How Marketers and Entrepreneurs Can Love What They Do, Be Passionate, Authentic, and Drive Profits

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Welcome to today's episode.

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Our guest today is Beverly.

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She is a author, podcaster and marketing expert who helps entrepreneurs with their marketing.

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Welcome to the show.

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Hi Eric, Thank you so much for having me.

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I'm super excited to be here.

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Appreciate you joining us today, so why don't we start off with you giving us some context, a minute or two about who you?

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are.

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So I am an accidental entrepreneur.

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I had a very long experience in the ad agency space and then I also worked doing marketing VP of marketing for a couple of companies and I loved what I did.

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And when I met my now husband he's in the United States Army in active duty my show had to go on the road.

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Due to a very transient lifestyle, we move every three years and to find a very high level VP marketing position every three years would be very challenging.

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You have to build a network and know people and all the things, and so I started doing just one-on-one consulting with a few people.

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I'm originally from Detroit and so I had a very large network in Detroit and people started to give me referrals and pretty soon I had a legit business.

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So from there I decided I guess I am going to be an entrepreneur and I better make this the best that I can, and so I became an S-Corp, and that was almost 13 years ago now, since I actually endeavored into my own agency space.

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So time flies when you're having fun and being a nomad right the moral of the story.

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It does really fly.

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All right, let's jump right in.

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Why don't you start by sharing a story about the marketing that you've done, that you're most proud of, the best marketing you've done?

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So I think we work mostly with small business owners, small entrepreneurs, so retailers, service-based businesses and in that experience I found a couple of things.

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People have a really hard time understanding their passion and their why in a way that communicates and connects with customers, and I was so busy over the last 10 or so the previous 10 years that doing all the things.

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I think as an entrepreneur, if someone comes to us and says I need this and you can do it, you do it.

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And so, because I was an accidental entrepreneur and I didn't have a strong business plan and vision for my business, my customers built my business and I don't think I'm alone in that.

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I think a lot of businesses just take what they can and do the thing that they love right so that it creates income for your family, and you do love what you do, rates and come for your family and you do love what you do.

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But a couple of years ago I had a reckoning with myself of customers don't get to decide my business.

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I do what I love to do and what brings me joy, and then I find the customers that fit that and I think that has transformed my business and the way that I approach my customers now.

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I had to do some really deep thinking, uncomfortable thinking, to uncover what is my joy, who is my niche?

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How do I serve them and solve their problems?

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Because they have a lot of them problems because they have a lot of them.

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Entrepreneurs are very busy people.

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They have a lot going on.

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They're often overwhelmed, limited budgets, all the things, but how do I still do what I love to do?

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And so I spent a lot of time.

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They say the cobbler's kids have no shoes.

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As a marketer, we oftentimes don't market for ourselves very well.

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So I decided I wanted Louis Vuitton's and I was going to do the marketing that I really wanted to do, and so that's what I intend to do for my customers.

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So one example is one of our customers is a pet food store.

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Pet food doesn't sound very glamorous although dogs and cats are marketing gold, as we all know but she was a doctor of naturopathy, so natural healing from the inside out, from the gut out, and so when people would come into her store they would spend half an hour with her asking about my dog has allergies, my dog is itching, my dog whatever.

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So it wasn't like a transactional experience.

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So we had to uncover that she literally needs to charge for her time.

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And so she started doing consulting and started building a business based on appointment and elevated her brand and her authority to a whole different level.

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And so she's not just a pet food store, she is a place to go to for animal wellness and I think that transformation just totally created a unique opportunity for her and there's no competition for her anymore in that sense.

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So I think, really getting to the heart, and plus it created a lot of more money for her because she was able to charge for her time.

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Bottom line of the results is that and for me it also has really looking at, we call ourselves kind of marketing therapists.

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We get down and dirty, we deep dive.

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It actually can become really uncomfortable to get past kind of the stuff that we're told or we think or we know or we get so in our business that we don't think about our passion and our joy and our vision and our legacy and what really makes us unique, because that's the stuff that makes you authentic and ultimately, at the end of the day, helps you connect truly with your customer.

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Yeah, it's hard to be authentic if you're not passionate about what you're doing, and vice versa, right, those things are dependent upon each other.

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The thing that strikes me is that there's millions of small businesses out there in the US.

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I clarity about what they should be doing and what their passion is.

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What area of marketing for your agency did you decide to focus on?

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Because marketing is such a broad area?

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I can do a thousand episodes on marketing for sure.

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Because it's so broad, it's like I can just be here for the rest of my life doing episodes.

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I'm never going to run out of topics.

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I'm sure of it, but what area did you decide to focus on?

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So we do think there's a couple, two things that I think are more unique or that aren't like every other agency.

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We definitely spend the time.

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We have a brand spark which spends a 90 minute deep dive just to get a blueprint of your voice and your brand and what really makes you unique in the space.

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So that is like your initial and people might call it branding, people might call it, but I think it's clarity, vision and purpose that drives everything afterwards.

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It determines if you're going to do Facebook versus LinkedIn or Facebook versus Twitter, or if email marketing works for you or if podcasting works for you, even because that is space that resonates with them.

