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Emily Hirsh:

Hello, my friends. I hope you guys are having a happy week. I have been so busy and I want to share something with you guys, because I think before I dive into this, you’ll get some value out of this. You guys always love it when I give you some behind the scenes. I’m a CEO, obviously like most of you. And so I get a lot of what you go through in terms of your time, and your bandwidth for things, and growing a team, and just being a CEO. So this is totally a marketing podcast, and I am going to talk all about three actions that you can take with your marketing for the rest of the year in this podcast. But I want to share a realization I had yesterday that I just think will help you, and I’ve been in this place many times.

So I have been extremely busy the last month. My schedule is way too over-packed, I have like 17 hours of meetings a week, which is stupid, and I have a list of to-dos that never can get done. I’m just in a season where I’m really busy. Partly because I’m launching a software next year, partly because we are overhauling our offers, we have a lot happening in our marketing, we’re launching a YouTube channel, we just have a lot going on and all of it is really great and exciting. I’m building my team, I’m hiring new team members, especially beefing up our own marketing and creative department, and then the same for our clients. I just have a lot going on. 

I woke up the other day and I was dreading the week, and I never dread the week. I love working and I love what I do. I was just dreading it mostly because I am on too many meetings to actually get work done. I’m way too much in the day-to-day, which happens. And I share this because I have built a team of 27 plus employees and I have a multi-million dollar company, and I’m successful, and I’ve been able to delegate and build my team. So I’m out of the day to day, but I still get in seasons where I’m way too much in the day-to-day as we grow, and I’ve taken over some components just because I want to rebuild them from the ground up, especially in our marketing department. Then in a few places in our delivery as it relates to overhauling our offers, and I noticed myself thinking like, “oh, well this is just temporary. This will get better. So, I’m not going to hire more help or I’m not going to expand out my help because this is going to get better.”

Then I woke up Monday morning and I was like,” I don’t even want to go to. I just want to cancel all my meetings so I can actually work.” I’m not in this strategic mindset right now, and I hate that. So I was like, “what am I doing? I need to get help.” So that morning, first priority, before I did anything, I put together a job post for what I need help with. So if you’re in that place where you are either trying to save on expenses, so you make yourself suffer by putting too much on your plate, or you’re convincing yourself that something is temporary, and once you finish this project, or you launch this thing, or you overhaul this offer, or fill in the blank, that then your schedule will become lighter, you’re teasing yourself. You’re not doing yourself a favor.

I’ve also been in the place where I’ve tried to save money and I’ve been like, “oh, well, I’ll just save on that salary. I’ll take it over. It’s just X amount of time for me.” It costs you more money doing that every single time. Because if you analyze and you look at, “what would I be spending my time doing if I wasn’t doing this day-to-day tactical work?” and you realize, “oh, I would actually be able to be way more strategic. I’d be able to do business growth activities.” You realize when saving on that salary that you’re hesitant to hire or add to, because your payroll expenses or whatever the case may be, is actually costing you more money. So, go get the help that you need because if you’re growing, if you’re growing your business, then you need that support. And the amount of support you need today isn’t going to go down once something is launched, or a project is finished, or a funnel is done, it’s actually just going to increase the amount of support that you need, because there’s always going to be something more if you’re growing, if your business is growing. 

So, I had that realization. I am hiring help. I’m titling it an Operations Coordinator because I need a part project manager, part assistant. I don’t need full-time for either. I need a right hand. I’ve got a right hand on my ads team, the director of operations, but she is fully maxed out and busy managing our entire agency department, and that is the most smooth running component of my company in terms of not requiring any support from me, because I’ve built out so much support and leadership and a team over there, but what needs my help is marketing and our internal operations and our Ignite program. I’ve been spending a lot of time there and we have a lot of things happening, a lot of projects, and I’m like, “I should not be project managing in Asana. What am I doing?” So I’m getting help and I’m encouraging you if you’re in that place, get some help. All right.

Today’s podcast is about three actions that you can take right now to end 2021 with the best marketing out there. One action is go hire help. And I’m just kidding, that’s a bonus. That’s a bonus action for you guys. So I have three things, and these are things that I’m actually doing and I think are going to make a big impact in our business. It’s things we’re helping our clients and students with, and it’s something I would encourage all of you to do. So let’s talk about those three actions. Side note. Can you believe we’re like two months, almost two months away from the end of the year? Like, how am I saying to end the year? It’s insane, but let’s end this year strong. It has been kind of a crazy year. I don’t know about for you guys, but for us, with all the Facebook updates and marketing components, it has definitely been a wild one. So here’s the first one. 

First, I encourage you and want you guys to sit down and take inventory of what has and has not worked this past year. Sit down. I’m a big fan of the empty sheet of paper and the free flowing lists. I think you will get a lot of benefit out of sitting down and actually allowing yourself time to just process and say what has worked, what has not worked in the year and really breaking it down because you might think you know this, but if you go back all the way to January and you think about the promotions you’ve done, you think about the ads you’ve run.

