Growth Through Strategic Planning feat. Kenyetta Hall

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 sell 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 and digital marketers to discuss strategies and software to build automated marketing and sales systems at scale. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, the founder of automation bridge. And on this episode, I get to interview Kenyetta Hall, the founder of the Katalyst HQ, that is a coaching and consulting company focused on helping entrepreneurs and leaders get unstuck and take their business to the next level of growth. Through strategic planning, I need you to make a mental mark on those two words, strategic planning, okay. And leadership development and brand clarity along her journey, she’s had the opportunity to be a part of two startups, build a founding team and help other business owners, founders and nonprofit leaders really become intentional about growth and sustainability of their business so that they can build the life they want on their teams and make an impact while doing it. Added bonus Kenyetta it is an alumni of bridge, has successfully completed the automation service provider curriculum. And she’s here if I couldn’t, I was thinking about just the nature just where the market is right now. And the word that kept coming up was strategy strategy. People are without strategy. They’re not without activity. They’re without,

Chris Davis 2:18
is committed to strategic growth through planning than can yet so she’s here to help us understand how do we approach things more strategically, Kenyetta welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Kenyetta Hall 2:32
Thank you. I’m doing great. I’m so excited to be here. Since you reached out. I was like, yes.

Chris Davis 2:41
Yes, and I’ll say this. I have the pleasure. I’ve had the pleasure of having you through the program. But we’re also connected on LinkedIn. And it is a breath of fresh air to see someone unapologetically.

Chris Davis 2:58
Talk about the importance of strategy and what happens when you don’t adhere to such an approach for your business’s success. But first, but first, before we jump into it, give the listeners a little bit about a little bit of info about your journey, how you landed, how did you get to the Katalyst HQ, and more specifically, why you’re talking about it? What was that point where you realize it’s all about strategy?

Kenyetta Hall 3:28
Um, well, let me just start from the beginning. You know, I’ll start from when I received my MBA, because that was really a turning point. For me. I was in proposals and grants and contracts with the government. So I did a lot of proposal management, building strategy around that. So that’s when I really got introduced, introduced to what strategy meant, even when applying for government contract work, it was a ton of things people or companies did in order to get those contracts outside of just applying. So I got a chance to see all of that. One thing I realized it was actually hated. So it’s not the process, but my natural innate abilities to be talking to people be out in the community. And I was stuck behind a desk and it just didn’t seem right in my spirit, and it just wasn’t where I was gonna be successful. So I went and got my MBA because I felt like I had all this experience and proposals and government contracts and I was like, if I want to get out of it, I gotta, I gotta do something that’s complete opposite that’s gonna move me out of it. And me getting my MBA was a turning point. So I went to UNC Chapel Hill, Kenan Flagler shout out. I can’t say shout out to the Tar Heels because I went to NC State. But I did get my MBA from their 2006 16 Six genetic team ended up working in healthcare. And that’s when I started digital strategy work at a healthcare company eventually moved to working on the mobile app. So understanding product strategy, product, legacy systems and products really doing met in a corporate setting into working with startups. And just while I was still working there, because it made sense, right, like I understood the process, because strategy is strategy nowhere, no matter where you apply it, you know, a lot of times people are very like, trying to make some differentiated, there’s certain slight nuances when you do product strategy. Or when you do business strategy, or product strategy is launching a new company, right, within a company or launching something like that when you’re in a corporate city. When you do for startups, launching a new company, what’s the difference? Right, they their components generally are the same. But what the pain points that I saw the most, it’s how people were so not only in startups, but in corporations is that people were so reactive. They were reactive. They’re not responsive. And so therefore, there was nothing that had true intention. reactivity is not true intention, right? Oh, my God, something just happens. I gotta respond,

Chris Davis 6:01
something’s broke. Somethings broke, fix it.

Kenyetta Hall 6:05
We don’t care about the systems, it doesn’t matter. And you’re like, that’s how it works. So that’s, that’s one. And another thing is that people operate whatever, without a ton of emotion, without with a ton of emotion. And two, people don’t take two steps back. So everybody just moving all over the place, kind of just doing whatever and hoping that something sticks. And I know that people say that all the time. And they’ll say, Oh, well, you need a marketing strategy, or you need a brand strategy, or you need to know you need to take two steps back to figure out what it is you actually you’re trying to achieve. Put that at the forefront. And so that’s what I kept seeing all over the place. And it happened in nonprofits. It happens in business, it happens in the startups that I’ve been a part of is happened all over the place. And then you wonder why you have no movement? Right? It’s no wonder you can’t be responsive to the market. So people are all of a sudden, it’s like now we excuse me, now we’re in what we call it to recession in quotation air quotes. And you see a lot of people just are like, Oh, my God, I got it. I gotta do something. The first thing you should do is just take two steps back. Pause.

Chris Davis 7:19
love that. Yeah. Yeah, I love I love that. It’s simple, but it’s very hard Kenyetta because I’m about to throw some context on everybody for us. In a fast moving environment, which startups are often in, taking two steps back almost feels like making no movement for the next two months. We can’t afford to take two steps back. What do you mean, we need leads right now and look at this, we need to be on social look at this week. So how do you help? Because you know, they don’t do it themselves? How do you help them? Take those necessary two steps? Whoa, whoa, whoa, pump the brakes? Let’s take a couple steps back. How do you do it? How do you engage with them and get them to see that?

Kenyetta Hall 8:08
The first thing I do is like, you know, what’s the goal here? You know, what, what are actually are you trying to achieve? Because a lot of the a lot of the problem, the challenges are happening with they’re not staying focused. Right? Yeah, a lot of times founders are tuning in tuning in to everyone else. And when everything is what everybody else is doing everybody else’s movement. And what they’re not doing is turning into themselves into the core strengths that they have as founders into the core strengths they have as a business and try to leverage those. They’re too busy trying to leverage everything outside of them playing the comparison game. And you hate a lot of this is mental they play in mental gymnastics. Right? And so with you playing, I’ve seen everybody doing this, I’m I got to do this, and I’m not behind this. And my competitors, if they even did a competitor analysis. Yeah, you started, right. A lot of it is is that they’re they’re too busy tuning into what everybody else is doing, instead of tuning into what they need to be doing and staying focused on the goals of what they’re trying to do and and where they are at within the business. Right. A lot of startups, a lot of businesses are very unclear about what part of the entrepreneurial journey they’re actually on. Right? Because each of these phases requires something different. Yeah. You know, so a lot of times when you are within a startup or even with a small business, there’s a lot of similarities, but it starts with small businesses. Right? Right. Because the thought process people think it’s about just the money now it’s about how you think about it too. Right. So when you’re thinking about it, Amy, a lot of times under 100k. You are sales and marketing. What’s the Last thing that any business invest in sales and marketing, excuse me, let me let me put those in reverse orders, marketing and sales. Because Because marketing tells you what we do as a business, to the world to the target customer, and they qualify to lead. And then you go into the sales cycle. A lot of times people are trying to skip marketing, go to Sales and get conversions. Right, and nobody even knows who you are. Right? And so you try to close on something, and nobody knows who you are. That’s number one, too, depending on your target, very unclear in the sales cycle. Right? So if you’re unclear about how long it’s going to take, potentially take for your target market to close, like if you’re targeting corporate corporate has to jump through 1000s of hoops before they can even bring somebody on as a vendor. Yeah, we’re talking about a nine, nine to 12 month process, we haven’t even calculated that into your, your, your business model. Right. So again, not taking those steps back, not fully looking at what’s in front of you. And making decisions from that space, you’re making the you know, a lot of decisions are just being made, well, I have a product I want everybody to buy. No, you don’t want everybody to buy, at least not in the beginning. It’s not made for everybody. And because it’s not made for everybody. And we’ve talked about this several times, right? It’s good to know when and then you’re gonna get bad customer reviews, because they’re not going to get what they supposed to get out of it. Right now you just you’re taking your brand, now you’re upset now now you gotta be more reactive, because now you got to she got to counteract that. And so those types of things matter. And this, you’re not, you know, as businesses, you’re not, you’re not thinking from the business perspective, you’re either thinking from this marketing perspective, or this content perspective, or those are all tactics to get to the goals, but you haven’t named the goals, you haven’t figured out a path, you haven’t, you have no focus. And so now you get to those spaces of your marketing, your sales, your content, you know, social media, or any way you decide to get the word out there and you’re wasting your money, wasting the three core things I teach all the time you waste your time, right? Because you do not understand the level of effort it takes to get to the goal. And because you have exhausted your energy on things that are important, but not priority, you are all over the place. And you have nothing to give the things that needed the most.