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So we spend that time first.

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I will not work with a client and just do a social media template with them.

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I need to know the purpose, their vision.

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I want to get down and dirty and I want to really help them find that clarity, because once you have that clarity, it doesn't go away.

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Once it's there, you own it and it's life changing for a business owner, because now they know how to talk about their business, they know their voice and there's no compromise in that going forward.

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So it becomes super clear.

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And then we also help establish small businesses in a really intensive way.

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So, instead of a website taking a month or two months to establish a basic website not an e-com fully developed website we do it in two days for them so they can get up and running.

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They get their brand, everything they need, the foundation for their marketing up and running in two days.

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We pick two days to work with, but we're literally co-creating the content together.

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Yeah, so you can't start with the tactics, you have to start with the clarity of really what people do and what their reputation is, and, using your example of the store that was selling pet food, it sounds like the remarkable thing there is that you transformed the business by helping them define who they were, because pet food is a commodity.

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You can buy that at the grocery store.

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You can buy it at almost any place, but the expertise and what you should feed your pet is pretty important.

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I actually have a French bulldog, number one dog in America for the second year in a row.

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It is.

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You're right, I'm a marketing therapist, but I also have my own emotional support animal.

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Basically and actually that's the whole point of this podcast is for people to follow my puppy on Instagram.

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Keeping up with Lexi Eden, my favorite job is being her social media manager.

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She has 5,000 followers right now, but sorry that I couldn't resist putting in that plug, we got a plugger.

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Yes, yes, yes.

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We're talking about pet food, but the story resonates with me because it's very important when you feed your pets.

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If you don't get that advice, they just throw up everywhere and it's just really gross.

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So I think that's pretty, actually important.

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Yeah, but not only that.

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What's the ingredients of the pet food?

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And some dogs are allergic to chicken of all the things.

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There's a lot of sensitivities, but dogs have evolved from wolves, so the prey diet and all of that is very important.

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And just because a big conglomerate company says you should feed this kibble doesn't mean it's the right kibble for your dog.

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So understanding what is available, even in the space, is really critical for pet owners.

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I want my dog to be with me for a long time.

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I'm pretty selfish.

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I don't want them to pass away early of cancer and all the things, if at all possible, so I want to feed them the best nutrition I can.

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My dogs eat way better than I do.

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Way better than I do.

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But I love this story because it actually is a good example, but it applies to, I think, most businesses that are B2C and B2B.

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I work with a ton of B2B companies and they really struggle with getting to the clarity of who they are.

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They struggle with an elevator pitch.

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They struggle with getting a tagline that's five to seven words in addition to the name of their company If it's not descriptive.

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I tell companies all the time you have to have a tagline.

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People don't even know what you do.

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And then they struggle to have a headline on their website and just a couple sentences of text to describe what you do.

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And when you're saying you help companies, small businesses, get a website going in two days, that's awesome, because it's not like these websites need to be amazoncom.

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I think people get overwhelmed with the idea of a website.

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They think it's this huge project you can't possibly manage.

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But at the end of the day, you're talking about a couple pages and what's really important is how thoughtful you are about the copy on the homepage and it's not about volume.

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It's actually.

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People make a decision under 30 seconds, so can you have the right couple sentences right?

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Yes, you want to capture their attention quickly, you want to know like trust build that as fast as you can and how do you do that?

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And it's with talking about your passion, talking about your customers and what they say and how you've changed lives.

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She's like cured cancer.

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She can't say cured cancer, but she's literally helped dogs live.

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They were supposed to live like two weeks.

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They lived three years after that diagnosis.

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Those are really powerful things.

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That needs to be front and center because that's going to resonate with me.

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Oh my gosh, she's got that kind of information and knowledge that she can help a dog that has cancer live a longer, more fruitful life for three years.

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That's amazing.

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So you're right, it's five, 10 pages can make the difference on a website.

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And you've seen this across a lot of the businesses that you work with, right.

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I think it's a great example, but this applies broadly, right.

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Oh yeah, there's so much.

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You ask that question and my file cabinet my head starts flying files out of it visually just so you can see what happens.

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But yes, and even for myself, truly to talk about myself as a marketing therapist even that phrase that was something that I realized.

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I spend so much time with these business owners and I learned so much about their businesses.

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I know their pains, I know their frustrations and I talk through that and I hold their hand and I give them the resources and I was like I'm like a marketing therapist, that's what I do.

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Even coming to that for me was so powerful that it changed my entire vision of my business and what I do and what our services should be.

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So if you go to my website, you don't see that I do social media marketing, that I do a deep dive marketing conversation, that I do intensive marketing execution.

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You don't see the tactics, because that's not really.

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Yes, we do all that stuff.

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It's really noisy.

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Over the last two decades, marketing has changed so much.

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But that, I feel like, is the tools.

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But the process is way more important for us than the tools, because I can throw out social posts all day long, but if they're not resonating, it doesn't matter, it's just noise.

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So I don't want to be noisy in a place that's already very crowded and noisy.

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I want the arrow to the target.

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That's what I want.

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Yeah, the science of some of the tactics is pretty interesting.

