Transcription

Jennifer Tamborski

00:00:00

If you are wanting to make a million dollars in your business, it is best to find somebody as a coach who has made a million dollars because correct. If they haven't, they can't take you there. Right. If you're looking for six figures, it's again best to find somebody that has taken people to six figures before.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:00:18

Yes.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:00:18

And on the other side of that, the fallacy is that it's easy. They're is nothing about business that is easy. It doesn't have to be hard. It's just work.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:00:32

Yeah, it's effortful.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:00:34

Exactly.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:00:36

You got to do stuff. Welcome to too legitimate to quit instantly actionable small business strategies with a pop culture spin. I am your host, sales, trainer and self professed muppet, Annie p. Ruggles. And my guest today is the brilliant and lovely Jennifer Tamborski. Jennifer Tamborski is a digital marketing strategist and CEO for virtual marketing experts. She delivers high energy keynote presentations that give a unique twist on common marketing topics. Her talks break down marketing into understandable processes designed to help the audience remove marketing overwhelm and grow their business. She and her team work behind the scenes in their clients businesses, creating, managing and optimizing profitable digital marketing strategies and campaigns that produce unprecedented levels of growth for those businesses. Jennifer Tamborski before we finally embark in one of the largest pop culture quests that I have undertaken on this show, before we get there and we will get there, folks, I have the pleasure of asking you the question, what the heck do small business owners need to focus on this week?

Jennifer Tamborski

00:02:28

So in my world, small business owners need to focus on marketing, like all marketing, all the time. Because reality is the big secret about business is in order to create consistent profits in your business, you must have consistent leads so that you can have consistent sales.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:02:48

No.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:02:53

And if you're not marketing your business, you're not going to get those consistent leads. Which means your whole business is a roller coaster event of up and down and feast and famine, which I don't know about you, but that does not make me happy.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:03:10

I mean, I've lived in that place for a really long time and I have muscle memory of that place and I would really like to not go back there. I think about that dry pipeline as like the part this is not our pop culture topic, everybody, but just roll with it. Where that part in the lion king wall SIMB is gone. That pride rock turns into the elephant graveyard. That's how I feel about my dry ass pipeline. It's like nothing can grow here.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:03:40

That's exactly it.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:03:41

This is a barren wasteland of work stress. Like nothing can grow here because I have no nutrients left. This is a wasteland of sad stress, overwhelming, overwork and probably over delivering. Right. So I love that idea of making sure that your marketing is keyword consistent so that you can have that pipeline consistent so if anything, it runs to a trick call, but not a drought.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:04:12

I think what a lot of business owners, when it comes to that consistency, there's three types of business owners. There's the business owner that doesn't market at all, right? They have no idea how to start. They're afraid to get out there. They're in what my business coach calls entrepreneur Witness Protection Program. It's fabulous. It's a fabulous term where they just.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:04:38

Tell your business coach to make shirts for that because that's good. It is.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:04:42

It is a fantastic term because a lot of people do start there. They don't tell anybody that they even have a business. And if you don't tell anyone you have a business, they can't buy from you, right. Or they're in that feast and famine mode. They market for a very short time, maybe a month or two, and then they get three or four clients, and it's enough to satisfy that need for income. And then they stop marketing until they need more clients. And one of the things I don't think they realize, or most people don't realize, is that marketing efforts sometimes take 30, 60, 90 days to actually bring forth results.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:05:24

Or longer.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:05:25

Or longer.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:05:26

30, 60, 90 days is conservative.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:05:29

It really is.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:05:30

Like, a lot of us are playing long games. And you're on a podcast right now. I was on your podcast earlier this week. Podcast interviewing, apart from just being a whole lot of fun, can be great marketing, but it's a long ass lead time, right? For example, if I had a backlog of episodes, which I don't, this is coming out in like, three weeks from them right now. But if I had a long backload of episodes, let's imagine that you were relying on me and this show to grow a launch for you to bring new eyeballs in. Of course that's the goal, right? But if I had a backlog of shows, it's very possible that this interview could come out in June. January, right. So we got to play that long game because sometimes we don't have control over how long something takes or how long it takes to vest or how many brand impressions it really takes before someone steps up to the plate and says, you know what? My interest in them is more important to me than the inertia I'm feeling.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:06:37

And that's the biggest thing that's the biggest thing I think most people are also unaware of is that it can sometimes take hundreds of impressions of you in front of somebody, especially in this day and age where they're inundated with everything. I mean, we thought TV commercials when we were kids, and well, in my generation, anyway.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:07:01

