00:00:00 - Tayler Hollman
You've hired a human who's, who's very competent in some ways, but marketing is so multifaceted that the person who's going to be great at social media management is not also going to be able to do email marketing. Right. Like, those are two totally different beasts, totally different skill sets. And so you need to hire appropriately for all of those things.

00:00:29 - Dana Kadwell
Welcome to Hustle and Gather, a podcast about inspiring the everyday entrepreneur to take the leap. I'm Dana.

00:00:35 - Courtney Hopper
And I'm Courtney.

00:00:36 - Dana Kadwell
And we are two sisters who have started multiple businesses together. And yes, it is as messy as you think because we know that starting a business isn't easy.

00:00:43 - Courtney Hopper
I mean, we've done it four times. And on this show, we talk about the ups and downs of the hustle and the reward at the end of the journey.

00:00:49 - Dana Kadwell
And this season, we're talking all about the messy middle, you know, when you.

00:00:52 - Courtney Hopper
Have to decide to either grow or scale your business or maybe even take a step back.

00:00:57 - Dana Kadwell
And today we're talking with Taylor Cusick Holman about marketing during the messy middle. A marketing consultant and small business builder, Taylor is the founder of Enji. So you might recognize her from one of her other companies, tailored media and designs and source Co. In her newest endeavor, Taylor is taking everything she has learned over nearly a decade of helping small businesses, of marketing, to design and build a suite of online marketing tools that fit your lifestyle and make sense for you. Taylor, welcome to the show.

00:01:20 - Tayler Hollman
Thank you so much for having me. I'm very excited that our worlds have finally collided. And I don't know, this is so silly, but, like, I don't know, I'm excited to be in a room full of brunettes, for one.

00:01:32 - Dana Kadwell
That is true. That is true. It's rare there's always a blonde somewhere.

00:01:37 - Courtney Hopper
Always true.

00:01:38 - Dana Kadwell
Yes. But brunettes are better.

00:01:40 - Courtney Hopper
I think so, too.

00:01:40 - Dana Kadwell
Always. Yeah, I just saw that.

00:01:43 - Courtney Hopper
Is it Reese Witherspoon's daughter? She just turned brunette. She said she's trying the other side for a while.

00:01:48 - Dana Kadwell
Okay, nice.

00:01:49 - Courtney Hopper
Yes. She'll love it. There you go.

00:01:51 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah. Well, thanks so much for being here today. We're so excited to chat with you. Just to get started, tell us a little bit about your background, how you started your businesses, and just kind of top down view of your story.

00:02:01 - Tayler Hollman
Totally. You know, I, like a lot of entrepreneurs, did not expect to end up as an entrepreneur. Like, I went to grad school and, you know, got a master's in sociology because I wanted to spend my life in a classroom teaching at a community college. And I was like, that's my happy place. And as a geriatric millennial, I had the pleasure of graduating at, like, the worst time, when, you know, everyone was out of a job. And so I ended up not getting a teaching position because I was competing against PhDs. And why would you hire a master's when you could go a level up? So I did one, one good college try in the corporate world and very quickly realized, like, too small of a sandbox for me, right? Like, too big of a boat that moves too slow and it's too hard to turn. And so I've played my one babe, can I quit my job and not have anything lined up on the other side card? So I played that and eventually got connected with some entrepreneurs in San Diego where I'm based who needed help with things. And there were finger quotes around that because they didn't explicitly. They weren't able to explicitly communicate what it is they needed help with. And it turns out it was marketing. And so I had played in marketing during my corporate job and then in some, you know, other jobs that I had had. And so that was my first sort of like, okay, we're doing. You're becoming a marketer. It ended up being a totally natural fit because as someone with a background in psychology and sociology, marketing is just a very practical application of those things. So, in a strange way, I still am using the eight years of college that I put in. Know, my parents are thankful for that. But, you know, and so ever since then, that was back in 2015, I've been self employed, and I've been a marketing consultant for small businesses, overwhelmingly working with wedding industry professionals, and was actually the marketing director at Aisleplanner from 2015 to 2018. So that's really where I got, like, thrown into the deep end of this industry. And so, you know, ever since then, all of the businesses that I've started have revolved around how do I help solve this marketing problem for small business owners, especially those of us who are doing our own marketing? Because that's a very special experience in and of itself. And so, you know, with tailored, I was consulting, and source Co is stock photography for wedding professionals, and then Ng is me as a marketing consultant turned into software for folks to use on their own. And so even though each one of those things has come at the problem in different ways, there's a very clear theme of what I'm trying to do with the time that I spent tippy tapping at my computer.

