Why Marketing Hacks Fail | Revenue Strategy for Service-Based Founders

Speaker 1: So you're posting on LinkedIn. People know you. ⁓ Referrals in waves and your calendar still fills up the mercy chance. You can get attention but not command. What if visibility is not your problem? What if the missing piece ⁓ is infrastructure that turns your authority into a steady rhythm of qualified conversations without you working the platform all day. So we are here today talking to Jamie Ellithorpe. I'm assuming that's how you pronounce your name. I forgot to ask.

Speaker 2: I know what I'm over marbles, right? ⁓ Hot tip out there branding. So that's why I kept my last.

Speaker 1: There go, there you go. Yeah. Not quite as catchy as like John Cougar Melon Camp, but you know.

Speaker 2: That's true. I could have been like Jamie Cougar, Ella Thorpe. Really got people's tongues tied, right?

Speaker 1: Jamie is a client acquisition infrastructure architect. Now that is a mouth.

Speaker 2: I did that so Ellithorpe looked like Smith.

Speaker 1: She helps established consultants and B2B experts turn their existing authority into predictable revenue. She installs structured client acquisition infrastructure that replaces referral dependent growth with controlled distribution and documented systems. She sees the part of the business that most founders undervalue, not visibility, but the structure. All right, Jamie, tell us more about who you are, how you got here.

Speaker 2: wow, how many minutes do we have?

Speaker 1: Easy, easy, easy question to answer,

Speaker 2: story short, ⁓ an ex-corporate executive turned business owner who started business coaching and marketing ⁓ consulting. And the pandemic hit and probably like for many others that completely turned my business upside down. And that's I got into the LinkedIn business, if you will, is the in-person networking I was doing to grow the original business went online. And I realized LinkedIn was a very powerful tool that is kind of like networking on steroids, quite honestly, because with LinkedIn, now you have the power of talking to anyone anywhere in the world and being very focused and strategic about the conversations that you're having. So I started doing that for my own business. in the early days of the pandemic and ended up turning that into a system for my business. And then I ended up getting into the business of systematizing LinkedIn for other businesses. And so for the last five or six years, that's where my focus has been is really taking a deep dive into LinkedIn and understanding really what it can do for businesses and figuring out how we can leverage that as an engine for people's businesses. so that they can make the right connections, have the right conversations, and have unlimited opportunities for doors to open that I truly believe would not be available if the right connections weren't made. So that's really the focus of my work is looking at a relationship and saying, how do we go from new connection to contract? And what are all the steps in between in that relationship that need to happen? in order for that to happen over and over again inside someone's business. So when I talk about infrastructure, that's what I'm talking about is I'm not only a marketer and yes, I'm helping you build the strategy and the words and the messaging and we're helping you positioning your product and things like that so you can increase sales. You need a container or a structure that supports all the steps in that client journey. And that's where I see so many businesses are missing out is they just don't have that system. running in the background so they can go back to doing the work they love to do while that system is supporting their business.

Speaker 1: Okay, so going along with that, do you see patterns when it comes to the consultants who think that they have a visibility problem? And then once you kind of start to dig in and you're showing them that it's more of an infrastructure problem, are there certain patterns that you notice?

Speaker 2: There are certain patterns. would say when we're talking about consultants specifically it's the feast or famine feeling of being on that roller coaster where you've got two or three months that you're just feeling like you're not getting out of the park. And then you have a month where little to no activity has happened. You're not bringing on new clients and you're wondering what's going to happen. And then all of a sudden a new client appears and things feel good for a while. And it's that emotional up and down of what is next month going to look like. So typically when I talk to people in those good months, they know they did something great, but they don't know what they did. They can't go back and trace the breadcrumbs, if you will, was that one thing that I did that brought in those three new clients. And so it's ⁓ it's that hustle scramble feeling of, my gosh, I gotta go get some new clients. And so then there's a lot of marketing activity that goes on. then they get busy and now they're in grind and they're so overwhelmed. They can't hardly see daylight because they're so busy in client work. And then there's that dry spell. So now they're back out hustling. And so there's never an end to that feeling.

Speaker 1: Do you have a specific story that made you realize that, hey, this is not a isolated situation? I've talked to more than one person, and they've had the same kind of a problem. Do you have any kind of stories around that?