Chris Davis 12:35
Yes, yes, yes. And we see it happen far too often. I’m sitting here thinking, and of course, of course, you’re you’re very proficient in the space of strategy and strategic planning, and what that plan should encompass. And we’re, we’re, as you were talking about product launching, I’m still surprised at how many startups don’t have an avatar, like literally have no idea who’s buying their product. But you know, a lot of times they just happen to have a partnership or something happened out of their control, again, to your point reactive in a positive way, right? Like somebody put them on, and now they’ve get this insert of leads, and they’re like, oh, let’s do something with them. Right. But when it comes time to to be intentional, this is where your strategic planning really comes in. So when you think of it, I know we talked about taking a step back, and it’s realigning with the goals. In your mind, what you’re doing is you’re trying to make sure that they have a strategic foundation in order to achieve that goal. Right. So what are some of the pieces of that strategic foundation that you’re looking for? I know you mentioned earlier, competitor analysis, right? Yes. Who else is in the market? And what they’re doing? Yeah. Know how to

Kenyetta Hall 14:01
go? You got it? Yeah, it’s because this is what happens when comparison when people you have to think of from a customer perspective, right? If a customer is evaluating your product against other people, other products, then what are the other products? And what do they do as to why people want to buy them? Those are very core questions. And so what I’m seeing is, I’m going into these spaces all the time, it’s like don’t care about your competitors. Now, you don’t need to care. But you do need to be very aware. And the reason you need to be aware, it’s because you have to explain how you’re different. Now, the difference. The difference doesn’t have to be this dramatic nuance difference that everybody is looking for it. I think that’s where people get lost, is that people it has to be this so dramatic, dramatic difference. That’s a lie. It doesn’t have to be a super dramatic difference. You just need to be able to confidently explain why you’re different. Yeah, and it can be it doesn’t have to be necessarily about the product being different. It can be various other reasons as to why A lot of times we think that customer avatar when they’re not, when they’re when if they’re doing the competitor analysis, and then they’re looking at their customer avatar, you forget how intrinsic values matter, to your to your target. And if your product is touching all those intrinsic values, you got to be able to tell that story better than your competitors. Sellers. Yeah, right. Yeah. But if you’re not doing a competitor analysis and understanding what people like what people don’t like, you can’t even below you, whoever you’re talking to prospects out the water, through through your messaging, because you aren’t clear about what it is that you offer. And it comes across like, right. So I would say some foundational pieces, I always say, one is know who you are, as a company. Yeah, like know who you are as a company, like your mission and value vision. And those values actually matter. And they actually don’t just drive how your leads, they drive how you operate. Yeah, it’s a foundational element of how you operate. Now, if you’re starting off, you need, you should be getting those in check a little bit quicker, because you’re going to be iterating through because you’re still trying to figure out what’s going to like who you are, right, but you do need to have those foundational elements that you will refine over time. Right? Because it’s going to you need to get to the marketplace. So you can sell to see what’s working. Right? When you are when you have money. When you’re making money. Let’s be clear, not when you have money. But when you’re making money, because that’s very different to when you’re making money. Your actions need to be more intentional, because we’re not talking about the fact that you have legions, you have weeks, you are making money, you have a product that works. So you should be a refinement of those activities, but also figuring out, right, figuring out what, where do I need to improve within my business to make it more efficient? Right? How do I become a how do we how do I become proactive instead of being reactive? Because it’s not that things aren’t working? They can be better? Right? What’s the proactivity? Where should I be investing my time the most? Where should I be investing? What what is the level of effort did it take for me to get to the new goals that I’ve set for the company in the next 12 months? Right? Because those things are all ways that are going to get you to know how to spend the money you have. Like money allocation comes from priorities, money allocation, don’t just you don’t just throw money away. That’s why people, that’s why you have leaders that are that are undeveloped, right. When you are making money, you have to be a different type of leader, you have to learn how to self lead, which means you have to have discipline, you got to have focus, you got to be able to understand some things you got to understand you can’t do this alone. Right? Who should your first hire be? Understanding how to hire out understanding how to automate those things like the scope of work as a as a CEO at the level when you’re making money after 100k becomes very different for you? Right, so you have the launch stage, where you still the marketing, you have the growth stage where you’re understanding self leadership, you’re just saying leadership of a team, potentially, how do I take my business to the next level? What does the next level look like? And what are the steps to get there?

Chris Davis 18:24
Oh, yeah. So So listeners, I hope you realize or I hope you’re seeing why I have Kenyetta talking about strategy because it’s across everything. We’re not talking about strategic marketing, strategic sales. We’re talking about strategic being. Okay, how do I move with purpose, less with strategy, right strategy is what gives purpose to every step that I take. And Ken yet and I were connecting prior to recording, and I wanted to invite our listeners in on the conversation that we talked about with activity, right, everybody has activity, everybody’s doing some thing, right? And I’m gonna put this on the table here. I was working with the company, and they were looking at their leads, and they were like, oh, we need more leads. So naturally, I’m a strategic thinker. And I’m thinking like, Okay, let me go look at previous performance and see what work to generate the leads that you had before. I’m not thinking this is going to be revolutionary or anything, it’s just natural. Okay, let’s look at what worked before and see if we can replicate that or do us a derivative of it and get more leads like Why reinvent the wheel right? And before we can even get there can yet before I can even step foot through the one foot down that path, social, we need to be on social, we got to be posting on social where’s our social media people hope though their whole mind went straight to social So, now I’m new. I’m new. So I’m not necessarily saying, hey, wait a minute, stop it, right? I don’t know yet. So I go and look at the data, right? In analytics. And it’s a head scratcher, I’m looking for where does where’s the green light for social here? I don’t see. I get it, it’s gonna give you the warm and fuzzy is gonna make you look good. But it is activity. That’s it. It’s all activity. So can you get it? These are fast. Listen, these are fast moving startups in, they got to do something, it’s like you tell a kid to sit down. And they just can’t sit there stop playing with the front stop playing with your fingers. They start playing with their toes, like they got to do something. Right. So how, how can you? How do we get them to stop just being active and actually moving with with purpose?

Kenyetta Hall 20:59
Well, one, social media content. Webinars are all marketing tactics. They are not strategies. They are tactics. People throw tactics and strategy around this word, they’re not synonymous. They’re not be clear about that. When you think of the word, when you think of strategic planning, the thing I invite people to think about is that you have the thinking part of strategy and the execute the plan, the roadmap, the execution part of the strategy, they could actually be two very different people, they do not have to be the same people. Right? That’s good. That’s good. Okay, so that’s one thing about that, too. In marketing, let’s, let’s get it all way down to the simplest form. Marketing is your ability to tell the world about who you are, what you do, how you can solve the problem and help them. Okay, so that’s, that’s it. Now, depending on where you are, if you’re trying to launch a product, we people need to know like and trust you. Okay? Right. If you have an existing product, you need to keep people fully engaged with who you are. Right? And you need to keep this the cycle of know, like and trust, because now when you are when you already have an existing product, we’re talking about new leads, keeping keeping the old customer rehabbing into full immersion in the lifecycle. Right, so fully understand that there’s two to three pronged approach to that alone. But you can only think about those things where you’re thinking marketing strategy, and how do I deliver what my goals are? What am I trying to achieve? How do I bring it to the world? And then I’m gonna pick the channels that I want to go after the world at. That’s what people are not looking at marketing strategy. You’re like, oh, well, I’m gonna do a social media strategy. Now. Here’s the thing. Can social media convert? Sure. Can webinars convert? Yes. Can YouTube convert? Yes. Can email marketing work? Convert? Yes, they all can convert? Yeah, we’re not saying that nobody can’t get that these channels, not spaces of conversion, you need to be aware about where you are, as a business in this time. If you’re launching a product, you’re not converting, because no one knows who you are. Right? And that’s number one. Number two, are you have you picked the channels to share your story with the world? Where your target is? Are you just picking channels based upon how you feel about where your target is? Right,

Chris Davis 23:36
right?

