36: Swap Your Unicycle for a 4-Wheeler with Tim Fitzpatrick

30
Apr

Tim Fitzpatrick is the president of Rialto Marketing, a marketing company that helps service businesses simplify marketing. We discuss the benefits of personalizing emails, the power of social media, and why business owners need to be producers and not consumers of content.

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Listen to the podcast here

 

Swap Your Unicycle for a 4-Wheeler with Tim Fitzpatrick

Our guest is Tim Fitzpatrick, who is the president of Rialto Marketing, a company that helps service businesses simplify their marketing so that they grow with less stress. Don’t we all want that? And he has a BA in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley. So welcome to the show, Tim.

Steve, thanks for having me. I’m super excited to be here.

It’s great to have you. And, you know, would you share with us your entrepreneurial journey? How did you get here running a marketing company with all these great ideas, how to break through marketing?

Sure. I was not one of those entrepreneurs that was entrepreneurial, you know, since I was a kid, right? I didn’t have a lemonade stand. I wasn’t, you know, hawking baseball cards or any of that stuff. At that point in time, all I cared about was playing with my friends and riding my bike and all that fun stuff. So I kind of fell into my entrepreneurial journey when I graduated from college. You know, as you mentioned, I was a math major. I had no idea what the heck I wanted to do, but I figured that math is a great skill to have, especially in business.

It’s, you know, you’re using it all the time. So I majored in math. When I got out, you know, my dad had been an entrepreneur for a long time. He was a manufacturer’s representative. He sold consumer electronics, so home theater equipment and speakers and all that kind of stuff. He had started a sister company to that. That was a distribution company a couple of years before I graduated. And when I graduated, there was no full-time employees in it.

I knew that he needed some help and I said, hey, look, let me help you out for the summer while I figure out what the heck I want to do. And he said, sure, that’d be great. I’d love your help. Well, after three months, that was all she wrote. I was hooked, I loved it. And I said, look, I would love to continue doing this and helping you if you’ll have me. And he said, absolutely. And so I became, I was the first full-time employee. He was managing his rep business and I just started managing the distribution company on a day-to-day basis.

And we just, you know, we continued to grow and grow and grow and, you know, by the time we sold it, we had three locations, we had 20, 25 employees. And I learned more in six months of doing that than I did in four years of college. It was an on-the-job MBA.

How did you get from your family business to Rialto? This is a different business, right?

Yes, different business. So that was my first entrepreneurial journey. We sold that. I then got into real estate. I was in real estate for about two and a half, three years, and that’s when I decided to shift into marketing. You know, I just thought about, gosh, what did I love about distribution? It was changing, it was dynamic. I had experience in growing, marketing, selling, and so I got involved in marketing, and that’s what I’m doing today. We’re working with service businesses primarily, coaches, consultants, and professional service providers to help them with their marketing. So that’s how I got to where I am.

So that’s interesting to hear that you are also focused on professional services, service businesses. Why did you pick that niche?

Because that’s what I’m in. I’m a service business. So how we market our business is exactly how our customers can market theirs to see success. So I know it and that’s why, you know, and there’s plenty of, you know, there’s tons, there’s no shortage of business out there. So, but it just lends itself well to what we do because, you know, there’s a lot of marketing companies that they don’t walk the walk, ironically. They don’t market their business very effectively, you know, and so I wanted to be able to say, hey, look, we’re not recommending you do something that we don’t already do in our business. You know, if you wanna see results, well, go look at what we’re doing. That’s what we’re recommending to you as well. So, you know, I like to be able to have the experience.

So how is this different? How is it different to do this kind of service for a service business as opposed to a manufacturing business or distribution?

I don’t think it’s vastly different, but depending on the niche, there can be some nuances there. So, you know, for example, e-commerce, like we don’t touch e-commerce. I mean, there’s so many different nuances with selling products compared to services that I just don’t, one, I don’t really care for it, and two, I’m just not comfortable doing it. And I want to make sure that we’re going to be able to work with somebody and get results for them. So I think there’s, there are some nuances in certain industries where it just makes sense to where you need to really be focused there. And it’s just not a place that I feel comfortable, so I stay away from it.

So, what are the lowest hanging fruits for a service business to fix their marketing?

