Ep. 136 – In this episode, Chris gives a bit of a different meaning to the term “MO”, than you may be familiar with. The truth is, marketers often don’t have marketing funnels equivalent to those that they create for others. Chris uncovers why this happens and why objectivity is so crucial to the success and growth of your own business. If you’ve been struggling with lacking in doing for yourself, like you’re doing for others, make sure you tune in.
What is your MO?
What You'll Learn
- [3:17] The problem that most marketers face
- [4:48] Why it can be so difficult for marketers to see how to optimize their own marketing
- [7:34] Chris shares a tip that has always worked well for him in making decisions for his business
- [11:31] What to consider first when your systems that previously were working have plateaued
- [14:58] “The reality that I had to face is that I’ll never be the best marketer for my own business.”
- [15:14] 1 major realization that led to a paradigm shift in Chris’ business
- [17:53] What directly causes objectivity in your marketing strategy to decrease
- [21:29] The 1 thing that might be holding you back from asking for marketing help and how to overcome it
Today's Guest
Resources Mentioned
- Apply to become an Automation Service Provider™
- Automation Service Provider™ Directory
Transcript
Narrator 0:00
You’re listening to the all systems go podcast, the show that teaches you everything you need to know to put your business on autopilot. Learn how to deploy automated marketing and sale systems in your business the right way with your host, the professor of automation himself and founder of automation bridge, Chris Davis.
Chris Davis 0:32
Welcome everybody to another episode of The all systems go podcast where we invite startup founders, digital marketers, email marketers to discuss strategies and software used to build automated marketing and sales systems at scale. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis. And on this episode, I have a question. What is your MO? What is your MO and depending on where you grew up, or how you grew up, Mo could mean many things. For me and my upbringing and moment, your motive? It’s, it’s something you say when you question somebody’s intention or integrity when you’re trying to figure out okay, why did you do that? I’m going to propose to you on this podcast, it has a different meaning it has a different meaning. But let me first start by saying, giving you a hint at what it may mean. And sometimes we’re just too close. Okay, that’s the hint that you’ll get now and see if you can figure out where I’m going. All right. So that’s your first hint. And then I’ll start with a with a popular proverb for the lack of a better term or, or add an idiom think is the word for it. But the same goes, everybody has shoes except the cobblers children. Right. And there’s another way to say it is practice what you preach. And essentially, these capture the the need of doing for yourself, like you’re doing for others. Right? Do do unto yourself, as you do unto others is not, it’s not in the Bible, it is my my aversion. It’s in the book of Christopher, chapter one, verse three, do unto yourself, as you would do on to others in the startup space, in the startup space, they call it dogfooding. I don’t know if that’s still a thing. I don’t know if that’s still terminology that’s being used. But it essentially means you use your own software to run your business, instead of selling software, and using somebody else’s software that does what your software does, because you don’t really believe in it, or you just don’t use it. For whatever reason, I would stay clear of any email marketing platform that when you sign up, you don’t get emails from that platform. Right? Like, how weird would that be? If let’s say MailChimp, just for the first one that came to mind, if you sign up for MailChimp, and then they were sending emails from Active Campaign? Would that not be weird? Right? So there’s all kinds of situations where you find that you will do unto others better than you will do unto yourself. And in fact, marketers. Often this is, I will say this, it’s just as prevalent if not more for marketers, than any professions out here in the digital space. And the fact is, marketers don’t often have marketing funnels equivalent to those that they create for others. It’s the truth, very rarely does their own marketing, funnel perform, or produce on the same level. I mean, they could be experts at what they do you bring them in, you go from zero to millions, you go from millions to 10s of millions. I mean, they make it happen. Yet, very rarely, when you turn internally, to them, Do you see it working for them? There are some marketers that do have their marketing working. And here’s why. The topic of today’s podcast is why. And this is where the title comes from. My submission to you is that the the flaw as well as the solution is all in objectivity.