Kenyetta Hall 23:37
You see, that’s different. Like, I feel my people aren’t social why? There’s people making money on and off social Yep. It so it doesn’t, that’s not the indicator that you need to be there. Now. If you’re in the launching, you do need brand awareness, to your target audience, brand awareness to the target. That’s the whole purpose of having focus is having brand awareness to the target that you are trying to get to get to if I know you’ve worked with tons of product companies, right, or software companies, if your target is a corporation that notoriously has no social footprint. And you’re talking about going on Instagram, when we know for a fact that four out of five leaders are on LinkedIn. Right? So that’s just one facet. Right? You know, sales is about being seen market is about being seen. So you got LinkedIn thing you like you said, Could I run a webinar? You sure could right? Do I need to send some presents to the admin? Yes. You see what I’m saying? So it’s like, but you could only think about those things when you’re thinking about the strategy, the marketing strategy as it relates to the business goals. The cascade effect, the business goals should be driving the marketing strategy which should be driving the tactic says which of us, which then drives how much money you gonna spend to get out there. Because this is what happens. People always want caviar shoestring budget, that don’t happen, people spend, who was it, Budweiser spent $4 million on a commercial on a commercial during the Super Bowl, it is a reason for that. They are not just throwing dollars out there, there is a there’s a space of capitalization there. Right. So they understand that you think that those people are spending $4 million, just to spend $4 million. And you think that as a small business or startup that you won’t spend money on marketing, but expect a huge outcome. That’s that’s not that’s not how this works. And oftentimes, sales and marketing need to be built in conjunction with every product or service you plan to launch. Bringing them into late puts all the pressure on sales and marketing to do something that you never did before was create goals and intention in the beginning. Yeah, because now they have to, because what happens is those two teams end up going back and having to create that for the business in a rapid amount of time, so that they can actually execute on something and probably are underpaid for doing it.

Chris Davis 26:18
Yeah, this this is this is good, because what I hear you saying is that tactics without a strategy become activity. Just anyone stuff.

Kenyetta Hall 26:33
And what happens is people are like, Oh, well, things happen. Yes, good things can happen out of activity. That’s nobody saying that. Let’s be clear, this is not an either or it’s very much. So a sliding scale. Yeah. Very much. So a sliding scale, right. And I think people need to operate in this space of sliding scale versus either or. But understand you made less you small number you made 50,000. You could have made 250,000 As you read that right. Had you had a strategy that you could have employed there? Yeah, right. Yeah. And you could have gotten to whatever goal you want. But a lot of times people scared to have goals. You know why they scared to meet goals? And so I hear I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but I’ve hear people now are saying like, don’t set goals set systems. Oh, Lord, whatever, you know, to me, because here’s the thing, and I preach this all the time, y’all. Can anybody hear me say this? Failure is a part of business. Failure is a part of life. The problem is that most people have been taught that if they fail, they’re failures instead of getting back up and being able to recover from failure. Yeah. Right. And so because we are scared to fail, because we have been taught as a society, that success is equivalent to perfection. Right? If success is the equivalent of perfection, then we never should fail. Well, the growth is in the failure. Sometimes you got to go through, you can’t go around, you can’t do all those things you got to go through so you can you can be taught and things. Because it’s one thing to go to the next level. It’s another thing to be sustainable at that level.

Chris Davis 28:06
Yes. Right.

Kenyetta Hall 28:08
So let’s start failing, so we can understand how to get back up. If you don’t make the goal. That’s okay. We have now have the data to figure out what happened. Yeah, he had a process that we could actually track, you didn’t throw spaghetti at the wall and try to figure out what happened. The problem is, is that you haven’t been taught to fail in the first place. We’ve been taught as adults to fail, we didn’t get taught his kids to fail. We got taught us adults to fail. And so we’re battling this internal indoctrination that we’ve had a lot of lives to failure. Yep. failing. So now obviously, it’s competing. And you don’t even know what’s competing within you until you start a business and realize that those limiting beliefs in your head are even preventing you from taking action preventing you from taking the right action or think that you got to take all the action.

Chris Davis 28:56
Yeah, yeah. I like what you said about failure. And what came to my mind was failure is an activity, not an identity. Without being a fail your

Kenyetta Hall 29:13
year, it has they’re not synonymous and, and, and it’s okay to fail in the process. I’m not and believe it or not, I’m not a natural person who likes to fail in public. I don’t care to fail, but like, I don’t like, like people like failing public. I’m like, Girl, I’m not failing. Like, I would like to fill in private, I would like to recover in private right. But you know, I’m trying to move faster. Okay. My own indoctrination, right. But the but it says is that give yourself time to even iterate. You know what I’m saying? The point the point of iteration, and I think what has happened is that we have got caught up in well, you just need to go out there and get user data. Just go out there and talk to all the customers if you haven’t done any market research. Miss me with that Missy with the whole conversation with I need to just talk to customers because now that since I’ve got to talk to enough customers, that’s gonna guide you in the right direction. That’s, that’s number one. Number Number two, you didn’t you need to there are marketers for a reason y’all. Technology, folks, I love y’all. But there are there are marketers for a reason. There are people who do market research for a reason, because there is a lot there. Right trends matter, they’re catching all of those things, it’s gonna guide you and how you develop product is gonna guide you and what feature sets you decide to put forth. First. It’s going to guide you in, where you’re going to spend your money. It’s going to guide you on what type of salespeople you actually want a higher understanding strategy, putting the pieces together business strategy, understanding how that impacts with, with who you are as a brand, how you deliver that brand to the world, how you close on the deal, how you keep them in the sales cycle, all things matter in comparison to the goal. Right? What are the goals and you don’t need 30 goals? You need a max of five and that’s pushing it.

Chris Davis 31:04
Yeah, that ain’t right. Especially if we’re going quarterly. Listen, you might

Kenyetta Hall 31:11
write one, one core one, like, brand awareness. Like we need to. How do we get our name out there like, but I think people are so driven by the dollar that they are forgetting in order to get to the dollar. There are some steps that you have to take first, in order to get to you’re going to get there if you have the right if if you understand where you are in that in your business right now. Yeah. Right. If you understand that, okay, I’m still launching my services and said, like, I’m gonna iterate through that, and learning how to fail and get back up. Okay, that’s all right. I thought I said the straight Okay. Broke down right there. All right, let me go review that content. This content didn’t work. I’m gonna say more that. Yeah. Okay, so I thought that I was hitting the right admin. She’s not the gatekeeper. Let me go send flowers to someone else. Yeah. So understanding and keeping track of those things are going to develop it was What’s wrong, right now, I can say, two things is wrong. Everybody want everything right now. And nobody willing to really put in the work or the money behind it to achieve the goal. Your expectation cannot be at a 10. And your your level of effort with money and your level of commitment is attitude.

Chris Davis 32:28
Mm hmm. I agree. I agree. I, you know, as you’re, as you’re saying, everything, I’m just kind of thinking and putting myself in the situation. The companies, I’ve worked with some of the trends that I’ve seen. And what, what I often well, what should take place every one is that your strategy should be take time, you know, plan it out everything else. But your strategy is is like the big ship, right? It should, it should change, it can change, but it should not just be changing all the time. A strong strategy will encompass tactics that can change that now that they’re interchangeable. Okay, we tried a webinar. Okay, that didn’t work. Let’s, let’s move this. And let’s try this. And the thing that gets people in trouble that I found with strategic thinking is that they sit in on on a tactic that has to work a way. And when it doesn’t, they’re not willing to adjust and say, Okay, well, the webinar, we didn’t get as many registrants as we want to. Let’s try something else. No, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, timeout? Why, like you’ve mentioned the break down? Why didn’t that work? Was it at the registration? Was it show up? Was it at the, like, what part didn’t work because there may just be one piece in the tactic that we need to shift and keep going and allow this thing, you know, to run out. So of course, you know, you have the scatterbrain. And people are nervous, and they just want stuff to work. But I would be remiss without mentioning this. We have the marketing, we have the strategy, let’s just say that we have the strategic planning, and then the tactics are within that. I just need people to understand when we talk about technology, the marketing and sales software that we often refer to and scaling your company, and your business is at the tactical level. Okay. Technology is introduced at the tactical level. What does that mean? If strategy encompasses your tactic? There should be no tactic without strategy. Thus, if no tactic, no tech, no technology, right?