Oh man, there’s in general, I’m going to tell you first, most businesses skip the fundamentals, what I would consider to be the fundamentals, which are understanding your target market, having clear messaging, and having a plan to get that message in front of those people, that’s the lowest hanging fruit that’s out there. Because when you skip that, you’re going to waste time, you’re going to waste money, your marketing is a crapshoot, and you’re always going to have to come back to that at some point.

So I would say that’s the first piece of low hanging fruit. The second is your website. Almost every business has a website at this point, but a lot of them are missing. They don’t have good content on there. They don’t have good calls to action. Those, just those simple changes can make a huge, huge difference. So that’s the second one. The third one that comes to mind is email marketing. Email marketing is inexpensive. It’s been around forever. I can’t believe how many people don’t take advantage of it. You got to take advantage of it. It’s there. It’s a great way to stay in front of, nurture prospects, and then just continue to serve your audience over time. And it still works day in, day out.

I hear a lot about how email marketing works. And maybe I’m totally different from a typical business owner, but I don’t like email marketing at all. I, whenever I receive it, I always unsubscribe. I just keep it as noise. I want to have a clean inbox and I just want to have messages that are targeted at me, customized for me, that I really want to read. That’s what I want in my inbox. Maybe I’m, am I out of the ordinary?

I don’t necessarily think you’re out of the ordinary, but there are a lot of people, so just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean that you can’t take advantage of it for your business, right? And you hit on a really key point. You said you want messages that are targeted for you. So those businesses that are sending you those emails are missing the mark because it’s not relevant.

They’re sending you stuff that’s not relevant for you. And when it’s not relevant for you, you just view it as noise and you don’t want to get it anymore. But if they’re doing a good job of putting out information through e-mail that’s hyper relevant to what you’re doing, and it’s serving you, and it’s helping you, there’s certainly a much higher likelihood that you’re going to read it, and that’s where I think people are missing the boat on it.

That’s right. How laser focused do you have to be to create that targeted approach? So if I don’t know if I’m again if I’m unique then maybe it’s irrelevant to talk about this but if I’m not unique, if other people are also looking for messaging that are really directly for them. How narrow do you make your focus to be able to get to that level of customization?

Yeah, with email?

Yes.

So you can go really narrow, but if you go really narrow, it’s going to be hard to do that at scale, right? You’re going to be sending one-off messages, which most people don’t have the time to do. There are times when you’re going to do that, but let’s just take an example of a vet, okay? Let’s say we’re working with a vet and they’re working on setting up their email marketing.

One of the easy ways that you could start to segment your audience of customers into groups is by the types of animals that they have. Do you have a dog? Do you have a cat? Do you have a snake? You know, whoever you’re serving. But look, I’m not a cat person. If my vet starts sending me all kinds of stuff that has to do with cats. I’m going to delete it. It’s not relevant for me.

And so if we take even just that small step of going “Hey, yep, they have a dog” “Oh, they have a cat too,” or they just have a dog or they just have a cat I can start to create messages that are really relevant to where they’re at that’s going to increase the likelihood that people are going to engage with that content so much more than if you just send them a general mass communication just saying, well, they got a vet, they’re a vet client, so I’m going to send them stuff on dogs, cats, and pigs, and whatever else it is.

So, I mean, that’s just a simple example. I think the more narrow you can go the better, but you’re going to reach a point where you’re not going to be able to, you know, unless AI continue to get better and better and better, it’s going to be hard to go really narrow at scale.

So, people still want to receive messages that they respond to as opposed to just being in search mode and looking for the information, whatever they need?

Yeah. I mean, look, people, we’re all looking for information that’s going to help us, help educate us, help us solve problems that we have. So, I mean, if we continue to do that and we do it well, you’re going to get interaction, you’re going to get engagement from your audience.

Okay. So, you mentioned the fundamentals, which is great. It’s always good to focus on the fundamentals. What are the other steps? I noticed on your website that you have a proven process. In EOS, we also use this concept of a proven process visual. How do you show your customers the lifetime of the relationship, how do you take care of them? So, what is your proven process visual and what are the major steps in that?

Sure, so the process we work through is five steps. Okay, the first one is identifying where you are from a marketing perspective.

What does that mean?

Think about it like your GPS, okay? My GPS can’t tell me how to get to Denver International Airport until I tell it that I’m starting from Highlands Ranch. You can’t possibly put together a marketing plan of what you need to do to get to, you know, to reach your goals until you know where you’re starting from, you have to get a baseline.

