Episode 1: The Real Reason Your Marketing Isn’t Working – And Our Fix

Randi Beth Burton 00:00
Hey, welcome. I am Randi Beth. This is Monica and Branden, and we are Atlas Rose, and we're excited to invite you around our table, which usually has cups of coffee or bourbon on it.

Monica Spieles 00:22
Yes, no, no trash water, also known as tea, but we won't talk about that. No tea to spill here, so yes, there, yeah, that's clever.

Randi Beth Burton 00:35
What are we doing here? Why are we thinking that people want to listen in on our conversations about in life.

Branden O’Neil 00:45
This is for mom.

Monica Spieles 00:46
No, this is, this is Monica's Mom. Hi, Mom. Hi, Mary, Lou. This is just been the dream. So I think honestly, where we've gotten to is we were caught. We've been what we've been what we've been doing this for several years now, and every time we start solving people's problems, we just start getting passionate and talking about things, and then we We have little time to to do the work, because we can't get off of this issue that we are constantly encountering, and that is just our industry. And so we were like, You know what? There's other people who experience this that we it just, it's actually, it's just fun. Let's just talk about it. Maybe this will be, like, therapeutic for us, and then we can start changing the industry by actually going through these therapeutic methods of just talking about it, because we encounter it all the time. So let's just turn it into a show. And then and start there.

Branden O’Neil 01:40
And I think, from my perspective, you know, we've built a methodology. We've built a way of running small business marketing. And what I am hoping for in this, if two or three people listen and they are able to grab a nugget or two, or even even be able to start to implement that system, that methodology, in in this format. I think that'd be amazing. I think that'd be amazing. So what I know that we're planning on doing is just being as generous as we possibly can, just to give it all away, and it's gonna happen in the midst of a quirky conversation and and rabbit trails and all that stuff. So hopefully it'll be interesting. But for sure, it'll be informative. And so that's what I'm excited about, just being able to be generous.

Randi Beth Burton 02:27
Well, speaking of the industry, I'm going to drag up a soapbox right now, and Brandon, I'm putting it in front of you. And since this is the therapy session, Monica, can you say some things that might trigger Brandon. Let him go.

Monica Spieles 02:47
I'm gonna say a word, and you just give me the first word that comes to mind, or a phrase.

Randi Beth Burton 02:55
How about social media?

Branden O’Neil 02:58
Social media? Oh, this is like, everyone's favorite silver bullet.

Monica Spieles 03:03
But you know, it's what everyone's taught is like, if you are not on social media, then you are then you're not doing it, you're not doing it right, or if you're not on Tik Tok. But what's so funny? I actually was thinking how ironic it is that I'm a marketer without social media, if you don't count LinkedIn. I mean, I do have LinkedIn, obviously, but, but I don't have social media, and so I thought, it's not, it is not the silver bullet. There is no silver bullet. But it's certainly not everyone's answer. And it's just like saying that I don't know every pizza shop needs to make pizza the same way, like there's just, it's so it's so silly when you really get down to it, yeah, but it is actually, it's fool's gold, and that is, that's the part that's frustrating, is that we, we spend our whole world here, so we, we get to be exposed to everything that people could or should be doing, what's right for their brand, what's right for their business. But, you know, small businesses don't have time, they don't have time to do that, and so they have to make a choice. Do I jump on the train and go for the fool's goal that everyone else is saying is the way? Or do I delay and put it off and then just figure out what the thing is? And so it's a lot of it's just not knowing and having the time to do that and invest in time to make decisions. So it's I see. I see where it's easy to jump into just thinking social media will solve your problems.

Randi Beth Burton 04:26
We get the plight of the small business owner and the frustration of the marketing industry, where you you legitimately believe that you should be doing marketing and that you know that marketing could make a difference in your business, but you don't know where to start, or you don't know where to look. So what? What's a small business owner supposed to do? If I've got I'm I own a business, probably have been successful in just the fact that I have a great business, I have a great product that solves my customers problems, or a great service, whatever it may be. E but at a certain point in time, I've plateaued, or I'm stuck, or I don't know what to do. And I think marketing's the example, but I have social media in my head, and I don't want to be on tick tock. What? What am I supposed to do? How do you know? Where do I look? You tell me. Are you

Branden O’Neil 05:17
going to tell you right now? Yep, silver bullet.