Kenyetta Hall 34:49
The problem is shiny object syndrome is a real thing. It’s real. It’s so real. And here’s the thing. There are people operate million dollar companies and have four people feel like that’s a real thing because they late they honed in on what they actually need it and they focused? Yeah. And they actually gave himself time to trust the process. Yeah, the thing about strategy is that it requires that you trust the process and requires that you’re willing to be in it for the long haul. That’s what strategy requires. Right? It requires, you know, people are like, Oh, well, people have strategies, and they just, they just, it’s just stuff that they check off, are you they is your company, then we need to be equipment, are you they because if you’re they, that will be you. If you’re deciding to take an active role, to set the goals set the tone for your business, your existing business, let’s talk about existing companies set the goal for these existing products you want to launch or existing or existing services that you have, then you got to be willing to go over the long haul be able to see a trend over time. You think Nike doesn’t look at their past data for February for the last five years of February’s Yes, to see how they’re going to how are they going to make product, that’s why they had level of efficiency is very high, is because they’re willing to trust the process. Now here’s the thing, you got to stop operating from a space of luck. And I’m gonna tell you this 99 businesses 90% mental and 10%, physical 90 percentage, you’re finding yourself on letting go and letting somebody else who is more knowledgeable than you in this specific area. And let them do the work and allow them the space to feel to because guess what, just because you paid them domain, it’s a sure thing. And if you ever pay somebody for a shirt thing, that’s problematic. That means that you’re unwilling to take responsibility as an owner. And as responsibility for not trusting the process, not responsibility for failed process. Because let’s be clear, there’s going to be investments that you make in your business that will fail, they’re not going to be right in business. And that’s okay. Because that’s just the cost of doing business. Yeah, right. Like, that’s just our business roles. You have to get used to that. And that’s where when you’re over making that 100k. That’s where that matters the most right? As you understand self leadership, as you begin to understand commitment, and you begin to understand investment, not only in your business, but in yourself as a leader, when you understand that technology is going to be used as a tactic to deliver on the goals. So that when somebody like Chris and I come in, and the things that we’re going to look at know, a part of that is your automation stack, because you need to bring lean, because you’re talking about you have money. But do you have money to blow over unintentional actions, have a flurry of activity, you are not a thunderstorm stop acting like one. So you have to think about that, right. And so I can tell you now that when Chris is going in and looking at somebody’s automation process, or what they should be implementing to be automated, he’s saving you time, he’s saving you money, and he’s actually gonna increase your ROI he can. Let me tell you something in any business, if somebody is lowering your operating your operating budget, they have increased your ROI. Yes. And people don’t even look at it like that, you know, people are like, Oh, I have to have more leads one or your leads qualified, you got to think about the qualified leads or use the leads. And then to are you effectively as a, as a leader, now looking at the totality of operations of your business, enough to make more educated decisions? To know that over time, let’s look and see if this webinar will work in the next 90 to 180 days. Yeah, versus did this webinar work in the next the last 14 days after we just launched it on a new product that we want to market?

Chris Davis 38:58
Yeah, I love it. I love it. And remember, everybody. technology affords us the ability to understand how well our tactics are working. With that information, we can then improve and or validate our strategy. This is how it all works. And I don’t know if you all are tired of hearing it. If this is refreshing. It doesn’t matter. Because if you want to scale in a sustainable way, this is the way to do so. Kenye I know it’s not always sexy, right? It’s not always fun to sit back and strategically plan and, you know, there are some technologies that you can use in that in that phase of business. That makes it a little more interactive, right, not as dry as some people would think. But you’ve got to do it you I think if there’s anything I need you, the listeners to get from this podcast is that I may hear these founders say, we don’t have time for strategy. Let’s just do some stuff. Figure out the strategy later. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don’t have time to not define the strategy. And Ken Yetta on our side, let’s take ownership. We we are, we are aware that you can’t just stop. The analogy I use all the time is we’re operating on the patient while they’re woke.

Kenyetta Hall 40:24
Oh, that’s so good. So you know what I do. A lot of times when I work with my clients, a lot of times I’m the first thing we’re doing is find a low hanging fruit that says, like, I’m a low hunger, I’m gonna, I’m gonna find a low hanging fruit. And you know why? Because you do need quick wins. Because I need you know, what I need most people to do is build up the confidence to let go and trust the process. So I’m always going to try to find a quick wins first, not only am I cuz mental is a mental battle, I play it first. Right? So if I’m working with you’re playing mental gymnastics to I’m like, trying to go with it as well, right? And but the thing I do is find the quick wins, so that what’s the low hanging fruit? I’m gonna always ask, what do you see the low hanging fruit? Let’s go execute on that first. Love it right. And then finally, the low hanging fruit and your ability to execute on that affords you the opportunity to take two steps back, because you feel like you can breathe, whether it’s real or whether it’s, you feel like you can breathe right? Now you’re like, Okay, well, I’m doing activity, because I’m still because we’re still doing Activity. Activity don’t take away from strategic thinking where it doesn’t. We what we found a purposeful action to invest in, that we know that it’s gonna get us a little return, get us a little breather as we plan what the next 12 months are gonna look like. Or the next nine months are going to look like. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I go for is like, let me let’s find the breathing room first. Let’s push something out there. And then let’s get you in that let’s get you in the act. And so that you’ll get a taste of planning because I just gave you something real. Let’s go. And now you can start to see oh, okay, right.

Chris Davis 41:59
Yep. Kenyetta that’s gold I, and I need the strategic thinkers, the agencies, anyone responsible for the strategy to understand everything that we’re saying is good. It’s, it’s the way that it is. But in reality, you have to earn their patience, earn their trust, and like Kenyatta said, earn them being able to take two steps back, and that’s with identifying and hitting those quick wins. You got to do it. This is just the nature of it. So can you

Kenyetta Hall 42:33
for anybody? Well, I feel like with anybody, right? Especially anybody who already, you know, who already feels like they’re struggling, a lot of times people are looking for strategic help where they feel like they’re struggling. So if you feel like you’re struggling and you’ve tried everything, then you’re like, I got maybe I needed somebody that gives me some direction. Be okay with that, but you got to let it go. And that’s why I find that it’s because I know that’s what’s happening, right? Again, I’m dealing with somebody’s mental first. Yep. So that I can calm the inner voice of saying that you’re failing so that we can go try. While I’m right there with

Chris Davis 43:12
ya. Yeah, absolutely. This was Kenyetta, This has been great. I can’t thank you enough for coming on to the podcast. If people want to get in contact with you learn more about what you do. Have you helped them out strategically in their startup and in their business? Where should they go?

Kenyetta Hall 43:33
You can go to my website, the Katalyst HQ and I spell catalyst with the K because my name is Kenyetta. Nothing special about that. But the Katalyst HQ, you can always email me at Kenyatta at the catalyst hq.com You can hit me on Instagram, is Kenyatta H Hall, they disabled my Instagram, going to have the Capitol so we’re not going to get for no reason just no reason Instagrams playin and on LinkedIn as well so on LinkedIn Kenyetta hall you can always hit me up there. I’m always looking for good company startups. And nonprofits too. We’re always looking to really level up the way that they think so that they can think differently so that they can move differently in their business and I think that’s the most important thing that you want to do. Love it, love it, everybody if you’re listening. We have the website on on the screen. Those of you watching the video of course you see it. Please check it out connect I highly recommend highly recommend connecting with Kenyatta on LinkedIn. For those of you are business professionals I don’t do Facebook’s and the tiktoks in reels and Grams. Go to LinkedIn, she will not disappoint you. Always thought provoking posts around strategy and just business mental. So Ken yet again, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. Great to have you back. When I say back, everybody back to

Chris Davis 45:00
into the fold. And yes, of my presence. And I’m glad that the listeners get to experience you as well. So I’m greatly appreciative of it.

Kenyetta Hall 45:11
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad that I can be on and talk about strategy because it’s the way man, it’s the way

Chris Davis 45:18
it is the way it is the way and I need you all to make it your way. Okay? We can’t force you to do it. But please, just take

Kenyetta Hall 45:27
less success if you if corporations are spending millions of dollars on one thing and his strategy.