So that’s the first and the most logical place to start, is what’s the baseline, what are you doing, what’s working, what’s not, then you can start to formulate a plan from there. So the second step for us is looking at those fundamentals. Do you understand your target market and who your ideal clients are? And do you have clear, engaging messaging for that target market? If you do not, those things need to be in place. Otherwise, you’re just, you’re wasting marketing dollars. That’s why it’s in that second step.

Then in the third step, that’s when we create your plan. And we use a 90-day marketing plan. It’s simple, there’s six steps. And the reason we use 90 days is because it’s long enough to start seeing things take shape, but it’s short enough where you can start to make adjustments and course corrections along the way and just continually update your plan. And it’s easy. I shouldn’t say it’s easy, it’s simple. Too many people overcomplicate their marketing plans. Who’s going to look at a 15, 20 pages marketing plan? It’s too complicated.

So, we keep that plan simple. And then from there in the fourth step, you going to take action, right? So, you have to implement. I’m going to implement what’s in my plan. And then the fifth step is optimization. Nothing is ever going to be perfect. And marketing success is all about testing. You got to test, test, test. So, in this optimization phase, we’re just, we’re testing. We’re looking at what actions we took that worked, what didn’t, why? And then we’re basically going back through steps three, four and five in a circle.

Fundamentals are often overlooked in business: understanding your target market, clear messaging, and a plan to get that message in front of those people are the building blocks of success. Click To Tweet

So that’s the process.

Yeah.

So, in your experience, if someone does these 90 days marketing plans, how many plans do they have to complete until they get to 90% close to a great process that works for them, that generates leads, converts the leads? How many iterations do you need?

That’s a good question. It’s a loaded question, Steve, because it does depend. But I would say anywhere from 12 to 18 months. Somewhere around there. Because you’re going to find the marketing channels and the marketing tactics that work for you. And you can continue doing those. Depending on what your goals are, you may expand into other tactics, but you don’t, there are a lot of marketing channels at this point, certainly a lot more than there were when I was in the distribution business, especially with online marketing.

And that’s where people, I think they just, they’re battling information overload and they get overwhelmed. So, like, oh my God, I got people telling me I got to be here, here, here, here, here. It’s like, oh my God, I don’t know what to do. You don’t have to be in every channel. You just have to find the ones that work for you. But I do think you have to be generating leads from multiple channels. You know, like there’s too many business owners, small business owners especially, that are working off referral.

There’s nothing wrong with referrals, but that’s not a scalable way to grow a business, and it’s really not very predictable either. So, it’s a great lead gen channel, but it’s like riding a unicycle. If that channel goes, if that tire goes flat, you’re screwed. You know, so I would much rather be riding a four-wheeler, generating leads from, you know, referrals, generating leads from my email marketing, I’m generating leads from social, and then I’m creating content. At least if one of those things, if something happens with one of those, I can still get to where I want to be. May take me a little bit longer, but you need to be generating leads from multiple channels as far as I’m concerned.

Okay, that makes sense. So don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

Yes.

So, what are the trends? I mean, what are the things that work these days? You say that email is still good.

Email is still good. You know, a lot of, especially with the pandemic, video content has been hot for a long time, but I think video is even more important now than it was before because we’re not, most of us are not having those one-to-one interactions that as often as we may have prior to the pandemic. And outside of face-to-face, there’s no better way to connect with people than video.

Look, we’ve never met, but we’re still having a conversation. I can see you. I can hear your voice. I’m getting to know you. Well, if you can’t meet with people face-to-face, how the heck are you going to do that? So, it’s video. The other thing that I love about video content is you can get a lot of, you gain leverage from it, because you can take one piece of video content and slice it up and you can transcribe it to get written content, you can take the audio and create a podcast if you want to, you can create shorter form video.

And so, I love video and I think there’s a ton of opportunity there and you can really use video content to drive your social media activity as well. So, I love video. The second thing you kind of already touched on a bit, was personalization. You know, personalization is something that has been talked about in marketing for a while. It’s not necessarily anything new, but as AI starts to get in and it gets more sophisticated, I think it’s going to be easier for people to do that. But the more we can personalize our marketing message, the more relevant it’s going to be, and the better, the more effective it’s going to be. So those are two things that I would definitely be keeping an eye on.

Personalization is key. The more we can personalize our marketing message, the more relevant and effective it's going to be. Click To Tweet

Okay, that’s really interesting. What about social media? Do you believe in social media? Is this for lead generation or it’s more of a branding?