Speaker 2: I gonna say, I think it's the everyday story in the consulting space. I love to tell people that I'm very grassroots with everything at 540 strategies because I ended up building the things that I needed in my business. I could not find some of the infrastructures and the strategies that I needed as a struggling consultant. I am the story, but yeah, I hear it every day. So a story that comes to mind was recently, I was on a call with a graphic design consultant and I was explaining to him what I just explained to the audience and I saw the light bulb go off and he said, oh my gosh, I was that person a year ago. And he said, I could not figure out what I was doing to bring in the clients and I would have them for a little while and then things would dry up and I didn't know what I had done to bring in those clients. So I'm scrambling. and then I'd get some more clients and then I'd get so busy in client work that I wasn't doing anything to outreach anymore and then I was scrambling. So I think when I tell that story, I think so many people resonate with that and it's not just consultants too. I mean, it's anyone in a ticket service based business. And a lot of it too is that ⁓ a relationship build that when you're in a high ticket business, you've got to build that relationship and that rapport anyone's going to write you a big check. And so if you're not constantly building those long-term relationships in your business, then it is going to feel like up and down months are occurring.

Speaker 1: Yeah, So let's get into ⁓ The owners that you talk to are getting wrong. So when your consultants that you're talking to or they say we just need more LinkedIn ⁓ reach ⁓ maybe. Maybe they have certain things that they say that are kind of triggers to you. Do you have like a list of that you listen for? ⁓

Speaker 2: Well, I think the thing that I see is that so many, and I'll just say this loosely, business owners, included, they're looking at isolated strategies that they think are going to result in the end result, which for most of us is more paid business or more clients. And what they don't realize is it's not just one thing that you're going to do. to grow your business, it's an orchestra of many strategies that when aligned, create an entire system takes a relationship, like what I said earlier, from hi nice to know you Nate, to hey Nate, let's do business. It's not just an isolated social media post that's going to build that relationship, or it's not just a couple of DMs hoping for the best. It's putting all of those things in the right order, in a container, if you want to call it that, or an infrastructure that together to build that relationship in the right order with the right timing and right know, like, and trust. So that's what I see is so many people are kind of, and I the marketing space, I'm going to call it out because ⁓ I was a victim of this as well. The marketing space is full of one-off shiny new strategies. And I don't know if the people that are selling those really realize the detriment that they're creating to someone who doesn't quite understand that what they're saying is one of many. They're really positioning that as, hey, Facebook ads are the thing. Hey, a funnel is the thing. And it's like these isolated things that yes, they will grow your business if you're doing other things in and around to support them. And so I think we're kind of led in the industry to be misled, whether people are intentionally doing that or not. I, you know, I don't know that, but I do feel like there is a big problem in the marketing industry that's, that's selling the new shiny and people are running from one shiny to another, hoping that that's the silver bullet. And unfortunately there is no silver bullet. It's, it's systems over time.

Speaker 1: Yeah, we were just talking about this before we started the show about how AI is the new shiny, right? Like everybody's trying to get in on that and we have AI, you know, come with us. So all right. Can you walk us through a before and after where you've you talk to a consultant, they have a strong reputation, they have maybe a lot going for them, but they're pipeline is up and down. What happened once you kind of installed a structure around that?

Speaker 2: Yep. So most of the people that I talked to have an existing professional network, whether they're consciously aware of that or not. But when you really start to dig in, the first couple of years of their business were really built off the back of referrals. And those referrals came quickly and easily because that network was already established. So for many of us, we had some kind of a job, right? Before we started a business. mean, I wish I would have been 18 and been an entrepreneur, but I wasn't. spent, gosh, 15, 20 years in corporate, right? So I had, when I first started LinkedIn, I had about a thousand connections. And that was a mix of people that I grew up with, people I went to college with and people that I worked with through the various corporate jobs during my time there. Well, that was already an established network that I didn't really have to focus on building because I built it through a rapport of of the jobs or growing up or whatever, it was already established. And that's what people don't understand is that was something that was marinated for 20 years, right? And so business seems easy in the beginning because you're already leveraging that. But what ends up happening is after a while that network runs out of resources. They're out of introductions, they're out of referrals. And then that's when the business owner typically starts feeling the first bits of pain.

