you as a person, who are you as a business and all that stuff, right? And some of that stuff, you must come across it all the time, especially at the beginning where people have no idea what those things are.

For sure. That's absolutely right. And I, I'd like to kind of echo on what you're saying and taking it from visual to experience to the so what. And one of the analogies, I love analogies. It's not an aquarium this time, but different theater. I'll say the brand and marketing intention is very much like going to the theater.

Hmm.

So if I said to you, and my daughters are in theater, so I'm gonna pick on them a little bit. So if you've never seen Into the Woods, right, I'm gonna come to you and say, Jo, Jot, you guys gotta go to Into the Woods. It was amazing. And that witch was phenomenal. And like, I'm hyping you up. I'm getting you excited to go see Into the Woods. And then I'll go further and say, we have the Warner Theater here, which is a historic, beautiful theater. They just renovated a nice— and then you go into the Warner And its gold beautiful staircase and the beautiful seats. Like, I'm hyping you up now for the environment in which you're gonna sit in to watch this hyped up now theater performance of Into the Woods. That is marketing's job.

Yes.

To get you excited to buy the ticket, to go to the space, sit down and watch the show. It's the business's job, AKA the witch, The actor's job to come out and deliver that performance the same way each night.

As advertised.

As advertised. The costumes have to be on point, the makeup, the set, the microphones have to work. Like, that was an issue in our play. Like, all the things, like, have to be on point every single time because the minute that is not on point Bad reviews come in, right?

Yeah. Expectation—

Expectations drop. Word of mouth is viral. The ticket sales plummet. And then you're in a what the heck moment of how are we going to generate more ticket sales?

And then you're blaming the marketing.

And then you're blaming the marketing. Well, then now, well, you had a bad performance. Now I'm going through And trying to do reputation management, customer recovery, selling back tickets. Like now it's even more expensive because they didn't deliver.

That's it.

Yeah. And getting— sorry, go ahead, Joe.

I was gonna say, so I mean, the point is, is that what you're pointing out here, Jenny, is that all this is connected. Okay. And the fact your service delivery and your sales process and your marketing, right. And the operation of your business and the way that you're out at the, you know, and in the community or whatever, it's all connected. Everything builds on another. Like you said, it's the small rocks and the bigger rocks and the whole thing. But in the theater example, the, you know, the idea is that everybody has to be singing from the same sheet music, right? And every part of the business— and by the way, this is true whether your business is 3 people or 3,000. 100%.

Okay.

Right. And in fact, The bigger it is, the more important it becomes because it's harder to control, right?

Yeah.

I'm just, if I'm the only person making ads, you know, in my company and doing the communication stuff, and I'm the only person making LinkedIn posts, whether I'm the owner or anybody else in the organization, that's really easy to control that. Now, I still need controls in place because what are the rules? How are we doing this? You can't be willy-nilly about it. You've got to have some Some, again, you need your brand guide or, you know, something like that driving you, setting guardrails. But the larger you become, and especially when you're in the exit situation or a potential exit situation, it becomes really critical, critically important to demonstrate to a buyer that you're all, that you have this system in place, that you know how to do this, and that this brand is, was built because you are intentionally building it. Not that it was like, well, you know, yeah, 5 years ago you can tell the story about how you just happened to, you know, to fall into this, right? But what you want to be demonstrating to a buyer right now is the intentionality behind it, the way that it's systematized, and the ability to be able to see the growth in that brand. And that growth, again, isn't an advertising situation. It's a full-on business thing where everything is attached and everything is, again, is rowing in the same direction.

Yeah, everything's aligned, as you said, Joe. It's like marketing brings in people, service delivery, and then there's like feedback loops, right? So like when you— when someone goes through a bad experience, it's like, oh, they should get a call from somebody and be like, hey, you, you had a— you had an experience at the theater where the microphones didn't work and the lighting was screwed up at the end, and we apologize for that. And it's amazing how When you say that to people and you tell people that, that they understand. People understand when something goes wrong, and it may be one experience out of, you know, out of 100 that happened. But like they say that, I don't know what the numbers are, but people tell, people do reviews and they write bad reviews, and more people read the bad reviews than the good reviews. And they'll tell 6 people about a bad experience and one or half a person about a good experience.