Randi Beth Burton 05:24
Actually, I team you up to tell me why Atlas rose exists.

Branden O’Neil 05:27
Brandon, yeah, yeah. Well, so maybe I'll answer your question directly, and then I'll get to why we where we exist. So there are, there are a few simple, strategic steps one has to take in order for anything to work. So we, first of all, we need to know who our target market is. And I'll say that, and everyone's like, Oh, yeah, yeah, I got that. No problem. Keep going. But guess what? Your target market is, not everyone who buys your product, or anyone who can fog a mirror, or anyone who who is interested in listening to your story, right? The problem with entrepreneurship is that we go about it the wrong way. We go about it backwards. We all have this brilliant idea, boom, I have an idea, and then I go and make my idea happen. I execute on my idea, and then I look up and I'm like, Okay, does anybody have a problem that matches my idea, right? My solution? If we were smarter, if we were smarter people, then what we would do is we would find somebody with a problem, and then we build the solution to that. But we don't ever do that, right? So fast forward to your scenario of, you know, 510, years down the road, you hit a plateau. We've probably been we got lucky in that we built a solution that somebody actually does have a problem for, but that marriage, that alignment, isn't perfect. And so what we do, what everyone needs to do in order for their marketing to really start to make sense, or business in general, I think, is to start off with that persona. And that persona, I know we're going to get into it much more later, but that persona is less about demographics, although it's part of it, but more about psychographics, what actually makes them tick, what's going on in their life, and how are we going to solve their problem, their actual problem. And so there's a lot of discovery around that, and then getting niched down to a specific person, being highly relevant to that one person. So, like, that's one thing. And then, you know, we talk about key differentiators and brand language, those, to me, those three things have to be done. So maybe there is a silver bullet, and it's the it's that, it's like, yeah, yeah, start off without foundation. That's the first thing you have to do, no exceptions. But that's the reason why Atlas rose exists. Atlas Rose was I started Atlas rose Monica was at 1314, years ago, something like that.

Monica Spieles 07:57
Think that's going on 14, yeah, I always

Branden O’Neil 08:00
have to look at my sign established 2012 so whatever that would be, not a math, yeah, 13. Okay, not hard math.

Monica Spieles 08:10
Really hard math right now.

Branden O’Neil 08:14
It's really everything's hard math right now. Um, so I was working for a guy named Dave Ramsey. I was helping them start a brand called entree leadership. And as part of that, we were doing these Master Series events where hundreds of people, hundreds of small businesses from across the country would come to a location for a week. Dave would teach him from stage. We would do some fun experiential stuff in between. And we also did one on one coaching, and like the CFO would do financial coaching, COO operations coaching, and I had the opportunity to do the marketing coaching, and it was a huge opportunity for me, because I literally got to sit knee to knee with tons and tons of small businesses and hear their their problems. You know, what's going on in their world? Are they marketing? What are they doing? Where's you know? What are you What are you doing next? So you have clarity around that. What I heard over and over and over again was, I've tried marketing and it didn't work, or I hired a guy and they stole my money, or I don't it all kind of bubbled up into this. I can't trust I can't trust marketing, right? And so I'm not doing it, or I'm doing it, but I don't know if it's working or not, or whatever. So it's just kind of this ambiguity and distrust for my industry, for our industry. And at the same time, we were teaching from stage that 90% of American business has 20 employees or less. And I was like, well, shoot, okay, so I'm sitting here with the cross section of, really, the backbone of America. 90% of American business has 20 employees or less. That's an that's insane. That's a big number. So I'm sitting here knee to knee with a cross section of the backbone of America, and they're all saying the same thing, that they're not growth prone to mark because with marketing. Thing because they don't know what to do next, and they all kind of feel guilty about it. And so that's when I started Atlas rose. I started coaching folks on the side, and then that turned into a full time, a full time gig where we were leaders within these small businesses on a fractional basis. We would help build a strategy and then kind of lead them and coach them and coach them month to month on how to get it done. We helped find the right marketers to do it and that kind of thing. Well over the course of my career, before Atlas rose, and then throughout Atlas rose, we've worked with hundreds and hundreds of businesses, and we've started to build a methodology, right so we started to pick up ways of doing, of doing marketing for for these small businesses that then morphed into really what we are today, as Atlas rose in its most mature form is we are a methodology company, right? So now we found the secret sauce. We found the way to run small business marketing in an effective and efficient way. And now we, and we get to help implement that into into these small businesses, whether that be us leading it or coaching them on how to do it themselves, or leading or teaching other marketers on doing it. So that's that's the purpose. And the reason for for for Atlas rose, is that we get to standardize the way small business marketing works. So it's actually working for people, and it's not leaving people feeling confused and frustrated.

