[social_warfare]

SHOW NOTES

We’ve rebranded! The Hirsh Marketing Underground Podcast is now officially The Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast. 

And for the first episode of our rebrand debut, I’m calling out the digital marketing industry.

There’s this mindset in our space that once you get your funnel “perfect” you can just sit back and let it run on autopilot without ever having to lift a finger again.

Spoiler alert: That should NOT be your goal.

That kind of thinking is exactly why businesses like Blockbuster crashed and burned. Had they been more willing to pivot and adapt when the market started changing, maybe they’d still be around today.

If you don’t want to end up like Blockbuster, tune in to today’s episode to learn more about the importance of being able to pivot and adapt, even when you do have the “perfect” funnel.

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Emily Hirsh:

Hey guys, and welcome back to the podcast. I am excited for today’s episode. I have been thinking about this one for a few days. It’s been on my mind. It is going to call some things out in the industry, which I love doing. I’m also so excited because our first Not For Lazy Marketers Club workshop is happening on Thursday this week and it’s all about strategic ad targeting. So this club, if you haven’t heard about it yet, and these workshops are going to be next level training, so higher level content and information, than like a free webinar. And then also, it will have opportunities for hot seats, getting your questions answered. I will be there live with our members. As a member, you also get access to our private podcast feed, which has awesome, super short, less than 10 minute actionable content pieces we release, and a texting community so we can provide you support with your marketing in a super affordable way. 

It’s awesome because we created this so that clients and our students can be a part of it, as well as people who are maybe like checking us out, seeing my process, just getting that little bit of support to build that trust. So that’s notformazymarketers.com/club to be able to join that. Then we’ve officially rebranded this podcast to the Not For Lazy Marketers Podcast. So I am super excited about the rebrand. More will be coming in the coming months around this rebrand. And I can’t tell you just, it feels so in alignment, the name and what we’re launching. 

So with that, I have, I have spent a lot of time, over the weekend and the last several days trying to create space for me to think. I was telling my, my friend the other day, it’s amazing how when I started my business, I just woke up every day, dove into email, hustled. I didn’t have work-life balance, or work out, or have free space and white space. And then now that I’ve created this schedule where I need, you know, a couple hours a day of free space, I need to have a walk without stimulation and just like time to think. Part of it is that as you become a bigger CEO, you have to make more decisions and you get that, you just feel that decision-making fatigue all the time, but also when you’re used to having that time and then you don’t have it, you really feel that. 

So after the week I took off after Christmas, I feel like I’ve just been like going a hundred miles an hour since then on calls, onboarding a new team member, working on projects like new ones, webinars, all the things. I felt a little bit over committed and I’ve noticed that I don’t have the capacity for that anymore. I can’t work late at night. I’m not effective. I probably was never effective doing that, but I used to just kind of accommodate and make that happen. And now I’m just a lot more sensitive to it. So it’s interesting. So I have to have that time to think, and one of the things I was thinking about over the weekend is this idea that when you just do this one thing, or make this one hire, or finish this one project, or launch this one webinar, then everything will be perfect. Then your business will run on automation. You will have leads. You will have sales. You will deliver a perfect product. Maybe not even perfect, but it’s easy. This easiness that you want with your business. 

And I was thinking, you know, I talk a lot about how playing the long game is putting in the work, is committing to a business that’s going to be here not just for the next year, but for decades. And that is something I really embody in my own brand, but I started to notice this thought that I was like, something is wrong because I always have a project that we’re working on or something that I need to fix, or that idea of just if I do this one thing then everything will be fixed. But that’s never the case. When I hire an assistant, I don’t all the sudden have 10 hours of time a week. It gets filled up with other things. Or, you know, when I launched that webinar, there’s another project we’re working on, another launch, another initiative. You’re constantly creating those things to stay on top of everything, to stay innovative, to stay relevant, to stay, you know, on your toes as a business owner. So I started like thinking about how in my mind I was like, for the last six months have kind of been like, well, as soon as we do that thing, then everything will be fixed. 

I realized like, that’s not the goal. The goal is not to just sit back and have your business run on automation because you’ll become irrelevant very quickly. I started reflecting on big companies, and big companies and also big influencers and clients we’ve had the opportunity to work with, and kind of what the behind the scenes looks like. It doesn’t matter if they have an eight figure plus company or they are six figures, and obviously in more of a hustling phase when you’re at six figures, even an eight figure plus company has tons of projects and initiatives happening. The difference is that as you grow, you can protect yourself with your team and hopefully delegate more so you’re not hustling as much, but you always have projects and initiatives. 

And how this really carries over in marketing is I noticed this overall kind of thinking that some people have, and I think it comes from a lot of the digital marketing brands that kind of were like, make a funnel, sit back and just do nothing and like, sit on the beach and your leads will come in, and your sales will come in, and that means you never have to do any more work once you get that one funnel working. I think that the concept, I understand that you want to create a customer journey, a funnel where you’re consistently getting leads and sales in a pipeline, a hundred percent. That is the goal. But people kind of over promote this, or think of this idea that once you get a converting funnel, then you don’t have to do any more work. And it’s not true. Even successful people are constantly improving or putting out new things because you have to, to stay relevant, especially in today’s world. 