So let me just tell you, personally, I don’t care for social media. I don’t spend a ton of time on it, but I do use it to market our business and our clients. I think it’s kind of a hard channel to ignore at this point. I mean, there’s so many people there. It’s a great place to get in front of your audience. It’s certainly a place to brand, but if it, when it’s done correctly, you can absolutely generate leads from there.

But I think one of the things that I read a while back about social that really stuck with me was, as a business owner, you really need to be a producer of content on social media, not a consumer. There are so many people, we waste time on social media. We consume all this meaningless stuff and nothing happens. It’s just, I think if most people looked at the time they spent on social media, if they were honest with themselves, they would realize that it’s not very, it’s not time well spent in most cases.

So as business owners, I think it’s important for us to look at being producers. So if you’re going to use it to generate leads, well, what do you need to do? I think there’s a couple of things that people can focus on initially to start generating more interest and leads from social. One is getting social. It’s social media, right? So you can’t just expect to post stuff onto your Facebook page and generate leads. It’s just not, it’s not going to happen. Okay, well I’ll give you an example.

When this is done, okay, and this podcast episode is live, I’m going to take that content and I’m going to post it on our social media page. I’m going to tag you. I’m going to mention you. Now, that may get your attention, it may not, but it’s certainly increasing the likelihood that you’re going to pop on, you’re going to go, oh, hey, Tim, thanks so much for taking the time, loved chatting with you. That gets me some interaction. And on a lot of social, other people are going to see that you’ve made that comment.

So, you’ve going to do things like that. When you post it on your social media, what am I going to do? I’m going to go be there and I’m going to comment on it. So, we’ve got to get social. We have to interact and comment on other people’s stuff. Do we belong to groups on Facebook or LinkedIn? Start to engage people there. Add value and serve people.

And if you’re active there and they see that you’re putting out good information, at some point people are going to go, oh, Steve’s putting out, he, man, he’s giving some great advice in here. What’s Steve do? Let me go check it. Let me go check it out. Oh, wow, he’s an EOS implementer. Man, I’ve been running into these problems. Maybe I need to reach out to Steve, right? So all we’re doing is just putting breadcrumbs out there for people to find, you know, or we’re putting seeds and we’re just watering those to see which ones are going to grow.

How do we scale that? So that’s, I like that. It makes sense. But as you grow the business, how do you scale? I mean, do we really have time to spend hours on social media to talk to everyone? It’s like spending half your day at networking events every week.

No, so look, there are certain things that are going to be difficult to scale, but you can scale it by, look, it doesn’t have to be you doing all that. You can hire somebody to do that, right? They’re going to have to understand your business. They’re going to have to understand what you’re trying to accomplish. They need to understand your brand, your tone, so that they can do it for you.

But that’s the reality of social media. The only way to scale it is to hire people. AI is not at the point where you can just let AI run with it and it’s going to work for you. It’s just not there. So the only way to scale social media activity and actually interact with people without you doing it is paying somebody else to do it for you. And a lot of businesses aren’t doing that because guess what? That’s expensive.

Well, that is a reason, but the second reason of why, I mean, I’m doing it right now, but it took me a long time to be able to do it, to kind of commit to doing, starting it? Because it’s really hard to give up your social media control, right? I mean, personal and what if someone takes advantage and then your reputation could suffer? It’s really tough. Or they put out typos or they put out messages that you don’t really agree with. Yeah. They misunderstand stuff. So how does one handle that part?

You got to take it slow, right? At some point, if you’re going to take the risk, you have to take the risk. But one of my mentors said, inspect what you expect. This is no different. You need to give clear direction. And don’t just pull the training wheels off immediately. And not only that, you can have people go through dry runs. Hey, you saw what we posted last week. I want you to do a dry run of what you would post. Show me all of it, you know, just take those baby steps to the point where you get comfortable where you can start to let things go a little bit. But yeah, you can’t just give it to somebody and say, Go ahead and then not look at it ever again. That’s a recipe for disaster.

Inspect what you expect. You need to give clear direction. Don't just pull the training wheels off immediately. Take those baby steps to the point where you get comfortable letting things go a little bit. Click To Tweet

So, you know, some of us have a higher level of comfort with that than others. But just find out what where your comfort level is and start doing it. But look, most social media channels don’t make it real easy for you to start, especially on personal profiles. You can’t add a team member to your personal profile. Yeah. So you’re giving them the keys to the castle. And like you said, I mean, yeah, I’m sure there’s people that have been burned in that way, but.

