That’s just one of the questions we answered in the latest episode of the Marketing Mentor Podcast with one of my favorite (and funniest) guests, Michael Katz, whose business is writing newsletters for professional service providers.
We talked about which skills creative solopreneurs will need to strengthen and what we will need to do (and help our clients do) as AI becomes more and more a part of our lives and our businesses.
We also talked about:
So listen here (and below)...
Michael’s baby step is a simple one: push send!
Don’t wait to “feel ready” (and I’m putting that in quotation marks). Don't wait for your newsletter – whether on LinkedIn or via email – to be perfect. And don't allow any of those other obstacles Michael and I both see get in your way.
And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
Read the complete transcript of Episode #495 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast. You'll learn how will AI affect content marketing for creative professionals.
ilise benun
Hi there. This is ilise benun, your Marketing Mentor. And this is the podcast for you, if, and only if, you are ready to leave the feast or famine syndrome behind, and I mean for good.
If you struggle with consistently sending out your own email newsletter, whether because you worry that you have nothing worthwhile to say or because you can't figure out the technical piece, this episode is for you. I talked with the very funny Michael Katz of Blue Penguin Development, and no, he doesn't have anything to do with penguins. He's a marketing consultant who specializes in email newsletters for professional services firms and providers.
In our chat, we delve into the value of using LinkedIn's new newsletter feature to start your own newsletter, and what the heck should you write about, no matter how you send it out, because that is a perennial question from writers and non-writers alike. So, listen and learn.
Hello, Michael. Welcome to the podcast.
Michael Katz
Good to be here. Thank you.
ilise benun
You're welcome. Please introduce yourself.
Michael Katz
Hi, I'm Michael Katz, and my company is called Blue Penguin Development.
ilise benun
“Don't ask me why.”
Michael Katz
“Don't ask me why.”
ilise benun
I love that. In your newsletter recently, or somewhere, I saw you said, "Yes, that's the name. Don't ask me why."
Michael Katz
I really should come up with a good answer after 20 years, but I really don't have one.
ilise benun
Well, to me, that's just, in a way it says, what you call your company really doesn't matter all that much. I really believe that—if you're doing all the good marketing that you need to be doing and positioning yourself—but with that said, tell us what you do.
Michael Katz
I raise penguins. I am a marketing consultant and I specialize in email newsletters.
ilise benun
And for any particular niche or market?
Michael Katz
Yes. I've had a broad range over the years, but in the last, at least 10, maybe even 15 years, I work exclusively with small, professional service firms: financial planners, consultants, recruiters, leadership coaches. What they have in common is, it's really hard to tell what's different between one and the other. In fact, maybe there isn't a difference. One accountant and another accountant is the same. A newsletter is particularly good for this kind of differentiation between people like that.
ilise benun
Um hmm. And you basically do the newsletters for your clients?
Michael Katz
To varying degrees. So, I do the entire thing, in terms of back end and the tech and all that. I mean, my goal is, they should have as little to do with it as possible. However, I do zero research. So, either I straight up ghostwrite it because I interview them. Or, after we've done a bunch of work about who the audience is and the voice and all that, and then we have a conversation each month about, ‘what are you going to write about?’ many of them, they write the first really bad draft, and I fix it. As long as I have the raw material, I can work with it, so it depends on how much they want to do on their own.
ilise benun
When you say, "I don't do any research," is that part of your process and your policy, or is that just because you don't think you need to?
Michael Katz
Well, I mean, there's any number of ways to do it. Sometimes, I'm asked by someone, "Hey, can you write? We need a newsletter once a month. It's going to be on real estate law. Go off and write it." But I don't do that.
My belief is that if you want to differentiate yourself, regardless of what you do, it's your perspective on real estate law or accounting or management consulting. And so, I always say, “I'm a juicer and my clients are oranges.” They have decades of knowledge. Their problem is, you can't drink an orange.
What I'm good at is forcing them to explain it to me. And, because I'm not an accountant or attorney or whatever, they have to simplify it because you have to remember their audience is not other attorneys, it's someone like me. So, they don't have to do any research, because they could talk for a thousand years about whatever they do.
I go in there and say, "Okay, given the topic we're going to discuss,"—and that's something, we come up with a whole bunch of topics in the beginning process of setting it up to start—I'm like, "Okay, tell me about this." And I just keep pestering them until they explain it, which they can find annoying but I get it out of them, and then I write it, hopefully in their voice.
After a while, I get really good at figuring out how different people write or speak, and they may have to fix certain things like, "Yeah, this isn't quite right” or "I wouldn't use that phrase," but the idea is to remove them as much as possible from the process, because they'd rather have nothing to do with it.
But to me, it has to be a combination of their insight, as well as a fair amount of their personality and even their personal story, if they're willing to share it. Because to me, like I always say, “You have no idea how medically capable your doctor is. You don't even know your doctor went to medical school.”
If you love your doctor, it has nothing to do with medicine. It's the way she talks to you or the way she listens or interacts. So, there's a real personality aspect in hiring a professional. Again, whether it's the guy who fixes your car or your kid's guitar teacher, it's really not about capability. You have to have capability, but the problem is, everyone you compete with as a professional is, at least on paper, just as good and technical and credentialed. So, the personality stuff really comes out in a big way.
ilise benun
You know, you're touching on something that I think about a lot and that Ann Handley has said very concisely, and I wish I had said it. She said, "A newsletter should be more letter than news," and I assume you agree with that.
Michael Katz
Yeah. I mean, it's funny. I can Google anything, today, in terms of straight-up facts. So, if I want to know how to change a tire, I'm just going to Google it. So again, if you just took the made-up example of an auto mechanic talking about ‘here's how you change a tire,’ I suppose it's somewhat useful, but it's certainly not unusual.
But, if he or she talked about, ‘I'm driving into work today and I hit a thing, and it caused my tire to break, and here's what you really have to think about when you're driving,’ it's like, it's really more insight than just how-to. And I agree; the more you can include your own, like we were joking earlier about your dog barking, that kind of stuff, people connect with that. It's very human. And I think ultimately, your decision to hire, let alone like, whoever you work with is based on that connection; even though it sounds so non-business-y. But I found that, especially among people like us—solos and very small companies—that's our superpower relative to the big companies. I mean, that's why the big companies have to hire celebrities and make up cartoon lizards selling insurance. They're trying to put a human face on a big company. So, I try and get my clients to reveal their actual human face.
ilise benun
I don't know if you're aware of this, but in my framework of the Simplest Marketing Plan, I focus on three main tools which, I propose, when you use them together on a particular market, that's what works. And the three tools are what I call:
Because often, when you do all those three things together, you get what I call ‘newsletter magic’—which is when you've been in touch with someone through your newsletter for a while and then, one day, they respond to a really old one and say, "I've got a project. Can we talk?"
I just want you to respond to that idea of where it fits into the marketing mix, if you will.
Michael Katz
Yeah. That experience is exactly what I found for myself and my clients. My entire business works that way. Nothing wrong with making cold calls, but I just couldn't do it. I don't even like talking to people I sort of know. So, I don't call strangers. I've never made an outbound call, in terms of getting business, in my entire time doing it. Not to say you can't, but all I do is publish a newsletter, and it's sort of derivatives now on social media and all that, and I do this strategic networking thing—I'm really good at staying in touch with people. And the perfect client is the person who says, "I've been reading your newsletter for two years, and we want to talk." The guy who Googles, like in my case an email newsletter, and then calls me, it's like a bad blind date. The chances of that being a good connection are really small. You don't know each other. They have some perception of you and whatever. So, the newsletter is really good at sort of turning cold calls into very warm calls. Plus, when somebody calls you, it's a completely different conversation than if you call them.
ilise benun
And I refer to what you're describing there as having people ‘marinate’ in my content for as long as they need to.
Michael Katz
That's good. I'm going to steal that.
ilise benun
You're welcome to it.
Michael Katz
Thank you.
ilise benun
So, with all of that said, then, one of the things that prompted me to want to talk to you about this is this new-ish feature on LinkedIn of being able to do your newsletter on LinkedIn. And I noticed that you were doing it, and I love your strategy because there's so many different ways to do it, and I just wanted to pick your brain a little bit about out your own evolution of thinking about this. Maybe start by explaining to me, as if I didn't know, which I kind of don't, what does it mean to have a newsletter on LinkedIn?
Michael Katz
I've kind of come full circle on it. I don't know. At least two years ago, LinkedIn started letting a select group of people—and as with all group things LinkedIn, nobody knows who the select group is or how they're chosen or whatever—do something that they hadn't done before. So, for a number of years, you've been able to write what they call “an article,” which is essentially a blog post, a long-format article that you post on your account, and people who are your contacts and followers will see an alert of that in their notifications and in their stream, and that's okay.
Then, they started doing this thing where they do call it “a newsletter,” where people can actually subscribe to be notified by email from LinkedIn when you “publish,” and again, nobody knows how they rolled it out and whatever.
When I saw that a couple years ago, I thought, "Oh, I really want to do that." I'm waiting and waiting, and one day, it shows up. I've been granted the capability. And then I'm just about to go do it and suddenly I think, "Wait a second. Do I want to publish on LinkedIn?" Because my concern was, I have a newsletter with a mailing list of my own that I publish through MailChimp. What happens if my subscribers start leaving that and saying, "I'd rather get it through LinkedIn?" Even though they're both my subscribers, I've sort of cannibalized my own list. And that's why I say I came full circle, because the thing you have to be concerned with, with any platform, is that they make all the rules … LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook. As we've seen, they can throw people off. They can decide, ‘we’re going to do this, not that.’ They're an intermediary between you and the end user.
The thing I love about email is, nobody runs email. It's a completely distributed system. There's nobody in charge, and so the only people who decide that you can't send to them are the recipients. There's nobody in the middle.
I used to use a different email provider and I recently switched over to MailChimp. All I did was export my mailing list, canceled my account with the old people, and started up with MailChimp. Well, if you have a newsletter with LinkedIn or followers on Facebook or whatever, you can leave, but you can't take it with you. You are literally building a business on rented land. So, I had this concern: Now, wait a second; I don't want to be beholden to LinkedIn. What if you do it for three years and LinkedIn, one day, says, "We're not going to do newsletters anymore," and they shut the whole thing down. However, I started talking to some people I knew who had been granted this magical power earlier...
ilise benun
Which I have not, by the way. I cannot figure out how to do one for myself. So, I don't think I've been granted the magical power yet.
Michael Katz
Just to tell you and any of your listeners, if you go to the “write an article capability,” when you get in there, there's a new button called “Newsletter.” It's either there or it's not.
ilise benun
Right. It's not for me.
Michael Katz
Yeah, so one day …
ilise benun
Usually … I don't have it.
Michael Katz
Well, that's what I thought. I'm a newsletter guy! But it's a good reminder that they make all the rules, and you're just like, whatever. So, then I thought, "Okay, I'm not doing this," but then I talked to some people and what they had said was, they didn't see any indication that it was hurting their ... it was cannibalizing their list, and so I thought I'd do it.
ilise benun
And for yours, Michael, let's just describe the strategy a little bit, because I thought it was kind of brilliant. You basically publish an abridged version, a shortened version, of your longish—yours tends to be, in my opinion, long, but also a really good read always, so, people read it. But you do … so you do an abridged version on LinkedIn. And then you say, "If you're reading this on LinkedIn, you're reading an abridged version and you're reading it late," which I love.
Michael Katz
Right.
ilise benun
“So, if you want the real one, click here,” and that takes them to sign up for your real newsletter on your email, where there's no intermediary. Right?
Michael Katz
Right. So, I'm going the other direction. I want to take those LinkedIn readers and have them sign up for, “the real thing.” And I have seen that work, because when people sign up, I ask them, "Where did you hear about me?" and I'm getting a whole bunch of LinkedIn people.
What's interesting, though, which I like, is the people subscribing on LinkedIn … you can't export the list, but you can see who they are. And they're sort of unlikely people who really would never even hear about, let alone subscribe to, my newsletter, like people, maybe, I used to work with; my kids are grown now, so their friends are now connecting with me on LinkedIn, so they might subscribe. These are what I would think of as ‘unlikely people’ are subscribing. Plus, people who already subscribe to my newsletter. So, it's a funny thing.
The other thing I do is, I don't publish current newsletters. I've been publishing for a long time, so I may go back and grab one from four years ago, publish that, and most of your readers don't read most of your newsletters and they certainly don't remember …
ilise benun
What?!
Michael Katz
Yeah, I know. Sorry.
ilise benun
Explain that, because I think most people don't understand that.
Michael Katz
That's in my case. In your case, they're reading them all. (Laughter).
It's almost like I'm doing a “best of” and getting in front of people, and my strategy has been, I publish my newsletter every other week, so I'm publishing the LinkedIn ones on the every other ‘other week,’ in between.
ilise benun
Okay, wait. You publish every other week? Because, to me, it feels like weekly.
Michael Katz
It's so funny. Some people think it's weekly. Some people think it's monthly. No, it's never more than every two weeks. I mean...
ilise benun
I don't believe you, Michael.
Michael Katz
The pace is every week. I have a friend who's been doing it. He's published like a thousand newsletters. No way. I couldn't do that. But every other week, I find is, if you like writing it, I think that's the ideal.
Almost all my clients are on a monthly schedule, just because they have real jobs. They couldn't do it every other week. Plus, it would double their cost in paying me, but I find every other week is good. People think it's weekly.
ilise benun
Why is that?
Michael Katz
Well, I mean, it just sort of reinforces the idea that nobody's paying a lot of attention. Here's another's shocker. Nobody is paying attention to anybody else, really. They don't know. Sometimes I'll skip … it'll be a third week, because I skip. Nobody ever says, "Where is it?"
It doesn't matter. I think it is the cumulative effect, the marinating thing. I always use the metaphor: it's like exercise. It's like, if you skipped a day of exercise, it doesn't make a difference. And if you never exercise and then exercised for eight hours one day, it also would make no difference. The benefit is in over time. It's the same thing.
ilise benun
Right, compounding interest.
Michael Katz
Yeah.
ilise benun
It's about investing. You're investing in your business, and in your list, and in your people. I think when you don't send out a newsletter, when you drop the ball because you're too busy, I feel like you're betraying your people and giving up on them—not so much on yourself. What do you think of that?
Michael Katz
I totally agree. I would also say, even though nobody knows how often you publish, I'm very strict with my clients about their publication date, because it's so easy to stop. At this point, there's no risk that I'm going to stop publishing my newsletter, because it's just part of my life. But for my clients, we'll pick a day, second Thursday of the month or something, and I am all over them because your newsletter is never going to be on fire. You could push it off a day and nobody would notice. But, you push it off a day, and then it's two days, and then it's a week, and then it's like you just abandon the whole thing. So, you really got to be strict. I always say, "Look, if you publish 12 in a row for a year, you can take a break." But until it's becomes part of your real schedule and your marketing DNA, you got to keep doing it. And I agree—if you want people to anticipate and follow you, you got to be out there all the time, or they're going to move on.
ilise benun
Let's connect this, then, to content strategy, because this is really one of the biggest obstacles people seem to have is: "Oh my God, what am I going to write about? What do people want to hear about? Why would they want to hear from me?" and all those kind of psychological obstacles that people put in front of them. How do you to think about that?
Michael Katz
Well, on the whole, "Why would they want to hear from me?" it's sort of like, why would they want to hire you? I mean, again, just take a made-up example. You don't have to be the best carpenter on earth to have somebody like me hire you, because I don't know anything about carpentry. You know lifetimes more about whatever it is you do than the people who would hire you. That's part of why they hire you. So, you're way over the bar on knowledge, whatever it is you do.
In terms of how it works, I think of it, it's like a magazine. You've got this body of knowledge. You have to think about, who's my target audience? It's not, like, Planet Earth. It's, who wants the type of carpentry information I know?
So again, use that example. My brother-in-law builds houses; he's a carpenter. So, whenever he comes to my house—he lives like three hours away—which is like twice a year, soon as he shows up, I get him a cup of coffee and I walk him around my house. “What do I do about this? Do I need to fix that?” And he'll be like, "Ah, you better take care of that right away," or he's, "Ah, don't worry about it." Like, I don't know.
What's interesting to me is, he knows stuff that, while he is drinking a cup of coffee, he can answer my questions. Again, it's true for everyone on this call relative to what you know. I know nothing. I don't want to know a ton. I want to know Carpentry 101. But if he were writing a newsletter, is he writing to a homeowner or a commercial business? Someone who knows a lot, somebody knows a little? How old is the person? Because that affects the language you might use.
So, you really want to pinpoint who the audience is, and I say, "Look, who's your perfect client? Who do you want 10 of? What do they look like?" Everyone with a little work can answer that question. Like I said in the beginning, I want small professional service providers, so that's who I'm writing to.
And then, each newsletter is just a little bit of, sort of I think pretty basic insight stuff, not how to ... it wouldn't be how to build a deck or something. It would be the kind of thing my brother-in-law would be like, how to buy the right kind of hammer or why you should never buy lumber on a Tuesday. I don't know. But it's all this stuff that he just sort of knows from having done it for years. That's the real insightful stuff that you can't easily Google. And then people just start to see you as a source of information.
The other thing to realize is, the vast majority of your readers will never pay you anything. They're just going to take the free information, but that's okay. You don't need them. You need a tiny fraction who say, "You know what? I'm not building this deck. I don't know how to do it. Let's just call that guy who's been writing the newsletter." I mean, it's so funny, but it just works that way. It's very enhanced word of mouth when you create, as you were saying, ‘quality content.’ People follow you for the information, and some small percentage of them eventually say, "Let's just have her do it."
ilise benun
There are two more things I want to cover before we wrap up. One is, I want to go back to the idea of the LinkedIn newsletter, but maybe as an alternative to something like MailChimp, as a way to get started because LinkedIn is where the market is.
And then I want to wrap up. I like to give my listeners a baby step that they can take based on our conversation. I may ask you what that baby step is, or I might suggest one to you. But that was the brainstorm I had last week when I started looking more closely at these LinkedIn newsletters, which I haven't done one for myself since I don't have the magic power yet, but I thought, so many people struggle—who especially aren't designers, right—with the technology and figuring all of that out, that gets in the way. What if they just did it on LinkedIn? What do you think of that?
Michael Katz
Well, it's way better than not doing anything. I mean, because again, if you're just on LinkedIn kind of posting stuff, and here's an article and you're like, "Hey, great, great. Congratulations, ilise,” or whatever people do on LinkedIn, at least I know you're alive, but that's not really demonstrating anything about what you do, how you think.
The reason I like long-format writing, as you said earlier, that you need to give people some content that actually shows you know something. And again, I guarantee you know plenty, so that's not the issue. It's a way, without getting into any MailChimp or anything else, to just start publishing long-format content. And yes, you'll be amazed how fast people subscribe. I mean, because what happens is, the day you launch that newsletter, LinkedIn will notify all your connections that, "This person just launched the newsletter. Do you want to subscribe?" It's like a one-time thing, they'll do that. And then people can subscribe over time, but you'll get way more on Day One.
I think it's a good way, if you've not been publishing and writing anything, to just sort of get your feet wet. There's no risk. That technology is no more complicated than using LinkedIn. So, I do think it's a good place to start.
ilise benun
I agree with that. I'm glad you do, too.
Michael Katz
Yeah.
ilise benun
All right. So, in terms of a baby step, let's be thinking about mostly people who haven't gotten their newsletter off the ground yet. Maybe they've been thinking about it. Maybe they've got a few drafts of things written, but it's just not perfect, or they don't feel ready, or they don't know enough people, or any number of things that might get in their way. What would you say is a good first step?
Michael Katz
I think the hardest part is the first time you hit Publish, or Send if it's a newsletter, because you get all these ideas of like: "Who am I to share information? And what do I know? And what are they going to say?" And all that. It's a funny thing. The opposite of raving success in this world is not failure. It's anonymity. So, no one's going to email you back and go, "That's the stupidest thing I ever heard." If it was absolutely terrible, which it won't be, you'll just be ignored.
And so, again, it goes back to this idea that people just aren't paying that much attention to other people, and so your 10th newsletter or LinkedIn post will be way better than your first, but you have to write 9 before you get to 10.
So, my advice is always just ... well, two things: Make a list of the questions you hear from clients and potential clients. What's the stuff people are always asking you? I get to all the, "How often should I publish? What time of day? How long should it be?" I mean, it's the same questions over and over again, because people all start at the same place. Make a list of that stuff, and then just answer the question. And then just, whether it's MailChimp or whoever, or you do it on LinkedIn, just post it.
You'll get some thumbs up. You'll be surprised. Someone you went to college with, you haven't heard from, will be like, "Oh, great job." It's very satisfying, and you'll get better and better at as you do it.
As you said earlier, it's amazing, the people who sort of come out of the woodwork. Very unlikely people come to you. And a lot of people will spread the word about you, even though they're never going to hire you. Again, your college roommate or it's a guy across the street who suddenly sees it will send people to you. So, it's a really amazingly effective word of mouth tool.
ilise benun
And I think a big part of that, also, is you will never know what people are saying about you or how they're thinking about your newsletter, when they get it, because they're not going to go out of their way to tell you, but there is an effect, whether you know it or not. That's what I keep trying to harp on.
Michael Katz
Absolutely. And, one day, in the future, you'll be at some event and somebody you've never seen on earth, or heard of, will come up to you and go, "I love your newsletter." And you're like, "Wow."
ilise benun
That's right.
Michael Katz
You don't know what's going on out there. I mean, someone once said, I don't know who it was, that customers are not on/off switches; they're volume controls. So, there's all these people out there, who, some of them are a second away from hiring you, and other people on your list are a second away from unsubscribing, and everybody else is sort of in between. And you can't tell, because most of them are invisible until they call you. So, you just have to keep doing it. Again, like exercise, you don't go to the gym and do 10 pushups and go, "Where are the muscles?" You got to keep doing it. By the way, it gets easier and enjoyable, like exercise, where if you do it for a while, you'll miss it if you stopped.
ilise benun
I love that. All right. I actually have a baby step idea that I wanted to run by you, also, because one of the struggles, as I said, is just figuring out what to say. What should my content be?
Over the weekend, I started thinking about—because as I'm getting older, Michael, I seem to be spending more time remembering things, lately—and I started remembering how in the '90s, I studied Creative Writing at the Writers Studio with a poet named Philip Schultz. For years, we did what I would now call, “mimicking the masters,” basically. He just had us read the masters and then do our version of a paragraph.
I thought, let's give the baby step of read, maybe one of my favorite of your newsletters or your favorite of your newsletters, and then write your version of Michael's newsletter, because it's not like you're going to send it out, right? No one's going to send it out. It's just an exercise. It's a writing exercise, whether you're a writer or not, to just get in the habit of writing a newsletter and trying out different approaches until you find the one that works for you. What do you think of that?
Michael Katz
Oh, I love that. I really do, because what's so hard for people from starting from scratch is sort of just figuring out the flow and putting the pieces together. So, the idea that you would take somebody else's and just put it in your voice, and even the way you might organize this stuff. Oh, I think that's great. I mean, a big piece of this, too, is getting comfortable with your own voice because it feels weird at first. It's like doing a webinar on Zoom in your office where there's nobody there, and you can't see anybody, trying to sound natural. And I do think it's important for this tool, it ought to sound like you talking. I should recognize you when I hear it, and I think the mistake people make is either they're too kind of business-y or they take on this Joe Podcast persona that's, like, way over the top.
And so, it should sound like you're having coffee with somebody or, and so again, if you're having coffee with a friend and they say, "Hey, I don't really understand this. Can you explain it to me, Carpenter Friend?" My brother-in-law would go, "Yeah, yeah, just, here's what you do." So, that exercise, though, that you describe is great because it removes the whole, ‘what do I write about thing?’ And if there's structure there already, and now it's just, can you figure out how to put it in your own voice—oh, that's brilliant. I love that.
ilise benun
It's yours, if you want it, I'm going to use it. I'm going to give it as a baby step, but you just gave me one other thing I wanted to talk about with you, which is the way your newsletter is also a podcast. I don't know anyone else who does that. Can you please explain that?
Michael Katz
Yes. My newsletter is technically a podcast because I do it in audio. I mean, podcasts are usually, think of this kind of thing, you're interviewing somebody or whatever. But back when podcasts began, I thought, "Oh, why don't I do that?"
So, what I do is, every time I publish, I record it. And it's not word for word, but it's pretty close because I write the way I talk. So, it's really easy. I just turn on my computer. I use something called Audacity, which is a free download on a PC, and then I just sort of speak it. And what I find is, first of all, the whole thing only adds about a half an hour to the process. Probably 10% of my people who open my newsletter click the link. And so, without a lot of extra work, I'm creating something that's for people who want to hear audio.
I mean, there's some people who are hearing impaired. There's some people who like to listen while they drive. So, it's like you're getting to another portion of the population who just prefer to listen, and it's easy, and it's free to be on iTunes. So, I'm on iTunes. Big deal. But occasionally, I'll have somebody who reaches me from that direction, who then signs up for the newsletter, and I look at it as, the hardest part is writing the thing. Then, to put it on audio, to put it on your website as a blog, to put it on all the social, are just giving you other ways to reach other people; as opposed to 15 years ago, you'd write your newsletter and you'd send it out, and that was it. There was no blogs, and there was no anything. It was just gone. So now you’ve got all these other ways to use it, and a podcast is a great, pretty easy step to do.
Ilise benun
Awesome, Michael. I feel like we could talk forever about newsletters, and so we’ll definitely have to do this again, but for now, I want to thank you and tell the people where they can find you and your newsletter online.
Michael Katz
Yeah. They can find me at michaelkatz.com, and scroll to the bottom of the page, and you can subscribe, and it is a lifetime commitment, though. You can never unsubscribe. So, be ready.
Ilise benun
(Laughter) Awesome. Thank you so much, Michael.
Michael Katz
Thanks for having me.
ilise benun
I forgot how funny Michael is, and full of good ideas, healthy perspectives rooted in reality, and very apt metaphors, too. Right? Now, I want you to follow Michael's excellent example, so you can have newsletter magic, also. So, here are the baby steps you can take. In fact, you can choose from the two we discussed based on where you are in your process and which makes the most sense for you. Only you know what that is.
Now, I suggested that you read Michael's newsletter, which you can find at michaelkatz.com, and then as an exercise, write your version using his strategy or approach. It doesn't need to be perfect or even very good. It's just an exercise, and no one will ever see it—unless you send it to me, which you're welcome to do. Or you can follow Michael's suggested baby step to just get that first newsletter out, which may or may not seem like a baby step to you. If it does, then do it, because as he said, they do get easier as you go. But, you've got to get going, so your prospects can marinate in your content before any newsletter magic will happen. That's how it works.
So, did you learn a little something? I hope so, because that's how this works, one baby step at a time. Before you know it, you'll have better clients with bigger budgets. Speaking of better clients, they're probably not going to fall in your lap. That's why I keep hawking my Simplest Marketing Plan. If you want to build a thriving business on your own terms, you need the new 4.0 version for 2022. It's not too late to get it, and it is packed with all new content, including six new case studies and six new lessons. You also get three different planners, plus access to the free monthly Office Hours group coaching session, where you'll meet other creative pros who are practicing what I preach and taking control over their business and their life. You can find it all in the marketing mentor shop at marketing-mentor.com. And, I'll be back soon with more conversations with creative professionals who are doing what it takes to ditch the feast or famine syndrome. Until next time.
]]>That’s right. I only work with good clients!
And you can, too.
There are enough good clients out there to make the world go ‘round. And I can’t help but think I could have avoided some red flag clients along the way if I knew what to look for, and what to avoid.
Optimism is a beautiful thing, but rose-colored glasses usually aren’t helpful when we’re vetting possible clients. Here’s something that is helpful … looking for green flags! Ready to pinpoint good clients (and avoid some pain along the way)? Here are some client green flags:
Read the rest here:
Client Green Flags: 11 Signs of a Good Client
They don't know who you are or how you can help them – yet.
They may not even know they need help.
Which means the likelihood of you working with them is extremely low…
Unless you do your Targeted Outreach (one of the three tools in my Simplest Marketing Plan).
Not sure how outreach is different from, say, networking?
Watch this clip from my recent SMP+ Outreach Club session to hear my definition of outreach.
You’ll also discover my new favorite AI tool, Perplexity.ai, and a trick to make it find your “ideal client” prospects for you.
Play around with it and see what you get.
Using AI is a big experiment. It’s far from perfect, but the more you play with it, the more you’ll understand as it evolves.
I plan to lead the charge when it comes to using AI to help you do your marketing.
So I’ll be experimenting with it a lot this year and sharing what I learn.
Feeling AI-resistant? Maybe a little overwhelmed?
It’s just another way to use your business as a laboratory.
If you stay curious and approach it with the intention to play and experiment, you’ll stay on top of this emerging technology - and your business will be better for it.
]]>
How do you know whom to trust? Not to mention trusting the market – but how exactly?
That was the main topic in my latest crossover episode with Jenny Blake, author of Free Time, host of the Free Time Podcast, and one of my favorite conversation partners.
We covered a lot of ground in this conversation, including:
Listen here and below:
And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
Here's the transcript:
Who do you trust when you’re in business for yourself? Do you trust yourself? Do you trust others? And if so, which others? How do you know whom to trust? All very important questions that I think a lot about. Not to mention trusting the market that I keep telling you to listen to. If the market is going to guide you – and I think it should – you have to let it. But how exactly? That was the main topic in my latest crossover episode with Jenny Blake, author of Free Time, host of the Free Time Podcast, and one of my favorite conversation partners because she really does bring out the best in me, which we talked about too. So listen and learn.
Hi friends. Welcome back. I am delighted to be in conversation today with Ilise Benun. Ilise is the founder of Marketing Mentor. And we had so much fun doing our first round of podcast conversations with thanks to our mutual friend, Terry Trespicio, who introduced us. You can check those out in 165 on free time.
Are your clients bringing out the best in you? And episode 467 on marketing mentor on how to free your time. We had so much fun. We said, we got to do this again. Let's get on for just coffee talk. We have a few topics in mind about kinds of juicy things. So I'm just thrilled to have you back and vice versa, since we're recording this as a crossover.
So hi, Ilise. Hello, Jenny. So good to be back and talking with you and. You know, one of the things I actually, I think we talked about this too, is wanting to work with people who bring out the best in you. And there's just certain people who, when I talk to them, my excellent new ideas rise to the surface.
And that was my experience with you last time. So I'm looking forward to seeing what comes out of my mouth today. Ooh, I love that. Well, you really challenged me as well in a great way, talking about word of mouth marketing and you know, that alone cannot be a standalone strategy. So I learned just as much from you.
And I'm just so grateful to Terry for putting us in touch. In fact, we're recording this on a day, well, peak summer heat. My room is a sauna. I was telling you. Before we record, you're going to be a camp counselor again for her annual summer camp. And the theme of her summer camp is breaking the rules.
Your topic specifically is on trust and trusting ourselves. I would love to know how this particular topic bubbled up for you. So her version of my topic is the time you stopped giving a crap, basically. Because that's the format, the time, blah, blah, blah, dot, dot, dot. So everyone has the time. So that's my time.
And the more I thought about it, the more I realized, I mean, it came out of something that has almost become one of my signature quotes lately, which is, who cares? I say, who cares? Constantly. It can be misunderstood. It's very provocative. And so the thought was, let's try to dig into what it means when I say who cares and how it has freed me to not care.
And so the more I thought about it, the more I realized that who cares actually is a trust issue. And it has to do with so many different ways of trusting and things that can or cannot be trusted. And one of the ones that has occurred to me most recently is that when I say who cares, what I mean is, I don't know.
And whatever happened and whatever is going to happen, I have to trust that it's going to be fine. I'm going to be fine and I will figure something out because I am, as my teacher always told me, smart, resourceful, and there was one other thing, smart, resourceful, there's one other thing I am that makes me able to just say, who cares?
We'll figure it out. Where do we begin to list the other qualities? Smart, resourceful, creative, experienced, wise, improvisational. I love this. And of course, it's perfect timing because we were talking offline about how I'm just launching a secret sub stack for astute VIP listeners. I'm going to put a secret link in the show notes.
So you've got to dig to find it. And one of the things is I was having all these daily vulnerability hangovers, feeling totally gripped by fear, overwhelm, vulnerability, insecurity, just all the waves because it's very personal writing. And in one of the early posts, I write. Who cares? And I write it in all caps and I said, it is so exhausting to care.
So I love how you're framing this of who literally, who cares? And I, here I am. I'm so worried about what people are going to think. Are they going to judge me? Is my writing good enough? No, it's not good enough because I could list 10 sub stackers with better writing or smarter thinking or any laundry list of things.
And I say, we're not meant to compare ourselves to 8 billion people, which we now have access to seeing a good portion of them through social channels. And that if you really break it down, it's like, okay, maybe people see me for who I really am or what I really think or hard times that I'm going through or that my writing is filled with cliches.
Okay. Even if those things were true, which they may not be, who cares? Mike's so wide. I think Sometimes my mind goes to these worst case scenarios like, Oh, my clients or potential clients in community will lose respect for me and they'll unsubscribe in droves and I'll be left with the husk of a business.
That would be my fear talking. a result, but it could so easily go one of a hundred other ways. This phrase, who cares, which another way of saying it is what you said, so what, which is a little bit softer, right? I think it is so freeing. That's my experience, because the minute I realize, Oh, nobody really cares.
And yes, I am going to pick myself up. And figure it out. And that distracts me from all those big feelings that are getting in the way so that I can really focus on action because when something's happening, action is what we need. I do think that sometimes there's a vicious cycle in business, the psychology of running a business where if the chips are down, I tend to lose confidence and I get, want to crawl into my turtle shell.
And I also lose a little bit of trust in myself because I think, well, if I was so smart at business or if I took my own advice, maybe things wouldn't be going this way. A question I have for you is how do you trust yourself? And embrace the who cares, even when things aren't going the way you would like them to.
And this is something I've been giving a lot of thought to also. And one thought is that when we say trusting our self, which self are we talking about? And which selves cannot be trusted? And so I even made a list just off the top of my head of a few of the various selves, like the old self versus the new self or the rational self versus the irrational self.
And not even that it's binary, but like the desperate self, I'm not going to trust the desperate self or the self that wants something too much or the critical self. I would rather trust the compassionate self. And I even think like I have a morning self and an evening self and I totally trust the morning self and not so much the evening self.
That's hilarious. I don't trust my evening or afternoon self for that matter. I don't let my afternoon self participate in meetings because she's like hot and tired and over it. Yeah. And you're so right. I'm a terrible coach. If I do coaching sessions with a client, it has to be before a certain time in the day.
Otherwise I can't remember things. I don't have my words. I'm not nearly as sharp. So I love even thinking about the morning self and afternoon self or whatever listener, whatever your circadian rhythm would indicate. The idea there is that once you've identified which selves, and there are so many of them, right, we could make a long, long list of how many different selves there are, then We know which one's not to trust?
And then maybe we begin to think about how we might trust the ones that are left. And so to me, that first pass is the important one. I'm fascinated by the first one, the example you gave, the old self versus the new self. Sometimes in a liminal state, I find that it's not exactly clear which self is talking or which one's which, or which one even to trust.
Sometimes the new self is this reckless, excited risk taker, at least for me. That's how my new self comes in, like really wanting to go for it sometimes. So, do you have a recent example where you had even a debate between the old self and the new self and how did you discern the difference? Well, let me not answer exactly that question quite yet, because the thought that's coming to my mind is that that's a very common state, I think, especially when you're in that liminal state to not know.
Even be able to distinguish between the various selves and identify them that way. And that's where, from my experience, trusting other people and knowing who out there you can trust becomes paramount because my experience was that for years and years and years, I did not trust myself. I always made the wrong decisions in all aspects of my life.
I was okay. I got very lucky in many situations, but the decisions I made and remember I've been self employed for 35 years now. So you might think that first decision to go out on my own was a smart one, but it was really rooted in anger and nothing else. And it happened to be a good one, but it wasn't a rational decision at all.
And so little by little I found people outside of myself That I could trust, and as I began to trust them, I began to essentially import their brains into mine, which required letting go of the way I was thinking, that's the old self, and instead, agree to think the way they do, and that's very tricky, it took me, I don't know, 15 years to even begin to do that, But as soon as I did truthfully, things got better.
And so I saw that the way these other people are thinking is just smarter than the way I think, and I need to think like they think, and then. you know, it's really just a question of like remaking the new self based on teachers and mentors and people you admire and respect and then adapting what they're doing for myself.