Speaker 1: Hmm.

Speaker 2: is because they've never before and they don't realize how ⁓ hard that is because you're starting over and trying to engage people who have absolutely no idea who you are. And so you're having to start from scratch. And that really doesn't, it doesn't matter what marketing strategy you're doing. It's the same thing. If you look back on that strategy, Someone has to find out about you and then they've got to figure out who you are and then you've got to build some kind of a rapport through whatever that strategy is that takes them from stranger to connection to I need your help. And so that takes time no matter how much you do it. So really people have a decision that they need to make. Do I want to do this organically? and I'm gonna take the long route to do that. I'm not gonna invest a ton of money in marketing. I'm gonna build these relationships organically. So do I wanna invest a ton of time ⁓ I wanna invest a ton of money ⁓ now I'm gonna have to play the traffic game or I'm gonna have to go through thousands and thousands of prospects to find the three that are ready right now for my services. ⁓ that's the reality that people really need to understand is you're going to have to leverage your time or you're going to have to leverage your wallet. And in some cases, both, you know, it really depends on where people are at and how fast they want to grow. But either a time ⁓ or ⁓ volume game that you're going to have to pay to play.

Speaker 1: Yeah, are there ⁓ of people who business owners founders are who are playing the LinkedIn game, right? Are there. ⁓ is ⁓ of like the pattern that ⁓ see with that? So ⁓ ⁓ they're posting, and it just doesn't convert. What is the, or you see a certain pattern as far as that's concerned?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up. I just had a conversation about this with a client right before our podcast. And I think where there's another misunderstanding is that people have to understand what a particular strategy is designed to do. So for instance, posting on LinkedIn, it is about visibility, but it's also about what I call original signal, meaning a post is in and of itself is not going to get you a new client.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: However, that ⁓ liking your content and even taking the time to comment are in some ways raising their hand saying, hey, I'm interested in what you just said. But then the next piece of that strategy is now you've got to reach out and engage these people. Just because they commented on your post or hit the like button, ⁓ not gonna go any farther. down the lane with doing business with you, you've got to be proactive and reach out and do that. And that was exactly the conversation that I had with this client was like, hey, you're getting likes, you're getting comments, but I don't see you doing anything with that. And so it's missed opportunity that you've got sitting here, but you've got to start building that relationship now. They're just opening the crack of the door to say, hey, I might talk to you if you said hi, but you've got to reach out and say hi, and then you've got to take them through the next steps of doing business with you. And that goes back to that infrastructure is if you don't know what the next step is in your process to get a client, then that's your problem. It's not that you don't have 10,000 people looking at you. It's that if 10,000 people were looking at you, you wouldn't know what to do to convert them into a client anyway. So it doesn't.

Speaker 1: Do you ⁓ primarily see this these issues with solopreneurs, ⁓ ⁓ or does it also apply to ⁓ with multiple employees? Yeah.

Speaker 2: levels, all levels and surprisingly enough, very successful companies as well. And I think a lot of them have been victim of the churn and burn strategies is that they are just running the gamut of the next hot strategy that's out there and they entertain that for a month or two and that's not working. So they ditch that and they go to the next strategy. They don't fully understand that Again, back to the one-off strategy, that one-off strategy needs to be part of a system to create stable growth in their business. doing that, ⁓ PULTS too, is like high PULTS, low PULTS, but they look successful enough because, you know, financially they are bringing in capital. It's just, it's typically not stable.

Speaker 1: And maybe the one off should be seen as a test as part of a larger ⁓ strategy then, right? In that case. Okay, so what's the first thing you stop doing? You encourage your clients to stop doing when you first work with them.