That's right. And you talked about feedback loop. And one of the analogies I've been using lately, because I collaborate with sales teams and sales coaches and sales consultants, is it used to be back in the day, marketing and sales were very fragmented departments.

Yeah.

Right? But now we play, well, a good structure, they play in the same sandbox. We may have our own equipment and you have your equipment, but we're in the same thing together. And the analogy that I've used in that seat is a bow tie. And so marketing's role is to flood people in from one side of the bow tie to get to the knot, where then sales takes it, converts them, and then they replicate and generate client lifetime value, loyalty programs, reward programs, referral programs. And that's where marketing comes back in to help close that feedback loop. But marketing is the baton handoff to sales because we're talking to the same people and nurturing them just at different points of the journey.

One is downstream from the other, right? And the reality is that, but again, you need the sales guy. And we talked about this with Corey Brucia a couple of weeks ago, right, John? I mean, the reality is that you need to have— one is downstream from the other, and you need to be able to not just have it be a one-direction thing. That's the biggest issue that we've seen, and I've seen it from a marketing standpoint too, because again, I spent a lot of time as a marketing consultant, and I did a thing I called operational kind of marketing, which was the notion that marketing had to be part of your operations. Marketing is not, and this is a huge mistake that people make, and it goes along with investment and the ROI and money and the way that advertising is viewed. And I'm saying advertising, which is, by the way, to be clear, is just one segment of marketing, and I should be very clear. Clear to say that, which is another common misconception, right? But the idea here is that when you're we are we are trained to have things kind of go one way. Okay, I'm doing this marketing out here or this advertising out here, probably more likely meaning your example going back. I want to have digital you know digital banner ads. Why anybody wants that anymore, I don't know. But any case, the the you know that's what I want to do, and I and because you know that's what you know. Right? And so I want to drive that, you know, I understand that it starts with going out there, showing people I exist, and telling them in some kind of communication that I'm there, and here's a call to action, and come to this thing or go to this website or whatever. Where, where, where, where what? Because that's the big first question, right? Is like, okay, so I, if I am doing whatever I'm doing outbound, meaning sending, you know, information or content out into the world with the hope that it somehow, it starts to attract people to a place, to a product, to a thing, right? Sales then, digital, in the digital world, the sales part becomes the website, right? The sales part is the experience of checkout, the experience of browsing through, how easy it is to do that. What are the things in my way? The coupons that I'm getting on the thing, right? If you just use the analogy. But in, in other businesses, in non-digital businesses, in service businesses and things like that, where there are, where you need human intervention to discuss the different things we do and, or get your, let me assure that what we do is custom. So let me see what your needs are, whatever. The idea is that now what I need is that not, I need a warm handoff, right? But I want what I want. There's some through, right? There are some through, uh, Notes that need to pass through, right? And musically, like, you know what I mean? Like, does that make sense?

It does. And then what's coming up is businesses and even nonprofits that I work with that have the executive director or CEO leading the charge of marketing, whether they have in-house or not, the CEO is the one in charge of saying what's working or not, right? It is our marketing investment. doing something? All the things that you just talked about, Jo, right? How does the CEO say, yeah, that thing that we're doing is working?

Right.

And what I'm hitting is so many people don't know how to ask those right questions. So there's a nonprofit that I'm working with, Schooley Mitchell, through maybe consulting with this large nonprofit, and they spend a lot of money on a lot of marketing. And they don't have a reporting system in place to say what thing is actually working.

Right.

You know, is influencer marketing correct? And so from those conversations on that large scale to my smaller businesses, I just recently, just this week or last week, forgetting the time period now of summer, but I created a quick guide called What's Actually Working: A Leader's Guide to Evaluating Marketing Performance. And there's a handful of questions in there in which owners, CEOs, top leaders now can ask of their team if they have in-house marketing and/or with their vendors to challenge them on what is actually— what's— I'm paying X amount for X thing. What's it doing? Right.