Chris Davis 45:35
He’s got to catch up. We gotta get out. Yeah, we got to catch up. So. All right. Thank you so much for jumping on Ken yet, and I’ll see you online. Yes. All right. All right. 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 podcasts, Google podcasts, 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 all systems go podcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends

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 sell 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 and digital marketers to discuss strategies and software to build automated marketing and sales systems at scale. I’m your host, Chris L. Davis, the founder of automation bridge. And on this episode, I get to interview Kenyetta Hall, the founder of the Katalyst HQ, that is a coaching and consulting company focused on helping entrepreneurs and leaders get unstuck and take their business to the next level of growth. Through strategic planning, I need you to make a mental mark on those two words, strategic planning, okay. And leadership development and brand clarity along her journey, she’s had the opportunity to be a part of two startups, build a founding team and help other business owners, founders and nonprofit leaders really become intentional about growth and sustainability of their business so that they can build the life they want on their teams and make an impact while doing it. Added bonus Kenyetta it is an alumni of bridge, has successfully completed the automation service provider curriculum. And she’s here if I couldn’t, I was thinking about just the nature just where the market is right now. And the word that kept coming up was strategy strategy. People are without strategy. They’re not without activity. They’re without,

Chris Davis 2:18
is committed to strategic growth through planning than can yet so she’s here to help us understand how do we approach things more strategically, Kenyetta welcome to the podcast. How are you doing?

Kenyetta Hall 2:32
Thank you. I’m doing great. I’m so excited to be here. Since you reached out. I was like, yes.

Chris Davis 2:41
Yes, and I’ll say this. I have the pleasure. I’ve had the pleasure of having you through the program. But we’re also connected on LinkedIn. And it is a breath of fresh air to see someone unapologetically.

Chris Davis 2:58
Talk about the importance of strategy and what happens when you don’t adhere to such an approach for your business’s success. But first, but first, before we jump into it, give the listeners a little bit about a little bit of info about your journey, how you landed, how did you get to the Katalyst HQ, and more specifically, why you’re talking about it? What was that point where you realize it’s all about strategy?

Kenyetta Hall 3:28
Um, well, let me just start from the beginning. You know, I’ll start from when I received my MBA, because that was really a turning point. For me. I was in proposals and grants and contracts with the government. So I did a lot of proposal management, building strategy around that. So that’s when I really got introduced, introduced to what strategy meant, even when applying for government contract work, it was a ton of things people or companies did in order to get those contracts outside of just applying. So I got a chance to see all of that. One thing I realized it was actually hated. So it’s not the process, but my natural innate abilities to be talking to people be out in the community. And I was stuck behind a desk and it just didn’t seem right in my spirit, and it just wasn’t where I was gonna be successful. So I went and got my MBA because I felt like I had all this experience and proposals and government contracts and I was like, if I want to get out of it, I gotta, I gotta do something that’s complete opposite that’s gonna move me out of it. And me getting my MBA was a turning point. So I went to UNC Chapel Hill, Kenan Flagler shout out. I can’t say shout out to the Tar Heels because I went to NC State. But I did get my MBA from their 2006 16 Six genetic team ended up working in healthcare. And that’s when I started digital strategy work at a healthcare company eventually moved to working on the mobile app. So understanding product strategy, product, legacy systems and products really doing met in a corporate setting into working with startups. And just while I was still working there, because it made sense, right, like I understood the process, because strategy is strategy nowhere, no matter where you apply it, you know, a lot of times people are very like, trying to make some differentiated, there’s certain slight nuances when you do product strategy. Or when you do business strategy, or product strategy is launching a new company, right, within a company or launching something like that when you’re in a corporate city. When you do for startups, launching a new company, what’s the difference? Right, they their components generally are the same. But what the pain points that I saw the most, it’s how people were so not only in startups, but in corporations is that people were so reactive. They were reactive. They’re not responsive. And so therefore, there was nothing that had true intention. reactivity is not true intention, right? Oh, my God, something just happens. I gotta respond,

Chris Davis 6:01
something’s broke. Somethings broke, fix it.

Kenyetta Hall 6:05
We don’t care about the systems, it doesn’t matter. And you’re like, that’s how it works. So that’s, that’s one. And another thing is that people operate whatever, without a ton of emotion, without with a ton of emotion. And two, people don’t take two steps back. So everybody just moving all over the place, kind of just doing whatever and hoping that something sticks. And I know that people say that all the time. And they’ll say, Oh, well, you need a marketing strategy, or you need a brand strategy, or you need to know you need to take two steps back to figure out what it is you actually you’re trying to achieve. Put that at the forefront. And so that’s what I kept seeing all over the place. And it happened in nonprofits. It happens in business, it happens in the startups that I’ve been a part of is happened all over the place. And then you wonder why you have no movement? Right? It’s no wonder you can’t be responsive to the market. So people are all of a sudden, it’s like now we excuse me, now we’re in what we call it to recession in quotation air quotes. And you see a lot of people just are like, Oh, my God, I got it. I gotta do something. The first thing you should do is just take two steps back. Pause.

Chris Davis 7:19
love that. Yeah. Yeah, I love I love that. It’s simple, but it’s very hard Kenyetta because I’m about to throw some context on everybody for us. In a fast moving environment, which startups are often in, taking two steps back almost feels like making no movement for the next two months. We can’t afford to take two steps back. What do you mean, we need leads right now and look at this, we need to be on social look at this week. So how do you help? Because you know, they don’t do it themselves? How do you help them? Take those necessary two steps? Whoa, whoa, whoa, pump the brakes? Let’s take a couple steps back. How do you do it? How do you engage with them and get them to see that?

Kenyetta Hall 8:08
The first thing I do is like, you know, what’s the goal here? You know, what, what are actually are you trying to achieve? Because a lot of the a lot of the problem, the challenges are happening with they’re not staying focused. Right? Yeah, a lot of times founders are tuning in tuning in to everyone else. And when everything is what everybody else is doing everybody else’s movement. And what they’re not doing is turning into themselves into the core strengths that they have as founders into the core strengths they have as a business and try to leverage those. They’re too busy trying to leverage everything outside of them playing the comparison game. And you hate a lot of this is mental they play in mental gymnastics. Right? And so with you playing, I’ve seen everybody doing this, I’m I got to do this, and I’m not behind this. And my competitors, if they even did a competitor analysis. Yeah, you started, right. A lot of it is is that they’re they’re too busy tuning into what everybody else is doing, instead of tuning into what they need to be doing and staying focused on the goals of what they’re trying to do and and where they are at within the business. Right. A lot of startups, a lot of businesses are very unclear about what part of the entrepreneurial journey they’re actually on. Right? Because each of these phases requires something different. Yeah. You know, so a lot of times when you are within a startup or even with a small business, there’s a lot of similarities, but it starts with small businesses. Right? Right. Because the thought process people think it’s about just the money now it’s about how you think about it too. Right. So when you’re thinking about it, Amy, a lot of times under 100k. You are sales and marketing. What’s the Last thing that any business invest in sales and marketing, excuse me, let me let me put those in reverse orders, marketing and sales. Because Because marketing tells you what we do as a business, to the world to the target customer, and they qualify to lead. And then you go into the sales cycle. A lot of times people are trying to skip marketing, go to Sales and get conversions. Right, and nobody even knows who you are. Right? And so you try to close on something, and nobody knows who you are. That’s number one, too, depending on your target, very unclear in the sales cycle. Right? So if you’re unclear about how long it’s going to take, potentially take for your target market to close, like if you’re targeting corporate corporate has to jump through 1000s of hoops before they can even bring somebody on as a vendor. Yeah, we’re talking about a nine, nine to 12 month process, we haven’t even calculated that into your, your, your business model. Right. So again, not taking those steps back, not fully looking at what’s in front of you. And making decisions from that space, you’re making the you know, a lot of decisions are just being made, well, I have a product I want everybody to buy. No, you don’t want everybody to buy, at least not in the beginning. It’s not made for everybody. And because it’s not made for everybody. And we’ve talked about this several times, right? It’s good to know when and then you’re gonna get bad customer reviews, because they’re not going to get what they supposed to get out of it. Right now you just you’re taking your brand, now you’re upset now now you gotta be more reactive, because now you got to she got to counteract that. And so those types of things matter. And this, you’re not, you know, as businesses, you’re not, you’re not thinking from the business perspective, you’re either thinking from this marketing perspective, or this content perspective, or those are all tactics to get to the goals, but you haven’t named the goals, you haven’t figured out a path, you haven’t, you have no focus. And so now you get to those spaces of your marketing, your sales, your content, you know, social media, or any way you decide to get the word out there and you’re wasting your money, wasting the three core things I teach all the time you waste your time, right? Because you do not understand the level of effort it takes to get to the goal. And because you have exhausted your energy on things that are important, but not priority, you are all over the place. And you have nothing to give the things that needed the most.

