[00:06:04] And it’s that grind that gets you to that end outcome. And when you are looking at scaling a business and growing a business, you’ll always be there. You’re always, like you said, you can get to that point where you can write a check and it starts to make it easier. Or you hire the right person that comes in and runs that area, but, it’s very systematic. So I’m a very system guy. I like to put systems in places because that’s what gets you out of there and allows you to not go back. And I think a lot of people don’t talk about that is [00:06:40] when people make it out of that mess. A lot of times they do a 180 and go right back into the mess because they didn’t put the appropriate system in place to keep ’em out of it long term.

[00:06:52] And then the same mistakes happen. So say if you work your way through that and then you hire somebody and you don’t put the right systems in place, then they go make the exact same mistakes that you have made or it is not even necessarily mistakes, it’s just the learning points. As you grow a business, yeah, there’s different boxes that you have to check and you have to learn throughout that and

[00:07:16] the most, like I said, you add a zero, it be, you go right back into it, you add another zero, you go right back into it. that’s just the nature of the beast until you figure out what a well oiled machine is. And then once you get to that point where you can write that check or bring the right people on that and trust and you have the right systems, that’s when stuff starts to be easy.

[00:07:38] So when you have the right systems, that gets everybody rolling in the same direction, so you can bring somebody on and write that check and say, Hey, here’s our systems. This is what this looks like from all perspective as a company. This is what we believe and this is what’s work. And then they can take that and move on.

[00:07:59] Audra: You know to add to a couple of the things that you just brought up when it comes to hiring, especially like your first person or your first five, maybe we hire based on that skillset. So we’re looking for that employee or that contractor to bring their experience to the table. Because business owners don’t have any [00:08:20] systems in place when they hire their first person.

[00:08:22] if you look at what that process looks like, I had an idea. I had launched a product, I start making a couple bucks. I’m trying to keep up with now delivering of that product or that service. I’ve not really built any internal systems yet. Okay, I’ve made enough money, now I need to hire somebody.

[00:08:40] Audra: So they’re coming in and you’re hoping that they’re gonna bring the skills to build that system for you. You keep going. You fast forward a little bit more. That person does what their skill does. This is the challenge. Hiring this way without having a foundation first. You are leading from the bottom up, which is not always effective when you’re the owner.

[00:09:02] You actually need to be leading from the top down, which means I already know what the company should look like. I know what the foundation is. The people that you start adding to the team are just that. They’re there to fill a role of a plan or a strategy you have already built. So if I say I’m hiring for this role, I’ve already got all that mapped out.

[00:09:25] Their skills need to match what that role consists of. And let me give you an example. When I had coffee shops in California, that was like my first adventure on my own. I was building from the bottom up. I had no idea what I was doing a hundred percent. I had no idea what I was doing. I would, I started bringing staff in.

[00:09:45] Audra: I would train them enough to get them to be able to serve drinks and make coffee and stuff like that. But the inconsistencies were killing me because I didn’t develop a system. So Bob was trained one way and Susan was [00:10:00] trained another way, and Jim was trained another way. And so I would run into my customers out in the community and they would say, Hey, Audra, I was in the coffee shop and I really like it when Allie makes my drink, but when Sam makes this not so good.

[00:10:13] So the inconsistencies of what my customers were actually experiencing was killing my business. Now, I was still new enough and people were loyal enough to me that they were still coming in, but it was a huge problem. fast forward six months through my first storm, still struggling to get it off the ground.

[00:10:33] Business is coming, but it’s coming slowly and it’s sporadic, right? I have not figured out how to do this. Went to see my accountant and he said, so how are things going? I said, oh, I’m struggling a little bit. I just, I can’t figure out how to control all these moving parts. There’s too many. And he says, have youread the E-Myth?

[00:10:52] I’m like, dude, I don’t have time to read. I’m trying to write a business here. I was a single parent, three kids under the age of 10, full-time student, and I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing. So he gave me the book. I sat down and tried to get through it a couple times, couldn’t get through it.

[00:11:06] Fast forward a few, couple more months, still struggling to get through it, and I was like, you know what? I am suffering If he thinks that’s the answer for me, I gotta sit down and read it. Took the book, started reading it, went through it in a weekend. I was like, oh my God, this is all I have to do.

[00:11:22] Sat down and mapped out my coffee shop from the moment you turned the lights on to when you locked the door at the end of the day, pushed all my staff back through that process now on exactly, and I managed everything. So it didn’t matter [00:11:40] who was making your drink, they were getting a consistent result.

[00:11:44] That completely changed it. Three months later, opened my second store. Once I figured out I had to build that foundation and that system, then the people fit into it, then I could actually grow and scale the business. But I almost imploded. I was almost one of those statistics that didn’t make it.