What's my ROI on that marketing investment? Yeah.

And so often when I hear marketing doesn't work, my response immediately is always, there's probably something broken in your house because they don't have that system in place to say, oh, out of the 2 million impressions we got and the 30% click-through rate we got, it generated X amount of leads. Oh, and sales took those leads and was able to convert 50% of them. Like they, a lot of businesses don't have that kind of structure in place.

Most. Well, it's like, it's the, it's, I can't remember. I think it was Mel Karmazin who said, like, we know 50% of our marketing is working. We just don't know which 50%.

John Wanamaker, John. But actually, that was the, that was it. Okay. Yes. Yeah. I know 50. I know half my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half.

Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So.

And sometimes we may not always know, right? Because brand awareness campaigns are very hard to measure, right? We might be able to get a surface level of measurement just by increase web traffic or whatever. But if you can set some benchmarks and have some metrics to at least monitor when you increase spend or efforts and you see the needle move, as well as the business performance is improving. I once asked a hot sales leader from New York, I had a great conversation, much like Jo and I have had conversations, and I said to him, what would you say to a business owner as far as what marketing is working to help your sales? And he said, they're not gonna care about the Facebook ad or the blog or the whatever little thing, as long as the efforts overall are moving the needle. That's what owner wants to see.

Right. Yeah.

And so that's why one of the things that fueled a tool that I created, here's another gen word, the Generate Marketing Toolkit, and with a J-E-N. And it's just a beautiful spreadsheet, but it's looking at month over month across the primary channels of advertising spend. spends and efforts and looking at, did we increase those numbers from last month and year over year? And while, did the business performance goals go up? So if we were trying to get more leads, if we're trying to get more bookings, if we're trying to get more attendance, like whatever the things are that we said we're trying to do marketing for, is everything increasing? And, and often, like, so recently I've been working with a nonprofit for quite a while. We generated 11,000 job applications over the course of a year, which is really great for them. But they converted less than 3% of those. And of that 3%, I don't— I can't tell you how many stayed. So my marketing questions are, were they the right candidates?

Right.

Why were they the wrong candidates? Who is the right candidate? What happened once they got into your system? Did you call them? Did you respond to them? Is it really an hourly wage issue or is it a communication issue? Like, you have to go at it from Or attracting the wrong audience, right?

It's like maybe the 3% conversion was because you were attracting the wrong audience and there just happened to be the 3% that converted. Let me ask you a question.

My toolkit can say, well, oh, you know what, those things we invested in that we had to plummet. So I know that, and from the little rocks, there was a handful of little rocks that weren't working right. But in this case, I was able to say, listen, all my little rocks were— they were, they were doing great.

In my previous, in previous jobs, I was like this CFO of a company and my marketing VP would come to me and say, hey, we need to spend this amount of money on brand, brand marketing and this amount of money on sort of, and I'm getting the wrong word, but tactical marketing, right? Marketing that would drive sales. And I'd always say to her, I say, I get brand marketing, but like, what's the ROI on the brand marketing and how do we measure it? So Can you talk a little bit about how should entrepreneurs think about when they're a marketing person who has good ideas, you know, but how should founders and people thinking about it to think when they have a small budget, how should they think about how brand marketing will work for them in the long term and how they should measure it?

So there's a lot of answers I could do in here, but the first thing I'm going to say is it goes back to the goals. Right. If they're not trying to increase sales right away, brand awareness is a great approach to do. And I'm gonna, I know we're gonna be visual and audible, but so here's a chart showing when we do brand awareness. So you have to have a decent budget to do brand awareness.

Yes.

Right. And this is not something you can stop and start. This is something that goes on throughout the year. And it can be very expensive. So this chart is showing, the blue lines are showing we're spending brand awareness budget each month the same, and the growth bar here is showing we're slowly growing across the year.

