August 27, 2024 • 28 mins
Unlock the secrets to standing out in today's crowded digital marketplace with insights from Rich Brooks of Flyte New Media. Rich introduces us to his "Remarkability Formula," a powerful tool comprising four key lenses: Find, Focus, Forge, and Frame. Discover how these elements can help you pinpoint what makes your business unique, zone in on your niche, create offerings aligned with your mission, and reposition your brand to attract your ideal customers.
This episode is packed with actionable strategies for branding, customer targeting, and effective marketing, all essential for small businesses aiming for growth and success.
Rich Brooks also hosts a podcast called 'The Agents of Change'. Further, he hosts a digital marketing conference called the 'The Agents of Change Conference' each October. This conference brings in many marketing experts from across the country to cover things like local SEO, AI in marketing, creating successful LinkedIn ads, and much more! 'Listeners of Small Business Big World' can receive $25 off tickets by using the promo code "bigworld" when purchasing.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This is Small Business Big World, our weekly
podcast prepared by the team atPaper Trails.
Owning and running a smallbusiness is hard.
Each week, we'll dive into thechallenges, headaches, trends,
fun and excitement of running asmall business.
After all, small businesses arethe heartbeat of America and
our team is here to keep thembeating.
Welcome to Small Business BigWorld, our weekly podcast, where
(00:22):
we talk about all things smallbusiness.
This week, my guest is RichBrooks of Flight New Media.
Welcome, Rich.
Thanks for joining me, Chris,I'm so glad to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thanks for the invite .
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Before we hop into it .
We're going to talk aboutRich's thoughts on his
remarkability formula Before wehop on.
That don't forget.
Please like follow share ratereview Everywhere you get your
podcasts.
We are there Apple Podcasts,spotify, iheart Podcasts.
We are there for you.
So please take a minute, goahead, like, follow share rate
review.
Certainly, any reviews you cangive us are always helpful to
(00:55):
help with our growth and weappreciate that.
All right, rich, so Flight intoMedia.
Talk to me about you.
Guys are digital marketingexperts.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
You're riding the wave of the craziness we have
going on in this world todaydigital marketing and so forth.
Right yeah, I've been doingdigital marketing since 1997, or
been in business for 27 years,starting with just me building
websites out of my apartment,and up to the point now where we
for many years had a niceoffice in the old port of
Portland, Maine.
And there's 10 of us.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
We're still a small company, 10 of us working on a
wide variety of digitalmarketing campaigns, which is
really cool, and certainly weall need that, as well as ours,
because life is crazy and Icertainly know our team spends a
lot of time trying to figurethat all out, and we've been the
beneficiary of some of yourgreat information through your
conference too, so that'swonderful cool so talk to me
(01:47):
about.
You know, you've kind of puttogether this remarkability
formula, um, really to helpdistinguish yourself from your
competition, right?
What's?
What's it all about?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
well and I would say it was more came out of me
trying to help my clients.
Uh, because a lot of peoplewould come to me and they just
didn't have a sense of who theywere.
They didn't have a sense of howto differentiate themselves
from any of their competitorsand, over time, as I started
asking them questions to betterunderstand their business,
that's when we started to figureout.
(02:16):
Oh, you know, it's like let'sfigure out what makes you
different.
And because I'm a marketer andmarketers love formulas and
frameworks and everything likethat, it ended up developing
into something that I couldexplain to other people and that
became the RemarkabilityFormula.
And the whole goal of theRemarkability Formula is to
figure out what makes youdifferent or what makes you
(02:39):
remarkable in the marketplace,something that your potential
customers can latch on to, thatyou can hang your hat on and
that will just make yourmarketing much more easy and
much more successful, becausethe days are gone where you
could put up a Facebook ad andit would work.
The days are gone where it wasjust search engine optimization,
menu or guaranteed business.
Every business knows that theyneed to do SEO and Facebook ads
(03:04):
or Google ads or LinkedIn adsand email marketing.
We all understand the things weshould be doing.
The problem is, becauseeverybody's gotten to that level
of sophistication at this point, it means that those are table
stakes.
So I think that what we need todo is kind of go back to some
of the classic marketing ideasabout, like, how do we position
ourselves and what's going tomake us stand out.
(03:24):
So with that in mind, I startedto develop this idea where
there are four lenses that youcan use on yourself, if you're a
personal brand, or on yourcompany, if it's more of a
corporate brand or a smallbusiness brand, and those are
find, focus, forge and frame,and I'm happy to go through each
one in a little bit more detail.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, that's great.
Certainly, you know, we tellour clients keep it simple,
stupid in their, you know,payroll and HR world, and I
think this kind of puts it backto that in the marketing world.
Right, start back at thebeginning.
We all remember our marketing101 class back in college or
whenever, and it's you know,find your target audience,
figure out who you are.
So what is that?
Fine, what's the first one?
What's find?
What's that go?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, so I'll give you the tagline almost for each
one, and then we can dive alittle bit deeper.
So find is there's alreadysomething remarkable about your
business, and your job is toidentify what that is and then
give it a name.
Focus is all about niching down.
Forge is a little tricky, and Ihave examples for all of these.
(04:25):
But Forge is a little tricky inwhich you create something
that's outside of your offeringsbut is in alignment with your
mission and values.
And then Frame is aboutpositioning yourself in a new
way that shows your idealcustomers the value of what you
have to offer.
So actually, the bookends offind and frame are similar in
(04:50):
the fact that you've already gotwhat you need.
It's just a matter of mayberepositioning things a little
bit.
So find is a great place tostart, and that's where I
usually start when I'm talkingto clients, because it already
exists.
There's nothing extra that youneed to do here.
It's just about identifyingsomething, and an example that I
often talk about is when Ifirst bought a house and when I
(05:11):
moved in, the house was inserious need of a paint job.
I'd never been a homeowner, Ididn't know anything about it,
but all the stories my friendstold me were horror stories
about.
You know, these companies wouldcome and they wouldn't show up
on time and then they would dragthe project out for multiple,
multiple days, sometimes weekson end.
They turn your house intobasically construction zone and
it just it feels like it neverends.
(05:33):
So when we were talking to abunch of local painters, one of
the guys said I can get it donein two days.
And we're like that soundsfantastic, let's do that.
So we went with him and the waythat he was able to accomplish
this is they show up in fivevans, 20 guys come spilling out
of the vans, they throw up theladders, they paint the entire
house from top to bottom in justone day.
(05:54):
I think they were singing seashanties the entire time, but
maybe I'm just misrememberingthat.
You know, come back a day ortwo later, after the paint dries
, do the whole thing again.
As you can imagine that all ofmy neighbors took notice of this
because they've never seen somany people painting the same
house at one time.
(06:14):
That is remarkable.
Like if you're a painter andyou just have lower prices or
better ratings on Yelp, that'snot remarkable.
So this was something thatreally also is very hard to
compete on.