[00:12:04] And if my accountant hadn’t pointed me in that direction and I went that route, I probably wouldn’t have made it.. Yeah. And

[00:12:13] Ron Nussbaum: you know what’s amazing about that story right there is, we talked about at the beginning of this podcast is that we’re getting your other, having this conversation.

[00:12:22] And we talk about that clarity at the beginning, beginning of the podcast. And we go out in business and hire people, bring people’s entire livelihoods, on all backs without having that clarity form, other than, you need to have somebody to fill this role through, a couple of, business acquisitions.

[00:12:45] And that’s what I’ve seen in the past. is you have business owners that are, getting rid of businesses because they have a great product, they have customers, but they can’t put the systems in place cuz they can’t gain that clarity or they don’t understand that is what’s needed for the employees.

[00:13:03] The employees want that. They want. And once you put those systems in place, they can start to thrive. and then also decide, hey, is my skillset a good skillset for this company? I think that’s what we run into a lot where you talk about [00:13:20] hiring for a skillset perspective. Is we end up hiring people that aren’t a good fit for the company in general or because you don’t have no bar, you don’t have, here’s what the standards are and we need to gain clarity around that.

[00:13:34] And that’s how you start to move out of that middle. cuz you can’t. Oh, actually, let’s go. I’ll go back one step forward. That’s how you move into it, because you can’t move. That’s true. Without having a good foundation. Because if you move into that area where everything’s a mess and you and the foundation crumbles and everybody leaves, you are, you’re nothing like it goes back to zero.

[00:13:59] So having that clarity from day one ,when you sit down and write that business plan, write what that looks like, what you said about daily operations, what does it look like when my when my number one player shows up every day, what’s the first thing they do? What does that day look like?

[00:14:18] What, has to be wrapped up before they go home? That stuff’s so critical and it also gives that employee direction that gives them a good place to work. And there’s a lot of, that’s lacking. I think if you look, yeah, know what the statistics are, but if you go and look, there’s a lot of employees that are disgruntled because they don’t have no clarity or direction on exactly what

[00:14:41] The expectations are every day and they really want that.

[00:14:46] Audra: Absolutely. The more clear you can be on the position, and not just the position itself, but how is that person actually gonna acquire new skills and help the company to continue to grow? I [00:15:00] had a client that was in the real estate event space, doing tremendously well.

[00:15:06] Few million a year. Very small staff, maybe 10 people. So every person on the team was wearing multiple hats, trying to get multiple things done, which is pretty normal for a company that size. The challenge is though they were brought in for each one of their expertise. But there were no systems built or no foundation.

[00:15:28] So the challenge where you run into it at that level, yes, they were doing a few million dollars. You can’t get past that though because there’s no infrastructure to support the growth. And so they ran into the issue of how do we get past here? We’ve plateaued. Everybody’s maxed out, so nobody has any ability to learn whatever the next set of skills are to get to the next level.

[00:15:52] The owner doesn’t know what they are because the owner’s trying to manage the front and then the business stays stagnant. The only way that you get out of that is bring in a third party to build an infrastructure, right? To sit down with each one of those people and say, okay, what do you do? What are your responsibilities?

[00:16:10] Build it into a system and then you can plug and play at the players however you need to because the company itself has the support and the system. Now with this company specifically, we try to backfill. Meaning me and a couple other people as outside, contractors tried to backfill those systems and because you run so lean and those people on the frontline have so many responsibilities, you could never get them to a place where they could [00:16:40] stop what they were doing to backfill this.

[00:16:42] So yes, they’ve been able to grow a little bit, but if they would’ve had a solid foundation to start with, they would’ve been able to take it instead of from two to 3 million, they should have been able to go from two to 5 million. And yes, they’ll continue to edge through it and see success, but it’s just out of pure force and burning out your people and just, grit and being reactionary.

[00:17:08] yeah, it’s super challenging.

[00:17:11] Ron Nussbaum: Yeah, you end up in, just living in that middle and no one’s happy and it kills your margins and it kills the momentum for everything. And it destroys what you set out to build at the very beginning when you had a vision to start something.

[00:17:32] You start to kill that and you get lost in that day-to-day. And we can’t do that. it, as leaders, it’s up to us to realize I need help here, or I’m maxed out. How can I figure out how I can move the ball for myself? Because we have to move it for ourselves in order to be able to move it for our employees.

[00:17:55] And the last thing we want to do is be stuck in not looking about how we can get better. And I see it all too often where you have business owners that look at it as their employees should be getting better, they should be learning, but , at the end of the day, if you are not setting that as a focus for yourself and they don’t see you developing and they don’t see you looking outside, the [00:18:20] box can continue growing the business.