So, so, so, and I'm going to interpret this in my, in my parlance, if that, if that's helpful, is, you know, what you're saying here with this chart is brand awareness is sort of table stakes. And it's required in order to grow the brand. Like, yes, you obviously need growth marketing to get people to come to the website and buy the product, but also is required is brand marketing to, to let everyone know that you have this offer and you have this product or service available to them.

It's the air cover.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah, that's great. And so this is great for businesses who want to invest in marketing but don't necessarily need to do a spike in sales, right? They just want to maintain their brand. So I call this a long-term strategy.

And Jenny, sorry, just again to describe, okay? So what we have here is a chart where you've got January through December, okay? And what you see is a blue bar that basically represents the same exact amount of spend across every single month. That's in the brand awareness category. And then what you see is a green, a green line with a bunch of dots showing that this is the growth of the, of the, of the company, right? And essentially what that is happening, what you're seeing there is that over that course of that year, you were seeing the growth kind of steadily start to increase until it eventually is outpacing the brand awareness spend.

Correct. That's excellent. Thank you.

And part of the reason for that, right, Jenny, I think, is that without the brand awareness, you wouldn't have the same trajectory of growth. That's the thinking, is that it's the brand awareness is not directly feeding each sale, but it helps sort of in an overall way to again make people aware that you have this product and service, and maybe you get a couple people clicking on the page to To buy the product.

Correct. And so slow-moving KPIs that we would monitor is just web traffic or database growth or slow lead captures.

Okay, thank you.

Yep. And so then if we look at a short-term one, so here's a different strategy. This is, I call it demand versus brand awareness. So what you're seeing is the same calendar bar, but ad Spend 3 times a year. I mean, you can pick the frequency, but in this case—

Yeah. And what you're looking at here is this is like a shark graph that I used to have in one of my old businesses, is that it spikes up when you're doing the advertising, that growth advertising goes down for a couple of months and then spikes back up, presumably in the month right after the advertising is going or when the advertising is happening. So it sort of gradually is going up. In sort of a dorsal fin type of graph.

Correct, exactly. And so, well, I'll usually do this if clients don't have long-term spend capability, or if they even have seasonal parts of their growth of their sales calendar, right? If they're dipping in the summer, then we'll do a spike just before the summer that helps fill that dip.

So that's it, which, look, and that's a huge piece of the, you know, the kind of the background and the discovery work that you have to do to be able to even set this strategy, right, is that to understand that there's a cyclical nature to the business, that there is a, right, that there are, there are times. So your marketing spend can be set around these natural kind of occurrences in your, in your business to make it more efficient, right?

Correct, 100%. And so this is if you have a small budget or have needs Quick growth, right? Right. This is a nice— the long-term strategy, brand awareness, is just keep it steady. And then I show it, well, when you do it together, right, right now you have brand awareness and growth happening simultaneously, and you can have more growth.

And so what you're seeing in this chart basically is that you see the, again, the brand awareness being spread, right? Brand awareness money being spent across entire year at the same rate, then you're gonna see these natural spikes of your natural seasonal business or whatever. And so you're gonna see, in this case, we got a spike in March, we got a spike in June, we got a spike in September. And that happens naturally. That's the demand, the natural demand of the business already in there, right? And then you've got your growth spend on top of that, or your growth is happening then as a result. And it's exponential compared to the longer-term, you know, brand awareness only situation. So the lesson, I think, Jenny, if I could just say it, just to make sure that I'm saying it correctly, is it is all of these things. It is all of them together, and it is in a focused way, right? And again, if your spend is, hey, I've got enough money to keep this air cover going all the way along throughout the year, every year, then you should absolutely be doing that. And then the tactical spikes of the wherever that makes sense. If I've got a, you know, if I'm an alcoholic beverage company, the whole thing, I'm gonna see a natural spike in the summer and a natural spike around the holidays. Like, those are the 2 big things at the end of the year. Those are the 2 big places that we play, right? That's one example, right? And so what I'm gonna wanna do is I wanna heavy up my spend At those times where it's natural that I'm happening, right? What lots of people do, I think incorrectly, Jenny, and back me up on this if you think I'm right, is I stop spending money when I have the natural things happening already.

