Because Business is Personal

Jen McFarland on Constructing Resilience in the World of Online Marketing

• Mike Caldwell • Season 1 • Episode 11

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Get ready to redefine your marketing game with our remarkable guest, Jen McFarland. This episode takes you on a journey through the realm of marketing, blending it with the power of empathy and authenticity. Jen, championing the cause of entrepreneurs worldwide, shares her insightful approach and how consistent messaging can transform your relationship with customers, leading to a sales boom.

Busting the myth that a website alone can magically attract customers, we stress the crucial role of proactive promotion and distribution. Jen shares her robust framework for marketing, highlighting how understanding your audience is the key before venturing into technologies like sales funnels. We tackle the challenge of building resilience amidst criticism, an inevitable part of online content creation.

Towards the end, we delve into the significance of taking action and constantly promoting your business. Jen shares her wisdom on crafting a compelling Google business profile and how honesty can shape your marketing strategy. The episode concludes, exploring the profound intersection of empathy and business strategy. You'll walk away with an enriched perspective on marketing, so plug in your headphones and soak up all the insights!

Eager to harness the power of Empathic Marketing to propel your business growth? Get your hands on my #1 Amazon Best Selling book, 'Empathic Marketing,' or book a '30-Minute Gap Analysis' session directly from my website: www.becausebusinessispersonal.com.

Discover a wealth of knowledge in our podcast archives at www.becausebusinessispersonal.com.

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Speaker 1:

Hey, welcome to the Because Business is Personal podcast, the podcast where empathy meets marketing strategy. I'm your host, mike Caldwell, but I'm also known as the marketing medic. Now, the reason for that is because, before becoming a marketing strategist, I actually worked as a paramedic for 12 years, and it was during that time that I realized how important it was to truly understand the problems your patient was facing before you started providing treatment. And it's this same understanding, the same empathy, is just as crucial when it comes to understanding our prospects and making sales, and that's why, in each episode, we'll dissect the art of empathic marketing, exploring how top professionals infuse empathy into their strategies to build stronger relationships, boost their sales and make a lasting impact. So buckle up and prepare to turn up the dial on your marketing effectiveness.

Speaker 1:

Hey, everyone, welcome back to another episode of Because Business is Personal. Today we've got with us the super exciting and dynamic Jen McFarland. She's a passionate and compassionate champion for entrepreneurs, founders and business owners. She built her business to encourage people with great ideas to reach their full potential, particularly women, non-binary folks and people of color. A natural teacher and gifted speaker, jen's committed to providing you with fun stories, stories and great value. So welcome Jen.

Speaker 2:

Hey, thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

So I didn't come prepared. Did you come prepared with a dad joke?

Speaker 2:

Oh, with a dad joke, I mean, there's just so many, I don't.

Speaker 1:

So tell me.

Speaker 2:

Do you have anything to share? You didn't have one.

Speaker 1:

No, that's how we usually start, but I forgot this time.

Speaker 2:

You know it was coming and you didn't.

Speaker 1:

No.

Speaker 2:

I didn't have one because my other bio talks about dad jokes and how much I love dad jokes, so Okay, well, we'll mull on it and we'll come back.

Speaker 1:

We'll come up with something.

Speaker 2:

Don't worry about it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

It's all good All right so, Jen.

Speaker 1:

so let's give us a little bit of background to who you are and who you help.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, so my company is called William and Conker Business. People ask if I help men and I'm like sure you just have to be cool with the business name. You know, kind of believe that we're all in it together. We're all trying to build a thing.

Speaker 2:

I started off in marketing way back when because I could identify a scanner. I'm not even kidding. I was like in an interview and I had done all this design work and stuff and the guy's like what's that? And I'm like a scanner, and he's like you're hired, and I was like really Okay, and so then I worked for a long time as an in-house designer. I did a lot of graphics. I designed educational posters, video covers, you name it. Then I went into the Peace Corps for a couple of years and I lived in Kazakhstan. My husband and I went there and we lived and worked and taught in Kazakhstan for two years. I came back, I got a master's degree in leadership and management, worked as an executive at the city of Portland, helped with their website and boosted traffic at my bureau by like 250%. I got kind of bored with helping nameless, faceless hordes and crowds of people with these huge projects and started my own consultancy. And here we are. Okay, well, cool yeah.

Speaker 1:

It's interesting because I didn't know about your master's degree, because I have a master's degree it's called a master of science and management from Regis University, but it was all. It was mostly leadership stuff. Yeah, and it's funny because I'm so literal. I'm like how is this a science degree? It seems pretty, seems like leadership really a science, I don't know it sure as a science degree or an arts degree.

Speaker 2:

I have an MPA, so it's a master of public administration.

Speaker 1:

Okay.

Speaker 2:

So it was. It's kind of like an MBA for government.

Speaker 1:

Okay, gotcha.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I really thought I was going to work in government forever. I did for about 10 years and then I was like, yeah, I need to do something else. So Okay.