[00:18:24] They’re not going to do that. Because they don’t even know, like that’s an expectation because you’re probably wasn’t clear with that. And that’s when you start to get that crumbling and people start to look elsewhere and. It creates huge problems. And you can’t go from a million to 2 million to three to five purely on grit without having extreme turnover and just having the culture problems and all that kind of stuff.

[00:18:53] And I speak from experience. I’m a grinder. I know how to get stuff done. And I had to look in the mirror and say, Hey, this ends at how I should be doing this, we shouldn’t build this way. and you, that’s when you put those systems in place and you have those conversations. If you’re not talking with that frontline leadership, You’re never going to be able to continue to grow the business cuz they can’t read your mind As much as I would like people to read what’s what I’m thinking and act on that’s not reality.

[00:19:24] And we have to figure out how we can communicate that. And I just want to keep going back to what you started with, is that clarity. That’s what we have to have, we have to have clarity with our employees. We have to have clarity with our vision on where’s the company going? What is some of these key marks that we fear, that we feel will lead us out of here?

[00:19:47] How can we establish that this right here, this point, say we go from 1 million to 1.2 million, we feel that would get us out of this middle area and solve that [00:20:00] problem. , but there’s going to be another middle area from one, two to two. And it’s a devil’s advocate when it comes to this cuz businesses are growing business and will always live in this area.

[00:20:11] You just have to figure out how to become efficient at transitioning through it and not letting everybody fall off. You don’t want the foundation to crumble or if you use the analogy of whitewater, you don’t want everybody falling out of the boat as you get through. So you wanna get efficient at keeping everybody in that boat moving in the same direction and solving the problems.

[00:20:36] And that all starts with clarity.

[00:20:38] Audra: Yeah. I wrote, maybe a couple years ago an ebook I mapped out the different stages a business owner goes through. So for me there’s six steps that we do. You have the upstart, where you start with the idea, then you have the launch.

[00:20:56] Then you have, upstart launch, growth where you actually start to see some growth. Then you have scale, then you have automation, and then you have impact. Now, each one of those stages, you’re focused on something very different in the idea stage or the upstart stage there’s not much you need to focus on other than finding your target audience, finding the right product with the right message, and that is. until you get that nailed, that’s the foundation of a business.

[00:21:25] Until you get that right, there’s no point in trying to learn any of this other stuff yet cuz this needs to be spot on where you can say, okay, I have the right product, the right message with the right audience. Now let’s go into launch [00:21:40] and let’s get this thing moving. And I think some of the challenges with business owners is they don’t break it up into systems.

[00:21:48] So today they may have somebody working on automation, but they’re just getting out of the launch stage. Why are you worried about automation yet you haven’t figured out everything to automate, to begin with? Or they’re focused on scaling and they haven’t really started growing yet. They haven’t hit that momentum where they’re start seeing growth after growth every month, 1%, 2%, 5% off of the previous month.

[00:22:16] That big growth part, you should be focused on things that are going to keep that momentum going so you can hit that scale place. I’ve made it my mission going forward between the marketplace that I’ve built and owning an agency since 2009 to try to organize this entrepreneurial space.

[00:22:35] It’s total chaos. There is no rhyme or reason how any of these parts move together, and I know that many more businesses could be successful. If they weren’t walking out there and just seeing all this amazing marketing popping up Facebook ads and get a coach and, use Shopify and use this plugin or take this course, there’s nothing,

[00:23:01] it’s just total chaos out there. And I think people end up chasing all these different kinds of rabbits thinking that’s the result I need and my business will be fine. I just need to learn TikTok ads or put up dance videos and everybody’s gonna buy my product. But it really is simpler than that.[00:23:20]

[00:23:20] Ron Nussbaum: Yeah. I think what you’re talking about is where people focus are the sexy aspects of business. So that’s start that beginning stage where that excitement is and then that impact, that, that’s where. So we made it, we try to skip all these steps. We can move through that because hey, we, it’s hot, it’s cool.

[00:23:44] It’s the big thing to do is I got this company, I’m starting it up, and then that fizzles is out. You want to get to where you’re having that impact, because that’s the thing people see. That’s the next hot thing, and everybody forgets. There’s a lot of stuff that goes in between all of that gets you from idea to impact, and we can’t lose sight of that because it’s.

[00:24:08] It’s a journey along the way, and the those, it is full of ups and downs, but we can’t just think the next shiny object’s going to get us there because in, in the world we live in today, that’s what people want. They want to have that moment where it’s I’m here and then I’m here, but long lasting companies.

[00:24:29] are built over a period of time in working the vision, in working that clarity, and then going back and looking at what the original plan was and how we can make that better to continue to grow the business because that original plan’s only gonna get you so far, right? It’s not going to get you to that end vision, because as a leader you grow.