And that's another interestingfactor of the remarkability
factor of a formula the moredifficult it is for your
competitors to compete with youon that front, the more secure
your position is.
(06:34):
And you know, in Maine thepainting season is very short,
like there's only so much timeduring the year you can do this.
So to have 20 guys on payrollaround the whole year, that's a
very difficult thing to competeagainst.
So that's a great example ofremarkability and something to
find.
But it could also be you knowyour pricing, it could be your
positioning, it could be yourlocation.
(06:56):
There's already somethingremarkable about you or your
business and there's a reasonwhy your current clients chose
you.
And what you need to do is justidentify what that is, because
often people choose you forreasons you didn't intend and
then give that a name and thenyou can go out and market.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
So how are you finding clients or small
businesses are reallyidentifying that?
Is it throwing the sticky noteson the wall?
Is it really talking with youguys?
I know my wheels are turning aswe're talking about this.
I know what I would say, buthow are you pulling this?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
information out of folks.
I think the best thing to do isactually to talk to your
clients or your customers,depending on how you see them.
But I think the most importantthing is and this is something
all businesses should beconstantly doing is when a
project is done, when a job isdone, or if it's an ongoing
client, to be checking in.
I mean, you should be checkingwith them all the time, but
maybe every six months how arethings going?
(07:50):
And asking very specificquestions like what were you
going through?
What was your pain point whenyou called us?
What caused you to choose usrather than anybody else?
When the project was over, whatwere some of the things that
you were taking away?
And if you interview three tofive people customers, clients,
(08:11):
whatever, um on this, I thinkyou're going to start to find
these recurring themes, some ofwhich may be very self-evident
and you knew them all along, andthis is just confirmation.
And other time it's somethinglike oh, I never thought that
that was going to be what it wasthat got people to choose me.
And I was just talking to awoman on my podcast the other
day.
She had an app for getting freedrinks at local bars and when
(08:31):
they started to interview people, it turns out that they were
not as interested.
I mean, everybody's interestedin free drinks, right, but that
was not the reason they did it.
They were often using it onnights where there were no free
drinks to be had.
They were using it to find newplaces and to connect with their
friends.
Once the app developers knewthat, they rethought the entire
app and how it displayed on thephone and they got much more
(08:54):
buy-in from people and they alsobuilt in tools to get them to
tell their friends, which all ofa sudden really started to
build up the user base.
So I think it's critical totalk to your clients first.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
That's the easiest piece of business, which is
something so many of us wellbusiness owners are afraid to do
.
We're all afraid, especially incertain industries.
We're all afraid of those Yelpreviews or the Google reviews,
but I certainly think we havedone a really good job.
We do a once a year kind ofclient satisfaction survey and
it's been good because, you'reright, 95% of the reactions are
wonderful.
But there are times wheresomeone will come to us with
(09:30):
things gosh, we didn't know thathappened.
Or, especially as we've grownand my team's getting bigger and
so forth.
Of course I want to know whenthings are going wrong, because
I don't want things to go wrong.
So I think we all have to beready for that feedback good,
bad or indifferent.
But I think you're right,finding why people are coming to
look for you is certainlyreally cool.
So once you found that, whatare you focusing on?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
What's the focus piece of it, right?
So what I would say is all ofthese lenses I don't know that
you're going to check off everysingle box, but even if you find
something in find, I recommendgoing to all four lenses,
because it's really by stackingthese uh, remarkability factors
up where you really start tocreate this unique place.
So keep on going and then,after find, you move to focus,
(10:17):
and focus is really just aboutniching down where you are going
to serve fewer people, whereyou are going to offer less
things, where you are going tooffer less things, where you're
going to be open for fewer hours, whatever it is, that you keep
on niching down until you arethe only business that is
serving your ideal customer withyour particular solution.
(10:38):
And that may be an absolute.
That's difficult to get to,especially for certain types of
businesses, but that's reallythe goal here.
And so I remember years agowhen I asked a guy who owned a
restaurant who's your idealcustomer and he said people who
need to eat to survive.
And I'm like, okay, that'sfunny, clever I'm, but that's
not really accurate.
You have a Mexican restaurantnear the mall in South Portland.
(11:02):
It's like there is a veryspecific audience that you
should be paying attention toand ignoring everybody else.
And one example I think aboutis since we're on a podcast,
I'll share this my friend JohnLee Dumas.
I met him before he started hispodcast Famously he's behind
Entrepreneurs on Fire and whenhe started there were no daily
(11:23):
podcasts and he decided that hisdifferentiator was going to be
putting out a daily businesspodcast for entrepreneurs and
everybody who was in hismastermind, everybody who was
ahead of him in the race, toldhim he was crazy.
Nobody wants that much content,nobody's going to listen,
they'll get frustrated, they'llunsubscribe.
But he knew that, even thoughthey were probably right for the
(11:45):
majority of listeners, therewas a subsection of listeners
who wanted that dailyinspiration when they were
driving to and from work that hecould speak to, because he
understood their pain points andthat helped him become a rising
voice in podcasting and reallyblew up his entire business by
doing the daily podcast.
He became known for it and sowhen journalists started writing
(12:08):
about and talking aboutpodcasts, very often his name
would rise to the top.
They would interview him.
He suddenly was attracting a lothigher quality guests, a lot
more sponsors, a lot morelisteners, and it became this
very virtuous cycle, all byniching down and I know it
sounds weird that he's doingseven times the work that
anybody else is doing.
How is that niching down?
(12:28):
But it really was, because hewas creating content for a very
specific subset of thatlistening audience.
Now, of course, other peoplemight join in Not everybody's
going to listen every day, butthat was very powerful.
And the other thing aboutniching down is when you become
an expert in something, peoplewill pay you more.
And as I was researching thewhole idea behind the
(12:49):
remarkability formula, one statthat I thought was really
interesting was I think it wasback in 2017, the average
American PCP doctor generaldoctor was making a very healthy
I think it was $247,000 a yearon average, but the average
specialist was making $399,000in that same year $150,000 more
(13:13):
for literally being able to helpfewer people and potentially
knowing less.
But because when it comes tosomething important like
healthcare, like a kneereplacement or or, you know,
like heart surgery, we'rewilling to pay more for that
expertise, and so you can becomethe go-to person because of
that increased expertise, justlike John 7X'd his podcasting
(13:38):
journey by doing it every singleday where the rest of them were
just doing it.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I think that's, you know, certainly, being the
expert at what you do, whetherthat's in marketing or payroll
and HR, or or even being, youknow, the expert in hospitality.
Right, you want to run arestaurant, you know we, we see
the folks that do hospitalityreally well.
I mean, we have some phenomenalhospitality here in Maine, but
you go to New York.
These are careers, these arewhat people do, you know.
(14:02):
That is why people go there,right, that's why people
frequent your business.
And certainly you are wonderfulat telling the world about your
expertise in marketing.
And you're on TV once a week,you know, at 107, right?