Speaker 2: I don't I guess I don't necessarily say stop doing what you're doing, but I want to look at what you're doing that's usually the first step is what are you doing to grow your business? And then the next question is how's that working out for you? ⁓ we take a look at that to see is it working not working ⁓ what can we do to shift it? But I'm also a big believer that there are certain strategies designed for different types of relationships So I use the bullseye approach where if you think about the rings of a bullseye in marketing there's three. Cold strategies, so that's getting the visibility that we've been talking about so people are even aware that you exist. Warm strategies where it's taking that awareness and turning it into the relationship that could lead towards what we'll call the hot strategy which is the conversion piece that takes a warm lead and converts them into a client. And so you've got to have strategies at all levels and they all need to be working together to bring that relationship through the continuum of stranger to customer. So that's the first thing that I look at is what are you doing in those spaces? If anything, if you're not doing anything and you've grown your business off the back referrals, awesome. You're, you know. A new chicken coming out of the egg, the possibilities are endless of what we put into those three key areas.

Speaker 1: All right, good deal. I like that bullseye framing. Speaking of framing, let's get into the approach that you take with your clients. If you can walk us through step by step so that someone listening out there and watching out there can kind of picture what this is going to look like when it's actually working for them. And let's I'd say let's start at the foundation. You know what what happens there? What what what do we have to have documented before any outreach happens? Yeah.

Speaker 2: So before we even start to build the infrastructure, we've got to get the marketing right. And what I mean by that is you have to fully understand what your ideal target client is thinking about at three o'clock in the morning. If you don't know what's keeping them up at night, it's going to be very, very hard to serve them and get their attention and marketing. So that's the very first thing that I work with clients on is we've got to get clear on who your target market is. The second thing is, is we're not gonna guess at what we think they need. And that's another thing that I see with a lot of businesses is that because a business owner has a certain expertise, they already know what their ideal client needs, but your client isn't living in that mindset yet. They're living in the problem. So you've got to become an expert in your client's problems just as much as you are an expert in solving. your clients problems because the problem is the marketing that's gonna get them to stop and listen. So I've got deep exercises that we go through to figure all of that out so that we're no longer guessing from a marketing perspective. So that's creating the messaging that's going to call out your ideal clients and get them to go, whoa, I need to listen to what he or she has to say. So that's kind of number one. Number two is what are you selling? we've got to figure out if you're selling what your market really, really wants from you and the perception of that. So if that's misaligned, then we fixed that, we either fix the offer or we fix how we're talking about the offer. So there's those two things because when all of those things line up, now we're ready to build the container or the system that those things are housed in. And then that's just the steps that your market is gonna take in order to do business with you.

Speaker 1: Awesome. And I'm assuming that is, you're helping them kind of, you're using that information to help them form their LinkedIn profile, I'm guessing.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. That becomes the positioning piece or the unique branding positioning, not only for the company, but who you are within that brand because LinkedIn is such a personal relationship business platform. Is that's another thing I think people kind of misunderstand is yes, is it a professional platform? It sure is. But people don't do business with 540 strategies. People do business with Jamie. And so it's all about creating that one one connection. to build the relationship and then the business comes on the backside of that.

Speaker 1: so let's talk about distribution. So how are you going about creating a controlled distribution system for clients?

Speaker 2: So tell me a little more about distribution. want to make sure that I'm.

Speaker 1: Well, like, like, for example, list building connection criteria, you have something like we're going to connect with these people and not these people. And here's why. And then, you know, ⁓ is like, I know that there are automated ⁓ outreach, for example, or ⁓ that something that you're employing? And then what does it look like on a daily, weekly basis, you know, helping them? What is it that they're actually doing as far as like the act of getting in front of the people that they want to talk to?

Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely. Okay, so there's a lot to unpack there. We'll go back to the marketing, the ideal potential client, right? So when we're going through the foundations of the marketing piece, we're clarifying who that potential client is. now we know ⁓ we want to focus on building relationships with on LinkedIn. So I look at LinkedIn very much like an email list ⁓ a very targeted strategic warm pool of potential possibilities. So when we go to the phase of building out the LinkedIn engine, that's what we're focusing on is we're going out on LinkedIn and we're strategically finding the people that fit the criteria of who our client is ideally looking for. So that's kind of that piece. In LinkedIn, the first degree network is extremely powerful. Those are the people that are directly connected with you on LinkedIn. Those are the people that you can reach out to directly any time of day or night. So I treat that first degree network like a coveted email list. Those are the people that we really want to cherish and really build great relationships with. And as that first degree network grows, then that's bringing more people from the second and third degree network in. And so it becomes a system within itself is that we're growing, growing, growing, but we're being very strategic about it. So now it's opening the doors up to more potential people that we can move in from third degree into the second degree and second degree into the first degree. So that's how I go about building a network. So once that is built and as it's continuing to build, then we're having very focused conversations with those people. but we're doing it in a very warm and engaging and authentic way. This is not spam. This is not putting an ad in front of them. It's truly being curious and interested in them as a human being and what they do professionally to build a solid relationship. So that's what we're doing in that space. But to answer your question about tech, do we use that too? Absolutely. So as a marketer, I had to make that strategic decision a couple of years ago when I knew AI was not gonna go away. And I said, you who's 540 strategies? And I said, you know, we're the best of both. That we leverage tech where we can and where it makes sense without compromising the human connection. So we're all about building a real authentic human relationship that is not done by robots, it's done by real people, but we're leveraging the technology for volume and analytics so that we know what we're doing is working. but we're able to reach out to a vaster array of people than if we were doing it all organically by hand. Started the agency that way. So be done, but it's it's harder and it takes longer because you don't get the volume.

Speaker 1: Yeah, so are there, with that conversation piece that you started to touch on there, let's dig into that a little bit here. Can you walk us through from the first time the outreach is made until they're actually booking a call? What is a typical? length of time or is there a typical length of time? Does it kind of vary or?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so I treat it very much like the cocktail party that you're invited to for a chamber event, right? Is you walk into a room, you grab your soda or your cocktail and you've got some business cards in your hand and you're kind of looking around going, wow, I don't know anybody here. So you walk up to a table and you say, hi, my name is Jamie Ellithor. What's your name? And you say, hey, I'm Nate. And I say, hey, it's nice to meet you, Nate. Curious, what do you do? And so you kind of give me the high level overview and typically you're going to go, you know, enough about me, Jamie, what about you? So I'm going to give you my little 32nd commercial. And because we're in a crowded room and I'm holding my plate of appetizers and my drink and my purse and hopefully a business card somewhere. And people are bumping up against me and somebody else wants to talk to me. say, Hey, Nate, you know, I know we don't have a lot of time here. But let's have coffee next week. I really want to hear more about your business and what you're doing. That's the networking call on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: Okay.

Speaker 2: So it's the same approach, except you can do it all over the world now. You don't have to go to the local chamber event with 50 people in the room and maybe two are really ideal conversations. Now we're being super picky and strategic about who we're having those cocktail party conversations with so that we have really great networking calls.

Speaker 1: You had mentioned, you know, like as far as the messaging goes, the conversation, yeah, you're using the tech for the outreach portion, but it's vital that a human takes over at some point in there for the conversation. But ⁓ there kind of rules of when, ⁓ know, how ⁓ are you coach your clients into keeping that human touch there?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so these are gates, I guess I would call them, is you've got to understand the art and the science of a conversation. So you've got to know how to connect with somebody and then art and the science of how do I take that connection and turn it into a conversation. Then you've got to figure out how do I take that conversation and turn it into ⁓ call. So ⁓ an art and a science of that. And then you've got to figure out how to turn that call into a console. That's typically the setup for a high ticket service based business is most people are going to sell the high ticket on a console, but you've got to be very strategic and very authentic at the same time for LinkedIn to work. So those are kind of the gates is connection, conversation, console.

Speaker 1: ⁓ all right. Is there, you give us an idea of like a weekly cadence? ⁓ know, how many people are we outreaching to? How many people can we expect to connect with? Does it, does it differ depending on industry? Like.

Speaker 2: Yeah, so depends and you're exactly right. It depends on industry. I think it depends a lot on personality. Some people just really like LinkedIn. Some people don't. But just using average numbers, no guarantees. I'm just using flat numbers. On average, we reach out to about thousand people a month. So if you're a typical LinkedIn user, most people have a hundred, I think it's a hundred connection requests a week. So you're capped at 400. unless you're performing really well. And I won't get into all the nuts and bolts about that, but there's a lot of algorithmic things on LinkedIn. But the average user, if they're just knocking it out of the park, which is very few people might be able to reach out to 800 people a month organically, but I think that's rare. So again, that's why we use some technology. So reaching out to about thousand a month. I like to see about a 30 % conversion rate. So that means we're growing your first degree network by 300 people. So that means 300 people are actually in your first degree network. That's the warm pool of people that we're having the conversations with. So depending on that, if we just use the law of 30%, out of that 300, about 30 % is gonna end up talking to you. And then maybe another 30 % is gonna end up wanting to have a call with you. So that's where stability starts to show up in the business after a while when we're in scale mode, is you can typically have five to seven quality conversations every week in your business.