Monica Spieles 11:32
What I love about it too, is it's so, it's so built on the foundations of what you just were started talking about the beginning, which was, you know the principle of people, you know marketing is, is is created, is made to help people make decisions, to influence them into decisions to buy. And so what doesn't change is the way that people want to make decisions. They want to be compelled to buy something that has a story, that has meaning. They want to be seen. They want to be known. They want their their problem to be solved uniquely by that, that product, that brand. And so it's it's not the, you know, the way that we've built the methodology is not built upon the flashy, the new and the maybe going to change in the future. Type of solutions is really built on the foundational principles. And then you have the ability to weave in what's new, if you if doing a dance on Tiktok is what's going to get you customers, there's going to be a way that that is spelled out and in the methodology, and that makes sense for you. I don't know if it's going to happen or not, but I'm going to guess not. But that is that there's a place for that. There's a place for the weird, you know, the weird and the new and then maybe going to stay, and it's but it's not built upon that. It's not the foundation that could crumble. So I think that's what's like, extremely promising, when you think about a methodology that small businesses need, they need something that's, that's here to stay, and something I can trust. That's the whole point. Is that we, you know, it's hard, it's difficult to trust in that in the industry. Well, anyways, we were talking about just the reasons why building a methodology off of something that's so foundational is important because it's something you can trust and not be be fearful of if I start to implement this. Is it just going to change tomorrow, because everything changes so rapidly? Is it something that is going to cause me to go down a path I'm not even comfortable with? You know, that's what's so cool about the methodology, is that it's, it's, it's not new and flashy. It's, it says, it says old as time and as good as bread and butter. I mean, it's like, it is really tried and true. It is. It is so, I mean, I say that, and I didn't like butter on my bread till, like, couple years ago, but, but it is foundational. I know I it was weird. I just just didn't like it. Grandma even knew. Grandma knew if I spent an hour house,

Branden O’Neil 13:51
did you call it aioli?

Monica Spieles 13:55
Discover that later, create a brand new we will have a whole section session, one day on, on parents marketing or market, yeah, parent marketing. So the creative, the creative rebranding of parent marketing, yeah, and

Randi Beth Burton 14:15
damages, Spider Man sammies. In my career history. I was a, you guys know that I was a marketing director for a nonprofit and pretty, a pretty sizable one, and we had a strategy, had a marketing strategy in place, but I would continue to ask the question, surely I should be doing something different, or or, where do I go for advice, and have someone challenge the way that I'm thinking about this. And I would schedule meetings with marketers, anyone that I could find in the industry, who I could lay out my strategy in front of them and say, Hey, this is how we're approaching this. What would you do differently? And over and over again, I would get the answer. Sounds like you're thinking about it pretty well. You're. This is good, and I would not get any valuable advice. And the reason is because I was going to tacticians, because they called themselves marketing agencies, or they were marketers, and yet they really had specialty in certain areas, be it graphic design or ads or whatever it may be. They weren't, they weren't strategists, and that's not to say that they couldn't think strategically, but it highlighted for me that there's a real gap in the industry if, if, if we've got small businesses out there who are trying to seek advice that it's actually pretty hard to find, because marketing companies are a dime a dozen, and yet finding someone who is really thinking strategically for you is pretty difficult, and that's what drew me to Atlas rose, whenever I discovered this team, and we really fell in love with Atlas rose. And as much as I want to say, and I will say that it's because I love the two of you, I also was very drawn to the methodology. And so that's what I just want to say. It's not really even about us. We're not brilliant. We have a methodology that applies across many different industries and businesses. It's how we can show up and speak very intelligently about things like die making and how packages are created, because we're working in does that, and we're able to learn those things because we have a methodology that, when applied, allows you to resonate with your with your target audience, the point you were making earlier.