00:04:55 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, it's so interesting how you didn't think you're gonna be an entrepreneur. You didn't wanna be an entrepreneur, yet you have started three different businesses. Yep. Do you feel like each one was because you were trying to solve a problem from the previous one?

00:05:08 - Tayler Hollman
You know, the first one was, I woke up one day and was like, I have clients who are asking me for invoices, so I think I have to formally start a business here. And so that one just sort of organically happened. But then with source Co. It was actually during my time at aisle planner where my job there was to create an obscene amount of content about the business of being in the wedding business. And whenever I would reach out to the pros that I was collaborating with on blog content and I would ask them for photos, no one had anything other than, you know, tablescapes and wedding galleries. And so I saw this gap in the visuals that wedding professionals had to use to tell a big part of their story.

00:05:53 - Dana Kadwell
Right.

00:05:53 - Tayler Hollman
Like, your value is wrapped up a lot in the work that you do behind the scenes. That's not in the pretty stuff. And so that was the inspiration for source, and then Enji was, you know, it was for my consulting days and people were hiring me to create custom marketing strategies for them. And I deliver them as these gorgeous PDF's just died on their computers because there was really no way for me to facilitate the doing of the strategy. And so that was my big inspiration point for Enji was like, hey, people are coming to me asking, literally telling me, Taylor, just tell me what to do. But then even though they were super motivated, they didn't have the actual, like, software tools to put these plans into motion. And so that was the thing where I was like, well, I think I'm starting a tech company.

00:06:52 - Courtney Hopper
Nice.

00:06:54 - Dana Kadwell
Which is probably the hardest out of all of them that you've done.

00:06:57 - Tayler Hollman
Totally the hardest thing ever. And I, you know, you work as sisters. One of my co founders is my husband. So that's also, you know, you know, all the things that, like, I need to compartmentalize my relationship with this person that I love, so it makes it extra.

00:07:12 - Courtney Hopper
We could do a whole nother podcast on working with family and unique struggles that it brings up, for sure. Well, I love that. I mean, I love that. I feel like kind of similarly, when I think through our entrepreneurship journey, it was very much like that, oh, there's this need, let's try this. Well, now we have this need, let's try that. And, well, that's kind of evolved into this. And you kind of just naturally find yourself in these areas and you're like, well, let me formulate a business surrounding that.

00:07:38 - Tayler Hollman
Right?

00:07:38 - Courtney Hopper
So I can help more people or reach more people or be a little more formalized with what I'm giving out. But, yeah, I feel like our journey was very similar to that.

00:07:47 - Dana Kadwell
I think it's interesting because our degrees are not in anything creative. I have a degree in a science, chemistry, and math, and she's biology. But I think what's so interesting about entrepreneurs is their creativity and how creative they actually are. But maybe not in the traditional sense. I can't draw to save my life. I tried to in college. I went to Italy, and I was like, I'm going to bring a sketchbook, and I'm just going to sketch these things, mind you. I mean, it's hilarious. I saw it the other day in the attic, and I was like, I feel like I should take pictures of these and put them on social media.

00:08:19 - Courtney Hopper
I feel like you should.

00:08:20 - Dana Kadwell
I didn't even my delusion that I could just randomly start sketching. No formal background or anything. Cause I was like, I can do it. Why can't I? Like, it's not that hard.

00:08:30 - Tayler Hollman
I can hold a pencil.

00:08:31 - Dana Kadwell
Why? Yeah, no big deal.

00:08:34 - Courtney Hopper
I've never seen these pictures. Oh, yeah.

00:08:35 - Dana Kadwell
Cause they're in my attic. I don't know why. I just didn't throw them away. But at any rate, I think that there's a different kind of creativity that isn't always recognized or appreciated, I would say.

00:08:46 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah. Cause I think it's not conventional.

00:08:47 - Dana Kadwell
It's not conventional.

00:08:47 - Courtney Hopper
It's not like you're, like an artist or painter or sculptor or like, you're creating something with your hands that's tangible. It's intangible creativity.