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I do nerd out on that quite often on the podcast here.

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But I do agree that you really have to start with a strategy and I guess one question I have is around.

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Your book is Marketing for Entrepreneurs, and if you're doing marketing therapy for entrepreneurs, what is it that you advise entrepreneurs to do really at its core to win at marketing?

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So the Marketing for Entrepreneurs book is a quick guide to spark and ignite your marketing.

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So you see behind me the nice fancy flashing sign, but it really there's action steps like to really look, reflect inside, about your entrepreneurial journey, your entrepreneurial spirit, the reasons why you started, your passion, your mission, your core values, your vision, the legacy you want to leave, and to write it down and to create a.

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I call it the soul, the heart and soul of your company, and to have it to reflect on, because we as entrepreneurs are so busy that we sometimes get lost in the weeds.

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Right, we're just balancing all the things all the time and so you can reflect back on it to help you make the choices and decisions for your business that are in congruence with the way you feel.

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What you wrote down, it's a filter to run everything through and it's a quick guide.

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It's an hour and a half, two hours if you do every single exercise and write it out.

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There's an audio version so you can listen to it on a way to work, a way home from work maybe, and then you can do the exercises.

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But it's really about that, like getting centered in your business so that you don't feel so frantic with all the things and if you have this clarity and this filter to run everything through, it makes you excited about your business again.

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I am so excited about my business right now because I know what I want to do and I know how I help people and I know what the legacy is I'm going to leave for my family or for the world, because I do want to make it a better place.

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I get to.

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I get this really cool thing.

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I get to be on a journey with entrepreneurs, ultimately doing the American dream every day, having successes and challenges and all the things.

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I've learned so much from my clients.

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I feel like they learn stuff from me as well, but I've learned so much from my clients.

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The grit and the resilience of people is truly a blessing for me and I just want to make that path a little bit clearer, not so jagged, a little bit stronger and a little bit, like I said, the arrow to the target.

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Let's make the path as easy as possible and with the most purpose that you can have, and then I think everything else falls into place when you have that.

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Yeah, I think marketing is one of the hundred things that entrepreneurs need to master, and they also need to master accounting and sales and product development.

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It's just customer relations.

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The whole thing is.

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Being an entrepreneur is crazy when everything you have to be an expert in, and so when you take the marketing piece of it and helping people get clarity so that they can be excited and love what they do every day, that's how people get to be authentic.

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That's really awesome.

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Let me ask you one other question around reputation, because I think that's part of clarity is, and I think you do some work with entrepreneurs on reputation.

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Talk a little bit about that, because that's unique.

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So my official title is reputation and growth strategist, and so the things we want to do is simplify, organize marketing, elevate the brand and then achieve the next level of success.

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That's our mission right.

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To achieve the next level, whether that is get an e-com store or to open a second location, whatever that looks like for the particular business owner.

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And to me, reputation is key, just like with the naturopath.

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We had to position her as the expert so she could charge for her time, right.

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So how do you do that?

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She started doing more speaking engagements, she was in the community more, she was doing articles, she was being interviewed, all the things to help elevate her brand.

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So people knew that she was the pet nutrition expert in the area.

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And I think that reputation part of it.

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You don't ever really stop that Like you're continuing feeding that so people can see you and know you.

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Again, that know like trust factor, right.

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So it starts with the knowing and then, because you are speaking and you're doing all of these things, you're building that trust, literally.

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Even you, eric, you're in people's ears every day.

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You're whispering to them.

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Whether or not people understand that, you're whispering to them and you're becoming a trusted leader for them.

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So the ways you do that, the path that you do that, I think is really important and it also needs to be resonant to the person who's doing it right.

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So if I force somebody to be on a podcast, that's not going to work.

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You have to do something that you really love and enjoy to be able to come across as that authority and that leader in the space.

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That's great.

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That's really awesome.

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I think reputation is important.

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It's just one of the things that people don't necessarily think about top of mind, but it really drives a lot of the behavior of buyers.

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One more question is you also do a podcast, right?

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Yes, tell us about your podcast.

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So the podcast is Sparketing Night.

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Do a podcast, right?

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Yes, tell us about your podcast.

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So the podcast is Sparketing Night your Marketing and I interview entrepreneurs on the podcast.

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People have interesting journeys and have had challenges and how they've overcome the challenges and their best marketing tactics that they've used to help elevate their business, and it is about 40 minutes an episode.

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I've interviewed clowns.

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I've interviewed I have a fellow who has a safari in Africa like really interesting people.

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A couple of weeks ago I interviewed a Zen priest and we learned about the three breath meditation.

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Like there's just to me.

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I've learned so much and just connecting and hearing their stories are amazing.

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But what's what is nice for me is a common thread that all entrepreneurs have struggled in ways, how they've overcome those and that marketing is a key part of where they are today.

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So that's essence of the podcast, but I really like that part.

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I love it.

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Stay curious, Beverly.

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I encourage everyone to stay curious.

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I'm going to link to your book and your podcast in the show notes so everyone can easily get to it.

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Thank you for being with us today and appreciate you sharing these insights with us.

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Thank you so much.