Monica Spieles 16:39
Brandon, you know, similarly, RB, I had, you know, I grew up in this I grew up in Atlas rose. I had been in every single role you could, you could be in, because it was being created as it was going. And so I also had the incredible experience of talking and being and being alongside the journey of hundreds of businesses in a variety of industries and in a variety of projects and situations, and oftentimes in my role, when I was, when I was a marketing manager, I was meeting with all different kinds of tacticians and specialists. And I'd bring, you know, bring a strategy to the table and be like, Hey, this is what we're trying to accomplish, and this is what we've thought through, you know, and this and I, we'd meet up, and they'd say, you know, I was kind of wondering why you were coming to the table when I thought we'd be competitors in we're both marketing companies. And they'd realize we don't do anything that's the same. And and then they'd realize, I could really use something like this. This makes my job so much easier, because you know who you're talking about, and you know what you want to say to them. And it was just like this, revelation for them, like, oh, this, this could be incredible. And to your point, they're they're all very strategic, and they're lame, but no one is thinking holistically. No one's thinking about the bigger picture. I shouldn't say no one, but most people aren't, and that's where the problem was. And so I got to sit in the middle of that and experience the surprise that so many tacticians had and going, I could use this just as much as the, you know, the on the other side of it, the the team, the business, is going, Holy cow. This is what we've been this is what been looking for. So it's just, it's amazing how something so fundamental and so needed by all parties in our industry, customer, tactician, strategist, client, everyone is just like craving something like this methodology.

Branden O’Neil 18:26
I wanted to I wanted to say a statement and hear what you guys have to say about this. I don't know that we've ever, ever mentioned this before, but I think that frameworks, that having a methodology, actually makes you more creative. And the reason why I think that is because, let's say you're a small business or you're a marketer. You've got, you've got only so much amount of time that you can work on a particular thing, right on on marketing. Let's just say you're a small business owner and you've got, you've dedicated five hours a week or 10 hours a week to marketing. Okay, that's that's a lot for small business anyway. Well, you sit down to do marketing, and then it's like, okay, what am I going to do? What am I supposed to do next? Should I be doing a strategy? Maybe not. Maybe I should just write something. Okay, maybe I'll write something and I'll put it on social media, or I'll put on LinkedIn. Wait and then, and then there's all this figuring out of your own system. We all have systems. Systems are everywhere. As systems are everything. So then you have to create your own system. And so all your creativity goes towards figuring it out, as opposed to just doing, doing the thing that's That's right And next, and being creative in that moment, right? So it's like, if you, if you're, I almost want to say, like, if you're struggling with with good creative stuff coming out of your marketing, it might just be because you don't have a framework. What do you guys think about

Monica Spieles 19:55
that? No, I think that's so true.

Randi Beth Burton 19:58
Just talking with a. Copywriter, and he is one of the best copywriters that I've ever done business with. He's wildly creative. Has just a great voice in an angle. He's not using AI, which is nice, totally coming out of his brain. But he said that exact thing, I was able to provide him with brand standards. We talked about persona and key differentiators and brand voice, and said that our our brand needs to align with with these things. These are our stakes in the ground, that if who we are, who we talk to, the message that we say, and then outside of that, you can play, you can be creative and use your God given talents and skill set. And he said that that was the best way that I could set him up, that it is worse for him to not have guidelines like that, and he wastes so much time because he's trying to figure those things out. And so just sort of from the horse's mouth, that's what he was saying. Was, was how much it made it ignited his creativity versus versus hampering it.