00:08:56 - Dana Kadwell
It's more intellectual creativity.

00:08:57 - Courtney Hopper
Yes, it is.

00:08:58 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah.

00:08:58 - Courtney Hopper
But, yeah, I would love to see these at some point one day. I know, I know. Me too.

00:09:04 - Tayler Hollman
Social media content.

00:09:05 - Courtney Hopper
I've never seen Dana draw anything. Yeah.

00:09:08 - Dana Kadwell
Okay. All right, we've digressed here. Yeah.

00:09:11 - Courtney Hopper
Well, I love that. So, like, we're talking again about that messy middle, and I want to talk specifically about, like, marketing. Like, the tools that you have. Like, how does marketing evolve when a business enters into that messy middle phase? I think you really think about marketing when you're starting something and you, like, hit it hard and heavy and it starts getting successful. And I think we tend to get a little lazy with our marketing and stagnant, and then we find ourself in the messy middle, which I think it's like, this is the chicken and an egg issue, but once you find yourself there, regardless if it's your fault or not, how does that evolve? And what should we, like, how should we shift to be prepared for that?

00:09:44 - Tayler Hollman
You know, one of the, I don't know if the two of, you know, Candice Coppola, but she used this phrase once with me, and I was like, oh, that's the perfect way of putting it. It's that new girl energy, right? When you start your business, you're like, I am here. I'm going to make sure that everybody knows that I am here now and I exist. And then you basically get complacent. Like you said, you get lazy. You just, you start to stagnate and your focus and attention shifts. And so, you know, before we started recording, we were talking about, you know, just how do people end up in the messy middle? And I was saying that right now, you know, at the time of this recording, it is the summer of 2024, and even really established businesses feel like they're back in the messy middle when it comes to their marketing. And when I think of what that messy middle is, it's that moment in time where you think, my marketing isn't really working anymore. Right. And so that isn't, it isn't confined to a specific, like, time in your business. It's just something that sort of almost continuously happens as a part of a cycle, as you either get complacent, which is the self inflicted messy middle, or your business is growing and evolving. And so you need to then change your approach. Right. Because there have been shifts in what you're doing fundamentally. And so when you're, when you find yourself in that space, you know, I'm, I'm a, I'm one of those folks that use it like, well, I know everybody uses both sides of their brains, but, like, I'm both, like, I'm kind of equally left and right brained, and, but most of my friends who own businesses are, like, very squarely in the creative camp. And for those folks, numbers are, like their enemy. And when you don't know certain basic metrics about your business, then it makes it really hard for you to see what the shift that's happened in your business was because you're only left to just make guesses about it. And so the kind of takeaway that I want to have people walk away with is that change is always going to happen. That's not breaking news. Right. But in business, you do have to just expect that things are going, you're going to build these systems and these processes and they're going to be really effective for a certain period of time, and then they're just going to wane. It's just, it's what happens. And so I don't want people to think that, oh, I'm going to go through this messy middle thing once, like an awkward teenage phase, and then it's done. You're, you know, you're probably going to hit it again at some point. Yeah, I know.

00:12:42 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah. And it's so interesting. Like I, you said, like, everyone's in that messy middle right now. And it's so true. And I think a lot of it is because we had to really reinvent ourselves with the pandemic. You had to reinvent how you did things. And then now we're kind of in what you said, the teenage phase of, like, like, even just talking to my salesperson recently, I was like, look, you can't compare what happened in 2021 and 2022 in sales to now because people just bought because they were panicked. Right. And even last year, we were starting to still see some of that residual. And this year is the first year people are asking the question, does this have value? Like, what is, like, how is this going to, like, really serve me? Is this really what I want to spend my money on, all that stuff? And so even just the approach of how we did before, like, in our marketing, like, oh, put a pretty picture. Everyone's like, oh, my God, it's so pretty. Let me book it. It's like that. They don't, I mean, they want the pretty picture, but that's not what's going to sell them. It's not the pretty picture because there's pretty things all over. It's, you know, how do I get the best, best bang for my buck? How do you make me feel when I'm on that property? And, like, I just feel like everyone is, is in that space of trying to figure out, like, how to sell, what to sell after this really crazy period of when we didn't really need to focus on it. Right.