On Facebook, in the digital marketing world, things expire a lot faster. Your webinar title, it probably needs to be updated about once a quarter. Your messaging, you’re going to need revamps and new ad copy and new messaging about once a month at minimum, maybe more. You’re going to need to record a new webinar, you’re going to need to create new funnels. Once you have one working on autopilot, it doesn’t mean that one just sits there and you can scale that endlessly. If you want to continue to scale your business, you might have to create new initiatives to bring in leads to the same product. You might have to do a live launch. You might want to create a referral, you know, effort to bring referrals. And you are constantly going to be creating new avenues to bring in leads, to bring in sales in your marketing. 

Once one is working, that doesn’t mean completely scatter your attention and put like 5% of your attention here, and 10% over here. It means when you have one thing working, now that’s an avenue to bring in sales, to bring in applications, to bring in leads, and you can continue to scale that, but you might also need to create other things. You might also be wanting to launch a podcast. You might also, like I said, want to leverage referrals or organic social media or your connections in a dream 100 strategy. I don’t know what it is for your business, but there will always be all those things if you are growing, because if you’re not growing, then you’re going to just sit back and be like, well, I got my one webinar funnel and I’ll just let it go right into the ground until it stops going. Because if it doesn’t have any attention on it, it will have a lifespan on it. The content will become irrelevant. The messaging will get saturated. It will dry out. 

And yeah, I’ve just seen a lot recently, people who are like, well, I want to grow business, but I don’t want to do work. Or I just want to create, you know, it’s not even about just they don’t want to do work, it’s this idea that you are failing if you have to go and update and create new initiatives and continually work to drive your sales, to drive your leads, to drive your marketing. And I’m talking about this relevant to marketing, but it’s also relevant completely in the delivery of your product or service. There’s always going to be room to improve major things like your onboarding, or the way that you deliver your product, or your retention rate to your membership site, or your course completion rate, whatever those things are.There’s always ways and methods that you’re going to be able to put your energy into to improve that. 

So my friend, Alex Charfen talks about the myth of a perfect business, which I know that, but I still found myself in this place that I was like, well, once I do all these things, then I’m done. Then I won’t have to do this new initiative, or create this new webinar. And while I don’t think that you have to continually hustle all the time, I think that you have to have an ability to adapt and to pivot, and to stay relevant and to stay on top of industry trends, and what’s working, and what your audience is responding to, what they need. And you have to have the ability to do that quickly, or you will become irrelevant. 

You know, there’s big companies out there, like an example would be like Blockbuster or Microsoft, right? They did not pivot and adapt fast enough in their industry, and other companies came in, swooped in and took the market share. So they were maybe sitting back in like, well, we got our customers, it’s working, you know, we’re not going to change anything, this is the way we do it. And that’s an example of what happens if you do that. Whereas, if you compare like Apple, and Netflix, and Uber, and all these massive companies, you will see that they are constantly pivoting and adapting. Someone just told me, I don’t really watch a lot of TV, but someone just told me that Netflix has like these watch parties where you can all play the same show at the same time and then there’s like a chat. I’m like, that’s so cool because the COVID, they created that. And because my friend told me that there was another site who made this opportunity to go and do that, it was a third party, but they like kind of used Netflix’s name or something like that, and Netflix came in and either bought them or like created themselves. I don’t know the exact details. That’s an example of they didn’t plan to have to do that, but COVID hit, they had this massive opportunity to leverage their customers, to leverage people wanting to watch shows together and have a watch party. They rolled it out. They implemented it to their users. They pivoted, they adapted, and they stayed relevant, which eliminates the opportunity for a competitor to come in and take that market share.

So that’s a big example, right? Like we’re not Netflix, I’m not Netflix too. You’re probably not in that, you know, that size, but what I’m trying to say is if you compare companies like that who are so successful, billion-dollar companies worth so much, they’re still pivoting and adapting. They’re still creating new initiatives in their marketing, new initiatives in their delivery, new ways to attract and bring in customers. They never just stop and sit back and say, well, like we made it, so we’re just going to stay here. we’ve got a successful business forever. And for some reason in the online industry, there is a lot of people who think that is how it works. And I had this realization that as long as I’m growing, as long as my business is scaling, I will constantly be having to create new initiatives to bring in applications. Our goal last year was to have about 40 applications per month. And we hit those goals. Now it’s 80 applications and we’re close to there. And I want to actually scale that to over 150, by the end of the year, I cannot do that through one single webinar funnel that I just spend endless amount of budget on. 