Monica Spieles 21:07
Now, there is something odd about boundaries and like guardrails that create more freedoms. And so when you've got, when you know the arena you're playing, and all sudden, you just, yeah, you let the you let it all down. And I don't know if it has something to do with. You know, we were, we've talked about intrinsic motivation and an extrinsic motivation. And if you're constantly worried about what everyone else is doing, then you you actually exhaust yourself in in doing what they're doing rather than doing what you should be doing. And so when you just kind of create the rails of what you should be doing, because it's true to your brand, it's true to what's right for your industry and how to get your customers and all customers, and all of those things. Then you then this intrinsic, intrinsic motivation is actually more authentic to your brand, and it breeds real creativity, and not copycat creativity. And so it's, it's freeing. It's very freeing, I think, when you get to that place and and it's rare that you have that opportunity, because there's just so much you could do.

Randi Beth Burton 22:03
True, hey, Brandon, I've heard you say this many times that marketing is sales in the abstract. I think we're kind of talking about that and boundaries as well. But what do you mean by that, the the abstract, and why is that so hard for us as marketers,

Branden O’Neil 22:22
for marketers, for small business owners, for sales folks, for all of us, marketing is difficult because we don't know what to say, because we we can't see somebody. Let's just say, let's say we take, let's say we take a small business owner, and that's been successful, right? They've been around for 1015, years. They've grown they've grown a business. They probably have grown that business off of their ability to communicate a message to somebody sitting in front of them, probably word of mouth marketing. They got referrals in things like that when they talk to somebody, I guarantee you, I mean, I've talked to a million of these guys, so I bet, I bet they would tell you, man, if I can just get in front of them, I'm gonna sell them like it's not a big deal, like I can, I can definitely sell them. I know. I know what I need to tell them. I know the stories I need to tell them. I know the stats. I know exactly. I know exactly the story I need to walk them through. But if you were to take that same business owner and that same exact prospect, and instead of being knee to knee, face to face with them, you put them on the receiving end of an email or the receiving end of your website or anything like that. In an ad, we all freak out that, you know, we freak out and we put a Buy Now button in front of them. You would never do that. You would never do that in in a sales scenario, you would never walk up say, Hey, my name is Brandon. You want to buy my thing right now? Let's go. You know, you would never do that. That's so silly. It's like asking someone to make a baby with you before you've gone on your first date. You wouldn't do it. It's not recommended anyway. So, so, so that's where the abstract nature comes from, right? So it's the same conversation. The truth is, you have to have the same exact conversation that you have with the person knee to knee. It's just in a place you can't see them. That's abstract, and so that's what makes it difficult. And so when we just say marketing is sales in the abstract, it's the same sales conversation. It's just happens over time and in different places with that same person in in a place where we can't see so then we create tools to take the abstract nature out of it, like the persona I was talking about. That's the reason why we have to start there is, is that tool? We literally print it off, we put it up above our computer, and we say, and let's say the persona is named Bob. What does Bob think? Hey, Bob, I'm about to write you an email, right? I'm writing him an email or your website. Copy becomes a love letter to Bob, right? So it's just it takes the abstract nature out of that.

Monica Spieles 24:53
So I learned through Randy Beth how to tell good stories. Actually, I didn't learn how to tell good stories. Was, but I learned how important they were. And so I think I was telling you guys this once, I had taken the time on vacation to try and tell my kids stories, and I was like, this is I'm gonna have to come up with new stories every time. And so I started the whole session with asking them a few questions, and I'd say, you know, what are your favorite colors and their favorite and things I already knew, but I wanted to hear what was the flavor of the day, because they're, you know, they're five and four, and so it changes all the time. So anyways, I got to know those artifacts really well. And then I started my story, and I started finding ways to weave in all these things that they cared about, that were their favorite superhero and their favorite color and the favorite food that they came upon. It created the whole story. And the reason I say this is because it's just it's the same thing when we're doing our storytelling. The reason we get to know our personas so deeply and so intimately that we remove the abstract nature of it all by putting their face in front of us on when we when we're building our plan and our communications, we want to know the psychographic, not the demographic, is because we're telling our story, that story to them, but we're talking about all the things that they care about that are really relevant to their problem. We did all that work on the front end. We discovered all of that. We've proven it. We continue to prove it. We, you know, we dig into the research to make sure it's verified in the way that we believe we know our customer. And sometimes we're wrong, but when we're not, that story is told so well, and it's just, it's just the icing on the cake in the abstract way that we have to tell it. So I feel like that's just, it continues to, I continue to experience, in just the funniest of ways, how important it is to really not underestimate some of these, these baseline principles.