00:13:50 - Courtney Hopper
Because I think we, in hospitality, especially, like, in our industry, specifically. Specifically weddings, it was like, all the catch up.

00:13:56 - Dana Kadwell
Right?

00:13:56 - Courtney Hopper
Like, so you got really lazy on your marketing. Like, so lazy. And I think for us, like, with our messy middle and the marketing, and we actually just started talking about marketing again. Like, we aren't hitting what we do well, we're just talking about what we don't do well.

00:14:10 - Dana Kadwell
Right.

00:14:10 - Courtney Hopper
And I think you kind of carry that type of energy into your sales, but I think that the clientele that we have, like, our marketing has not caught up to the clientele that we've had. Like, as we've grown and grown and grown clear that our clientele is growing and growing and growing and their needs are a little bit different, but we're still marketing the exact same way. So it's like, we're getting this clientele and there was so much of it before that it really didn't matter. But now it matters. Like, we're not reaching the clientele that we are actually serving. And I think that's where you see the misses in the marketing.

00:14:39 - Tayler Hollman
Yeah, totally. You know, that is one of, like, the big gaps that any small business owner is going to, like, encounter is, like I said, as you grow, you know, you, a lot of people get stuck in this. Like, oh, well, I'm, I'm just gonna play where it's comfortable and I'm gonna continue business as usual. But as you are pushing your business forward, like, it should surprise no one that your ideal customer changes. And so your messaging and your marketing needs to change with them. And that's one of the big mistakes that I see people making is they think that, like, all of these marketing to dos are a one and done checklist. And, you know, I feel like I'm like the bearer of bad news today, but it's not a, it's not a one and done checklist. Just like, you know, people talk about SEO as an exercise, you know, making sure that you really understand who your ideal customers and clients are on basically an annual basis, like committing some time to doing customer research and then taking those learnings and then applying them to your website copy and all the content that you're putting out and then even the sales conversations that your team is having and the client experience that you physically want them to have working with you, it all is on shifting ground. And so we just have to really accept that reality that nothing, nothing is totally done. There's something that's going to backfill that task as soon as you check it off of the list. And you're going to have to reinvent yourself continually if you're, if you're trying to build a business with longevity.

00:16:23 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, yeah. And I think that's honestly, like, I don't think people recognize that when they start a business. They just think, okay, I have a good idea. I have a good process. And even, I mean, I've been, I have felt that way. I'm like, I have created the best process. Why are you all not following it or doing it? I'm like, well, it doesn't really work anymore. And I'm like, how do you know it doesn't work? You just stopped doing it, you know? But it's definitely a thing where you feel like, okay, I've hacked it, I figured it out, and, like, this is how you fix it. And then, you know, four years later, it's like, well, this is so not what our clients are looking for. It's. It's not even what the. It's not even what the world's looking for. Right. So when you even just think about the last four years, like, what they value and, like, what they care about and what they're looking for in a space is very, very, very different. It's totally different. And so you have to look at it from a different perspective of marketing. But I think it's a truth that I don't like that we're always on shifting ground. Like, we're always on.

00:17:20 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah, I don't love that.

00:17:21 - Dana Kadwell
No, no, but it's the truth.

00:17:23 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah, yeah.

00:17:25 - Dana Kadwell
Like, maybe if you just accept it.

00:17:26 - Courtney Hopper
Like, yeah, this is just what it is. It's what it is.

00:17:29 - Tayler Hollman
We all need to go to the circle.

00:17:31 - Dana Kadwell
I know.

00:17:32 - Courtney Hopper
I know. Well, that's what they say. The only consistent constant in life is change. So just embrace it.

00:17:40 - Dana Kadwell
I know, I know.

00:17:40 - Courtney Hopper
So, getting super practical, what are some marketing strategies when you are looking to grow through and out of? I mean, I don't think anyone wants to stay in the messy middle.

00:17:50 - Dana Kadwell
Let's look at it from two perspectives. So when we're talking about messy middle or making a decision, are we going to grow in scale because we want to get out of this messy middle? We want to kind of get to the point like, maybe we have more employees, we're larger, we could be more the CEO, or we don't like that idea. And we want to scale back and get back to maybe that niche. Super quality over quantity. So I'm sure there's two different strategies there that you have.