That's the key part also, is you're not just following someone else's instructions. You have to integrate it and experiment. I like to say that your business. is a lab for your own personal growth, essentially. And so you experiment with things and then you see what works and what doesn't and what feels right.
But if we're too attached to who we are and how we do things and very rigid about it, then we can't let anything else in. I'm so curious to hear about the anger inducing incident that started your business. And I'm also curious back then, how did you know who you could trust? Because I always joke that I just had a faulty picker when I was in my twenties of who to date.
I really did trust the wrong people, my trust picker mechanism. wasn't great. It had to be developed. And I think that can happen too, in a business sense, because it's really easy to do what Mike Michalowicz calls keeping up with the entrepreneur Joneses and maybe trusting, or also like you said, kind of delegating the, Oh, how would you think about this?
How would you approach this to others? Sometimes for better, sometimes for worse. And just real quick before you respond. I can relate so much, and I'm so happy you brought this up because there's been areas of my life where I've been confident, but in many areas, I am not naturally inherently confident.
And it is not until I go to my trusted advisors and ask for input that I can move forward and even see what I'm not seeing about them. Qualities that would help me to move forward or that I can do something. And so I love that you've put words to this because I've never thought of it in quite this way, that there have been countless business decisions that I could not and would not have made if it weren't for the trusted advisors encouraging me, reflecting things to me along the way.
All right, first, I just want to say, I don't know anyone who is inherently confident. I don't think we are born with confidence in any way at all. And I personally don't love the conversation about confidence because I think confidence is a byproduct of action and experience. And it comes later. And if we think we need it first to do something, well, we're sabotaging ourselves essentially.
Totally agree. Right? And so courage is the word that often gets used kind of as a complementary idea here. And I think it does take courage to do the things that need to be done to trust someone based on Maybe it's a feeling, maybe it's someone else's referral, maybe it's something you can't even pinpoint and describe, but you're going to try it again.
You have to experiment, you've got to test it out little by little. Okay, here's an example. In, I think it was 2016, I had been living in Hoboken for almost 30 years. And I decided... Like, why am I still here? I don't understand. I know why I came here in the first place, but I don't know why I'm still here.
And it was just too cold. I'm from Southern California originally, and I just got tired of the cold. And so my teacher said to me, why don't you try Savannah? I don't know why he thought Savannah would be a good place for me, but I trusted him. Over the years, right? It took many years to trust him. And so he said, try Savannah.
So I did. And I was like, all right, well, I'm going to go spend the winter there. And he said, uh uh. You're going to spend one month first, the first winter. And then if you like it, you'll go back for two months. And if you like that, you'll go back for three months. And then you'll see how it goes. And then you can make a decision.
I was like, no, I want to go now. I want to spend the whole winter there now. And it's not like he was in charge, but, you know, if I was going to trust him, I was going to follow his guidance. And so I did it that way. And that was really the best way to do it because I got to see different neighborhoods. I got to dip my toe in the water and test it out before I made any big commitment to anything.
And I think We get very excited about things and we want to dive in and we think diving in is the right thing to do, but I'm really all about the baby steps and the testing and small bites before I make any decisions. I was used to quote Joan Baez, who said, action is the antidote to despair. That was like my living mantra, because it's so true that it's only taking the action, like you said, that any confidence.
And so that became one of my mantras for a long time. And I used to have these postcards that would say, build first, courage second, it's like, it's not the other way around. We'll be right back. Just after this.
So tell me, I just have to know, maybe your listeners have long since heard this story about what made you so angry that you started your own business? All right. Well, first of all. Well, it's helpful to know that I come from a family, a long line of self employed people. I wouldn't call them entrepreneurs necessarily, and this is actually maybe even before people thought about or talked about entrepreneurs, but everyone in my family essentially was self employed.
And so that's what I knew and that's what I grew up around and there was nothing scary about it to me, actually. And in fact, this morning I walked by a restaurant that was closed with my coffee and there was a little boy in the window and then he waved at me and I waved back and it brought back this flood of memories of Spending so many days during the summers in my grandmother's dress shop on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills, where before Beverly Hills was Beverly Hills and Rodeo Drive was Rodeo Drive, she had a dress shop called Sylvia Bender, that was her name.
And I used to go and spend time in the window, basically, and watch the people go by and pretend I was a mannequin. And, end. Who knows what I was doing, but I was just surrounded by self employment constantly in all of these environments. So that's my foundation. And so I went to college for Spanish. My degree is in Spanish.
I studied French as well. I had no idea what I was going to do. I moved to New York with a very good friend, and she basically got me my second job out of college. The first one was in the fashion industry, which is what my parents did, and I spent a year and a half working for a big buying office in New York.
I hated it, so I quit to become a waitress at Café Androit, one of my favorite places. And then my best friend said, well, we need someone to come in and do computer data entry at night. Would you do that? And this was like at the beginning of computers, 1985, 86, right around there. And so I said, sure, if you teach me, I'll do it.
And that's actually. A really important kind of reaction, I always try to say yes to things, even if I don't know how to do them because the no that comes from a lack of courage or lack of confidence gets in the way of being able to learn something new, actually. And so if someone is willing to give me a shot.
And it wasn't a secret that I didn't know how to do what they were asking, but even if it was after that, there were many times when people said, can you do this? I'm like, sure, I'll figure it out. And I think that attitude is just essential as a self employed person, because people are going to constantly ask you for things you're probably not prepared to do, or you're going to need to do things that you're not prepared to do.
And you're going to need to say yes, and then figure it out. So I just think that's a really important attitude. My best friend at the time had gotten me this job and it Essentially evolved into a full time job because then they offered me to be their operations manager, which I had no idea what that is either, but I said yes to it.
And it turned out to be kind of a marketing job and I didn't know anything about marketing there either, but I learned, and then I worked there for a year and a half and it just got a little political and on a personal level, my friend and I were, it was very up and down relationship and it. got to be very down.
And so I basically started doing bad things to get myself fired because I did not know how to quit that job. And I'm not going to go into detail about what I did, but let's just say one of them was I was also the bookkeeper. And I forgot to pay one of the tax bills, one of the quarterly tax bills, and the boss got mad.
And on a Friday, he basically just handed me an envelope and said, thank you very much. And that was in April of 1988. And at that point, because I didn't realize I had gotten myself fired, right. Because I didn't know how to quit. I saw that later, but basically I just thought, how dare he, and I'm never working for anyone again, and then I had to figure out what to do, but because he had given me a little bit of money in that envelope, which I thought was very generous.
I wasn't in a hurry and I could take my time and I went to my therapist and we talked about it and I just basically started listening to the market. I didn't know that's what I was doing at the time, but that was her suggestion, which is see what the world needs, see what people out there need people, you know, and that's what I started to do.
And. All the people around me were creative artists, actors, musicians, dancers, and I could see that they were very disorganized and I was a little bit more organized, you know, sometimes people call it anal. I'm not so much anymore, but that's the old self, not the new self. And I just started saying to people, Oh, well, I'll help you get organized with all your papers.
And people said, Oh, good idea. Let's do it for 15 an hour, essentially. And then little by little, I started to notice that at the bottom of everybody's pile, there was always something that had to do with marketing and self promotion that was not getting done. And it was just so consistent that I realized this is the main problem, but clutter is an obstacle to self promotion.
I can do that. I know how to. Get the word out. Let's just send stuff to people. That's really all it was. I love the mail and that's what I started doing. And that was the beginning of marketing mentor, essentially. That's incredible. And back to this topic of trust, how you say that you somehow knew even early on how to trust the market to tell you what was needed and that by taking on those early clients, you were able to see themes that were emerging and then trust yourself, not only.
To try to go this route in the first place, but then to trust that you were spotting the trends of what you could provide. Yes, but I didn't think of it that way at all. It didn't feel like an issue of trust. I was just really in tune with the people I knew. And what they need and often, you know, really sensitive introverts are very attuned to what people need.
And if you put your trust in that and just provide it, I think the rest, it doesn't happen by itself. You definitely have to do things, but the market tells you what it wants. The market guides you if you let it. Okay. That piece seems crucial. If you let it, what do you see among your clients today in terms of when they are leaning into that kind of mutual information exchange, let's say with the market, with their clients and where it goes wrong, let's say.
Like, when do people stop? With that trust and timing connection, where does it go wrong? I think what happens is there's this belief that I need to know. I need to know what I'm doing. I need to know what my niche is. I need, in order to go out there, put myself out there in the first place, I need everything to be clear.
I need all my ducks in a row. Those are some of the cliches, but I don't think so. I think if you approach it with this, who cares? Life is an experiment. My business is an experiment. Yes. It's going to support me. So it must support me, but you can't be so. fixated on knowing anything before you can actually know it.
And so that's the obstacle I see most people putting in front of them. And one of the things my teacher always said was, if I came to him with an idea, he was like, yeah, try it. That was the most beautiful thing he could ever say. Yeah, try it. And I tried it and it either worked or it didn't. And I learned something and it always kept getting better.
Is there ever a case not to try it? Like, have you ever gone wrong with the, yeah, try it or who cares? Not really. I can think of a time. I mean, again, if you follow the baby steps and you don't risk everything to try it, you just figure out what's the MVP, as they say, right? What's the minimum viable product or the minimum viable service, whatever you can do.
Then you'll get enough information and often people, you know, again, they want to know like, well, how long is it going to take? The thing that happens is that you will know much sooner if it's not working than if it is, you will get the messages like, no, that's not interesting. Or no, we don't have money for that.
Or what are you talking about? We don't understand. And that is the information that's important. You're not going to hear, oh my God, this is the best thing I have ever heard of. Yes. Go ahead. Right. That's not usually what happens. You know, I say in Pivot that a good pilot will teach you three E's. Do you enjoy this area?
Can you become an expert at it? And do you want to? And is there room to expand in the market and your business and your services? So I've always said the same thing too, that you have to think of pilots as, you know, Resources at the Kentucky Derby. Like you can't know who's going to win, which of your small pilots or projects are going to take off.
You really can't know. You need to have a few running in parallel and then they'll show you which one takes on a natural momentum of its own. And if you're enjoying it and you want to develop your expertise in that way, and there's room to expand and you're getting that feedback from the outside world.
That's when you can double down and that's when you can kind of pick the direction. So I find that that's always been helpful for people who are stuck, myself included. Yeah, I totally agree. And another element of the obstacle though, is that people don't trust the feedback or they have really unrealistic expectations of what the feedback is going to be.
And What's normal for a lot of feedback is silence and we seem to have very little tolerance for silence. And the thing about the silence though, when someone isn't responding yet, or when you don't get any likes on your post or any of those vanity metrics. The thing is that there's a lot happening out there in the silence that we are not aware of.
This is another, I may have mentioned last time, one of my favorite cognitive biases is absence blindness. That we don't see what's not there, but in the silence, things are happening. People are thinking and seeing, even if they're not commenting and liking, it's making an impact. You just don't know it.
And that's another thing you have to trust. Oh, absolutely. I'm so glad you're saying that because it reminds me of everybody uses the iceberg metaphor. There's what you see and then there's everything else below the surface. But I like the way James Clear talks about it in Atomic Habits. He talks about an ice cube melting and that let's say the room is a certain temperature and the ice cube is going nowhere.
But little by little, the room gets one degree warmer, one degree warmer, one degree warmer. You're not seeing any action for a long time. And then at some point, the temperature threshold changes enough and the ice cube turns instantly into water. But there's so long in that alchemical process where it looks like nothing is happening.
Yeah, and often one of the ways I think about this and talk about it is in terms of magic. It feels like magic then when something actually happens, even though it's not, it's just been marinating for a while. And you haven't seen it. For example, one of the marketing tools in my simplest marketing plan that I highly recommend people do kind of as a maintenance marketing is a newsletter.
We talked about newsletters last time as well, a monthly newsletter, a bimonthly newsletter, a quarterly newsletter, even whatever you can manage, but you have to stay visible. And often when you send your newsletter out. And if the right people are on your list, then someone will respond, no matter what you said in your newsletter and say, Oh, I've been thinking about you and meaning to reach out and I have a project.
So let's talk. And I call that newsletter magic because It feels like magic, but the truth is you've been cultivating and developing those relationships over time with your newsletter, even if people aren't loving it or telling you that they love it, things are happening and that you have to trust. It's so true how it feels like magic.
My metaphor for that is like Bluetooth devices. You got to be discoverable. So, you know, when you're trying to match two devices, one of them has to go into discoverability mode or they both do. And so a newsletter just keeps you discoverable, keeps that light flashing like, Hey, I'm ready to be found. And you're really, really good at that.
You help my gosh, you do this in so many ways, more than I could possibly be able to keep up with. One of the things that I found most interesting and that Terry even mentioned when she asked To make the introduction is that you put your phone number in your email signature, and I'm pretty sure your phone number is on your website and in your newsletter, like it's everywhere.
You're not shy about it. Now for someone like me, who's practically allergic to phone calls, if it's not a podcast recording, tell me how that is for you. Do people ever call you randomly? Is it ever too much? It's overwhelming. Like I would just love to hear about this aspect of putting yourself out there in that way.
It's so funny. Yeah. And I do put my phone number in. My FromLine also, it's not just in my newsletter, it's in my FromLine because I want it easy to find. And I will say that these days very few people call me, but it used to be when people were picking up the phone and not afraid to pick up the phone. I think at this point people seem to be afraid to pick up the phone if you haven't made an appointment with someone.
And maybe there's some merit to that, I don't know, we could discuss it. But I want to be available. I don't want to ever give off this feeling to anyone, prospects, clients, my market, the world, like I'm too busy. And so as we've talked about, I put a lot of cushion in my schedule so that I don't have to rush from one thing to the next.
So that I don't have to have that feeling of pressure. Cause I think a lot of the pressure that people feel is self imposed pressure, and we could do a lot to take it off of ourselves. And so one way is definitely just giving ourselves time. And so at this point, you know, most people are not calling me.
And when they do, they're so thrilled to reach me. And I love to be able to thrill people in that way. When I'm available, I will definitely pick up the phone. I don't care if it's a number that's in my contact list, somehow the phone knows potential spam. So I don't answer potential spam, but. If it's a number I don't know, I'll pick it up.
I can always say, sorry, can't talk now. I love it. I love the feeling of somebody being thrilled that you answer and there's a real person there. I learned a little delightful software tip from my friend, Alexandra Franzen, many years ago that sometimes for email replies, she uses a service called Vocaroo.
I'll put the link in the show notes. And Vocaroo allows you to record a short voice message and easily copy and paste a link. So without having to do the rigmarole of recording on your phone, uploading a file. You just send this Vokaroo link. And what's interesting is that the times that I use it are when maybe it's a long message or it's an important message from a friend or a potential client, and I just don't want to sit there typing out the email.
And so then I'll open Vokaroo, I'll record a voice memo. And sometimes it just blows people's minds, you know, they can't believe it's my voice. And again, whether it's a friend or someone potentially reaching out to join the community or something, it always comes across as delightful to them, which surprises me because I'm doing it because I don't want to type out a long email, you know, and it's easy and it is joyful and you can convey emotion through the voice, which is why we're here doing this.
But it's one of those examples of something that's really a win win in this way where you get to. Spark joy and create a connection that wouldn't otherwise be there. And that does break from the norms of how we communicate now. Yeah, I love that. I'm going to check out Vocaroo because I do think that our voice has so much power, especially when we're just swimming in a sea of text and images, the voice just communicates so much.
And there are other tools that I am often advising people to use and I don't think they do it very often because there's something a little scary, I guess, about actually putting your voice in a recording, but, you know, LinkedIn on the mobile app, you can send a voice message to someone through the messaging app.
And on LinkedIn also, one of the things I love is they have a little thing. I call it an audio intro. I think they call it something else because its original purpose was if you have a weird name, you can say it in 10 seconds. You have 10 seconds to say something and you can pronounce your name for people.
But I thought, Oh my God, that's an awesome marketing tool. Just put your elevator pitch there and a call to action. And so I've been teaching people how to do that. It's not that hard, but it's also something you can only do on the mobile app. That's so good. Okay, so what's yours? What's your 10 second? I can't remember.
But it's something like, I mean, I say something different every time I introduce myself, but it's something like, If you want better clients with bigger budgets, then sign up for my quick tips and you'll get the magic money formula worksheet. Actually, you know what? I should change it to that because that's definitely better.
And that's what I'm offering these days is my magic money formula worksheet. When people sign up for my quick tips, little plug there. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Okay. Okay. Well, now, you know, I got to ask you about that. What is the magic money formula? Give us a sneak peek. I know they'll have to download it, but here's that word magic again.
So I'm intrigued. All right. People are often asking me how much marketing they should do. And I can't answer that question until we know how much you want to make. So the magic money formula is essentially you figure out how much you want to bring in on a monthly basis. And then you figure out how many different types of projects will get you to that monthly number.
And then that helps you figure out how much marketing you need to do in order to get to that monthly number and helps you figure out your capacity as well. Because all of these things are connected. But I find many people compartmentalize almost everything and therefore don't see the connections between it all.
And so the goal of the formula. is to tell you how much marketing you need to do in your 30 minutes a day, which is what I recommend. That's really what works. And that may be enough for most people. And then what you do depends on what kind of clients you're trying to get and how much you need them to pay for each type of project.
But the whole thing is rooted in marketing, which is why when you sign up for my quick tips, which is my bi weekly every other week newsletter, and all you get are really quick tips to help you do something right now,
we'll be right back just after this.
Now you're on so many platforms and I know you're their marketing mentors, like you're so good at this. Do you have any systems on the back end that enable you to stay visible, discoverable and consistent in so many places on a regular basis? You know, I know you're all about systems, Jenny, and I'm a little bit older than you are.
And so I want to say no, actually, I have help. First of all, I have really good people. Who disseminate my content and most of it is through my blog, my newsletter and LinkedIn and YouTube. That's essentially where I am. I know it may seem like I'm everywhere, but that's really where I am. And as long as I put out a newsletter every other week, that's my system.
I know that's what I'm committed to. And then the rest gets chopped up and put out into All the other places. And that is really the strategy that I recommend in the simplest marketing Glenn too, by the way, which is create some content and then chop it up and repeat it, repurpose it so that you're not reinventing the wheel every single time it's exhausting.
And, you know, the internet is a content machine. It's a content monster. It's a hungry beast. And so you have to find ways to repurpose and reshare because, again, you know that people are not seeing everything and even if they saw it once they're not going to remember or maybe they want to be reminded so it reinforces the idea and it reinforces your branding.
I mean, repetition is everything when it comes to marketing. So I just try to create, you know, one big idea, every newsletter, and then disseminate it in lots of places. That's my system. And so the newsletter is the crux. If you're doing that and you're coming up with your big idea, you're on track. And then it goes out blog, podcast, YouTube, LinkedIn, et cetera.
Hmm. Fascinating. Okay. So is there anything else on this topic of building trust in yourself or knowing who to trust? If we circle back to where we started, that we haven't covered or that you think people miss, or kind of think about you where there's an opportunity to think about something differently.
I want to go back to the idea of where we started in a way, when not to trust yourself, because I think if people can make a list of the different selves or the different moments, even, because it's kind of micro moments. Like I know for myself, I always have a big, excited feeling about something new.
That's just my MO, but I know better than to trust taking action on that. And so, for example, I will always sleep on it. Yesterday, I was negotiating a speaking engagement, and they're having trouble coordinating with the date that we came up with, and the time, and the place, and all the logistics, and they came back to me and they said, Would you reconsider doing it on a different day?
I had already said no to, and I could have reacted from my evening self. So funny. Yes. My tired self. Yes. Right. I mean, if you ask me something at night, the answer is always no. So don't do that. And I'll even get enraged. Like if I read that at night after a long day and I'm tired and I feel I've already set a boundary, that's what will make me angry.
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. Yeah, no, it didn't make me angry. I just knew I needed to sleep on it and I would have a clear perspective and thought in the morning and my thought was the same, it was still going to be, no, sorry, I can't do that, but I was much more polite about it in the morning than I would have been in the evening.
So I just think those moments, it's about getting to know yourself. Jen Lederer, another friend of Terry's, I met her recently and I'm going to have her on my podcast soon, actually. She's hysterical. And she said to me, starting your own business is a spiritual experience. You will meet yourself. And I love that so much.
I've been quoting her. All the time, because I do think it's true, whether to you, that's a spiritual experience or not is not the question. The question is, you will meet yourself and you have to be looking to meet yourself and not trying to be someone else and learning from all these little moments that it's going to surprise you what you find out about yourself and.
Really, when the rubber hits the road, as they say, and when the chips are down, how do you respond? That is yourself, and you could make a mistake and learn from it, or you could do the right thing, or you could just wait. until the moment is right to actually decide. That is such a powerful statement. I can see why you love it.
You will meet yourself. It's so true. And then part of the reason that's so powerful is that when you run your own business, really no one's coming to save you. You could say the universe, or if you believe in a higher power, okay, maybe yes, there will be grace or you'll be guided or your intuition will show you or inevitable serendipity popcorn will pop somewhere.
And at the same time. There's no one coming, like you have to confront yourself. You have to confront how it feels to be vulnerable or afraid or in a cash crunch or whatever the situation, like you're the only one who can get yourself out. So it's not like if you just wait for a long time or the paychecks keep coming and you can kind of punt certain feelings or sweep them under the rug.
There's no one coming. So it's like it requires this meeting yourself over and over and over again. And I think one thing people don't realize when they're dreaming of self employment is that the reality is, yes, there's all that freedom everybody talks about with a lot of hyperbole. Both you and I talk about the freedom and we're kind of spoiled by it by now.
But I think the part people don't talk about is the responsibility because you are responsible for absolutely everything. Even when someone else makes the mistake, even when someone on your team makes the mistake. I think I heard you say this recently. What could you have done to communicate more clearly so that that did not happen?
And how do you make sure that never happens again? Always. Yes. A hundred percent. Like just today I got surprised by a legal bill that I wasn't expecting and I kind of didn't think much of it. I was not venting to my VA, but I was just saying, Oh, did you see the bill? It's such a surprise. We got to cover this now.
Anyway, we're just chatting. And then she said something like. You know, it'd be great to get a quote for a flat fee next time in advance, just so you know what's coming. And it was such a great example of. Even this surprise could have been avoided and she was exactly right. And this is exactly how I encourage anyone on my team to think, which is, okay, this thing happened and it created friction or it surprised me not in a great way.
Now what? Okay, great. The next time I need to work on a contract renewal with a client or a legal issue or whatever, I need to ask for an estimate and a flat fee upfront. I can't just like let the clock roll, or at least I'm not in a position right now at this moment in time. And so. In this sense, when money is tight and a surprise happens, that's actually what starts the new system or makes us smarter at what to do next time.
Cause when times are really good, it's kind of easy. Things just roll and flow and you can be a little sloppy and things don't hit as hard. So that was exactly what you were talking about. Is there anything we missed on knowing when to trust others? I have a feeling you have some great rubric in there in that brilliant mind of yours of who not to trust.
I mean, we know the big red flags, but let's say in a business context, when do you know that someone is a true, wise, trusted advisor who can tell you what you might not be seeing for yourself? And when would you not let somebody's advice in? One of the things I think we need to be careful is someone who has too much at stake in the decisions that we are making.
And sometimes that could be a partner, right? Or someone in your family has some attachment to what you're deciding. And you want to trust the people who are closest to you, but sometimes they have the conflicts of interest and we don't see that. So that's one thing to make sure that there's enough objectivity.
Between you and the person who is advising you. That's what I would say. Okay, well, the last question that I ask always on free time, and I know this one's a crossover, is if you could give fellow small business owners permission to do something differently or drop something altogether, what would it be?
I would give permission to listen to someone else. Find someone. Try it. Find someone you think you might be able to trust. And just try something that they suggest and see what happens. I love that. And I'll build on your permission slip. I'll say. Choose something that's really vexing you that maybe you even feel a little bit vulnerable about, and you don't have to go this route.
But I always end up feeling very shy to ask for input, even from close friends, business friend, or it's been so rewarding when I put myself out there and ask for ideas or input on a situation, or what would you do if you were in my shoes or in your experience, what has worked for you? And I'm always so glad.
So even when I feel nervous to take a risk, Putting myself out there to ask for that input. I'm almost always so grateful on the other side, and I always take very interesting things away. Actually, you made me think of another one, if I may. Sure. Permission slip bonanza. Give yourself permission to share honestly with trusted people about a mistake that you made that you're especially embarrassed about.
Because I think when we're self employed and we keep it all inside, it's not healthy. And just the act of sharing it, even if you don't go into the gory details, you just say, Oh my God, I just made the biggest mistake. I need to get it off my chest. I think that is very helpful. So that's my other permission slide.
Okay. Well, now I'm going to build on that and just say, you know, the secret sub stack I've been so transparent in a very uncomfortable way, but I have to tell you, and the only reason I'm mentioning it again is that. Since the day I got some bad news and I felt like the sky was falling, I started writing.
And since I started writing, I have felt better every day. And yes, I have felt vulnerable. I say it's a 51, 49 ratio, 49 percent of me, speaking of parts, wants to take everything back down and Again, hide it from the outside world, but the 51 percent that's just tipping the scales toward courage. It's actually so healing to write about it and be honest about it and share more with people than I ever have.
There is something so freeing and healing for me in that process, even if nobody read it. And then I am hearing from people saying, thank you for being this open and this vulnerable, whatever. That's also something that really closes the loop is that we crave to hear the reality from other people because otherwise we feel very alone.
Like you said, it's a lot of pressure. There's a lot that we internalize in a bad way. It's like the pressure or the bad feelings kind of get stuck in our system. And it's so true that if you pick a mistake or something that's not going well and put that out there, it actually is incredibly freeing in a completely unexpected way.
Sorry just. Had to add that to say, yes, I'm going through it right now and I can confirm it's helpful. It's worth the risk. Definitely. Well, this has been so fun, Elyse. I just love our follow up coffee talk and we'll have to do another one again because I just love riffing with you on all these topics. Me too, Jenny.
It's been awesome. Thanks so much, Ilise, and big thanks to everybody who's here listening. Thank you.
Her “permission slips” are kind of like my baby steps and we shared a few of them – so take your pick!
And if you want to build a thriving business on your own terms, the first step is to sign up for my Quick Tips at marketing-mentortips.com. Once you’re on the site, you’ll find lots more resources, including my Simplest Marketing Plan. Enjoy and I’ll see you next time. .
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Wins are easy to come by when you’re motivated. (Marketing works when you do it!)
But motivation can be fickle.
One day you’re commenting on LinkedIn, reaching out to potential clients, and writing new content.
Then suddenly, you don’t “feel like” doing it anymore.
Something that will carry you through no matter how you feel:
Habit.
Here’s a new way to look at the habit of marketing…
One of my new favorite writers, Adam Mastroianni, writes in his blog, Experimental History, that there are two different kinds of problems:
Marketing is more of a “Toothbrushing Problem.”
Which is actually great news.
Because when you develop the habit of marketing so that it becomes automatic, you no longer have to depend on motivation to continue getting wins every month.
You just do your 30 minutes a day, every day, no matter how you’re feeling and no matter the state of the economy. Easy as picking up a toothbrush.
(In fact, you could stack those habits: do your marketing right after you brush your teeth.)
Listen as I explain this and share tips for staying positive no matter what the economy is doing in the Best Bits from our last Office Hours session here:
Don’t overthink it.
Just pick something - anything - and do it for 30 minutes. Then do it tomorrow. And the next day. Until doing your marketing becomes automatic.
And if you still can't get yourself to do it...
Try what my friend Alan Seiden does to get his email newsletter out when he doesn't feel like it.
Here's what he told me:
"My trick is to have a team member 'baby-sit' me on a Slack Huddle call while I do it. I say 'This email looks good?' They say yes and I send it. Meanwhile, I am seeing it through their eyes."
Co-working really is magical! That's why we've built it into the SMP+ program with dedicated co-working sessions and our Focusmate group. More on that here.
Need a visual reminder?
Take a look at this “Ink Insight” from our Office Hours, drawn by Architect of Vision Antonio Meza:
Share them here on LinkedIn and let’s see what everyone is up to!
Need more guidance on what you should be doing with your 30 minutes a day? Pick up a copy of the Simplest Marketing Plan (SMP) for 2024 – it includes a one-page weekly marketing schedule you can print out and follow!
You’ll also get to come to every live monthly Office Hours session in 2024 - so you’ll stay on track all year long.
Get it now here.
Now go do your 30 minutes of marketing!
]]>I talked with my good friend (and 4 time guest on the podcast), Ben Callahan, about so many things, including a different way to think about content marketing that removes the fear and pressure that often comes with "putting yourself out there."
Ben is an agency owner and co-founder of Sparkbox. He is also building his own personal brand through which he’s offering coaching – a popular path these days. Ben and I share a love of collaborative learning and in our conversation, he shared how he went from designing web sites and thinking small to thinking big enough to pursue complex projects for companies like Gap.
It all has to do with his "mantra" -- on a post it note on his monitor!
So listen here (or below):
If you like what you hear, there are 3 more episodes with Ben Callahan:
We’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
Read the full transcript of Episode 493, One Antidote to Imposter Syndrome
ilise benun
Hi there. This is ilise benun, your Marketing Mentor, and this is the podcast for you if, and only if, you are ready to leave the feast or famine syndrome behind. And I mean, for good.
If you are looking for an antidote to imposter syndrome, this episode is for you. I talked with my good friend and four-time guest on this podcast, Ben Callahan, about a different way to think about content marketing that removes the fear and pressure that often comes with putting yourself out there.
Ben is an agency owner and co-founder of Sparkbox. He's also building his own personal brand through which he's offering coaching, a popular path these days.
Ben and I share a love of collaborative learning. And in our conversation, he shared how he went from designing websites and thinking small to thinking big enough to pursue complex projects for companies like Gap. So, listen and learn.
All right. So, Ben, welcome back to the podcast.
Ben Callahan
Thank you so much for having me back.
ilise benun
It's lovely to hear you and see you again. And I always ask my guests to begin by introducing themselves. So, who are you today, Ben?
Ben Callahan
Thanks. Yeah. My name is Ben Callahan. I am the founder of a company called Sparkbox, and we help complex organizations do better digital-user-interface work. So, we help with digital products, basically. A lot of that is design system related.
For the last six or seven years, I've also been doing a lot of research around design systems, so interviewing folks. And so, I am starting to call myself a design system researcher. I'm just really curious about the space and all of the implications of that kind of work. So, continue to dig in there.
I have, in the last year, started up a coaching practice for design system folks, as well. I think that's a group of people that are not being supported in the way that they need to be, so there seems to be a bit of a gap there. And so, I'm trying to fill that a little bit just by sharing experiences and insights. So, a coach.
And then also, I kind of lead the design-system consulting part of our business at Sparkbox. So, a consultant in that capacity. So, that's all the work stuff.
I'm also, outside of work, I love to take pictures. I'm an aspiring poet. I love coffee and volleyball and all kinds of other fun things.
ilise benun
Awesome. And for those who don't know what a design system is, let's define that, please.
Ben Callahan
Sure, yeah. There's a lot of definitions out there about what a design system is. I think of it as being made up of three main things.
What a lot of folks think about are the assets that come with a system. So, that's the stuff that a team, an internal team, might use to build digital interfaces. So, components that represent buttons or dropdowns or headers or navigations; all of the pieces and parts of a digital interface, right?
But along with that, I think there's a whole lot of stuff that comes with that, that you can't just have those and succeed. And so, we talk a lot about documentation as being a really key part of that—which is essentially giving a language to the way that you design inside your organization, so you understand each other when you talk about the problems you're trying to solve with design.
And then, also the process—which is sort of how the humans work in and around the system.
And so, all of that together is a design system, and it basically gives organizations a way to be more cohesive in the experiences they're creating, even across brands or across products, across platforms like native iOS and Android, versus something that's showing up on a TV somewhere, versus something that's on a browser or on your phone—Safari on your phone or something, right? So, lots of different product places, screens where those can live. The system allows those experiences to sort of feel like they're from the same family.
And then also, when you do that, you're creating with more efficiency; you're reusing pieces and parts, and so it kind of allows the team to solve new problems instead of focusing on solving the same old problems repeatedly, which is nice. So, that's kind of high level, what it is. I know that's still a lot, but ...
ilise benun
Lest listeners think we're going to talk about design systems, we're not.
Ben Callahan
Yeah. That's another podcast.
ilise benun
Exactly. But I think it's relevant to the extent that, what I want to talk about is two things that I think are interrelated.
One is your personal brand, which you've been developing, and you're positioning, and how your Ben Callahan brand relates to the Sparkbox brand. And just kind of watching your evolution of your brand over the years, as I've known you, has been fascinating to me. So, I want to talk a little bit about that.
And then also, under the umbrella of a topic that I know has been dear to your heart for a long time—and which I'm really just starting to open my eyes to, I think, a little bit more explicitly—which is the idea of collaborative learning: how people learn together.
And I connected in my mind, also, and in my process, to what I call: “just-in-time learning”—where, not only do we learn together, but we learn in the moment when you need to know the new thing; not a month ago or two years ago when you studied it, but have forgotten now when you need it. So ...
Ben Callahan
Yes, that's great.
ilise benun
... Just respond to whatever of what I just said you want to first, and then I'll kind of keep us on track.
Ben Callahan
Yeah. Those two things are very interrelated for me. I think I've learned about myself that ... And I have this written on a sticky note that's stuck on my monitor here. It just says, "Stay in learning mode." Because I want every interaction that I have with somebody, I want to approach that as an opportunity to learn. And I actually think this simple little idea could solve so many problems in the industry.
I just imagine all the struggles that folks have or that our industry has had in terms of welcoming different voices into the conversation ... Imagine how different that would be if we all just thought, "I want that person here because I can learn something from them." Right? That changes the dynamic completely.
ilise benun
From what, though? What stance do you think people are normally taking, then?
Ben Callahan
I think it's easy to get into this space, and you look up to lots of folks who are sharing a lot of the things they're learning; they're thought leaders or content creators or whatever, right? Influencers, maybe, is another word for that.
And I have nothing against that. I share my fair share of writing and videos, and all of that, and I think that's important to do.
But I think it's easy to put those folks up on a pedestal. And I think sometimes that happens when people in those positions start to believe that they're on that pedestal.
And so, I think that's what I'm trying to guard against, right, is like every interaction that I have, as somebody who's for 15 years now spoken at a lot of events ... and I still go to an event and I try to find the person who looks to me like they feel like they don't belong. That's the person I want to connect with. I just want to get to know them. I want to make them feel welcome and I want to learn something from them.
And if we all just had that, I think if we all had that perspective, it would really shift the way things feel in the space instead of there being sort of tension around topics like diversity and inclusivity. I think we could really turn that on its head.
So anyway, that stay-in-learning-mode idea. My coaching and consulting business is called Learning Mode. And I think that, for me, has been really about ... that's my brand, essentially.
And that's early, early days. I haven't actually really announced that other than ... so I'm announcing it right here on your podcast. So there's no website, there's no logo yet, but that is sort of the legal entity. And so I have some plans to think about what that looks like in the coming years.
ilise benun
Interesting. So let's talk a little bit about your personal brand and maybe also connect it to this idea that I often talk about, which is listening to the market as we evolve our brands.
And it seems to me that that's what you've been doing with design systems—because when I knew you originally, and I can't even remember how we first met, maybe you do—but you weren't talking about design systems. I knew Sparkbox as a web design agency, I think, right? Isn't that what it was?
Ben Callahan
That's right. Yeah, that's what we did when we started. And even before Sparkbox was a thing, I had my own little web design business, and I just worked for local clients. The first website I ever did, I charged $500. I mean, that's what it was, you know?
And so over the years, I think we as an organization, Sparkbox, fell in love with the idea of web standards. And so Jeffrey Zeldman wrote this incredible book and he was one of many folks who were really fighting for standardizing how we approach working on the web.
So all of that happened and we have a much more collaborative environment for evolving the standards with which we all code to. So that's really cool to see that that's happened, but that kind of pushed us in the direction of thinking a lot bigger about the web.
And so one of the things that led to is working with much larger clients. And when you shift from working with these small local clients who have a website to working with much larger ones who have many, many websites for many products and many brands ... all of a sudden, the challenges are a little different.
You have scale. You're trying to design at scale for these experiences that there's some overlap in what they're trying to do. There's commonalities there that you have to allow to shine through.