You all hear the Gen X shame in that. Do you all hear the Gen X shame that she is chucking at this elder millennial? Me? Like, do you hear my generation? Yes, your generation.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:07:17

My kids didn't watch a whole lot of commercials. They streamed things on Netflix, so there wasn't a whole lot of commercials in that right. And even nowadays, if you're watching Hula or whatever and you don't pay for the upgrade to not get commercials, you're getting commercials that used to be the only method, one of the only methods, but the most common method to get your message in front of people. With social media platforms and podcasting and all of the things nowadays that are out there, it's become just this flux of information. Good, bad, or indifferent information. It's all just this influx of information, which means people really need that interaction with you multiple times, maybe hundreds of times.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:08:04

Yes. A zillion, billion, trillion, sometimes.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:08:08

So without actually keeping them engaged throughout the process, nurturing them all the whole time, you never know when they're going to be ready. I've had clients that have had people on their email list for three to five years before they've bought for them. Others, you know, other people are ready right away, but you always want to keep in mind to continually bring in those leads because you don't know how long that lead is going to take. You may get one lead that's ready to buy immediately, and the next lead, it may be two years.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:08:39

Yeah. And in my business, I have both. I have a client right now that has been hanging out in my orbit for no joke, ten years and has seen me because she's been around for ten years. She's seen me through, like, 87 different pivots. So I tell her I finally just hit the lottery of pivoting to the thing she actually needed. So she's been hanging out around me for ten years. And then I have another client who I dearly, dearly love, that hurt me on one podcast and hired me the next day. We just don't know. We don't know where people are in their learning curve. We don't know where they are in their financial set. We don't know what their stressors are that are either fanning the flame of them hiring you or making them feel like that's inaccessible. We don't know. So all we could do is show up and show up over and over and over and over and over.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:09:35

You are very correct. Which makes it so important that even if you have a full client roster, like if you're a coach or whatever, and you have a full client roster, it is still important to continue to fill those leads, because at some point, you're not going to. And if you don't have a base to sell into, guess what? You're starting all over again.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:09:58

Thank you. Thank you. I teach sales. You all I teach sales. But if you don't have an audience of any kind or you are unwilling to accrue one, I could teach you what to say when you find people, but you still have to go out and get those people. I cannot invent a pipeline for you just because your selling strategy walks in any more than I can teach you how to sell by having your marketing be good. Right?

Jennifer Tamborski

00:10:31

Exactly.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:10:32

This is a partnership. This is a trade off. We talked about this on your show. Marketing and sales are not the same damn department. Right, but we need to be fostering.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:10:41

Both but they are friends.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:10:44

They're buddies. Yes, they're biffles. Right? But I think especially in digital marketing, which is your area, and especially in online digital entrepreneurship, info preneurship all the portmanteas you could possibly need with the wordpreneur. One of the things that I see us get really hooked on is this nebulous term called a launch, which means 97,000 different things to 97,000 different people. And yet everyone's like, what are you launching? When is your launch just launched? Well, launches are stressful. No, launches aren't stressful. Launches can be lean. Launches can be luscious. Launches can be everything. Launch, launch, launch, launch, launch. Okay, so what is your freaking definition of the word launch? And why is everyone so obsessed with this concept?

Jennifer Tamborski

00:11:35

So, launching is really simple. It's just putting a product out there at a specific time frame. That's it. That's the simplest definition of a launch. There's different tactics you can take in a launch, and there's different processes you can go through when it comes to launching your product, service, or solution. But in reality, it's just putting it out there. Now, the biggest mistake people make when they launch is that they launch into nothing land back to that lead generation.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:12:05

They got 87,000 nurture emails that go to nobody. Exactly.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:12:11

And that's the biggest mistake people make, especially in, like, the info products section where you're creating this course. You spend months and months and months and sometimes years creating and perfecting this course, and then you're like, okay, I'm ready to sell it. But you haven't spent any time growing an audience to sell it, too. So then you launch into nobody, and then you're disappointed and you're dejected. And all of the things that go around, I suck, my product sucks, when reality is, if you had spent some time marketing and building up a leads generation, when you opened your doors and said, hey, I have this new, pretty, shiny product, people would have bought it.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:12:55