Randi Beth Burton 26:41
I love that. And I could just picture your kids being so drawn into the stories that you were telling them, because they see themselves in it there. It's like, this is the greatest story ever told about me showed up. That's how your customers feel when they're reading your marketing messaging, wherever that may be. It's great, great. So Well, that makes me think of our sort of second piece of brand standards. So you talked about persona, but the other thing that we really work through with businesses is key differentiators, because it happens all the time where businesses are proud of their history. We're proud of our history and our story. And you know, you want to tell that you think it matters and it's going to matter to the right customers. And so I see a lot of people sort of get tripped up in in this of what do I say that actually, but now I know my customer, what do I say that really resonates with them? And how do we sort through that and help a business sort through that? What does that look like?

Branden O’Neil 27:49
This is one of my favorite exercises. It's very difficult. It's not my favorite exercise to do to myself, so we've done this for ourselves several times, and it's a scary thing. It's one of my favorite exercises to do for clients because, or to see clients do for themselves, because it's like, it's like, it's like a light bulb goes off, or like a key that unlocks a treasure. I mean, to understand really what it comes down to, like, what actually I need to say. So a definition of marketing is the right message to the right person at the right time, the right way. So you have to understand the right person first. I think we've beat that horse to death. So what's the right message? This should be what makes us different, right? And so and so, everyone can do this. You can pull out a sheet of paper right now and make a list of the things that make you different. Okay, list out all the things that make you different. Then go through that list and say, Okay, which of these things does my persona, that I just created, not care about, or does care about, if you want to go the positive route. So then what you would do is, you know, the the words that would survive, the words that would be left would be the things that make you different, that you claim make you different, and that your persona cares about. And then finally, go through that remaining list and say, okay, and now, what does my competitor not claim? Right? What are my main competitors? What do my competitors not claim and usually that gets you down to a scary small list, like two or three things and and we

Randi Beth Burton 29:28
know we're better than the competitor, and like, we're for sure better, so we should claim that, right? Nice.

Branden O’Neil 29:36
I love it. You just teed me up. No, no. This. So, so, no, unfortunately you can't, right? There are a ton of things like that that you. That your competitors may say the same thing as you, but, but the problem is, is your prospects are window shopping. They don't believe you, they don't believe them, they don't believe anybody, and so you have no more credibility than anybody else. It's only what your words are saying and if they're relevant to them and if they're different, right? So unfortunately, you can't. So that comes down to a small list, two or three things, usually, sometimes five, sometimes zero. I've come, I've done this exercise a few times where we've come down to a differentiators, 00, differentiators, true differentiators. And it's scary, and that's, that's like, that's like a gut punch, right? And, but what we end up doing is, it's actually, it's actually a beautiful realization, because it's an opportunity for us. If there's no real differentiators, that means we're a commodity, then then the only differentiator we could ever have in our minds, initially, we think, is price, right? Well, that's a commodity. You don't want to be a commodity. You want to be a brand assuming, right? So then it's an opportunity to create differentiators, and you just use the same exercise to create those differentiators. Well, what does my customer care about? Well, what that my competitors aren't claiming? Boom, let's make that go and create that. Give it a quarter. Now you've made a differentiator.

Monica Spieles 31:21
You know, I love the analogy of window shopping, because it's there's been so many times that we've taken people through this exercise and and what they realize, like a lot of their value, or what makes them different, is is kind of held in, is not something that's in the window, it's something that is further down the experience. And it's like you, it's not what they're shopping for. It's something they come to appreciate and love, and it totally sets you apart from business, other businesses and competition. And so it becomes, it's a cornerstone for them in so many ways. But it's not the thing that's being shot for and beginning. So it's totally missed. And so it's just, it is a lot of light bulb moments for people to go, okay, nothing makes me special. I mean, we do everything. We do so many things well, and there are so many things that we represent in a in a way that no one else could but the end of the day, by this definition, we are not special. And that's it's a heartbreaking moment, but it's also a great moment to rally the troops around and say, What are we going to do about it. How are we going to show up different