There's also uniqueness about each of these properties. And so how do you let that shine through? And so, I think that complexity kind of pushed us towards thinking more systematically about the work.
And that was about the same time a lot of other folks were coming to those same ideas and trying to put a name to it. And so “design systems” really, it's kind of a terrible name because it incorporates way more than design, but it's just a systematic way of thinking about digital interfaces. That's really what it is.
And so, we've been trying to do that for as long as we've been a company, and I think having that sort of emerge in the industry was just good for us because we were sort of already trying to figure that out.
ilise benun
And actually, that just makes me want to ask about how you market differently when you go from companies who have a website that you're going to design to large organizations who have multiple websites.
And you started as a designer, not a business person, but from what I can tell, you've become a very good business person. So what can you say about any of that?
Ben Callahan
Yeah, I started actually as a developer; I studied computer science. And now I kind of moved into design, and then, now the product that I work on mostly is the business. But I think the transition was interesting for us. I remember when ...
I think to start with, when we had the business, when I had my own business just working locally and when Sparkbox started, that's really what we did too.
I think I believed ... there was something in me that was a limiting belief about what we could do. I guess I just thought, well, we’re in Dayton, Ohio. It's like, what are the companies that are the big companies here—that would be the top of what we could do.
But then I remember a couple of my friends who live in Austin, Texas, three of these guys, they were a company, they went to high school together, they were buddies, and they started a company and they redesigned Microsoft.com working out of their houses.
And I remember that moment, I saw that redesign. It was beautiful, incredible work. They're still a company; they still are doing really cool things. But I remember that moment as a shift mentally for me. I think I realized if three guys sitting in their living rooms can redesign Microsoft.com—
ilise benun
And they were hired to redesign Microsoft.com, right?
Ben Callahan
That's right.
ilise benun
They didn't say, "let's redesign Microsoft.com."
Ben Callahan
Yes, Microsoft hired them.
I remember thinking, if that's the case, we can work for anybody, anywhere in the world, and I need to change my perspective on what's possible for us. And so we just started thinking much bigger at that point. And-
ilise benun
And is it a switch you can just flip like that?
Ben Callahan
I mean, it's not ... I would say that was one piece which made it so that we believed we could do that.
And the other stuff is there's timing.
And then there's: do you have the skill to actually execute? If you get that work, can you deliver and can you deliver repeatedly and put that in your portfolio and let it build? So, there's all of that too.
And we got lucky with timing. We had a local contact that I did some work for way back in the day with that first business, moved into a larger organization, and when he needed help, he thought of us. And so we got called in that way.
And so a lot of our growth has been making somebody inside of a big company, or a small company, look great. Now, they can get hired at a big company, and when they do, they bring us with them.
So that has worked really well for us. And so that's kind of the sort of domino thing that happened for us. And we got hired. I remember that first large contract we got was for our utility here in Dayton. And then, from there, we signed a contract with Gap—and that was a big one for us there. Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy; all of those brands are under that one organization. And so we worked for them for years.
And having that in your portfolio means you can confidently go to other organizations of the same scale. And so we learned a ton working and doing that work that I think enabled us and gave us confidence to go and work for others in that capacity.
ilise benun
And it seems to me, over the years, the marketing tool that you've used most is content marketing. Would you say that's true?
Ben Callahan
A hundred percent. Yeah. We've tried lots and lots of things. We've done cold calling. We've sent stuff to people randomly. All kinds of stuff. We've done some paid ads and things. But really the thing that has worked for us is just being smart in front of people.
So that's speaking, teaching workshops, training. It's also running surveys and doing research and sharing that with the community.
A lot of when we first started, one of the things that we put in place was that everybody at Sparkbox will write. Everybody will write. And that stemmed from a belief that it's our responsibility to share what we know, because we sort of see it as a chain. It's like there's somebody a little better than you, somebody who's not quite as experienced, and you have to share what you're learning so that everybody can continue to grow. That's sort of the model.
ilise benun
And that connects to ... I'm sorry to keep interrupting you-
Ben Callahan
No, that's okay.
ilise benun
But that connects to stay-in-learning mode, right?
Ben Callahan
Yeah, that's right. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I think writing for me is probably the way that I learn the best, which feels weird because usually you think I don't write until I've learned something. But a lot of times I write just to learn something. It pushes me to read and research and talk to people. And so it kind of is a source of that for me. Yeah.
ilise benun
Okay. So content marketing, speaking, writing, researching, creating content. I know you've put on events; you've spoken at a lot of events and all of that. I mean, have you ever felt what they call “imposter syndrome,” which seems like the opposite of it's my responsibility to share what I know? If you feel imposter syndrome, that's the opposite of it, from my point of view, right?
Ben Callahan
I'm so glad you brought this up because in my coaching practice, now, every single person that I coach feels imposter syndrome. I feel this. Every person that I know ...
And I don't want to ... I want to be careful, right? Because I think there's a tendency, I think it's part of the human condition, to doubt yourself. I think some folks experience this imposter syndrome in much more extreme ways than others. So I don't want to downplay that sort of spectrum of experience there.
But I think I could say generally that I think almost everybody that I know has some level of doubt in their own ability—especially that moment when you've signed up for your first presentation and you're backstage ready to go. And I mean, that's scary. It's scary.
And I think there's a healthiness to that. It kind of keeps you fresh and on your toes. But I actually, I love the way that you drew the connection, because in my coaching practice, when somebody shares that with me, one of the things that I say in response is, "Think about it like this."
And I give them that example of this sort of chain. It's your job. You have to share what you're learning. And that model kind of takes the pressure off. You don't have to be the smartest person in the room. You just have to be willing to share what you know. And that's a nice way to break that cycle.
ilise benun
I've actually talked recently about a strategy for creating content where you don't share what you already know, you share what you are currently learning.
So if you attend a class or one of my webinars or read The Simplest Marketing Plan, then you can just say, "Here's what I just learned and here's how it might apply to the people in my world or my people." And that also seems to take the pressure off.
Ben Callahan
Yeah. I love that. And some of the best articles that I read are when somebody is at an event, they learn a ton, they take a bunch of notes, they come back and they just write a little write-up of each of the sessions. Because that's such a great ... Oh, go ahead. Sorry. I'll let you jump in.
ilise benun
No, I was just going to say, I mean, one of the things I always remember about being at events with you, Ben, is that you've always created these collaborative-notes documents and said, "Hey y'all, come and share what you're learning here." And my impression was always that very few people actually did it. I don't know if that's the reality from your end, but I'm curious.
Ben Callahan
Yeah. So I have got a folder in my Google Drive, because those were always Google documents, so you could literally ... I would just make it open to the public and Tweet that link, and we would always get about a dozen people who were pretty committed and then everybody else would lurk.
And I think it's hard when you're in there in the real time and everybody's trying to take notes in the same place; it gets chaotic.
But my goal with that was just to say, "Hey ...” I wanted to sort of level the playing field. Right? Like, I'm there, maybe I'm speaking, but I'm also trying to learn. And I want that to be part of what everybody ... you know. We go to events to engage with other people, not just to sit there and learn something. So that's a way to create some engagement. And I've got so many great notes, documents, from those days back when I used to go to events.
ilise benun
So I feel like the value there is also in the process, not necessarily in the artifact of those documents, right?
Ben Callahan
Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, it's a way to sort of see who else is taking notes, who else is sharing things, who else is in the session with me. So it does sort of create an opportunity to kind of see who else is interested in these topics. They did make nice artifacts. A lot of folks would take them back to their companies and they have a nice resource to share with their boss who paid for them to go. So maybe that's nice. But yeah, the process of all of that is really where there's value, for sure.
ilise benun
But it also seems like there's a networking aspect, then, to that process as well, if you wanted to follow up, say, on the people who also took notes.
Ben Callahan
Yeah. And we would always put a space in there to say, if you're willing to have conversations about specific topics, just put your name and your email, and list what topics you're interested in. Things like that. So that's fun.
ilise benun
Interesting. Yeah, I think that's something people could still do. I mean, we are, kind of, going back to events eventually, little by little, right?
Ben Callahan
Yeah. I went to one last night.
ilise benun
Oh really?
Ben Callahan
A local meetup, yeah, so it was fun.
ilise benun
Cool. For some reason, this also connects in my mind to AI. And I'm curious: how are you thinking about AI in your business, in your marketing, in your coaching, in this collaborative learning? That's a big question, but go ahead.
Ben Callahan
I mean, the collaborative learning stuff, I think is probably where I'm using it the most right now. I mean, it's never been something that feels threatening to me. I'm like a science fiction nerd. I love The Matrix and all of this stuff like this where the AI is taking over the world and all of it. I love that stuff. I mean, I don't love it because I want it to happen. I just am fascinated by the concept. And I've read a ton of old writings from folks like Ray Kurzweil, who is somebody who's been writing about AI for decades. And actually, I studied computer science, but my specialization was artificial intelligence. And so back then, that was the thing. It was just like studying how the human brain works and trying to create software that more closely mimicked that.
And so I think I am obsessed with that idea, but I am not somebody who jumps into a fad, and I'm not trying to call AI a fad. I just am saying a lot of the ways that people are excited about using it are ... they feel a little fad-ish to me.
I've found a ton of value in especially analyzing large bodies of text. So as somebody who's constantly asking questions and doing interviews and gathering ... having folks answer a question with just a bunch of paragraphs of text, it takes a lot of work as a human to read through all of that, keep it present in your mind to connect the patterns.
That's actually an area where I can easily put thousands of lines of text into an AI and say, "Give me the patterns. Identify for me what are the common things here? What's the theme? What's a summary of this?"
And so that's an area where I use it quite a bit. I mean, the tools are growing so rapidly. There's folks out there saying that even just designing websites, you can kind of do that with AI today. And so that's fun. Writing your own content ...
I mean, I think I'm somebody who believes that we will definitely have a place in the market. I don't see-
ilise benun
“We,” as humans.
Ben Callahan
As humans. I don't see it sort of replacing us completely in the tech space in the very near future. But long-term, I think every programming language that comes out is an abstraction, a higher level abstraction. All of it's boiling down to zeros and ones.
And so, at one point, we wrote code that was very close to zeros and ones. And then we created an abstraction above that, and then we created one above that. And the more we do that, the more they feel like just talking to the computer. While this number is less than this number, do this thing. And that's English, that's embedded in the language. And so I don't see a reason why that won't continue, and it's already continuing in that way.
ilise benun
Interesting. All right. I have one more question for you. We could obviously talk a long time, over margaritas; we will soon.
Ben Callahan
We'll do that. Yes.
ilise benun
But, I want to ... and then I'll have you tell people where they can find you online, obviously.
But you are doing something that I find really interesting, although I don't know a lot about it at this point, which is The Question thing. And I'm just thinking about how I might be able to adapt it for my own process and I want other people, if you don't mind, to think about how they might adapt it for their own process. What is The Question, then?
Ben Callahan
Yeah, thanks for asking. I mentioned that I love to learn. I'm somebody who's been curious about systems for a long time. One of the things I've been ... and this has been an idea I've had for over a year, and I just didn't do it, and I didn't do it, and I didn't do it. And one weekend I was like, I'm just going to do it.
ilise benun
We all have that thing, right?
Ben Callahan
Yes, I know, right? And it wasn't complex. It was little pieces and parts I had to pull together.
So what it is, structurally, is very simple. Everything takes place between Monday and Thursday, and what I'm looking for is people who are like me, they want to learn. And I want it to cost something. So in order for them to participate in the learning, they also have to share something.
And so the way this works is on Monday, I send a question out. So I have an email list through MailChimp. You can sign up for that. You get an email very early Monday morning so that we're hitting folks in Europe and also all time zones or whatever. And so you have basically forty-eight hours to answer that question.
And if you answer it within forty-eight hours, you get an invitation to a deep-dive conversation of the results of the question. So all the data that we gather, combined and analyzed, and we do that the next day.
So Monday, the question goes out. Wednesday, I close it. You have to have your answer in. If you've answered, you get an invite to the deep dive on Thursday. And so then I take the weekend to write up what I learned and post that on my site. And so it all kind of ...
ilise benun
So wait, what happens on Thursday?
Ben Callahan
So Monday morning, question goes out. Wednesday, at lunch, it closes. Thursday, at lunch, Eastern time, we have a one-hour call. And anybody who's answered gets an invite. So usually we have about 50 to 60 people answer, and then we have 20 to 30 attend the call on Thursday, and it's growing and it changes a little bit each week.
This is about design systems, but you could literally do this about any topic you wanted. So pick whatever your specialization is. You could do the same thing.
One other piece that I've added to this is that I also wanted it to be a chance for us to build some community.
So I invite somebody to be a co-host with me each week. Sometimes it's somebody who's more well-known in the space. Sometimes it's just somebody who's attended a few of our conversations. We've had about eight of them so far. I think this is our ninth one, and I've learned so much. I mean in just a few of those, I've learned more than I would have, by far, just going out and trying to research and find stuff on my own.
So I'm hearing other people's experiences. They're getting to know each other. Over the holidays we had one where we just hung out and just kind of chatted a bit and it was super fun. I'm really excited about it.
ilise benun
I love it. So you're creating community. You're creating content. And you're doing networking. I mean, it kind of has all of the components of The Simplest Marketing Plan also. So I could see listeners who have The Simplest Marketing Plan or know The Simplest Marketing Plan could easily find a way to figure out what their thing is, what their specialty is, what their question idea is, and even start very small. I feel like that could be a nice baby step for listeners.
Ben Callahan
Yeah. My vision for this, long-term, is imagine if I had 5,000 people on a list. There's a problem that I'm trying to solve, and I've got a big list of folks that all may be facing that problem or have already faced it. I can ask that question, and in a matter of a week, get a bunch of really good information back. It's like real-time learning. So I love it for that.
ilise benun
Sounds like a good marketing tool, also.
Ben Callahan
I definitely think it could be that. Yeah, and I'm trying to figure out, I want it to be really authentic in terms of community. So I don't want it to be a lot of sales stuff. I've resisted the urge of ... because I've had some folks reach out from product companies that want to be in there, and at this point it's just practitioners. But I don't know, maybe at some point there's a way to sort of facilitate conversation with those folks because tools are important for the work too. And so maybe that makes sense.
ilise benun
Well, I'm just connecting it back to what you said about being smart in front of people.
Ben Callahan
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. And so yeah, I guess that marketing for myself in terms of, I do offer coaching, and so in the emails that I send out to folks, I remind them, "Hey, if there's a topic or if you're struggling in a certain way, I've got this coaching program. Would love to support you in that way.”
I'm doing a little coaching cohort, which is just a five-week session. It's inexpensive and it's not customized to somebody's needs. It's about how design systems mature. So that's an opportunity for folks to get involved in a very inexpensive way and start to build their own community like that.
So there's lots of ways like that I think that same group ... It's just the same group of people that might be interested in coaching are the ones who have the answers for the question.
ilise benun
Yeah, definitely. I love it. All right, Ben, let's put a bookmark here and tell people where they can find you online.
Ben Callahan
So the easiest thing is just bencallahan.com and there's a Connect link there at the top that you can send me ... can give me feedback. You can just say, “hello.” You can ask a question, you can ... all kinds of stuff there.
You could also sign up for The Question. So if you follow me on LinkedIn or connect on LinkedIn, I'm always posting about it there. It's also on bencallahan.com/the-question, so it's right there. If you see a research link on that site, it'll take you to The Question's page. And so that's a place where you could go. If you answer the question one week, you'll get put on the list. You can put your information in as well when you answer the question, and then you'll get each question the following week. So that would be a way.
My company, Sparkbox, is another, if folks are needing help with digital products, that would be the place to reach out. Sparkbox.com.
ilise benun
Awesome. All right, Ben, so good to see you and talk to you, and “to be continued,” as my mother likes to say.
Ben Callahan
Yes, I love chatting with you, ilise. So anytime you want to talk, just let me know.
ilise benun
Will do.
I love Ben's concept behind The Question. If you want to create content and community, what question would engage your market and your people in a way that allows for collaborative learning and high-quality content development, not to mention putting you in a position of authority and expertise without having to know absolutely everything? Think about it. That's your baby step.
So if you want to build a thriving business on your own terms, the first step is to sign up for my Quick Tips at Marketing-Mentortips.com. Once you're on the site, you'll find lots more resources, including my Simplest Marketing Plan.
So enjoy and I'll see you next time.
]]>
It may be all you need to do.
But once you’ve got commenting under your belt, it’s time to take your LinkedIn game up a notch…
By posting content.
When you do it right, posting to LinkedIn prompts potential clients to start conversations with you right in the comments of your post.
Not sure what to post?
Keep reading if you want ideas you can use today.
But first, here’s something fun…
Want to know what my top 5 LinkedIn posts from 2023 have in common… starting with my dog Fanny?
8,117 impressions
241 comments
5 “reposts”
#2: Poll: Should You Set Money Goals?
4,630 impressions
138 votes
90 comments
#3: Introducing New Quick LinkedIn Tips Newsletter
4,114 impressions
48 comments
9 “reposts”
#4: Poll: How LinkedIn “Promiscuous” Are You?
4,100 impressions
169 votes
57 comments
#5: Poll: Biggest Change You’d Like To See in Your Business
4,060 impressions
188 votes
56 comments
1. They are all relevant to you.
In other words, they all help creatives market themselves. Even the post about Fanny, which is about what you should or shouldn’t post on LinkedIn. Many are also specific to the time of year. For example, I posted about “money goals” around the New Year since I knew it was on your mind.
2. They start with a hook or question.
I love asking questions. Plus they make great hooks because they grab attention and prompt people to answer. When people are scanning through the LinkedIn feed, they only linger a few milliseconds before deciding whether to read the whole thing. To grab attention, make the first line of your post a question or hook related to the topic you’re posting about.
3. They have a call to action (CTA).
People love to be told what to do – and often, they’ll do it. That’s why, every time I post to LinkedIn, I either invite readers to share in the comments, take a poll, watch a video, or click a link. You should, too.
4. Four out of five are polls.
Polls are an easy way to bump up engagement on your posts, as they’re easy for people to answer with one click. But for a poll to take off, it still needs to be intriguing, relevant, or even controversial. And note that with a poll, it helps to write an attention-grabbing post to go with it. For example, with my “LinkedIn Promiscuous” poll, I started with a confession about how I used to be afraid of people. See the full post here.
5. None are profound.
You don’t have to write mind-blowing posts to get people engaged and start attracting clients. Notice that mine ask simple questions, like “Do you set money goals?” You can do it, too.
Add visuals whenever you can (dogs rule!).
Always respond to comments on your post. LinkedIn loves conversations. The algorithm will reward you for posts with lots of engagement.
Speaking of engagement…
1. Wider reach. Your connections’ connections will see their comments and can join in the conversation or follow you.
2. Credibility. When potential clients see that you have a thriving LinkedIn account with lots of engagement, they’re more likely to see you as an active, knowledgeable person they’d like to hire.
3. More content. When people comment on your posts, they start other side-conversations, which you can turn into more content. Do it right and it becomes a machine that feeds itself.
The reality is: No one is paying much attention to you or anyone else on LinkedIn. Start small and just put yourself out there. And let me know how it goes!
Did I miss anything?
What else makes for an attention-grabbing LinkedIn post? Have you ever had a post that went viral?
Tell me here in this LinkedIn post.
]]>The 3 quick tips in Episode 492 of the Marketing Mentor Podcast will save you from yourself! So listen here (and below) and learn...
And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
And if you want more resources to get better clients with bigger budgets this year, check out my online courses:
Read the transcript of Episode 492: The Price of Price Blurting with Ilise Benun
Have you ever blurted out a price and then instantly regretted it? Or agreed to a deadline you knew in your heart wasn’t realistic? Or worse, volunteered to deliver a project faster than humanly possible, just to please your client? If you said yes to any of these, this new solo episode is for you. In it, I’m sharing 3 quick tips to save yourself from yourself so you don’t turn self employment into something even worse than a J-O-B. So listen and learn…
Have you ever blurted out a price and then instantly regretted it?
What about saying yes to a deadline that you know in your heart was unrealistic (not to mention impossible) but the client insists on it?
Or worse yet, volunteering to deliver a project too quickly just to please them, even though they aren’t even asking for it right away?
It's easy to feel pressured by someone who wants a price on the spot.
And it’s not unusual to feel pressured – to actually pressure yourself – when you desperately want a project or a client. (Or when you have a hot lead on the hook.)
Here’s the lethal combination that might make you do it:
You know what happens...the blurted price is almost always too low and of course they agree to it. Later, when you see how much work is actually involved, it feels too late to ask for more. (Is it really too late?)
It’s even worse when the price you blurt is too high, which can scare your prospect away before you even have a chance to demonstrate your value.
That's why you have to resist that urge to blurt.
Unless you are absolutely sure about the right price, the best thing to say, is:
"Let me give it some thought and get back to you."
Why is that so difficult?
All you have to do is restrain yourself in that tiny moment of emotion and pressure. If you can manage this, you've bought yourself some time.
That way, you can give your price careful consideration (i.e. sleep on it and talk to a mentor or accountability partner) and, when you're ready, propose a number you won't hate yourself for.
You see, when it comes to pricing your creative services, you may think your biggest challenge is charging the “right” price, but it’s not.
Because there is no “right” price without the money conversation – and that’s a conversation it’s your responsibility to lead.
But many, if not most, creatives I talk to confess to actually avoiding the money conversation at all costs.
How? They take the first price that is offered or, when none is offered, they knowingly underprice so they don’t lose the client. But that usually ends up being a very expensive project – emotionally as well as practically.
So while this attitude may get you the project, it will rarely get you the best deal.
So here are 3 Quick Tips:
Quick Tip #1: Address “the money question” early on. In fact, be the one to initiate it. That puts you in a position of strength. Don’t put any more effort in than necessary before talking money. Otherwise, you may waste a lot of time researching or even just thinking about the project, only to find out they have “no budget.”Say this: “Let’s make sure we can come to terms financially before we get too deep into the details.”
Quick Tip #2: Don’t take the first fee offered. Sometimes the prospect will have a budget and they’ll be up front about what it is, saying something like, “Can you write a landing page for $200?” Whether the price they offer is higher or lower than you expected, resist all temptation to accept it, just to be done with it. Budgets aren’t written in stone and there is usually some wiggle room that you won’t know about, unless you push. (And yes, you can push without being pushy.) So instead of accepting the first offer, see how much more you can get by asking for more. The negotiation will then take place within those two boundaries.
Say this: “I was thinking more along the lines of (try double what they offered). Can we meet somewhere in the middle?”
This happened to me recently. An editor at a magazine I have written for before offered me $1,000 for an 1,800-2,000-word article with a deadline in 30 days.
That’s essentially 50 cents per word; I wanted $1/word. So I wrote back: “I was thinking more along the lines of $1 per word. Can you come any closer to that?”
Her response was to offer $1,200, which she said was the maximum she could offer. But she also brought down the word count to 1,300-1,400 words. I accepted, but not without one more request: would she agree to give me more time? I got it.
I could have left it at the higher price, lower word count, and same deadline. But I like to negotiate — to see how well I can do for myself — and that last “chit” hadn’t figured into the negotiation yet, so it was there for the asking.
Quick Tip #3: Know how low you will go and be ready to walk away. The best outcomes to negotiations are always a result of a willingness to walk away. After you get your questions about the project answered, but before opening up the negotiation, you must have a number in your mind below which you will not go — your personal bottom line. And you must be so detached from the opportunity that you can take it or leave it — and that you will leave it, if it doesn’t meet your bottom line.
If you do have to walk away, all is not lost.
Say this: "I'm sorry we couldn't make it work this time. Hopefully, there will be another opportunity for us to work together in the future."
Don’t you want the best deal for yourself, if for no other reason than out of self-respect? If so, follow these guidelines, adapt the language to your own situation and see what happens. I can guarantee you’ll learn and earn more!
And finally, do it with a twinkle in your eye. The more you practice, the better you’ll get, the easier and more natural it will become for you to have a twinkle in your eye when it’s time for the money conversation.
I do hope you found those tips helpful – your baby step is simply to notice the next time you are about to do this and see if you can stop yourself. If not, then simply take a moment to reflect on what would allow you to catch yourself, to restrain yourself, next time. Do that until you do.
And if you want to build a thriving business on your own terms, the first step is to sign up for my Quick Tips at marketing-mentortips.com. Once you’re on the site, you’ll find lots more resources, including my Simplest Marketing Plan. Enjoy and I’ll see you next time.
Photo by Dmitry Ratushny on Unsplash
Call me old fashioned -- I still love to read books!
But I know I'm not alone. In fact, here's proof:
If you love wandering the aisles of a bookstore, you'll love Shepherd, the brainchild of Ben Fox, who shares: Why he is building Shepherd?
]]>
(That’s the Peruvian dish where raw fish is marinated in lemon and lime and served as a kind of chunky salsa.)
I’d never tried it, but I was sure I didn’t like it. So I ignored it on every menu.
Then, one fateful day last year while visiting friends, their daughter made fresh ceviche.
Not wanting to be rude, I tried it. And lo and behold…
I love ceviche! And now I want it all the time.
What does my newfound love of raw fish have to do with you?
I want you to love marketing the way I love ceviche – especially if you decided at some point that you didn’t like it.
You see, my goal with these blog tips and my Simplest Marketing Plan is to show you what marketing could be for you…
First, that it’s not what you think it is.
And second, that it’s something you get to bring your creativity into and make your own.
Watch me tell my “ceviche story” and share my number one way to get “quick wins” in your marketing this year in the “Best Bits” from January’s Office Hours:
It’s easier to fall in love with marketing - and find success through it - when you have a clear plan to follow, lots of excellent examples to emulate, and a community of fellow creatives to meet with every month. All of which comes with my Simplest Marketing Plan.
Speaking of success, in this month’s live Office Hours session, I asked:
How do you define success?
Here are a few of my favorite answers:
“Success means not in a constant state of panic.” - Wendy Q
“Being able to do what I want to do, when I want to do it and earn an above income as a freelancer.” - Steve M
“Success for me is to use my superpowers (web design and strategy) to connect with and help others.” - Kimberly E
“Success: consistency in cash flow, writing what I want to, being a digital nomad for 3 months (minimum).” - Caryn S
“Success: Meaningful client relationships and enough income to support my health and life goals.” - Georgiana D
How are you defining success in 2024?
Share in the comments here on LinkedIn and let’s see what everyone says.
]]>To wrap up this amazing year – it’s been a really good one for me and for Marketing Mentor – do you have your Simplest Marketing Plan for 2024 yet? – I’m sharing Episode 16 of Humanizing Success, the podcast of my young nephew, Jake Benun.
He’s trying to figure out what to do with his life so he’s using his podcast to ask the question, "What is success?"
Here's how I answered --
You can also listen here and below.
I love all the experimenting Jake is doing – does that run in a family? Certainly the entrepreneurial spirit does – I can feel it in him. I’m sure this isn’t his first appearance on my podcast. I can’t wait to see where he goes and what he does with his life.
And if you like that one, be sure to watch Episode 1 where he interviews his older sister (my niece) – something definitely runs in this family!
And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
You can also find Jake on
And here's his podcast Set Up:
Read the complete transcript below:
ilise benun
Hi there. This is ilise benun, your Marketing Mentor, and this is the podcast for you, if and only if, you are ready to leave the feast or famine syndrome behind, and I mean for good.
Is podcasting genetic? My young nephew, Jake Benun, recently started a podcast called “Humanizing Success.” He's trying to figure out what to do with his life, so he's using his podcast to interview people he knows about their definition of success and much more. I think that's pretty smart.
When I was in Miami recently, I was hoping he'd invite me to be a guest on his podcast, and he did, so I wouldn't have to suggest myself, which I would have. You know that, right?
So to wrap up this amazing year, it really has been a good one for me and for Marketing Mentor, I hope for you too. Do you have your Simplest Marketing Plan for 2024 yet?
Anyway, I'm sharing episode 16 of “Humanizing Success”. You can also watch the video version on YouTube, and be sure to subscribe, as well. I think it's kind of fun, so listen and learn.
Jake Benun
Hi guys, and welcome back to the “Humanizing Success” podcast. Thank you guys so much for being here, and today we are here once again with James, our newest host here.
James Harden
Hi, Mom.
Jake Benun
And with ilise benun. If you guys have been paying attention, my last name is also Benun. So ilise is my aunt, and we are lucky to have her here today. She's from Savannah, Georgia, and she'll be going back a little bit later, so just caught her in the nick of time. We're lucky to have you, and thanks for being here.
ilise benun
Hi, Mom.
Jake Benun
She will be watching this. So the first thing that I like to get into, straight away, is when you think about success, what does that mean to you?
ilise benun
Freedom.
Jake Benun
That's it?
ilise benun
In a word, yeah. I mean, and what does “freedom” mean, right? Freedom is the opportunity to do exactly what I want, when I want, with whom I want, for as long as I want, until I want to do something else.
James Harden
Did anything drive you to want to achieve that freedom? At one point, did you consider yourself not free?
ilise benun
Uh, yeah. I would say, all growing up, you have to do what your parents think you should do, and sometimes they even want you to be a certain way, and they communicate that to you. And then you leave home, which I did when I was 18, and you are behaving like someone that doesn't really feel like you. And then it takes years and years and years to figure out, "Well then, who the heck am I?" And so that's part of the quest for freedom, I think, as well. But more specifically, I was fired from my second job out of college when I was 27, and that's when I decided I was never working for anyone again.
Jake Benun
What was that job exactly?
ilise benun
I was the operations manager at a safari company. It was a small Kenyan company.
Jake Benun
“Safari” meaning ...?
ilise benun
Kenyan safaris.
Jake Benun
Oh, wow.
ilise benun
Yeah. And I was working in their New York office, and I didn't realize that I wanted to quit, so I just got myself fired.
James Harden
That's one way to do it.
ilise benun
Yeah, I was young.
Jake Benun
But it worked out.
ilise benun
It did work out, because that's when I became self-employed. It's been 35 years.
Jake Benun
Which brings us to, what do you do now?
ilise benun
What do I do? Get clients. Sometimes I say, “I teach creative professionals how to get better clients with bigger budgets.” Which do you prefer?
Jake Benun
I like the second one.
ilise benun
Second one better?
Jake Benun
More of a punch, for sure.
ilise benun
Mm-hmm. And I do it in many different ways. I've written several books. I have my own podcast, as well. I do speaking. In fact, the reason I'm here in Florida is because I was just doing a speaking engagement in West Palm Beach. And I do one-on-one coaching. I have a program called the Simplest Marketing Plan, through which I teach groups how to market themselves using really simple strategies.
Jake Benun
Amazing. And that's a lot of different aspects of the business.
ilise benun
That's right.
Jake Benun
Where did it start?
ilise benun
It started ... so the idea I had when I said to myself, "I'm never working for anyone again. Okay, what am I going to do?"
I had a degree in Spanish. And I didn't really want to do anything ... I didn't know what to do with my Spanish.
And so I lived in New York. I looked around. All my friends were creative: dancers, actors, artists ... and I thought to myself: These people are really disorganized.
I was a little bit more organized. It was 1988, and I thought: I'm going to be a professional organizer, and I'm going to help people with all their piles of papers.
And so I did that. I started telling people that's what I was doing. And little by little, I would sit with people in their piles of papers, and at the bottom of everyone's pile, there was always something that had to do with self-promotion and marketing that they were not doing.
James Harden
So you find that pain point amongst all the mess in their lives, and I'm sure it was kind of easy for you to see from an outside perspective what other people could be doing better, and then allowing them to actually see your value in getting them to that next step of actually marketing.
And was that just marketing themselves as their brand, or did they have products? Who exactly do you focus on? What's your niche?
ilise benun
No. My niche is solopreneurs, for the most part, or small agency owners marketing a creative service. At this point, they're mostly commercial services as opposed to talents. But it started with ... my first client was an actor, and I would just help him put together his resume and photo and send them off to casting agents. We just did mailings together, because that's what he needed help with.
Jake Benun
Wow. So in your work, let's say you get a new client, do you have a process that you've already laid out and you kind of fit it to the person? Or do you start from the beginning and say, "Okay, you're not related at all to my other clients, let's take a whole different path"?
ilise benun
No.
Jake Benun
Okay.
ilise benun
No to the latter. Kind of no to the former also. I mean, I've created this framework, that I call the Simplest Marketing Plan, over the years. I've whittled it down to three tools, and I think three tools are all you need.
And so I adapt those three tools to each client based on their comfort level, based on their preferences, based on where I see their strengths could be, and also based on the markets that they're going after.
Jake Benun
Very interesting.
James Harden
What are these three tools?
ilise benun
Oh, you want to know what the three ... ? Okay, so the three tools are: high-quality content marketing. So creating content. Right? Content, which is pain-point oriented. I like to say that, “high-quality content is content that's about what you know they need as opposed to content about what you do or what you know.”
Jake Benun
Sure.
ilise benun
So for me, high-quality content is ... actually, the most recent blog post from the most recent podcast is all about SEO—search engine optimization. Do creative professionals really need search engine optimization? That's, I know, a question that my clients and prospects are asking themselves. So my content is about what they're asking about marketing.
Jake Benun
Gotcha. I mean, first of all, SEO is a huge thing that's promoted on social media, and there's tons of agencies built solely around helping people with SEO. What is your take on that?
ilise benun
I hate SEO.
Jake Benun
Interesting.
James Harden
Really?
ilise benun
And that's what I said to this woman who does SEO for a living. Cuz I wanted to see how she would respond and whether she would defend it or understand my rationale for why I think it doesn't make sense.
Jake Benun
It's a bold statement.
ilise benun
And the reason I think it doesn't make sense is because my whole framework is based on you choose who you want to work with and go get them. You don't wait for whoever happens to find you, whoever happens to come along. Because for me, actually, search engine optimization, when people find my website on Google, they're really bad prospects. They can't afford me. They stand me up, they don't know what I do.
It's funny, "marketing mentor" has become a keyword search phrase, but when I started my business, it wasn't. So now when people search for a marketing mentor, they're not looking for what I do. They're looking for what someone else does. And actually, most of the people who find me that way are new corporate people who have just been promoted to do marketing and they know nothing about marketing. So they say, "I need a marketing mentor." But I don't know anything about marketing in a corporate environment. I'm all about creative professionals.
James Harden
It sounds like what you're saying is SEO only gets you an influx of very unqualified leads.
ilise benun
For me.
James Harden
For you, exactly.
ilise benun
There are certain situations. I have a client who is a public speaking coach, and she gets all of her best clients and prospects through search engine optimization. So it really just depends on the service you're offering, how people think about looking for it, and then the quality of the prospects you're looking for.
James Harden
And in your experience, which you obviously have given it the ‘old college try’ on that one, it sounds like ... .
ilise benun
No, and I get good SEO. I just don't value the people who find me that way.
James Harden
It's just not something that you feel the need to crank the volume on, because it hasn't actually...
Jake Benun
Produced.
ilise benun
I have a better way to get the clients that I need.
And content marketing includes speaking. So this event that I was just at, right, all of those people are prospects. And having them see me on a stage, commanding the stage and speaking with authority, and saying things that they're like, "Oh yeah, she's right about that," that's a direct connection to people who are going to reach out to me or I'm going to follow up with them and say, "All right, here are the options."
Jake Benun
So I have a couple questions that I want to ask relating to what you just said. But I don't want to miss on two and three.
ilise benun
We won't forget about two and three, I promise.
James Harden
Yeah, she's a public speaker, she's got all of her... She's already bullet pointed down for the next 30 minutes.
Jake Benun
Yeah, I'm glad you'll catch us up on that.
ilise benun
Yes.
Jake Benun
So, in private, you've said that ...
We had dinner last night and you said that you were maybe someone who likes to be more on their own, keep to yourself a little bit. So it shocks me that you found a talent in one, public speaking, but it sounds like with your clients, you have to create some sort of relationship to understand who they're reaching out to, what they would be, I guess, trying to tell people. So how have you found that balance with yourself?
ilise benun
So it's not like I don't like people, Jake. I just really value my alone time. But I also love relating to people, especially around business. And so my one-on-one coaching clients, I really kind of become their business partner, and get to know them and the way they think and what they react to.
Jake Benun
How have you evolved?
ilise benun
No. Definitely not. I remember my first talk that I gave in 1993.
Jake Benun
Wow.
ilise benun
I was really nervous. It was to a conference of graphic designers. I had no slides, and I didn't know that graphic designers need something to look at.