Yes. Or at least considered it. You would have gotten farther into consideration that you could have done some data, you could have mine some data, you could have gotten some feedback, you could have pivoted if necessary. But I totally see what you're talking about because people buy, and I'm not okay, hold on. I'm being very bitchy this episode, and I want to just make sure that I'm being utterly clear and reminding my dear beloved listeners who know me that I say this bitchiness out of love, and I say this bitchiness at my former self. I'm not trying to chew you out. I'm not trying to make you feel bad I was you. But launches feel and I'm not dogging the whole idea of a launch. Don't at me, but launches feel so significant and event based and humongous that we get this idea that if I just launch, if I build it, it will come. No, feel the dreams is bullshit. You have to put up a billboard. You have to tell everyone to come. You have to remind them to come. You have to send them a coupon code for their friends. You ought to email them 57 times. You got to have the strobe lights in the air. If you could hire a blimp, great. No one is coming to a baseball field they don't know about except ghosts.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:14:17

I say that in my own podcast on a regular basis. None of us are Kevin Costner. It's just not happening.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:14:24

No, again, not our pop culture topic, but important, right? Like, if you build it, they will come. It means ghosts. We don't need ghosts. Most of us serve the living. Okay?

Jennifer Tamborski

00:14:38

Exactly. And there's this whole to get off into a different tangent, but this whole idea of bringing things to you and this idea that God will provide or whatever, the thing is, here's the reality. And there's this story out there that goes around the Internet all the time about the man who was in a flood, and he climbs on his roof, and someone comes by and says, hop in the boat. And he's like, no, no. God will save me. And then a helicopter comes, and he says, no, God will save me. And then the water rises. He dies. He gets to God. And God's like, I sent you a helicopter and a boat. What more did you want? You do have to do the work. You have to step into it or manifestation and God and whatever it is you want to call it isn't really going to work if you're not doing the work upfront.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:15:35

Exactly. You got to work with the universe, not against it. If you're rejecting help and you're rejecting growth, you're working against it.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:15:43

Absolutely.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:15:44

Right. You're working against it. And so, man, I would get this picture bibi and like, Nah, I'm cool. Rolls over, does little sunbathing, people like, Annie get the freaking boat? I'd be like, okay. But it's interesting because visibility is vulnerable.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:16:07

It is.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:16:07

And so a lot of us feel that if we just sit and wait for the right people to find us, that naturally they'll be led to us. And they will. And it's like, okay, but visibility is vulnerable until you realize that it's not actually about you, right? Like, you are showing yourself for someone else. I just watched this really sad, amazing, rough documentary about football player mantiteo, who very famously got super catfished by this now woman, transgender woman who at the time was male presenting and was catfishing mantiteo and was like a girlfriend. And then the girlfriend air quotes died and it was this whole big thing. They could have really villainized that woman, the catfish. They could have really villainized her. And they do. They say like, she needs to atone and take responsibility and do these things and she's been forgiven by manti and all these things, but they really allowed her to show her story and her struggle and also her strength because at the end she's moved back to American Samoa, she's dancing, she's found this new identity. She's living as her true self. And they said, why would you put yourself through this? Why would you agree to be in this documentary? And she said, Because I need other people to see, not to make the choices I made. And also if they go down the wrong path that they can heal their own lives. And I was like, see, that is not her being visible for her. She is not trying to be a fame horse. She never wanted to be found. She wanted to stay in obscurity. That's why she killed the damn girlfriend, right? So the fact that she wound up an international news sensation for months is not her ideal. But the visibility now is not for her and it's not for manti. It's for people out there who are so lonely that they feel like catfishing is their only recourse. And I'm like, see, that is strength, that is vulnerable. Visibility for the purpose of others. And I think sometimes we're like, oh, my hair, my face, that's just ego y'all. We're out here trying to impact someone. We're out here trying to enable change. We can't do that in entrepreneurial witness protection, like you said, absolutely cannot.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:18:27

And here's the reality. There are going to be trolls. I mean, there are trolls on the internet and you don't have to listen to them, right? You can recognize that they're trolls and that what they say doesn't actually matter. Here's the second part to that visibility. Your audience, this sounds really mean, but they don't care about you. They care about what you can do for them. So if you're out there presenting information and presenting yourself as the solution for whatever their problem is, they're not going to care that you have gray hair or you have red hair or you have a pimple on your nose. They want and need what it is you provide them and that's the most important thing to them.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:19:14

Yeah, and what are the things they say about trolls? Like people only throw shade on shiny things. Yeah, right. The people that are trolling you are not your ideal client. I think we can make that very sweeping generalization and I think we can lean into it, right? Like the people you're afraid of coming at you are not the people that are going to turn around and invest in you ever. So who are you so worried about embarrassing yourself in front of you if.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:19:45