Chris Davis 4:42
That’s what I that’s what I would submit today is it’s all about objectivity. And simply put, marketers tend to be too close to too close to their own marketing, or just so focused on It other marketing, that they can’t truly see what’s going wrong with theirs or how to optimize or how to improve. And it’s no different than you looking in the mirror and you get so close, you got something in your eye and you really zoom in, and you’re looking at your eye. And as you’re focused on your eye, there’s no way you can get the booger out your nose, the crust around you, your mouth from eat nachos and cheese that just kind of like dried up in the corner of your mouth, all of these flaws because you’re, you’re lacking objectivity. The perspective in which you’re viewing yourself is so close that you need somebody else that’s walking by say, Hey, you got something right here. Hey, your mouth, man, yeah, Latos must have been good to you, right. And it’s that loss of objectivity that comes with perspective, or a close proximity to your own stuff, and you lose perspective, that I believe is the source of it all. So this is where this is where if you haven’t figured it out, I’m going to tell you right now, this is where today’s title, this is where the topic of today’s come comes from. And Mo is not motive. It’s what is your marketing, objectivity? Okay, where do you get it? How do you get it? Who do you rely on? What do you rely on, as that outside influence trusted influence to see what you simply cannot write and to help? I want to share my journey. I don’t want to talk about anybody else on this particular podcast, but I want to just kind of share my journey. And it starts, when I see if you can relate. How about that. But for me, I always and I don’t know where I picked this up. I think just being a student of the game, you know, I often look at athletes. And as nerdy as it sounds, I look at myself and with those same aspects of practice studying and just really being a student of the game I apply to digital, right? You have the greats, the Lebron James, Kobe Bryant’s and Michael Jordan’s, and all of them, they study film, they do the boring stuff. Well, in my world, and in my sphere. I’m studying these companies, I’m seeing what works, what didn’t, why did that work? I’m breaking it down. I’m trying new things testing, right that the ongoing requirements of a evolving marketer, right, so I’m doing all of those things. And one of the things that’s worked well, for me just in a long term is, I’ve always done for myself, what I saw work elsewhere. So if I’m working with a startup, and maybe we’re building a certain follow up for our customers, and I look and I say, Ooh, that’s a good idea. Right? So so I’m listening to my own advice for one, two is I’m watching my own self, as well as others, but more so me. I’m like, ooh, that worked really well. So I just turn around and do the same thing. And do the same thing for me. And that’s served me, me, me, well, many consultants, what they do is they do that with their clients. They don’t know anything. I don’t want to say anything, but they’re learning a lot. And they’re learning on the clients dime. Right, the client is paying them a service fee, as well as funding their education. And thankfully, for me, that experience has been on the startups die. Right? So when I’m working with clients or working with companies, they’re not paying for me to learn something they’re paying for me to execute something, no shame about it, we all go through it, we all have to learn at some point, we’re all practitioners, right? Even doctors are still practicing and experiencing a unfortunately unfortunate event that they what they thought would work didn’t work. So you can never expect perfection, but many consultants, that’s what they do there. They test on their clients, and they figure out what works, but the step that they miss, is they don’t turn around and do it for themselves. And it could be something as simple as building a landing page, a certain subject line, maybe a tagging structure, all of these things I’m actively monitoring and doing for myself. So So one would think Well Chris, you got it, you got to figure it out. And this worked really well. When I was building my business on the side and and was converting warm, warm to hot traffic. And by warm to hot traffic means I didn’t really have a need to to get cold traffic and warm it up quickly. It was just kind of like building a system on the side. It will deliver leads when it delivered leads and I will close it very you know, no pressure wasn’t living off of it, but it was great for supplemental income. So at As the leads came in, I closed them because I had the system in place because of what I was implementing for myself that I did for others, you would think, all right, you got to figure it out. But when I started to work full time, okay, and let me translate that full time means when I started living fully off of my business, okay? Meaning I couldn’t go to the restaurant and have a meal prepared for me. That’s what a job does, right? It prepares the meal for you, you just come in, you sit and you eat, I had to go out and go kill what we were going to eat, I’d had to go out and generate the demand, I had to generate the leads and close them. Well, that that changed, that changed, because that changed things because I needed more consistent results, I needed to be more intentional and consistent with results, then growing a business on the side. And that is a that’s a shift that a lot of full time employees get lost in even if you’re running your business on the side as I was, I was running my business for close to five years, five years. Before I went full time, actually more than that I was running for almost 10 years. So anyways, you start working full time, you got a different intention you need, you have a different value for results, a different need for results. And what started