Yep, because they're busy. And that's where I always want a business coach to come in, because they'll have the oh crap moment, right? Like, well, if I do more spending, then I'm gonna need to hire more people Get another truck, get more product. And like all that, that quality, that theater, that witch, right? The actors, you need more of them. And sometimes people don't know how to make growth happen.

Right. But growth is not just happening because you're, you're promoting it. It's because you are servicing it, the growth.

Well, yeah, it's like in real estate when back in the day when we were doing marketing, we noticed a crazy amount of people looking at houses the day and the week after the Super Bowl for whatever reason, right? And we just leaned into that and did all sorts of marketing around that to say, yes, we were leaning into the— we saw the demand spike up, but we had to spend, to Jo's point, we wanted to spend at the time when people were looking because that would just increase the growth and increase, you know, all the metrics that we were seeing, websites, leads. Visits to agents, all those types of things.

So, yeah, and it comes back to business. What do you want? Do you want to continually be busy and to continually grow? Or when business seasonality goes down, are you good with slowing down? And do you want to stay—

Is that a respite for you? Are you able to use that time to do something else or focus on things or whatever? But I think, again, from a purely from a marketing standpoint, and again, especially from an ROI, because, you know, look, I've so many conversations about this with founders and CEOs and marketing directors, you know, from in my previous life about the spend. And of course, all marketing people feel this way because again, they're marketing people. But the ability to be able to, as John said, lean into the times that are natural that way and build a plan around marketing at those times, right? Because that's a net, you've got a natural occurrence happening that you want more of.

Yeah.

And so that's where you spend the money, right? And if there are times that are, and then, no, look, if you have the ability to then say, hey, look, we, and this is again where I think where a lot of, of CEOs are is, well, I've got these natural things. I wanna recreate this at times when I don't have these natural spikes. Yeah.

So you have consistent lead flow or consistent sales and, and that becomes a slightly even yet different Strategy, right?

Right.

And the phrase is feast or famine. And how many business owners are tired of the feast and famine mentality? Marketing can play a role in helping that.

Let me ask. So, Jenny, what have you— you know, a question we like to ask a lot of people is, what have you learned along the way? Right? Like, what's your biggest learning either from clients or from other people along the way when you're consulting with all these types of small business in your areas of expertise?

What I've learned along the way is you have— I love working with people that are intentional. I mean, the intentional business owners, meaning they have a growth plan, even if it's not finite, they at least have a gist of what they're trying to do.

Mm-hmm.

I can come in and do better. My, my learning along the way, yeah, I have a fine arts degree in graphic design and an entrepreneurial background. My career has gone into strategy because I ask a lot of questions and I understand the arena of business.

Right.

And how marketing can be a collaborative partner in that space. And, you know, going right down to dad who's investing in whatever for the market, they want to know what's working. Or the hospitality company that I worked with, they want to know I'm spending X, what's it doing?

Right.

I want to be able to help answer those questions. And so I listen to the market, I listen to what people's challenges are, I craft my expertise around helping answer those questions like this, what's actually working. you know, quick guide for leaders because I can't get in your door if you don't even understand how marketing can help you.

Sure.

That's it.

Thanks.

What, on that same kind of theme, a little bit about the stuff that you've learned along the way is, you know, if there was something that you had, could have shared with yourself that you know now that you could have shared with yourself at the start of your journey in terms of your business journey and stuff, Is there anything that pops to mind that you go, man, if I had just known this 20 years ago?

Yeah, I think 2 things. One, as a graphic design major, I wish marketing and business were required classes within that structure.

Ooh, that's a good point.

And being self-employed, you know, to invest in continuing ed for me doesn't make sense or didn't make sense because it's not like I can charge higher because I have another degree.

Right.