James Harden
Hence the name.
ilise benun
Right. And I don't remember, I'm sure I was not very good, but you're never good at something you're doing for the first time, anyways. So I've gotten better over the years, I think.
James Harden
And how long from when you quit your job at 27 to that first ...
ilise benun
That was five years.
James Harden
That was five years?
ilise benun
Yeah.
James Harden
Okay. And then when did you actually, from the time you fired yourself, say, "You know what? I need to go into helping people market themselves."
ilise benun
It was really quick, actually. There's a little story behind how it happened. I said I was going to be a professional organizer. I said that to myself. I started saying it to other people. Someone I said it to said, "Oh, you should know about the National Association of Professional Organizers."
Jake Benun
Sounds kind of perfect.
ilise benun
So I guess I didn't make it up. All right. And then at an event ...
So I started getting involved in the National Association of Professional Organizers, and that woman who told me that, she was actually writing an article for New York Magazine about things that you could get people to do that you didn't want to do for yourself. And she had a whole section about organizers. And that was in September of 1988.
So I was fired in April. And in September, this little blurb, one paragraph in New York Magazine came out. And it said, I just looked at it a couple weeks ago, it actually said "She helps people market themselves and is kind of like an agent that doesn't take a commission," which is true. And so I realized it only took me about six months, basically, to find that evolution.
Jake Benun
Very quick.
James Harden
And they did it for you, pretty much?
ilise benun
Yeah, basically.
James Harden
That's awesome. Yeah.
Jake Benun
So when you were talking about that, you emphasized that you started to, one, say it to yourself, but then started to speak it to other people. How important do you think, when you're talking about dreams or maybe something you want to pursue, a lot of people maybe get stuck with just keeping it internal.
ilise benun
Keeping it to themselves, yeah.
Jake Benun
So, how did that journey look like for you? And looking back, how important do you think that was?
ilise benun
Well, it wasn't a dream. It was just an idea at that point. I've never actually had a dream about what I wanted to do. I just listen to the market and go where it tells me to go, and then make decisions about how I want to go there, essentially.
Jake Benun
Okay, so you've always been action-oriented?
ilise benun
Yeah, I would say so. I'm a person who if you say, "Can you do this?" I'm going to be like, "Sure, I can do that."
It's funny, because a lot of my clients really struggle with a lack of self-confidence, or an imagined lack of self-confidence, because they don't really understand that confidence doesn't come first. Confidence is a byproduct of doing stuff and making mistakes and failure, if you will. And just learning. Confidence comes from learning, it comes from competence.
And I actually have this other acronym. I say, "You don't need confidence. You need a cat." You want to know what “a cat” stands for?
Courage. Autonomy. And trust.
So courage, not fearlessness, but courage, to do the thing that needs to be done.
Autonomy, which is not independence. It means, basically, I don't need any one. I need every one. I don't need that particular prospect to come through, I don't need that particular project. I'm not dependent on any one. I just need lots of irons in the fire, because I know that something's going to materialize.
Jake Benun
I like that.
ilise benun
And trust, in myself, in the universe, in common sense. Just trusting that I'll figure it out. And you know what? If it doesn't, who cares?
Jake Benun
I like that.
James Harden
We like that.
Jake Benun
We like that.
James Harden
I liked cats already, so now, need more cat. I love it.
ilise benun
You don't need confidence, you need a cat.
James Harden
So where did your confidence come from?
ilise benun
I don't have confidence.
James Harden
Well, you had cat.
ilise benun
I have a cat, I have courage, autonomy, and trust.
James Harden
But you don't think that's built to you to a level of confidence in yourself?
ilise benun
Whatever that is. I have no idea what it is.
Jake Benun
Right, that's the question.
James Harden
Okay, so you're saying you can just throw that out the window altogether and just, as long as you're doing those three things ...
ilise benun
Yeah. Don't worry about confidence.
James Harden
Don't worry about it.
Jake Benun
I like that, because, like you were saying, a lot of people have this sort of illusion about confidence. "Oh, I just don't have that," or something like that. Why do you think so many people have that thought?
ilise benun
I think people, actually, are afraid of success and the responsibility that comes along with success. Because if what I say I want to do, I actually do, and it starts to work, then I'm actually going to have to change. I'm going to have to be different—and who knows where that's going to take me. And a lot of people are really afraid of not knowing where they're going. But I love that.
James Harden
Do you see self-sabotage?
ilise benun
Yeah.
James Harden
Occur when that ...
ilise benun
Oh my God, totally.
James Harden
When they realize that they're going to have to change?
ilise benun
All the time ...
James Harden
What does that look like? What does a self-sabotage client look like to you?
ilise benun
Well, let's take that back to the second tool.
James Harden
Perfect.
Jake Benun
That's amazing.
ilise benun
The second tool is networking, strategic networking.
So we had high quality content marketing. That means you create content, but that's not enough. You have to go find your people, in real time, ideally, and in person, if possible.
And a lot of people are very nervous, introverted, reserved, and don't like networking. Don't like talking to strangers because they don't know what to say. It can be scary.
And so the self-sabotage is they just don't go. They procrastinate. They buy a ticket to something and then don't go. Or they go late. Or they leave early. Or they sit in the corner. There are all different ways we cannot do the simple thing that will really bring you into contact with your prospects and maybe lead you to success.
Jake Benun
Yeah. I mean, I've done that before.
ilise benun
We all have.
Jake Benun
The way we met, actually, and we've talked about it previously, is both of us, at that point, I guess, decided to go against that. And I was here; I just moved here. I thought I would be interested in real estate investing; hHe is a realtor and has gone to a couple of those before. But in those things, you're either going to sit in the corner and eat the free food that's there, or you're going to start to speak to people and schmooze and network and things like that—which I had never been to an event like that.
James Harden
While eating the free food.
Jake Benun
While eating the free food. You can't forget about that.
But yeah, so in that story, I put on my name tag, "I'm new."
ilise benun
Smart.
Jake Benun
I think that was it.
James Harden
Yeah, it was like, "I'm Jake Benun. And I'm new."
Jake Benun
So I had a lot of people come up to me, including this guy. So it sort of forced me, even though I wasn't going to go up to people, it brought people in to me. So maybe I had a fear and just tried to overcome it by that.
ilise benun
And it worked.
James Harden
Yeah, that's the C, man—courage. There was a definition I heard of courage recently, and that was kind of what you were talking about. It's not the absence of fearlessness; it's acting even though you are afraid.
And I like that, because now I know when I'm afraid to make cold calls, I hate it, I'd rather be waterboarded. 100%. But I'm like: Okay, it's good that I'm afraid of this. Now I'm going to make myself even more uncomfortable and keep doing it.
ilise benun
And that is actually the third tool, but I don't call it that. I call it “Targeted Outreach.”
So again, you're choosing who you want to work with, who your best prospects are. You've done your research, you looked them up on LinkedIn, you've gone to their website. You know exactly how you can help them. They just don't know you exist yet. And so you reach out to them, not just once, several times, to say, "I love what you're doing. I'd love to work with you. Here's how I think I can help you. And if you're too busy right now, don't worry, because I'm not going anywhere."
Jake Benun
So follow up in that case.
ilise benun
Follow up, yeah.
James Harden
Yeah. And it sounds like you kind of have the right idea of this, because I mean, this whole renaissance of salesmanship has been going pretty hard recently. And I think people have gotten away from the actual definition of what a salesperson should be doing. And it's not so much trying to sell them on what you're trying to do so you can help yourself. It's like, you really love what you do and you see the value in it, and you can love your client almost enough to where you're like, "Look, I would feel bad if you didn't take my service right now because I can actually really help you, and I think that we could work well together," rather than just me trying to go and shove a product or a service down somebody's throat. So I think you're the right kind of person for that.
ilise benun
I talk about it as, “marketing with generosity,” because you're, literally, generously bringing what you have to offer to the people who could probably use it.
And then it's just about timing. Are they ready? Can they even focus on it right now? Can they listen to you talk about it? Are they ready to make this decision? And they're usually not. So then you have to be patient, and wait, and follow up, and stay in touch with your content, basically.
Jake Benun
How much of your clientele now, after doing it for a couple of years, how much of that is long-term clientele, and how much of it is friends of friends who you've worked with before and, I guess, word of mouth has spread about maybe your services?
ilise benun
I'm not going to answer your question. I'm going to answer a slightly different question.
Jake Benun
Please do.
James Harden
You should be in politics, too.
ilise benun
I mean, my clients are ... A lot of them are long-term, so people I work with year after year, and then we just go deeper and deeper and deeper with their business.
James Harden
Amazing.
ilise benun
But there are also people who buy the Simplest Marketing Plan and say, "Oh, this looks good. I get it. I can do it." And then they go off and do it. Those are self-starters.
And then there are people in the middle who kind of need accountability and they need a group of people around them to be doing it with, and so I provide that space through my program. And so I kind of guide that program, but don't get to know those people quite as well. And then some people will stay for a year, some people will stay for longer. And it's really just, there's a lot of come and go.
Jake Benun
So you have something for each person who needs a little more attention or doesn't need more attention.
ilise benun
Right.
Jake Benun
Amazing. And this whole podcast ... there's been kind of a podcast craze. A lot of people starting podcasts and things like that. It sounds like you started yours in a time when, one, there wasn't the same technology or maybe things to help you start that.
How did you continue or not get discouraged, maybe by ... I don't know. You've told me that you don't really keep track of your metrics or things like that, so maybe you were doing it, and you can tell me just for the love of it.
ilise benun
I do it because I learn a lot.
Jake Benun
Okay. I agree.
ilise benun
A podcast is actually the nexus of the three tools, if you think about it. Because with outreach, you can reach out to someone and say, "Do you want to be on my show?" Who would say “no” to that?
James Harden
Sure.
Jake Benun
Yeah, and then you're giving them publicity.
ilise benun
Right, you give them publicity. You create it, and it's content, and it's an amazing opportunity to network with someone.
So I can invite people on my podcast who I want to learn about, and I can reach out to them, I can create content with it. And the other thing is, just about being discouraged, I don't know. I don't get discouraged. I don't know why. That's not part of my vocabulary.
James Harden
Amazing.
ilise benun
I think because I'm not focused on the result. I'm not focused on the external.
I do it because I love it. I learn a lot. I'm trying to be better every single time. And also, I'm very disciplined—I learned that from my parents, actually, and not from my mother, actually; from my father. Hi Mom. [Laughter.] She knows.
And once I commit to doing something, I just do it. I don't not do it.
James Harden
Amazing.
ilise benun
And I think that's really important from a marketing point of view too, because there's so many people out there who say they're going to do something and then forget they said it, or don't do it and hope the other person forgets they said it.
James Harden
A hundred percent.
ilise benun
But I try to think before I talk. And I don't say something I'm going to do if I don't have the intention, or know I will have the space and the opportunity to do it.
Jake Benun
I mean, in business, in general, I think that's such an important thing. And especially when you're going to go around marketing yourself as something, when you can't back that up or don't follow through, trust is a huge thing.
ilise benun
I also want to say ... I mean, part of that is I say I'm going to do things. I may not do them perfectly. I don't actually like perfection. I like mistakes. It keeps it human. It keeps it real. And now with AI and all of these bots, people are imagining they have to be perfect. And I think the only way to distinguish ourselves from the bots is to not be perfect. One way, not the other way.
Jake Benun
I like that. I wanted to talk about the next level. A lot of people are always focused on how can I grow, improve, get to that next level, whatever that means in their head.
Do you feel any of that, or what did that look like for you?
ilise benun
I guess I would start by saying I don't think of it as “levels.” It's just a continuous flow, for me, and evolution.
And I think a lot about growth, because I always want to go to the next place, or do the next thing, or do something I haven't done before. And actually, that requires focus.
And part of the problem, I think, for a lot of people, is there are a lot of different things they want to do and they can't decide which one to do. So in order to grow, I really do think you need to focus and then do whatever's next later, or next. Because we don't know how much time we have, but hopefully we have, you certainly, y'all have some time left.
Jake Benun
I hope so.
ilise benun
So don't be in a hurry to do everything. Just choose one thing to do well. So that's what I'm doing. And right now, the thing I'm focused on is my Simplest Marketing Plan framework and the program that goes with it.
So, my one-on-one coaching, I'm backing off that a little bit so that I can devote more time to growing the groups.
Jake Benun
Gotcha. So you kind of cater ...
A lot of the things we've talked about previously are balance, and so obviously there's no ...
Some people, when they think about balance, it's like, "Okay. Equal percentages of everything I'm focused on." But for different aspects of your life or different points of your life, you've been more focused on different things.
ilise benun
Projects, let's say.
Jake Benun
Exactly. I think that's really important, because like you said, it's almost impossible to do everything at once.
ilise benun
Or do it well.
Jake Benun
Yes.
James Harden
Projects are your passion. Right?
ilise benun
Well, I don't really like that word.
James Harden
Okay, I'm curious.
ilise benun
Well, “passion” is a little too emotional. I like to stay neutral and not get too excited about anything, because that conserves my energy. And that way, I have more energy and better energy for the things that really require it. And I'm making a distinction between enthusiasm and passion, right? I'm enthusiastic about what I do. I'm enthusiastic talking about it. But I wouldn't say I'm passionate about anything.
James Harden
Wow. No, that's fair. I like that, actually. I really love that distinction.
Jake Benun
Yeah.
James Harden
What are you ... Actually, no. Go.
ilise benun
Let me just give a shout-out to my friend, Terri Trespicio, who wrote a book called “Unfollow Your Passion,” which is along the lines of what I'm talking about, also.
James Harden
That makes sense.
Jake Benun
I think that's obviously a very controversial topic, especially at the moment. I feel like everyone's like, or a lot of the advice out there is, "Find what you love."
And there's almost this idea, or at least in my head, that when you find that thing, it's always going to be exciting, and it's always going to be this amazing thing.
ilise benun
Forever and ever and ever.
Jake Benun
Right. But like you were talking about, I don't think we have the capacity for that.
ilise benun
And it doesn't work that way. It really doesn't.
James Harden
I mean, being enthusiastic about what you do is one thing, and then you're saying that you should conserve your passion for ...
ilise benun
Conserve my energy.
James Harden
Your energy, for what?
ilise benun
To implement, to think clearly, to ... I don't know. I find that when people are too excited, they're just all over the place, and that's a dispersion of energy. It's a waste of energy. And if I conserve it, then it's more focused and more effective, I find.
Jake Benun
Is this something that you've sat down and thought about for a long time? Or you just have done that naturally?
ilise benun
No, I've learned over the years, through my own teachers, through my own process, through working with clients like, "Oh, this works. That doesn't work. I'm not doing that anymore. That doesn't work."
James Harden
And then how long until you decide it's not going to work? I guess a better way to ask that question would be: how much have you tried something before you totally throw it to the curb?
ilise benun
It depends, right? If it's a big project, I will give it time, especially if it's something I believe in and really know the market needs, it's just that the market doesn't know it yet. I will definitely give that time and then experiment with all different ways, like "Maybe I should say it this way? Maybe I should approach it this way. Maybe I have to start with this." There's a lot of experimentation that happens with how to implement it. But I don't throw a big idea away without giving it enough of a chance. And I do see a lot of people doing that, actually. "Oh, that didn't work. They never called me back."
Jake Benun
One week later.
ilise benun
Yeah, exactly. No, I will give it time. And I mean, even the Simplest Marketing Plan, it took me, I don't know, five years to figure out the best 14 pages of the document. For the first four years, it was different things. And then it was like, "Okay, no, this is what it needs to be, now. Now I know."
Jake Benun
Did you put that out and then change things and put it out again?
ilise benun
Yeah.
Jake Benun
Oh, okay.
ilise benun
No, every year I do a new one.
Jake Benun
Oh, okay. Very interesting. What would you say is your favorite thing about your current profession?
ilise benun
I really think it is the freedom that I have to do what I want to do and work with the people that I want to work with. And what that really means is saying “no” to the people I don't want to work with, or doing the things I don't want to do. Right? To me, that's the best part of freedom—is what you don't have to do; not what I do get to do.
Jake Benun
Did you learn that by saying “yes” to the wrong person, or maybe people?
ilise benun
Oh yeah, definitely.
Jake Benun
Before you started the business, or even after?
ilise benun
No, after. All the time, right? There's always something. I'm just thinking at the moment of people who are just talkers. Talker, talker, talkers. Right? And then there's no space for me. And so I can't help someone who won't stop talking.
Jake Benun
Obviously you're talking about, maybe, some clients that you've had that turns out maybe this wasn't the best fit. Do you find it difficult to say “no” to them, or even once you've started?
ilise benun
Mm-mm.
Jake Benun
No?
ilise benun
Mm-mm. Sorry.
James Harden
No, you're embarrassing me now.
ilise benun
"Sorry, this isn't working."
I mean, on the opposite side, there are people who expect me to do all the talking. Right? "You're the expert. Tell me what to do."
"All right, well, I'm going to have to know a little bit about you first, so you talk to me." And some people don't want to do that, so, sorry, that's not going to work.
James Harden
Yeah, I can relate to that. When you were talking about things that you don't want to do, necessarily, is there any room for you to delegate tasks like that, because from my understanding, it seems like you're kind of a one-man man here.
ilise benun
I'm not, actually. I have a team.
Jake Benun
Amazing.
ilise benun
Yeah, it is. I have a writer who does a lot of my writing, actually, and writes in my voice, essentially.
I have a sound guy who does my podcast.
Jake Benun
Amazing.
ilise benun
Yeah, so I just record it and then I send it over to him.
Jake Benun
On the premise?
ilise benun
No, no. Everyone's virtual.
Jake Benun
Okay, gotcha.
ilise benun
Yeah, everyone's remote.
And then I have a digital marketer. Hi, Tomas. He's going to watch because he watches everything.
James Harden
Okay, perfect.
Jake Benun
Hey, Tomas.
ilise benun
He's in Sweden.
James Harden
Very cool.
ilise benun
And he's in charge of strategizing all of my campaigns to sell the Simplest Marketing Plan.
Jake Benun
How long did it take you to start expand to different, or delegate, I guess?
ilise benun
It's really just very recent, in the last year or two.
Jake Benun
What prompted that, if it was more recent?
ilise benun
Yeah. I know there was something that happened. I can't remember what it was actually, but something shifted. I was like, "No, I think I need to do this differently now."
Jake Benun
Makes sense.
ilise benun
Yeah, and it was a gradual evolution. I don't think there was any one thing that happened. I just thought, "No, this is the direction. So I need help."
And actually, you know what it was? I think it was Tomas. I mean, I've known him for many years, but I started to realize he could really help me a lot more. And when you find someone really good, you don't want to let them go. You have to find work for them. It was basically his presence, I think, that made me say, "All right, let's move in this direction, and you do everything."
James Harden
And do you have plans for the future to have that kind of be the direction of your role in the company, where you can remove yourself and still have this be a fully functional ...
ilise benun
I don't imagine removing myself.
James Harden
No, completely. I mean, obviously you still would do your public speaking events and your networking, but when it comes to working one-on-one with clients, you mentioned wanting to back off.
ilise benun
No, I love the one-on-one work. I just don't want to do as much of it. I want to be pickier about who I do it with. But really, what I want to do, the thing I value most of my work, is the deepening of the ideas. And I want to spend my time thinking about, "Well, what is getting in the way for people? Why aren't they doing their outreach? What can I do? Or how can I say it differently that will make them say, “Oh, of course I'm going to do it'?" Or "What kind of space can I create?"
So I feel like that's my job, is to just keep deepening the ideas, not necessarily coming up with new ideas, but better ideas. And then he can be responsible for getting them out there.
James Harden
Yeah. So you found your wheelhouse and now you've built a team around you to where you can focus exclusively on what you're best at and what you're more enthusiastic about.
ilise benun
Yes. For now, and then that could change.
Jake Benun
Have you found it, or I guess, are you someone who feels they need to be in control of more things or have you found it easy to delegate, I guess, is the question?
James Harden
Good question.
ilise benun
Are you asking if I'm a control freak?
James Harden
Yes. That's how I would've worded it.
ilise benun
I heard that. I would say, I have been a control freak, and that's partially why it was just me for so long. But I've changed.
Jake Benun
As we do.
ilise benun
Yes. And grown, and I've gotten, I don't know, just much looser and ... and so I will often say, "Okay, yeah, go ahead. That's fine. Whatever you think is fine."
I mean, if I have an opinion, I'll say, "No, we're doing it this way." And I always have the last say, but I let them do ... I mean, I've hired them because they are smart and I like the way they think. So I want them to do their best work.
James Harden
That was actually a quote by Steve Jobs, I think.
Jake Benun
Really?
James Harden
He said, “We don't hire smart people to tell them what to do. We hired them so that they could tell us what to do.”
ilise benun
Yeah.
Jake Benun
Makes sense. So you've been talking a lot about maybe some self-reflecting that you do or thinking about different things in a deep way. Do you do any journaling?
ilise benun
I started when I was 14, and I did stop when I was probably 50 ... what was that, 65? No, that wouldn't make sense. I'm not 65.
James Harden
That's a big journal.
ilise benun
Yeah. No, I stopped at least 10 years ago.
Jake Benun
Okay.
ilise benun
Because I ...
Jake Benun
Was that a conscious decision?
ilise benun
Yeah, I just felt like I don't need to write anything down anymore. It all comes internal.
James Harden
You don't want to get that out? Well, you are an author.
ilise benun
Right. And it's not like the ideas don't come out. They just don't need to be in that raw form.
James Harden
They're more condensed.
ilise benun
Yeah.
James Harden
And publishable, right?
ilise benun
Yeah. I mean, I actually don't find writing to be the best medium for me anymore to figure out what I think. I like to talk, and that's why I love the podcast. And that's why I don't stop doing the podcast, because I learn a lot about what I'm thinking. And I'm best when I'm riffing off of or responding to other people.
James Harden
Absolutely.
ilise benun
So when I say something, and then I actually have a writer who works with me who will just take a transcription and then a video and then my notes and put it all together into an article. Do you think AI could do that?
Jake Benun
I don't think it's far off if it can't, but ... Yeah, I don't know.
ilise benun
I don't know either. But I have this one really good person who I give all that material to, and I say, "Just make something out of that knowing what you know about how I think."
Jake Benun
So I think that's the difference with AI. I think if I were to give something to AI, it would come back and I would have to still then go in and make changes. But if I were to give it to a person, I almost feel like I could just let it go, and however it comes out, it's going to be unique in their way, versus AI is going to come back and almost give me a robotic ... and maybe that'll change.
ilise benun
Maybe.
Jake Benun
But ...
ilise benun
We don't know.
Jake Benun
I do value the ...
James Harden
I think that'd be one of the interactions it has had with you.
ilise benun
Right.
Jake Benun
Maybe, yeah.
James Harden
I don't know very much about AI, but I imagine it learns more through continued interactions.
Jake Benun
Supposedly, yeah.
James Harden
To learn how you actually operate and think. And I think, I don't know, maybe if you spend enough time with ... just like a person, if we spend enough time together, I would probably be a good option to where you could send me all your stuff and then I could turn it into something based on how you think. But it would always have my bias on there, whereas to an AI could probably do the same thing, but it would only have your ...
Jake Benun
True. And we briefly talked about this last night, we could have a whole different conversation about it, but at that point it's like, "Am I really just telling AI or am I telling the whole ..."
ilise benun
Who else will hear?
Jake Benun
Right, the whole internet about that.
I want to ask you, as sort of a final question...
ilise benun
All right.
Jake Benun
So far, throughout your career, your lifetime, what are you most proud of?
ilise benun
Hmm. I would say just the growth of myself from where I came from, because I was a scared little girl for a long time. And over the years, I've been able to let go of that, and I think that is the best part of my life, actually.
Jake Benun
Become “the cat.”
ilise benun
Become the cat, exactly. Become who I am, to be constantly figuring out and inventing myself differently. It's a never-ending process.
Jake Benun
It's funny, because the majority of the answers that I've gotten to that question is "The growth that I've been able to achieve and the person that I've become today," which makes sense.
I feel like at the end of the day, these, maybe, material things that you've grown, this business, this medal you won, they don't matter so much in the end. It's more the person you are and the people you can touch. Not physically.
James Harden
And physically. [Laughter]
Jake Benun
But that's it, almost. Except for the word association. I wrote some things down, but if you ... he likes to riff off of it, right?
James Harden
Yes.
ilise benun
Okay.
Jake Benun
I don't know if that's true, but I like to hear what he has to say off the top of his mind, because it's usually fairly interesting. You understand how it works?
ilise benun
I do.
Jake Benun
Okay, perfect. So I'm just going to say the word and you go for it.
ilise benun
All right.
Jake Benun
Podcast.
ilise benun
Sound.
Jake Benun
Books.
ilise benun
Reading.
James Harden
Banana.
Jake Benun
There we go.
ilise benun
Squishy.
Jake Benun
Marketing.
ilise benun
Mentor.
James Harden
Obstacles.
ilise benun
Mm ... Self-imposed.
Jake Benun
I like that. Travel.
ilise benun
Anywhere.
Jake Benun
And, success.
ilise benun
Freedom.
Jake Benun
Amazing.
ilise benun
Yes.
Jake Benun
Thank you so much.
ilise benun
Thank you, Jake.
Jake Benun
And I'm sure there is plenty more to be talked about, to be spoken about, and maybe I'll come and visit and we'll do something else.
ilise benun
That would be lovely.
Jake Benun
Incredible.
James Harden
Does she want to tell us or the audience where we could find her podcast?
ilise benun
Yeah.
Jake Benun
Absolutely.
ilise benun
All right, well, the hub of everything I have is on marketing-mentor.com. So the podcast is there, the books are there. My Quick Tips are there, the Simplest Marketing Plan is there.
James Harden
One place to find it.
Jake Benun
Incredible. So we'll have that in the links below, and any other information that you tell me we should have, we'll have down there. But thank you so much for being here, and thank you guys for watching. And if you wouldn't mind, we would love if you could hit that, “Subscribe”, that “Like” button. And if you're hearing it on her channel, give it a “Follow” as well. And yeah, we appreciate you guys being here. Thanks James.
ilise benun
Bye, Mom.
Isn't he adorable? I love all the experimenting he's doing. Does that run in a family? Certainly the entrepreneurial spirit does. I can feel it in him. I'm sure this isn't his first appearance on my podcast, and I can't wait to see where he goes and what he does with his life.
And if you like that one, be sure to watch Episode One where he interviews his older sister. Something definitely runs in this family.
Anyway, thanks so much for listening in 2023, and longer, if you have been.
You know, what we let into our minds, and what we keep out, can have a very powerful impact whether we know it or not. And I really appreciate the fact that you make space for my voice. In fact, recently someone wrote this:
"It's not often I allow someone else's voice inside my head, but somehow ilise permeated my thick skull and seems to have nestled right inside my brain, becoming my own inner voice. And now, I literally hear her talking in my ear. When doubt begins to creep in or I start to think about a potentially negative outcome or how others might perceive me, then I hear it: ‘Who cares?' With a shrug of the shoulders, a gentle invitation to fail or succeed or have nothing happen at all. ‘What's the worst that could happen?’"
I just love that, and I have been saying "Who cares?" a lot lately. But this is what makes this all worthwhile. So thank you.
Do you want to build a thriving business on your own terms? It really is possible, and I am speaking from personal experience. The first step is to sign up for my Quick Tips at marketing-mentortips.com. Once you're on the site, you'll find lots more resources, including my brand new for 2024 Simplest Marketing Plan, and the all-new Simplest Marketing Program. It's got built-in accountability, and it's designed to help you build a business you can depend on, and all it takes is 30 minutes a day. It really isn't all that hard. So take a look, and I'll see you next year. Happy New Year, y'all.
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You see, friends, I went pretty quickly from some big changes in 2016, to recalibrating in 2018, to an amazing hot mess of a 2020 to a whole new life: Right now I have a 3.5-year-old, two stepsons, two old-lady dogs, and a whole array of crazy, lovely messiness that I’m still trying to figure out. (Maybe the point is that you never quite figure it out?)
2022 into 2023 was tough. My hubby was out of work for a while with some health concerns, and this sent my Type A tendencies into a tailspin. At first, I went into overdrive to keep everything okay. My control-freak-ness escalated to 11, and so did my stress and worry. I was hanging in there, but it wasn’t pretty.
In 2023, I started to crumble. I realized that muscling it out will only get you so far. Overall I was emotional, anxious, and defeated … I felt like I was ducking and punching, but never on solid footing.
Money-wise, while 2022 was my best year in 5 years — 2023 was my worst in 9. (While I’m usually on top of my monthly income, I didn’t even realize my income was 10-15k lower than usual until October!)
Ah, the ups and downs of self-employed life, right?!
While it’s easy to see this as B-A-D, I can’t help but think that maybe the universe only gave me what I could handle. I had a limited amount of creative juice, ya know? Considering my low bandwidth, I never stopped loving my work. I got joy and respite from doing cool projects with wonderful clients. But instead of my norm of 70% conscientious worker / 30% messy human, I’d say my ratio was flipped this past year. 🙂
Listen, I never said I had it all together! (If you do, please email me and fill me in!)
Alas, like I’ve shared in 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022, here is my 2023 by the numbers:
Heading into 2024, I’m money down, spirits up! I’m open to abundance, aiming for my best year yet, and ready to DO THIS. Are you with me?
—
Hi, I’m Deidre. In my posts, I talk about my voyage down the road of self-employment as a web copywriter, my achievements and roadblocks along the way, and what I’m learning as I go (with Marketing Mentor as my guide). To keep in touch, sign up for my un-newsletter here and get my freebie download, 12 Sparks to Write Sizzling, Audience-Attracting Website Words. If you want to get my perspective on your copy, check out my pick-my-brain session.
Have a great-looking website? Wonderful. Now let’s make it SEO-friendly — because that matters just as much. An impressive, important, and FREE tool I recommend to my clients is Google Search Console.
While understanding Google can feel like a guessing game, it doesn’t have to be. Google Search Console gives you the inside view to how Google sees your website. It puts information at your fingertips that will help you achieve a stronger SEO presence.
Good news: You don’t need an SEO expert to help you implement it. You can absolutely do it yourself.
In my latest post, you will learn more about what Google Search Console does, and how to implement it. Check out: Strengthen your SEO with Google Search Console--
Hi, I’m Jill, a web designer/developer who partners with talented designers, copywriters, and agencies on their websites, and their client’s sites. I’m passionate about crafting beautiful and innovative WordPress websites focused on clear positioning and positive user experiences. See my work & get my free report, Get Your Website Done: 12 Actionable Steps for Designers.
The first one is, "You Reply, I Donate."
I just did this in my own Quick Tips newsletter - in which I donated $10 to the National CARES Mentoring Movement every time someone replied to the email.
CARES empowers black youth through mentoring, STEM programs, and more. And its founder, Susan Taylor, was one of my very early clients. She always supported my work with love and was one of my teachers when it comes to taking good care of your people.
This “you reply, I donate” idea is a form of “generosity marketing” that I learned from another dear client.
It’s a great way to bump up engagement in the last month of the year and give to a cause you care about at the same time. Win-win!
Try it in your own newsletter or by inviting people to comment on LinkedIn.
Karen McElmoyle, a longtime client and new member of SMP+, does this especially well in the December issue of her LinkedIn newsletter, LevelUp Creative… PLUS she added the “birthday as a marketing tool” strategy! It’s a marketing bonanza!
You’ll see another example of “you-reply-I-donate” marketing in today’s “Best Bits” video…
Plus three more super-simple ideas to end the year strong using each of the 3 tools in the Simplest Marketing Plan: High-Quality Content, Targeted Outreach, and Strategic Networking.
Speaking of generosity marketing…
Should you send gifts to clients around the holidays? Weigh in and see what other creatives think here on LinkedIn!
Thanks for reading and showing up this year. It’s been a fantastic year and I am so grateful that you’re here.
Ready to make next year better than the last? Grab a copy of The Simplest Marketing Plan for 2024 and join me live every month to stay on track with your marketing all year long.
Cyber Monday LIVE Event Replay
Watch my hour-long live launch of the Simplest Marketing Plan, where I shared how to be consistent with your marketing… why you don’t need iron willpower to get it done... how to stay top-of-mind to your ideal clients without “pestering” them… and more.
Watch The Replay Here:
“All it Takes is 30 Minutes a Day” Minisode Series
Want to build a business you can depend on next year in just 30 minutes a day? Start with these four simple mindset shifts.
Minisode #1: How to Build Momentum in Your Marketing
Minisode #2: Discipline Doesn’t Work - This Does!
⭐ Minisode #3: Attract More Clients without “Bothering” People
Minisode #4: Marketing that “Lights You Up”
Answers to Your “Burning Questions”
Over the last couple of months, I shared my video answers to three of your burning-est marketing questions. Watch those here:
#1: What Should You Be Doing on LinkedIn?
#2: How Do You Keep Marketing When “Life Happens”?
#3: What’s a Better Alternative to “Pitching”?
Quick LinkedIn Tips:
⭐ How to Build Momentum on LinkedIn
Posting vs. Commenting on LinkedIn - Which is Better?
[Podcast] A Peek Inside the Simplest Marketing Plan:
⭐ Listen to: One Year of the Simplest Marketing Plan with Florian Schleicher
See how Florian used my three tools in Simplest Marketing Plan in an all-new way to turn his business around - and borrow a few of his ideas for your own business.
Marketing Success Redefined
Watch this series of 1-minute YouTube “shorts” to get a new success mindset going into the New Year.
#1: How You See Your Success vs. How I See It
#2: Success Starts with A Mindset Shift
#3: Baby Steps & Small Wins
#4: The Power of “Showing Up” in Your Marketing
Happy binging!
And if you’d love my help building your business through simple marketing this year, you can still pick up my Simplest Marketing Plan for 2024 and get invited to every monthly live Office Hour session next year! Get it here.
"This is pretty mind blowing in the best possible way. Although I’m not a copywriter, I’m seriously thinking about taking Nick’s Futureproof Copywriting course just to better understand how to use AI to create emotionally-rich and compelling copy. Writing AI prompts is an art form in and of itself!" (BTW: get 10% off with promo code "BENUN64")
I totally agree -- communicating with AI is like learning a brand new language (and I love learning languages, so this is going to be fun!)
Nick Usborne, an early adopter and renowned copywriter, has been using Artificial Intelligence for years. That's exactly why I invited him to join me on the Marketing Mentor Podcast to share his idea, which I think is kinda brilliant.
If you haven't already, listen to (or read the transcript of) Episode #488 where we talked about how to use AI to make your content marketing painless.
Then, listen to Part 2 here (and below) where we focused on how (or whether) to use AI for marketing, especially targeted outreach (one of the tools in the Simplest Marketing Plan for 2024) and when to rely on EI instead to build relationships with actual human beings – you know…your clients and prospects.
It’s a fascinating conversation, especially if you’re not quite on the cutting edge of technology.
Be sure to check out Nick's excellent course, Futureproof Copywriting, to teach you how to increase your value by leveraging both artificial intelligence AND emotional intelligence. (Get 10% off with promo code "BENUN64")
For a baby step, Nick suggested developing your voice so that you can train AI to use your voice so you won’t sound like samesies – all the other creative professionals out there.
That will be the only way to stand out in a future replete with AI – at least that’s what Nick thinks today, at the end of 2023. Time will tell – of course.
And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
(Image generated by AI)
Read the complete transcript of #489 with Nick Usborne
ilise benun
Hi, there. This is ilise benun, your Marketing Mentor. And this is the podcast for you if, and only if, you are ready to leave the feast or famine syndrome behind, and I mean for good.
In today's episode, I continued the conversation about artificial intelligence, AI, and emotional intelligence, EI, with Nick Usborne. We had to talk fast and publish soon before AI improves again and makes our conversation obsolete, so I'm glad you're listening now, and I hope the ideas are still helpful and relevant.
We focused on how or whether to use AI for marketing, especially targeted outreach—one of the tools in the Simplest Marketing Plan. And when to rely on EI—again, emotional intelligence—instead, to build relationships with actual human beings: your clients and prospects. It's a fascinating conversation, especially if you're not on the cutting edge of technology. So listen and learn. All right. Nick, welcome back to the podcast.
Nick Usborne
Thank you for inviting me back.
ilise benun
You're welcome. And it was really just the other day that we had Part One of this conversation, although we did do two episodes way back when, that neither of us remember, but I will link to them. And everything has changed since then.