Branden O’Neil 32:23
so more often than not, you're going to have two to three to five key differentiators. And what you do with those key differentiators is you shout them from the friggin rooftops, right? That's that ends up being the core to everything you talk about. That's the right message. Because why would we ever talk about something that we're not that, you know, we wouldn't ever talk about that that's that's that first list. Why would we ever talk about things that our customer doesn't even care about we shouldn't, otherwise we're being totally irrelevant. And then why would we ever talk about things that everyone else is talking about? Because that is just adding to the noise. So this list of key differentiators are things you claim make it, make you different, that your that your persona cares about, your ideal customer cares about, and that your competitors cannot claim. You shout those from the rooftop. That's the base of it all.

Monica Spieles 33:16
How many times on a list have you seen our team cares different.

Branden O’Neil 33:22
It's always in the first that's always in the first column. Go ahead and write it down.

Monica Spieles 33:28
We have premium products. Go ahead and write that one down too. That one's gonna go on.

Branden O’Neil 33:33
Yeah, customer service.

Monica Spieles 33:37
Our customer service sets us apart. Like these are true statements, but they aren't what make you different. Because I can tell you about every single person that we've we've ever done this for those are so those are common those are the common ones. And that's where it's a great stretch for us to go through the exercise, the painful exercise and the uncomfortable one, to get to the ones that you are so proud to scream from the rooftops,

Randi Beth Burton 34:02
I have did add a lot of booze and trade shows. And the first thing anybody when you're whenever you're at a trade show, they'll come up to you and say, what do you do? And that's the first question. And the temptation is just to just spew all the things that you do, and not knowing anything about the person that is right in front of you. And the the moment that this clicked for me with key differentiators and understanding persona, was when I was able to really understand my audience and the things that would resonate with them, and then to be able to ask those specific questions before just spewing all the things about me and I, and then the difference that that would make in the person standing right in front of me who's asking me, What do I what I do was just lights out, and it was so energizing. And that's that's one of the things that I think good marketing strategy does. For a business is it just it energizes you. It energizes the things that you can say and do, and activities that you can do, tactics that you can do because you have a purpose and you have a direction, and you have guardrails that you've given yourself. And it really unlocks, it unlocks people to to produce communications that really move the needle and make a difference and and grow businesses. And that's what that is, what that's, what it's all about.

Monica Spieles 35:31
I'll say one more thing on what you just said there in unlocking, and I think that's what I've experienced time, time and time again. That's been the most rewarding is that when you see a business owner, or whoever you know, someone who's been a part of this story for a long time, and part of that frustration when they get unlocked, and then they start enjoying it again, and they start enjoying talking about their business again, and why it's so special, and why they got into it that has been one of the most rewarding things, because it's not this frustrating, you know, hour of marketing again, it's, it's, man, I see this opportunity to fuel my business in a way that I've just been waiting for. And it's in it unlocks the depths of the excitement of the mission. And it's like, it's just so it's powerful.

Branden O’Neil 36:16
So I think, I think it also be, it'd be good to make clear that this is just like the the front door, not even the front there's like the front mat to the whole system, to the whole methodology, right? So we're just, it's like the windows open and you're peeking in, and this is barely this, and you're scratching the surface. It's just the first blush, right?

Randi Beth Burton 36:38
Yeah, well, here's, here's what I would hope people would take away from today, you don't need more noise. You need a plan. You don't need marketing gurus. If you want to view us as that, that's great, but you don't need us. You just need a methodology. And you don't need a bigger budget, which a lot of people are going to tell you, you just need you need better leadership. You need a better strategy and and way to implement that.