Chris Davis 12:35
Yes, yes, yes. And we see it happen far too often. I’m sitting here thinking, and of course, of course, you’re you’re very proficient in the space of strategy and strategic planning, and what that plan should encompass. And we’re, we’re, as you were talking about product launching, I’m still surprised at how many startups don’t have an avatar, like literally have no idea who’s buying their product. But you know, a lot of times they just happen to have a partnership or something happened out of their control, again, to your point reactive in a positive way, right? Like somebody put them on, and now they’ve get this insert of leads, and they’re like, oh, let’s do something with them. Right. But when it comes time to to be intentional, this is where your strategic planning really comes in. So when you think of it, I know we talked about taking a step back, and it’s realigning with the goals. In your mind, what you’re doing is you’re trying to make sure that they have a strategic foundation in order to achieve that goal. Right. So what are some of the pieces of that strategic foundation that you’re looking for? I know you mentioned earlier, competitor analysis, right? Yes. Who else is in the market? And what they’re doing? Yeah. Know how to

Kenyetta Hall 14:01
go? You got it? Yeah, it’s because this is what happens when comparison when people you have to think of from a customer perspective, right? If a customer is evaluating your product against other people, other products, then what are the other products? And what do they do as to why people want to buy them? Those are very core questions. And so what I’m seeing is, I’m going into these spaces all the time, it’s like don’t care about your competitors. Now, you don’t need to care. But you do need to be very aware. And the reason you need to be aware, it’s because you have to explain how you’re different. Now, the difference. The difference doesn’t have to be this dramatic nuance difference that everybody is looking for it. I think that’s where people get lost, is that people it has to be this so dramatic, dramatic difference. That’s a lie. It doesn’t have to be a super dramatic difference. You just need to be able to confidently explain why you’re different. Yeah, and it can be it doesn’t have to be necessarily about the product being different. It can be various other reasons as to why A lot of times we think that customer avatar when they’re not, when they’re when if they’re doing the competitor analysis, and then they’re looking at their customer avatar, you forget how intrinsic values matter, to your to your target. And if your product is touching all those intrinsic values, you got to be able to tell that story better than your competitors. Sellers. Yeah, right. Yeah. But if you’re not doing a competitor analysis and understanding what people like what people don’t like, you can’t even below you, whoever you’re talking to prospects out the water, through through your messaging, because you aren’t clear about what it is that you offer. And it comes across like, right. So I would say some foundational pieces, I always say, one is know who you are, as a company. Yeah, like know who you are as a company, like your mission and value vision. And those values actually matter. And they actually don’t just drive how your leads, they drive how you operate. Yeah, it’s a foundational element of how you operate. Now, if you’re starting off, you need, you should be getting those in check a little bit quicker, because you’re going to be iterating through because you’re still trying to figure out what’s going to like who you are, right, but you do need to have those foundational elements that you will refine over time. Right? Because it’s going to you need to get to the marketplace. So you can sell to see what’s working. Right? When you are when you have money. When you’re making money. Let’s be clear, not when you have money. But when you’re making money, because that’s very different to when you’re making money. Your actions need to be more intentional, because we’re not talking about the fact that you have legions, you have weeks, you are making money, you have a product that works. So you should be a refinement of those activities, but also figuring out, right, figuring out what, where do I need to improve within my business to make it more efficient? Right? How do I become a how do we how do I become proactive instead of being reactive? Because it’s not that things aren’t working? They can be better? Right? What’s the proactivity? Where should I be investing my time the most? Where should I be investing? What what is the level of effort did it take for me to get to the new goals that I’ve set for the company in the next 12 months? Right? Because those things are all ways that are going to get you to know how to spend the money you have. Like money allocation comes from priorities, money allocation, don’t just you don’t just throw money away. That’s why people, that’s why you have leaders that are that are undeveloped, right. When you are making money, you have to be a different type of leader, you have to learn how to self lead, which means you have to have discipline, you got to have focus, you got to be able to understand some things you got to understand you can’t do this alone. Right? Who should your first hire be? Understanding how to hire out understanding how to automate those things like the scope of work as a as a CEO at the level when you’re making money after 100k becomes very different for you? Right, so you have the launch stage, where you still the marketing, you have the growth stage where you’re understanding self leadership, you’re just saying leadership of a team, potentially, how do I take my business to the next level? What does the next level look like? And what are the steps to get there?

Chris Davis 18:24
Oh, yeah. So So listeners, I hope you realize or I hope you’re seeing why I have Kenyetta talking about strategy because it’s across everything. We’re not talking about strategic marketing, strategic sales. We’re talking about strategic being. Okay, how do I move with purpose, less with strategy, right strategy is what gives purpose to every step that I take. And Ken yet and I were connecting prior to recording, and I wanted to invite our listeners in on the conversation that we talked about with activity, right, everybody has activity, everybody’s doing some thing, right? And I’m gonna put this on the table here. I was working with the company, and they were looking at their leads, and they were like, oh, we need more leads. So naturally, I’m a strategic thinker. And I’m thinking like, Okay, let me go look at previous performance and see what work to generate the leads that you had before. I’m not thinking this is going to be revolutionary or anything, it’s just natural. Okay, let’s look at what worked before and see if we can replicate that or do us a derivative of it and get more leads like Why reinvent the wheel right? And before we can even get there can yet before I can even step foot through the one foot down that path, social, we need to be on social, we got to be posting on social where’s our social media people hope though their whole mind went straight to social So, now I’m new. I’m new. So I’m not necessarily saying, hey, wait a minute, stop it, right? I don’t know yet. So I go and look at the data, right? In analytics. And it’s a head scratcher, I’m looking for where does where’s the green light for social here? I don’t see. I get it, it’s gonna give you the warm and fuzzy is gonna make you look good. But it is activity. That’s it. It’s all activity. So can you get it? These are fast. Listen, these are fast moving startups in, they got to do something, it’s like you tell a kid to sit down. And they just can’t sit there stop playing with the front stop playing with your fingers. They start playing with their toes, like they got to do something. Right. So how, how can you? How do we get them to stop just being active and actually moving with with purpose?

Kenyetta Hall 20:59
Well, one, social media content. Webinars are all marketing tactics. They are not strategies. They are tactics. People throw tactics and strategy around this word, they’re not synonymous. They’re not be clear about that. When you think of the word, when you think of strategic planning, the thing I invite people to think about is that you have the thinking part of strategy and the execute the plan, the roadmap, the execution part of the strategy, they could actually be two very different people, they do not have to be the same people. Right? That’s good. That’s good. Okay, so that’s one thing about that, too. In marketing, let’s, let’s get it all way down to the simplest form. Marketing is your ability to tell the world about who you are, what you do, how you can solve the problem and help them. Okay, so that’s, that’s it. Now, depending on where you are, if you’re trying to launch a product, we people need to know like and trust you. Okay? Right. If you have an existing product, you need to keep people fully engaged with who you are. Right? And you need to keep this the cycle of know, like and trust, because now when you are when you already have an existing product, we’re talking about new leads, keeping keeping the old customer rehabbing into full immersion in the lifecycle. Right, so fully understand that there’s two to three pronged approach to that alone. But you can only think about those things where you’re thinking marketing strategy, and how do I deliver what my goals are? What am I trying to achieve? How do I bring it to the world? And then I’m gonna pick the channels that I want to go after the world at. That’s what people are not looking at marketing strategy. You’re like, oh, well, I’m gonna do a social media strategy. Now. Here’s the thing. Can social media convert? Sure. Can webinars convert? Yes. Can YouTube convert? Yes. Can email marketing work? Convert? Yes, they all can convert? Yeah, we’re not saying that nobody can’t get that these channels, not spaces of conversion, you need to be aware about where you are, as a business in this time. If you’re launching a product, you’re not converting, because no one knows who you are. Right? And that’s number one. Number two, are you have you picked the channels to share your story with the world? Where your target is? Are you just picking channels based upon how you feel about where your target is? Right,

Chris Davis 23:36
right?