It’s no different than doing anything in your business. You hire someone and you give them a responsibility and you’re running the risk. They can abuse it. They can do stupid things. And it’s exactly the same thing. You have to onboard them and you have to be committed. I’m talking to myself, basically. I have to invest the time in the relationship, even if they are a contractor. I cannot just take it for granted that just because it’s an entrepreneurial contractor, they’re going to be like me and they’re going to get me 100% and run with it from day one. Yeah. It’s a good point. It’s a good point. Okay, so we talked about email, we talked about video, we talked about social. What about AdWords, pay-per-click? Is it, does it still work? I mean, prices have been going up like crazy recently. Is it easy to do a good ROI on Google AdWords?

Yes, it still works. If it didn’t, people wouldn’t continue to do it. Depending on what industries you’re in, I mean, it can get pretty expensive. You know, especially you start to look at like, you know, attorneys and folks like that. I mean, some of these costs per clicks, when people click on an ad can get into the three figures, you know, $100, that’s a lot of money. If it costs you $100 per click, but you know, the lifetime value of a client is $100,000, well, maybe that’s not a big deal. So yes, it still works.

I think it is a place where people can burn money fast, if they don’t watch it, and they don’t do it right. So I think you need to go into it with open eyes. And if it’s, if it’s not your forte, if it’s not your thing, hire somebody to do it for you, or at least hire a consultant to guide you through the process so that you know that you’re doing it right. You know, I still see ads that I click on in Google AdWords where you click on the ad and it goes to the home page of their website.

If it's not your forte, if it's not your thing, hire somebody to do it for you, or at least hire a consultant to guide you through the process so that you know that you're doing it right. Click To Tweet

To me, huge mistake. Huge mistake because most people’s websites are not, I mean yes there are calls to action there, but it’s really not geared towards getting somebody to take direct action from an ad if you’re going to get into this you need to make sure that you’re targeting the right keywords that you’re excluding the keywords that you don’t want your ads to show up for and that’s and by the way, that’s not a set it and forget it thing either you’re constantly testing and making slight tweaks to see if you can continue to get it better you’ve got to be driving those clicks to a very relevant landing page.

And when I say landing page, you know, I don’t want to assume everybody knows what a landing page is. We’ve all been to them. But a landing page, there is no navigation for the rest of my website. If I clicked on a VET ad for whatever, weight loss, okay, I’ve clicked on a weight loss ad, at the top of that ad, it says something about weight loss. It’s hyper relevant, maybe there’s a video there that’s giving me more information, there’s a form, there’s a number. I’ve got a very clear call to action that I want people to take, and there’s nothing else that they can do. That’s it.

There’s a few benefits in using landing pages, which goes into my next point. If you’re going to be successful and you’re going to get good ROI with Google Ads, you got to track your results. You have to know what’s working. How many clicks am I getting? How many conversions am I getting? Because just because people click doesn’t mean that they fill out the form on that landing page or they call, right? A lot of people don’t realize that there’s call tracking software out there now.

Companies like PhoneWagon or CallRail, you should, if you’re not, you should be using call tracking for your paid ads. If you’re putting a phone number in there, because now, guess what I can do? I can determine how many phone calls I got from that specific ad. And then I can, and if I’m tracking it and going, okay, we generate an X-amount of leads from our Google ads. How many of those leads then became customers?

Conversion, yep.

Yep, and then what’s the value of a customer? Lot of companies don’t know what the value of a customer to them is. And it’s not just, in most cases, it’s not a single transaction. There is a lifetime value of a customer. And I think if you’re not looking at the lifetime value of a customer, when you’re looking at the return on investment for your ad spend, frankly, any of your spend, you’re not getting the whole picture. So those are just a few things that I would keep in mind if you’re thinking about getting into AdWords as a channel.

So, I like this idea that whatever you do digitally, most of it is trackable and you can calculate your ROI and you can tweak it, test it. Now, what about the traditional methods like direct mail and billboards? Do they still work? I mean, I’m still getting a lot of junk mail in my mailbox here, especially political campaigns and fundraisers and stuff like that. Is it still worth for a small business to invest time and attention into traditional kind of offline methods?

What’s a billboard? I’m kidding. You almost got me there.