And one of the things we were talking about in our Part One conversation is AI, artificial intelligence, and EI, emotional intelligence. So if you want to know about how those two things connect, listen to Part One.
We're going to pick up where we left off because what I had basically asked you was: how can we use AI to do our marketing?
We're going through each of the Simplest Marketing Plan tools and we didn't totally cover at all, actually, content marketing. But we made a dent in content marketing. And today I wanted to focus on outreach. But before we do that, please introduce yourself.
Nick Usborne
Okay. Right. My name is Nick Usborne. I've been a copywriter forever. Well, not forever, since 1979, which feels like forever. I've been a writer, I've been a coach, and I'm a coach. I've been running ... most of those years have been working as a freelancer. I prefer freelancing, so I've been running a freelance business.
I am, kind of the kind of person who ... I get bored always doing the same thing. So when something new and exciting rears its head, like the web or AI, I tend to leap in with both feet with my eyes closed, which has worked out reasonably well for me.
But yeah, I'm definitely someone to lean into new technology, new things happening. So that's why I find myself right deep down the rabbit hole of AI right now.
ilise benun
Yeah, it's awesome because I'm definitely not one of those people. I'm not an early adopter. I drag my feet and wait until I absolutely must focus on it, and then I dip my toes in kind of slowly. So when we ran into each other at the AWAI bootcamp recently, I thought: All right, here's an opportunity to pick your brain, basically, and help pass along some of what you are doing and what you've learned so far to my listeners—who are all basically creative professionals, ideally self-employed or eventually self-employed.
And as you know, that's a different mindset, right, to be self-employed versus to have that employee mindset.
Nick Usborne
Absolutely.
ilise benun
So as I said, we talked a little bit about content marketing, but today I wanted to talk about outreach— which is basically reaching out to prospects—because what I teach in the Simplest Marketing Plan and program is that this is actually what works. Reaching out ... handpicking your ideal clients and reaching out to them is very effective. But it's effective when you do your homework and tailor and customize your messages to them—which tends to be time intensive and labor intensive, and people get a little lazy about it.
So my first question is: how can, or can AI help with this part of the process? And then we can talk about other parts of the process.
Nick Usborne
It's a tricky one. I mean, I agree with you that it's absolutely the best way. I tell people, "Hey, it's just the math. If you reach out in a smart way to a lot of your core prospects, sooner or later someone is going to say, “Yes,” and then someone else will say, “Yes.”
Most people say, “No” because the timing is not right. So AI, it's a tricky partner in this space. A while ago I was following a discussion on Upwork—so one of these places where freelancers, they sign themselves up and get to pitch for client business.
And there was a lot of upset clients because they were saying that they were putting jobs up on the board and they were inviting people to submit proposals. And the proposals were coming in and the proposals were almost all identical because the freelancers had used tool like ChatGPT to look at the briefing and they'd said, "Hey, based on this briefing, please write a proposal." And then they sent it off to the company and the company was looking at it saying, "This is insane. I'm not going to choose any of these people because this just feels lazy. It just doesn't feel like there's a real person here at all.”
So you've got to be very mindful of that, of whatever you're doing with AI, that it doesn't make you look the same.
So I've written about this. I call it kind of “the sameness trap” and it can happen with companies using AI for marketing too much because same tool, same language ... all of a sudden companies start looking the same.
And it can definitely be a problem with freelancers. And as freelancers, I think are, in a sense, our greatest, and in some ways only strength, is being ourselves. All right. Which brings us over a little bit to emotional intelligence. So it's messy at the moment trying to use AI for that purpose.
So what I say to people, and the rule I follow, I mean, I use AI extensively, but I never ever use it with client-facing communications. If I'm writing an email, if I'm writing a proposal, if I'm running anything, I sit down and I do it, because it needs to be me. I need to differentiate myself. If I use AI, I'll sound the same as other people and as soon as I sound the same, I'm dead in the water. Right? That said, you can certainly use AI.
So what I might do, let's say I'm in the general aviation business, a specialty. I'm writing in that area. What I might do is I might go to LinkedIn and I might copy and paste 50 profiles from these companies or leaders within these companies. So I'll copy and paste 50 of them and I'll put them in a document and I'll upload them into ... I'll basically paste them into GPT-4 and say, "Hey, this is, from a training point of view, as a record, this is what these companies talk about in their profiles.” And that is almost like a training set.
Then what I do, the company that I'm interested in writing a proposal to, I'll separately get hold of their profile. I'll say, "Okay, ChatGPT, you've got the 50. Now look at this one and tell me if there's any differentiating factors here. Is this profile different or interesting or unusual in any way based on what you've seen in the other 50?"
So I'd use it like that because that can be golden. If I find something about a company or about an individual in the company that’s a little bit different, a little bit unusual, it gives me an opportunity to start a conversation in an unexpected way.
ilise benun
But why wouldn't I just look at someone's profile and find that myself?
Nick Usborne
Maybe you can. But ChatGPT is insanely good at two things:
One is pattern recognition. It notices similarities and differences.
But the other thing, like the 50 that I cut and paste into this document that I uploaded, it's almost impossible for us to hold 50 profiles in our heads at the same time and find commonalities and find differences. We can't do it. Not 50 in our brains. But GPT, that is just easy peasy. All right?
So I'm always looking to use GPT for things that I can't do. If I want to write a short email, I can do that. I don't need ChatGPT to do that. I might ask it out of interest, but I'm still going to do it myself because I'm good or better than ChatGPT at writing emails.
But stuff that I can't do, like finding common elements or themes within a very large document of 50 different profiles, I can't do that. But ChatGPT, it's simple.
ilise benun
I was going to say, so part of the outreach homework process and the way that I advise people to come up with the thing they're going to point to that says, "Here's our connection, basically," ... it could be something different from the other 50. But it could also be something that I know about myself that I see on this person's profile and we have a connection; we have something in common. So is that a variation on this theme that we're talking about?
Nick Usborne
It can be. It can be. I can also put up my profile and say, "Hey, do you see any common elements?"
But again, it's so tricky because now we're getting into ...
You must get the same. I'll get messages from people on LinkedIn saying to me, who want to connect with me, "Oh, I see you like such-and-such a sports team."
And it's like, "Nice try. But I've already had 50 of those this morning."
Finding this common thing, it's very tricky. It's very tricky.
So yes, it's listening, first. I want to see if I can listen to the prospect through their profile. Through other materials I get ... I won't just get to their LinkedIn profile. I'll try and find other information about that company. I'll sign up for their newsletters. I'll find them on the web. I'll do whatever I can to listen to the company. I've lost track, lost track of what I was going to say. I'm sorry.
ilise benun
That's all right. That happens. Maybe ask the AI what you were about to say.
Nick Usborne
I know. I'm getting there because I can. I'm on my phone now. I can just talk to it, which I do because I'm a terrible typist anyway, so I just talk to it half the time on my phone now.
But I am conflicted in terms of ... So this is the AI plus EI. So artificial intelligence is a huge productivity boost and it does some things way better than my brain is capable of. But I know that the way into ... I don't think AI is going to land me a new gig or a dream client. I think the emotional intelligence does. So, I'm going to do the research with AI. I can get to ChatGPT and say, "Hey, go to their website. Go here, go there. Learn about this company for me."
And then I can say, "Well, give me a way in; give me some suggestions." And most of them probably are not great, and a lot of them won't be terribly original. So I'll then say, "Okay. Now give me some non-obvious suggestions." Which is usually more-
ilise benun
That's your magic word, “non-obvious.”
Nick Usborne
-to get the more interesting stuff. But still, if I'm reaching out to you, I can't do this like, it's not like Lego bricks. It's not like a jigsaw puzzle. I can do the research bit with AI, and it can speed up that area, or it can give me some insights I might not have otherwise seen.
But when I’m actually going to reach out to you, I need to, in my mind and in my heart, have a sense of who you are. I need to listen. I have to switch from AI into EI, into emotional intelligence.
I have to be aware of my emotions and what I'm feeling as I write to you. Using that research, I've got to get a sense of who you are and what you love and the fact that you've got a puppy. And I've got a puppy too. I may not use that because it can be a little weird. But I think, in terms of getting clients, I don't think I've got clients because of awards. I've got all these copywriting awards. I don't think-
ilise benun
That's not why they hire you, you're saying?
Nick Usborne
No. I don't think that's why they hire me. I think they hire me because they think: I like this guy. Yes, he's got the background. Yes, I've seen the resume. Yes, he's been around the block. Okay, I get it. He can write. But am I going to hire him?
And a lot of that, I think, is down to ... and contradict me if you think I'm wrong, but I think a lot of that is down to: Do I like this person?
ilise benun
No, I totally agree with you, like, who is this person?
But I was actually saying this to someone the other day, that the right approach, the right mindset for marketing is not: I hope they like me, I hope they want me, I hope they're willing to pay me.
It's: Who is this person? What are they going to be like to work with? Can we collaborate together and get something done that's a win-win for both parties?
Nick Usborne
Right. Hey, it's really interesting because you say, “Are they going to like me?” Which sounds to me like a defensive posture.
ilise benun
And that's how most people approach it.
Nick Usborne
There's anxiety there. I try to switch that around. And again, so we're now getting back into the emotional intelligence thing ... is rather than ask the question, ”Is ilise going to like me?” I want to ask a different question, which is, "How can I make ilise feel better?”
I want to make it about you. I don't want to make it about me: Is she going to like me—she doesn't like me. I don't want to be in that, because that's a defensive posture. I don't want that.
I want to find some emotional touchpoint where I can make ilise feel really good about our working relationship, the work that we do together about ... I want her, when she gets an email from me, to think: Cool, I wonder what Nick's come up with this time?
I don't want: Ah, no. Is this going to be one of Nick's feeling unhappy emails, seeking reassurance emails?
Which I've been guilty of. I haven't heard from a client for ages. You write this email and when you look back you think, eh, it's a little bit whiny. I don't want to do the whiny thing. I always want to be ...
And like I say, this is the heart and soul of emotional intelligence, is to be aware of your own emotions, to control your own emotions. Don't write that begging email just because you're feeling insecure. Don't do that. Be aware; be mindful of your emotions.
But also lean into the emotions of the person you're writing to. Always make it about them. And there's no easy way. I've seen so many, kind of, templates for this.
ilise benun
Right. There's no template for this.
Nick Usborne
I don't think there is. This is a human relationship thing. It's a personal relationship thing. And you really have to treat it that way, like you are meeting someone for the first time in a coffee shop, in a bar, in the park or whatever, and you feel your way into it. You feel your way forward.
ilise benun
I agree with that. However, if someone is not a good writer like you are, you said, "Well, I can do the writing of these messages, so I'm not going to ask AI to do it for me." But a lot of people feel like they're not necessarily good writers, or even if they're a good copywriter, they don't necessarily have the objectivity or the finesse to write about themselves and write these marketing messages.
And so in the Simplest Marketing Plan, I actually have templates that I advise people to adapt for themselves. And lately one of my clients told me that he was putting that into the ChatGPT to make it better.
And then I was offended. I'm not easily offended. But then I was offended, because it's already very good. This is what works. And AI is not going to make it better. All right, I got a little chip on my shoulder. I know that about this.
But I really feel like that's where you have to bring the EI. That's where you have to bring your heart and soul and do the homework. And imagine, you said, "Feel what the other person is feeling." And I can channel the listener saying, "Well, how am I supposed to know what the other person feels?"
Well, you use your imagination and you are empathetic, right? This is, again, where EI comes in.
Nick Usborne
You don't go on a first date and ask the other person to marry you at the end of the first date. This is step one. And step one in the communication is an opportunity to listen. You're going to write an email. They're going to write back. You're going to listen very carefully. You're going to read between the lines.
Is this a complete brush-off or is it like half brush-off? And you're going to go back and forth. So it's like any relationship that you build.
But to your point about people who are not comfortable writing or don't think they're great writers, ChatGPT is a fantastic writing tool.
I'll often do a draft, or I'm writing a blog post right now. And in fact, the topic was suggested to me by ChatGPT when I asked for it to look at in-between, like for the non-obvious, and it came up with a few ideas.
I said, "Okay, number three, give me an outline," which it did. And I said, "Fill in a bit of a description under the heading," and it did. What I'm doing is I'm using the idea. I've changed some of the headings. I'm completely going to write it, but it gave me that starting point.
The other thing is that writing, say emails, ChatGPT is really, really good at it because it's got access to a gazillion marketing emails out there as part of its training set. It's read more emails than you and I have in our entire careers. And it accesses them and it knows the good ones and the bad ones. So you can actually get ChatGPT to write a really, really good email. It's got a beginning, a middle and an end, a call to action.
And then you can say, "Hey." You start revising it saying, "Look, I'd like you to start off more, where it's feeling a little bit too casual, too familiar, let's make this a little bit more professional. Dial back the kind of conversational chattiness a little bit.” And it will.
And you say, "Okay. I want to start with something that this person had in their profile. So can we open with a mention of ..." And it will. So you can just go back and forth.
And in terms of grammar, it's way better than me. In terms of spelling, it's way better than me. And people say, "Oh yes, but it doesn't have ... I don’t know ... It can't do what a human can do."
And that's true, but it can do a lot more than you think it can do.
ilise benun
But you also said before, Nick, not to use it for client-facing messaging. So I hear a contradiction there.
Nick Usborne
Well, I'm using it as my buddy, it’s my assistant. So I'm saying, "Look, give me a first draft. Here's the brief. Here's what I want to achieve. Give me a first draft."
And then I might go back and forth with ChatGPT until it gets to be a stronger draft. And then I use that as my ... I never send just that. I always go back to it myself and say, "Okay. It started with this, I don't know, story or metaphor or analogy. I can think of a better one. I can think of one that's personal. I can think of one that I think will resonate better with the reader here."
So I'll go in and I'll switch stuff around and I'll make sure that it has my voice. So particularly the first paragraph and the closing section—I absolutely want that to be as I write, as Nick Usborne writes. Now of course, we're now getting to a point with ChatGPT where I can train it the way I write.
ilise benun
Yeah, explain that. You were telling me about that earlier. Explain that.
Nick Usborne
So I've been building a ... It's called a “custom GPT assistant.” This just came out last week, this ability where I can take GPT and I can create a custom version of it, trained to work the way I want it.
So I basically uploaded thousands of words, hundreds of pages of my own writing and transcripts on the topic of copywriting and AI and EI. Tons of stuff just on copywriting, conversational copywriting, and I've uploaded it, and this becomes this primary source for this version of ChatGPT.
It's a custom version that is for me, and that I then share with my students, share with other writers. It's out there publicly. You can go and use it. So it's a ChatGPT that is focused on copywriting.
So this gives it a level of ... and I can also say as part of ... I've written lots of instructions on how I want it to perform. And one of those instructions is: figure out the voice of the writer.
It's all my writing. I can say, “Figure out the voice of the writer and I want you in your output to write in that same voice.” So that's one of my instructions. I got other instructions, like if someone explicitly asks to train-
ilise benun
Wait. Let me just stop you there because again, I'm just channeling my listeners as I listen to you and they're thinking: Yeah. Well, what if I don't have pages and pages of writing? And even if I do, what if I don't even know what my voice is? How is AI going to find my voice?"
Nick Usborne
Don't worry, if you have some writing, AI knows what you mean. You may not know what you mean, but ChatGPT does. “Find my voice”—it definitely understands that prompt, that request. If you haven't done much writing, then get cracking.
ilise benun
All right. Let me ask you another question because last week you also posted on LinkedIn an avatar of yourself. And I'm wondering if, for example, I am constantly challenging my clients to use audio and video in their outreach. And when I saw that, I thought: Is there a way to use this avatar to create a video that would be part of someone's outreach message?
What do you think about that? And talk about what the avatar thing is.
Nick Usborne
So what the avatar is that ... and it's insane ...
ilise benun
It's insane. Let's just establish that.
Nick Usborne
So basically all I have to do to train a video avatar is I've got a camera up behind my computer here. I get that going and basically I talk to the lens for two minutes. So it's picking up my voice, my movement to my mouth, movement to my head, my eye movement, things like that. And that's all it takes is just two minutes of me talking to the camera, to the lens.
And then it goes through this thing, and now it has a version of me. So now I can just copy and paste some text into it and I will start reading the text ... I won't, but my avatar, the digital video version ...
ilise benun
So you don't even have to record the audio, you just give it some text.
Nick Usborne
If I give it some text, it comes back with ... suddenly I'm speaking in a weird Mid-American accent.
There's two things I can do. I can either record audio on my phone, which I've done, which I did for that demo that you saw. And I just upload the audio and then it converts it into video with this ...
So I've never spoken the words you see on that video. It's my avatar speaking; I just did the audio. But if I go to a company called 11 Labs, I can now get a clone of my voice.
All right. So once that's done, I can copy and paste an article or a post I've written. I can clone it in my voice, upload it to my avatar, and now my avatar is going to speak in my voice and it's going to basically read whatever I give it.
It could be an article, it could be a post, could be a speech, whatever it is. For freelancers, I shared it because I just find it astonishing that I can clone someone with two minutes of video. So we've been talking to each other for two minutes, more than two minutes, now. So if I was recording this, I could clone you, which is kind of creepy.
ilise benun
That is creepy.
Nick Usborne
So I'm not sure whether this is a fantastic tool for freelancers. I think, give it time, give it two or three years, and you'll be able to have 10 of your avatars talking to 10 different prospects at the same time and none of them will be saying exactly the same thing.
That conversation will ... so that is weird. And that's one of the ... people are going to use this for sales. They're going to have their best sales person selling to 25 different companies at the same time.
So there's weird applications for us. It's a curiosity. It's just fascinating and scary to me that we can already do this.
I don't think, again, I would apply that to ... I think, if it's about getting clients, if it's about marketing, if it's about prospecting, I would be using AI principally as a productivity tool to improve my efficiency in terms of discovery, in terms of sorting out the good prospects from the bad prospects.
Hey, and you can do things like you can go to ... like, let's say something worked out really well for you. And you can go to a profile on LinkedIn of this company where things went really well and you could have a look at the series of emails that you wrote, and you landed the gig, and it's a fantastic gig. You can give that to ChatGPT and say, "Hey, given how well this worked, can you find me similarly good matches among ..."
ChatGPT can't go into the database of LinkedIn itself. You have to copy and paste 50 prospect things. But you can find the success story and then say to ChatGPT, “Can you find some other prospects here that you think will respond as well as this one did?”
And like I say, ChatGPT is insanely good at pattern recognition. So look for patterns. What is it? What was unique about that prospect and the way you interacted with them that led to a positive outcome? Let's see if we can find similar pairings where it might work elsewhere.
So that's the kind of thing I'd experiment with. But in terms of how I finally write ... and I might say, "Hey, based on that, draft me a series of three emails: like an introduction, follow up, follow up."
And it'll do that. But again, like I say, with customer facing, with prospect-, client-facing, I never leave it there. I've got to insert myself because, ultimately, it's our only differentiator is ourself.
Whatever I promise as a freelancer, someone else is promising the same thing. But no one else can be me, for better or for worse. I got weaknesses, I got strengths. Some people love me, some people dislike me. It's the same for everyone.
But that is our only differentiator. And as AI grows—and it will, and it's growing insanely, and companies are going to lean into this because of the productivity benefits—the more the world becomes enthralled with and overwhelmed with AI, the more important it will be for us, as creatives and as freelancers, to double down on being ourselves.
ilise benun
I love that.
Nick Usborne
And also on leaning into the emotional intelligence, because AI is not good at that. It's good at so many things and it can understand the basics. It understands love and stuff like that. Although, it's never loved. All right. It understands loss, but it's never experienced a loss. So this is its weak point, which is why we want to lean in.
So like I said, I never ... I can now, I can actually interact with GPT at a level where I can ask it to write emails and messages. I can give it access now to my Google accounts and I can say, "Hey, write to ilise and say thanks for having me on as a guest." And it can do it.
I'm never going to do that. I don't want to do that, because all of a sudden, I sound like other people.
Clients are going through the same thing—is they're loving the productivity benefits of AI, but they're suddenly realizing that their marketing material now sounds exactly the same as everyone else's because they're all being written by AI. Same tool, same prompts, and all of a sudden there's this sameness.
What I'm really doing is I'm doubling down on the promises that I am not the same. I will not be the same. I promise, I'll never be.
And that's a whole different thing is like, clients ... if you go to places like Upwork, freelancer.com, lots of clients are now saying, "AI, not accepted. If you use AI, do not submit a proposal."
Now, some clients say, "It's fine, just declare it." Other people say, "Don't do it."
It's horribly messy because people are submitting work to clients, clients are running it through. You can run through tools and systems to identify whether a piece of writing has been written by AI or a human.
So clients are doing this now, but it's very unreliable and you get all these false positives. So clients are going back to a writer or a designer or whatever saying, "Hey, you said you wouldn't use AI, but you have." And the writer is like, "Seriously, I did not. I did not, I promise." But they said, "We run it through this system and it says ..." and they're very unreliable. So the whole thing is messy, messy, messy. So just lean into being whatever makes you different.
ilise benun
Yourself.
Nick Usborne
Just lean into yourself. And always, always, even if you're using AI as a tool to draft proposals or draft estimates or draft emails, never leave it there. Always rewrite it, so it's in your voice.
ilise benun
All right. Well, thank you, Nick. I have a feeling one of the things we might talk about later is maybe having you join me for a workshop for my SMP—Simplest Marketing Plan members to actually try to implement some of these things into our marketing. So we'll talk offline about that.
Nick Usborne
All right. Hey, can I just ... talking led me to something else.
ilise benun
Go ahead.
Nick Usborne
And you were saying people ... I've been writing for a very long time, so I have developed a bit of a voice. But if you haven't been out there writing blog posts and social media for decades, you perhaps are not even sure what your voice might be. And that'd be an interesting workshop thing, is work on that, because it's going to be the most important thing, I think, for you going forward, is that, hey, there are some people ....
I always come back to the same example, because Ann Handley's voice is so unmistakable, so Ann Handley of Marketing, not Marketing Experience, of MarketingProfs.
ilise benun
MarketingProfs.
Nick Usborne
And her newsletter, and whenever she speaks, you can almost recognize her writing from a hundred meters because she has a voice that is almost unmistakable.
And that's what we all aspire to. I think it is going to become an incredibly important asset to us because of this sameness trap.
That's what AI is leading us into, is sameness, sameness, sameness. So people are going to love the financial benefits of that sameness, but they'll suddenly realize that: Well, hang on, this is not cool. We sound the same as everyone else.
ilise benun
Okay. And one of the things I asked you last time, which we actually never got to, so we can get to it this time, which is: What is the baby step that people can take to begin moving in the direction that we're talking about? And I hear you basically saying, "Start building your voice so that you can use it with AI.”
Nick Usborne
Right. And also, you want a voice that is very sensitive to EI. You want to be a very emotionally-intelligent writer because, again, that differentiates you.
One of the things a lot of people struggle with is they were taught writing at high school, at university, at business school—and that is a very particular formulaic, academic writing, business writing. This is not a good way to connect with people emotionally. It's very formulative. It's like I said, "Formulaic."
So, if you have a background in professional structured writing like academic writing or business writing, you want to step back from that, I think, and find your personal voice.
And to do that, always imagine. And it's a cliche, but I've said it a thousand times is, “Always imagine you're sitting across the kitchen table from one other person and speak to that person as a living, breathing, feeling, emotional human being. And be a good conversationalist, which means listen. Listen more than you speak. Always be listening, listening, listening. Because that's how you become a more emotionally-intelligent person and you become a more emotionally-intelligent writer is you've always got to see someone as a human being first, even if they are vice president. The vice president for a few hours a day, but for 24 hours a day, they're a person with emotions. All right?
ilise benun
And though that is the topic, actually, of our first two podcasts, was conversational writing, so I will link to those episodes so people can understand more about what you mean when you talk about conversational writing.
Nick Usborne
It's everyday language. Just be yourself. It's, like, show your character.
ilise benun
All right, Nick, we're going to stop here. We're going to put the bookmark here. We might have another conversation, but there's definitely more to talk about. We might do something monthly. Who knows? But in the meantime-
Nick Usborne
It almost needs it.
ilise benun
Weekly.
Nick Usborne
Because the AI thing is moving so fast. But just in case ... I know I keep repeating myself, but use AI for productivity, for research, for preparation, for pattern recognition, all the things we've talked about. But when you're talking, writing, or face to face with a client, always do your voice, yourself.
Learn about emotional intelligence, and what that is and what it means and stuff, because this is your secret weapon is to be yourself and to be an emotionally-mature version of yourself when interacting with prospects.
ilise benun
And the book you have recommended is Daniel Goleman's original one, right, “Emotional Intelligence”?
Nick Usborne
Yeah.
ilise benun
And I know you have a course also on future copywriting, “Futureproof Copywriting.” So tell the people where they can find out more about you and your course.
Nick Usborne
Okay. If you go to Nick Usborne, nickusborne.com, actually, you'll see right there on the homepage, on the right-hand side, there's a big thing you can click on all about this course, which is basically AI plus EI. It's about how to combine the two. So basically, it speaks to what we've been talking about. I also have a blog there, so you can see ... go back through the last 10 blog posts that are all on the same topic, so you can see me exploring it from different angles. So yeah, explore the blog posts, find out about the course, and then maybe we'll speak again before too long.
ilise benun
Yes. Thank you, Nick.
Nick Usborne
Thank you.
ilise benun
As I trust you noticed, we did get to the baby step in Part Two of our conversation and Nick suggested developing your voice so that you can train AI to use your voice so that you won't sound like ‘samesies’—all those other creative professionals out there. That will be the only way to stand out in a future replete with AI. At least that's what Nick thinks at the end of 2023. Time will tell, of course.
So if you want to build a thriving business on your own terms, the first step is always to sign up for my Quick Tips at marketing-mentortips.com. Once you're on the site, you'll find lots more resources, including my Simplest Marketing Plan. So enjoy and I'll see you next time.
]]>When I ask what they want to be found for … crickets.
SEO can be complicated. But it doesn’t have to be. Starting with a simple first step can really help improve your website’s rankings and get you in front of your ideal clients.
If SEO overwhelms you, or if you’re not sure what you want to be found for on a Google search, my latest post is for you!
You’ll learn:
what a focus keyphrase is
how to choose one
what to do with it
Learn how to get your SEO started — simply — in my post: Not sure where to start with SEO? Choose your focus keyword.
--
Hi, I’m Jill, a web designer/developer who partners with talented designers, copywriters, and agencies on their websites, and their client’s sites. I’m passionate about crafting beautiful and innovative WordPress websites focused on clear positioning and positive user experiences. See my work & get my free report, Get Your Website Done: 12 Actionable Steps for Designers.
]]>That's what I thought when I saw Nick Usborne's recent presentation at the AWAI Bootcamp.
So the first thing I did was invite him to join me on the Marketing Mentor Podcast to share his idea, which I think is kinda brilliant. (Listen here and below).
Nick Usborne is an early adopter (and renowned copywriter) who has been using Artificial Intelligence for years. He even has a custom AI!
So it's not surprising that he has already developed an excellent course, Futureproof Copywriting, to teach you how to increase your value by leveraging both artificial intelligence AND emotional intelligence. (Get 10% off with promo code "BENUN64")
Since this is the Marketing Mentor Podcast, I wanted to know what he thinks about integrating AI into your marketing.
So in Episode #488 (part 1 of our conversation), we talked about:
...and lots more (so stay tuned for Part 2).
Nick will also be joining me for an "Intensive" workshop on how to use AI in your marketing as part of the 2024 Simplest Marketing Program.
Nick asked his custom AI to generate an image for this episode, so here's what it generated! (It's pretty good but it definitely has that AI look!)
If you like what you hear, listen to more conversations between me and Nick:
PLUS subscribe here and be sure to sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
Read the complete transcript of #448 with Nick Usborne here
(produced by a human, not AI!)
ilise benun
Hi there. This is ilise benun, your Marketing Mentor, and this is the podcast for you if, and only if, you are ready to leave the feast or famine syndrome behind, and I mean for good.
If you're wondering how to use artificial intelligence in your own marketing or, like me, are already overwhelmed by it all, this episode is for you.
I talked with early adopter and renowned copywriter Nick Usborne about how he's using AI to make his content marketing quicker, easier, and less painful, and about what he won't use AI for, too. So, listen and learn.
Hello, Nick. Welcome back to the podcast.
Nick Usborne
Thank you, thank you. You're right, it is coming back, isn't it? Thank you for the invitation the second time.
ilise benun
You're welcome. And actually, this is the third time. I had forgotten the second one, too.
Nick Usborne
Oh, wow.
ilise benun
When I did my research, I looked back and I searched “Nick Usborne” on my blog, and two podcasts came up.
Nick Usborne
Oh my goodness. I should leave the building immediately.
ilise benun
So before we get any further, tell us who Nick Usborne is.
Nick Usborne
Briefly. I'll just stick to the work stuff, I think.
ilise benun
Okay.
Nick Usborne
So I started out as a ... it was my first kind of proper job, like non-manual labor job. It was 1979, I got hired as a junior copywriter at an ad agency in London, England. And that was it. Ever since then, ever since the first day in the creative department at that agency as a little shy trainee, that's it; I've been earning my living as a copywriter ever since, so like over 40 years now.
ilise benun
But you're more than a copywriter, right?
Nick Usborne
Well, that's my kind of core thing. So I was doing a lot of direct-mail stuff and I was doing print stuff, and then along came the internet.
So I created my first website in 1995, so that would make me an early adopter. And then from 1997, I kind of said goodbye to my print world and was just all 100% digital online from the beginning of 1997.
So yeah, my core skills is still as a writer, but I'm into user experience, I'm into design, I'm into certain aspects of the technology. So yeah, I have certainly gone broader. I've done some consulting, I do course creation, I do coaching. So yeah, it all stems from all those decades as a copywriter, but things have sort of broadened out more recently, I guess, over the last 10 years.
ilise benun
Yeah. And one of the reasons we're having this conversation is because you are an early adopter and we reconnected at the AWAI Bootcamp in West Palm Beach recently, and your presentation, I thought, was really interesting. It was about EI and AI. So talk to us, because as an early adopter, you've obviously early adopted AI. So just talk to us about each of those things, and I may interrupt you and ask you questions. But what is EI? Let's start with that. And why is it important?
Nick Usborne
Can I start with the other one? Can I start with AI?
ilise benun
Oh, sure, yeah.
Nick Usborne
All right. So I started getting interested in AI about four years ago. I was doing a lot of work with chatbots and I was working with kind of native AIs from IBM and Google. And back then, it was very limited functionality and really, really tough to build stuff with AI back then.
So that was my first taste. And then last November, in November of 2022, late in the month, along comes ChatGPT—which was just like ...
I'd been using some other AI tools like literally the week before. And then along comes ChatGPT, and honestly, it was like I've been asleep for 10 years and woken up. The advance, the change, the difference that that made was extraordinary.
So naturally, wherever you find a rabbit hole, you can see me close by about to dive in headfirst with my eyes closed. So I kind of dove into that.
So I've learned a lot and I've worked a lot with AI. And I think as I look at it, I think it's also, it's a kind of survival imperative. If you're in an industry which you think might be impacted by AI, you really should definitely not be closing your eyes to it. You should be leaning into it to see exactly what it is and what the opportunities are and what the threats are.
Coming now to EI, which is emotional intelligence ... so this goes back to, I guess, 1995. Daniel Goleman wrote a book called Emotional Intelligence. And it had been around, it had been discussed before, but he really kind of formalized and gave it a structure.
And his premise basically was that, hey, for many years, we've thought that the most successful people—in life, in business, in entertainment, at home—are the people with high IQ, so cognitive intelligence.
So that's the intelligence test we're given as kids, which we probably shouldn't be because if you're told you have low IQ as a kid, it's not very encouraging. But yeah, he said, "Actually, no, it's not."
And he did a lot of work. It's a very dense, science-rich book. And he did a lot of work and went through a lot of research that demonstrated, actually, that the best leaders, the best creators, the most successful people don't necessarily have a high cognitive intelligence, but they do have high emotional intelligence.
So what is this thing? Basically, it is about being aware and open to emotion, your own emotions and the emotions of people around you.
And stop me if I'm going on for too long. But Daniel Goleman broke it down into like four domains.
So the first domain was self-awareness, being aware of your own emotions, which we think: Hey, that's easy. Of course, I'm aware of my own emotions.
But actually, we're not that good at it. You could be having a heated conversation with a colleague and they might say, "Hey, why are you so angry?" and you say, "I'm not angry." Well, actually, you are. You Just haven't figured it out yet.
ilise benun
And actually, yesterday, I was in a very rare bad mood, and I only knew because I kept reacting really badly to the things that were happening—and they're the things that happen every day, which are never a problem for me, but for some reason, yesterday, I was really angry when these things happened. But I agree with you that our own self-awareness, it's not a given, it's not-
Nick Usborne
I know, which is kind of weird, because you think of, like: Well, of course I'm aware of my own emotional state.
But actually weird, like your experience yesterday, suddenly you're surprised like: Hang on, I didn't realize I was angry.
ilise benun
Exactly. And then what am I angry about? But that's a whole other issue.
Nick Usborne
That's right.
And so, the second domain he identified is self-management.
So this is how we actually deal with that. So let's say you were feeling angry yesterday, and you were about to interview me for a podcast, and you'd say to yourself internally: You know what? I've got to just put that anger aside for a minute because I've got to do this thing with Nick.
So that's self-management.
And it could be like one of your kids or someone at work who always manages to get a rise out of you. Somebody at work says something that typically you would respond badly to it, but with more self-awareness, the self-management becomes part of that, like: You know what? I'm not going to rise to that. You know what? I'm not going to get upset.
The third one, and this is the hardest one, is actually social awareness, and that is being aware of the emotions of other people around you.
So perhaps the best way to look at that is just empathy; having empathy for those around you.
Again, let's take a business meeting, three or four people around a table in real life. How aware are you of the emotions of people around you? And again, you may think: Oh, well, of course I am.
Well, not so fast, because often we're not. I mean, I can think of situations where I've sat like that at a small business meeting around the table and I've been talking and other people have been talking. And I thought I was aware of the emotions of the people in the room, but then sometimes it's like an hour or even a day later, I'll almost get a little snapshot of someone's face in that meeting and I think: Oh my goodness, he was really upset when we talked about X and I just didn't see it.
ilise benun
Right.
Nick Usborne
So again, I guess we'd like to think that, hey...
At the event you referred to at Bootcamp, I actually asked the audience, "How many of you think have a high EQ?"
And over half the people put their hand up. And I didn't call them on it. But I can say to the same room, "Who thinks you have higher-than-average IQ?" and more than half the people ... so we tend to-
ilise benun
Overestimate.
Nick Usborne
Yeah. We tend to say we're better at this than we actually are. So emotional intelligence is something that is ‘applied to.’ It can be applied to business. You know, good managers, good leaders learn about EI and they apply it work.
And we can apply it at home. We can be better partners, we can be better parents, we can be better brothers and sisters.
And the nice thing about emotional intelligence is that unlike with cognitive intelligence, you actually can study and think about it and improve and get better, which is great.
But as a writer, like two things happened to me here when I was thinking about this.
One, emotion has always been the kind of killer app for copywriting. We buy stuff for emotional reasons, not rational reasons. I get an ice cream because it tastes delicious, not because I read the ingredients, because if I actually read the ingredients, I probably wouldn't buy the ice cream. So it's not a rational choice; it's just pleasure, it's an emotional choice.
So copywriting has always been at its best when it touches people's emotions. But now we come back to AI, artificial intelligence, and I was saying how amazed I am by the quality of the output. If you put in some quality prompts, quality input, these tools can now ... and just like over the last few days, weeks, there's more and more things happening, and the quality, and the scope, and the opportunities are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. It's truly amazing. It’s super, super fast.
But there is what a, what I describe as ‘a sameness trap.’
So if every writer, and every company, every internal writer, every businessperson, every marketing writer and copywriter starts using ChatGPT and we all downloaded the top 20 prompts from our Twitter feed or from Google or whatever, now we're using the same prompts with the same tool, and the output is going to be similar, which is not cool.
As a copywriter, as a freelancer, you don't want to sound like other writers. And as a company, you've probably invested millions of dollars in creating a unique brand. Well, you don't want your company marketing suddenly sound like all your competitors' marketing. And that's a real danger, when everyone is using the same AI tools. It's kind of inevitable; there's this kind of leveling off.