Is it once a week or once amonth?
You guys are Once a month.
Yeah, yeah, I see the previewevery once in a while and I see
on there, you know, just talkingabout all the things we need to
know, and that's we do the samething through our podcast, you
(14:27):
do it through your podcast andthe content that you put out we
put out.
And I think that really, I willtell you, we kind of figured
that out during COVID as lawsand the situation was changing
every single day.
We were I was reading more lawthan I was doing anything else
and I was telling my clientswhat was happening and how to
deal with it.
And we became the experts in mybusiness group 25% that year
because we knew we were justtelling people what was out
(14:49):
there, right, we were the expertin that thing and I think
people don't take a step backand think about that expertise
piece.
Gosh, there's a reason you getinto this and it's to be the
best, right?
Um, certainly, that focus isreally, really important.
So once you've found it andyou've focused on what you want
to be doing, you've built yourniche, what's the forging part
(15:15):
of it?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
So, yeah, forge is a little bit challenging for some
people to wrap their headsaround, and the whole idea here
is that you are going to createsomething that is outside of
your core offering, but still inalignment with what you are
doing.
So there's a lot of ways tothink about this.
One example is the Lost Kitchen.
You've probably heard about theLost Kitchen.
This is a famous restaurant inMaine, very hard to get
reservations to and the only wayyou can get reservations.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
've figured it out.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, they've focused and they've done a great job
yes, yeah, and so the only wayyou can get a reservation there
is that you actually send apostcard that arrives between
about april 4th and april 11thor whatever the dates are this
year.
Um, and then they pick andchoose from those postcard
reservations.
You have to hand write thesethings out and send it to them,
which seems so crazy, but itactually happened, because the
(16:03):
previous year when they openedup their phone lines for
reservations, the phone linescrashed because 10,000 people
all tried to call at the sametime to get a very limited
number of seats at the you knowand so.
But postcards seem like kind ofold school.
But if you know about therestaurant, the restaurant
everything's very organic.
I mean you sit at big, longtables that are made out of,
(16:26):
like you know, reclaimedfurniture.
It's very organic, feeling likethe farm.
All the food comes from localfarms, the farmers are off in
the servers that night, likeit's just a very different vibe
and a handwritten postcard feelslike it's in alignment.
Now, there's no way that theycouldn't have just said let's
outsource this all to OpenTableand just let them handle it.
The whole idea here is it'svery much in alignment with
(16:49):
everything else they're doing.
They could have just used somesort of reservation app like
OpenTable, but the truth is likethis just feels better and then
it becomes a great story thatgets passed along.
And, in the same vein, I don'tknow if you've ever overcooked
pasta, but barilla the, thepasta maker, actually has
spotify song lists that aretimed to the exact amount of
(17:11):
cooking time for their pasta beal dente and you can like.
You can go to spotify andyou'll find boom bat, too silly,
which I think comes in at like11 minutes.
And then there's like aspaghetti mixtape that comes in
at nine and you know it's got.
It's got Italian musiciansplaying, it's got Italian
artists who did the cover artfor all this.
It's very, very all about theirbrand.
(17:34):
Now, of course, you can alsosay to your smart speaker hey,
set me a nine minute timer andit'll be just the same, but they
created something that youdon't need to use.
But it is keeping in alignmentwith everything they believe,
which is cooking, is art, andthat's really what they believe
and they do a great job usingthis tool.
And one more example my agentsof change conference.
(17:56):
Like you can hire flight newmedia to do your digital
marketing.
Never having attended agents ofchange, and you can go to
agents of change conference andnever hire flight new media.
This is something that'soutside of what we do.
But the agents of changeconference is all about digital
marketing.
Flight new media is all aboutdigital marketing, and so it's
just something that we offerbecause we believe it.
(18:16):
And very often, as I askclients hey, how did you hear of
us?
You know they'll be like oh,I've been attending the agents
of change for years and I'mfinally ready for a new website
or seo or branding, what haveyou?
So again, these are things thatyou don't need to use to work
with us, but it is somethingthat's helped grow in our biz,
grow our business and helpposition us and kind of show off
(18:37):
our remarkability.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
It's a really interesting kind of thought
about stepping to the side,thinking about how to offer more
value.
Right, I didn't know about theSpotify playlist, so I feel like
I need to make pasta for dinnertonight, so, but that's a
really cute thing that you know.
Again, it has my wheels turning, so hopefully it's good for
some other folks as well.
So, once you find it, you focusit, you forge it, you build it.
(18:59):
What's the frame piece?
How are we?
Speaker 2 (19:02):
framing.
Yeah, so frame is again.
You're not going to make anychanges to what you offer, but
you're just going to position itin a way that it resonates more
with who your ideal customer is, and one quick example is Red
Bull.
Red Bull could have come tomarket it was actually already
on market.
It was like this caffeinatedbeverage that a lot of taxi
drivers in India drank, if myresearch is correct and when it
(19:25):
decided to become more of aglobal brand.
If they had just gone head tohead with like Coke and Pepsi,
we never would have heard of RedBull.
But instead they went withsmaller cans and they promoted
an ingredient that was veryuncommon in other soft drinks,
which was Tori, and theybasically identified this not as
a soda but as an energy drink,and it is now like the biggest
(19:47):
energy drink in the world.
I think it made like $60billion last year.
I mean, it's just an incrediblebrand.
That's not the only reason it'sbeen successful, but it talked
about, it positioned itself insuch a way that it's ideal
customer whether that would be,you know, guys doing programming
late at night or collegestudents or what have you they
(20:07):
really identified with it.
They saw the benefit of thisthat you know.
Now there's Monster.
There's a bunch of knockoffs aswell, but at the time that was
a real emerging trend that theywere able to jump on by
promoting it and positioning itin such a way.
And another great example Ipicked up in a book by Matthew
Stoddard.
He wrote the Introvert's Edgeand in it he talks about some of
(20:29):
his coaching services.
And there's a woman Wendy Huang,I believe her name is.
She was teaching Mandarin inCalifornia very successfully,
and then all of a sudden thingschanged and suddenly a lot of
new people entered the marketoffering the same thing for a
fraction of the cost.
You could jump onto Fiverr andactually, you know, people
living in China would give youlessons.
(20:50):
For next, she couldn't competeon price.
She saw her profits and evenher business eroding.
She thought this was the end.
She ends up hiring Matthew andas he's looking through her
client list, he's like you'vegot a couple of business people
there and it turns out thesebusiness people had been
relocated to China and theyneeded to learn Mandarin.
They hired her and it turnedout not only was she teaching
(21:12):
them Mandarin, but she was alsoteaching them about how they
should behave in a businesssituation while they were in
China, and then she also wereteaching the spouses and
children about the newenvironment so they could adapt
more easily.
When they got there, and he'slike so really, you're helping
people succeed in China.
They immediately rebranded heras the China success coach.