00:18:14 - Tayler Hollman
Yeah. If you're in the camp where you're like, I want to scale the business. Marketing is like the redheaded stepchild. Not to offend any gingers that are listening, but, like, it's always like, it gets treated in the.

00:18:28 - Tayler Hollman
In this really strange way where even as you're like, I'm going to add, like, I'm going to open a new venue, I'm going to add more sales folks to my team or whatever it is that you're doing to physically scale the business, a lot of times you have these expectations that your marketing is also going to scale, but you have the same number of resources working on it, right. And you're just trying to like, squeeze more out of something or someone. And that's not how it works.

00:18:59 - Tayler Hollman
Like, doing marketing at scale requires more of the things, it requires more people, it requires more of a budget, it requires more of your headspace. Right. Like, marketing definitely doesn't get to live rent free anywhere. And so when you're in that camp of, I want to do this more than you know, one of the strategies that typically gets pulled in is the advertising one, because even if you are maybe not, like many time, many times over, xing the number of people who are doing marketing things for you, you can start to throw money at the problem. And so we're like a solopreneur probably isn't going to make major investments on the marketing side or on the advertising side of things.

00:19:46 - Tayler Hollman
And the other thing that typically I see getting added to the mix on the scale side is email marketing, especially for venues. Like, I think venues are in a really great position to actually set up like nice nurture sequences and be, you know, setting something up. Like setting up email newsletters to make sure that you're just like kind of tapping people on the shoulder during that decision making phase of the buying process and booking process. And so those would be the things I would really recommend folding in for those folks. But then when it comes to on the other end of the spectrum where you're like, I just really want to get better quality leads, right? That's what we're talking about when someone's like, I'm going to scale things back and focus on quality over quantity. That's the space where you have to spend a ton of time really getting to know who you are marketing and selling to and not just making assumptions about who those people are.

00:20:50 - Tayler Hollman
Especially if you haven't gone through this exercise since, like, you first started your business. Cause like we talked about earlier, like, those people have changed. Because your, like, offerings have changed. And one of the things that I think people overlook is when they're sitting down to do customer research and create a Persona, they focus too much on the demographics.

00:21:13 - Tayler Hollman
Like, oh, here's Susie and Mike, and they're 34 and 29 years old and they're a lawyer and a nurse and they live here. They have blah, blah, blah. Those things help to create foundational context for who they are as people. But all of your marketing should always be focused on what is their problem, because their problem is what's motivating them to go out and look for a solution. Right. Whether that's finding the perfect venue or booking the rest of their team of vendors, or even going out and trying to buy a hammer, that's the classic example of, hey, what's the problem that you're trying to solve with this hammer? It's not just I need to pound a nail into the wall. When you are thinking about your customer's problem, I really encourage people to go a few layers deeper past the problem of, I need to book a wedding venue or for planners. You know, it's the, I've never planned a wedding before, right? That's so surface level. There's something at least two or three layers deeper than that that's actually motivating this person to take an action.

00:22:29 - Tayler Hollman
And when you get to that sort of layer of the onion, then your marketing messaging can focus on that. And then you start to just intuitively stand out because you're talking to these people much more like candidly and specifically than everyone else who was too lazy to do that work.

00:22:50 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah. So how do you suggest, like, I wrote down actually some notes. I was like, things. I was like, oh, shout to the team about some of these things. But how do you suggest to somebody, like, to find out those layers of an onion? Do you look at past clients that they worked with and, or like clients maybe who didn't book them? Or what do you suggest somebody who's trying to take that step?

00:23:09 - Tayler Hollman
So there's a couple of things that you can do. The first is, you know, you can do customer interviews, right? Like, maybe it's a part of your offboarding process and where you're sitting down with someone as you're closing things out with them, and you ask them just a couple questions about what was it during your venue research that really stood out? Or why were you looking for XYZ? That's a more time consuming thing to get information at any sort of volume that you can start to see patterns. But one of the cool things about AI technology is that it can take tasks that were like projects that you would never, as a human, sit down and do, and then it can do them for you at the snap of a finger. And so one of the things that I really encourage people to do is take your inquiry emails, take your reviews, and take your, it's not you, it's me. Sort of email and copy and paste a bunch of them into different documents and then prompt an AI chatbot to analyze them and pull out the common themes, right? Like, you can say what are the reasons that people are reaching out to me. What stands out? What are the problems they're having? Or, you know, what was, what are the words and phrases people are using in their reviews to describe what it's like working with me? And so then you can get a volume of information about your customers and what's motivating them super, super fast.