Maybe you haven’t run the ads. Why not? The funnels you’ve tried to build, the offers you tried to push, the team members you’ve tried to hire, the companies you’ve tried to get support with. Whatever comes up. There is no wrong answer. Think about and take inventory. What has led to the most success and growth this year? 

Maybe your company hasn’t grown. Maybe you haven’t had the best year. I don’t want you to feel like alone in that. That happens sometimes, but let’s figure out where have the micro wins happened. Where has something actually happened that worked for you? Maybe you did a specific Instagram live, or video, or piece of content that took off that had an amazing engagement that started to get you some momentum. Maybe you did one live webinar in the middle of last year and that felt amazing, you felt in momentum, your audience responded well, you sold your offer. What are those things that have worked? 

Even if it doesn’t mean that your business as a whole for the year has met its goals, or maybe you haven’t, but what has worked? Then what hasn’t worked? What was something that you put resources to, company resources, time, and money towards, and it didn’t work in the past year? Like it didn’t result in the level of success that you wanted. It felt like it was sticky and you are walking through mud. When you tried to do it, you either lost money with it, whatever it was like, what didn’t work. And these can also be things where you thought it was going to work really well. Let’s say it’s a piece of content or something that you put a lot of resources into creating and editing and getting it all perfect and you launch it and it just didn’t have the momentum that you thought it would write that down. That way you can step back. 

Once you have this list, maybe it even takes you a couple of days of like going to it, walking away from it, coming back to it. And you have a list of what has, and hasn’t worked. And like you’re being really honest with yourself. If you can create that, that allows you to really ask yourself, okay, now for the rest of the year, am I actually being picky with my resources and putting in only what’s going to move the needle only, what’s going to make the most difference for my business, because I oftentimes find that us as entrepreneurs, we’re trying to do way too much. And we don’t actually slow down enough to think, will this make the impact that I want it to make?

There’s never going to be a shortage of things. You can go do strategies. You can go try ideas that you have things you saw that were cool. There’s never going to be a shortage of that. You will not have a shortage of those ideas, but you will need to choose. And the real success comes down to being able to kind of say no, and I’ve talked about this a lot, but say no to yourself, almost into your team over things, and then say yes to others and, and choosing what you say no to. And what you say yes to is extremely impactful. And it should be based on what has, and hasn’t worked in your business. So reflect on the last several months of this year and this entire year as a whole, and really get a solid, clear, truthful list out of what has, and hasn’t worked. That’s the first thing. 

The second action is to make an effort in the remaining time of this year, to connect with your audience via either one-on-one interviews or a survey. And this is especially relevant to you. If something isn’t working right now. So if you are in the boat where you have a webinar that isn’t working, or you have an offer that previously sold, but it’s just not continuing to sell, or you have something where it’s like, I don’t know what the problem is, but it’s not working. If you’re feeling that the one place to turn is your audience. And I’ve talked about this a lot. We just did this. It was extremely impactful, big game changer for us to actually sit down and talk to our audience. We did over 50 interviews, one-on-one interviews with our audience and it made a huge difference already in our company.

We’re still working through the changes that are result from those interviews. So one of the best uses of your time. And I know some of you are going to go, well, I don’t have time for that, or I don’t need to do that. Like I can just look at comments. I promise you, like, just trust me on this one, put the time and effort into this because it is one of the best uses of your resources. Especially if you’re in that place where something hasn’t worked and isn’t working. And especially, especially if you’re in the place where you’re, you had something that previously worked and now it’s not working. So schedule interviews, put a survey out to your list, do both and figure out an, ask your audience what you want to ask your audience and what, how you want to connect with them.

You don’t want to go and say to them, like, what do you guys want? They don’t know what they want. Your audience doesn’t know what they want. They’re not clear on that, but here’s what they do know. They know what they’re frustrated about and they know what solutions they’ve tried that haven’t worked. So make sure that you’re clear on what your audience is frustrated about, what they’ve tried, what’s not working and how you can support them, and then make sure all of your marketing, all of your offers, both your free offers, like your webinar and your lead magnets, as well as your paid offers are in alignment with that, with what your audience is saying, you’re going to find a lot of times you’re out of alignment. We have a client right now where our team on Mondays, our team does an all ads team meeting.

They’ll sometimes bring client accounts that are maybe not getting, hitting their numbers. And, and the ads managers like, Hey, I could just use like another input or eyes on this. And one of them shared, this is a very common case. We have a client who’s at about a two X return ad spend. But every time we go over a threshold of her ad spend the sales don’t increase with the ad spend. So like she, then she drops down to like a 1.5 and there was a few suggestions that the team had, but one of them was going back because this client is actually in, uh, she helps people, I think it’s with Etsy. And so it’s selling, you know, on Etsy and businesses and digital marketing right in their company. And one of the suggestions from our messaging team was to make sure to go and really realign with the client, with the client’s audience, because so much has changed in digital marketing in the past year.