Kenyetta Hall 23:37
You see, that’s different. Like, I feel my people aren’t social why? There’s people making money on and off social Yep. It so it doesn’t, that’s not the indicator that you need to be there. Now. If you’re in the launching, you do need brand awareness, to your target audience, brand awareness to the target. That’s the whole purpose of having focus is having brand awareness to the target that you are trying to get to get to if I know you’ve worked with tons of product companies, right, or software companies, if your target is a corporation that notoriously has no social footprint. And you’re talking about going on Instagram, when we know for a fact that four out of five leaders are on LinkedIn. Right? So that’s just one facet. Right? You know, sales is about being seen market is about being seen. So you got LinkedIn thing you like you said, Could I run a webinar? You sure could right? Do I need to send some presents to the admin? Yes. You see what I’m saying? So it’s like, but you could only think about those things when you’re thinking about the strategy, the marketing strategy as it relates to the business goals. The cascade effect, the business goals should be driving the marketing strategy which should be driving the tactic says which of us, which then drives how much money you gonna spend to get out there. Because this is what happens. People always want caviar shoestring budget, that don’t happen, people spend, who was it, Budweiser spent $4 million on a commercial on a commercial during the Super Bowl, it is a reason for that. They are not just throwing dollars out there, there is a there’s a space of capitalization there. Right. So they understand that you think that those people are spending $4 million, just to spend $4 million. And you think that as a small business or startup that you won’t spend money on marketing, but expect a huge outcome. That’s that’s not that’s not how this works. And oftentimes, sales and marketing need to be built in conjunction with every product or service you plan to launch. Bringing them into late puts all the pressure on sales and marketing to do something that you never did before was create goals and intention in the beginning. Yeah, because now they have to, because what happens is those two teams end up going back and having to create that for the business in a rapid amount of time, so that they can actually execute on something and probably are underpaid for doing it.

Chris Davis 26:18
Yeah, this this is this is good, because what I hear you saying is that tactics without a strategy become activity. Just anyone stuff.

Kenyetta Hall 26:33
And what happens is people are like, Oh, well, things happen. Yes, good things can happen out of activity. That’s nobody saying that. Let’s be clear, this is not an either or it’s very much. So a sliding scale. Yeah. Very much. So a sliding scale, right. And I think people need to operate in this space of sliding scale versus either or. But understand you made less you small number you made 50,000. You could have made 250,000 As you read that right. Had you had a strategy that you could have employed there? Yeah, right. Yeah. And you could have gotten to whatever goal you want. But a lot of times people scared to have goals. You know why they scared to meet goals? And so I hear I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but I’ve hear people now are saying like, don’t set goals set systems. Oh, Lord, whatever, you know, to me, because here’s the thing, and I preach this all the time, y’all. Can anybody hear me say this? Failure is a part of business. Failure is a part of life. The problem is that most people have been taught that if they fail, they’re failures instead of getting back up and being able to recover from failure. Yeah. Right. And so because we are scared to fail, because we have been taught as a society, that success is equivalent to perfection. Right? If success is the equivalent of perfection, then we never should fail. Well, the growth is in the failure. Sometimes you got to go through, you can’t go around, you can’t do all those things you got to go through so you can you can be taught and things. Because it’s one thing to go to the next level. It’s another thing to be sustainable at that level.

Chris Davis 28:06
Yes. Right.

Kenyetta Hall 28:08
So let’s start failing, so we can understand how to get back up. If you don’t make the goal. That’s okay. We have now have the data to figure out what happened. Yeah, he had a process that we could actually track, you didn’t throw spaghetti at the wall and try to figure out what happened. The problem is, is that you haven’t been taught to fail in the first place. We’ve been taught as adults to fail, we didn’t get taught his kids to fail. We got taught us adults to fail. And so we’re battling this internal indoctrination that we’ve had a lot of lives to failure. Yep. failing. So now obviously, it’s competing. And you don’t even know what’s competing within you until you start a business and realize that those limiting beliefs in your head are even preventing you from taking action preventing you from taking the right action or think that you got to take all the action.

Chris Davis 28:56
Yeah, yeah. I like what you said about failure. And what came to my mind was failure is an activity, not an identity. Without being a fail your

Kenyetta Hall 29:13
year, it has they’re not synonymous and, and, and it’s okay to fail in the process. I’m not and believe it or not, I’m not a natural person who likes to fail in public. I don’t care to fail, but like, I don’t like, like people like failing public. I’m like, Girl, I’m not failing. Like, I would like to fill in private, I would like to recover in private right. But you know, I’m trying to move faster. Okay. My own indoctrination, right. But the but it says is that give yourself time to even iterate. You know what I’m saying? The point the point of iteration, and I think what has happened is that we have got caught up in well, you just need to go out there and get user data. Just go out there and talk to all the customers if you haven’t done any market research. Miss me with that Missy with the whole conversation with I need to just talk to customers because now that since I’ve got to talk to enough customers, that’s gonna guide you in the right direction. That’s, that’s number one. Number Number two, you didn’t you need to there are marketers for a reason y’all. Technology, folks, I love y’all. But there are there are marketers for a reason. There are people who do market research for a reason, because there is a lot there. Right trends matter, they’re catching all of those things, it’s gonna guide you and how you develop product is gonna guide you and what feature sets you decide to put forth. First. It’s going to guide you in, where you’re going to spend your money. It’s going to guide you on what type of salespeople you actually want a higher understanding strategy, putting the pieces together business strategy, understanding how that impacts with, with who you are as a brand, how you deliver that brand to the world, how you close on the deal, how you keep them in the sales cycle, all things matter in comparison to the goal. Right? What are the goals and you don’t need 30 goals? You need a max of five and that’s pushing it.

Chris Davis 31:04
Yeah, that ain’t right. Especially if we’re going quarterly. Listen, you might

Kenyetta Hall 31:11
write one, one core one, like, brand awareness. Like we need to. How do we get our name out there like, but I think people are so driven by the dollar that they are forgetting in order to get to the dollar. There are some steps that you have to take first, in order to get to you’re going to get there if you have the right if if you understand where you are in that in your business right now. Yeah. Right. If you understand that, okay, I’m still launching my services and said, like, I’m gonna iterate through that, and learning how to fail and get back up. Okay, that’s all right. I thought I said the straight Okay. Broke down right there. All right, let me go review that content. This content didn’t work. I’m gonna say more that. Yeah. Okay, so I thought that I was hitting the right admin. She’s not the gatekeeper. Let me go send flowers to someone else. Yeah. So understanding and keeping track of those things are going to develop it was What’s wrong, right now, I can say, two things is wrong. Everybody want everything right now. And nobody willing to really put in the work or the money behind it to achieve the goal. Your expectation cannot be at a 10. And your your level of effort with money and your level of commitment is attitude.

Chris Davis 32:28
Mm hmm. I agree. I agree. I, you know, as you’re, as you’re saying, everything, I’m just kind of thinking and putting myself in the situation. The companies, I’ve worked with some of the trends that I’ve seen. And what, what I often well, what should take place every one is that your strategy should be take time, you know, plan it out everything else. But your strategy is is like the big ship, right? It should, it should change, it can change, but it should not just be changing all the time. A strong strategy will encompass tactics that can change that now that they’re interchangeable. Okay, we tried a webinar. Okay, that didn’t work. Let’s, let’s move this. And let’s try this. And the thing that gets people in trouble that I found with strategic thinking is that they sit in on on a tactic that has to work a way. And when it doesn’t, they’re not willing to adjust and say, Okay, well, the webinar, we didn’t get as many registrants as we want to. Let’s try something else. No, no, whoa, whoa, whoa, timeout? Why, like you’ve mentioned the break down? Why didn’t that work? Was it at the registration? Was it show up? Was it at the, like, what part didn’t work because there may just be one piece in the tactic that we need to shift and keep going and allow this thing, you know, to run out. So of course, you know, you have the scatterbrain. And people are nervous, and they just want stuff to work. But I would be remiss without mentioning this. We have the marketing, we have the strategy, let’s just say that we have the strategic planning, and then the tactics are within that. I just need people to understand when we talk about technology, the marketing and sales software that we often refer to and scaling your company, and your business is at the tactical level. Okay. Technology is introduced at the tactical level. What does that mean? If strategy encompasses your tactic? There should be no tactic without strategy. Thus, if no tactic, no tech, no technology, right?