00:24:37 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, I love that idea.

00:24:38 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah.

00:24:39 - Dana Kadwell
I love the idea of using AI because we've done some, like, like, venue consulting and people asking, what is it that we need to change? And so we are the robots, and we can go read all the reviews and the negative and the positive and pull out what are the common themes that we're seeing to help them understand that. But I love that we can use AI to do that now.

00:24:57 - Tayler Hollman
Totally.

00:24:58 - Dana Kadwell
It's a very time consuming process.

00:25:00 - Tayler Hollman
Super, super time consuming. And then as a consultant, if you're utilizing that tool, then that really frees up a lot of the time that you, your client has booked you for to do the deep thinking about the solution versus trying to find the problem.

00:25:13 - Dana Kadwell
Right, right.

00:25:14 - Courtney Hopper
Yeah, that's great.

00:25:16 - Dana Kadwell
I do love that. It's like, one of the things, too, that I think is hard from, like, especially from. For talking about industry specific. You know, I've had this conversation with people before, and they're like, well, the problem is they're looking for a photographer. Or the problem is they're looking for a venue. And I'm like, I don't think that's really what it is. And, you know, I was talking to our salesperson day, actually, about it, and I was like, you know, we ask all the good questions. They say, how did you meet? Tell us about yourself. Like, tell me about your wedding. I was like, but let's make more pointed conversation. Like, how do you envision your day? Like, what are your pain points? What are things that you didn't like in other tours that you've done? What specifically made you book this tour at the Bradford? Like, what is it about it that you are excited to see and excited you to come to this tour? So, like, I. Then as you're. Cause at this point, we're trying to sell them to book it. You're constantly talking about it throughout the tour, all these things. But it's a different way to ask a question, because if you were to ask somebody, what's your problem? They're like, I don't know.

00:26:15 - Tayler Hollman
Totally.

00:26:16 - Dana Kadwell
What's my problem? What is my problem? I don't know. I need a venue or I need a photographer or whatever.

00:26:21 - Courtney Hopper
I think you could also implement some of the things to do as planners. How do you want to feel at the end of your wedding day? Or what would make this a success for you if you were to. This is the most successful event for you. Like, what would that look like to you? And they'll tell you.

00:26:36 - Tayler Hollman
They will tell you. And you can also ask, just like, what are you worried about? Right?

00:26:41 - Courtney Hopper
Yes.

00:26:42 - Tayler Hollman
And that's a very direct way to get the problem out of someone, but not using that. So tell me, what's your problem? Right?

00:26:50 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's so funny. The groom today, he was. The bride was like, I don't know. I don't know what I'm worried about. And he was like, I'm worried about rain. You want everything outside. And what if it's monsooning? He's like, we're from Florida, and I know what that looks like. And so this is after the tour, and he's like, so I felt really relieved when you kept talking about this backup plan. Like, we could have this backup plan and all these things. So it was funny. And I was like, that probably would have been helpful to know before the tour, but I'm glad that I addressed it unconsciously, like in the tour. Yeah, yeah. So, like, what are some things that, like, when you're looking at these, I'm so. I'm sure you have tons of clients, and I'm sure being in the industry, you are. You see people on social media, you see people, you see the marketing efforts. What are some areas you think people maybe are spending money where they shouldn't or like, big mistakes that you're seeing in these businesses and you're like, oh.

00:27:39 - Tayler Hollman
I can't believe they just did that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, one of the big mistakes that I see is people really mistaking marketing and sales as one and the same. And when I look at somebody's marketing, we'll just call out, like, an Instagram grid as an example here. If I look at an Instagram grid and it's just peppered with the, what I call the buy my shit kind of content.

00:28:07 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah.