Monica Spieles 37:05
For most businesses, it's very daunting to think that they should even that they're even at the size to do marketing of any of any sort. And what they should, they should believe and know, is that you should. There is a way. And to your point, Randy Beth, doesn't matter the budget, the expertise level, the resources you have, there is a way, and you should be doing some level of it, because you're, you're, it's like, it's like, it's like, building. You know, the most expensive time to build is, is tomorrow, actually. How do they say that? Like, totally forgetting this. Well, there's, oh, the cheapest time to build is, the opposite is, the cheapest time to build is yesterday. And so the that's, that's so true for when you get into marketing, like it's never going to get easier. You just have to start and you have to start building. And so it's never going to get easier, because there's always more happening. But I think that, you know, I guess, summary statement, this is not summary at all. Summary statement is, is you need to get into you need to start educating yourself. And it's there. It's possible. No matter what level of expertise that you're at, what level of comfortability you're at, or the number of resources you have in your corner, there's a there's a place to start. And it does not matter what size your business is.

Branden O’Neil 38:19
I think I would say you owe it to yourself. You know you've been doing you've been doing this for a long time. A lot of you small business owners, been doing it for a long time, and it's hard. It's really hard. You have to figure out all this stuff. Have to figure out how to run payroll. You have to figure out how to pay taxes. You have to figure out how to be a leader, you have to figure out how to wash the toilets. You have to figure out everything. And the more, and I'll even pull this outside of marketing, the more systems and frameworks that you put in place. My experience of running a small business for 13 years is the more frameworks you can put in place, and good people that you put in place, the more successful you're going to be, and the more creative you're able to be. So you really do owe it to yourself. You don't have to burn yourself out over and over again to do the next thing. It's kind of The Who, not how and and if you think of a framework as being a who and then a person being a who. I mean, you can kind of think of both of those as being load bearing beams on you or over you, to take off this load and to grow with confidence to know what you're going to do next in a way that many, many, many, many people have done before. So do that across your whole business. But certainly, you know, our bent here is is in marketing, and we'd love to help or and we've got lots of resources for that. This podcast being one, we've got a lot of content coming out. Follow us on LinkedIn. That'd be another good place for it. We're going to launch a Daily Show. So I don't know when this is going to come out, but there's gonna be a daily show that might be totally ridiculous, but there'll be another resource. We've got a paid subscription where all this content is and we've got live coaching in those in in that subscription, we've got workshops around all the sub strategies and around the methodology as well. We've got coaches that can be do one on one coaching with you, and then, of course, we've got fractional leaders that would love to lead the efforts for you, but there's really no we've tried to make it very, very easy, give you all the options to be able to grab on to all this stuff and either do it yourself or get help doing it. But do it

Randi Beth Burton 40:40
our guest for next month. So we are going to have your friend and mine, Mitch Lewandowski. He can correct us if we're saying last name wrong.

Monica Spieles 40:52
It's more like Lewandowski.

Randi Beth Burton 40:57
Anyway, Mitch, who sometimes we call SON OF A Mitch, is going to be joining us, and we're really excited. Mitch is a pinnacle guide. He's our pinnacle guide, and he works with a number of our clients as well. If you haven't heard of Pinnacle, it's a it's a system that picks up where EOS leaves off. So we didn't even really talk about Eos, but there's operational systems that businesses run on, and pinnacle is a great one. Mitch is is one of the top guides in the country, and he has been in the trenches with growth minded business owners who are serious about scaling with structure and not just speed and and that's what Mitch brings to the table. And we're thrilled to get to invite him to this chaotic podcast and just pick his brain and hear from him about, you know, leading better, growing smarter, actually enjoying running your business again. These are, these are things that Mitch helps business owners do, and he's just a wealth of knowledge and resources, and we're excited to have him on the show next month.

Branden O’Neil 42:10
Shout out to a couple of our unofficial sponsors, Pinnacle being one. Pinnacle, thank you, pinnacle for your unofficial sponsorship and for who makes your pen?

Monica Spieles 42:21
Monica, oh, gosh, that's a good question. Let me tell you. Let me tell you, is it cool? Who makes it? It's Cutlite. Oh, Cutlite America.

Branden O’Neil 42:32
America. Well, that's who's branded the pen. But I was gonna say that of the of the pen clicking noise,

Monica Spieles 42:42
Oh, unofficial sponsor. That is, that is what you have to look forward to next month, along with coffee, bourbon and more, what we call it more chaotic business breakthroughs, big business breakthroughs, all right and more pen clicking. Thanks, everyone.