Hey Bold Leaders. Welcome to episode 62 of The Bold Leadership Revolution Podcast where we train leaders to have the endurance to make an impact.
On the podcast featuring Laura Wright, I mention that if you’re a small business owner, your role is essentially a commissioned sales person. But here’s the thing, this is true for ANYONE — whether you’re a profession, business owner, executive or a parent. ESPECIALLY if you’re a parent.
I don’t consider myself a marketing specialist. As a matter of fact, I hire for that position because while I really enjoy marketing, it’s a HUGE part of my business and I can’t hold it all myself.
However, marketing is an essential part of growing your business so you can show up as that commissioned sales person. Great marketing actually makes your sales job way easier. It creates warm and interested leads for you to talk to and it ensures the people that do raise their hand to work with you have the exact problem you’re here to solve. Great marketing brings a lot of EASE to your business and can systematically do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
Now, while I don’t consider myself a marketer, I am a leader which makes marketing one of my most important tasks. Here’s why…I remember when I was in corporate and in charge of the human resources function.
I asked my team what our role was. It was a trick question. You see, at this point in my life I was running a successful blog, establishing my thought leadership while simultaneously juggling my 9 to 5. It was 2013 and having the opportunity to share my knowledge thrilled me. It gave me a way to serve people outside of the confines of my corporate job.
When you have something to say, you really want people to hear it. Which led me to get incredibly curious about marketing, messaging, writing consumable content and then getting as many eyes as possible on it.
Simultaneously my team would get frustrated when employees wouldn’t read the emails we were putting out or sign up for the training classes we created or didn’t follow a specific process we established. They would blame the employees and the managers.
SO, it prompted my questions: What do we do here? What’s our role?
Everyone unanimously agreed “We hire, train, provide benefits and rewards and we fire.” Pretty typical HR response.
You’re all wrong. I said.
We market and we sell. The fact that nobody is taking action on our services, processes, and trainings is our responsibility because we aren’t marketing them at all. We’re not understanding what their needs are, where the gap is and how we can help them fill the gap. We most likely do but we aren’t communicating it in a way that inspires overwhelmed and overworked people to take action.
What if you looked at every conversation like a sales conversation? You wouldn’t be telling people anything, you’d be listening and inviting them into the solution we already have. And this is true for almost everything in your existence.
People hire me to help them prep for job interviews and negotiate $20K + salary increases. Guess what? I’m training them to sell in that situation. Instead of showing up to the interview vomiting how amazing you think you are all over them, what if you asked questions and listened to the needs of the organization?
Your kid is sitting on Fortnite till all hours of the night. Instead of yelling and demanding. How about you asked some questions, listened to what they had to say and invite them into a mutually beneficial solution? Imposing your solution on them without hearing their perspective will leave you shut out and shut down. Also, pro tip: Your Fortnite issue isn’t a Fortnite issue. It’s an issue with YOUR leadership and something YOU need to take ownership over. And I get it, I’m raising a post millennial who believes he’s the second coming of Ninja. Which is a reference only a parent of a Fortnite addicted youth would understand.
There was a time when I was really stuck with this marketing thing. It was about 2015 and my blog had turned into my business. Meaning I wasn’t just marketing content for content sake anymore. I was marketing with the outcome being sales.
As I watched a slew of people come online and follow new and shiny marketing tactics like moths to flames, I started to shut down. It all felt like these aggressive money grabs with OUTRAGEOUS promises that any intelligent human being could recognize as an empty promise.
Worse, some of these tactics felt like psychological manipulation. At best this was a degree of peer pressure that I don’t think I had seen since middle school.
I know I’m not the only one who feels this way. Many of my clients have come to me for these two reasons:
- I’m not an “online business person”. I’m emphatic on the fact that I have a business that happens to leverage the internet as we should. It’s a tool but I absolutely don’t call myself an online business NOR do I want to work with people who only want to do business online using solely online tactics. If you have no interest in having REAL connections or if you don’t value your local market or you don’t ever want to do business IN PERSON, please don’t ever apply to work with me. My company utilizes the internet to meet new and inspiring leads who want to have the endurance to make an impact. My marketing strategy has a LARGE digital component because that’s the world we live in.
- The other reason why people come to work with me is because after trying the cookie cutters and formulas, they realize it doesn’t quite work as promised. What these people have realized is they have been brainwashed into a belief system that isn’t theres and have lost touch with their own uniqueness. Which is really why people by from you — they buy what makes you unique. Your unique enhances their uniqueness.
SO, as we are rolling through 2019. The year that many people are proclaiming marketing will change, I want you to market like a BOLD LEADER.
That can be done by focusing on THREE things:
- BE HELPFUL
- BE HUMAN
- BE HUMBLE
If you approach ever aspect of your marketing from your market research to your ideal client profile to the problem you solve to how you bring it all together in a message you will be just fine with the intention to be helpful, be human, be humble — you will make sales.
Now here is it what I want you to do, because I want you to always take action on these podcast episodes.
I want you to take out your journal and write about what it looks like for you to be helpful, human and humble. How are you showing up in the world, with your family, with your team providing these three attributes.
Now, if you want an example of how I show up in this way, I want you to download a behind the scenes look at my CEO Debriefs within the BRAVE Society. This motto or mantra is infused into how we show up as a group of business owners to lead shoulder to shoulder.
If you found this podcast valuable, help us develop more bold leaders in the world by sharing this episode with your friends, colleagues, and other bold leaders. Also, if you haven’t done so already, please leave a review. I consider reviews like podcasts currency, and it’s the one thing you can do to help us out here at the Bold Leadership Revolution HQ. We would be so grateful for it.
Special thanks goes to Stacey Harris from Uncommonly More who is the producer and editor of this podcast. Go check them out for all your digital marketing and content creation needs.
Be sure to tune into the next episode to help you embrace your ambition and leave the grind behind.
Important links to share:
Listen in on CEO Debriefs and Get 10 BOLD Questions for your own debrief.
Help more Bold Leaders find this podcast by leaving a review on iTunes