[00:24:53] and things differently. So I say annually you need to be reevaluating yourself as a [00:25:00] leader. what does that vision look like for the company? Because in that year, those 12 months, you should have not only grown as a business, but you should have grown as a person. And you have a different way of looking at stuff.

[00:25:12] You’re looking at stuff from a different angle, and you need to go back and rewrite that clarity. So it’s still clear because that clarity can change in your mind. But if you don’t change that for the people around you, they’re still operating with what the last message was that you gave them.

[00:25:32] And,

[00:25:32] Audra: It’s not about catching up. You can’t catch up. So don’t even try. just get in a game where you’re at and learn what’s working right now. To touch on the impact thing. Oh, you’re right. A lot of people get into business because they wanna make an impact, but I would challenge that there’s different ways to make an impact without thinking that you’re in the impact stage.

[00:25:56] So I’ll give you two examples. Think of Russell Brunson, the founder of ClickFunnels. a hundred million dollar year company. Russell is the owner. Russell is still out there day in and day out. Hawking his widgets. Think of Richard Branson. Richard Branson has, last I heard,

[00:26:16] He had 450 companies. . Now, mind you, he is been in business 50 years. Okay? He’s an ambassador. He is at Impact, and he is been an impact for many years, but the quality that he gives back,

[00:26:30] He shows up as the ambassador of his company. Now, that’s where impact is. And I’m not saying everybody’s gotta become Richard Branson, so don’t go there. [00:26:40] But what I’m trying to say is they’re different people. When you’re at that level of creating an impact, doesn’t mean you stop working. Doesn’t mean that, you don’t still deal with challenges that come up in your business.

[00:26:55] Doesn’t mean that you’re not out there selling still. yes, you wanna create an impact, but you’ve gotta be able to focus on the stage of your business that you’re at. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to be that face and that impact that you can have. Russell is in, what, seven years? I think ClickFunnels has been around and even before that, probably three years after it took off.

[00:27:18] he nailed it. He created a market that didn’t really exist. He was able to put it out there and he stuck to it. Putting the work in, going through the messy middle, dealing with all the challenges that came up with technology and staff, and growing pains to get where he is at now.

[00:27:36] Audra: Regardless if you love him or hate him, that’s not the point. The point is to look at what he’s had to go through to grow a business like that. Now your goal may not be a hundred million a year, and that’s okay. The steps are still the same. Even if you’re a hundred thousand dollars a year business, you are still gonna go through these things.

[00:27:55] If you don’t have the systems, if you don’t learn the right things at the right stage, your business will not be able to produce consistent revenue.

[00:28:05] Ron Nussbaum: Yeah, and I think one of the amazing things from what you just said is that we look at Click Funnels and think of this huge overnight success, and you just said seven years of of working through that.

[00:28:19] Like [00:28:20] you don’t just wake up one day in run a billion dollar company, or you run a hundred million dollar company. There’s lessons that have to be learned along that way, and that’s when I talk about reevaluating what that clarity looks like, it’s because yeah, if you are going to go from a hundred thousand to 200,000, that’s a double up.

[00:28:39] You have to become the $200,000 a year leader. You can’t do that as a hundred thousand dollars a year leader. Or if you’re going to take your staff from 50 to a hundred people, you yourself, as a leader have to have a transformation that allows you to be able to be that person. It doesn’t just happen overnight, and you have to put in the effort.

[00:29:01] You have to get the right people around you and invest in yourself every day or else you’ll never get there. Yeah. That’s how people just get stuck in that middle because they’re unwilling to look in the mirror and say, Hey, I need help with this. This, I don’t have all the answers, but I know the answers are out there, and I’m a lifelong learner, so I have always just positioned myself around the right people and feel that that’s very important because I know Ron Nusbaum today.

[00:29:33] Isn’t the Ron Nusbaum that we’re lead nut nest when, you know we have a 500 million evaluation, it’s two completely different people. And I have to be willing and open to go become that person, and go through the challenges that lead me there. ,

[00:29:49] Audra: that’s a great point. Back to the leadership thing and we’ve spent the first 30 minutes of this conversation talking about the challenges.

[00:29:58] And what I don’t want [00:30:00] is people to feel so overwhelmed by what we’re trying to say. That you’re not getting the lesson here. here’s the quick takeaway. Yes. All of these things can happen. Yes. All of these things are important. All you have to do is get really good at asking questions. Nobody has the answers when it comes to parenting.

[00:30:20] It’s easy to make a baby. It’s very hard to raise a baby if you have children. You know this. There’s no manual. Some of it is just tripping through it, saying, oh, okay, that didn’t really work. Maybe we’re not gonna make that decision next time. But I think it’s being open to just saying, you know what? I don’t know the answers and I’m not supposed to know the answers.