Speaker 1:

So one question I have is, since you're a marketing expert, is how do you define marketing? Because, especially so, it's funny you bring up the government because my buddy Joe, he wants me to do consulting work for the government. He's a consultant in the government. He's like dude. You're like well, it's $1,000 a day per day, it's just easy money. And I'm like but I'm a paramedic and I'm a marketing guy Like I don't know how I could serve. He's like don't worry, it's just a club and you just need to know somebody in the club to get you in. And I'm in the club.

Speaker 1:

So anyway, it was funny because when I was creating my CV for the public sector, he just trashed. He's like oh my God, you just say like marketing and every one of your bio things. I'm like well, that's because that's what I've been doing. He's like well, the government hates that word marketing. In the government you have to use comms. It's all about comms, which means the same thing. We just can't say marketing, but marketing has a different perspective for different people. So how do you envision marketing?

Speaker 2:

I mean I have all these like fancy technical definitions, but I will say that at the end of the day, marketing is getting the word out about the things that you care about. That's it. And then you choose how that is. It can be online, it can be offline, it can be in so many different ways. The one caveat is if I meet you on the street and I go look you up, I better see the same thing. I better see that same passion, I better see that same thing.

Speaker 2:

But really fundamentally and it's one of the things I talked to about with my clients is like you remember when you sold lemonade on the street and how much fun that was? That's all that marketing is, because I tend to meet with a lot of people who are pretty tight about it. They get pretty scared about it. They don't necessarily want to go out and do the things and they've heard so many things about what it quote unquote has to be that if we can strip everything else away and say look, you really care about the people that you serve, you really care about the work that you do and making a difference, talk about that, make offers around, that Share, that that's the marketing. That's marketing is talking to people getting out there and doing things, and I think a lot of people don't realize all of the ways that they're actually marketing now, when they feel like they're not doing any marketing at all.

Speaker 1:

Right, because my differentiation is I hate sales. For me, sales is me trying to convince you to buy from me. I think if you can mark it well, then you're going to be begging me to sell to you. I much prefer that you make that happen by exactly what you said. When I just talk about my stuff out of passion, then people so I'm a crystal executive with Isagenix.

Speaker 1:

It's a multi-level marketing product. That's a protein powder. I've never sold the product. It's funny because all the people that I have sold it to I always feel bad, because for some reason, I feel bad about selling stuff. But when I first started with it, I was just so passionate about it because I lost weight, I was racing faster, I had my best Ironman time ever. I was beating guys that I could never beat before. They're like how are you doing? I'm like, oh, I felt this amazing thing and I would just go on. They're like how can we get it? I'm like, oh, I guess I have to sell it to you. I could find it weird because I feel guilty about that, but they'd be like no, you must. They thought I was trying to keep it for myself because I didn't want them to have the same results, but that's marketing.

Speaker 2:

So then you're creating you didn't mean to, but you're creating all this FOMO which makes it even more attractive, like oh no, you don't want to sell it to me.

Speaker 2:

So that's great, that's awesome. I feel the same way, though. If you talk about things several times and you're different angles of it, you're sharing your expertise. All of these things, all of this passion, all of these things make you more attractive to your customers, and people forget about that. They think that all of that stuff is boring or they just have. There's all these things within our minds that keep us from doing that thing. That's going to help get to do more of that thing that you want to do and that's really the work that I do with a lot of folks is helping with what's going on between the years, so that we can get some things out and get things happening. And that's the real magic, I think, of being a consultant is unpacking what's really going on and what the values of the organization are, and then let's make a plan around that, let's do that, and then things start to really unlock for people.

Speaker 1:

Okay, so that sounds like empathy to me. Yeah, and that's just it. So, as a consultant, it sounds like you empathize, so I'm sure you have a framework that you use with your business, with your marketing, but I think it's not a cast and stone framework. No Right, it sounds like you adapt your framework to where you're customers. So can you give me some examples of that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I think and I think a lot of this comes from having such a varied background I think it's one of the things that I offer that a lot of people don't is.

Speaker 2:

I've done everything from DJing to Peace Corps to executive. I mean it's like I'm all. I'm multi-passionate myself, but the bottom line has always been about marketing and doing marketing. So I have a framework around the repetition and getting things out the door. And then what we do is we just look at all of the options for marketing and I'm like, okay, we're going to sit down, you're going to agree to it's different for everybody, but it's kind of like you're going to agree to do this many tasks that are marketing related. Okay, what are the things that you're going to be able to do when we pick from the menu? And then it's like, okay, now you're going to do that, we're going to put this in the calendar and you're going to go network this many times and you're going to put that in the calendar. And then you're going to track, like, what happened after that? Did you follow up with them? Did you do what you were supposed to do? You're going to write X number of newsletters. You're going to talk about your offers. You're going to do that. We're going to put that in the calendar.

