Collaborative Marketing: Winning Strategies

Speaker 1: that feel like for you you have to work backwards on how am I going to get there you can think about your 5year plan I want to be making $100 million a year but then you have to break it down to what is that oneyear plan what is that six-month plan what am I going to do this quarter and also another thing people Miss is at each one of those levels in order to get to that level you need to understand what does my business need to look like to function at that level and sustain that I'm Melanie VAR welcome back to the shilp podcast your go-to place to empower you to live the life and business that you crave I'm here to talk about everything from Having the courage to make life and career leaps to the details of how to lead effectively create successful teams Implement strategies for growth and Infuse Tech Innovation I'm here to celebrate your wins and navigate through your challenges I live in the city now but I grew up in a town of a thousand people I've navigated major life leaps a senior level corporate career worked in professional sports and now as a successful entrepreneur who loves business technology family and making meaningful connections with you and the Sheil it Community I also love a good workout and dose of self-care magic happens when we focus on the part of ourselves and our business that brings us joy so turn up the audio open your favorite Notes app grab your favorite drink and here we go welcome back to the sheet builted podcast thank you for joining us Courtney share with us the journey that led to the creation of screws and stilettos and about your marketing like a CMO course sure I've been in digital marketing for 19 years I've always focused on Google ads analytics SEO a little bit of where screws and slos came from I do a lot of the nuts and bolts of the work of our projects my sister and partner on the other hand does a lot of the front end facing things the Stiletto so she does a lot of the design but then she also handles a lot of the automation Where it All Began was I was in digital agencies and although I was able to climb the ladder fast and get to where I wanted to be title wise and position-wise it didn't fully align with me because a lot of what it was about taking these big pharmaceutical companies or these huge culinary institutes or whatever it was at the time and roping them into these large monthly retainers 10 $220,000 retainers with the intent and that could just be for let's say just SEO so nothing more than just your SEO but what I saw from my perspective was there was only three to four hours of solid work going into that account every month and beyond that it was project management account management and then some reporting and the strategy itself too to help enable these companies to be able to do these things or leverage these things across other initiatives wasn't there it was intended to be gatee kept even when it comes to assets the website all that stuff the agency is naturally it's a business but all about securing its Pipeline and in doing so they essentially handcuffed their client to themselves in one way or another whether that is a lack of transparency about a strategy a lack of training or informing or guiding a team on how to do themselves or how they can leverage these things elsewhere or the ownership of assets and locking them out of being able to do certain things and Beyond the fact that I like that's not enabling these businesses and I just didn't align with that and then there was also some other moral dilemmas of trying to write ads for Prostate Cancer drugs to sell drugs to cancer patients and it didn't match up there but beyond that I want to help companies and I want them to succeed and I loved seeing the positive results I started to push back at the agency world and try to get them to hand a little more of The reigns over and it didn't sit well and that's where I realized that I was at the end of where I was going to be in this journey and that there would be a shift I ended up moving on with my sister she opened her own small business grw to $5 million all organically I joined her as an interim president and the headed up the marketing team there and then from there after growing to about 120 employees we found ourselves in the same situation of we're not really helping all these people anymore we've lost a lot of what we get excited about and what makes us great and where our passions are and that's really in enabling people to do awesome in the business World whatever their passion is enabling them to do it and to provide those services or products to other people so we ended up stepping away from that and that's where we ended up starting our consultancy and it ended up being that all of our customers for consultancy side of thing or all word of mouth and they all came to us for essentially the same reasons that I left the agency they were stuck in these agency traps they don't know how to grow their business and they don't have a solid marketing strategy they don't know how to implement and they just think that the only option is to Outsource everything and so our real focus is to bring it all in house and teach you how you can do it and delegate and leverage people but using strategies that really work to attract customers boost sales and just grow your business but in a sustainable fashion no no quick fixes and it's great that you're helping companies move like a Scarab versus move like a ship and speed of technology today companies need to know how to do it they don't necessarily need to do it but things change so fast understand it because this the pace at the way things move you can be doing something but maybe that's not the best thing for you but you still keep doing it because you don't really know any other option and you don't know how to do it yourself so it's great that you're empowering businesses with that ability to be able to make those decisions and not keeping them out of it there's definitely a place and a time to Outsource things for people but my recommendation is inhouse it so even if you're going to if you need some help with let's say your social media and growing your social media side of thing or the engagement so the scheduling post and all that stuff find yourself a VA that knows has some social media experience that you have ownership of that you can also leverage them to do whatever other tasks that you need but going to a social Agency on the other hand that's where a lot of brand identity is lost that's where a lot of your look and feel is lost that you can't just say actually this isn't working for me I'm going to switch right now and do all my videos a different way they're like oh we're already like two weeks into the next plans we can't switch whatever else so that's where you lose your agility and as a small business you need agility if you only ever want to be chasing your competitors then go ahead and Outsource everything I think any business needs that because at the pace we live things can change quickly and maybe you want to Rebrand and do something a little different not a complete Rebrand but Rebrand your social like you mentioned just a little but you're right you can get so stuck in that where they're like no to do that would be this and you're right we need that ability to make those quick movements and changes yeah and actually there's a few different sites that companies that we explored for insourcing essentially activities or responsibilities or tasks that we needed some additional help for we just only have so much capacity within a day of to get all these things done and we're obviously growing our business as well but one of them that I found really helpful was somewhere.