[00:30:43] So I’m not failing. I’m learning. let me find somebody a step or two ahead of me. What are they doing? How do, how did they transition to that next stage? I just need to learn it. Somebody’s already done it. Like you said, I just gotta learn it. I just gotta seek out the knowledge that’s gonna move me to the next stage.

[00:31:02] Some business owners take it as a personal attack on their ego or their effectiveness as a leader, and it’s not the case. How are you going to acquire these skills? They don’t come through osmosis. They don’t come through. I’ve decided I’m gonna open a business today, so now I have all the skills. There’s no download.

[00:31:21] You gotta learn it. , we’re not like the Matrix yet where we could just put in a program and it downloads it to our brain on how to fly a plane. You have to learn. Yeah,

[00:31:29] Ron Nussbaum: no, hey, I 100% agree with that . Cause I want that guy. I’ve been down that road where I thought I should just know the answers.

[00:31:37] I’m in this role. I’m here for a [00:31:40] reason. I should just know and that’s the wrong mentality to have. I made more mistakes that way then I have ever made from just saying, Hey. I need help with this. and that’s something we will always fight because the reason you’re a leader, you have a business, is because you want to be that guy.

[00:31:58] You want to be that lady. You want to be the person that’s out in front leading the charge. But you don’t just have all of that from day one and you’re always fighting the consistency on going and getting help. And that’s why building a circle and having people close to you that are willing to point that stuff out and point you in the right direction is so critical for anybody along the stage.

[00:32:24] you should always be surrounding yourself with people that are where you’re at, where you’re going. And I like to surround myself with some people that I can help and bring along the way because I know that had a big impact for me to have people that were willing to point me in the right direction.

[00:32:42] Ron Nussbaum: So I, I think you should always be looking at every aspect of where you are in your path and your journey.

[00:32:49] Audra: Okay, so I got a question. So I’m a business owner and I’ve gotten a little bit of momentum. I’m in the, you’re my cat, I’m sorry, . Um, I’m in the growth stage, but I’m an introvert. How do I go about learning to advance my business to the next level?

[00:33:13] I don’t really like people. I have a good widget. I don’t really have to communicate with them, but I [00:33:20] box myself into, I only know what I know and I’m not really the one to go to networking or join coaching programs or something like that. So what would you suggest from a leadership role, how to push those people out of that zone?

[00:33:35] Audra: And then I’ll tell you why afterwards. Yeah.

[00:33:38] I would start, I would ask, why did you develop the widget? what is that end impact that you’re looking to create? And then once we have that we can lead into how can we take little steps of action every day to get you outside of your box, being in that box.

[00:33:55] Ron Nussbaum: We’re not in where you want that widget to go,what was that? Why? So you gotta work on building up the courage to be able to take action. I’m a big component of taking action. Doing something, yeah. Is better than doing nothing, whether it was right or wrong. And every day, if you just take a little action to move outside that box, it will compound and you’ll become more comfortable.

[00:34:23] But you always have to have that reason why you created the widget to drive that. And if you don’t have that, you’ll never want to leave the box.

[00:34:33] Audra: Okay. Okay. I met a person yesterday that has a small business and she’s been doing it for a while. And so we were talking about different kinds of things and I said, what about this?

[00:34:48] Or what about that? And she says, I don’t really know anybody because I’m an introvert. And I said, what does that have to do with anything? You’re running a business. You have to be able to get outside yourself [00:35:00] or hire people that are gonna be outside there for you, but where are you personally getting your growth from?

[00:35:05] if you never leave your four walls and don’t look online and don’t read books, or watch YouTube or do something to try to expand your mind, how can you lead effectively? You’re gonna be, like you’ve said earlier, you’re gonna be left behind. Your business is not gonna make it. With the invention of the internet and the ability to reach people in nanoseconds now 24 7, 365 days a year, it’s not that you have to be everywhere, but your people are out there and it’s outta sight, outta mind.

[00:35:39] Audra: If I don’t see you, I’m not gonna think of you when I need to buy that widget. I, so I had to challenge her a little bit, but then I got to a place where I was like, I shouldn’t try to force her to be somebody she’s not. But we already know, we’ve helped enough clients through this journey so many years, both of us.

[00:35:57] It’s not gonna go anywhere. It’s just not, if she’s not gonna be open enough to explore her own growth, the company can’t grow. It’s just not possible.

[00:36:09] Ron Nussbaum: No, and what we all face is not being known. Not having your product known is that’s the, whether you provide a local service or an online sales porter or selling on Amazon or anything, if people don’t know you exist.