happening is I was working on the business, right. But I started working more and more in it. In those processes, making sure they’re firing, the systems are built. And I did a good job, I’m not going to doubt myself, I’ll pat myself on the back. But it’s when I started to get involved in the processes, and the execution of it all that I lost objectivity. I was too invested, I was too close, I lost proximity. My perspective was skewed, I simply got too close. And what happened is I was able to get my business to a certain point. And then once you hit that, that marketing saturation point where it just feels like all output and minimal input, but it was the same stuff that you were doing before. Right? These are the same efforts, the same systems that were scaling before. What happened, why all of a sudden, is it no longer producing? Well, to crack that nut, you need objectivity. And most of us simply don’t have when, when when marketing was performing. I simply couldn’t. Back when when this saturation happened. I couldn’t just sit back and see I couldn’t step back and see it out. In there’s many reasons. One is, I was just exhausted. I don’t know about you. But sometimes you just get tired of looking at the same website and the same emails and the same automations although they’re working, right, you just you need new eyes. At the end of the day. That’s what it is. I needed new eyes. I needed an expert. I needed some expert, objective advice. Someone who was not vested in my in what they had built for me, but really wanted me to succeed someone that could be honest and just say, Chris, you’re doing this all wrong, wait a minute, your business model was totally off. This is how you really need to be shown up in the in the marketplace. Right. And I don’t know if you relate. As you’re listening, if you’re watching on YouTube, raise your hand right along with me nod give a like, subscribe, whatever. But I don’t know if you relate to that. Just feeling like man. My marketing used to be we used to get leads we used to close money was coming in. And then something happened and I just haven’t been able to figure out what to do next. This is an important shift in growth in business. We’re all going to face it. And and again, depending on where you’re at listening to this may hurt, it may hit a little different. This this may be that gut punch on top of what has already floored you maybe your your marketing has plateaued you’re at your lowest month and now here I come with the knockout blow like look and you lacking objectivity. Right, but hopefully this is more of your first step to getting up or your next step to scaling. All right. And here’s here’s the harsh reality everybody so for me I like I honor the truth. And I embrace it even if it hurts, even if it
Chris Davis 14:47
disrupts and it made not feel good when it’s going down. But once it’s in there, it will always work for your good. That’s how the truth works. And the reality that I had to face is that I’ll never be the best marketer for my own business. I said it all right there, I said it, I came to the realization, I’ll never be the best marketer for my own business. And I don’t want to be, I actually don’t want to be coming, it was a paradigm shift coming to that realization helped me lock in, and open up, lock into what I can be the best at, and then open up for others to come in and truly help. What was the source of this all what what was, for me, the root of it is, I really sucked at asking for help. And I was even worse at asking for help with marketing. Even worse, right. And when I when I came to this realizations, and you’re hearing a lot of growth, awareness, introspection in this statement, but I started to realize I’m a much better a much more effective leader, coach, mentor, to the marketers in my business, than being the marketer for my business, I can show them how to perform better than I ever will. Right? Hence why I literally have a program to teach marketers to do this. So you see, a consistent thing with me is I never teach what I don’t know. And I’m always stretching, I’m always pushing myself. So anybody connected to me will experience that same thing. The marketers on my team, the students, whatever the case may be. And the question is, have you come to that realization? Or are you still committed to rent it all? I don’t know if you can hear but this was, this was not a day I woke up and was just like, I’m not my own marketer. I’m not my own best marketer. This was a, this was time of various breakdowns, revenue loss, people leaving me being frustrated me being overwhelmed, just all of the things that you experience. And you have to step back and look at yourself. And what I realized is the realization that if you haven’t added, I’m giving it to you now, at some point, you have to pay for perspective, the perspective that you lost the objectivity that you no longer possess, you’re gonna have to pay for that. And be willing to invest in expert eyes that can remain objective, and help you get your marketing to scale. Right. Most of the time that I spent these days, as of recording, this podcast, is spent with startups providing objective marketing guidance, because by default, I have that perspective. I’m not in your business, I’m not in the day to day, the second eyes, go go into your business and in in the day to day, you’re really dealing with process improvement, and proven framework implementation and things of that nature. But to get your best out of me, I’ve got to remain objective. It’s one of the reasons why if I do bring on a startup and work with them in a in a very intimate capacity, I will have a marketer do the work. Because the second you start touching, and second, you start doing stuff, just know, your objectivity is decreasing as your perspective or your proximity increases, your proximity to the process increases, your objectivity decreases. That’s the that’s the correlation there. So yeah, I intentionally remain objective, and the startups love it. It’s working great. And I told you, if we go back to the top of this podcast, I’ve always done for myself, as I have done for others. Right. So because remaining objective worked with startups, I now look for that same objectivity in my business, I now pay invest in someone who can come in and look at my stuff, and tell me, Oh, this, this won’t work. Now, you’ve got to vet, you got to vet those eyes, because everybody has ideas. And everybody has opinions. And some people love their ideas, and have no experience bringing that idea to the marketplace profitably. So you got to do your due diligence in who you’re listening to. Right? You’ve got to do that. However, however,