Speaker 1: right. Is like how are you keep maintaining that quality with ⁓ that of volume?

Speaker 2: So that again, that goes back to the infrastructure, right? That's why we're building this system is every little piece or every little gate that we've kind of talked about, there's a system behind it. So there's a system to connect, right? We kind of just went through that with the 30 degree or I mean, the 30 % conversions hypothetically. So you got to have enough people to connect with. You got to have enough people to have conversations with. You've got to know how to take enough of those people from conversation to call. And then out of those calls, a certain percentage of those people are gonna want a next step consult to learn more about working with you. So where numbers start to feel more stable. And now you can really feel confident growing your business and being able to forecast a lot better than these, know, months I got five clients, I got no clients, I got six clients, I got no clients, I got one client, I got seven clients. It's very, very hard to build a lifestyle on and be able to say, I wonder if I can pay the mortgage this month. But when you start having the consistency of, I've got this dialed in that if I have five calls a week, that's 20 calls a month and I close at a 40 % closing rate typically, then I know that I'm gonna bring on X number of clients approximately every single month. and the average cost per client that I make is X. So now you can start seeing predictable income.

Speaker 1: Yeah. you find that, you know, like sales navigator, like the ⁓ LinkedIn that are available for sort of building audience lists and that kind of thing, are those effective or?

Speaker 2: Yeah, we use Sales Navigator. Sales Navigator is the tool to find the right people on LinkedIn.

Speaker 1: presumably because you've gone through the exercise of, ⁓ is exactly who we want to target. Then we can go to LinkedIn's ⁓ sales navigator, say, all right, let's find those people. Let's build a list. Okay. Perfect.

Speaker 2: Exactly. And that's where I can be really transparent with somebody upfront that, know, if you're wanting to meet, I don't know, ballerinas, I'm probably going to go, you know what, LinkedIn's probably not the platform for you.

Speaker 1: You Yeah.

Speaker 2: that whoever they're looking to connect with there's thousands and thousands of those possibilities on LinkedIn or it's probably not the best system.

Speaker 1: Yeah. All right. So have you worked with companies with multiple people on the team or is that

Speaker 2: I have, and we can be creative with that. I had a sales team, well, I still do, where ⁓ the salesmen were actually prospecting the same exact types of people. So we were just very strategic to make sure that messaging was different and they had their own identity. We also can do some cool things where we can make sure that if you connect with Bob, coworker is not connecting with Bob, you know, it really just depends on you're looking to do. But yes, it can be very effective because it's such a person to person strategy that this isn't like you're trying to connect to the company. This is that you're connecting to individuals within that organization. But yes, we also want to make sure that no two people on a team ⁓ trying to talk to the same person at the same time.

Speaker 1: Is there like a time commitment involved there? Like, I'm guessing there is, like, what do we, what would that be? What would that look like?

Speaker 2: as far as like how much-

Speaker 1: Or let's say for a multiple person team, like what kind of a time commitment are they putting into this LinkedIn thing that you're doing?

Speaker 2: depends on what all we're doing for them. So I try to meet with clients. we're actively running, that's something else we really haven't talked about. If we're actively running the system after we build it, then that becomes more of like a consultative strategic relationship. So for most clients, we meet twice a month for 30 minutes. And that way we're making sure that we're staying on top of communication. We're looking at analytics and we're making any tweaks that we need to make within various stages of the pipeline and things like that. But really their biggest responsibility is showing up for the appointments that are being set on their calendar that they have committed to. Yes, I'm going to have a good conversation with the person that connected with me on LinkedIn. So it really depends on how busy they want to be.

Speaker 1: So you have kind of different varying tiers where you're either helping them set it up and then they run it and you're just checking in versus setting it up, doing the whole thing, running it from a strategic, this is what you need to do here, kind of hand holding situation. Okay.