I thought maybe that’s a British thing.

Yeah, you know what, I can’t speak to billboard advertising because I’ve never done it, but I think whether it’s direct mail or networking, print advertising, offline methods still work. They absolutely still work. Are they going to work for every business? No, they’re not. But you won’t know until you test it. Like you said, look, I still get direct mail. Most of it I throw out, okay, but that’s me. There’re still people that do it. Home service businesses, direct mail can work great. Those folks, they’re still canvassing neighborhoods, right? I did a job at one house and I’m going to put flyers on all the houses right around in the immediate area. That stuff still works.

What about professional services businesses? Like attorneys, accountants, engineers, consultants?

It can, in that case, I think it needs to be very, very targeted. And again, Steve, this is just my opinion, but if I was doing it for, like if I was doing it for my business, I would be doing direct mail targeted to people that I had done research on, that I thought were ideal clients. And I would not be using just direct mail. So I would be using a combination of direct mail along with other channels to get in front of those people, right, to get them to know me until they get some interest. But I would not just be sending out direct mail willy-nilly every month, hoping that it’s going to work. But, you know, here’s a professional service where it still works, real estate.

There’s plenty of real estate agents that they work a specific neighborhood and they send direct mail pieces to that neighborhood each and every month. That works if you’re consistent with it, but you can’t just do it for three months and go, oh, it didn’t work. It’s not going to work in that short term of a time period because what you’re doing is you’re trying to build your brand. You’re trying to stay top of mind. So, because not everybody has to sell their house every year.

But that’s kind of a consumer service. I understand it’s professionals who provide it, but it’s a consumer, but what about a B2B? I mean, I can hardly see that any direct mail would get through the gatekeeper to the CEO of the company. And I don’t know their home address. What can I do?

It depends on what kind of company it is. But again, I think it needs to be very, I don’t think you should be sending out direct mail. If you’re in our business, I don’t think you should be just sending out direct mail expecting you’re going to get results from it. Now, look, maybe I’m wrong. And I’m also not somebody that has taken advantage of a ton of direct mail. I just don’t do it. Most of our customers don’t. But if I was going to recommend it to a customer, it would be, I don’t think you can send out just a postcard. I think it’s got to be something that’s sticky, right?

Something that somebody is going to want to open and go, oh my God, what is this? Like, who sent this to me? And it’s not just that piece. Two days, three days after they got it, they’re getting a phone call from you, or they’re getting an email, you know? Or if you have their email, Steve, you could target them on Facebook. You know, so all of a sudden, they’re now like, oh, I got this cool whatever, thingamajiggy, whatever it is I sent from Tim, he was in my inbox, damn, now I’m seeing it on Facebook. Right, so I think you can gain attention by doing that, but you’re not going to gain attention by just sending direct mail.

So let me ask you this. So, for a professional service company that is business to business, what would be the top one, two, and three options for their marketing? And I understand that some companies are different, so it’s not a one size fits all, but if you kind of go after your gut in general, what would you say is the highest ROI, number one, number two, and number three?

Okay, I’m assuming that you’ve already got the fundamentals in place and you already have your website. Yeah, I do. Okay, so from there, I would say you need to spend the time to start building your email list. I think you’ve got to be investing in content. So whether it’s blogging, video, podcasts, you have to be doing that because we have to build credibility and authority to gain trust. We have to educate and that’s what content helps you do.

And the last thing I would do is I would be speaking in one way, shape or form, whether that’s speaking in, we’re not doing a lot of speaking in person, but that will change, but speaking in person, doing workshops, educational workshops, some way, shape or form, those are the things that I would be doing from a digital perspective. So basically content is also, speaking is also content. So you’re saying yes, it is email, Is it blogs. Well, it’s not I  like writing. I like writing, but if I tell you to do video and you don’t like video, you’re not going to do it.

So I think you can be successful with any type of content, but it has to be content that you enjoy if you don’t like writing and I tell you that you have to do a blog, you have to write a blog post every week, you’re never going to do it consistently. So I think you need to choose what resonates with you and what you like and do it, but you have to be creating content. And then I would be working on how I can speak and educate. You’re right, speaking is a form of content, but I, look, speaking works. People generate leads from speaking, especially in professional services, coaches and consultants. It’s huge.

So, it’s not just the idea, but it’s the performance as well.

Yes.