So this is where I bring in emotional intelligence.
So I say, "Okay, ChatGPT, you've done a great job in so far as you can." But AI's read about emotions, it's read the script to “Love Story,” but it's never felt it. AI has never felt lost. It's never had a first kiss. It's never seen someone across the room and thought: Oh my goodness. So it doesn't have that firsthand experience.
And that is what, by becoming an emotionally-intelligent writer, but at the same time using AI for its productivity benefits and everything else, now we can make sure that our output is unique—because we're not just using the same AI as everyone else.
We're putting in this layer of emotional intelligence, which makes it unique, and interesting, and can preserve the company's brand. As a copywriter, I can still differentiate myself. Sure, I'm using AI, but my output, the work I'm going to do for you isn't going to sound like it was produced by AI, because that's not what I do.
ilise benun
So here's how I want to connect this, because I am not an early adopter, so that's why I was very eager to talk to you, since you are.
Nick Usborne
Okay.
ilise benun
And, I've been trying to figure out how to bring AI and EI ... and let's broaden, actually, the conversation about EI beyond copywriters, cuz my listeners are designers, marketers, coaches, and people, ideally solopreneurs or small agency owners, marketing services, creative services. And I think everything you've said, so far, applies accordingly.
But my business is all about helping people market themselves, and I am getting questions, and seeing people experimenting with how to integrate AI into their marketing. And so I thought it would be interesting to go over the three tools of the Simplest Marketing Plan and talk about maybe the pros and cons of using AI—whether it's going to be just the same as everyone else, or there's some other way to use AI to enhance or potentially damage one's marketing—because I've seen both, actually. So are you up for that?
Nick Usborne
Sure.
ilise benun
All right, so the three tools of the Simplest Marketing Plan, for anyone who has not memorized them yet, are high-quality content marketing, targeted outreach, and strategic networking.
So let's start with content marketing, because I know a lot of people struggle with writing blog posts or writing content, and they think: Oh, well now ChatGPT can do it for me.
So how are you thinking about AI as it relates to content marketing, pros and cons?
Nick Usborne
The pros is a huge massive productivity boost. So just to clarify, so I have nickusborne.com. That's me, that's my brand. My business has always been my name, and that's been my website for the last 25 years. There is nothing there that is written by AI. I might get there, but so far, for me, it's incredibly important that every line, every sentence on that website, be absolutely my voice and hopefully recognizable as my voice and my writing. So that's that. So there are certain places where, the way it is right now, I don't want AI to be a big part of content creation. That said, and this is very kind of time-sensitive, so I'm saying this today, is like this week ...
ilise benun
So, November 2023.
Nick Usborne
Right.
So OpenAI just made available to some people something called the ‘GPT Builder,’ and this will allow me to actually have my own private version of ChatGPT. And I can give it access to my Google Drive and my Google Docs and my hard drive.
And I can say to it, "Read everything, every post and article I've written over the last 20 years, and based on that, now write in my ..."
So I can have this customized version. So that's beginning to happen this week. So another huge leap forward.
In terms of general content for a business or a company ... so, I have some information websites that I have just for pleasure and it's got a passive income, and one of them is about mushrooms. It's called “Incredible Mushrooms,” and it's all about mushrooms, and there's hundreds of pages of content there. And I use ChatGPT. I've been using it quite extensively on that website.
So this is where I can say to ChatGPT, "Hey, give me 10 blog post ideas for my readers who are interested in mushrooms and fungi."
And it does. And they're usually kind of pretty obvious and I've usually written about them before. So then I go back and say, "Okay, do that again, but give me the non-obvious ideas."
This is one of my favorite prompt phrases, is “non-obvious.”
So then it comes back with these non-obvious ideas, and out of 10, there's probably two or three where I think: Well, that's interesting. I've never even thought of that. Never even thought of that.
So, there's that part of it, is that it'll come up with ideas that I'd never thought of, which is great in terms of content creation.
Then what happens is that, and again, it depends on the resources and availability of writers that a company has.
Let's say you're a freelancer, and I have these three bits of content I could now create. Do I have time? I probably don't. Historically, that's been my story, is like: Hey, here are three great ideas for content, but I don't have time.
But now I do, because now I'll go back to ChatGPT and I'll say, "Okay, write me an outline." Then I'll say, "Okay, write me a first draft of this, like 700 words, 800 words, whatever."
And it will do that, and sometimes it'll do something really well, sometimes not so much.
So I say, "Okay, again, but with a slightly more conversational tone." And then I'll go back and say, "Okay, I noticed we've made a whole bunch of claims in this article about the health benefits of mushroom supplements. Give me some references for any claims that we make here," which it does, and then it prints out and you get all these scientific references appear at the end.
ilise benun
But let me just interrupt you there because I've heard that sometimes the AI hallucinates and gives you things that aren't real or don't actually exist.
Nick Usborne
Yes.
ilise benun
How do you handle that?
Nick Usborne
If it's something like, you're buying a coffee mug with a mushroom picture on it, then I don't really care if there's something wrong, because the stakes are like: who cares?
If it's something like a supplement, whether it's some kind of health claim, then I'll check. So I'm familiar with the topic. So a lot of companies, a lot of internal writing teams or freelancers, will be familiar with their own topics. You can often recognize when something's wrong or off.
ilise benun
I see.
Nick Usborne
When it provides me with the references, I click on each of them and I have a quick look at the reference. "Okay, yes, this is on topic; this is correct."
I've not seen a great deal of hallucination, and I think that's becoming less of a problem than it was like nine months ago, six months ago.
Where I come across problems is where I've been ambiguous in my prompt.
So I was writing this short ebook, and it had 10 chapters, and we'd been citing various experts in the text. When I say “we,” it was me and ChatGPT.
And so I said, "Hey, you know what? Why don't we start each chapter with a relevant quote from each of these experts that we cited?"
So it said, "Fine," and it did it. And I thought: ‘Oh, this is great,’ because these were the experts and they were saying something.
But I said, "Hang on, let me just check this." So I copied one of the quotes into Google to see if it existed, and it didn't. And I went back to my prompt, and my prompt said, "Write testimonials, relevant testimonials from the experts we've cited." I didn't say, “Find existing testimonials.” I asked it to write testimonials, write these quotes.
ilise benun
Make them up.
Nick Usborne
So it did exactly what I asked. So I might say, "Oh my goodness, it's hallucinating." Actually not. It's just ambiguity in the prompt. So the ambiguity in the prompts, obviously, can lead to faulty output.
But say those three articles that I posted I could now do for my mushroom site.
A year ago, it'd be interesting if I'd come up with a list, but I didn't have time for that. And sometimes, if I really wanted some content and I didn't have time, then I'd hire a human writer and I'd pay them $200 or $300 to write it for me.
So what's happened this year, in terms of content creation—and I know this applies to a lot of companies ... it applies to social media, it's blog posts, it's product reviews, product descriptions—all of a sudden, companies see that there is almost zero barrier to entry in terms of creation of content.
Like, I might not have bothered with testing subject lines because it's a bit of a pain. Now I can just go to ChatGPT and say, "Hey, give me five alternative subject lines that are super engaging and intriguing." And it will.
ilise benun
And then you decide which one you want to use.
Nick Usborne
Yeah, then I'll choose two or three and I'll test them next time I do something. Or I might do something, I could do the same thing with tweets. I'll feed it. Let's say I'll paste in an article or some content I've created and I'll say, "Hey, I want to share this content on social media based on this."
So I paste in the whole article or post. "Based on that, give me a dozen tweets or give me texts for a Facebook post” or stuff like that. And it does, and it'll come up with a whole bunch of them.
So as a writer in a hurry, I might come up with a couple of tweets. When I work with ChatGPT, I can ask for 20. And I can go back and say, "Okay, yeah, but let's have a bit more intrigue," and it'll do me 20 more.
And then I'll look through and I'll find the best one or the best two. And yes, they're better than what I would've done on my own, because I didn't have the time to write 40 tweets and choose the best. With ChatGPT, I do.
ilise benun
Yeah. So writers in a hurry, or freelancers in a hurry, or content marketers in a hurry, can certainly benefit. And we may not get beyond content marketing in this episode and may have to do another one on each of the other tools, because I have more questions—and one of them is, I'm thinking of a client, actually, who I'm going to be talking to later today, who apparently spent 10 hours writing what I would consider to be like a ‘cornerstone’ piece of content. I think that's the right term, right?
Nick Usborne
Right.
ilise benun
Like a very substantial piece of content, thought leadership, an idea that he's been working on. And he says, “It took him too long. How could he pump something like this out every month?”
And my thought is: well, for thought leadership, that's different from the kind of blogging or content marketing that we're talking about. For myself, I love thinking and having these ideas, and then figuring out how to articulate them, and then disseminating that information. And yes, I make time to do that, and he may not be able to make time to do that.
But I'm curious what you think about just that idea of, like, the real ideas, the ideas no one else is thinking of, the ideas that maybe EI comes into play here, too—where my own emotional intelligence gets integrated or my voice gets integrated into the idea.
What do you think of that, Nick?
Nick Usborne
That is coming. And like I say, with the GPT Builder, where you can actually customize and personalize this. And actually, it's kind of mind-blowing that I can have my own personal version and train it on my own—giving it for context everything that I've ever written.
ilise benun
Yeah, but that's the past. I mean, I guess the distinction I'm making, also, is between the past and old ideas, and new ideas that are consistently or constantly evolving and growing and getting richer and more clarifying.
Nick Usborne
I guess. But let's say I do ... let's say I get the Builder and I feed it the thousands of articles and posts I've written over the last twenty-five years.
I can now say to it things like, "Hey, can you find patterns over the decades of ideas that I've consistently circled back to?"
I can't do that as a human. I can't read through three- or four-thousand pages and try to find those patterns. But this system with ChatGPT is really, really good at that analysis of massive amount of data.
I use it for sentiment analysis, as well, so coming back to EI. All right, let's go back to EI for a minute.
ilise benun
Okay.
Nick Usborne
So a computer doesn't do emotion, but if you prompt it, if you ask it ...
So for instance, I often do surveys. I use, like, SurveyMonkey or some other tool, because I'm always interested in what my audience, or people I interact with, what their opinions are on things.
So I'll do these SurveyMonkey surveys. And then there's like “yes” and “no,” but then there's always this open-ended question, "Hey, share your additional comments here."
And the last one I did, there's something like 120 comments at the bottom. So I just uploaded them into a file and I copied them and pasted them into ChatGPT and said, "Hey, run me a sentiment analysis on this survey feedback." And it did. So it was actually explicitly looking for emotion.
ilise benun
What is a sentiment analysis?
Nick Usborne
A sentiment analysis, hey, if you do sentiment analysis in ... There's whole companies, there's massive companies out there that do this for big brands.
Basically, it's: What are people feeling about your product or service? What are the emotions people express when they come across a can of Coke, or a Ford motorcar, or whatever the brand is?
So sentiment analysis is basically analyzing the emotional response of your audience to your product or service.
So I can paste in a whole bunch of stuff. I wrote some copy like this. So this is where you can start getting some emotion into AI.
I was writing some copy for a blender. So I went to Amazon and, again, I copied, like, a hundred Amazon reviews for this blender. And then I pasted them into ChatGPT and said, "Run me a sentiment analysis on this." And it did.
It said, "Here are the positive feelings people have about the product. Here are some of the negatives."
I said, "Okay. On the positive side, what is the language people are using to express their positive feelings?" So it comes back and says, "Here are the phrases that consistently come up when they're saying something nice about the product in a positive way."
Then I go back to ChatGPT and I say, "Okay, based on the sentiment analysis and the positive language you've identified, please now write me a sales page for this product,"—which is absolutely freaking amazing, because as a copywriter, this is what I strive to do.
Whenever I'm teaching copywriting, I say, "Job One is to listen to your audience. Understand your audience. Listen to them. Understand their high and low emotions, how they respond to a product or service. Identify the language that they use—that they use, not what the company uses, but what the buyers use. What language do they use to express their appreciation for product?"
So this is what I've been doing for decades. Now, I can do it with ChatGPT.
So, again, when I say there's no emotion to a computer, if I instruct it to identify emotion within a sentiment analysis, it could do that. So there are ways around the no-emotion thing.
I asked it another time to write some emails, and I said, "Okay, but you're kind of leading with features. Can you rewrite this leading with benefits?" And it did.
And I said, "Okay, why don't we start with some kind of little story at the beginning?" So it did. It came up with an example of somebody doing something.
So I look at that, and I print that out, and I think: All right.
Then, what I did in that case is I thought of a story. The story that ChatGPT had opened the email with, it was just three or four lines. I found something equivalent in my own life and experience, so I rewrote it with my real story, all right? So I'm not actually just taking that email and sending it out. Very often, I'm taking the email and then I use that as a template for my own writing.
So okay, ChatGPT made up a story; I'm going to find a real story. Because if I start sharing a real story, there's going to be nuance in there.
Like, if you ask ChatGPT what its weakness is in terms of communication, it'll say that it misses out on the nuance of emotion, on regional differences in viewpoints, it's all the subtle points that it misses. And that's where EI comes in. And that's why when I get output from AI, I'll generally, like say with an email, I'll say, "Hey, that story, I got something like that." And I'll write the real story, and I'll get that nuance in there, so people actually feel it from me.
ilise benun
But if you gave the prompt to write a story, why wouldn't you just write the story?
Nick Usborne
Because I'm interested to see what it comes up with. It's like having a companion. It's like the first time in almost 40 years that I've actually had someone on the other side of the desk to talk with and bounce ideas on.
ilise benun
That's interesting.
Nick Usborne
And that to me ... I do a huge amount of brainstorming with ChatGPT. Remember, this is the smartest, most intelligent, most articulate partner you can imagine. It knows almost everything there is to know in the world, and it can access it in a microsecond. This is the smartest person or smartest thing you'll ever have working at your side. I respect that, so I ask its opinion.
And it's way smarter than people think. That short book with the quotes I talked about, the e-book, I challenged it. I said, "Hey, this thing we say in chapter eight, shouldn't we introduce that in chapter two? Because I feel it should appear earlier."
ChatGPT came back and said, "Yes, you're right." So I said, "Okay, rewrite chapter two with this included," and it did. And then it said, "By the way, we now need to look at something in chapter four, because that was based on the fact that we hadn't talked about this yet." So it did some forward-thinking for me.
I didn't explicitly prompt and say, "Hey, do we need to change anything in the intermediate chapters?" It came back to me and said, "Oh, by the way," or equivalent.
And again, I was just dumbfounded like, "How did it do this, because that's not how that engine is meant to work?!”
ilise benun
So okay, Nick, we are going to have to-
Nick Usborne
I know. I'm getting over-excited. I get it.
ilise benun
That's all right, that's all right. Relax. But we are going to have to wrap up this episode, so obviously we're going to have other ones because we've only talked about content marketing and kind of barely scratched the surface. But I have two questions for you before we say goodbye.
One is, again, bringing it back to marketing, right? If freelancers, copywriters, designers, photographers, whoever, want to integrate AI into their content marketing for themselves, then—and maybe this is similar to the baby step question that I'm going to ask you, and if so, we just have one answer—but what should they do? What should one do if they want to start integrating AI into their content marketing?
Nick Usborne
Okay, first off is do not use AI in your client or prospect-facing content. If you're writing something to a client, if you're writing like prospecting, don't use AI, don't use AI tools.
ilise benun
Why?
Nick Usborne
Because everyone else is doing the same, and companies are already coming back and saying, "You know what? I had 10 proposals come in this week and they all sounded exactly the same."
And they sounded exactly the same because somebody is using a top-20 prompts on how to grab new clients. So don't do that. You've got to be unique. You've got to maintain your own ... you know, you’ve got to differentiate yourself. You cannot sound like other people. So I would never use it in client- or prospect-facing communications.
ilise benun
Okay.
Nick Usborne
I do use it in content.
Now, like I said, I want to use my own voice for nickusborne.com. Now that doesn’t mean to say that I don’t use ....
I use AI extensively, as for brainstorming, for research, for, hey, give me an outline.
So probably most of the posts and articles that are written in the last six months has been this collaboration ... is like, I'll do some research, like: Hey, here are my last 10 blog post headlines. Based on that, what do you think I should write about next?
So, it's just like chatting with a friend across the table, like a work colleague, right? So I'm doing the research, then I say, "Okay, can you find-"
ilise benun
Or a marketing coach, maybe?
Nick Usborne
Yeah, yes, or a marketing ... .
So I use it for brainstorming, and then I'll say, "Hey, do me 10 potential headlines for this idea, then." And it does. And I say, "Okay, give me an outline, a structure for this piece." And it does. And then I write. So I've been collaborating up to that point. I don't want AI actually writing that final piece. I want it a hundred percent my voice. But I use it. It really speeds things up because it helps me identify good topics; it helps me think of different ways of introducing with a headline; it comes up with some interesting structural ideas for me.
ilise benun
So collaborating and brainstorming, but not for the final output, essentially?
Nick Usborne
Unless it's something like if you're working with a client or ... hey, if I’m writing ...
I have a website about coffee; I have a website about mushrooms; this is about what is the best way to make coffee or something. I'll use AI almost a hundred percent till the cows come home on that kind of content.
ilise benun
Because you don't need it to be as good, or as strong, or as high quality as the stuff on Nick Usborne?
Nick Usborne
It's not that; it's the voice. I'm trying to protect my brand. I've spent 40 years building the brand of Nick Usborne. And the way I do that, I'm a writer. I express it in my writing, and occasionally when I'm speaking, but basically when I'm writing. So I don't want to mess with that.
The quality of the content I create for my content-rich sites, like mushrooms and coffee and stuff, it's not lower quality. It's just not in Nick Usborne's voice. And I don't mind. If I'm talking about mushrooms or coffee, I don't mind if it's in Nick Usborne's voice. The quality isn't low. The quality is sometimes quite much higher.
ilise benun
Interesting.
Nick Usborne
Because it can access everything. It can access all the knowledge on something.
One other thing I wanted to throw in, if we've got an extra 10 seconds, is one thing I've learned by looking at EI and layering in this emotionally-intelligent writing is I've also thought: Oh my goodness, I wish I'd thought of this 20 years ago, because I should be applying EI to my client relations—how I talk to prospects, how I interact with clients.
I know I've been guilty of sometimes thinking: Hey, a client's a client. It's my contact person. They give me the brief. I send the work. They write the checks. Stuff like that.
But of course, it's not the case at all; that person is a human with perhaps complicated and a difficult relationship with some colleagues at work, or maybe her manager is giving a really hard time this quarter or whatever. And I think sometimes, as freelancers, we forget that people working in companies are people like us, and they have bad days and good days.
So if I would go back to redo the last 20 years, I would try to be more emotionally intelligent in my dealings with and communications with prospects and clients.
ilise benun
And finally, then, is that something AI could help you do today? Or is that something you have to work on within yourself?
Nick Usborne
It's both, it's both. Hey, I can get ChatGPT and say, "Hey, I'm a freelancer. I work with client companies. What are the 10 complaints companies have most often about working with freelancers?"
I don't know the answer, but in 30 seconds, I would, if I just asked ChatGPT.
So I can research stuff like that. But no. Mainly this is on the emotionally-intelligent side. So if I improve my level of emotional intelligence, as a writer, that's going to help with my copywriting. And it's going to make sure that when I have artificial intelligence plus emotional intelligence, everything I produce will still be unique. It'll still be different. I'll still be differentiating myself or my client's brand.
In terms of dealing with my relationships with companies, with my contact people, with my clients, then that is going to be all emotional intelligence. It's like when I look back, you know, I sometimes thought to myself: Hey, I wonder why some freelancers keep clients for 10 years, but I don't?
And it's probably because those other freelancers are more emotionally intelligent than I am, so they build these really, really deep relationships with their clients and prospects.
ilise benun
Interesting. All right, that seems like the perfect place to ‘put the bookmark,’ as they say.
And why don't you tell the people where they can find out more about you and everything that you offer?
Nick Usborne
nickusborne.com. N-I-C-K-U-S-B-O-R-N-E.com, and you'll find my blog there, where I talk about all of this extensively.
I have a course called “Futureproof Copywriting,” which basically is the how-to of ... well, it's in three parts. It's one, dive deep into AI, because it's super powerful. Two, understand what emotionally-intelligent writing is. And the third part of the course is how to then blend the two so you're writing with AI plus EI.
ilise benun
Beautiful.
All right, Nick, well, to be continued, of course, for podcast episode number four for us. But just thank you so much, so far, for sharing all of that, and I'll talk to you again soon.
Nick Usborne
Thank you very much. Thank you.
ilise benun
Wow, we didn't even get to a baby step this time, but stay tuned for part two and maybe even part three of this conversation. There was, and is, a lot to talk about.
So if you want to build a thriving business on your own terms, the first step is to sign up for my Quick Tips at marketing-mentortips.com. Once you're on the site, you'll find lots more resources, including my Simplest Marketing Plan. So enjoy, and I'll see you next time.
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“More income” is, not surprisingly, the top answer.
But the truth is that they’re all related, as some commenters pointed out:
But I also love this point that Karen made:
She’s right, I do say that!
Because clients and projects that “light you up” are just as important as all the rest - if not more so.
After all, as creative professionals, we get to craft a business that makes us jump out of bed in the morning.
I may be a bit biased, but I do believe that whatever you want more of in your business next year…
Marketing is how you’ll get it.
But if you start small and do just a little every day, it’s easy to be consistent… and finally end up with the business you’ve wanted all along – not to mention, a business you can depend on.
But what if you’ve tried marketing and it didn’t work?
Or it felt too hard. Or you got busy and dropped the ball.
That is exactly what I want to change for you.
Watch today’s fourth and final “Minisode” in my “All it Takes is 30 Minutes a Day” series to hear why this time could be different:
Marketing doesn’t have to be “hard” or feel “slimy.”
Your marketing should be part of what “lights you up” about your business.
Yes, it’s the means to better clients, projects, and income.
But it should be fun, too. Like a treat you give yourself.
And I’m going to show you how it can be all of that on Cyber Monday.
Join me live for the launch of the Simplest Marketing Plan for 2024 on Monday, November 27 from 1-2pm ET and you’ll learn:
And how to do it all in a way that’s fun and authentically you.
Plus, you’ll get a sneak peek at the 2024 Simplest Marketing Plan & first dibs on special Cyber Monday discounts and bonuses.
It’s totally free to join.
Reserve your spot here!
Can’t wait to help you see marketing in a new light - one that lights you up 😂 – so you can finally have the business you’ve wanted all along.
In today’s episode, Florian Schleicher, Marketing Advisor & Strategist, shares how he has used the 3 tools in the Simplest Marketing Plan – content marketing, strategic networking and targeted outreach – to achieve more growth than he imagined possible, all in less than a year.
When I asked Florian for a baby step to follow in his path, he said, "Never stop learning." He suggested you identify something you think is missing in your creative business, whether a topic or a skill or a role, find a book or a course or a coach who can help.
In fact, here's what Florian said about the coaching we did together:
Listen to the podcast here (and below)
Read the complete transcript of Marketing Mentor Podcast #487 with Florian Schleicher
ilise benun
Hi there. This is ilise benun, your Marketing Mentor, and this is the podcast for you if, and only if, you are ready to leave the feast or famine syndrome behind. And I mean for good.
One of the things I love most about the work I do with creative professionals is that I get to see their creativity in action.
I've designed the Simplest Marketing Plan framework with a lot of a wiggle room, so you can bring your own creativity to the business side of your business, which means everyone who uses this framework gets to make it their own.
So in today's episode of the Marketing Mentor Podcast, I talked with Florian Schleicher, a marketing advisor and strategist, about how, when he decided to invest in his business by working with me, in one year he has used these three simple tools—content marketing, strategic networking, and targeted outreach—to achieve more than he imagined possible so quickly. Because, as I keep saying, “Marketing works when you put in the effort; when you do it.” So, listen and learn.
Hello Florian. Welcome to the podcast.
Florian Schleicher
I'm so happy to be talking with you again, ilise. Thanks for having me.
ilise benun
Of course. Please introduce yourself.
Florian Schleicher
So my name is Florian Schleicher. I'm a marketing strategist focused on sustainable growth. And before starting my own marketing studio, I worked for three big brands: McDonald's, Greenpeace, and the food waste initiative: Too Good To Go.
And now, with my marketing studio, FutureS, I help companies, big and small, with their strategy when it's no longer working. And I do this with coaching, workshop[s], and the Simple and Sustainable Marketing Academy.
ilise benun
Beautiful. And how long have you been in business as a solo?
Florian Schleicher
Yeah, so as a solopreneur, I am just celebrating my two-year anniversary in a month.
ilise benun
Congratulations.
Florian Schleicher
So yeah, that's going to be a big step for me.
ilise benun
And you have an accent—your English is excellent, but you do have an accent—so tell us where you are, and actually maybe also how marketing might be different where you are.
Florian Schleicher
Yeah, sure. So I'm from Austria. I live in Vienna in the middle of Europe and I totally understand that I have an accent. But yeah.
So I've been working in marketing for the past 15 years, and what I observed, also, working with a lot of big brands, is that there are certain areas in the world where marketing is a little bit different.
There is for sure the European area that is fairly similar to the US area, too. And then there's of course Asia, South America, the Pacific and Africa.
So, what I think is different compared to the US and Europe is that in Europe, people are not that keen on being the first doing something. So that's very interesting.
When I worked at Too Good To Go, for example, and it was a startup, so at the very beginning, we had to convince stores, supermarkets, to join in on food waste. And the challenge was no supermarket and no partner wanted to be first in Europe. Everybody wants to be the second one using something when it's already established. And I think that's a big difference compared to the US, where it's good to be first in the world; also culturally, it's more okay to fail, also.
ilise benun
And are your clients mostly, then, in Europe or elsewhere?
Florian Schleicher
Yeah, so at the moment I'm super proud working with a lot of international brands and entrepreneurs. My focus is of course Europe because that's where I know most people and where I've built my career. But I also now have two entrepreneurs from the US. So that's what I'm doing right now.
ilise benun
And you came to me last year and we worked together on your own marketing and I shared with you the tools from the Simplest Marketing Plan.
And you, I think I would say, unlike most of my clients, literally just took it and ran with it in a way that I have never seen before—which is why I wanted to invite you onto the podcast.
So would you talk about ...? I'll just say what those tools are for people who don't know, and then maybe you can share a little bit how you're using them and how it's going.
So the first tool is high-quality content marketing.
The second tool is strategic networking—in person and in real life, if possible, and in real time.
And the third tool is targeted outreach.
So I think you're doing all three of those. I'm curious how you have made them your own and how you integrate them into your business.
Florian Schleicher
Yeah, sure. And I'm so happy we started working, I think it was like 10 months ago, because back then I had a challenge.
The first year was perfect. I had so much progress; worked with a lot of brands. And then beginning of 2023, I felt like I was missing out on something. The market got a little bit more complicated and I struggled, as a lot of entrepreneurs probably do. And what you mentioned also was this feast-and-famine culture.
ilise benun
Right.
Florian Schleicher
And it seemed that I was heading towards a famine phase and I was a little bit frightened about this. And I saw two options.
So option one was keeping the money that I have saved, also close, to be safe for a famine phase.
Or to reinvest it and try to learn something new from an experienced mentor—which you turned out to be. And I was super happy doing that because, right now it's beginning of winter 2023, my business has never been growing better. I feel super confident about the next phases and I've learned so much. So let's dive into those three things that you mentioned.
And so first was the high-quality content, if I remember correctly.
ilise benun
Yup.
Florian Schleicher
So I started writing a newsletter, I think now almost a year ago, and it gained some traction, and when we began working with each other, I already had the newsletter. It was going great back then; I think I had 500 followers, readers; that was great.
And what you suggested was to reuse elements of the newsletter for different channels.
So I reused-repurposed them on LinkedIn, also. I used them in my presentations.
But the biggest change that I did was—and that was a recommendation from you—to start a podcast.
So the recording we're now doing is a crossover episode. You publish it on your podcast; I'm going to publish it on mine.
And starting the podcast, I also mentioned to you: “Where do I get the time to do that from?” Because it takes a lot of time to start this thing, to come up with the questions. You have to prepare. You have to reach out to people. Maybe you have to do the post-production. Maybe you can outsource it.
And I still remember you telling me, “How often do you write a newsletter?”
And back then it was a weekly newsletter. So I changed to only every-other-week newsletter. And in the new time that I gained from that, I did the podcast.
And a podcast was hugely beneficial, also, for a more targeted outreach—which I think is the third thing you mentioned from the Simple[st] Marketing Plan—because it enabled me to get into contact with a lot of very interesting people.
And it's always different knocking on somebody's door and saying, “Hey, do you want to have a chat with me? I'm this marketing strategist guy.”
Most of people would say, “Yeah, I don't have time for that.”
But knocking on people's doors and saying, “Hey, I really like what you're doing with your brand and with your marketing and your strategy. Do you want to talk about that on my podcast?”
So that was very good to get into contact with people. Obviously, you still need to do the work. But it also enabled ... it showed to other people that I can do more than just write a newsletter—because at the end of the day, people need to be aware of who this person is.
And you and I ... like, I reached out to you because I heard you speaking on another person's podcast, on Jenny Blake's podcast “Free Time. “
So I think in the coaching business, which we are both in, it's very important to get a feeling on how this person really is. And that's a good way to show off with podcasts.
ilise benun
And I totally agree with you. I love the idea of a podcast as the nexus of the three tools, basically. They all come together because what you produce is high-quality content. When you reach out to someone and say: “Hey, you want to be on my show?,” no one would say, “no” to that, basically.
And it's a networking opportunity, because even if nothing else comes out of the conversation, you get to know another person who might be a prospect, might be a referral source. So that actually just brings me to: who are the people you invite to be on your podcast?
Florian Schleicher
So my main area is marketing strategy and sustainability. So the people I invite are marketing managers, heads of brands, heads of strategy from corporations, maybe startups, maybe some small businesses, who have a track record of doing great stuff with their marketing.
ilise benun
So actually, let me just interrupt you there. So do you see them as prospects or do you see them as, I dunno, colleagues, who are doing great things with their marketing and you might think: Well, why would they need me?
Florian Schleicher
Honestly, I invite them because I would like to chat with them, because I really like learning from other people. And those are ... the people that I invite, I want to learn how they run their business, how they run their organization, what they do with their marketing strategy, and how they approach the topic of sustainability.
So it's not so much about that they could be prospects for me, but when you're a solopreneur, when you run your own business, it's also a little bit lonely from time to time. And exchanging thoughts with other thoughts leaders, that's really inspiring for me. And I don't keep track on who then joins in as a client or who just becomes a person that I enjoy having a cup of coffee with. But it's a way to build a relationship with other experts, for me.
ilise benun
One thing I love about that, Florian, is that it seems like the lines are very blurry in your mind, and in your network—which I think is a good thing. Often, we think blurry lines are not great. But I think people compartmentalize a little too much. Like, oh, this is a prospect, and this is a referral source, and this is a client.
But it sounds like everyone in your network kind of maybe goes back and forth between these things, or at least has the opportunity or the potential to. So, someone who's a guest on your podcast could become a client or could join your academy—which we'll talk about, or could pass your name along, and you're not keeping track of who's doing what. You are just trusting that the system works, the strategy and the process works. Is that accurate?
Florian Schleicher
Exactly. And I don't remember where I read this quote, or maybe I heard it from somewhere, but there is this quote of: “You can't compete with someone having fun.”
So what I strive with my newsletter—where I currently have more than a thousand subscribers, or with my podcast or also on LinkedIn ... I want to produce content that I would enjoy if I would see it somewhere else or listen to it somewhere else. So I'm having fun while I'm doing this. And I think the success rate, so far, it shows that that strategy is also working.
ilise benun
And so when you say “the success rate,” what are you referring to, there?
Let's talk about results. And I think you haven't really talked too much yet about strategic networking, also. So just integrate that. How do you do your networking? I know you're out there a lot, presenting and attending events, and so how does that all fit in?
Florian Schleicher
Yeah, so important note: I'm an introvert.
ilise benun
No. That's not possible, Florian.
Florian Schleicher
So yes, I think it's possible because what I really enjoy is intimate conversations, like the one we're having right now. One-on-one conversations. Maybe one-on-two conversations. But whenever there's a big crowd, I feel drained afterwards. I'm so low on energy.
So I'm really not good at going to big networking events and then standing in the middle of the crowd. I don't know what to do with myself there. And I'm not the kind of person who then approaches other people.
So what I do is, I'm very selective on the events that I'm going to. And I've made this rule for myself that I only go to events if I'm invited to speak there or if there is an opportunity to speak there.
So that doesn't necessarily mean that I have to be on a stage or have to be part of the discussion on the stage. But maybe there's a very interesting small-circle event where I could get into contact with people by just asking questions, raising a hand during the conversations on stage and joining in.
So what I really need in order to feel comfortable at a networking event is the opportunity of having a say in what's being discussed.
ilise benun
So, the topic, the substance of the meeting, is important to you.
Florian Schleicher
I want to contribute to it in any way. And use it, also, of course, to position myself.
So I had this fall, I think, I already had six speaking engagements. And it was great because, even if it's just a 10-minute presentation, people come up to you afterwards and say, “Hey, let's have a chat.”
And it's the same as with the podcast. Whenever somebody approaches me, I don't think: Okay, this could be a great new client.
I'm just interested. I'm curious, okay, what's going to happen if I keep talking to that person? If I reach out to that person a month later? What can happen from these serendipitous events?
ilise benun
I love that. It's related to something I've been saying a lot lately about enjoying surprises—that we have to shift our mindset to one of: What could happen? Let's see what happens if I do this.
As opposed to: Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. I have no idea what's going to happen and I'm terrified.
Right? Like, that's a choice.
Florian Schleicher
And I think if you approach things with the mindset of: I'm curious what will happen if I do this?, then you can very much be surprised by it in a good way.
And also, I also do tests that then fail—and it's also okay.
I think it's important to define how much energy you put into something new if you're curious about what's going to happen. And then if it works, okay, put some more energy into it. And if it doesn't work, it's a data point. It shows you something was not successful and you can learn from it.
ilise benun
So let's come back, then, to success, because I asked you several questions all at once; one of them was about success. And failure—which you've mentioned. People always love to hear examples of failure, something that failed. So maybe you can give us a success and a failure.
Florian Schleicher
Yeah. So let's start with the failure.
ilise benun
All right.
Florian Schleicher
So the failure was, end of last year, end of 2022, I read a lot about courses and academy formats and learning journeys where an experienced coach offers some kind of a course for people to learn from. So I thought: Okay, that's a great business model. I think I would like to do something [like] that myself.
So, I started something, and what I did was I offered a two-month course which had a two-hour-every-week session. I planned to have a small circle of four to six founders or marketing leaders there. And it had a very high-ticket price.
So the ticket entry price was above 1000 euros or dollars. And I pushed it through my newsletter. I pushed it on LinkedIn. I told a lot of people about it. I got a lot of positive feedback. And in the end, nobody booked it.
ilise benun
Nobody.
Florian Schleicher
Nobody. So I was frustrated, but I also thought: Okay, there's something in there and I don't yet understand why it did not work, because I still think that the program was great and it had a lot of potential, but something wasn't right.
So then I started reading, back then, a book by Dorie Clark. I think I mentioned it to you in one of the first sessions, where she also said she's also a strategist and advisor, and she also launched a course format. And also at her first course, nobody signed up. And I felt really happy reading that. Not because, not because ...
ilise benun
Schadenfreude. Don’t they call that “schadenfreude”?
Florian Schleicher
Not because of schadenfreude. But, I was relieved. I was relieved, okay, that this super-successful person that I admire, she also had it tough when she started.
And so I thought: Okay, I'll come back to this learning format, maybe in a couple of months. I'm not going to push it because it was a disappointment.
So yeah, that was a failure.
ilise benun
And that happened before we started working together, if I remember correctly.
Florian Schleicher
Yes, exactly. That was in December-January, last year.
So then we started working together, and we focused a lot, first, on the content part, on the outreach part, on the networking part. I learned a lot about structuring my business also, because still, like after working for 15 years as an employee, and I was a very professional employee, but at the beginning, I was not a professional entrepreneur.
ilise benun
Exactly. It's a mindset. You have to, really, learn it.
Florian Schleicher
Yes. And then, I think it was in one of the last two sessions, I explained the example of this failed course format to you. And I asked you: “Okay, any recommendations what I could change to run another test?”