00:28:09 - Tayler Hollman
It's just like constant sales messages. Right? Like, everything has a really strong call to action that is related to a transaction versus the know like and trust factor that marketing is really centered around. That is something that I see novice marketers and new business owners make all the time. It's just like a barrage of buy my shit. So definitely, definitely don't do that in terms of where I see people wasting or we don't necessarily want to say wasting, but like, you know, spending money beyond the point where they should have pulled the plug on it. Right. That's, there's, there's a couple things there. You know, I think advertising is the one that has to sit at the tippy top of the list because, you know, people can grow out of, and I'll start with talking about advertising, like, in a marketplace, people can grow out of that marketplace, right? Like, as their business grows, there are certain marketplaces where it's like, it's a really great place to put your business if your ideal client is, you know, an average to maybe premium wedding. But then if you have grown out of that and you're now in like, lovely low end luxury or even beyond that, then let's just call it how it is and say that, like, they're not going to the knot to try to find venues, right? They're using all of their, you know, that's where referral based marketing is super, super important. And then also just making sure that your, your business is being found on Google is super important. So I think some people just think and hope that advertising is this like, silver bullet, like this magical thing that's just gonna fill their inbox with leads to, and so they emotionally latch onto it and then just do it for way longer than they should, even when they've outgrown it. So that's one of the places where I see people investing more than they should. And the other sort of big mistake that I see people making is thinking that hiring a VA to do your marketing is a good way to spend money.

00:30:29 - Dana Kadwell
Okay?

00:30:29 - Tayler Hollman
And a VA, if you are, if you are able to communicate explicitly, like, here is our marketing strategy, here's our, you know, our content strategy for our blog, and here are topics and SEO keywords that I want you to write this for. Then, yes, maybe like a super, like, unicorn Va might be able to help you with that, but a VA is not a marketer. They're not going to understand how to do SEO keyword research and put together a full marketing plan that's doing, like, actually helping you work toward your goals. And so it's fantastic when people are ready to make that investment in outsourcing some of their business tasks, but that is a huge mistake just to just like, tap in any old VA to really spearhead your marketing.

00:31:25 - Dana Kadwell
I think that's so true. And I don't know if I would have actually realized that, like, we just hired a, what was that? A content creator, a copywriter. Copywriter. Copywriter. I was like, no, sir, it's a c, a copywriter. And it was, like, life changing. And I just, and we have a full time marketing director, and I recognize that that actually wasn't her strong suit, was taking a conversation that we had and creating the words that we wanted to say and the tone that we wanted to say. Yeah. And so we did this. And I was like, wow, it's so true that just because someone is maybe even good at social media or has a great eye for a picture doesn't necessarily mean that they are the right person for that kind of strategy of marketing behind it.

00:32:10 - Tayler Hollman
Yeah. And people who are in this messy middle phase, you know, it's often tied to a capacity problem. Right. And so when you have that capacity problem, you're like, I'll just, I'll hire someone. Right. Cause I have some money that I can make that investment. And so that's how people end up in this situation where you've hired a human who's very competent in some ways, but marketing is so multifaceted that, I mean, even when I think forward is into, like, when I grow out, my team at Enji to help me do marketing, the person who's going to be great at social media management is not also going to be going to be able to do email marketing. Those are two totally different beasts, totally different skill sets. And so you need to hire appropriately for all of those things.

00:32:58 - Dana Kadwell
And so I really think, though, like, so when I think back to, like, our, like, when we started hiring people, there was this fear of part time, there was this fear of even remote work. And this, this is like, back in 2014, 2015. And certainly there are parts of our job and our company where you have to be full time. So we had the venue. Yeah, but we had this fear of part time people because we're like, well, they need security of a full time salary and all this stuff, whatever. And so you would almost cannibalize what they were good at, like, because you say, okay, well, you're somewhat good at this, somewhat good at this, somewhat good at this. And I'm going to give you all of these tasks, and then they inevitably are doing a mid grade work on something that needs to be great. And I was recently, I'm part of, I'm on the nace national board, and they had just done some restructuring and stuff, and the executive director just said it best. He's like, we were taking these people who are really good at one thing, really great at it, and then we expect them to be really good at these other five things, and he's like, no, humanity is good at six things. Like, nobody is going to achieve what we need them to achieve, but we just kind of, like, cannibalize these jobs. And it was like a moment. I was like, yeah, like, 100%. And so they've moved to this model of more, like, outsource, doing a lot of outsourcing. It's so interesting to see how the last ten years, how that would have never even been a thought because it would have been so scary to think about it and how now it's so common to have these people who are making. Living, like, their life and making a full time salary with, like, five or six clients that are being outsourced to them. You know, like, it's like a whole different landscape. I think that's hard for people who I think are in the messy middle, who knew life before, I would say, like, before the 2020, that it doesn't seem feasible to do that, you know?