(21:36):
She wasn't doing anythingdifferent.
It was all the stuff that shehad been offering all along,
just repositioning.
So now she can charge whatevershe wants, because it's a
business expense.
She's not going after thelowest common denominator, she's
not competing with almostanybody else out there, and her
business, you know, just startedto explode again.
And this is an important thing,because not only was she using
(21:56):
Frame, but she was also usingFocus, because all of a sudden,
she stopped going after anybodywho wanted to learn Mandarin and
she only went after businesspeople who are relocating to
mainland China, and so also,that makes all of her marketing
so much easier as well.
That is a key point, because Iwant people to recognize that
these are tags or lenses thatwe're using to help us, but it
(22:20):
doesn't really matter whatcategory something falls under.
It's just about continuing tostack these things upon each
other until you have this reallyclear picture of what makes you
stand out and what makes?
Speaker 1 (22:31):
you.
So you know this is is reallycool.
I'm I like I said my wheelshave been turning our whole
conversation.
But how do you really roll thisout with small businesses?
You know we work you and I bothwork with small businesses.
You know, largely, you know inMaine kind of New England, and I
think most of our clients havea struggle every day just to get
(22:51):
the doors open and get you knowpeople to show up to work and
find clients.
And you know we're a relativelysmall market.
You know, are you seeing peoplereally go outside their normal
market?
You know, certainly we're inthis world today.
You can work anywhere, you canfind customers anywhere if you
think about it.
So you know, how have you had,what success stories have you
had kind of, with the smallbusinesses in this?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
area.
I would suggest that, yes, youcan get customers anywhere, but
that also means that thosecustomers can go anywhere, and I
think, more than ever before,brand is critically important,
and we're seeing this in a lotof different places, like a lot
of the conversations in the SEO,digital magazines and such are
about the reemergence of brandas really being a differentiator
(23:34):
.
Especially now, with AI, wherethere's so many companies just
leveraging generative AI tocreate a whole bunch of content,
it's so important to reallystart to build your brand, and
so this is where it becomesimportant to being able to focus
your attention.
So, if you have, if you've gonethrough this exercise and you
start to be like, okay, I know Ihave a really good sense of
(23:54):
what makes me remarkable, I'mniching down, so I'm going to go
after a more targeted audienceAll these kinds of things will
help with your marketing andgetting your message out.
It helps clarify your message,it helps you identify who your
best customers are and, at thesame time, it helps you kind of
push away, or you know thecustomers who are not going to
be a good fit, because thatdoesn't mean that they're bad
(24:15):
people, they're just not a goodfit.
So the more that you can leaninto what makes you remarkable,
the more that you'll attract theright type of client and push
away the wrong type of client.
And as far as implementationgoes, I mean, I always say
everything starts with yourwebsite, so it comes down to,
like you know, the messaging andthe graphics and the
photography.
As far as understanding andniching down, that's going to
(24:35):
help a lot of your targetingwhen it comes to digital ads,
whether they're social ads orpaid ads, so you can really
start to go all right.
Well, you know, I thoughteverybody was my customer, but
really they're in thisgeographic location, they have
this much income coming in.
There's this element of themthey like this, they like that.
Those are the kind of thingsthat help really narrow your
targeting.
(24:56):
When it comes to something likemeta or LinkedIn, that can
really help you lower yourcustomer acquisition costs as
well.
And then it just becomes thisvirtuous cycle where, as you
bring on more clients, you startasking them why did you choose
us?
What made us the right choicefor you?
Did we solve your problems andthings like that.
And I've just seen over timethat this really helps people
(25:19):
narrow the focus of theirmarketing so that they can spend
less time on their marketingand more time doing everything
else that actually generateswhich is always the argument
that everyone has.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
I don't have time to do marketing.
I don't have time to domarketing.
I'm too busy flipping burgers.
I'm too busy doing whateverright, so awesome and it is a
challenge, and we all know I'msure you've gone through the
same thing, chris.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I mean there were.
There've been many nights whereI've worked way too many hours,
but this is what you do whenyou're an entrepreneur.
This is what you do when you'rein charge of the business,
until you get to a point whereyou brought on enough people
where they're doing a lot of thework and you're just helping
them do the best job that theycan do Indeed, Indeed.
Well, that's a great place toleave things.
(25:58):
So talk to us about Agents ofChange.
That's coming right up, right,yeah.
So this will be our 10th annualin-person digital marketing
conference under the Agents ofChange banner.
This year it's going to be onOctober 9th and then we have
some deep dive workshops onOctober 10th for people who want
to really take their skills tothe next level.
Whether you want to go yourselfor maybe send the head of
marketing, this is a great event.
They can learn more.
We've got 15 digital marketingexperts from across the US and
(26:21):
Canada descending on PortlandMaine for that date, with great
content around SEO, artificialintelligence and marketing,
personal branding just a widevariety of things that are going
to help people grow theirbusiness.
You can check out theinformation at
theagentsofchangecom.
We are running some discountsright now, but for any of your
(26:43):
listeners, if they use the codeword big world all one world,
all one word, they'll get anadditional $25 off.
So I definitely recommend gocheck out the website, see what
we've got in store for you.
But this is probably going tobe one of the best investments
you make in your marketing.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
If you can't make it in person, you've got the
digital track as well, right?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Great point, yeah, so there is a digital pass that
will allow you a live feed ofthe main stage and then every
single session on demand afterthe conference.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I know.
John, who's our marketingdirector, went last year he did
a digitally loved.
It was a great session.
He's going to be out onpaternity leave this year, so
I'm going to try to get myselfthere for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
How do I?
Speaker 1 (27:22):
get in touch with you , Otherwise, what's a good play?
How to Instagram LinkedIn?
How do we get in?
Speaker 2 (27:26):
touch.
Linkedin is really my jam, sothat you can always find me on
LinkedIn.
I am the Rich Brooks on everyplatform, but I'm most
responsive on LinkedIn.
And if you want to come andcheck out our website, we're at
takeflight and that's F-L-Y-T-Edot com, but LinkedIn is a great
way to just talk to me.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Perfect.
Well, thank you again, rich,for joining us.
Reminder please like followshare rate, review us.
We are on all the podcastplatforms.
Those reviews really help usnot only improve but certainly
grow our following as well.
If you have any questions forus or any of our guests, you can
always email us at podcast atpapertrailscom, and we will get
right back to you or get you intouch with whoever you need to.
So thanks again, rich, andthanks to all of our listeners
(28:04):
and viewers, and we'll see younext week.
Thanks for listening to thisweek's episode of Small Business
Big World.
This podcast is a production ofPapertrails.
We are a payroll and HR companybased in Kennebunk, maine, and
we serve small and mid-sizedbusinesses across New England
and the country.
If you found this podcasthelpful, don't forget to follow
us at at Paper Trails Payrollacross all social media
platforms and check us out atpapertrailscom for more
(28:24):
information.