Right.

So doing more business structural at the beginning. I think the other one is, you know, we've heard probably the last decade, I'm sure you have too, of, um, there's riches in niches and there's so many people afraid to niche, um, myself included. So in the creative era of the business, I hated and had it as a core value to not work with the same type of company at the same time, especially in the same area, because I felt very unethical of helping them craft advertising marketing strategies to position them against each other.

It's just that this is a great point. I want to pause here for a second. This is a huge thing that you're saying, and this is fantastic because I have, it is, it is a very common practice for advertising agencies in particular. Okay. And we work with a lot of agencies and do a lot of agency, you know, transitions and stuff.

Okay.

And I come out of that world. But one of the things that you're, when you talk about niches, right, is that, well, what kind of, what kind of experience do you have working with my kind of company? Right. That's one of the, one of the things that owners always wanna know when you're talking to people So true. What experience do you have working on my thing? And we would come and say, in the old days, we'd say, well, here's, we've done this and this, even if it wasn't here, these people have worked on these things. And so they can bring this experience. And so we have all this stuff. And so, and then of course what happens too is that agencies build niche agency businesses where I only do, you know, whatever, I only do blah, blah, blah. And to me, that always, what you just said always seemed like it was a problem. which is like, yeah, I might get good at doing this, but at some point I'm starting to become a cookie cutter. And I am— how am I going to— how can I— how can you really— how can I assure the client that I'm doing this, I'm bringing my background and I'm bringing my experience, but what I'm doing here is completely original for you? It's almost impossible to do. And so I never understood why What, what I always wanted— want, want, and what I always tried to position myself was, is, is I have so much experience in other businesses. That's the, that's the experience you want me to bring. You know your business.

So that's, that's the relevant point to today, right? So then I was adamant on different businesses. When I came back and revived the agency, Jen, I went through a marketing ad marketing coaching program. It was very elite. And the hardest exercise I went through in those 2 years was figuring out my niche. And I came out of that really— it was really hard for me, like, to go— as I compare as an artist, like, what's your favorite color? Well, I like all the colors. How am I supposed to pick?

Right.

Right. And so I picked one, and that was nonprofits. And so And so the last 5 years I've been driving the nonprofit pain of everything I'm trying to talk about, about nonprofits. And here's what I've learned in this year. Niche, but niche in 4 at least.

Uh-huh.

Because back into freelance era, the consulting then, and I did a lot of work with national freelance creative organizations. Nationwide. And the, the mode and the method and algorithm then was always carry 4 freelance clients, because if you lose one, you only lose 25% of your business, right? And not all of it.

Mm-hmm.

And so that has come to, for me now with the state of our country and nonprofits, of I should have picked Because then I could— oh, nonprofits is hung up. Great. I'm just gonna focus on the other 3 now.

Right, right.

Great point.

Yeah, but you're right. And again, from the agency perspective, that's obviously a good business plan for you, right, in terms of your growth and your ability to stay around that stuff, right? From the client's perspective, one of the things that they ought to know or realize is that the perspective you bring from your work in other places is what's the most valuable thing. Because you're used to, as the owner, as the founder, you are used to doing it a way, you've been successful at it. And John, here's your entry into today's thing, right? But what got you here, John, will not get you there. Won't get you there.

You probably can't see that this sign behind me says, if you change nothing, Nothing will change.

That's exactly right.

But don't you think going niching and generalization can be a polarizing conversation? That's because like if I wanted to enter a SaaS world, right? Like I've never sold SaaS. So how are they gonna like, I've gotten the question, well, you don't know about my industry, you don't know what we do. And I'm like, it doesn't matter. You still have consumers that have challenges and you offer solutions and you have an ad budget. So we're gonna figure out how to place the right In front of the right people.