You are very sensitive? Like if you read all of the comments and you know it's going to hurt your feelings, I suggest you hire someone to read the comments for you. Stay off. Stay off. If you're running ads or posting on social media or even on YouTube or whatever, stay off the comments section. Hire a VA or somebody that can monitor your reputation and answer questions so that you don't get hit with that emotional whatever, damage.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:20:15

It hurts. I'm not going to sit here and say that when you get trolled, it doesn't hurt. When I got that thing on YouTube that I talk about all the time, that's like, why would I want to learn sales from a fat girl? That hurt. And then I went, I don't know anything about this person. I don't know anything about their life. I don't know anything. I could look like their abusive ex wife. I don't know. I don't know why they chose to lash out on me. It's not on me to know. I'm here to serve the people that are going to treat me right so that I could treat them right and they could treat me right and I can treat them right. It's not going to be this guy guy who apparently can't learn anything from the multi chin, okay, fine, dude, do what you do. So I think that is just so, so key. Now, another thing that I think we get into this idea of launch, right? Everything has to be huge. Everything has to be fast. Everything has to be limited. And then you can get away with having no marketing in between. Myth. Myth. Big myth.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:21:16

Huge myth.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:21:18

But I also, not for nothing, you, your firm, you and your team and your firm do outbound initiatives. That's what you do. And so ads and content and funnels and all the things. But in addition to talking about the value of those things, I want to talk to you specifically about social listening because I don't think people like us necessarily talk about that value enough. And this pressure on content, not that content is an extremely important it totally is. But one of the main hesitations I hear all the time is like, I just can't keep coming up with stuff. And then my answer to that is, well, until you decide what to come up with next, go in and engage on other people's stuff. Go have conversations, get in those comments, make new friends. What is your I call it social listening. But what is your stance, your take on helping people follow you back home through the other parts of social media?

Jennifer Tamborski

00:22:25

Yeah, we'll start with content. Content creation can be overwhelming. It doesn't need to be. There are very simple tricks and tips you can do in order to create content. I literally record three podcasts in one day because I do one interview a month, and then the rest are solo. So in one day, I sit down and record all three of those podcasts. I do it on video and then I chop up that video and guess what? That's content. So content doesn't have to be as overwhelming. And I totally get the idea thing because sometimes on my solo episodes I'm like, what am I talking about? I don't know.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:23:04

So I get that I don't have solo episodes. There has not been a solo episode. And that's because I'd be like, what do I want to talk about? That's why I bring you all on. You all are so I don't have to make decisions and I salute you. But that batching. I mean, you batch and batching works for you. I love it.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:23:25

Yeah, if batching works for you, that's the way to go. And I think it can definitely. I did 13 reels in 2 hours the other day. I just maniac recording. They're just two minutes long. Like, you just have a topic and go about it. I talk really fast so I actually can get more information into reels than a lot of people think. The solo episodes were harder because they were 15 minutes long. And I was like, here's what you need to know, but then really dive into it.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:23:58

That's the other reason I don't do solo episodes. These podcast episodes are already an hour. If I do a solo episode, it's going to be like a six and a half hour dissertation on what we can learn from the orcs of Lord of the Rings. Like, nobody wants to hear that. I don't even want to hear that. Like, come on.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:24:20

I agree with you. Okay, so to social listening, how to get people to follow you back, obviously being out there following and commenting on there's a term in networking called power partners, right? People that are in front of your audience but don't necessarily do the same thing you do. That's the simplest definition of a power partner. So if you're finding people online that do that, for instance, for me, I like to follow other coaches who coach and train coaches because then I'm creating a relationship with them and having comments. So when they bring up marketing, I can comment, I can make myself available and give that information and that value, which then introduces people and connects them and they're like, oh, let me go connect with you, and that kind of thing. So I think that's incredibly important if you are not up to creating content or you're not up to doing something like running ads or something like that. Using social media effectively to create relationships, I mean, that's all marketing is, is creating a relationship. That's all sales is creating a relationship and providing them value. So using it to your advantage can really help you grow your business.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:25:42