Speaker 2: So our initial engagement is a three month container. So in those first 90 days, that's when we're going through that entire marketing process in the product positioning process, figuring all that out, figuring out what's aligned, what's not aligned, lining up the messaging and making sure that they have a unique position in the marketplace. So that's what we're gonna base everything on LinkedIn about is how are you perceived on your profile? Is that matching up with what you're saying on your website and things like that? Then we're building that infrastructure. So it's pretty much everything that we've talked about today of all the things that we need to do to take a brand new connection and turn them into a potential client for your business. That's the structure piece. That's that first 90 days. So after that, now the system is ready to continue and potentially scale. That's when we have our next conversation of how do you want the next 90 days or forward to look? Do you want Jamie and her team? to execute this and actually run the system for you? is something you might wanna bring in house? Do you have a marketing team already in place? Or would you like to hire a staff member that we train to run that system for you? How does that look? So that's when we have that conversation going forward.

Speaker 1: What do you say to clients who say, know, know, Jamie, I really need your help. need, I need, I need clients like yesterday. Like I need an ASAP. Is that what do you tell them at that point?

Speaker 2: I mean, wouldn't we all love the silver bullet, right? I mean, it's kind of like coming to, funny. ⁓ kind of got two themes in my life, health and marketing. So I always liken it to, cause people can relate to this, to a personal trainer. You come to me and you say, Jamie, I need to lose 30 pounds by next week for my daughter's wedding. Typically people lose one to two pounds a week. So, ⁓ know, you've got to be realistic. ⁓ don't know or.

Speaker 1: That means surgery.

Speaker 2: Or I don't know, look your best now and maybe you can lose the 30 pounds for your son's wedding. You know, I don't know. ⁓ a lot of people that wait until the three alarm fire is going and they're wanting to run out of the burning house. And it's, that's just not, that's not reality. So, you maybe that is a very hard decision that somebody is going to make. Like, you know what, maybe you do need to go back to corporate for a while. You know, if you're deciding on hiring Jamie and her team or paying your mortgage, that's probably not a really good space to be in at this point. And there's no shame in that. You know, we got to take care of ourselves, but you've got to give your business the runway that it needs in order to be healthy. that's going to be a 90 day to a six month time window with investment ⁓ not only dollars, your time, your dedication, making it work because marketing is a partnership and I can't, and I've been there before, I can't want my client's success more than they do. And I've had to let some clients go or it didn't end well because I wanted it more than they did. So you've got to be dedicated to growing your business no matter what business you're in.

Speaker 1: Hmm. So going back a little bit to the process, you find that you have problems with the system becoming spammy? Or how do you prevent that from happening?

Speaker 2: The system was designed because the one-off strategies seemed spammy because everyone thought that social media marketing or throwing some emails out there was gonna grow somebody's business. So that was really the birth of this entire system was, you know what, we gotta go back to building the full machine for clients because that's what they're missing. And so that avoids the spammy because you're now, you're not in a hurry. The system is just, taking people through the paces that they need to be taken through in a very natural good feeling way. So you're not burning relationships, you're building them.

Speaker 1: Okay. Do you have a... So let's say, or ⁓ you ⁓ tell if you have this experience where ⁓ the rates start to dip. In which ⁓ what ⁓ you there? Is that part the strategy thing where you say, ⁓ well, this is some reason, we look at the numbers and we say... this is trending downwards, let's figure out why, right?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so that's why that's why we bring in the tech is that we can have analytics on various stages in that pipeline so that we can pinpoint what might need to be adjusted on what's going on.

Speaker 1: Okay, so we'll just walk back a little bit. What are you tracking then, as far as that's concerned? What is important?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so we're tracking conversion rates various steps of the pipeline. So beginning with the connection request, how many people are accepting that connection request versus how many people we reached out to. Then we're looking at how many people are engaged in the initial messaging. And then we're looking at how many people have responded at all. Then we're looking at how many people were interested in getting a calendar booking link. And then we're looking at how many people actually booked a calendar. And then we're also following up with our clients on how are those strategic calls going? Are they moving to the next phase of business where people are wanting to hear more about your work or was it just a bunch of nice to meet you conversations? So those are the main points of where there could be potential snags in that pipeline that we're looking to adjust and improve.