And what we do, and again, that's the thing, you're bringing process, right? And framework, right? As opposed to completed, done things. And so, if you want to be in a— there are, by the way, there are places that if you really believe in that and that's what you want, you can go to a place that is a cookie-cutter place and they will give you the thing and they will give you the website and they will give you all that stuff that exists, right? But what we, what we have seen from an exit standpoint is that that's What you do not want to do, what you don't want to be, okay, is a cookie-cutter thing that looks like somebody else that does the same thing. That, that is shooting yourself in the foot from an exit standpoint right from the beginning, right?

I can see that from a real estate side, right? It's like you're either gonna buy the house that looks the same on the whole block, or you're gonna buy the house that has the character and the charm and has invested care into it.

That's exactly right. And now look, some people are okay with the cookie cutter. And that's fine. And like I said, there's nothing— there is something out there for everybody. But if you want true growth and you want to create true value in your business, right, and you need marketing help in marketing to be able to do that, then again, what you really want at the end of the day is something that is uniquely yours, okay? And that is, again, it got a unique selling proposition and all that stuff, a unique brand, and all the things that we've been talking about this And so, and, and the, and what you want again is to, is to be working with people like Jenny as just one example, who are bringing process to you, who are bringing framework, bringing a point of view or, or a lens through which, right, this, this stuff is viewed because that's how you get the best, the best thing for your specific business.

Yeah.

Not because I've done it 5,000 times in a repeatable process, right? But because I'm thinking about it with you, together with you, through my— all my 20 years of experience across all these different things. I'm going to bring better ideas. I'm going to bring more. And the way that you're doing it too, in this kind of measurable way, right? Because nothing can change if you can't measure it. How do I know if it changes?

Yeah, if you're not measuring, just throwing it up, seeing what sticks, and having the CFO yell at you about how much marketing you're spending.

That's exactly right. If you have a CFO.

That was me, that was me. Sorry, I didn't mean to yell.

John's constantly yelling about that. Jenny, fascinating stuff. You have, you are, you're a wonder. You are, you honestly, you are the kind of person that You know, your personality and easy to work with, and you're thinking things through, and you're an open, you know, you're an open book in terms of your ability to keep learning and all that stuff, which is also, I think, is a really key thing, you know, when you're working with any kind of partner, is that they're like that themselves. You've talked about already about the coaching you've received and were open to and the whole thing as you have gone through your journey here. So, I mean, it's really, really great. Jenny, where can people get in touch with you? What's the best way for people to reach out to you and get in touch with Agency Jen?

Yeah, so I would say 2 ways. You can go to agencyjen.com, and that's J-E-N, and there's all kinds of free tools and all kinds of information there and gateways to come in. Um, or LinkedIn. I'm super in love in the LinkedIn space, um, right now. So if you search Jenny Marofsky, Mar of Skye, that you'll be able to find me there too, and we can have a conversation. I right now in the season of the career and the season of the climate, I am hungry for more conversations like this and to expand my network, just to meet more people and to hear what other people are going through. And, you know, maybe I'll get a referral from it, but I would love to have more conversations. So I invite anybody to Ask me for a virtual coffee date.

That's awesome. Very cool. John, you know, when we talk with with people every day about their businesses, and we've we spend a lot of time on the marketing side of things when we're talking with people because so much of it is about obviously is such such such a linchpin to growth, right? That it is a it is a major part of of or should be a major part of almost everybody's business. There are different places in the journey where it becomes more important. But I think the big lesson today is having people in your corner like Jenny, okay, as one, just one example, one great example, is imperative in terms of your transition, right? So whatever plan that you're going to make about, should I stay? Should I grow? Right? Optionality is what we talk about a lot. Okay? We want our clients to make sure that they have, that, that they get options, right? Selling the company will come one day, right? What you want is to be able to be setting yourself up to be the healthiest, most sustainable situation you can that raises your value and scalability, and you're ready to go at any point. But you need people like Jenny.