And you explained how your Simplest Marketing Plan works.
And so I thought: Okay, that sounds really interesting. I think there's definitely something in there, like success rates also show that it's working for you.
And so I then got back to the drawing board. I striked out a lot of things that I had in the first course format, and I thought: Okay, let's make it really simple, because I loved what you're doing with the Simplest Marketing Plan.
And then I thought: Okay, what's my business about? It's about marketing. It's about sustainability. It's also about I want to help people to make simple decisions, because strategies—they sound super complicated because a lot of people don't understand what ‘strategy’ really means.
I thought: Okay, maybe I can call it “The Simple and Sustainable Marketing Academy.”
And I started this test in July or August this year and currently we're in the first batch. I have 32 participants in there.
I lowered the price point drastically. So the entry ticket is now at about 100 euros or 100 dollars.
And that's a super great success story, because it failed first and then I changed a lot of things. I also thought: Okay. Who's my target audience for that, really, and what's the problem of my target audience? And for a lot of founders or young marketing managers, it's that they don't have a lot of budget for their learning.
So lowering the price point and downscaling the academy format really was what made it so successful now. And I'm currently in the process of starting the promotion for the next batch, which [is] going to be starting in February next year in 2024, and I already have some people who have pre-signed up for that. So yeah, I'm very happy about that.
ilise benun
And I'm curious, how are you improving it for the next round? Are there specific things you're going to do differently? Or things that just didn't work out that you're going to leave out?
Florian Schleicher
So a couple of things—and I think that's great as an entrepreneur, because you can just look at what worked and what didn't work, and just run another test.
So for the first run, there were two ticket categories. There was a basic category with the four presentations, so one each month, and a coworking Slack community.
And then there was the pro version, the “personal version” as I called it, where there also were two ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions for the smaller group and an individual one-on-one 60-minute session with me.
And so a lot of people book both packages. But I thought: Okay, maybe there could be something in the middle. Because being now in the process with the group, I see that those ‘Ask Me Anything’ sessions in a small-group settings are really helpful for people because they get in a more intimate setting with me.
Again, I enjoy more intimate settings because of my introversion. And people get together as a group and they also figure out: Hey, I can learn something from that person.
And I think that's really beneficial for everybody. So there will be now a mid-tier where there’s an additional ‘Ask Me Anything’ session.
And also I wanted to upgrade the “personal,” the pro version. And so next time, I'll have an external guest speaker there, because I'm talking about strategy, and then this expert, he's going to be talking about how to really use marketing in the digital channels.
And I'm not big into operational stuff. I'm really big on this high-level-picture strategy stuff. So I think that's a very good added value to have somebody else also in there who can give a different perspective and show people what else is there.
And also, it's good because it's a networking opportunity, again. So this guest speaker, he's also going to promote the pro version, of course. So it enables me to reach an additional target audience that I might be not able yet to reach.
So those are some of the things that I'm going to change for the second round.
ilise benun
That sounds great. And how is your one-on-one coaching business going?
Florian Schleicher
Yeah, so that's really awesome. I started with this, actually, because one of my previous employees back at Too Good To Go, when I announced that I'm going to start my own business, she said, “What I loved most, working with you, Florian, was our one-on-one sessions.”
I always put a lot of emphasis on enabling my team to do their best job. And I just love working with people, helping them to solve problems and guiding them. So that's why I integrated it into my business, now, this coaching part.
And how it works now, I send out a questionnaire, people sign up, then they choose a package of their liking. And what I really like is getting in touch with so many different kinds of people. I am sure you can relate to that because I'm working with heads of marketing, there. I'm also working with founders. I'm working with consultants, there, from B2B to B2C to SaaS companies. So there's a broad range. And that's really what makes me curious—learning from all those different aspects, because at the end, in a mentoring or in a coaching format, you always benefit from each other's perspectives. So I also take a lot away from those.
ilise benun
And listening to that, what you just said, someone might say, “But then, don't you have a niche?”
And I know that you do, and you've mentioned it, but it may not have hit as a niche. So would you describe how you perceive your niche?
Florian Schleicher
My niche is definitely sustainability marketing strategies. Because there are a lot of marketing experts out there; really good ones. There are a lot of strategists out there. But not a lot of people have a proven track record in sustainability.
So having worked for Greenpeace and Too Good To Go, and now I also work for a lot of sustainable companies or companies with sustainability projects, that's my niche.
And that was also one of the things that you told me at the very beginning, when we looked at my homepage, I can still remember ... and you were saying, “I don't get that ‘sustainability’ part. It's written in some words, but it's not really that in the forefront of things.”
And so everything that I do now has this sustainability angle in it. And that's also why it's called “The Simple and Sustainable Marketing Academy,” because I think it's very important to differentiate and to go into a niche, otherwise you're just swimming in a very big pool.
ilise benun
Yes. Excellent. All right, a couple more questions for you. First of all, I'm going to ask you the baby step questions. And it's kind of broad, but of all the things that we've been talking about and that you have shared, can you think of a baby step that listeners can take to move in the direction that you have gone?
Florian Schleicher
So I think what's really important, if you have your own business and if you want to advance, is to never stop learning. And what my suggestion would be:
Find something that you think is missing at the moment. Whether it's a topic, whether it's a know-how in a specific area. Maybe you're missing somebody you can talk to or you can learn from. And just see what's out there. Maybe there's a good book on it. Maybe there's a course on it. Maybe there's somebody who can teach you something about that.
And coming back to what I said at the beginning: Being an entrepreneur sometimes is lonely or you can feel alone. So reach out to people who you know and who maybe know something about the thing you want to learn.
ilise benun
And actually, that seems also related, too. I didn't quite realize this, actually, until you said it today, which is that you were trying to decide ... you saw famine coming ahead in 2023, and you could either protect your savings and hope you can ride out on it, or invest or reinvest in your business by working with me. And you decided the latter. You took that risk. And it seems to have paid off. So I don't know, can you say any more about what it took to take that risk?
Florian Schleicher
I think it has something to do with being optimistic about the future and having a growth mindset. Because at the end of the day, our businesses live from the energy that we put into it.
And the other day, I was listening to a very old interview by Jeff Bezos where he was on Jay Leno's show, back then. And Jay Leno was asking: “I don't understand the business model of Amazon. You're so big and you're still not having any profits at all.”
And Jeff Bezos said, “Yeah, that's because we are reinvesting everything that we're gaining.”
And looking at Amazon now, it's a highly profitable company. So it definitely paid off. And I think it's definitely a risk, reinvesting. But if we don't take risks, how can we learn? Like, the first moment a baby tries to walk, it's also at risk of falling. And probably it's going to fall a couple of times. But in the end, it's important to do those steps and it can work.
But the thing that's very important, I think, is—and you mentioned it at the beginning—a coach can only help so much, and you have to do the steps yourself.
Like, you could have told me: “Okay, start a podcast, downscale your newsletter, or maybe start an academy format.”
If I didn't use those recommendations, then, I think it doesn't make that much sense. And that's why I am also a big fan of giving my clients exercises to do in between sessions. And you're doing the same thing. I know, because it gives a sense of accountability and it helps our clients to make progress.
ilise benun
And it's really the only way to learn, in my opinion.
Florian Schleicher
Absolutely.
ilise benun
I can tell you what to do, but unless you start to implement it and experiment with it, you're not going to learn.
Florian Schleicher
Yeah, absolutely.
ilise benun
Awesome. Alright, three other questions for you, Florian.
Florian Schleicher
Yes.
ilise benun
What is “good marketing” for you, in three words?
Florian Schleicher
So, I always ask this question [of] my guests. So I had fun preparing for it and actually it was super easy. So for me, good marketing has to be sustainable, strategic and simple.
ilise benun
Um-hmm. Sustainable, strategic and simple.
And you've got some alliteration there, which I always love.
Awesome. Alright. And what is the future of marketing?
Florian Schleicher
So I'm very much focused on sustainability because I believe that marketing has a superpower. The superpower of manipulation, or getting people to buy something, to do something.
And I think we can use that superpower for something good. To tell new stories. To take companies, as well as customers, to a sustainable future. And I think that's the role of marketing and I hope that we can shift into that direction.
ilise benun
And actually, that reminds me of my answer to the next question, which I'll give before I ask it.
Florian Schleicher
Please.
ilise benun
Because there's a book called “Nudge” by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, if I remember correctly. And they talk about how marketing and other things are nudges that can be used for good or ill. And I agree with you that that's a choice, as well.
Florian Schleicher
Absolutely. And I've read that book. I really much enjoyed it because it shows you the psychological tricks that brands pull, and that can be used for bad things or for good things.
ilise benun
Exactly. Alright, so what book have you read, recently, that you want to recommend?
Florian Schleicher
So, I'm currently looking at my bookshelf and it's getting bigger and bigger.
ilise benun
Good.
Florian Schleicher
So I really had a hard time focusing on my own question and giving a straight answer. So I want to recommend two books. So first is “How to Be Strategic,” by Fred Pelard, because I really enjoyed the models that he's sharing and how to use them for a strategic-planning process. And the second one is “Obsessed,” by Emily Heyward, about how to build brands that everyone loves.
ilise benun
I've never heard of either of those books, so they're now on my list.
Florian Schleicher
Great.
ilise benun
Awesome. Well, anything else you want to say before we wrap up?
Florian Schleicher
I had a really great time talking with you again, ilise, because I very much enjoyed the whole learning journey that we both have been on and all the things that I've learned from you. So thank you very much for this exchange again. And yeah, I look forward to our next conversation already.
ilise benun
Absolutely. Me too. And so tell the people where they can find you online, Florian.
Florian Schleicher
Yes. So they can just type in “FTRS minus [symbol] studio dot com” (ftrs-studio.com) and that's where people can find all about me, my business, my newsletter, my podcast, and so many more things.
ilise benun
Beautiful. Thank you so much for sharing what you've learned and I also can't wait for the next time.
Florian Schleicher
Yes. See you.
ilise benun
Bye.
Florian's baby step is to never stop learning. And I, of course, agree. He's suggesting you find something that you think is missing, whether it's a topic or a skill or a role in your business. And then see if you can find a book or a course or a coach, and get the help you need.
So if you want to build a thriving business on your own terms, the first step is to sign up for my Quick Tips at marketing-mentortips.com. And then once you're on the site, you'll find lots more resources, including my Simplest Marketing Plan. So enjoy and I'll see you next time.
]]>First, know that you couldn’t possibly market your services “too much.” If you're like most creatives, you just don’t have it in you!
And second, there is a (very easy!) way to attract the clients you need without bothering anyone - ever.
In fact, if you do it right, they may even thank you for reaching out.
If you’re worried about “bothering” people, I’ll bet it’s because you’ve experienced too many annoying sales pitches. But that’s not at all what I’m suggesting you do.
Au contraire!
You see, strategic marketing and pitching are two very different things.
I don’t recommend you “pitch” your services, ever.
Not because there’s anything wrong with pitching. But because it often doesn’t work.
In my view, “pitching” means…
This is sure to turn anyone off!
There’s a much better way to market yourself that attracts clients to you - and you might actually like doing it.
Watch this 3rd “Minisode” of my “All it Takes is 30 Minutes a Day” series to find out what it is:
Would you believe me if I told you that you can actually build a foundation of trust with people you don’t know…
Without them even responding to you?
That’s what happens when you follow my Simplest Marketing Plan and keep up your 30 minutes of daily marketing…
Eventually, clients will reach out to you seemingly “out of the blue” and they’ll feel like they already know you.
Of course, it’s not really “out of the blue.” Because you’ve been building a foundation of trust and staying visible to them all along.
Plus, it doesn’t have to be hard or take up big blocks of time.
For months, I’ve been working on a new program that will help you get your marketing done - so you can generate the business and income that you want.
Come hear all about it at my Cyber Monday event, coming up on Monday, November 27 from 1-2pm ET.
It’s free and I promise you’ll pick up a few juicy tips you can use as you start the new year, too.
]]>Gobbled up by things that seem more important… like client work.
After all, clients are paying you, so they should take priority, right?
I say no!
And I want to change the way you think about your marketing with something I’m calling “me first time.”
Because from my point of view, clients are not the most important part of your business.
You are!
And I want you to prioritize yourself and your marketing, so you can have a business you can depend on next year – and beyond.
Which is why today I’m giving you permission to do something that’s good for both you and your business...
Carving out “me first time” (#mefirsttime) to spend on your marketing.
Now, if you’re thinking…
“That’s great, but what I need is discipline to stick to my marketing.”
Or...
“I need to get organized first.”
Again, I say no.
You don’t need discipline. You don’t need to “get organized.”
It’s easier than that. All you need is one little thing that makes your marketing happen automatically.
Find out what it is in this second “Minisode” in my “All it Takes is 30 Minutes a Day” series:
You don’t need discipline to do consistent marketing.
And you don’t need to “get organized” to have a business you can depend on.
You just need someone to keep you accountable, so you can build the habit of showing up for yourself every day.
And, as I always say, you only need to do 30 minutes a day to stay top-of-mind to potential clients.
Try it and by this time next year, you’ll look back and realize that your business and your life have completely changed for the better.
And it was a lot easier than you thought!
Look at this note I recently got from Rebekah Mays, content marketing consultant & B2B writer for climate tech:
If you love what you do, but you’re not getting the steady income you want, let me help you.
For months, I’ve been working on something BIG to help you get a business you can depend on in the New Year.
Come hear all about it at my Cyber Monday event, coming up on Monday, November 27 from 1-2pm ET.
It’s free and you’ll pick up a few tips you can use as you start the new year, too.
]]>I ask because now is the time to start.
We're switching gears for the next few weeks - from now until Cyber Monday - to help you focus on the business you want to have next year…
And how you’re going to get it.
Starting with what holds you back right now.
I’ve been reading through the results of last week’s survey (thanks, if you took it) and here are the three biggest things that keep people from getting their marketing done:
Here are the full results:
Sound familiar?
The good news is that the solution to the three biggest hang-ups is the same. And it’s very simple.
When you have momentum in your marketing efforts, finding clients and gigs that fit your goals can feel effortless.
Because you’re already moving forward. And to continue moving forward takes far less effort than to begin.
That’s why you only need to spend 30 minutes a day on your marketing to build the business that you want.
If you start now to take small consistent steps, by the time January rolls around, you will already be moving.
Want a few ideas about what kind of small steps you can take right now to build momentum without getting distracted?
Watch this first “Minisode” in my new Mini-series with Bonnie Fanning, called “All it Takes is 30 Minutes a Day” to find out:
You see, momentum is how you build a business you can depend on, with clients that you get to choose.
If you struggle to get your marketing done - or to do it consistently - I’m working on something BIG to help you in the New Year.
Come hear all about it at my Cyber Monday event, coming up on Monday, November 27 from 1-2pm ET.
It’s free and you’ll glean a few secrets you can use as you start the new year, too.
]]>That’s a strong word. Maybe it’s not actually hate. Dislike, disdain, not for me! Not for my business.
That’s why I wanted to talk to Meg Casebolt, SEO strategist, podcaster and author of the new book, Social Slowdown,
Early in the conversation, I dropped that bomb on her and was very curious to see what she would say.
Would she defend search because that’s her thing? Or would she agree with my rationale not to focus on search?
Listen here (and below) to find out…
The baby step Meg suggested is to start with empathy. Put yourself in the mind of your ideal client or best prospect. Ask yourself: what are they needing? What’s happening in their life that will lead them to find you? What words are they using to describe their need?
This sounds easy but it’s not! Whether for search or not, it’s important for marketing.
...a totally different episode Meg and I also recorded for her podcast.
Read the complete transcript of the Marketing Mentor Podcast Episode #486 here
Ilise benun
Hi there. This is ilise benun, your Marketing Mentor, and this is the podcast for you if, and only if, you are ready to leave the feast or famine syndrome behind. And I mean for good.
I've never admitted this publicly, but the truth is I hate SEO. I know that's a strong word. Maybe it's not actually hate. Dislike, disdain, contempt ... not for me, not for my business.
That's why I wanted to talk to Meg Casebolt of Love at First Search, who is a search specialist, an SEO search engine optimization specialist.
Early in the conversation, I dropped that bomb on her and I was very curious to see what she would say. Would she defend search because that's her thing or would she agree with my rationale for why I don't focus on search? Listen to find out.
Hello Meg, welcome to the podcast.
Meg Casebolt
Thank you so much for having me. I'm thrilled to be here with you.
Ilise benun
Me too. Please introduce yourself.
Meg Casebolt
Hi there. My name is Meg Casebolt. My pronouns are she, her, hers, and I am the founder of Love at First Search, which is an SEO marketing firm, which basically means that we help our clients who are typically solopreneurs, small businesses, small agencies to show up in search results like Google, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and then to bring people into their world and convert those new finders into lead subscribers and sales.
Ilise benun
And just give us a little of your background, your history. How long have you been in business? How long have you been doing this? How has it evolved?
Meg Casebolt
Sure. So I have been in business for a decade now. I started my business ... I had worked for nonprofits for almost a decade. I was with them for about eight years. I worked in the architectural field doing marketing there for a couple of years. And then I got married, got pregnant, and looked at my income and looked at the cost of childcare and went: Hmm, something's got to give there.
So I had had all this experience in marketing and I started a design studio helping people build their own, well, to build websites for them, not to build their own.
And so I built websites mostly for solopreneurs. Kind of always been in this space of working with small businesses and nonprofits.
And I would build these beautiful websites for clients and they would say, “Great, this is awesome. Where are my clients? Why aren't people finding me?”
And I had to figure out, you know, how do you balance building the actual website? Designing and you know ... the brand colors and the fonts and the copywriting and the images and all the things that go into web design. And also optimizing it so that way Google can send new people to these websites.
And I couldn't figure out how to balance it. And I took that query to a mastermind of designers that I worked with and was participating in. And I said, “How do all of you balance this?”
And they said, “Actually, we don't. We wish that we could just outsource it to an SEO person, but we don't have anyone we trust.”
And so I made the decision to become the SEO person that they outsource to that people trust.
It was sort of a Blue Ocean moment of: Hey, here's 15 people that I'm in the room with, who I trust, who need this service, that I think I'd be really good at, that I'm already trying to figure out.
So that was how I got started with Love at First Search—was as a very quiet, kind of silent partner for web designers.
Ilise benun
And that's an example of what we call “listening to the market.”
Meg Casebolt
Yes.
Ilise benun
So good for you. Kudos to you.
Meg Casebolt
I knew you'd appreciate that part of the story.
Ilise benun
Absolutely, absolutely. And I'm curious, what is it about all those other SEO people or companies that are not trustworthy? What's not to trust?
Meg Casebolt
I don't know that it's necessarily not trustworthy. I think it might be that they're not the world's best communicators. Or they aren't necessarily clear about what it is that their client needs to receive from them in order for it to make sense to them.
Because, you know Google's algorithm changes a lot. Search engine optimization is constantly evolving, just like any sort of marketing or any sort of strategy. Well, maybe not networking. But any sort of technology is evolving all the time.
And there seems to be a bit of a disconnect sometimes between what the tools that SEO people use spits out at them and what the client needs in order to turn it into something that they can actually read and implement.
And so regularly, I will have clients who come to me after having worked with another SEO organization or agency that they say, “Well, I got all these audits and I didn't know what they meant, and no one explained it to me, and so I didn't do anything with it.”
So in a lot of ways, I feel sometimes like I'm a translator from the robot-speak of these tools that will talk about ‘keyword difficulty’ and ‘search volume’ and ‘cost per click’ and all these sort of metrics. And what we do at Love at First Search is translating it into: Okay, here's what your client needs and here's how you can set yourself up so that you show up in those search results when it is that they need those answers to their questions.
Ilise benun
I'll just say that I studied language in college, Spanish and then French, and I never did anything formal with the languages and the degrees that I earned, but I have always felt from the very beginning that I am translating business language for creatives.
Meg Casebolt
I like that. See, I really, I call SEO “acronyms.” I refer to it loosely as “nerd speak.”
Ilise benun
Interesting. So we have that in common.
Meg Casebolt
My dad was an electrical engineer. I grew up in the nerd-speak space. I'm fluent in nerd speak.
Ilise benun
But I'm going to be completely honest with you. I don't think I've told you this yet, Meg, but I hate search.
Meg Casebolt
I'm not surprised.
Ilise benun
And I'll tell you why. And in a way, this is related to what I do, obviously, and the Simplest Marketing Plan—which is all about not waiting for people to find you, but going out and choosing who you want to help, basically.
And so within that context, I have always felt—and I've actually had this experience as well—that whoever happens to find me because they're Googling is probably not usually—sometimes there are exceptions to the rule—but not usually my best prospect. And not usually the person I would pursue.
And worse yet I would say, I offer a free 30-minute mentoring session on my website and inevitably the people—and I ask in the form, when you fill out the form, "how did you find me?”—when people say, “Google,” those are the people who stand me up, who do not show up.
And I think it makes total sense because on the day that they're Googling, they found me, I'm sure they found two or three other people, maybe more, and signed up for their free consultations. And my schedule's pretty busy, so I'm not going to talk to you for a couple of weeks. And by then, you probably don't need it anymore. I don't take it personally. But I just find that the people who find me through Google generally are not good leads. What would you say to that?
Meg Casebolt
I would say that that is totally fine. I think that, especially you, ilise, because of your framework and the way that you work with people and the approach that you take to things, I think that to an extent, the idea even of Marketing Mentor as a brand is maybe not the most search-friendly idea, because search is so specific in its approach. And if you were going to come out and say, “I teach people to get their clients on LinkedIn, and I want you to update your LinkedIn bio to follow this three-step process.”
You know, search can be very tactical. It can be very technical. And it can be very specific. And your approach is so much more comprehensive and holistic to that, that it doesn't necessarily always fit the algorithm of search.
Ilise benun
And that makes sense to me. And one thing that I found very interesting ... So, I've been in business 35 years. I've had this name of the company at least 20—Marketing Mentor—maybe a little less than 20 years. And when I came up with it originally, it was not a search term. But recently it has become a search term.
Apparently people, it occurs to them to search for a marketing mentor. But when they do—in fact, I have one of these calls scheduled tomorrow—it's someone within a company, in a big corporation usually, who has been promoted to do marketing and knows nothing about marketing, and therefore needs a marketing mentor. Those are not my ideal people at all.
Meg Casebolt
No, those are absolutely the wrong people for you.
Ilise benun
Which is why I don't mind when they stand me up. It's still, I just find it really interesting, like what ‘marketing mentor’ means to different people. And therefore, again from a search perspective, it's not helpful.
Meg Casebolt
And I think it comes back to what you were saying about language and knowing the language of who it is that you're trying to reach and the words that they use. Because, when you first came up with this, when you purchased the domain years ago—not even came up with the idea, but when you put your money where your mouth was and said: “This is how I'm going to position myself”—that wasn't the way that people were using that language. And the language around it has evolved.
And so maybe you're still going to get traffic for that term because it is your brand name, because you are going to rank for it because you have that authority in that term.
But you can definitely come out on your website and find ways to stop the tire kickers from booking calls with you and say, “I am here for small businesses and solopreneurs.” And so that way, when those folks come from corporate having just gotten those promotions, they're going to go: Eh, not for me.
Right? They're being repelled by your copy in that same moment.
Ilise benun
Ideally. But some people will not be repelled. I'll tell you that. I had a guy earlier this week; he picked my first thing on a Monday-morning slot, which happened to be open. It was on Sunday night, he picked it. And when I looked him up, he is selling leather wallets from somewhere ...
Meg Casebolt
But you only work with people with services. Why would you ... ?
Ilise benun
Exactly. And I had to tell him that, “I'm sorry. This is not going to be a good use of your time or mine because if you didn't notice, here's who I actually work with.”
And he was very understanding and we didn't end up having the call, after all. But I just find it really interesting that sometimes people will not be repelled.
Meg Casebolt
Well, it's kind of like when you go to a networking event in real life and they can't tell that you're bored and they just keep telling you about like the mushrooms in their backyard. And you're like: Oh my God, are we still having this conversation? Some people do not pick up hints.
And so, if that were something where it were constantly happening to you, ilise, I'd be like: Okay, maybe we need to rethink the positioning on your website. But maybe we also need to have an application process into your consults.
Ilise benun
No, there is.
Meg Casebolt
Yeah. So making sure that you're screening people so that way you're not spending your time on people that aren't a good fit. But that's the thing about search too, is we can be specific about who it is that we're trying to serve, but anybody can still find us. Anybody can still engage with us. And that, to an extent, that's a good thing. But you do have to be a little bit careful about how open you are with your availability.
Ilise benun
I agree. And just a little sidetrack, since you brought up the networking and people basically not being able to read cues in networking, I know for a fact that a lot of people, including some of you listening, do not like networking because you know there are those people out there who are going to talk and talk and talk, and you don't know how to get out of a conversation. That happens. But that's not a reason not to network, right Meg?
Meg Casebolt
Correct. It means you need to find a way to politely extract yourself from a conversation and have a strategy going into it. I'm not a marketing or I'm not a networking strategist, but I definitely have found ways to remove myself from a conversation, even if it's not networking. Even if it's, you know, I go to the soccer game that my kid's at, and somebody who's standing next to me wants to talk about their kid's rash. I'm like: Ooh, okay, not a nurse. Dunno anything about eczema. How could I get out of this?
It's going to happen no matter what, networking or not. You're going to have to engage with humans at some point.
I know, especially as a search person, I work with a lot of introverts who don't necessarily want to have those live conversations, but that can be a choice. That can be part of your business model.
But if you're going to run a service business, which I know most of your people are doing, ilise, most of the listeners to this are probably service business people, you're probably going to have to have a conversation with people at some point. That's just sort of the nature of the beast of the business model of service delivery.
Ilise benun
Ya. Agreed.
Meg Casebolt
And sales is ... if you're going to work with people one on one, if you're going to work with people in a group, not everything can be automated. So you can use something like search to get people to discover who it is that you are. But at the end of the day, you might still have to have a real-life conversation.
Ilise benun
So let's talk about ... there are two things I want to make sure we cover. One is: who is search best for? And then, I know that you have a new book out, new-ish book out, about social media, and so I want to make the connection between search and social media and the message in your book.
Meg Casebolt
Okay, so it all fits together very well. So thank you for giving me an idea of the direction that we're going.
Ilise benun
Good.
Meg Casebolt
Search works really well for people who solve problems that are not even time sensitive but that have specific needs at specific points in time.
So a couple of years ago my basement flooded. And I wasn't like: Hmm, let me sit down and wait for a Facebook ad to talk about whether or not my basement has flooded.
I went to Google and I was like: What do I do? Should I not go down there because maybe the electrical will shock me and I'll die? Or is this something where I can go check out the sump pump.
Like, when there's a specific problem that you're solving, then you can go to search.
That does not always need to be something that is really tangible, like there is standing water in my basement. Sometimes it is: I'm really tired of dieting and I just want to learn how to not gain a ton of weight and also not diet. Or, I am thinking about getting back into dating and I don't know where to get started with it. Or, I want to remodel my house, but I don't know what the budget is supposed to be.
Sometimes it's not necessarily your house is on fire and you need something right this minute, but you're aiming to make some sort of change in your life.
Ilise benun
Or, I mean, just speaking to the people who I know are listening, like if you need a logo, is that the kind of problem that is easily solved or helpfully solved with search?
Meg Casebolt
Yeah, it can be. And especially if you ... let's say that you are the designer who wants to be found for people who need a logo. This is a really good opportunity to be found for either your specific niche or your geography or to educate people with your content.
So if you are helping people with their logo design, you probably want to use the words “logo design” on your website somewhere.
It feels obvious, but sometimes people will try to get really clever and be like: We're going to create your custom visual identity.
And that might not be the language that their audience would be looking for when they think that they need a logo.
And so you might want to include things like “Logo design in Connecticut,” because you know that people want to work with you locally, even if you don't actually work with them in person. Sometimes people feel like they want to work with somebody who's nearby.
You might want to do logo design for sports organizations because you have that experience, and therefore you can sort of have a shortcut into that conversation that you've done that work before. And you have a portfolio where you can show all of the sports organizations that you've done logos for.
Maybe you want to have some content on your website about your logo design packages. So that way when people are thinking that they need a logo, but actually they do need a full visual identity, they do need a full brand, not just the logo. Maybe you want to have some information on your website about logo design for a new business versus a redesign and how that process is different. Right?
So, knowing what it is that you are selling, you also need to know what it is that the end client needs from you. Or what they already know versus what you need to teach them along the way.
Ilise benun
Okay. Let me just interrupt you there because I have a feeling you're going in this direction. I just want to frame it a little bit. Which is, one of the hardest things I think it is for people, humans, to do, is to get out of our own mindset and into someone else's mindset. And part of the challenge of marketing—all different marketing but especially SEO, it seems to me—is forgetting how you think about what you do, and finding out or learning or somehow switching your mindset to how others—the people who need you—think about what you do. Right?
Meg Casebolt
Totally. I think there's so much empathy that is required to do this. And as an industry, I think that search gets boiled down into like: Oh, well, just go find the spreadsheet with the keywords.
But just going into Fiverr and asking someone to find you keywords that are related to your industry or going on to ChatGPT and saying: “What should I have this be?” ... there's not a lot of human connection in that.
And I think that that's something that I talk about a lot. I'm actually working on my next book, which is tentatively titled “Search Empathy Optimization,” because I think that so much of what we do in search is not just go find these words and put them into these places in these strategic locations on your website, but like, you really do need to put yourself into the mindset of the people that you're trying to serve and go: What is it that this person needs? Why do they need it right now? What is the problem that I'm solving with this? And what is the language that they would use that is specific to this circumstance or this audience or this problem?’
Because it's not as simple as ... you know, sometimes it is simple. Sometimes it’s: I need a haircut and I want somebody who is in my state that I don't have to drive really far to get to.
Sometimes it is that simple. But when we're actually talking through the problems, maybe it's not: I need a haircut.
Maybe it's: I’m growing out my grays and my hair is curly and I want somebody to help me with both of those components.
It's not just who's the closest to me, but who has that life experience. Who has that professional training for what the outcome is that I need. It's not always as simple as: What's the closest pizza place?
And that's where the empathy becomes really, really important is, what is the problem? The person that is searching is a human, even if the algorithms that we're playing with are not.
Ilise benun
Right. And those algorithms are written by humans for the most part, aren't they? Or are they not?
Meg Casebolt
Umm, there's a lot of machine learning going on now.
Ilise benun
Okay, so scratch that.
Meg Casebolt
But the original algorithms were. And so there's also some bias in all of these algorithms because of the fact that they're written by humans. And so we have to think about that too. I'm not going to get on my search-algorithm-bias soapbox right now, though. I'll nip that one in the bud.
Ilise benun
Sounds good. So let's talk about your book then. What's it called?
Meg Casebolt
My book is called “Social Slowdown.” It's all about how to manage your marketing in a way that is sustainable versus feeling like you're on that social-media-content hamster wheel and you have to post all the time, and it can really impact your mental health.
So I wanted to talk about the mental health ramifications of feeling “on” all the time, as well as some alternatives of ways that you can market your business, including or not including social media.
Ilise benun
And it's a very interesting idea, which we'll come right back to, but I first am curious, like, what's the connection between social media and search, then, for you? How did this happen?
Meg Casebolt
For me personally? Well, part of it was marketing for my own business and recognizing the limitations that social media had for me—because even though I was a search specialist, I still felt like I had to show up on social. I still felt like I had that time.
Ilise benun
Why?
Meg Casebolt
Because I'm human and that's where people were, and I didn't want to feel like I was missing out, because FOMO is a real thing.
And because I was on social media, I was being served content that told me that social media was the solution. And because I was being told by business coaches and other marketing professionals that I needed to have a free Facebook group, and I needed to go on Livestream, and I needed to teach people where they were hanging out.
I don't want to make it seem like: Oh, I was brainwashed to believe this. Or, I was gaslit to believe this.
But I think that if you're on social media, then you're being fed messages that social media is the way to do it because the people who are on social media are talking about how well they're doing on social media. You're in an echo chamber.
You know, I built a big part of my marketing outreach on social media by encouraging people to join a free Facebook group. This was probably about five years ago. And over time, I looked at the metrics and realized that people who were in my Facebook group were getting lots of free value from me, but they were not actually buying any of my services or products.
And then it became a big expense because I had a team of people who were helping me to grow my Facebook group and my Instagram following, and none of those people gave me any money. And I started to really question what it was that I was doing in terms of my expenses.
And so after I looked at the metrics for that, looked at the fact that none of my sales were coming from social media, they were all coming from email marketing and from going on other people's podcasts, I shut down my free Facebook group, and I forgot to post on social media because I didn't have team members who were going: “Oh, people are talking in the Facebook group. Oh, we need to post our Wednesday poll and our Memorial Day flag.” All of those things you feel like you have to do when you're in the space.
So I forgot to post on social media. I went a couple months after I realized it and I didn't see a decrease in my lead generation when I stopped posting on social media. If anything, I saw about the same coming in because I was still doing content marketing and I was still doing relationships and referrals. I was still connecting with people, just not on those specific platforms.
And so that was my own experience with social media.
But then to answer part two of your question—which is how does this relate to search?—it kind of doesn't. They are two very different strategies. One is outbound marketing, which is let me go to where people are and connect with them in that space. And one of them is more inbound marketing, where it is let me create content for when people need me. They can go out and find it.
So they're very different strategies. But however, I work with a lot of small businesses. I work with a lot of solopreneurs. I work with people who have limited time and resources who don't necessarily have a full marketing team to do everything that they want.
And what the objection that I kept hearing to when I would say, “Let me teach you how to get new people to find you through search” was, “Oh, I don't have time because I'm so busy posting on social media.”
And there was very much a short-term approach to marketing, which is somebody told me that I have to post on social five times a day and therefore I don't have time to do something that can be found for the next five years.
So that's where they tie together—is just the limited resources that we have to be able to invest in this.
Ilise benun
And how much of your clientele or income comes through people finding you on search?
Meg Casebolt
Kind of hard to track it back. I would say probably 20 to 25% of my income comes from search.
Ilise benun
Because I would think you also have to practice what you preach, right, like I do, to a certain extent.
Meg Casebolt
Yes. And I think also search is not always, you know ...
One of the things that I like about your approach, ilise, is that it's comprehensive and you can't necessarily track every single lead that comes in because it's like: Oh, I made this connection with somebody and I did the outreach, but then I did that. I followed up with them in content marketing. I kept in touch with them, and maybe they've been in my world for a long time and I can't necessarily track that first point of acquisition.
So search, I think, goes beyond just what are the words that you're putting on your website.
If somebody listens to this conversation that you and I are having right now, and they're like: Oh, I should go find Meg, how did they find you? Did they find this podcast that you are creating in Apple Podcast, because you and I are having a conversation about SEO and you're going to put that into your podcast ... ?
And when you put a link from your website show notes onto my website, then that also impacts my search results because by being a guest on your podcast, by getting a link from your website to mine, that's a referral situation. But it also helps my domain authority for my SEO because you are vouching for me.
So I think that a lot of times the ways that we approach our marketing is not nearly as cut and dry and easy to track as we think it is.
Ilise benun
Totally.
Meg Casebolt
I just sort of tiptoed around the answer to that question. I dunno if I answered it.
Ilise benun
It's perfect. It's perfect.
Meg Casebolt
It's not always as straightforward as we think it is.
Ilise benun
No, definitely not. It's usually not.
Meg Casebolt
Especially when you get those inquiries where people ... I bet you do the same thing; you even said, people will find you on Google because they have filled out the form that says “I found you on Google.“ But people don't remember where they heard about us.
Ilise benun
Yeah, definitely. Alright, so we just have a few more minutes, but I do want to talk a little bit more about the book.
So the book is about social media. And first, I want to put social media in the context of my framework, because a lot of my listeners know about my framework, The Simplest Marketing Plan. And there's no social media in it per se. But I see social media as one of several different ways that you can disseminate and distribute high-quality, bat-signal content.
And I would even go further to say that LinkedIn is one of the places I most recommend disseminating your content.
And I've recently discovered, realized, that a lot of people don't think of LinkedIn as social media. So just talk about social media and the social media slowdown. But kind of talk a little bit in context about LinkedIn as well, if you would.
Meg Casebolt
Okay. So I would say to your point, LinkedIn, I think, is a really good networking and content-delivery platform for people who are working in the B2B space where they would want to connect with other people there.