As a reminder, the views,opinions and thoughts expressed
by the hosts and guests alone.
The material presented in thispodcast is for general
information purposes only andshould not be considered legal
or financial advice by invitingthis guest to our podcast, paper
Trails.
This is Small Business Big World, our weekly
podcast prepared by the team atPaper Trails.
Owning and running a smallbusiness is hard.
Each week, we'll dive into thechallenges, headaches, trends,
fun and excitement of running asmall business.
After all, small businesses arethe heartbeat of America and
our team is here to keep thembeating.
Welcome to Small Business BigWorld, our weekly podcast, where
(00:22):
we talk about all things smallbusiness.
This week, my guest is RichBrooks of Flight New Media.
Welcome, Rich.
Thanks for joining me, Chris,I'm so glad to be here.
Speaker 2 (00:33):
Thanks for the invite .
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Before we hop into it .
We're going to talk aboutRich's thoughts on his
remarkability formula Before wehop on.
That don't forget.
Please like follow share ratereview Everywhere you get your
podcasts.
We are there Apple Podcasts,spotify, iheart Podcasts.
We are there for you.
So please take a minute, goahead, like, follow share rate
review.
Certainly, any reviews you cangive us are always helpful to
(00:55):
help with our growth and weappreciate that.
All right, rich, so Flight intoMedia.
Talk to me about you.
Guys are digital marketingexperts.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
You're riding the wave of the craziness we have
going on in this world todaydigital marketing and so forth.
Right yeah, I've been doingdigital marketing since 1997, or
been in business for 27 years,starting with just me building
websites out of my apartment,and up to the point now where we
for many years had a niceoffice in the old port of
Portland, Maine.
And there's 10 of us.
Speaker 1 (01:27):
We're still a small company, 10 of us working on a
wide variety of digitalmarketing campaigns, which is
really cool, and certainly weall need that, as well as ours,
because life is crazy and Icertainly know our team spends a
lot of time trying to figurethat all out, and we've been the
beneficiary of some of yourgreat information through your
conference too, so that'swonderful cool so talk to me
(01:47):
about.
You know, you've kind of puttogether this remarkability
formula, um, really to helpdistinguish yourself from your
competition, right?
What's?
What's it all about?
Speaker 2 (01:56):
well and I would say it was more came out of me
trying to help my clients.
Uh, because a lot of peoplewould come to me and they just
didn't have a sense of who theywere.
They didn't have a sense of howto differentiate themselves
from any of their competitorsand, over time, as I started
asking them questions to betterunderstand their business,
that's when we started to figureout.
(02:16):
Oh, you know, it's like let'sfigure out what makes you
different.
And because I'm a marketer andmarketers love formulas and
frameworks and everything likethat, it ended up developing
into something that I couldexplain to other people and that
became the RemarkabilityFormula.
And the whole goal of theRemarkability Formula is to
figure out what makes youdifferent or what makes you
(02:39):
remarkable in the marketplace,something that your potential
customers can latch on to, thatyou can hang your hat on and
that will just make yourmarketing much more easy and
much more successful, becausethe days are gone where you
could put up a Facebook ad andit would work.
The days are gone where it wasjust search engine optimization,
menu or guaranteed business.
Every business knows that theyneed to do SEO and Facebook ads
(03:04):
or Google ads or LinkedIn adsand email marketing.
We all understand the things weshould be doing.
The problem is, becauseeverybody's gotten to that level
of sophistication at this point, it means that those are table
stakes.
So I think that what we need todo is kind of go back to some
of the classic marketing ideasabout, like, how do we position
ourselves and what's going tomake us stand out.
(03:24):
So with that in mind, I startedto develop this idea where
there are four lenses that youcan use on yourself, if you're a
personal brand, or on yourcompany, if it's more of a
corporate brand or a smallbusiness brand, and those are
find, focus, forge and frame,and I'm happy to go through each
one in a little bit more detail.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
Yeah, that's great.
Certainly, you know, we tellour clients keep it simple,
stupid in their, you know,payroll and HR world, and I
think this kind of puts it backto that in the marketing world.
Right, start back at thebeginning.
We all remember our marketing101 class back in college or
whenever, and it's you know,find your target audience,
figure out who you are.
So what is that?
Fine, what's the first one?
What's find?
What's that go?
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Yeah, so I'll give you the tagline almost for each
one, and then we can dive alittle bit deeper.
So find is there's alreadysomething remarkable about your
business, and your job is toidentify what that is and then
give it a name.
Focus is all about niching down.
Forge is a little tricky, and Ihave examples for all of these.
(04:25):
But Forge is a little tricky inwhich you create something
that's outside of your offeringsbut is in alignment with your
mission and values.
And then Frame is aboutpositioning yourself in a new
way that shows your idealcustomers the value of what you
have to offer.
So actually, the bookends offind and frame are similar in
(04:50):
the fact that you've already gotwhat you need.
It's just a matter of mayberepositioning things a little
bit.
So find is a great place tostart, and that's where I
usually start when I'm talkingto clients, because it already
exists.
There's nothing extra that youneed to do here.
It's just about identifyingsomething, and an example that I
often talk about is when Ifirst bought a house and when I
(05:11):
moved in, the house was inserious need of a paint job.
I'd never been a homeowner, Ididn't know anything about it,
but all the stories my friendstold me were horror stories
about.
You know, these companies wouldcome and they wouldn't show up
on time and then they would dragthe project out for multiple,
multiple days, sometimes weekson end.
They turn your house intobasically construction zone and
it just it feels like it neverends.
(05:33):
So when we were talking to abunch of local painters, one of
the guys said I can get it donein two days.
And we're like that soundsfantastic, let's do that.
So we went with him and the waythat he was able to accomplish
this is they show up in fivevans, 20 guys come spilling out
of the vans, they throw up theladders, they paint the entire
house from top to bottom in justone day.
(05:54):
I think they were singing seashanties the entire time, but
maybe I'm just misrememberingthat.
You know, come back a day ortwo later, after the paint dries
, do the whole thing again.
As you can imagine that all ofmy neighbors took notice of this
because they've never seen somany people painting the same
house at one time.
(06:14):
That is remarkable.
Like if you're a painter andyou just have lower prices or
better ratings on Yelp, that'snot remarkable.
So this was something thatreally also is very hard to
compete on.
And that's another interestingfactor of the remarkability
factor of a formula the moredifficult it is for your
competitors to compete with youon that front, the more secure
your position is.
(06:34):
And you know, in Maine thepainting season is very short,
like there's only so much timeduring the year you can do this.
So to have 20 guys on payrollaround the whole year, that's a
very difficult thing to competeagainst.
So that's a great example ofremarkability and something to
find.
But it could also be you knowyour pricing, it could be your
positioning, it could be yourlocation.
(06:56):
There's already somethingremarkable about you or your
business and there's a reasonwhy your current clients chose
you.