[00:36:28] It doesn’t matter. And you have to be willing to get outside of that and figure out what does that look like right now and long-term. So if you don’t feel you’re [00:36:40] the person long-term, you need to be the person now so you can train that person long-term. And what does that look like? Cuz if you just hire somebody and say, Hey, I absolutely hate doing this, just go do it.

[00:36:53] I guarantee you they do not what you want. And it ends up being a bigger problem cuz now you have to clean that up. So the best way to be able to teach somebody is to go do it. And then you understand every aspect of that. And that’s the same way as if you need to go do something and you don’t know how to do it, find somebody that can teach you how they did it and then implement that.

[00:37:19] And that’s how you start to get that growth. Because I guarantee you, you’re not the first person that was sitting there in a box that didn’t want to go out here, that had a great product, but did not want to get out of their comfort zone and think about what if Click Funnels, he stayed in his box

[00:37:39] Yeah. We would be, we wouldn’t be talking about it right now. And, but that’s what happens is there’s a lot of people with great ideas that can’t get out of their own way because they’re too afraid. And there’s plenty of people that have, I would say you just reach out to those people, learn from ’em, watch their YouTube videos, follow ’em on Facebook, Instagram, and what, there’s so many ways in today’s world to be able to get information and learn. podcasts are a great way to listen, to figure out exactly how do I get out of that space and how do I move on.

[00:38:16] Audra: I think the other important thing is you don’t have to follow everybody.[00:38:20] find what is next for you. So if you say, okay, I’m at a place now where I’m ready to hire my first employee, or I’m ready to build a team. My product’s doing well, but I’m not sure what’s next. Find somebody that’s just on that.

[00:38:35] Now, remember, when we go on social media, the goal is we’re promoters there. We’re not consumers. We’re not there to watch 35 videos from 30 different techniques. Then we’re completely overwhelmed and we do nothing. that’s typically what happens. Yes, there are 50 ways to send an email, and there’s probably 150 different companies that do it effectively.

[00:39:01] Start with one. Let’s just do one. Let’s find one product or one technology to send one email and just build that system until you get it done really well. Don’t go out there. cuz that’s what we do, right? we’re researchers. We go out, we read reviews, we see what the product does or the widget does, and then we have to make some kind of decision.

[00:39:23] But then the next step is, now I gotta learn how to use that technology. Which, if you’re not a tech person, that can sometimes trip you up to the point where you don’t end up doing it. And then you have to write that email if you do get through the technology, but you’re not a copywriter. So there’s so many little stop gaps that can prevent you from actually just getting out an email, find a way around it, even if it’s a very rudimentary way.

[00:39:51] There’s enough. to stick with the email marketing. There’s enough email platforms out there that are advertising the heck out of their services. Pick one and start with it. [00:40:00] Find something very affordable. and if you’re trying to get something free, you can use MailChimp, you can use Mailerlite.

[00:40:07] if you’re looking for something that’s got some automation, look at Active Campaign or MailChimp, Mailerlite, constant Contact Aweber. there’s plenty of great companies out there doing it. Send one stop worrying about, I need automation and I need a sequence of 10. Let’s start with one and get that nailed.

[00:40:28] Audra: Then go on from there. .

[00:40:30] Ron Nussbaum: Yeah, I, you can’t guarantee very much things in life these days, but I, there’s one thing I can guarantee is that you would get no responses if you don’t just step up and hit the send button. there you go. it, one of the magic of things is it’s on us to figure out what reaches our customers the best.

[00:40:47] But our customers don’t know what we’re supposed to be saying, so you could completely butcher it. They don’t know. It’s not That’s a good point. That’s not like their job to know what we should be saying to them. Our job is to figure out what gets them to click through and gets them in front of us.

[00:41:06] Ron Nussbaum: So by taking that action, that’s when you start to figure that out and start to know what that customer wants and then you get good at it. Yeah. But it all starts with hitting that send button the first time and figuring out does this even work? And being able to adjust it. And that’s the only way you’ll ever get that interaction.

[00:41:25] Audra: Social media, emails, cold outreach, any of that. All right, so let’s shift gears for a second. We’ve got probably about 10, 12 minutes. What would be your go-to strategy for outbound [00:41:40] marketing conversation?

[00:41:41] I do a lot of outbound right now. It’s just kinda good. Okay. The nature of the beast of what I’m doing right now.

[00:41:47] Ron Nussbaum: And,I worked a lot in my network and in my industry. reach out, I think, You most people have a knowledge base and I think if you’re starting out, you should start out by working within that so you can have relevant conversations that lead you to what your offer is. And I think too many people are in a hurry to get somebody on and close them down.