Heck yes. Because it also not for nothing, one of the main things I do in social listing, that people are like, well, what's your main strategy for this and depending on what they're selling or what niche they're trying to get into or whatever, I can put more framework around this. But most of the time I'm like, you know, what's a really great thing of social listening that that people do wrong, but is so easy? We see a lot of great posts and the raised hands and the hearts and everything else, and I'm like, that's almost right. That's almost right. But it's not right. It's not right because we look at those posts as likes and we don't see them as anything more. You could write, oh, wow, what a great post. No one will care. Okay. Right. But instead, the currency of enthusiasm on the Internet, genuine interest, curiosity and enthusiasm cannot be beat. So what I do when I'm social listening is I just get online and I get curious and I look for things that delight my curiosity and then I comment on those things with how they delighted my curiosity. So I'm like, Whoa, I never thought about that before. I think that's so interesting. Normally when I think about this, I think about this. Thanks for the reframe. It's the exact same thing as great post. I'm just being more enthusiastic and more specific.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:27:01

And not only that, if you can start a conversation on somebody else's post, that's also going to get the awareness of the person you're commenting on because you've just developed engagement on their social media post. They didn't have to do anything. Which makes engagement is how social media survives, right? Every social media post, whether it's YouTube or Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, doesn't matter. Engagement is what they want on their social media platform. That's the whole reason it's there. So if you're out social listening and you're finding somebody that maybe they're your ideal client and they posted something, or you think they're your ideal client, right? We never know on social media. That's the other fallacy. What people put on social media isn't necessarily actually real.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:27:53

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Tambor Escape. Wait a minute. Are you telling me that back to launches. Are you telling me that everyone that said that they had a million dollar launch with no work is not being honest? Are you saying that I am saying.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:28:09

That wholeheartedly because they may have had a million dollar launch, but it's the no work part. That's a fucking lie.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:28:17

But they may have had a million dollar launch if they spent $900,000 on Facebook ads, maybe.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:28:24

Or they may just have spent the last ten years growing an audience. There are people out there that have done that. They have focused on growing their audience. So when they have that million dollar launch, it's absolutely a million dollar launch.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:28:39

It's just a million dollar launch. Ten years. So many more particulars and factors that we will never see.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:28:49

Exactly.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:28:51

Although I do see all those videos of influencers posing in kitty pools to make them look like big pools and the people that get kicked out of car dealerships for, like, going in and laying on Maserati. Yes.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:29:05

Standing in front of an airplane. All of that is trite. I mean, it is trite. It's been done. People fell for it in the beginning. They no longer fall for that BS. Just saying.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:29:18

I'm going to find the actually, no, I'm going to shame my husband for a second. So several years ago, Annie P. Ruggles, full name because we're Shaming decided that he was going to accidentally crash my beautiful car at very slow speeds into a tree. And so my beautiful car, the Buckleberry Ferry, a bright orange Nissan, as people expect has a dent in the hood that has just always been there. So my version of laying on a Maserati, I'm going to go out in the winter, my salt covered car with the dent on the hood, and I'm just going to lay on it in a sweatshirt and sweatpants to be like real life, baby. Entrepreneurship, baby. Right. So goofy. It is this aspirational living stuff. It's important because it shows people the solution to the problem. But sometimes, like your point, like, okay, if they're looking for a problem solver, they don't care. If you have a pimple, why would they care if you're laying on a Maserati? They won't care.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:30:28

Yeah. Let's be honest. If you are wanting to make a million dollars in your business, it is best to find somebody as a coach who has made a million dollars because correct. If they haven't, they can't take you there. Right. If you're looking for six figures, it's again, best to find somebody that has taken people to six figures before.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:30:47

Yes.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:30:48

And on the other side of that, the fallacy is that it's easy. There is nothing about business that is easy. It doesn't have to be hard. It's just work.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:31:02

Yeah. It's effortful.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:31:04

Exactly.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:31:06

You got to do stuff.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:31:08

Exactly. You are not going to sit over there and make even content creators like those people, those influencers or whatever you want to call them online, they produce so freaking much content. Their entire life is revolving around content. It's not like they're sitting on the poolside drinking my ties and margaritas and doing nothing. They are working their buns off to make the money they're making. It just looks effortless because they're making a two minute reel or TikTok or whatever instead of but once you actually hit the jackpot on that, that's a business, man. And when it becomes a business, you got to work it like a business.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:31:49

You got to work it like a business. So you got to keep it like a business. Because one flash in the pan, success. We see this with virility on videos, like one successful real does not a company make.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:32:00

No. And the reality is, if you treat your business like a hobby, it will pay you like a hobby. And I don't know about. You, but my hobbies don't pay me. So if you want a business that's going to pay you, you have to work it like a business.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:32:15