Speaker 2:

So it's really about like we're just mapping things out, we're picking what it is that we're going to do and we get a rudimentary plan and it kind of gets people off the shnide and then they can start running with it and we can start adding complexity. It works really well, regardless of how complicated the organization is, to really get people to go. Oh, okay, now I need to be thinking about it. We don't focus as much on, like you know, marketing metrics as we do about. Did I get out and do it? Did I follow up with the person? Did it result in any clients? Did it result in?

Speaker 2:

You know, because I help service-based businesses, so it's more about clients and dollars and that kind of thing. Then, like you know, how many widgets did I sell? Product-based marketing is a little bit different than services. So, yeah, I mean that's kind of the general framework for, like, say, a marketing plan for somebody who is really confused Like I.

Speaker 2:

And the whole framework came about because I do a lot of mentorship and coaching with female business owners through a project called Accelerate Women. It's a fund here in Oregon, that you know you can get finance to help you scale. And I kept hearing from all these business owners like I don't understand, like why posting on social media is going to help me with my business, and I kept getting the you know or I don't understand email and how that helps my business. Like there was this huge disconnect and so I had to create the framework to say, okay, here's why these things come together. And then, like the light went off and I was like, well, I can do an iteration of this, for regardless of how big an organization is, it just depends on complexity, but the framework is very similar.

Speaker 1:

Okay. So this is interesting because one of the pet peeves I have with some of my clients is they think they're going to hire me as their marketing guy. They're going to say, okay, I've got this widget, I've got the services, sell, go, build me a website and then bring me customers. And it sounds like that you don't think I have the power just to make sales without involving my client at all. Are you saying that's true?

Speaker 2:

I'm saying that's true. I'm sorry, mike, I don't know. I mean, did you go to magic school? I didn't. I didn't get to go to marketing magic school where I could just you know, if I build a website, they will come. That's, it's too bad.

Speaker 2:

And I've had clients like that too I have you know that are that are like we have this website. Why aren't the people just coming? And I'm like, well, did you share the website? No, did you tell anybody you have it? No, what do you mean? And I'm like, well, we talked about it. Like you have to share it with people. And they're like, oh, okay, but what about the SEO? And I'm like, well, part of it is sharing it with other people so they read it. I mean, there is some distribution that goes on. We have these conversations too. And, yeah, I mean I wish it could be. If you build it, they will come with anything. But we live in a world that is very complex and has a lot going on and people are busy, so we have to remind them, not once or twice, but a few times, about our offers and what it is that we're doing.

Speaker 1:

Right Nowadays, every single day, I think, it grows exponentially the amount of distrust and skepticism. And so, yeah, without those consistent touches with your audience, that trust and understanding isn't going to be there.

Speaker 2:

Absolutely, and in fact the number of touches is so funny it's like exponentially more touches the longer I'm in business work. I think it used to be closer to like three to five and now they're like 10 to 100. I'm like, oh my gosh, that's a lot. But it is because of the lower trust. The internet, as great as it is, has also amplified the voices of people who are dishonest, not just people who are honest, and then it means that hardworking business owners have to work even harder sometimes to get their voice above some of the people who are nefarious and don't have good intent.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, because I've worked with some incredible business, great people with great products, and I'm really good at crafting a marketing message. I've got the hook. I've got the big differentiator. I've identified all the false learning beliefs. The offer is killer. With guarantees it's an absolute no-brainer. The sales aren't pouring in because people still don't trust us. I could write anything I want I'm the king of Saïr on my website. It doesn't mean it's true, and so even the guarantees. I see you got the guarantee, but will you honor it? Who knows? So, like I said, the people have to feel like you're something that would welcome to have dinner at your table before they'll buy from you.

Speaker 2:

Now it seems like that's true, and so the disconnect I think that people have is I've set everything up. It's like you're inviting people to have dinner with you and nobody's coming and you're like but I invited you, I've invited you 17 times, Right, they're not coming. And so part of it is that you have to go a little bit deeper. You have to be like well, this is the best fork I could find. I weighed it. It feels perfect in your hand. I've crafted this meal.

Speaker 2:

I spent so much time cooking your favorite dishes and here's why I think that's important to you and you have to keep doing it and doing it. And then they have to decide whether they want to have dinner with you. So it is like a very, a very long conversation and yeah, I mean it is harder because a lot of people I would say a lot of people but there are a fair number of people who don't have good intent and then they tend sometimes to drown out the people who do, and then sometimes there are a lot of people who are very empathetic, heart centered folks who they don't want to intrude. I get so many people who don't want to send out an email or they don't want to.

Speaker 2:

They're like I don't want to bother anybody. And the thing is, if you don't do marketing, if you don't go out and invite people in to what it is that you're offering, then you're just letting the other people win that maybe don't have the best intent and they're missing out on your great product and they're missing out on your copy because they're not going to see it and they're missing out on all of that hard work you did to make everything exactly how you need to.