Chris Davis 19:25
once that’s done, you’ll realize that this was the piece that you’ve been missing all along, they’ll start to say, they’ll start asking basic questions that you’ve just, it’s, you’re so familiar with a you and even asked that question. And sometimes you may feel like, Oh, God, this is stupid, right? Oh, how could you not know this? But if you embrace the process, you start to realize like, wait a minute, this is let me let me rethink this. Right. Let me let me let me get back to you on that. All right. So it’s been, it’s been working great. And and, and I would highly recommend, highly recommend that in your budget. In your uncomfortable budget, you’ve got to start to factor in objective marketing, expertise, expertise. And let me shape your expectation, stop, stop thinking that every dollar you put into marketing is going to result in $10. Back, some marketing spend is foundational, if you don’t have the foundation in place, you can’t properly expect a return. So you have to be willing one for the advice to help you build the foundation and then to continuing to invest in the expertise to leverage that foundation to produce a return. Okay, too many people have unrealistic expectations on marketing. And too many consultants let these business owners and founders operate under that false pretense, call the file, stop the play, regroup, alright. But I would be remiss to not mention this. We talked about marketing, objectivity, process, proximity, all of these things are definitely heavy factors. But what I found is, when I looked at myself, and you tell me, let me know, is this part of you, is this part of your journey right now or in the past? Or maybe you have it coming up? There was one, one thing that that was really preventing me from coming to this realization, and that was imposter syndrome. somewhere, somewhere, we learned and when I say we marketers, we learned that a marketer should not ask for help. marketing themselves are their own business. So I don’t know where but I know I had it. Maybe I’m the only one. You probably have had it, though. I’ve seen many marketers that fall into this, this problem. So I believe this is this is at play. And I think it is the fact that you’re showing yourself so confident and well put together in the marketplace, that you feel that if you ask for help, it means that you don’t know what you’re doing. And I think perhaps that’s where my saying came from is when I say I’m not the best marketer for my own business. That does not mean I’m not the best marketer for yours, or someone else’s. I’m just acknowledging I have limitations. And I believe a heavy part of imposter syndrome. I’m no psychologist. In fact, I’ve never truly looked up the definition of imposter syndrome. It’s just been used more frequently. And I can tell them the context what it’s used. I can assume what the definition is. And I’m think I’m pretty accurate. But at the foundation of that impostor syndrome, is the the the the unwillingness to embrace your natural limitations. How could you be the best at everything for everyone? It’s just not possible. It’s not. And when I accepted that I said, I’m okay not being the best for this, this, this and that, because I know the areas that I am, and putting my business in the area where I’m not the best marketer, allow me to annihilate the imposter syndrome and really start to ask for help. Because when you think about it, it’s contradictory. You’re out here telling other people they need to hire an expert, to look to do their marketing, look at their marketing, but then you’re not doing the same. You’re not putting shoes on your own kids. You’re not using your own software. You’re not eating the food that you’re cooking. And you got to check yourself. That’s all this is just a self check. For all my marketers out there is a self check. Right? But don’t fall into the trap. Don’t fall into the trap. Humble yourself. Accept your limitations. Embrace your strengths, acknowledge your weaknesses. Get the guidance, mentorship and what app community that you need to help you succeed. And as marketers, it is okay to ask for help.
Chris Davis 24:27
Thank you for tuning in to this episode of The all systems go podcast. If you enjoyed it, make sure that you’re subscribed at the time of recording the all systems go podcast is free to subscribe to and it can be found in Apple podcast, Google podcast, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts new episodes are released every Thursday. So make sure you’re subscribed so that you don’t miss out and while you’re at it, please leave us a five star rating and review to show some love but also to help future listeners more easily find the podcast so they can experience the value of goodness as well. We’ve compiled all resources mentioned on the podcast, as well as other resources that are extremely valuable and effective at helping you grow your marketing automation skills quickly, and you can access them all at allsystemsgopodcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends
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Discover how to deploy automated marketing, sales, and onboarding systems to scale your business without working long hours to do so.