So if you’re hitting that threshold and I think it would be, it’s easy to say, well, we’re selling some products, so it’s working at least a little bit, but yeah, but how you increase that sales conversion in order to scale is you improve your offer, positioning, you improve your offer pitch on the webinar and how you do that. As you go get clear from your audience where you are missing out, where maybe, you know, I guarantee for people selling on Etsy and businesses, selling on Etsy, things have changed in the last year, just like they have on every other marketing platform. So have you caught up to that? That’s, you know, an example. And so I think that a lot of times there’s a lot of business owners out there right now who are saying like, well, this is working on a little bit, so I don’t understand why it’s not working or it used to work.

It used to work a year ago. I hear that like so much now. And you know, there’s a lot you can do. There’s a lot you can do to improve your messaging. There’s a lot you can obviously do to improve your strategy and all the general marketing techniques. But I think what trumps all of them is going back and connecting with your audience, making sure that if things have changed or the way that they are viewing something or the problems they’re having, or how they’re describing their problems or the severity of their problems or the priority of their problems, if that’s changed and you haven’t adapted accordingly your marketing, that’s going to show, and that is going to come out in, especially the way you position your offer. So one action you can take between now and the end of the year is connect with your audience. All right, that’s the second thing. 

The third thing is now to take this, take the inventory of what has, and hasn’t worked, take the connection with your audience, the Intel that you potentially get from that. And finally get clear on your focus and what’s going to move the needle the most. So I just mentioned this, but I think going into, especially the new year and looking at the end of this year, what you will, if you do the previous two exercises, what you’ll kind of come to is you’ll have like a long list of things that you could be doing. And I think the true success and your job as the CEO and the visionary is to make sure that if you’re taking your team, you’re taking your company, you’re taking your audience and your clients somewhere. You are clear about where you’re going and being reactionary.

Just being like, “oh, we got to try this.” And the next month like, “oh, we gotta try this,” or, “oh, like, we should stop doing this and change it for this,” and reacting and moving like that. I think the industry makes you feel that that’s how you have to move because you do have to move at a fast pace. You do have to make pivots and adjustments quickly, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t be focused and intentional. So first the third thing is getting clear on your focus and what’s going to move the needle the most because the previous two things I talked about, you’re going to probably end up with a long list of things that you could do, a long list of things that either worked and you should do more of, or didn’t work and how you can change it or something, your audience, you know, out of connecting with your audience where you’re like, ah, this is what they need, or I need to overhaul my offer, or I need to change my webinar.

The list will go on. So once you have that, you need to sit there and take inventory and say, okay, out of all of this, what is actually going to move the needle the most, what will actually make the biggest impact? All of them will probably make some improvement, right? Something, and moving forward with that progress is better than nothing, but you have to decide what’s going to make the biggest difference. What is okay if you leave it, how it is, or if you don’t do it at all, and what is, what will actually change the revenue numbers, change your success, change your profitability. You might be guessing a little bit, but narrowing it down and asking yourself, that question will help you get clear on a focus. And then you can go all in on that. And then you can go and master that.

I think we all find ourselves oftentimes in a place where we have more ideas than we could ever execute, or we see something cool, or somebody tells us like, Hey, I tried this strategy out and it’s really awesome. You should do it. And you instantly feel like the pressure to go do it. I know, I feel that way. I mean, I have brilliant friends who all the time, you know, will share with me something they did that worked in my initial reaction is like, oh, we gotta do this. Like, let me take this to my marketing team. We need to do this right now, but I have to stop myself and say, okay, yes, we could do this. And I’m sure it would provide good results, but can we actually do this with all of our other commitments? And will this actually move the needle more than the other things we have on our plate? Sometime the answer is yes. Sometimes the answer is no. So getting clear on that focus and getting clear on what is going to make the biggest impact, because it’s always a choice between that. Like I said, you have more options than you ever could, could need, and you will need to narrow it down. And that’s where the real success comes from. 

So I hope these three actions helped you guys kind of get clear on what you can be doing between the end of this year and then going into next year. I believe if you can really do these things and be intentional and strategic, which is why I shared it at the beginning. You’ve got to be able to have a strategic mindset, which I lost a little bit. Not that I wasn’t being strategic. I just felt like I didn’t have enough brain capacity. I’m still currently in the thick of being way too much in the tactical day to day, but I’ll get out of it.

It’ll be, it’s a season and I’ll hire this role and it’ll get better. But it’s important for us CEOs and anybody leading that you have that space, like you cannot fill your schedule from beginning to end of the day with tactical things, or you have no space to think thinking is not promoted enough, how great it is and how  being intentional, like zooming out and seeing things from a different perspective, how big of a difference that makes it in your success. Thanks so much for listening today, guys, I’ll talk to you next week.

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