Speaker 1:

Right, one of my favorite pastimes not my favorite, actually, I don't really like it that much, but I do it. I like to go on to Facebook because I live off the grid, in different things. I'll see a picture of an off the grid cabin with a leg. It's like this is my dream home and it's just a beautiful picture. Right, it's just a motivational or inspirational picture. I like to scroll through the comments to start finding all the negative ones, because there's people who can throw stones at this beautiful like oh, I'd like to see how you do in the winter with no driveway. It's like you know, can't we just accept that? It's a nice picture and this dream that we're never going to do, but we could have dreamed about it. But no, there's the realtace. Like, oh, I don't see any phone lines going into that.

Speaker 2:

I was like come on, you know, and that's why people get it's the trolls right, that's why people get so tight about things like social media and stuff.

Speaker 2:

And it's so interesting because I had a troll on YouTube for a while and it was like every single thing I posted on YouTube and they're all like, hey, marketing is cool, like there wasn't anything that I thought. Anyway, that was like super like, crazy, out of bounds scammy, anything, you know, and it was just like thumbs down, troll comment, you know, and it got to where it was just comical, like I was just like, oh wow, they have, they're so bored they have nothing to do but wait for my new video to come up, you know, and I think that that is what kind of helped me just be like there's always going to be somebody, you know, and I knew that from managing people. But like out in the other, you know, there are those trolls under a bridge who are just going to throw a rock through any window they can find. And we have to keep going anyway, and you have to find a way to kind of laugh at it, which for me, in that case, was dude.

Speaker 2:

Talk about someone who's bored, like I was waiting for my YouTube video so they can make a comment, and but it's hard, right, like you have to build that online armor a little bit if you're going to be out in the public eye and doing things, because there's always going to be somebody. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Because unless you write or present something totally over the top amazing, it's pretty tough to get positive love from strangers, right. Right, there will be a lot of people that do really like it, but they're not going to extend themselves and write anything. And so there's a whole bunch of people that are seeing your stuff and they're loving your stuff. They're not going to be so vocal about it, but you got Joe Troll there who has never missed an episode, watches your entire 20 minute education on marketing just so he can zing you at the end. It's like whoa dude.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, thumbs down, brah, thanks. Yeah. Yeah, peace out, yeah, and it's so funny too, because I didn't even think they were watching it, I think it was just oh, there's Jen, no, so it's just an interesting thing. And you're right, I get that people see stuff and they don't say anything.

Speaker 2:

So what we fill the void with and I think that you find this a lot in working around empathy, because I know that I certainly find it is in that void we bombard ourselves sometimes with all the negative things around what it means when it's just like somebody saw it, they loved it and they moved on with their life, and we're like, oh God, it must have just been so terrible. I better go back and work on it, I better refine it, I better take it down, I'm not going to put anything up for a while. We fill ourselves with all of this negativity instead of just saying, oh, keep going. Yeah, but it takes a while to build up that resiliency, at least it seems in the folks that I work with and I would share with my own stuff too. It's a lot different when you work I did in a big organization all this infrastructure and everything, and then the infrastructure is gone. It's a lot different out here in the wild west.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and you probably experience the same thing if you're posting the YouTube regularly, Like a lot of first times I meet with a customer first time, first time I'm on a discovery call with them. They're quoting my videos and they're saying, like well, I've been following you for months, I finally got ready to reach out and contact you. But that's what your audience has to. Your clients have to remember. It's like there are people positively stalking you. Yeah, yeah, they're checking me out.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know every you know. If you think that you're coming in off the street and they don't know anything about you, you're wrong. I mean the statistics and my first hand knowledge, your first hand knowledge. They just really reinforce the fact that they're looking at reviews. They're looking at your public profiles there. If you have videos, they're watching them. They want to know if they like you. They want to know if it's making sense or not, because when you hire a marketing person or anybody for your business, it's an investment. Right, am I going to invest time with this person? You know, and that's the thing you know people don't necessarily think of marketing as the long game and they run out of patience a lot. And what I really try to reinforce with my clients and out in my writing and my videos is like the worst thing you can do is just give up. You have to keep at it for a while and give it a chance before you know really what's working and what's not working and what it is that you need to do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I just onboarded a client this morning actually, and she's an amazing tax accountant in California and she goes beyond that and she wants to offer a high ticket coaching offer where bookkeeping and tax returns are included. But she sent me her most recent blog posts from 2020 and I was like, okay, I can help you with this, but we're not going to make any sales in the next month or two months Because, like, you're just letting. Well, just, you know, you're just an accountant right now and to go to a high ticket coaching, they've got to stalk you and we don't really have anything recent to be stalked and so you've got to put in that time. Luckily, she's super intelligent when we say, oh, she's disappointed because she wanted to make a sale like the day after hiring me. But when I explained to her, you know the work that's involved, she's like yeah, no, that you know, I get it.

Speaker 2:

I get it Tracks. That makes sense. Yeah, yeah, you know, and that's the thing you know. There are a lot of people who don't want to make content, you know, and it's kind of hard sometimes if you know, without that, you know you're providing people with fodder for, like, making a decision. You know, with every piece of content that you create, and so I'm always trying to worm my way into like, well, what about this? You said you didn't want to write blogs, but where did you make a video? Okay, you won't make a video, but like, what about? Like an email? Like, will you do that?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Like I'm always trying to figure out like what's the soft spot.