Speaker 1: comom and they have you can essentially go to them with I want someone that specializes in HubSpot with four to seven years of experience and they get you exactly what you want and our assistant that we have right now is absolutely wonderful and it's just made such a worth of a difference every day I give her exactly what we need done she has our brand best interest in mind and I don't feel trapped by anything thank you for sharing that resource because I've tried certain things where they promise all these things and it doesn't necessarily happen so if you're having the experience where it's actually happening and you're having a good experience thank you for sharing that resource it is unbelievable so I I'm very much of a mindset that if you think about the agency world when the people that are you've outsourced to at these agencies go to sleep at night they're not thinking about how to grow your business they're thinking about how to grow their business and that's what the difference of bringing on independent contractors or assistant or whatever it might be for you bringing that under your umbrella is the difference of the experience I have right now with this assistant she was even doing some of our social and I saw a few comments on there and I screenshot to my sister I was like oh is this you and she was like No And I was like that was better than I could have said great and she it's just it's wonderful having someone that really is on your team and has your best interest in mind provides very valuable feedback but also sees how everything in your world is connecting whereas these agencies it's very compartmentalized tell us about your course how does your course help to drive market results that leaders can be proud of and want to share so the whole premise of our course is essentially to teach you the simple marketing strategies that we've learned tested they're proven we've leveraged them throughout our combined over 30 years but teach you the simple marketing strategies that will help your small business attract more customers boost your sales and scale at a fast pace but in a sustainable fashion and we teach you these things one of the big differences of our course is beyond the fact that we're teaching you all these techniques it's very personalized we give you Hands-On Consulting sessions to go with it so we can attack your biggest struggles and challenges and really get you on a clear path moving forward because that's another thing I find is so often these businesses don't have that path to get them out of the breath that they're in so we really hone in on that to help give you the smarter path of how to grow your business instead of grabbing at this quick fix and this quick fix and seeing if that's going to work and really talking about your dialing it back and creating that entire Foundation that you need to succeed so when it gets to a point of something like paid ads you know that if you turn off those paid ads your business is still going to thrive and function and drum up new business because you have that foundation in place whereas a lot of people jump straight to ads although we do go through ads in depth and how to run them efficient for small businesses we start with the Strategic side of things where what is your mission statement what is your uvp your unique value proposition what is your marketing position how can you differentiate yourself from competitors to standout then we bring you through the process of based on your target where should you be present and how you can effectively be present on those platforms in those Arenas and get ahead without also throwing your entire wallet into it so it's really about that enablement of teaching you these things to give you the skills help you succeed but also help you build up your own internal team it's great that you go that in depth in what the company and the business and the people need because so often we pitched things I was just pitched to work with a recruiter and I went through one of the conversations and it was like do you want to buy it do you want to buy it it was like a really heavy sale and I thought this is going to be a relationship that's about people and I'm going to have to have a relationship with them and actually it's hiring people so to have that heavy pressure do you want to buy it Without Really asking me what I needed it's great that you're going that in depth because that's what people need cuz so often today yes Ai and we all use Chach gbt and all the things but it's so great when a company tries to figure out what you need and what the business needs and really goes in depth to try to make that happen cuz that is becoming more unique unfortunately I agree thank you for acknowledging that I really appreciate that the two biggest things that I really want to find out from people are what are your struggles and what is your dream goal and what does that feel like for you what would that dream feel like for you and then you have to work backwards on how am I going to get there you can think about your fiveyear plan I want to be making $100 million a year but then you have to break it down to what is that oneyear plan what is that six-month plan what am I going to do this course and also another thing people Miss is at each one of those levels in order to get to that level you need to understand what does my business need to look like to function at that level and sustain that and that's something we've really helped people build is at one year if you want $10 million and 2,000 people what does your business need to look like to support even customer service for 2,000 people or onboarding 2,000 people so it's really not just about oh that's a great goal yeah let's help you get there let's type in some ads and we're going to just throw some budget at it and we're going to get you a bunch of leads but it's about creating that business structure that is again sustainable that will enable that growth in the future and enable you to get to those goals but in a way that your business will be fully supported when you get there magic happens when we focus on the part of our business and ourself that brings s joy we talked a lot about business today what is one thing that you do to make sure that you find and live your joy I like to be outside every year for my birthday I'm not a big birthday person but I have two things I want every year for my birthday to be outside of Nature and a watermelon that's it I really Value Health I've been PL based for about 10 years at this point but it's really health and nature and I want to be outside I want to be with my kids my family the people I love I love to go for runs I haven't done enough of it lately but it's not even about the run it's about that fresh air and it's about seeing that beautiful view breathing in the grass smell like it's it's really just about the light and the nature and surrounding yourself with love I hear you the running is my meditation too you feel so much better when you come back in our previous business when I didn't have a lot of time to run we had beds in our office and sometimes we stayed there for two weeks at a time because it would be wedding season and it was a wedding rental and Custom Fabrication business when I would hit a block of like how are we going to solve this problem I would either do one of two things I'd go for a 30 minute run and it would come to me or i' take a 10-minute nap and it would come to me thank you for joining us today can you share with us how and where we can find you sure we offer 20 minute Solutions calls to get you started on your path forward and you can book one of those on market like ao.com CMO D Solutions and then you can also find us on Instagram at Market LMO thank you for joining us today I'd love to hear from you reach out to me at hello Sheil it.com on our Sheed website or at Sheed on social thank you to my editor Rich draino who always makes us sound good until next time let nothing stop you from experiencing the life and business that you crave