I mean, if anyone would like to buy my crappy Crochet squares, contact me at HeyHey atquit.com. But I doubt it. Right. It's not solving any particular problem. And I don't think there's really a market for subpar crochet at the moment, but no, I think that's totally true. Because, again, content feels shiny and content feels purposeful, but it's really hard to pace your energy and your time, so that you're doing it right. Which is why I love that you brought up Batching, which is why I love that we talked about social listening. Right. Like there are things that you could do to augment your marketing, to keep it going, to allow that consistency to be there so that you don't suddenly do what I did in early 2022, where you spend so much. Time in your business and on your business that you wake up one day and you're like, hey, I'm having a conversion event, and I have no sign ups. Why? Because I don't have any new people in my life. Right? Because everyone's already been to a non sleazy sales academy, open house. I either need to change up the conversion event, get new people, or most likely both.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:33:26

I had a client, so she's a former client working on her way back to me. But I had a client a couple of years ago decide ads were too expensive, that she was going to turn off ads. She just wasn't getting the ROI. She thought she should get on it. So a year after that, which was this last year, she literally had the worst year in business she's ever had in her entire life. Why? Because she had zero new people coming in the door.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:33:52

I don't wish that hell on anyone.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:33:55

I mean, she had a really good, healthy email list. The thing is, that email list stopped growing when she stopped running ads. And at that point, she didn't have new people coming in, so she was only selling to X amount. Whatever her email list was at that point, I don't know, but let's say it's 1000 people. Hers was much bigger than that. But for numbers sake, let's say it's 1000 people on average, about one to 3% of your people buy from you, which means at some point you run out of people to buy from you. So if every time you're launching or doing something, like she had a group coaching program, every time she opened the doors, it just diminished the amount of people that she was actually bringing in the door because she diminished the amount of people she was adding to her email list. That's the problem.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:34:48

Yes, exactly. A zillion trillion, billion new eyes, greatest hits, repurposing, social listening, getting your launch, but making sure you have that beautiful connective tissue in between your big stunts. I think that is god, what haven't we covered today? Oh, I know. What on earth does any of this have to do with any part or all of the international behemoth that never stops churning out new content? That's right. I'm talking about the Marvel Cinematic Universe. What are we talking about?

Jennifer Tamborski

00:35:34

Well, let's be honest. They never stop churning out content. That in and of itself is huge. Some of my favorite altar. I've been an MCU follower my entire life. Like, I watched X Men when they were cartoons.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:35:52

Good for you. Again. Do you hear the Gen X disdain in this woman? I watched the X Men when they were carcans. Okay, good for you. My generation popularized you. Jackman. Take that. It's fine. I love it.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:36:18

True. Absolutely true. No. So one of my favorite characters in the MCU is Iron Man when it comes to business, because, let's be honest, he's just a billionaire. Like, a billionaire with billion dollar toys. For him, it's always about creating something better. It's one of my favorite things about him, is always learning from what didn't work in order to do something different the next time.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:36:47

Yes. Especially, like, his suit. Like something will malfunction in the suit, so he doesn't get a whole new suit. He just adds something really freaking cool to the suit to solve that problem. And then he's like, and while we're here, I'll make it able to order pizza while I'm flying around. Like, why? I don't know. Because he's got a billion dollars and he wants a pizza. Like, go ahead, Tony Stark, you got it.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:37:09

Exactly. And then he creates then once he's perfected his suit, he creates a suit for Spiderman. Right. That's you know, so it's it's not just about him creating for himself. He's also figuring out how to make everyone else's lives better within the MCU, at least. And I think that in business owners is what we get to look at our business. It's not just about making our lives better because, let's be honest, we all want a business because we want to make our lives better, but it's also about what we can do to make other people's lives better. And I think that's an amazing thought process.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:37:47

I mean, you brought up his relationship with Peter Parker. That is a pure died in the Wool mentorship situation. Here's someone with domain expertise who's been doing this for a long time, who understands that he's got all this money to basically fake power because he can manufacture it. Amazing. Good for him. And then he meets this wayward teenager that could scale walls and doesn't have parents, and he's just like, oh, okay, I'm going to teach this kid how to be resilient and also give him a better suit so he doesn't die when he gets kicked off a bridge. Like, great, that's solving a problem. Get in there. Get after it. But I think that's so great because what's the difference between Tony Stark and Lex Luther, right. Switching to DC. The billionaire villain or Docawker, any of the spiderman village, or this really good example of these rich megalomaniac dudes. And I think you're right. I think it's that care that's about solving problems for people other than yourself.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:39:00