Speaker 2:

You know it's like because when people are so adamant about not wanting to create content, then they don't understand how many you know. Other windows kind of close at that point in terms of what it is that you can do and we have to keep kind of exploring like how we're going to get the word out. You know, because the thing is like we can talk about like earlier I mentioned things like networking and stuff, but at a certain point you know the word of mouth and networking you're not going to be able to like scale at that point. You know you can always reinforce things and do things, but when you're trying to get out in the public eye and do and have like high ticket items and have people coming in, like sometimes you've got to step into the limelight and you've got to blog more often than every three years or four years, like the blog from 2020, you know, when I stumble upon websites that have a blog from three or four years ago, I'm like are they still around?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, Are they just paying for?

Speaker 1:

this website. Yeah Well, that's what gears, because it's my understanding that you once wrote quite the controversial blog post yourself. Yes, I did. Tell a little bit about that in the. Let's call it the fallout, the fallout.

Speaker 2:

You know it's so interesting so I think I wrote it. You know, I always kind of look back. I think I wrote it in like 2019, 2018. I wrote a blog post about ClickFunnels. That was. You know, reasons why you should or shouldn't use ClickFunnels and what to do instead. And the thing about it is, if you've ever I'm sure most people have heard of ClickFunnels, most people have heard of Russell Brunson. They've done all of the things If you ever look up ClickFunnels reviews, almost every single ClickFunnels review is like you need to buy ClickFunnels. Here's my affiliate link, you know. And so one of the things that made what I wrote so different was that I was like well, you know, a no affiliate links. B I'm not an active customer. C I'm somebody who's supported other people who've had ClickFunnels. So I've written.

Speaker 2:

I wrote about like who it works for, who it doesn't work for, about the FOMO that it creates and that whole excitement around getting somebody to buy a new product. And then the aftermath of like a product that maybe doesn't always perform the way it promises the people who are marketed to about it that can't generally afford that kind of product, maybe their business isn't ready yet for like a sales funnel and a whole online like sales, a whole online marketplace, basically created through ClickFunnels because it's a little bit more advanced of a product really for like who it's marketed to, which are, like they, at home moms who want to sell printables or something like that. That's who they market to and then, but the people who are really successful with it have a big audience and a team and are really well-developed salespeople. So I wrote about all of that. It was very cathartic, felt very good because I work a lot on SEO. I SEOed the heck out of it and here we are like five years later. I keep updating it and doing the work and under ClickFunnels reviews, I'm like rank number two. I get unbelievable traffic from it and I was in a documentary as the person like sitting on the couch in the basement saying no, yeah, you don't need all that. Yeah, no, nabra, it's not that important. Well, they're like interviewing all these high flyers and so I really hope it comes out. You know it's called Click the Link Below and you never know with the documentary if it's going to actually make it to theaters or not.

Speaker 2:

It was such an interesting experience because I was like we always tell our clients write something controversial, go out on a limb and talk about the things you're passionate about. And then I did it, and then all this stuff happened and I'm like, see, and I can tell my clients Because they had a it was a Swedish, a couple of Swedish men who were making this film, and they were like zooming me in and they hired, like this local, like Emmy winning cameraman, and like there's somebody in my house right now doing like professional lighting and mic'ing me to talk about ClickFunnels. Like this is the weirdest thing I've ever heard, you know, and I have so many clients and people who talk about things that are far more interesting than this. And here I am and so I'm kind of like you can write about anything and you have no idea, like what kind of attention you could get, and so it's really a good lesson in going out on a limb and talking about the things that you care about, and even if it's different, you know, I've never really gotten a lot of. You know, nobody's ever given me low back.

Speaker 2:

I've had employees, former employees from ClickFunnels, saying, well, you're not wrong, I've gotten messages and stuff, and you know, and it's just kind of I'm surprised you gave it two stars. So, like you know, so it's just kind of an interesting experience and it's a it was an interesting experiment, you know, and kind of how you can generate a lot of interest and excitement by being different and sharing an experience that runs counter to, you know, all of the you know programming out there. So, yeah, I did that. It was a thing Very cool it helps to be a good writer.

Speaker 2:

I will say that Definitely.

Speaker 1:

So that's one type of marketing and I call Russell with love a hopeium dealer, like he just deals in hope, right, and it's so addictive and he's not the only one who does it Like we're all getting hit by Frank Kern and his stuff. I don't remember, like last year he had this big offer of how he generated whatever like $7,412 and a single day with zero ad spend. Let me show you how to how you do it. Well, first, you just need, you know, 1.7 million followers. If you got 1.7 million followers and a decent offer, you can make that sort of money. But all these guys are like, look, how easy it was for me, you can do it too. And I'm not taking anything away from Frank Kern because it's easy for him now, right, but he did the work then.