And what you need to do is justidentify what that is, because
often people choose you forreasons you didn't intend and
then give that a name and thenyou can go out and market.
Speaker 1 (07:13):
So how are you finding clients or small
businesses are reallyidentifying that?
Is it throwing the sticky noteson the wall?
Is it really talking with youguys?
I know my wheels are turning aswe're talking about this.
I know what I would say, buthow are you pulling this?
Speaker 2 (07:28):
information out of folks.
I think the best thing to do isactually to talk to your
clients or your customers,depending on how you see them.
But I think the most importantthing is and this is something
all businesses should beconstantly doing is when a
project is done, when a job isdone, or if it's an ongoing
client, to be checking in.
I mean, you should be checkingwith them all the time, but
maybe every six months how arethings going?
(07:50):
And asking very specificquestions like what were you
going through?
What was your pain point whenyou called us?
What caused you to choose usrather than anybody else?
When the project was over, whatwere some of the things that
you were taking away?
And if you interview three tofive people customers, clients,
(08:11):
whatever, um on this, I thinkyou're going to start to find
these recurring themes, some ofwhich may be very self-evident
and you knew them all along, andthis is just confirmation.
And other time it's somethinglike oh, I never thought that
that was going to be what it wasthat got people to choose me.
And I was just talking to awoman on my podcast the other
day.
She had an app for getting freedrinks at local bars and when
(08:31):
they started to interview people, it turns out that they were
not as interested.
I mean, everybody's interestedin free drinks, right, but that
was not the reason they did it.
They were often using it onnights where there were no free
drinks to be had.
They were using it to find newplaces and to connect with their
friends.
Once the app developers knewthat, they rethought the entire
app and how it displayed on thephone and they got much more
(08:54):
buy-in from people and they alsobuilt in tools to get them to
tell their friends, which all ofa sudden really started to
build up the user base.
So I think it's critical totalk to your clients first.
Speaker 1 (09:05):
That's the easiest piece of business, which is
something so many of us wellbusiness owners are afraid to do
.
We're all afraid, especially incertain industries.
We're all afraid of those Yelpreviews or the Google reviews,
but I certainly think we havedone a really good job.
We do a once a year kind ofclient satisfaction survey and
it's been good because, you'reright, 95% of the reactions are
wonderful.
But there are times wheresomeone will come to us with
(09:30):
things gosh, we didn't know thathappened.
Or, especially as we've grownand my team's getting bigger and
so forth.
Of course I want to know whenthings are going wrong, because
I don't want things to go wrong.
So I think we all have to beready for that feedback good,
bad or indifferent.
But I think you're right,finding why people are coming to
look for you is certainlyreally cool.
So once you found that, whatare you focusing on?
Speaker 2 (09:56):
What's the focus piece of it, right?
So what I would say is all ofthese lenses I don't know that
you're going to check off everysingle box, but even if you find
something in find, I recommendgoing to all four lenses,
because it's really by stackingthese uh, remarkability factors
up where you really start tocreate this unique place.
So keep on going and then,after find, you move to focus,
(10:17):
and focus is really just aboutniching down where you are going
to serve fewer people, whereyou are going to offer less
things, where you are going tooffer less things, where you're
going to be open for fewer hours, whatever it is, that you keep
on niching down until you arethe only business that is
serving your ideal customer withyour particular solution.
(10:38):
And that may be an absolute.
That's difficult to get to,especially for certain types of
businesses, but that's reallythe goal here.
And so I remember years agowhen I asked a guy who owned a
restaurant who's your idealcustomer and he said people who
need to eat to survive.
And I'm like, okay, that'sfunny, clever I'm, but that's
not really accurate.
You have a Mexican restaurantnear the mall in South Portland.
(11:02):
It's like there is a veryspecific audience that you
should be paying attention toand ignoring everybody else.
And one example I think aboutis since we're on a podcast,
I'll share this my friend JohnLee Dumas.
I met him before he started hispodcast Famously he's behind
Entrepreneurs on Fire and whenhe started there were no daily
(11:23):
podcasts and he decided that hisdifferentiator was going to be
putting out a daily businesspodcast for entrepreneurs and
everybody who was in hismastermind, everybody who was
ahead of him in the race, toldhim he was crazy.
Nobody wants that much content,nobody's going to listen,
they'll get frustrated, they'llunsubscribe.
But he knew that, even thoughthey were probably right for the
(11:45):
majority of listeners, therewas a subsection of listeners
who wanted that dailyinspiration when they were
driving to and from work that hecould speak to, because he
understood their pain points andthat helped him become a rising
voice in podcasting and reallyblew up his entire business by
doing the daily podcast.
He became known for it and sowhen journalists started writing
(12:08):
about and talking aboutpodcasts, very often his name
would rise to the top.
They would interview him.
He suddenly was attracting a lothigher quality guests, a lot
more sponsors, a lot morelisteners, and it became this
very virtuous cycle, all byniching down and I know it
sounds weird that he's doingseven times the work that
anybody else is doing.
How is that niching down?
(12:28):
But it really was, because hewas creating content for a very
specific subset of thatlistening audience.
Now, of course, other peoplemight join in Not everybody's
going to listen every day, butthat was very powerful.
And the other thing aboutniching down is when you become
an expert in something, peoplewill pay you more.
And as I was researching thewhole idea behind the
(12:49):
remarkability formula, one statthat I thought was really
interesting was I think it wasback in 2017, the average
American PCP doctor generaldoctor was making a very healthy
I think it was $247,000 a yearon average, but the average
specialist was making $399,000in that same year $150,000 more
(13:13):
for literally being able to helpfewer people and potentially
knowing less.
But because when it comes tosomething important like
healthcare, like a kneereplacement or or, you know,
like heart surgery, we'rewilling to pay more for that
expertise, and so you can becomethe go-to person because of
that increased expertise, justlike John 7X'd his podcasting
(13:38):
journey by doing it every singleday where the rest of them were
just doing it.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
I think that's, you know, certainly, being the
expert at what you do, whetherthat's in marketing or payroll
and HR, or or even being, youknow, the expert in hospitality.
Right, you want to run arestaurant, you know we, we see
the folks that do hospitalityreally well.
I mean, we have some phenomenalhospitality here in Maine, but
you go to New York.
These are careers, these arewhat people do, you know.
(14:02):
That is why people go there,right, that's why people
frequent your business.
And certainly you are wonderfulat telling the world about your
expertise in marketing.
And you're on TV once a week,you know, at 107, right?
Is it once a week or once amonth?
You guys are Once a month.
Yeah, yeah, I see the previewevery once in a while and I see
on there, you know, just talkingabout all the things we need to
know, and that's we do the samething through our podcast, you
(14:27):
do it through your podcast andthe content that you put out we
put out.
And I think that really, I willtell you, we kind of figured
that out during COVID as lawsand the situation was changing
every single day.
We were I was reading more lawthan I was doing anything else
and I was telling my clientswhat was happening and how to
deal with it.