Yeah. And I think that's what every business owner, no matter what you're doing in business like Tony Stark, actually, he built his billion dollar business because it was an actual business, like providing things within the world. It wasn't just, hey, I'm, you know, Iron Man kind of thing.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:39:20

Right.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:39:20

Iron man was a subset. It was an offshoot of the way he was seeing the world behave. And when we're looking at our business, it doesn't matter if you're selling a widget or you're selling your services. The goal is to make other people's lives better, easier, more convenient, depending on what it is you're selling. And if we look at it from that perspective, it takes kind of the ego out of it.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:39:53

Right.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:39:53

Then it's not about us. And that was I will say, Tony Stark's ego is huge. Like, huge planetary ego.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:40:04

It's got gravitational force.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:40:06

Yeah, exactly. So that doesn't correlate as well. However, I think for most people, if you think about it from a perspective of making other people's lives better, it helps us take our ego out of it so that we're not the thing.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:40:22

Well, and you said something so brilliant there, and I'm going to paraphrase I wish I had the exact term, but you're like, he's very aware of how the world works.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:40:32

Yes.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:40:33

Right. He pays attention. He's a student of the world. He's a student of human behavior. He's a student of trends. Right. And seeing what direction things are falling, and and that allows him to problem solve. Right. So he's problem solving for the world, and he's problem solving for himself. Whether it's on a micro level, like, my suit needs to be able to order pizza, or on a macro level, like, we have crumbling infrastructure that needs to be immediately fixed. Okay. But if you're not paying attention, you don't know what to cling to, I guess.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:41:10

And it's also about how you're thinking. Right. I always say one of the things I've learned through my own personal development training is that it's what people think isn't important. It's how they're thinking that's important. And the thing about Tony Stark is how he thought. He thought from a global perspective. He wasn't just looking he was looking out for the little guy. However well, depends on the episode, but he was looking out for the little guy. However, he was looking at it from a global perspective, how is this person going to impact the world?

Annie P. Ruggles

00:41:48

And that's the central conceit of the MCU, which is that every single one of us has something we can contribute and that we're stronger together. Right? Yeah. That's the holding thing. So I love that idea of, like, I'm empowering the one for sake of the many because I understand the power of the one.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:42:09

It's one of the reasons that I work in the coaching industry. Most of my clients are coaches, consultants, info providers, that kind of thing, because I truly believe that they have the opportunity to make massive changes in the world by the people they coach. So it's this ripple effect. I get to help them help more people who help more people. And it's just this ripple effect that we all get then get a hand in changing the world in a way that we maybe never expected, right?

Annie P. Ruggles

00:42:41

Because it is so much wider than we think. Our impact is so much more than the reach of a Tweet, right? We look at those metrics, but the metrics that are really making change are not quantifiable it's. How does raising someone's confidence in business affect the way they parent? How does getting someone to face and hear their trauma affect the company that they found next? We don't know. We're never going to know. It's too far reaching for us. But what we can do is we can look for the people that we most want to support and we can move heaven and earth and to get them where we want them to go and compensate ourselves in the process. Because Tony Stark also ain't doing anything for free.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:43:29

No. He's a billionaire.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:43:31

He's a billion. He's got to sustain that success. He's got to make more money.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:43:37

And he also, I think, understands that it's an exchange of energy, right? He gives and someone gives him back. And that's, I think, from a sales perspective, jumping into your territory a little bit, I think that's one of the things that people one of the things that people often they feel bad about selling because they're like, I don't know, whatever their money mindset problem is. But if you look at it from an exchange of energy, right, people are going to be more invested in something they invest in. They're going to do the thing when they've paid for it the least expensive thing. Let's talk about your T shirt, right? Your $5 T shirt that you don't care if it gets ruined or not, as opposed to your $50 shirt that you make sure it gets washed and hung properly.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:44:36

Also, can we talk about the fact that a T shirt costs $50 now? Actually, that's a rant for a different dick. All right, listen, I got two more questions for you before I release you back to your majestic day. I feel like you and I could just rant about everything forever.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:44:53

We could.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:44:54

We could and we will, but just not right now. All right, two more questions for you. So the first one is you have been brought on as a coach for Stark Industries, and as such, you have been provided a digital marketing iron digital marketer suit. Okay? You have an Iron digital marketing suit? What is one of the functions capabilities of your Iron digital marketing strategy suit?