Kenyetta Hall 34:49
The problem is shiny object syndrome is a real thing. It’s real. It’s so real. And here’s the thing. There are people operate million dollar companies and have four people feel like that’s a real thing because they late they honed in on what they actually need it and they focused? Yeah. And they actually gave himself time to trust the process. Yeah, the thing about strategy is that it requires that you trust the process and requires that you’re willing to be in it for the long haul. That’s what strategy requires. Right? It requires, you know, people are like, Oh, well, people have strategies, and they just, they just, it’s just stuff that they check off, are you they is your company, then we need to be equipment, are you they because if you’re they, that will be you. If you’re deciding to take an active role, to set the goals set the tone for your business, your existing business, let’s talk about existing companies set the goal for these existing products you want to launch or existing or existing services that you have, then you got to be willing to go over the long haul be able to see a trend over time. You think Nike doesn’t look at their past data for February for the last five years of February’s Yes, to see how they’re going to how are they going to make product, that’s why they had level of efficiency is very high, is because they’re willing to trust the process. Now here’s the thing, you got to stop operating from a space of luck. And I’m gonna tell you this 99 businesses 90% mental and 10%, physical 90 percentage, you’re finding yourself on letting go and letting somebody else who is more knowledgeable than you in this specific area. And let them do the work and allow them the space to feel to because guess what, just because you paid them domain, it’s a sure thing. And if you ever pay somebody for a shirt thing, that’s problematic. That means that you’re unwilling to take responsibility as an owner. And as responsibility for not trusting the process, not responsibility for failed process. Because let’s be clear, there’s going to be investments that you make in your business that will fail, they’re not going to be right in business. And that’s okay. Because that’s just the cost of doing business. Yeah, right. Like, that’s just our business roles. You have to get used to that. And that’s where when you’re over making that 100k. That’s where that matters the most right? As you understand self leadership, as you begin to understand commitment, and you begin to understand investment, not only in your business, but in yourself as a leader, when you understand that technology is going to be used as a tactic to deliver on the goals. So that when somebody like Chris and I come in, and the things that we’re going to look at know, a part of that is your automation stack, because you need to bring lean, because you’re talking about you have money. But do you have money to blow over unintentional actions, have a flurry of activity, you are not a thunderstorm stop acting like one. So you have to think about that, right. And so I can tell you now that when Chris is going in and looking at somebody’s automation process, or what they should be implementing to be automated, he’s saving you time, he’s saving you money, and he’s actually gonna increase your ROI he can. Let me tell you something in any business, if somebody is lowering your operating your operating budget, they have increased your ROI. Yes. And people don’t even look at it like that, you know, people are like, Oh, I have to have more leads one or your leads qualified, you got to think about the qualified leads or use the leads. And then to are you effectively as a, as a leader, now looking at the totality of operations of your business, enough to make more educated decisions? To know that over time, let’s look and see if this webinar will work in the next 90 to 180 days. Yeah, versus did this webinar work in the next the last 14 days after we just launched it on a new product that we want to market?

Chris Davis 38:58
Yeah, I love it. I love it. And remember, everybody. technology affords us the ability to understand how well our tactics are working. With that information, we can then improve and or validate our strategy. This is how it all works. And I don’t know if you all are tired of hearing it. If this is refreshing. It doesn’t matter. Because if you want to scale in a sustainable way, this is the way to do so. Kenye I know it’s not always sexy, right? It’s not always fun to sit back and strategically plan and, you know, there are some technologies that you can use in that in that phase of business. That makes it a little more interactive, right, not as dry as some people would think. But you’ve got to do it you I think if there’s anything I need you, the listeners to get from this podcast is that I may hear these founders say, we don’t have time for strategy. Let’s just do some stuff. Figure out the strategy later. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, you don’t have time to not define the strategy. And Ken Yetta on our side, let’s take ownership. We we are, we are aware that you can’t just stop. The analogy I use all the time is we’re operating on the patient while they’re woke.

Kenyetta Hall 40:24
Oh, that’s so good. So you know what I do. A lot of times when I work with my clients, a lot of times I’m the first thing we’re doing is find a low hanging fruit that says, like, I’m a low hunger, I’m gonna, I’m gonna find a low hanging fruit. And you know why? Because you do need quick wins. Because I need you know, what I need most people to do is build up the confidence to let go and trust the process. So I’m always going to try to find a quick wins first, not only am I cuz mental is a mental battle, I play it first. Right? So if I’m working with you’re playing mental gymnastics to I’m like, trying to go with it as well, right? And but the thing I do is find the quick wins, so that what’s the low hanging fruit? I’m gonna always ask, what do you see the low hanging fruit? Let’s go execute on that first. Love it right. And then finally, the low hanging fruit and your ability to execute on that affords you the opportunity to take two steps back, because you feel like you can breathe, whether it’s real or whether it’s, you feel like you can breathe right? Now you’re like, Okay, well, I’m doing activity, because I’m still because we’re still doing Activity. Activity don’t take away from strategic thinking where it doesn’t. We what we found a purposeful action to invest in, that we know that it’s gonna get us a little return, get us a little breather as we plan what the next 12 months are gonna look like. Or the next nine months are going to look like. Yeah. Yeah, that’s what I go for is like, let me let’s find the breathing room first. Let’s push something out there. And then let’s get you in that let’s get you in the act. And so that you’ll get a taste of planning because I just gave you something real. Let’s go. And now you can start to see oh, okay, right.

Chris Davis 41:59
Yep. Kenyetta that’s gold I, and I need the strategic thinkers, the agencies, anyone responsible for the strategy to understand everything that we’re saying is good. It’s, it’s the way that it is. But in reality, you have to earn their patience, earn their trust, and like Kenyatta said, earn them being able to take two steps back, and that’s with identifying and hitting those quick wins. You got to do it. This is just the nature of it. So can you

Kenyetta Hall 42:33
for anybody? Well, I feel like with anybody, right? Especially anybody who already, you know, who already feels like they’re struggling, a lot of times people are looking for strategic help where they feel like they’re struggling. So if you feel like you’re struggling and you’ve tried everything, then you’re like, I got maybe I needed somebody that gives me some direction. Be okay with that, but you got to let it go. And that’s why I find that it’s because I know that’s what’s happening, right? Again, I’m dealing with somebody’s mental first. Yep. So that I can calm the inner voice of saying that you’re failing so that we can go try. While I’m right there with

Chris Davis 43:12
ya. Yeah, absolutely. This was Kenyetta, This has been great. I can’t thank you enough for coming on to the podcast. If people want to get in contact with you learn more about what you do. Have you helped them out strategically in their startup and in their business? Where should they go?

Kenyetta Hall 43:33
You can go to my website, the Katalyst HQ and I spell catalyst with the K because my name is Kenyetta. Nothing special about that. But the Katalyst HQ, you can always email me at Kenyatta at the catalyst hq.com You can hit me on Instagram, is Kenyatta H Hall, they disabled my Instagram, going to have the Capitol so we’re not going to get for no reason just no reason Instagrams playin and on LinkedIn as well so on LinkedIn Kenyetta hall you can always hit me up there. I’m always looking for good company startups. And nonprofits too. We’re always looking to really level up the way that they think so that they can think differently so that they can move differently in their business and I think that’s the most important thing that you want to do. Love it, love it, everybody if you’re listening. We have the website on on the screen. Those of you watching the video of course you see it. Please check it out connect I highly recommend highly recommend connecting with Kenyatta on LinkedIn. For those of you are business professionals I don’t do Facebook’s and the tiktoks in reels and Grams. Go to LinkedIn, she will not disappoint you. Always thought provoking posts around strategy and just business mental. So Ken yet again, thank you so much for coming on to the podcast. Great to have you back. When I say back, everybody back to

Chris Davis 45:00
into the fold. And yes, of my presence. And I’m glad that the listeners get to experience you as well. So I’m greatly appreciative of it.

Kenyetta Hall 45:11
Thank you so much for having me. I’m so glad that I can be on and talk about strategy because it’s the way man, it’s the way

Chris Davis 45:18
it is the way it is the way and I need you all to make it your way. Okay? We can’t force you to do it. But please, just take

Kenyetta Hall 45:27
less success if you if corporations are spending millions of dollars on one thing and his strategy.

Chris Davis 45:35
He’s got to catch up. We gotta get out. Yeah, we got to catch up. So. All right. Thank you so much for jumping on Ken yet, and I’ll see you online. Yes. All right. All right. 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 podcasts, Google podcasts, 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 all systems go podcast.com Thanks again for listening. And until next time, I see you online. Automate responsibly, my friends