Speaker 1:

Exactly, there's a reason he has 1.7 million followers right and he can throw an offer and make the money. But so many of these hopeium dealers kind of skip that part just to the like. You know, I sent out an email and made $7,000. Who wants to see the email? Like, yeah, I've got like seven people I can send that email to. I hope I can make some decent money.

Speaker 2:

My mom's in the market, Like, yeah, I mean it's, you know, it's just, and it's funny and it's sad because what happens then is people start like using these tactics on people they know and they can alienate themselves if they don't know what it is that they're doing. And I've never heard the term hopeium dealer, but yeah, I mean that's. Yeah, it's a lot of FOMO. You feel like you're going to be part of this big community and it's going to be so great. You're going to make all of this money. And it's hard for somebody like me who comes in and like kind of throws water on the fire, because I'm like, well, all of that is true and there's all this infrastructure that has to be in place in order for that to become the reality. And so what I, what I really want for people is to scale responsibly, and that's what a lot of my offers are about, because I have a really technical background.

Speaker 2:

So a lot, of, a lot of times, we're looking at the processes that are broken and positioning them for growth so that they can do it. You know, because what happens is they invest in something like a click funnels and then offers it. It's like offer island, like nothing, talks to anything else and things take longer than they think it should. There are so many stops and kinks in the hose in the process that you know reducing costs, streamlining, so you offer like a really like solid gold onboarding process and everything like that. These things are what helps you grow an audience, like because everybody has a good experience, they tell their friends and then, after some of those things, then you can think about like a click funnels or some of the some of the Hopium dealers might be, it might you might be time for some of the.

Speaker 2:

The other thing I tell people is like it's cool that you watch Gary Vaynerchuk, but if you really want to know about the hard work it took for him to get there, go to the very beginning of of Wine Library. You know, I know, see, even your dog agrees. See, I have the same problem at my house. Man Can never bring a dog, a ball and two dogs in the house.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, this is. They've got a thousand toys and there's this one orange ball. That is the much coveted must have ball.

Speaker 2:

We have one of those. We try to hide it and they always find it.

Speaker 1:

See if they're calling, but yeah, I mean it's, it's just really hard.

Speaker 2:

You know it's hard for people to navigate all of it. And they see the Frank Kearns and the Gary Vaynerchuk and they see all these people after they've done all of this practice and they've gone through the hard part and they didn't when they didn't have anybody. And then they see it now and they're like well, I want that, but I don't know. I don't know if you ever watched the TV show Seinfeld, but it's kind of like yada, yada yada, I'm a millionaire like, and it's kind of like well, yeah, but each yada is pretty important.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah that's where you get there.

Speaker 1:

That's a good one. Yeah, it's funny. I'm in one of the funnel building groups not click funnels, let's call it XYZ funnels and I was following your, your, your advice and like getting content out there, and I was posting in that group you know quite regularly about the strategy, about the messaging, and one of the admins asked me not to post so much about that stuff because it wasn't about XYZ funnels. I'm like because they just wanted like how do you automate an email system? How do you make the font blue? How do you? I was like none of that stuff matters.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, if you don't have the message like well, you know, I kind of understand, but we really always want to keep our platform about, you know, the funnels. Yeah, and that's one of the biggest things is everybody thinks that the funnel is going to do the work and it's just a delivery system.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, yeah, cause they asked. They asked me in the documentary like what's the definition of a of sales funnel? I was like it's a sales process.

Speaker 1:

Right.

Speaker 2:

And then there was like all this silence, because I think they expected like some big, dedicated thing and like it's your online sales process.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, Cause like and it only works yeah. Like we got to like yeah, I know, you know we make fun of Russell and stuff, but we, we both give them huge props and credit.

Speaker 2:

Huge props yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, and cause he was the one who said websites are dead. Right, that was. That was mind blowing. What do you mean? Websites are dead, you don't need a website, you need a sales funnel. So, with his definition, it's, you know, it's a one problem, one solution and website, whereas the reality is what you're saying is a funnel starts from your organic posts. It starts from, you know, talking to somebody on the street and it ends, you know, maybe a couple of weeks, months later, with a phone call and the and the close. It's not those, you know, three landing pages in the middle.

Speaker 2:

See, and it's not, and it's not. I'm not throwing shade at Russell Brunson. He's fabulous, he's brilliant, Like that. That's not the point. The point is that you can't add any technology, whether it's XYZ funnels, click funnels, WordPress, whatever. You can't do that unless you know what you're doing and what works, because that's what makes what makes click funnels work is the magic of knowing what your people want and how to deliver it in the online space. And you do that through messaging, you do that through, like, touch points and ads and all the different things that you have to do to make the funnel go. You're right, it's not about if the button is orange or not. You know, and honestly, it truly doesn't matter how pretty the funnel is either. It's really like do people understand what I'm trying to do here? Is it a reflection of who I am? Is it a reflection of my sales process? And if you can check all the boxes and people know, like and trust you, then it's going to work Exactly.

Speaker 2:

But nobody wants to hear all that. They want the magic software. The magic software. It's like the magic beans, you know.