Jennifer Tamborski

00:45:33

It's not nearly as fun as you think. It's data.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:45:36

Oh, yeah, I know that's fun.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:45:39

I think most people don't think so.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:45:41

Yeah, but we're nerds, so it's like a little screen that pops up that's like right? That's 22.1% Annie. Why, thank you suit.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:45:51

Exactly.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:45:54

Yeah, I want a sales suit that does math and projections for me. I'll be like, what percentage is that suit? And I'll be like, I guess I just wanted an Alexa I could wear, I guess, kind of. Yeah.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:46:06

But it's also it's looking at the data as a whole and understanding where you're going with it, especially in marketing. If you're not looking at your data and marketing, you are not doing it right.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:46:20

Well, there's that lensing again, right? Like, what are we paying attention to and what are we ignoring and what are we analyzing? What trends are we seeing? What growth are we spotting? What metrics are we tracking? What KPIs are we after? It's all that worldview that we need to adopt so we can make sure we're doing our best to enable the Peter Parkers in our lives.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:46:44

Yes, absolutely.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:46:46

Even when we are the Peter Parkers in our own lives. All right, off the rails, listen, I have one more question for you, which is what is the best way for our listeners to come into your world to learn about your work, to hire you in that savvy iron marketer suit? How can they find you?

Jennifer Tamborski

00:47:05

So if they head over to Virtualmarketingexpert.com messed up my own website, Virtualmarketingexpert.com, or if you just want to listen to me, you can head over to Marketing Matchmaker. That's the podcast that I run. It's on YouTube and Apple and all of the podcasting platforms.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:47:26

All of those links will be in the show notes, so look no further. Jennifer Tamborski, I am so freaking glad that you're on my squad and I'm on yours. Together, I feel like we can really turn into some marketing superheroes. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Before I love you any try to beleaguer that anymore, thank you so much for being my guest today.

Jennifer Tamborski

00:47:51

Thank you for having me.

Annie P. Ruggles

00:47:53

I'm going to recover from that transition, and I'll be back in just a second with my final thought. And your homework for this week. Well, hey there. Entrepreneurship can feel a whole lot like failing at being a superhero. There are so many hats to wear, clients to help, problems to solve, bad guys to outperform what's a well intentioned do good, or to do with all this weight on their shoulders. In reality, the wonderful truth is that most of our businesses aren't life and death. No cosmic supervillain is threatening our existence, except maybe the Facebook algorithm. No beloved family members will succumb to terrible fates if we fail to be in the right place at the right time. But that doesn't mean we aren't wildly powerful beyond our imaginings. But the gift and talent we carry is when we were born with no radioactivity or freak accidents required. It's our attention and our enthusiasm. Think back to a time when you were drowning in awkward social media silence, aka crickets. How ardently did you wish for someone to come along and discover you, boost you, validate you? This week, your homework is to go be that hero by practicing social listening. Go to your social platform of choice, turn off all distractions, and don't leave until you fully allow yourself to be delighted and inspired ten times over. Find ten posts at a minimum that change your mind, challenge your thinking, move a needle for you, or even evoke an emotional response. Then tell the poster exactly what transpired in the comments. You are not allowed to say Great post. Or yes. Or drop emojis in the place of real shared experience. Tell them why it was great. What elicited the yes gush a little before you throw up those celebration hands. Make the poster feel seen and appreciated. If the MCU has taught us anything, it's that actions have far reaching ripples beyond what we can understand. I don't know exactly how doing this this week will change your business. You might get a new client, make a friend, or even a nice pocket of new followers. But in any event, you'll be changing the Internet for the better. And that, my friend, is pretty damn heroic. Hey, thanks for listening. If this episode kept you laughing and learning, I have two requests for you. First, make sure you hit that subscribe or Follow button, depending on your platform, so you never miss an episode. And also, more importantly, if you are looking for support, inspiration, networking, collaborations, or just a chance to hang out with me, NEP Ruggles and our fantastic guests, make sure that you are a member of our LinkedIn community, the legitimate. It is a weird and wonderful place. I can't even believe it's on LinkedIn, and we want you there. You'll find the link in the show notes. Big shout out, as always, to the fabulous dudes who helped me make this show my producer and editor, Andrew Sims of Hypo Bowl Impact, my theme composer, Riley Horbasio, and my show art creator, Francois Vino. See you next time. You.

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