And don’t mistake this for being counterintuitive to my advice of one funnel, because I’m still promoting one offer, but I’m putting my energy and effort into different initiatives. So for me, that might look like I have an automated webinar. I also do a quarterly live secret podcast series. We also have a complete referral process to encourage referrals from our clients. We have organic social media goals. We have Dream 100 goals where we’re reaching out to strategic contacts, and PR goals. So I have a team and I’m able to get a lot more done than a single person could. So that means you might not have the capacity to do that many projects. So don’t mistake me saying you need multiple ways to bring in leads and sales in your marketing with you need to like 15 funnels. You need to get one thing working and needed to continually scale that, but that doesn’t mean you just sit back and do nothing. 

And so if that is your goal, or not even your goal, but you think that is possible where your business is going to just like reach this point where you don’t have to pivot, you don’t have to adapt, you don’t have to change your messaging, your webinar title, whatever it is. If you think your business is going to get to that point, think again, because that’s not the reality. That’s not the way it works. Things in our world are going to change drastically every year, just like they did last year, and you have to stay relevant. You have to stay on your toes. Now, Netflix, the founder of Netflix, right? He stopped sitting there doing this anymore. He probably was in the beginning, but now he has a whole team who does it for him. That doesn’t mean the company itself stopped pivoting and adapting. 

So as you grow, like me as I grow, I’m building leaders below me to be able to do this, to be able to make these decisions, but right now I’m still pretty involved in new initiatives. In times when we have to pivot times when we have to adapt, but as I grow, I will build that into leaders below me. So it doesn’t fall on me, but it doesn’t mean I just, my company just sits back and we like found the magic formula. Even if you look at, you know, Russell Brunson, right? He coined the term one funnel away. You’re one funnel away from that success. And that’s kind of what started the, I don’t know if it’s what started, but it definitely fed into the idea that you could create this funnel, it will bring you leads and sales on autopilot. And I think people associate that with it’s easy. If you look at Russell, how many new initiatives are they constantly doing, a new book, a new challenge, a new funnel, like more than the average business, because he has a whole team who can create these strategies and ideas. 

So one funnel away or creating this one automated funnel does not equal not a lot of work, or sit back and it just works like a machine within a single funnel. You might be adding improved email sequences, a different webinar title, a downsell, an upsell, a connection to your higher level services. I don’t know what it is, but creating this ecosystem that is contributing to driving traffic, to driving people to your brand, is going to come through multiple avenues. And I, you know, realized myself, like I had the goal. The goal is not for me to have everything working perfectly so I don’t have to create any more new initiatives. My goal is to delegate those new initiatives and to streamline them. But I know that a business that’s going to stay relevant, that’s going to continue to grow and to be in the scaling portion like I’m growing my business. I’m not sitting here trying to do the same thing I did last year. I’m growing it. I’m going to have to put work in. I’m going to have to create new content, create new webinars, create new innovative ways to bring in leads as people get bored with one thing, or a message gets stale. And that is going to take that consistent energy and effort. 

So your ability as a business owner to adapt and to pivot and to make those decisions and to do it faster than most other companies is critical to your success. I think that the companies who are willing to do that and have the mentality to do that and the discipline to do that will go so much farther than the ones who don’t. And I just have noticed, especially in the last like six months, people feel like, well, I don’t want to keep having to do whatever that work is. Or they feel like something’s wrong, like there’s something wrong with them or their business if they have to constantly have new projects, or things are broken, or whatever’s happening. Like I said, this has to do with your delivery too. If you’re not constantly innovating and improving your delivery or your product, it will become irrelevant at some point, especially in today’s world, because things change at lightning speed. 

So if that overwhelms you, like that is kind of what we’ve signed up for, but it’s also kind of fun. Like, how can you be innovative? How can you pivot? How do you, how do you improve things again? It doesn’t mean take away from your focus. You still want to get the one thing you’re putting your focus into working, but it doesn’t mean once that thing is working, that you just do nothing. That’s an opportunity to say, now I have that funnel or that initiative working, I can continue to scale that, but I can only scale it so fast, so I can also add this other project that I’m going to put a hundred percent of my focus in there and get that working. And then start scaling that, and then add something else, and create this whole ecosystem of success and of initiatives that are driving leads, and brand awareness, and sales. And then on your delivery side that are keeping the retention, the customer satisfaction, all of those things, I guarantee you could think of a project you could do for every single one of those things at any time, if you’re not working on it now.

All right guys, thanks so much for tuning in today. I will see you all on Thursday. If you want to explore working with Hirsh Marketing, I’m so excited. We are welcoming so many new Ignite students, but we’re actually, we’re getting full. I have to create an additional success coach in there because of all the one-on-one calls that people get with our success coach. And Aandra, my sales success specialist has 20 calls booked this week alone between people who want to sign up for Ignite or work with our agency. So if you want to explore doing that, even in the next coming month, I would get your application and its helpmystrategy.com. Thanks so much for tuning in today, guys. And I’ll see you on Thursday.