[00:42:13] And I think we should be building some relationships along the way, especially when you’re doing some of this called outbound and that’s how you’re gonna create some lifelong customers that are going to be around and people that promote your product. So necessarily not trying to get somebody right in the door to buy your product, but get them in to have a conversation

[00:42:35] around your product or around something that’s relevant to what’s going on these days? I come with a, construction background. So I talk to people in the construction industry and being that I spent over a decade there, I can have a relevant conversation. I don’t have to rely on trying to sell something.

[00:42:55] I can talk about my experiences and why I am here doing what I’m doing right now. And I think that’s how the messaging should be. I don’t think there’s any right or wrong when you’re reaching out, you’ll figure that out. But the main thing is what we talked about. send the message. Like just don’t write it and read it and read it.

[00:43:16] Write it and send it. See what happens. If it doesn’t [00:43:20] work, rework it, send it. And what people don’t realize is, like what I just said is there’s no right or wrong way like this is right, all untested waters. You just have to figure out what works for your product, your company, and your solution. what lands with the end customer.

[00:43:41] And it’s up to you to figure that out because there’s no magic sauce when it comes to that. The only magic that can happen is from you doing it. And then learning and then editing, and then doing it again, and then doing it again, and then doing it again. That is the, that’s where the magic happens. And then you get to where you have a message that your audience responds to because you’ve tested it, you know it works.

[00:44:08] And then when you send that out, or you can bring somebody else in that can then start doing that outreach because, this works. Hey, here, this is the message. This is what we need to send, or here’s the sequence. And this works because I have spent time figuring it out and sending it. I think we have all, all too much of where people think everything is very, just copy and paste.

[00:44:31] I, I think you need to figure out what that message is and what resonates with your customers. And if you don’t do that, your customers will never show up. And. Like I said, your customers don’t know what you’re supposed to be saying. Cause a lot of times you are going out with something that’s brand new and

[00:44:52] They don’t even know. So you’re writing the book about it. You’re writing the

[00:44:56] Audra: whole story. That’s a good point. That’s a great point. [00:45:00] So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna snip this little bit of what you just said and I’m gonna post it and share it with everybody on LinkedIn, because those are the worst emails that I ever get.

[00:45:13] You know what? They’re beautiful introductions. Hey Audra, I took a look at your profile, or something of value to let me know that they’ve read my profile. You accept their friend request. And then it’s, do you need help with your B2B leads? But , do you need help closing your sales calls?

[00:45:30] I’m like, seriously? No. No. Not even one original thought here. And I’m like, did you even read my profile? Did you actually read it? Because if you did, you wouldn’t be trying to sell me agency services. You would’ve saw that I’m already an agency. It’s unbelievable, what you can get out there.

[00:45:50] Ron Nussbaum: But, one of my, my, my co-founder Jared Yellen, he’s an amazing guy. And one thing he says all the time is, don’t send anything that you wouldn’t to respond to. Cause that isn’t going to work. So look at that inbound that you’re getting. we need to be looking at that. I’m the same way on LinkedIn.

[00:46:10] it just comes in, there’s messages every day. But, I read ’em and go through and see. What takeaways do I have? What are they doing bad? Why do I not want to click through? Why do I want to click through? Because A lot of your customers are going to have the same kind of emotions that you have, install peace in some of that to your other on what you feel does work and what doesn’t work.

[00:46:32] Ron Nussbaum: Work. I’m a very exciting guy. I like to lead in with I’m super excited to share what I’m doing because I am, at the end [00:46:40] of the day, I’m so excited to be able to get to do what I’m doing now and be able to go out and completely change communication in an entire industry. So I’m up front when I send messages, I say that Hey Mike, I am super excited to be able to share this with you, because that’s what’s going to come through when people talk to me.

[00:47:00] And, I think taking all that, that cold outbound that we receive and, reading it and picking out what, because it’s not all horrible, but. 99% of it is, but there’s that 1% in there that you go, man, that’s really good. that is a sentence that I think I should use.

[00:47:19] Audra: Yeah.

[00:47:20] No, and I’m in fun making, poking fun at it, but there’s good stuff and there’s super challenging stuff and I know that people could get a lot better result if they did what you just said. Take the time to read what’s effective here. What is just too cold and too generic that even if you, those people could have solid products, they could have great services, but they’ll never get past that email because it was a copy and paste and there was nothing personal or nothing that actually pertained to me it was some kind of value throw up of what they do.

[00:47:58] Great. That’s what you do. If I wanted your product, I would’ve come to your site or I would’ve soughted you out. You’re supposed to come to me saying how you can help me and solve my problems. It’s supposed to be about me, not about what you are trying to hawk. And I think if turn that message around a little bit and be more concerned with the receiver than you [00:48:20] are about just hitting at numbers.