So you have to have the idea. But you also have to put up some kind of performance. So that because people are looking for maybe is what is it looking, they’re looking for the energy of the speaker or they’re looking for the personality of the speaker or both? Why do you think they’re looking?

It depends on the venue. I also think it depends on what you’re talking about. But look, I do workshops to our email list every month. This is not high-tech stuff. I’m just getting on and I’m educating them. How do you define your target market? Here’s the steps that we use for our business and for our clients. I’m going to walk you through it. I don’t hold anything back. I give it away. Because there are some people that are going to be able to take that and run with it, and that’s fine. Those people are never going to be my clients.

No, I understand. I’m just trying to kind of peel the onion. So what’s the magic ingredient of speaking? I understand that there are different formats. It can be a video, it can be podcast, it can be on stage, it can be a workshop. I get it. But the content to me is the ideas. So come up with ideas, information, useful information. And then what you say is speaking, that there’s going to be an additional ingredient. It’s also the ideas, but maybe there is some kind of magic in the speaking.

Well, I don’t think there’s any silver bullet, but if speaking is going to a be a good channel for generating leads, you have to come across as credible and trustworthy and have authority.

So maybe that is kind of a way to translate your content because it’s not just the ideas, but it’s also the individual and professional services is important. So how that individual provides this content, maybe there is also, I mean, they say that the actual words are only 7% of the communication, 93% is, you know, it’s the gestures, it’s the face mimics, and the tone of voice, all that stuff matters. So I imagine maybe that’s what it is. It’s 93%.

I don’t know, I’m not sure I agree with that. I don’t think you have to, I think you have to have good content and you have to present it well. And by presenting that content, if you come across as credible that you know what you’re talking about, you are going to generate interest from that. But if you put out the content and it’s not good and you come across like you don’t know what the hell you’re talking about, nobody’s ever going to take action from it. So to me, the secret sauce is put out good content and come up and present it in a way where people feel like you know what the hell you’re talking about, and you can help them, they will then reach out to you. But if you don’t, then it’s not going to work.

Maybe it’s the chemistry. You know, if you want to work for somebody in professional services, you have to have a chemistry with that person. You have to be able to relate to them and the content on its own, although it also reflects the way of thinking. So maybe that is also a way to relate to people through ideas. But it’s also that in that personal chemistry, the way you project your energy and the way you behave. And maybe that’s also an additional way of people connecting. And you see that with politicians. Sometimes you have someone that is really magnetic, you know that they are lying all the time, but still, they can fool you because they have this personal charisma, you know, this magnetism that is very attractive.

Yeah. Well, I’ll just tell you my point of view on it. When I present, I just be myself. I’m not trying to impress anybody, I just be myself, and that’s it. If how I present resonates with you, then great. If it doesn’t, then I’m not a good fit, but I’m not trying to be all things to all people, and I’m not going to pretend that I’m somebody that I’m not. Because people see through that crap.

There’re all kinds of people out there who market by talking about themselves. Hey, cool, look at my big house and that’s why you should be following me and doing what I’m doing. I don’t care. Most people don’t care. They can see through that. They’re like, what the hell does that have to do with anything? So I just present the content that’s going to help serve them and be me while I’m doing it. And if that connects with people, then great. They’re going to be good people for me. But I’m not going to be all things to all people and I’m not going to try to be either.

Okay, well Tim, that’s a great perspective and I’m glad you talked about it. Kind of dug a little bit deeper than most of the time, which I always enjoy. So if people would like to enjoy one of your workshops or should get to know you better or get your content, where can they find you?

The best place is our website, Steve, at rialtomarketing.com, which is R-I-A-L-T-O marketing.com. We did put together some resources for your listeners, free stuff to help them with those fundamentals. So, if they go to slash profserve dash traction, and I’ll give you that link so you can put in the show notes, but there’s free resources there. If you’re running into roadblocks with your marketing, just click the Get a Free Console button anywhere on our website, and I’d be happy to talk to you and help you push through those.

Okay, well, sounds fantastic. Thank you, Tim Fitzpatrick, President of Rialto Marketing. So thanks for coming from Highlands Range, Colorado. Yes. For the way to the show. Thanks for joining us. And for our listeners, stay tuned. We’ll have something exciting coming up next week. Please tune into our show. And if you enjoyed it, please like the YouTube video and please leave us a review on iTunes podcast. That would be fantastic. That would help us get to more, more listeners. Thank you.

 

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