Speaker 1: And that's where through the magic of digital marketing and tech, you're able to kind of actually see the numbers because it's being tracked.

Speaker 2: Exactly. And that's where we can get the reporting.

Speaker 1: OK, well great. So what talking about here for those listening out there, ⁓ you we're talking about in terms of the V3 system here. We have visibility. Obviously Jamie says she's not anti visibility. We still need that, but she's very much pro viability. ⁓ In words, need to have those systems that support that visibility, right? What good is visibility going to do you if you don't have anything? underneath it to kind of back it up, right? And so let's get into ⁓ a multiplier effect here. So when viability improves, your visibility and your value ⁓ often along with it. having those predictable conversations, having ⁓ that systematized, to ⁓ of change you're showing up. you know, to begin with, I guess. ⁓ ⁓ that is into a, you know, predictable pipeline, then obviously the business is going to be worth more because it's generating more revenue, predictably, right? ⁓ It's like, wouldn't want something that's already set up? So when you're getting this right, what in your experience, what else starts working? that the founder hadn't expected necessarily.

Speaker 2: I think they get a sense of relief and peace of mind. I think that they feel like they can finally go back to their expertise doing what they love to do and going back to why they started the business to begin with. I think most people start the business with a dream and the desire to truly help people. And then this whole client acquisition piece gets muddy and fuzzy and hard. it ends up becoming the number one thing that the business owner is focused on.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So just being able to take that big heavy backpack off and be able to go, wow, now I can go back to being who I thought I was going to be in the beginning when I started this business. I don't know if you can put a price tag on that.

Speaker 1: it's kind of like full circle, right? Because we started ⁓ their core network and everything was great. And then that kind of dwindled out. Then all of a sudden, know, hair on fire. We don't have any more leads. What are we going to do? And now you've taken them back to, ⁓ okay, we have leads coming in. It's predictable. We get it. This is great. And everybody is, you know, feeling much better, I guess, at that point. So. When it comes to the business owner's time and the revenue outcomes that are coming as a result of working with you. I guess you kind of you kind of touched on this, but like you said, peace of mind, do you like stress levels are decreasing? I'm their their calendar is a little more, you know, freed up or at least, you know, they know what to expect when and that kind of thing. Does that is this I'm guessing making CFOs happy too, because because it's adding to the predictability of their forecasting and whatnot. So, okay. Do you find that there are, you working with businesses when it comes to their delivery customer experience as part of this? Or is that kind of like that ends up benefiting from the system? Or ⁓ you see that or?

Speaker 2: Usually that piece goes into the positioning of the service, typically the service that they're already providing. So they pretty much already have that part figured out. And that's another thing too, is to really be successful in this system, you've got to have sold. People have actually had to give you money what it is that you do, right? I mean, ⁓ have to have some justification there or we're market testing. I mean, I've had clients that have come in and not sold. an idea and yeah, we can certainly get you a lot of conversations to verify or deny whether your idea is going to work. But most people at that point in business have already sold and successfully felt confident in what they're doing. It's just they don't know how to get enough conversations going for it to be consistent.

Speaker 1: So let's close it out here with Jamie. She's been so kind to give us her time. Basically, having visibility is obviously useful. Your structure inside the business, that is durable. And what Jamie has laid out, turns your reputation into a repeatable system for your conversions and thereby your ⁓ revenue. And when your viability improves, then the business owners are getting their time back and their business becomes easier to run to some degree. So Jamie says, if you want to connect with her, go to HTTPS, connect2clients.agency, ⁓ LinkedIn mini session and we're going to include the link in the show notes in the description there of the video so you can connect with her. If this conversation made you realize that ⁓ you're sure where your biggest growth constraint actually is in the business, I encourage you to take the our growth ceiling assessment. The link to that is also in the description. It takes you two minutes, two to five minutes, shows It's going to show you which part of your growth engine needs your attention first whether that may be client acquisition infrastructure something else entirely. Subscribe to the channel. We just did a change. We're calling it the Growth Ceiling Podcast now. Wherever you listen, going to be available on Apple and Spotify soon. And if this helps to see something differently, send it to someone who also needs to hear it. So thanks a lot and come back again next time.