Yeah. And, and, and being intentional, like Jenny was talking about earlier in the, in the, in the podcast is, Setting your goals. And setting your goals can mean your marketing goals. It can be your exit planning goals. And as long as you set your goals and you have an objective with those goals, I guess those are the same things, but having a goal that you will achieve and a spend that you have and an ROI that you expect. Don't do things randomly. Don't plan for your exit randomly by doing, you know, 4 things. sort of using Canva to do marketing. No, you need to work on your marketing goals, just like you need to work on your exit planning goals. If you want to get somewhere, you need to know how to get there.

And invest, right? You can't make money if you don't spend money. So all of the things that you just said, John and Jo, but come ready to invest because it's not just into Jenny. It's, it's a pay-to-play space. And if you don't have money, you have to be able to spend time. So if you don't have time, you gotta pony up.

That's an excellent point. And again, as far as ExitEngine is concerned, okay, is that, you know, this is a place for everybody, okay? This is a place where founders and, and, you know, and advisors can get together, can play in the same sandbox, can, can, can get advice, can learn how to be able to move their needle forward, okay? And I think what I, what One of the things that we love about our, you know, people like Jenny being in our network is that, you know, is that they are— this is the kind, the same kind of mentality, right? It is a like-minded situation where Jenny isn't here just to make money. Jenny's got a mission, right? Jenny's got a larger mission, larger than herself and larger than her business, right? She's got a belief and she wants to see people You know, improve and be better. So, Jenny, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for being part of our network and, and, and for, for, for coming on the podcast today. Everything you're doing is amazing. She— you, you, you can get half an hour with Jenny to sit down and talk about her. You will walk away, you will be a believer. Those graphs and things like that that we had, guys, you'll be able to find that in the, in the notes. We'll actually post that up there so you can see what Jenny was was looking at in terms of those, in terms of those kind of plans, strategic plans. And keep in mind that, that everything at ExitEngine, okay, is all about helping you set an exit trajectory. The marketing, right, piece, you may need a fractional CMO along the way. You may eventually need a full-time CMO along the way, right? Another thing that Jenny potentially can help you with, and again, it may not be her, it may be someone she recommends, but this is again, What, what, what all of these fractional people do, Jon, right, is that they are there for you in this kind of like interim stage, helping you get set up, helping you grow, and potentially, you know, working themselves out of a job, right, is kind of almost, you know, their intent.

It's exactly, it's exactly their intent. They come in for a specific function, specific goal, specific, um, set of objectives, right? And they Once they achieve those objectives or, you know, then they go. Or it can be like where you have a fractional person that's only, you only need them 10 hours a week or 10 hours a month or however. So the fractional sometimes gets a bad name, but like, I think it's a wonderful value for getting an expert for 10 hours a week, 10 hours a month, whatever you need.

So yeah, that's exactly it. And just to echo on that, it might be just for 3 months. It might be just to help you rebuild a platform or rebuild a structure to let your team go. I mean, it all depends. So, yeah.

Well, Danielle Morawski, thank you so much for being here. Agency Jen. All right, this is— she's always going to be known as Agency Jen. Hey, John, call Agency Jen. Okay, I'll get her on the phone. Agency Jen is, uh, is where you— who we've been discussing, we've been talking with today. Uh, thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate it, guys. Exit Engine Podcast. Thank you for for listening. If you have not yet subscribed, wherever you are, okay? And if you are listening to this, you know, in somewhere other than Spotify and Apple, I would implore you to please go to Spotify and Apple and and start commenting. Subscribe here. You'll get you'll be the first to get this every Friday. If you go subscribe right now, you're going to get this thing downloaded. It's going to be it's going to be. waiting for you when you wake up Friday morning. Okay? And if you could do that, because we know you love this so much. But in any case, if you have questions about what your exit trajectory should be or how to do it or anything that has to do with you selling your business, please feel free to reach out to John or I at any time. Okay? You can email us directly. I am jo@myexitengine.com. That is John, j-o-h-n, at myexitengine.com. exitengine.com. You can email us anytime, find us on LinkedIn, share this podcast with the business owner you love. Thank you so much for being here today. We'll see you next week. Jenny, thank you so much for your time today. Really, really appreciate it.

Thanks, Jay.

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