It may not be the right choice for everyone, but given that you're working with service providers, it is a place that makes a lot of sense.
I think that LinkedIn is a little bit different from some of the other social media platforms—especially some of the more discovery-based social media platforms like TikTok or, oh God, I was about to say “Twitter,” but now it's X—because you already have a built-in audience in your LinkedIn of people who are familiar with you.
So if you are creating a video on TikTok, and it goes viral, you have no idea who that's going to be in front of. Versus LinkedIn, your water cooler has already been connected.
I think LinkedIn people also don't think of social media quite in the same way because the monetization mechanism is very different, where if you go on anything owned by Meta, if you're going on Facebook or Instagram, you are being served advertising. If you're not paying for it, then you're the product. You are being packaged up and you are being sold out to advertisers. And your eyeballs are the product on Facebook.
Whereas on LinkedIn, that platform is being underwritten by paid job postings—which you may not see when you're on the platform if you're not there to look for a job.
Ilise benun
Right.
Meg Casebolt
So I think it can feel a little bit less like ... It feels more like a connection with people that you already know or that networking space where there are people that you know. They feel like real people versus brands—which can be more common on the other social networking. So does that answer your question around the difference between them?
Ilise benun
Very interesting. Yeah. And so your main message of the book is: you don't have to do all the things?
Meg Casebolt
You don't have to do all the things.
I also, I did think of one more key differential between LinkedIn and some of the other social platforms, which is that I think LinkedIn is built for sharing content and for connecting with others versus Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok—they're entertainment platforms primarily. They're not meant for connection.
So I would say, yeah, the key thesis of the book, the key thesis of the podcast that turned into the book, is: you don't have to be everywhere.
Figure out where your people are. Figure out what your message is. Figure out who is already in front of your people. And then, figure out how to get yourself in front of them.
And if search is the thing that you want to do, then maybe you don't also need to be on every single platform.
If you don't want to do search ... like, ilise, you do really well without needing to have an intentional search strategy. That's okay because you have all of these other marketing mechanisms in place; these levers that you can pull and say: I have a good referral network. I have this targeted outreach in place.
You know, figuring out what works for it, not just: What is the checklist of marketing things that I need to do?
But thinking through: How do I want to spend my time? How do I want to spend my money? What resources do I have? What works really well for my brain? What works well for my life? How do I want to feel when I do my marketing?’
Makes a huge difference in how you bring yourself to it.
I love being a guest on podcasts. I would do this all day long if I could, but I also work with a lot of people who are afraid to put themselves out there in real time in a conversation like this. So that's not the marketing strategy for them, even if it would work really well for their business model. If you're not comfortable doing it, find a different strategy.
Ilise benun
Or I agree with you, but I would also say: “Maybe reframe some of the things that actually do work if you do it with the right attitude.” And that's kind of one of the underlying messages of the Simplest Marketing Plan, also.
Meg Casebolt
Yes, and that's definitely an ilise approach to it. My approach is like: You hate that thing? Find something else.
And you're like: No, you can still do it. Just think about how you can make yourself hate it a whole lot less.
Ilise benun
Or let's expand the way you think about it because it may not be the thing you think it is. That's why I often say to people, “I'm trying to change the way you think because the way you've thought about it for all these years may be very narrow and there are other ways to think about things.”
Meg Casebolt
Yes, I agree with that. And there may be ways to do it that don't have to feel ... like, I love going on podcasts. I don't love pitching myself for podcasts. Great. I have a team member who does some of that for me. We agree on it. And then they're the ones ... Sheena's the one that actually sends all of my emails ... okay. Finding a way to make the systems work for you.
Ilise benun
Exactly. All right. The question that I always ask at the end of the podcast is, is there a baby step in all the things we've talked about that you would suggest listeners take in the direction of anything that we've talked about?
Meg Casebolt
I think for me, the baby step is that empathy component—that thought process around not just what is it that I do, but why is it that would seek out what it is that I do? What are they going through in their life? What are they going through in their business growth? What is the change that they might want to make sometime in the not-so-distant future that would lead them to find me?
Whether they're finding you in search or on social or they're asking around for a referral, that part's not quite as important as starting to think about why? Why do they need to care about me? What's in it for them if they work with me? There's my baby step.
Ilise benun
Love it. Excellent. All right. Tell people where they can find your book, and you, and anything else you want to share.
Meg Casebolt
Sure. So you can find me over, well, you can find the agency over at Loveatfirstsearch.com, if you want to talk more about search engine optimization. If you want to listen to the podcast or read the book that inspired the podcast, no, other way, listen to the podcast that inspired the book, you can head over to socialslowdown.com and go from there.
Ilise benun
Beautiful. Thank you so much, Meg. I have a feeling there will be a part two.
Meg Casebolt
Okay, sounds good. I'll look forward to it.
Ilise benun
What a fun conversation. There will definitely be a part two, and we'll have to hear more about Meg's book, “The Social Slowdown,” but go buy it, check it out, see what you think.
Now the baby step that Meg suggested is to start with empathy. Put yourself in the mind of your ideal client or your best prospect, and ask yourself what are they needing? What's happening in their life that will lead them to find me? What words are they using to describe their need? This sounds easy, but it's not. And whether you do it for search or not, it's really important from a marketing perspective.
So if you want to build a thriving business on your own terms, the first step is to sign up for my Quick Tips. Once you're on the site, you'll find lots more resources, including my Simplest Marketing Plan. So enjoy and I'll see you next time.
]]>And the stronger the bond you build with your ideal clients, the more likely you are to win the project when they are in their time of need.
Watch as I go into more depth on this in the “Best Bits” from this month’s SMP Office Hours:
You can’t control (or even know) when a client will come into their time of need.
But you can control the strength of the bond you forge with them and the degree of trust they have in you.
Sometimes that means pushing past a little discomfort.
But the more you continue taking baby steps every day, the more natural it will become.
By the way, I've got big plans to help you take those baby steps in the coming year - stay tuned!
In the meantime, see how Antonio Meza beautifully summed up how all three tools contribute to better outreach in this thumbnail from his latest Office Hours sketch, here:
Question: Can you ever do too much outreach? See what the community thinks here on LinkedIn.
]]>Today’s “bonus” episode of the Marketing Mentor podcast is from a live interview with financial expert and podcaster, Farnoosh Torabi, host of the So Money Podcast, whose brand new book is out. Listen, then go buy A Healthy State of Panic: Follow Your Fears to Build Wealth, Crush Your Career, and Win at Life.
]]>
My friend, financial expert and fellow podcaster, Farnoosh Torabi, host of the So Money Podcast, has a brand new book out.
It’s called "A Healthy State of Panic: Follow Your Fears to Build Wealth, Crush Your Career, and Win at Life."
In August, in collaboration with the Nancy Ruzow of The Creatives Roundtable and Danielle Hughes of More Than Words, we hosted an exclusive live event with Farnoosh where she shared a taste of the book and much more, actually, including stories about her own life and her struggles with panic and fear around money.
In fact, she answered most of my questions with a story – that’s her preferred style, she told us.
To celebrate the launch of Farnoosh's book, we've turned that event into a bonus episode (#485) on the Marketing Mentor podcast.
We are also donating the proceeds from our live event to Farnoosh's favorite charity -- check them out.
So listen here (and below) and learn…
And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
Here’s a rare solo episode of the Marketing Mentor Podcast in which Ilise Benun answers a question that comes up over and over, “How exactly do you listen to the market?” and shares 6 different things to listen for.
]]>Here’s a rare solo episode in which Ilise Benun answers a question that comes up over and over, “how exactly do you listen to the market” and then shares 6 different things to listen for when you’re listening to the market.
So listen here (or below) and learn….
If you want more on this idea, here are more posts about "listening to the market"
And if you like what you hear, we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
Read the transcript for episode #484: How to actually listen to the market.
You can talk and you can hear, but do you listen?
I mean really listen?
Perhaps you’ve heard my talking about “listening to the market” — but people often ask what exactly does that mean?
Today I’m answering that question.
First, to truly listen, we’ve got to ready our receptors — that means gearing our ears in two different ways:
People will tell you a lot — but only if you’re listening.
They will reveal themselves. They will share more than you imagine. But only if you let them. Only if you listen.
And this takes practice.
Once your listening ears are tuned in, there are 6 things I want you to listen for:
1. First, listen for stories (and story-starters). People love to tell stories. In fact, humans have been telling stories since cave dwellers painted walls with them. In an interaction, there is usually a story at the ready. For example, I recently asked my massage therapist, “Why do you do this work?” She said, “Because my guardian suggested massage therapy.” I could have said, “That’s great!” but instead, because I heard the story under the surface, I said, “What’s a guardian?” and I certainly learned a lot from there. So get curious. When your conversational-counterpart opens a window, jump through.
2. Next, listen for preferences. I was recently in Nashville at HOW Design Live, a big design conference. I heard people saying things like: “I love Nashville”; “I really hate air conditioning”; “I love frosted donuts — but not the ones with the cream inside.” People will openly and passionately share their preferences, and that is a great opening to ask, “Why?”
3. Listen for their plans. Focus on the future; a lot of information lives there. I like to ask, “What is your plan?” No matter what service you offer, this will open up all sorts of answers that you can dig in and ask “Why?” about. Another pointed question: “Do you need help implementing your plan?” You just might be talking to a prospect and not even know it until you ask about their plans
4. Listen for their pain. If someone is venting or ranting — pull up your chair. You certainly want a front row seat. This is hero-making-terrain. When someone divulges their pain points and needs, you can quickly learn where someone (maybe you?) can come in and solve their problems. Ask questions like: “What’s your biggest problem right now?” Or, “Have you ever worked with a copywriter / designer / coach like me? What bugged you about it?” Sometimes the pain isn’t obvious, to listen too for inklings of pain, as it may be hidden.
5. Listen for what you can learn – those are the things that others know, but you don’t. I think too many people are too afraid of sounding stupid or uninformed, and they miss a huge opportunity. Even after more than 60 years on this planet … even after learning a lot … I realize more and more how little I know in the grand scheme of things. (And I think that ignorance is one of my best assets!) What could you understand better? What word or idea or concept? Ask, “Can you tell me more about that?” and “What does that mean? Or What do you mean by that?” In fact, I often start a conversation with, “Pretend I know nothing and tell me everything about what you do.” That takes a lot of pressure off me and them.
6. Listen for what isn’t being said. / The subtext. Many of my clients are creatives — so they have the natural gift of intuition. Maybe you too? If you hear a prospect tiptoeing around an issue, or saying a tiny-something when you feel there’s more, ask about it. You can say, “I hear you saying this … Is there more to it?” It’s okay to make a gentle assumption — or share a personally-related tidbit — that will help provide a comfort level for your partner to go deeper. Sometimes there needs to be an “instigator” to take a conversation from polite to real. Let that be you.
Those are my 6 ideas, but in a recent Office Hours session, I asked my community what they listen for. Here are some of the responses I received:
To continue on your journey towards ever more effective and deeper listening, here are a few simple tips:
I hope that was helpful and that it’s a bit clearer what I mean when I say, “listen to the market.”
As a baby step, I would suggest simply observing yourself as you listen – or try to listen – and notice when you stop listening, both to an other and to yourself. What can you learn about yourself in and from those moments? And what do you have to do differently in order to listen better – it might have something to do with focusing outward for longer and longer.
Try it…and let me know how it goes.
And if you want to build a thriving business on your own terms, the first step is to sign up for my Quick Tips at marketing-mentortips.com. Once you’re on the site, you’ll find lots more resources, including my Simplest Marketing Program. Enjoy and I’ll see you next time.
Photo credit: Emiliano Vittoriosi on Unsplash
]]>Not that there’s anything wrong with pitching. We all need work, and directly asking for it is one way to get it.
But over the past 35 years helping creative freelancers with their marketing, here’s what I find works better than pitching:
Offering help.
It’s a subtle difference.
Pitching is about you. It’s asking for and expecting something. That can feel uncomfortable.
Offering help is about the person you’re reaching out to and giving them something without expectation. That feels great actually!
It’s one more way to use generosity as a marketing tool.
When it comes to getting the clients and projects that you want, leading with generosity makes outreach easier and more natural for you to do…
And easier for your prospective clients to respond to.
Not sure what “generosity” looks like in outreach?
Instead of thinking about what you want out of the interaction, switch your thinking to how you can help them.
Q4 is an excellent time to do this, as people tend to get busy with projects and push for year-end goals while having less time to accomplish them.
That’s where you can jump in and offer your help.
Here are some Q4 messages infused with generosity that a few of my clients have used to fill their calendars with Q1 projects:
“I wanted to check in before the holiday season takes over to see where you are in the decision-making process and if you expect a decision before the end of the year. We’re planning for first quarter and we’d love to save time for you.”
-
“Just checking back with you before the holidays get super busy. Do you have any projects planned for next year that you would like to talk about now so they’re ready to go come January? If so, let me know a few days and times you are available and we’ll get it scheduled."
-
“I thought I would check in with you before the holidays get super busy. Do you foresee the need for extra writing assistance next year? If so, let me know if you would like to talk about anything before the end of the year to be ready to roll come January.”
None of these messages directly ask for work.
Instead, they offer to save time for the client or get things ready for them in the coming year.
And they all take some of the thinking and planning off of the client’s shoulders, which is generous in itself.
You can do this with prospective clients, too, if you do your homework so you can guess what they might need and offer to help them with it.
Want more guidance?
This cartoon from our last Office Hours by SMP member, Antonio Meza, lists the 5 things the first paragraph of your outreach message should do.
And note that “show you did your homework” is first on the list!
Or you can listen in as I explain more about leading with generosity in the “Best Bits” from our recent Office Hours here:
Can you think of one or two people you could offer to help? See if you can send them a note today. Let me know how it goes.
And if you just need a quick win, here are a few shortcuts you can try.
]]>If you’re having a great year so far, keep doing what you’re doing - it’s working!
And if you’re not, right now is the perfect time to reach out and offer your help.
Clients say “yes” when they are in their time of need.
You can’t control when that will happen…
But you can control how many new connections you make and how many irons you put in your fire.
Not sure who to reach out to first?
Watch the “Best Bits” from this month’s SMP Office Hours to hear my favorite place to do outreach when you’re just starting.
Have you had success with outreach this year? I’d love to hear about it. Share here on LinkedIn to encourage others with your story.
In my conversation with comedian and keynote speaker, Jenn Lederer, you will learn not only how to enjoy talking about your work but how to do it in an entertaining and authentic way.
Here’s Jenn’s baby step: Open the notes app on your phone and make 3 categories: what you do, how you do it and why you do it, next steps – then, over the course of the next week, make a note every time something comes to mind.
This is the beginning of your living, breathing elevator pitch, which can (and should) be constantly changing and adjusted depending on who you’re talking to.
So listen here (and below) and learn:
And if you like what you hear, check out Jenn's YouTube channel too.
And we’d love it if you write a review, subscribe here and sign up for Quick Tips from Marketing Mentor.
Read the complete transcript of Episode 483 with Jenn Lederer
ilise benun
Hi there. This is ilise benun, your Marketing Mentor. And this is the podcast for you if, and only if, you are ready to leave the feast or famine syndrome behind, and I mean for good.
If your mind goes blank when someone asks what you do, this episode is for you. In my delightfully deep conversation with comedian and keynote speaker Jenn Lederer, we covered everything from how to use the comedian's formula to develop your perfect pitch—which shouldn't be perfect at all by the way—to what confidence is, always interesting. Plus, how to tell a good story in real time, and so much more. We had a couple technical hiccups that affected the sound quality, especially near the end, but you know what? Who cares? It's a great conversation and I am confident you'll like it. So, listen and learn.
Hello Jenn, welcome to the podcast.
Jenn Lederer
Hi, ilise. Thanks for having me.
ilise benun
Of course. So Jenn, what do you do?
Jenn Lederer
I'm a comedian and keynote speaker, and I help entrepreneurs and creatives storytell their career using a comedian's formula.
ilise benun
Nice. And we met because we're both friends of Terri Trespicio, the amazing Terri Trespicio.
Jenn Lederer
She's the best.
ilise benun
She is indeed. And she's an excellent networker. And so we met at HOW Design Live, in Nashville, but we didn't really get to chat much there, and I was very interested in your HOW session, but it was so packed, I couldn't get in. So why don't we start with you giving me the top line on what it was all about? What was it called and what did you cover?
Jenn Lederer
Sure. It's called The Perfect Pitch - HOW to Talk About What You Do and using a comedian's formula. I teach people how to talk about their work, their value, their passions, what they're interested in, how they differentiate themselves within their industry, in a way that is entertaining and connects you to the people that you're talking to versus trying to be the most impressive person in the room—which nobody likes that person. So how to be human while talking about yourself.
ilise benun
I love that. And I don't know, why do people struggle so much with this simple question: what do you do? Because I've noticed that often, it's almost like your mind goes blank when someone asks you a question about the thing you probably know the best.
Jenn Lederer
Right? The thing that we spend the majority of our time doing, we suddenly are alien to as soon as someone asks us to explain it.
ilise benun
It's bizarre. Why do you think that is?
Jenn Lederer
From what I have seen, there is a dissociation that happens. It's like, as soon as somebody asks us: “What do you do?” we dissociate from ourselves and try to jump into that person's mind and body, and figure out what they want to know about what we do. And so that's where we start to try to be impressive or try to give them what they want. We try to be a mind reader. And now you're not present with yourself and you're really not even connecting to what excites you about your work because you're so concerned with exciting them about your work.
ilise benun
Right. And you referenced “the comedian's formula” and you said you are a comedian. So tell us what is the comedian's formula and how does it relate to this elevator pitch idea?
Jenn Lederer
Sure. So in a comedian's ‘tight five,’ which just means a five-minute set, the point of it is to give people ... usually there's three different topics that a comedian will cover inside of those five minutes.
To give you an idea of, if you followed me on social media, if you watched a longer set, if you came to one of my shows, this is the kind of thing that you could expect to get more of. So I basically give people the three topics for you to explore and create stories around—which is answering the questions: How do you do what you do? Why do you do what you do? And what's next in what you do?
ilise benun
I love the question, “Why do you do what you do?” Because first of all, I think not many people get asked why do you do what you do?” They're much more focused on the how and the what.
But I think the why is of much more interest, and everyone has a different reason for doing what they do, even if 10 people are graphic designers or copywriters—which is a lot of the people who listen to me—but they really struggle with this question. And I'm liking this idea of bringing the why into it. So maybe, if I asked you, Jenn. You said you're a comedian and a keynote speaker. Why?
Jenn Lederer
So this is actually one of the things that I very recently kind of nailed down—which is another part of this that I emphasize to people is, you're going to be talking about yourself and writing about yourself for a long time, usually, before you start to actually clarify these answers and really feel them as true in your body.
And what I've landed on is why I am so passionate about storytelling and teaching others to storytell is because it's how I've realized that I was queer. It's actually how I got to the core of my own truth, and I started seeing the patterns of the jokes I was writing and the things, the themes that I kept going back to. I was like: whoa, whoa, whoa. Who is this voice? Who is she?
And I've just found and seen in my own clients ... listen, unfortunately, you're not going to all come to the conclusion that you're queer.
Like, sorry, not everyone's going to have that arc. But you do get to peel back your own layers and figure out why you do what you do, how you do what you do, and what makes it so different.
And there's a type of connection that you build with yourself and your business and the stick-to-itiveness that's required to be your own boss, that in those moments where you want to quit, in those moments where you're second guessing everything, when you are really connected to your story, it helps you to keep going and it helps you to use your voice.
ilise benun
All right. So now I have too many thoughts all at once, and I'm just going to pick one and hope the other ones come back.
So I was actually listening to Yuval Noah Harari this morning on a podcast, and he was asked also about his realization that he was gay. And he basically said, "I know it's possible not to know something so core about yourself, "because that was the question: how can you not know?
And so when people really struggle with who they are, especially as it relates to what they do and how to talk about it—because you're not going to go around telling everyone that you're queer or you're whatever it is—but I just was thinking about this. You called it in a previous conversation, “a spiritual experience where you meet yourself” and it sounds like that's what you're referring to now.
Jenn Lederer
Yes, and even before I was focused on storytelling ... you know, I've been my own boss since 2009, and I met every space of resistance within myself through building a business. Every excuse I have to buy into scarcity, to believe that I'm not enough, to focus on everything but my own lane. All of those patterns that keep you small are going to come up when you run your own business.
And when the buck stops with you, and when the truth is, if you don't show up, there is no money coming in, you have no choice but to face these things within yourself.
You know, there's a lot of ways that we can hide from ourselves in life. Not when you're a business owner. You really can't afford to hide from yourself; you have to keep showing up. It's a spiritual experience.
ilise benun
Right. So interesting. I mean, now you're making me think about confidence, and a lot of people, especially people who struggle with this question and blank out when they're asked: “What do you do?” seem to also struggle with a lack of self-confidence. And you sound like someone who's very confident. But I also know that often people who sound confident aren't always, or in certain situations, they don't feel that way. So I'm curious, do you think of yourself as confident?
Jenn Lederer
Okay, so what's interesting is I decided to look up the definition of “confident” and “confidence.”
So, confident, they say, is feeling or showing confidence in oneself. And I was like, well, that's a useless definition. So let's look up confidence: the feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something; a firm trust.
So if we go with that definition, yes, I believe that I see myself as someone with confidence because when I look at my path so far, what I see is someone who, no matter what, gets up again. No matter what, I have my back. I have the ability to pivot, to change my mind, to speak my truth, even when my voice shakes. And that has shown me that even when I don't feel confident, I can rely on my confidence that I have my own back.
ilise benun
Well, it sounds like you're describing being your own best friend.
Jenn Lederer
Yeah.
ilise benun
That's interesting.
Jenn Lederer
Yeah, that's a lot of therapy work right there. (Laughter)
ilise benun
We went very deep, very fast, which I always love. But let's try to bring it back to the practical, a little bit. And you were talking about storytelling, and actually one of my clients last week asked, "How do you tell a good story in real time?" And I was curious how you would answer that question.
Jenn Lederer
Usually the best stories are ones that you've told before. They're the stories that you really know. Whether you have a script about it or not is irrelevant, but you know it in your body. There's a way that when you start telling it, you almost are right back in that moment. And again, you're not telling it to try to get some sort of reaction. You're telling it because you’re connected to it.
And when we are interested, when we are excited, when we are lit up, that automatically invites the people who are listening to also be lit up. Right? When you hear somebody talking about their most favorite food, even if that's not your favorite food, you're like, “I don't know. Maybe I want to try it now because this person is losing their mind over this thing. So I don't know. I'm curious.”
ilise benun
What's your favorite food, Jenn?
Jenn Lederer
Okay, so Italian hoagies, specifically from Pittsburgh; that's where I'm from. And it's a certain kind of “sub” is what they call it in the rest of the land. But in Philly and in Pittsburgh, they're called “hoagies.” And it's something that I get every time I go back to Pittsburgh.
ilise benun
And I love the connection that you're making. I have my version of talking about this. You make a connection, or a distinction actually, between being interested and being interesting. And you're saying, what I hear you saying now is, stop trying to be interesting and instead be interested—whether it's in what you love or what the other person does or says or anything. And I call that “using curiosity as a marketing tool.” What do you think of that idea or phrase?
Jenn Lederer
Yes, absolutely. Curiosity gives permission to not have an opinion about the thing. Right? You're just getting information. You're sharing and learning data about a thing. You don't always have to have an opinion about it or feel that it's right or wrong or good or bad. It's just like, can we create a space where this thing can exist and we can get curious and interested about it? That's innately a fun conversation.
ilise benun
Okay, now you're making me think about another podcast. I heard Tom Hanks was on Ezra Klein recently.
Jenn Lederer
Oh, compare me to Tom Hanks right now. Compare me to Tom Hanks. (Laughter)
ilise benun
And he said “authenticity,” because really what you're talking about is: be yourself, right?
Jenn Lederer
Correct.
ilise benun
Relax and be yourself.
Jenn Lederer
Correct.
ilise benun
That's the main message here when you're answering the question: what do you do? And he said, “authenticity is when you share a moment rather than perform a moment.”
Jenn Lederer
Boom.
ilise benun
Right?
Jenn Lederer
Yes, yes.
ilise benun
I just love that idea. And so if we can relax and just let whatever happens in that moment when we're just trying to share the moment instead of doing a performance, essentially.
Jenn Lederer
That's right. And within that, I would say get comfortable with the silence. If somebody asks you: “what do you do” and you feel yourself dissociate, take a minute, breathe, be like: “You know what? Hold on, I'm completely dissociating from my body right now.”
ilise benun
That's right. Say it right, say it. "My mind is blank. Isn't that bizarre?"
Jenn Lederer
Yes. And then they say, "Oh my God, the same thing happens to me. That's why I asked you first, so you didn't ask me."
ilise benun
That's right.
Jenn Lederer
And now you're connecting. And now it doesn't actually even matter what you were going to say.
ilise benun
Or what you do.
Jenn Lederer
Yep.
ilise benun
Okay, so connecting, right? I mean that seems to be the whole point of this question also, which I don't think most people understand. So talk a little bit about this idea of connecting—what the key to connecting is, because we’re kind of circling around it.
Jenn Lederer
So if I compare it to a comedian's formula, the point to getting on stage is laughter. That's my objective. Now, on the other side of laughter is connection. So anytime that you are talking to any other human, your objective is connection.
Now, you might do that through laughter. You might do that through an authentic or vulnerable story. But the point is not to convert this person or convince this person of anything. If you look at every conversation as: my objective is to connect, then suddenly you aren't worried about that whole impressing them or being the most interesting person in the room. You are present to: is this person with me right now? Is this person buying into the stories that I'm sharing? Or can I see that they're looking around the room; they can't wait to end this conversation. They're trying to get to the bar. And then, by the way, you can speak to that. There are moments where I have been talking to someone and I'm like, "Hey, I actually don't need to finish this statement. You're free to go."
ilise benun
What did they say?
Jenn Lederer
Honesty is a great connector.
ilise benun
I agree.
Jenn Lederer
One of two things will happen. They will either acknowledge, "Yes, you're right. My brain is all over the place. I apologize, I'm present, I'm here. Please keep going and thank you for calling me out."
Or in that moment, oftentimes they will get really honest. Like, whatever I was saying becomes irrelevant because they will tell me what's on their mind, whether it's something they're really excited about. “I have my wedding coming up soon,” or “My sister just had a baby, and I'm just, I'm thinking about all of that.” Or “Someone in my family was just diagnosed with something; someone just passed away.”
There's all of these human things that are happening in our life all the time. We come to these conferences, we go to networking events, and we think that our wholeness of a person is supposed to be compartmentalized, and we're supposed to only walk in with our business hat on.
It's like, no, come in as a whole-ass human and let me connect with that. So if I see that you are distracted, if I have the confidence to sit in discomfort, to sit in imperfection, and then I am the one to lead that and give permission to be curious about why are you distracted? And then you feel comfortable enough to be honest? Oh my God, we're friends forever. We're besties now because we just connected in a way that actually matters. And again, it's irrelevant whatever I was just saying, because we can skip past all of that and actually connect.
ilise benun
And I think the reality is that we don't connect with everyone. In fact, maybe it's rare when we actually connect with someone, whether it's over the fact that you both love dark pretzels. That's one that I've connected with someone over, or Italian hoagies or a movie or whatever it is. But what about when you don't connect with someone? That can be awfully awkward, right?
Jenn Lederer
I mean, I guess, but you can also just move on. It's really not that big of a deal. Do you need everybody in the world to connect with you? How overwhelming. Could you imagine 7 billion people connecting with you? The introvert in me wants to crawl under a rock.
ilise benun
Right. Right. So it's not necessary. I like to say, “Who cares,” right? “Just move on.”
Jenn Lederer
Who cares? And if you're not worried about being interesting, it's actually a neutral experience. It's not good or bad. We're always looking for alignment. We're always looking for real authentic connection. And if we're not in alignment, let me get out of your way because there's somebody here that you are aligned with, so go find them.
ilise benun
And me too. Right?
Jenn Lederer
Exactly.
ilise benun
We'll both find our people. You're looking for your people.
Jenn Lederer
Correct. It's dating, right?
ilise benun
Now. You talked about wholeness; come in with your wholeness. And that makes me think about the compartmentalizing I see people do between their business mind and their creative mind. So talk to that. I know you have some ideas about that as well.
Jenn Lederer
Yeah, I've been in the entertainment business my whole life and I've done a lot of mentoring in several different avenues. And then in my corporate experience, I see the other side of this where business-minded people are convinced that they don't have a creative mind, and creative-minded people are convinced that they don't have a business mind.
And first of all, everybody is innately creative. That is the human expression and experience. Your creativity might have to do with science and numbers and analytics and how you see the world, but that's still very creative.
And then on the business side of things, Fortune 500 companies are bringing in creative minds to stay relevant, in order to know: how do we pivot; how do we evolve from here? That's creativity. The creatives are the ones who can look at a blank slate, who can look at infinite possibilities, and start to say: “This is the direction that we want to go.”
So knowing that as a creative mind, you are not only relevant but one of the most important voices in business in staying relevant. But then also that you have the ability to be a business mind. It's innate in who you are also.
ilise benun
What is that, a business mind, to you?
Jenn Lederer
I mean, it's really about knowing how to package. Right? Knowing how to take your creativity ... When I was a talent manager for five years, I did this a lot with my actors, is taking this thing that is so close to your heart, and being able to step away from it enough to look at it from kind of a disconnected place and see, honestly, where does this sit inside of my industry? Where does this sit inside of the conversation that's being had as a whole, and detaching your personal value from it.
“If this pitch doesn't go well, then I am a failure?” No! It just needs to be tweaked a little bit, maybe. Or that pitch wasn't aligned to begin with; you weren't supposed to be working with that person. So being able to kind of create a little bit of space between you and your product or service to speak on it from just a more impersonal way helps, I think, with the business mind.
ilise benun
And starting with the elevator pitch, cuz as you were describing that, I was thinking, well, it starts in that moment where you have to answer the question: what do you do? And realize from a very objective, depersonalized position that it's really not about you, and you want to say something that will connect with the other person—which may not really be about you.
Jenn Lederer
Yeah. It most likely is not about you, at all.
ilise benun
Which is a bit of a paradox, right?
Jenn Lederer
Right. It's like there's you all over that question. And really it is about the audience. It's always about the audience. Good storytelling takes care of the audience. You take them on a journey and they feel safe to follow you.
ilise benun
And I'm curious, then, what you think of my elevator pitch? Because when people ask me, I say, “I teach creative professionals how to get better clients with bigger budgets.”
Jenn Lederer
I love that so much.
ilise benun
Why?
Jenn Lederer
Because it speaks directly to my goal. It's like, of course I want better clients with bigger budgets. That's an easy “yes” for me. It creates an easy sense of curiosity of like, ooh, okay, so how do you do that?
ilise benun
Do you feel like there's a story in there? Is there a storytelling element to just even that simple phrase?
Jenn Lederer
I think the story that's being told in that phrase is a level of confidence and experience. Right? Innate in that is someone who is connected, someone who has a network, someone who probably has been around the block a few times to know enough people to be able to claim this. So I would say the subtext of that story is someone who really knows what they're talking about.
ilise benun
So that's an interesting idea, also, that your story doesn't need to be overt. It could be covert. It could be implied in the description of the effect of your work. That's interesting.
All right, I have a couple more questions and then we're going to get to the baby step. I think what I wanna focus on ... someone asked me this recently also, and I like to ask my guests the things that people have asked me lately. And we've been talking a lot about LinkedIn in a particular group I'm leading and how to reach out. We do “targeted outreach” is what I call it in the Simplest Marketing Plan, when you reach out to strangers, essentially.
And someone asked me: “Well, how do you reach out to a thought leader or someone that you admire and you just wanna ... like you like them and you want to be their friend maybe, or you're not really asking for anything, it's not a prospect. But what would you say to someone like that?
Jenn Lederer
Well, first, what's the energy that you have in the outreach, meaning take them off the pedestal. Whatever pedestal you have them on, remember that you are both human. You are equal. And speak from that place.
And then, compliment them. Show them that you have researched their work; that you are actually a fan. Maybe share one of the ways that their work has inspired or transformed your life or the way that you move through your own work. And really just speak from that place of, if this person is my equal and I really respect their work and I want to show them that, here's a story I can tell that shows that. That highlights that. I'm not asking for anything.
And the other piece to being equal to them is they're human. They have insecurities. They are doubting themselves a hundred times a day, also. So it's always great to receive messages that remind us that what we do matters. It does not matter how big your audience is, how successful you are. Those types of things matter and people remember how you make them feel.
ilise benun
And I'm going to compare you to Tom Hanks again ...
Jenn Lederer
Yes!
ilise benun
... because he was talking about this in the conversation with Ezra Klein also. And he basically said, when people come up to him and ask him for a selfie ... I don't know if he said he says “no” or something, but he's not really interested. But if someone comes up to him and says, “That time you were in that movie impacted me so much and here's how,” so essentially telling a story, as you're saying, then he really does want to know that because his goal is to have an impact on people. And so when people tell you what the impact has been, I find this too, it is very gratifying.
Jenn Lederer
Yes. That's right.
ilise benun
Really interesting.
Jenn Lederer
Oh God, I'm basically Tom Hanks. So... (Laughter)
ilise benun
I think you would really enjoy that podcast conversation, too.
Jenn Lederer
Yeah, I'll have to check it out.
ilise benun
All right, so, all right. Final question here, Jenn. Do you have a baby step that listeners can take toward their perfect pitch is kind of the through line here.
Jenn Lederer
Open the Notes app in your phone, all right, and have three different areas: How do I do what I do? Why do I do what I do? And what is next in what I do? And for the next week, every day, be open to a different story, anecdote coming to you, and write it down.
Now, here's the thing. These stories are going to come to you while you're in the shower, while you're doing the dishes. Anytime your hands are wet and you're unavailable to write the story down, this is when it's going to come. Okay? So you have to be prepared for that. But I would say just start the conversation with yourself and get curious about these stories.
This is the muscle that I build the most as a comedian, is constantly looking around the world and my world, mining for stories and what it is that I want to share to connect with my audience. And that's how you should be looking at your business. You are constantly mining for stories that showcase you and how, why, what you do.
ilise benun
And I think implied in what you're saying also then is that there's no right answer to this. There's no right elevator pitch. In fact, maybe there's no perfect pitch.
Jenn Lederer
That's right.
ilise benun
And you take all of these elements that come to you over time and not just during that first week. Mine is really constantly evolving, and I keep thinking of new ways I do what I do. And I keep changing how I do what I do, anyway.
So this idea that ... because I think often people (think): “Okay, I got it. Now I've got it,” about their elevator pitch. And I'm like, no, you will never get it. And it will be constantly changing and just get used to it.
Jenn Lederer
Yes. And it should change based on who you're talking to, right? You should read the room a little bit and have, when you have enough stories collected, you can start to know: okay, this story is really going to connect with this person because X, Y, Z.
And so every time you talk about your work, it should evolve and sound different, because as soon as you ‘got it,’ you're going to sound like a robot.
ilise benun
Right? Yeah. All right, we'll probably have to do a Part Two of this because there are lots of other things coming to mind that then disappeared. So...
Jenn Lederer
Great.
ilise benun
I thank you so much, Jenn, for sharing everything you've learned in your process, in your life. And tell the listeners where they can find you online, and if you want to offer something, feel free.
Jenn Lederer
I am at Jenn Lederer on all of the socials and jennlederer.com is where you can go to sign up for my newsletter. I am almost always offering different resources and free things on there. So sign up for my newsletter and you'll get the latest and greatest from me.
ilise benun
Awesome. And that's Jenn with two Ns.
Jenn Lederer
Double N Jenn, baby.
ilise benun
Awesome. Thank you so much. Thanks, Jenn.
Jenn Lederer
Thanks, ilise.
ilise benun
So here's Jenn's baby step. Open the Notes app on your phone and make three categories: What you do. How you do it. And why you do it, and next steps. Then over the course of the next week, make a note every time something comes to mind. This is the beginning of your living, breathing elevator pitch, which can and should be constantly changing and adjusted depending on who you're talking to.
So if you want to build a thriving business on your own terms, the first step is to sign up for my Quick Tips at marketing-mentortips.com. Once you're on the site, you'll find lots more resources, including my Simplest Marketing Plan. So enjoy, and I'll see you next time.
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