Speaker 1:

I think I got my hand slap for being negative before too, because somebody was talking about you know all this tech behind their coaching thing that they're going to offer. And somehow I got I'm like, have you sold any yet? Like, oh, no, it's not built. I'm like you don't have to build it. I'm like does anybody want to buy it? Have you pre-sold it at one tenth of a cost? Like, no, I'm going to wait until it's built, because people, it's so much fun to build stuff like click funnels or whatever. Oh, yeah, they're building.

Speaker 1:

They have this huge thing and with all the buttons and the bells and the whistles and you can track how much videos they watch and all this stuff. But then it's the ugly part of having to sell it. And so people again, it's a build it. They think, oh, I'll just build it and then they'll sell. And I'm a big believer in you got to whatever you're, I don't care what it is, you got to pre-sell a couple of them. Like, just just, I don't, I don't give yourself for a dollar. Just like, will somebody buy it?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, you know, I mean it's and it's hard right. You know, I mean I have a community, an online community. I have people in there and and they're I'm like I keep saying we got to get out of tweak mode. It's about doing it. I'm giving you things that you can be doing, but it's still about prioritizing and executing and doing it. You can't just be build, build, build. It's got to be pre-sale release. You have to go through a whole launch cycle if you're going to do that, because, yeah, you're right, it's fun to build. I took myself off of WordPress. As somebody who develops and works in WordPress, I was like I don't need to be tweaking my own website all the time. I need to be talking to more people. The answer is sometimes you have to take some of that stuff out of your own hands. You make it less fun for yourself to tweak everything so that then you can get more in the execution mode.

Speaker 1:

I know Russell a little bit personally and he's a bit of a perfectionist. The stuff he puts out has a lot of thought behind it. Do you think Frank Kern has ever put out anything even close to perfect? Like Kern will just be sleeping in bed. He's like I got an idea. He gets on his phone and he sells it. He's figuring out what he's talking about as he's going. He had no idea when he started the live what he was going to talk about. He just offer, offer, offer after offer. He just waits and most of them fail. Something clicks. He's like oh, who knew that would click. Then he gets his team to start pushing that one thing. But he sells everything before he makes it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, no, yeah. You have to do that, otherwise you're just in constant development mode. That's the whole philosophy around. Fail fast, you just put it out there, just keep putting it out there. Then if it's not going to work, then you have to abandon it. The problem is a lot of people get too attached. I've done that before too. I think everybody's done that. You get too attached to the idea and you don't want to pre-sell it, because what if people don't like it? It's like well, yeah, because that means you need to come up with another thing.

Speaker 1:

You said you got to get past the trolls. That's not hard to do. How do you get past? I said not hard to do. I said that's not easy to do to get past the trolls. Then you've got failure. Failing is hard. You've got your baby. You put it out there. Everybody says, oh, your baby's ugly. How do you get past that?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, everybody's different. How you get through that is pretty personal. I think it's a lot easier the more that you know about your ideal customers. What happens a lot, I think, from what I've seen among clients and other people, is they haven't necessarily done enough of the work beforehand. They get pretty frustrated then when things don't go as they expect. There shouldn't be a ton of surprises on, especially like a high ticket offer. That means that you've done some things beforehand that lead up to it. Hopefully You're not just building toward this offer without testing it. People don't realize how much of marketing is a test. What Frank Kern is doing is testing. He's just like I'm going to throw this offer out there. If it works, we're going to make it, if it doesn't, well.

Speaker 1:

I'll throw it with something else.

Speaker 2:

That's the thing. A lot of people get too attached to that first idea, not knowing that there's other ideas behind it. There's other things that can come. I don't really have that problem because I have about 1,000 ideas a day. I acknowledge that not everybody's like that and it can be agonizing to feel that failure because the conversation around success is so much about all the good parts. We don't really focus on the fact that you have to fail in order to succeed. I can't think of any time in my life where I succeeded without some sort of failure before it. It's just that we don't talk about that. We're conditioned to not talk about that.

Speaker 1:

Success after failure is so much more valuable because if you succeed after you fail, you know what caused the success. If you succeed out of the box, people are like what did you do, I don't know? It was funny. I was watching Jimmy Fallon with Keith Richards and he had an acoustic guitar and he's playing Jumping Jack Flash. Oh my God, wow, that just sounded amazing. Jimmy Fallon asked Keith Richards how did you do that? How did you make that dollar store acoustic guitar sound like an electric guitar? Keith's like I don't know. He's like I know I can do it. I just don't know how I can do it. Nobody else could have picked up that guitar and made it sound the way Keith Richards did. And he doesn't know how he does it. He doesn't purposely do it, it's just what flows out of him. So when something just flows out of you like that, it's hard to reproduce. Keith can't teach me to play like he can because he doesn't know. He doesn't know how. Right. And had Keith work to develop that sound, then he could teach other people.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, there is something to genius, right In some ways. Michael Jordan can't teach people how to play basketball like him, keith Richards can't teach people how to play guitar like him, to an extent maybe even like Russell Brunson and Frank Kern, and some people can't teach you exactly how to do it. Some of that stuff has to be within yourself and you have to be willing to face the failure a million times. If you think about a musician or a basketball player I can't remember the stats now on Michael Jordan but you think of him as the person that you want to take the last shot. He missed a lot of last shots Right, he missed more than he made, but we remember the ones that he made because they were in the biggest moments. But there's a lot of shots that we miss, but the thing is you still have to take the shot. That's right. That's the thing that I want to encourage people most of all is take your shots and then take your lumps if it works or not.