[00:48:21] I, I get it. We all know it’s in numbers. If I do it enough times, somebody will pick up the phone and take my call. But come on, you can get much better results if you actually had intention in what you were doing.

[00:48:35] Ron Nussbaum: Yeah, it is. At the end of the day, it’s all a numbers game. It’s how much comes in and what your turn rate on that is.

[00:48:42] But if we can raise what our percentages are on the bottom end of it, as stuff comes in, It works out a lot better. Cause yeah, if you go from converting 5% to converting 10, that just doubled your customers on a hundred messages,Or it doubles your customers on any amount of messages that you send.

[00:49:03] But yeah, you have better results because you have a better introduction or you have, there’s just so many ways to be able to look at it, but you do have to do it. Like you not do it. You have to be willing to do it and then learn from it. Don’t keep sending the same thing. That doesn’t work.

[00:49:21] Audra: Edit it just to check it off your list that you get it today, right? yeah. Don’t, yeah, exactly.

[00:49:27] Ron Nussbaum: Don’t just do it to check it off, to say, Hey, oh, I did that, but I sent the same crap message I’ve been sending for two weeks and haven’t gotten one response. Like , edit it, figure it out. Send it to somebody in your network.

[00:49:40] Be like, Hey, what do you think of this? And get some feedback if it’s not working.

[00:49:45] Audra: Yeah. here’s the other thing. They send it out couple weeks, no response. And then they say it doesn’t work. I’m like, no, people are making billions and billions of dollars. It works. It’s just you don’t have the right message to the right [00:50:00] audience.

[00:50:00] Ron Nussbaum: Yeah. Cuz a lot of times it would just take a small percentage of the actual customers that are out there. if we look at market segments for anybody’s business and how big it actually is and how much of that market you need to be successful, it’s a tiny number. Like you, you have to have an impact on a small percentage of your in customers to have huge and great results.

[00:50:30] And you just have to figure out how do you do that? And that’s by taking action in doing it every day. Yeah.

[00:50:37] Audra: And having a plan.

[00:50:38] Ron Nussbaum: Yeah. Oh yeah. That’s where we started. That’s where we started with the entire, that’s that we started conversation. Yeah. Is being crystal clearer on that plan. So as you implement it, you don’t have any fall through it.

[00:50:51] There’s nobody doing the complete opposite of what you were planning on having done because you set that plan out, you were clear about it. Now you’re taking action, you’re implementing it, and you are pivoting and making decisions as you need to go. Then you reevaluate every year. You go back and you rewrite that plan and then you’re crystal clear once again and the cycle just continues.

[00:51:16] And that’s what continues to move you through that middle.

[00:51:20] Audra: So don’t stay stuck. There are solutions. Learn how to ask questions. Park your ego at the curb cuz that is not gonna serve you here, . Yeah, absolutely. And just keep taking action. Yeah. So any last words for our audience? Any takeaways you got for them?

[00:51:39] I would [00:51:40] just say don’t be afraid. Step outside of that box. If there’s one thing from this podcast that you learned today is go do something. Do something right now today that you’re afraid to go do. Do it right now and check that box. It’s not that scary. taking that action isn’t as scary as you think it’s going to be.

[00:52:02] Ron Nussbaum: Send that email, send that message, reach out to that client and just do it.

[00:52:11] Audra: Beautiful. So I’ll just add one last thing to that. If you are an introvert or you are struggling and don’t feel you’ve got anybody in your audience that you can, that can be a sounding board for you or give you some feedback. Join zindolabs.

[00:52:27] You have access to our community there. We’re willing to help and give you feedback or direction, resources, whatever it is, it’s free. So there’s is, I’m not selling you anything, but I want you to know that there is a place that you can go if you feel like you don’t have that network around you. So now there’s no excuse for not getting stuff done.

[00:52:49] Ron Nussbaum: Hey, I’ll make it super easy as well. Is that can be the action. Yeah. If that’s the one. If that, if you can’t think of anything else, let that be the action you take that gets you outside of your comfort zone. It don’t get any more easier than that. Signing up for a free network. Just

[00:53:04] Audra: go do.

[00:53:05] Just go do it and I’ll hold you accountable. So you need somebody to hold you accountable. I am happy to assist. All right, Ron, thank you so much for being here. I’ve really enjoyed the conversation, and what we’ll do is we will, in the [00:53:20] show notes, I will leave all of Ron’s contact information so you can check him out further and connect with him on his social platforms and continue the conversation.

[00:53:31] Yeah,

[00:53:31] Ron Nussbaum: absolutely. It’s been great being here today and thanks. I loved it. It was an amazing conversation.

[00:53:37] Audra: Good. Appreciate it.