And we became the experts in mybusiness group 25% that year
because we knew we were justtelling people what was out
(14:49):
there, right, we were the expertin that thing and I think
people don't take a step backand think about that expertise
piece.
Gosh, there's a reason you getinto this and it's to be the
best, right?
Um, certainly, that focus isreally, really important.
So once you've found it andyou've focused on what you want
to be doing, you've built yourniche, what's the forging part
(15:15):
of it?
Speaker 2 (15:16):
So, yeah, forge is a little bit challenging for some
people to wrap their headsaround, and the whole idea here
is that you are going to createsomething that is outside of
your core offering, but still inalignment with what you are
doing.
So there's a lot of ways tothink about this.
One example is the Lost Kitchen.
You've probably heard about theLost Kitchen.
This is a famous restaurant inMaine, very hard to get
reservations to and the only wayyou can get reservations.
Speaker 1 (15:40):
've figured it out.
Speaker 2 (15:40):
Yeah, they've focused and they've done a great job
yes, yeah, and so the only wayyou can get a reservation there
is that you actually send apostcard that arrives between
about april 4th and april 11thor whatever the dates are this
year.
Um, and then they pick andchoose from those postcard
reservations.
You have to hand write thesethings out and send it to them,
which seems so crazy, but itactually happened, because the
(16:03):
previous year when they openedup their phone lines for
reservations, the phone linescrashed because 10,000 people
all tried to call at the sametime to get a very limited
number of seats at the you knowand so.
But postcards seem like kind ofold school.
But if you know about therestaurant, the restaurant
everything's very organic.
I mean you sit at big, longtables that are made out of,
(16:26):
like you know, reclaimedfurniture.
It's very organic, feeling likethe farm.
All the food comes from localfarms, the farmers are off in
the servers that night, likeit's just a very different vibe
and a handwritten postcard feelslike it's in alignment.
Now, there's no way that theycouldn't have just said let's
outsource this all to OpenTableand just let them handle it.
The whole idea here is it'svery much in alignment with
(16:49):
everything else they're doing.
They could have just used somesort of reservation app like
OpenTable, but the truth is likethis just feels better and then
it becomes a great story thatgets passed along.
And, in the same vein, I don'tknow if you've ever overcooked
pasta, but barilla the, thepasta maker, actually has
spotify song lists that aretimed to the exact amount of
(17:11):
cooking time for their pasta beal dente and you can like.
You can go to spotify andyou'll find boom bat, too silly,
which I think comes in at like11 minutes.
And then there's like aspaghetti mixtape that comes in
at nine and you know it's got.
It's got Italian musiciansplaying, it's got Italian
artists who did the cover artfor all this.
It's very, very all about theirbrand.
(17:34):
Now, of course, you can alsosay to your smart speaker hey,
set me a nine minute timer andit'll be just the same, but they
created something that youdon't need to use.
But it is keeping in alignmentwith everything they believe,
which is cooking, is art, andthat's really what they believe
and they do a great job usingthis tool.
And one more example my agentsof change conference.
(17:56):
Like you can hire flight newmedia to do your digital
marketing.
Never having attended agents ofchange, and you can go to
agents of change conference andnever hire flight new media.
This is something that'soutside of what we do.
But the agents of changeconference is all about digital
marketing.
Flight new media is all aboutdigital marketing, and so it's
just something that we offerbecause we believe it.
(18:16):
And very often, as I askclients hey, how did you hear of
us?
You know they'll be like oh,I've been attending the agents
of change for years and I'mfinally ready for a new website
or seo or branding, what haveyou?
So again, these are things thatyou don't need to use to work
with us, but it is somethingthat's helped grow in our biz,
grow our business and helpposition us and kind of show off
(18:37):
our remarkability.
Speaker 1 (18:38):
It's a really interesting kind of thought
about stepping to the side,thinking about how to offer more
value.
Right, I didn't know about theSpotify playlist, so I feel like
I need to make pasta for dinnertonight, so, but that's a
really cute thing that you know.
Again, it has my wheels turning, so hopefully it's good for
some other folks as well.
So, once you find it, you focusit, you forge it, you build it.
(18:59):
What's the frame piece?
How are we?
Speaker 2 (19:02):
framing.
Yeah, so frame is again.
You're not going to make anychanges to what you offer, but
you're just going to position itin a way that it resonates more
with who your ideal customer is, and one quick example is Red
Bull.
Red Bull could have come tomarket it was actually already
on market.
It was like this caffeinatedbeverage that a lot of taxi
drivers in India drank, if myresearch is correct and when it
(19:25):
decided to become more of aglobal brand.
If they had just gone head tohead with like Coke and Pepsi,
we never would have heard of RedBull.
But instead they went withsmaller cans and they promoted
an ingredient that was veryuncommon in other soft drinks,
which was Tori, and theybasically identified this not as
a soda but as an energy drink,and it is now like the biggest
(19:47):
energy drink in the world.
I think it made like $60billion last year.
I mean, it's just an incrediblebrand.
That's not the only reason it'sbeen successful, but it talked
about, it positioned itself insuch a way that it's ideal
customer whether that would be,you know, guys doing programming
late at night or collegestudents or what have you they
(20:07):
really identified with it.
They saw the benefit of thisthat you know.
Now there's Monster.
There's a bunch of knockoffs aswell, but at the time that was
a real emerging trend that theywere able to jump on by
promoting it and positioning itin such a way.
And another great example Ipicked up in a book by Matthew
Stoddard.
He wrote the Introvert's Edgeand in it he talks about some of
(20:29):
his coaching services.
And there's a woman Wendy Huang,I believe her name is.
She was teaching Mandarin inCalifornia very successfully,
and then all of a sudden thingschanged and suddenly a lot of
new people entered the marketoffering the same thing for a
fraction of the cost.
You could jump onto Fiverr andactually, you know, people
living in China would give youlessons.
(20:50):
For next, she couldn't competeon price.
She saw her profits and evenher business eroding.
She thought this was the end.
She ends up hiring Matthew andas he's looking through her
client list, he's like you'vegot a couple of business people
there and it turns out thesebusiness people had been
relocated to China and theyneeded to learn Mandarin.
They hired her and it turnedout not only was she teaching
(21:12):
them Mandarin, but she was alsoteaching them about how they
should behave in a businesssituation while they were in
China, and then she also wereteaching the spouses and
children about the newenvironment so they could adapt
more easily.
When they got there, and he'slike so really, you're helping
people succeed in China.
They immediately rebranded heras the China success coach.
(21:36):
She wasn't doing anythingdifferent.
It was all the stuff that shehad been offering all along,
just repositioning.
So now she can charge whatevershe wants, because it's a
business expense.
She's not going after thelowest common denominator, she's
not competing with almostanybody else out there, and her
business, you know, just startedto explode again.