Speaker 1:

So I think this is it. So I'd like to close the interview with what is one thing that somebody can implement today to move the needle, and I think you might have been saying it right there, so let's just reiterate that.

Speaker 2:

Take your shots, get out there and do it. You have to start taking action. That isn't in the planning phases, it isn't in the I'm going to build the thing. You have to start talking about things publicly. You have to start sharing your offers, sharing your deals and getting it out there. I can't hear you. You coughed on, you coughed on, I did it backwards, you did it backwards.

Speaker 1:

For those of you listening and not watching I unmuted when I started coughing and then I muted when I was done coughing, so let's start again you don't want me to cough through it, or you don't want to cough through it.

Speaker 1:

Wow, damn it, all right. So, jen, I think you're, so we'll just start back with the one take, with I'll edit that coughing spasm out, because that's where I cough through. So, jen, I think you've already just sort of said this, but I like to end each interview with one thing that you can do right away to start moving the needle. I think you've kind of said it with taking the shots. Just want to reiterate that for us.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. So remember at the very beginning when I said marketing is getting the word out about the things that you care about, and then you do it over and over and over again and you have to take those shots. You have to get out there, you have to do something to talk about what it is that you're offering, and then you have to practice enough on that that you find the thing that you like to do and that you're willing to fail at and do it. You have to get out of this space of when it's perfect, I'm going to do it, or when it's all built, I'm going to do it. Those start to become excuses. They're not always excuses in the beginning, but at the end it becomes more of a barrier. So what we want to do is break through those barriers, start taking a few risks so that we can start to see the rewards, because you'll never get there unless you start getting out there.

Speaker 1:

Very cool. So if people wanted to learn more about you or ways that you could help them, do you have anything for my listening audience, for your listening audience?

Speaker 2:

If you go to womenconquerbizcom, I have a few classes there that are free that you can get into how to get 5% more leads from your Google business profile, which is, believe it or not, a really big thing that you can do, oh my gosh.

Speaker 1:

So I just want to touch on that for a second 5%. I want 500%. Jen, why are you saying 5%? Why can't I get 500%?

Speaker 2:

Well, you can, because if you're not getting any leads at all, then you can get 500%. It's because I'm honest, I'm not going to tell you you're going to get 500% more leads. Statistically, people can get 5% more leads from a good, well-written Google business profile.

Speaker 1:

Okay, and that's so. I, you know I was being tongue-in-cheek there because that's something else like and I don't know why I don't usually talk about Frank Kern this much, but Frank did some. He was showing his ad agency and he was saying, yeah, he's got a few different ad agencies and one of them was consistently getting him $2 for every dollar he spent. I guess he'd forgotten about them. He's like oh, I went into this account and they're getting me like $2 for every dollar. And he's just so excited about that. And because that's the reality, like so many of the big the Hopium dealers are like you know 100 times your thing, right? Or you can make all this money with no ad spend. And it's just so nice to hear somebody like be open and say you know what? I can get you 5%, because 5% is awesome, especially if it's, you know, compounded, daily sort of thing, right?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, that's the thing you know and so, yeah, I guess it's not like hot marketing copy, but it's the honest, the honest marketing copy of you know, hey, if you're not getting anything from it, if you wrote it once and forgot about it, hey, let's just remember that and make this part of our workflow and you might see 5% bump or maybe more.

Speaker 1:

Right, so very cool. Yeah. Well, jen, again, it was great having you as a guest. I love, like my individuals. I loved your honesty. I loved your. You don't have any Hopium to deal to us. I love that. It was great chatting with you. Thanks, yeah.

Speaker 2:

Thanks, it was great meeting you and, yeah, just glad to be here. Thanks a lot.

Speaker 1:

All right, thanks. And that is a wrap for this episode of Because Business is Personal. Thanks for joining us and don't forget to take advantage of my two special offers. First, you can get a free copy of my bestselling book, empathic Marketing. You just pay for the shipping. Or you can have 50% discount on my Gap Analysis session with the coupon code. Podcast. Let's head over to wwwBecauseBusinessIsPersonalcom or check the show notes for details. If you've enjoyed today's episode, please don't forget to follow, subscribe, leave a review and share the podcast with others who might benefit. Your support means the world to us, so stay tuned for our next episode, where we'll continue to delve into the intersection of empathy and marketing strategy. Remember, because Business is Indeed Personal, every connection counts. Until next time. See you then.