And this is an important thing,because not only was she using
(21:56):
Frame, but she was also usingFocus, because all of a sudden,
she stopped going after anybodywho wanted to learn Mandarin and
she only went after businesspeople who are relocating to
mainland China, and so also,that makes all of her marketing
so much easier as well.
That is a key point, because Iwant people to recognize that
these are tags or lenses thatwe're using to help us, but it
(22:20):
doesn't really matter whatcategory something falls under.
It's just about continuing tostack these things upon each
other until you have this reallyclear picture of what makes you
stand out and what makes?
Speaker 1 (22:31):
you.
So you know this is is reallycool.
I'm I like I said my wheelshave been turning our whole
conversation.
But how do you really roll thisout with small businesses?
You know we work you and I bothwork with small businesses.
You know, largely, you know inMaine kind of New England, and I
think most of our clients havea struggle every day just to get
(22:51):
the doors open and get you knowpeople to show up to work and
find clients.
And you know we're a relativelysmall market.
You know, are you seeing peoplereally go outside their normal
market?
You know, certainly we're inthis world today.
You can work anywhere, you canfind customers anywhere if you
think about it.
So you know, how have you had,what success stories have you
had kind of, with the smallbusinesses in this?
Speaker 2 (23:11):
area.
I would suggest that, yes, youcan get customers anywhere, but
that also means that thosecustomers can go anywhere, and I
think, more than ever before,brand is critically important,
and we're seeing this in a lotof different places, like a lot
of the conversations in the SEO,digital magazines and such are
about the reemergence of brandas really being a differentiator
(23:34):
.
Especially now, with AI, wherethere's so many companies just
leveraging generative AI tocreate a whole bunch of content,
it's so important to reallystart to build your brand, and
so this is where it becomesimportant to being able to focus
your attention.
So, if you have, if you've gonethrough this exercise and you
start to be like, okay, I know Ihave a really good sense of
(23:54):
what makes me remarkable, I'mniching down, so I'm going to go
after a more targeted audienceAll these kinds of things will
help with your marketing andgetting your message out.
It helps clarify your message,it helps you identify who your
best customers are and, at thesame time, it helps you kind of
push away, or you know thecustomers who are not going to
be a good fit, because thatdoesn't mean that they're bad
(24:15):
people, they're just not a goodfit.
So the more that you can leaninto what makes you remarkable,
the more that you'll attract theright type of client and push
away the wrong type of client.
And as far as implementationgoes, I mean, I always say
everything starts with yourwebsite, so it comes down to,
like you know, the messaging andthe graphics and the
photography.
As far as understanding andniching down, that's going to
(24:35):
help a lot of your targetingwhen it comes to digital ads,
whether they're social ads orpaid ads, so you can really
start to go all right.
Well, you know, I thoughteverybody was my customer, but
really they're in thisgeographic location, they have
this much income coming in.
There's this element of themthey like this, they like that.
Those are the kind of thingsthat help really narrow your
targeting.
(24:56):
When it comes to something likemeta or LinkedIn, that can
really help you lower yourcustomer acquisition costs as
well.
And then it just becomes thisvirtuous cycle where, as you
bring on more clients, you startasking them why did you choose
us?
What made us the right choicefor you?
Did we solve your problems andthings like that.
And I've just seen over timethat this really helps people
(25:19):
narrow the focus of theirmarketing so that they can spend
less time on their marketingand more time doing everything
else that actually generateswhich is always the argument
that everyone has.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
I don't have time to do marketing.
I don't have time to domarketing.
I'm too busy flipping burgers.
I'm too busy doing whateverright, so awesome and it is a
challenge, and we all know I'msure you've gone through the
same thing, chris.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
I mean there were.
There've been many nights whereI've worked way too many hours,
but this is what you do whenyou're an entrepreneur.
This is what you do when you'rein charge of the business,
until you get to a point whereyou brought on enough people
where they're doing a lot of thework and you're just helping
them do the best job that theycan do Indeed, Indeed.
Well, that's a great place toleave things.
(25:58):
So talk to us about Agents ofChange.
That's coming right up, right,yeah.
So this will be our 10th annualin-person digital marketing
conference under the Agents ofChange banner.
This year it's going to be onOctober 9th and then we have
some deep dive workshops onOctober 10th for people who want
to really take their skills tothe next level.
Whether you want to go yourselfor maybe send the head of
marketing, this is a great event.
They can learn more.
We've got 15 digital marketingexperts from across the US and
(26:21):
Canada descending on PortlandMaine for that date, with great
content around SEO, artificialintelligence and marketing,
personal branding just a widevariety of things that are going
to help people grow theirbusiness.
You can check out theinformation at
theagentsofchangecom.
We are running some discountsright now, but for any of your
(26:43):
listeners, if they use the codeword big world all one world,
all one word, they'll get anadditional $25 off.
So I definitely recommend gocheck out the website, see what
we've got in store for you.
But this is probably going tobe one of the best investments
you make in your marketing.
Speaker 1 (26:58):
If you can't make it in person, you've got the
digital track as well, right?
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Great point, yeah, so there is a digital pass that
will allow you a live feed ofthe main stage and then every
single session on demand afterthe conference.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
I know.
John, who's our marketingdirector, went last year he did
a digitally loved.
It was a great session.
He's going to be out onpaternity leave this year, so
I'm going to try to get myselfthere for sure.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
How do I?
Speaker 1 (27:22):
get in touch with you , Otherwise, what's a good play?
How to Instagram LinkedIn?
How do we get in?
Speaker 2 (27:26):
touch.
Linkedin is really my jam, sothat you can always find me on
LinkedIn.
I am the Rich Brooks on everyplatform, but I'm most
responsive on LinkedIn.
And if you want to come andcheck out our website, we're at
takeflight and that's F-L-Y-T-Edot com, but LinkedIn is a great
way to just talk to me.
Speaker 1 (27:43):
Perfect.
Well, thank you again, rich,for joining us.
Reminder please like followshare rate, review us.
We are on all the podcastplatforms.
Those reviews really help usnot only improve but certainly
grow our following as well.
If you have any questions forus or any of our guests, you can
always email us at podcast atpapertrailscom, and we will get
right back to you or get you intouch with whoever you need to.
So thanks again, rich, andthanks to all of our listeners
(28:04):
and viewers, and we'll see younext week.
Thanks for listening to thisweek's episode of Small Business
Big World.
This podcast is a production ofPapertrails.
We are a payroll and HR companybased in Kennebunk, maine, and
we serve small and mid-sizedbusinesses across New England
and the country.
If you found this podcasthelpful, don't forget to follow
us at at Paper Trails Payrollacross all social media
platforms and check us out atpapertrailscom for more
(28:24):
information.
As a reminder, the views,opinions and thoughts expressed
by the hosts and guests alone.
The material presented in thispodcast is for general
information purposes only andshould not be considered legal
or financial advice by invitingthis guest to our podcast, paper
Trails.
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