00:34:48 - Tayler Hollman
Totally. Yeah, the gig economy is real, man. Like, yes, I realize that a lot of people are placing flexibility at the tippy top of what they want out of their. Their workload. And, you know, so that's why a lot of these folks are self employed, and they're like, hey, I can have that flexibility if I have five clients who I just write blogs for. Right? So don't be afraid to try to find. I would really encourage people to find the right person to do each piece because the marketing unicorn is a. Is a unicorn. So, you know, like, you're. You're fooling yourself if you think you're going to hire one person to, like, cross sectionally do all of the marketing things for you.

00:35:35 - Dana Kadwell
Yes, yes. It's so true. And we realized that, like, there's a couple things we have out week. We have a marketing director, but there's things where we recognize, like, it's not her strong suit to do XYZ. So we're going to outsource those pieces that need. That need to perform at this level. It's not because she doesn't want to. It doesn't have effort. It's a lot of it's education gap, honestly, knowledge gap more than anything. But, yeah, I asked this because this is actually probably a selfish question. As we were recreating some of these, we were kind of resetting our team job descriptions and whatnot. And one of the things that we started putting into our sops this past year was metrics, KPI's, how do we know we're successful? And so I'm, like, writing this thing for our marketing director, and I'm like, how would we know we're successful? Is it our followers should grow by 1%, or should I see x amount more leads? And we have a really good baseline because we have a lot of analytics on it, but I don't know what's considered good growth.

00:36:37 - Courtney Hopper
Reasonable growth.

00:36:38 - Dana Kadwell
Like, reasonable growth.

00:36:39 - Courtney Hopper
What's a reasonable expectation for you?

00:36:41 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, if you're hitting it hard and you're putting all your energy and effort and you're changing, you're answering those questions, like, what is the problem? You have the right people in the right place. Like, what should we be seeing in terms of, like, metrics in our marketing?

00:36:53 - Tayler Hollman
You know, it's hard to say, like, give you a growth percentage for each thing. And, you know, that's something that, like, at ng, we have, you know, a very complicated spreadsheet pro forma that I'm sure. I hate it so much. It's literally, I'm like, oh, God, I hate it so much. Like, I'm scrubbing around in my. In my chair. And, you know, it baked into that proforma are month over month growth percentages. And I'm just like, those seem really aggressive.

00:37:22 - Tayler Hollman
Like, can we hit those? I don't know, man. And so I personally don't like to put percentages on things, but I also have, like, I've not. Running a venue is, like, such a different animal than what I've ever done. Wherever putting percentages on things actually makes sense. So I'm coming at this from the solopreneur aspect of it where you're like, I don't really care about percentages.

00:37:50 - Tayler Hollman
So I think for me, my knee jerk reaction is it's less about percentage growth as dollar amount. That's something where you can. That is a very tangible thing that someone can go chase down and, you know, like, hey, this is realistic or not to book an extra 20 grand in business over this next quarter year. Over year, right, versus the percentage. It's just a little bit abstract for folks to really know. So that's the way that I would look at something like that. But, you know, when it comes down to what all of your marketing is trying to do, it's trying to get you leads. And so knowing not just how many leads you're getting every month, but where those leads are coming from, right. What marketing channels are they coming from? What are those lead sources? You know, that all basically is saying the same thing just using different words.

00:38:47 - Tayler Hollman
And the reason you want to do that is because with marketing, you want to double down on the things that work, right? And then you want to like, start to move the things that are nothing or not effective or less effective, just like let them slide into the background and. But most wedding pros and service based, you know, businesses that I've talked to, we have a, I mean, and I was guilty of this too, before.

00:39:13 - Tayler Hollman
I like, was like, taylor, hey, yo, track some. Track some numbers. You know, in our, in our inquiry forms, we would ask, like, how do you find me? How did you find me? But then it never gets aggregated anywhere. And so you just have like 100 million emails with all this information. But because it doesn't live in one place, you can't use it to make decisions off of. And so knowing whether or not your referrals and if referrals are such a huge part of your, your marketing and lead source, like breaking down, like actually tracking, like, who are the planners, who are the photographers, who are the venues, who are referring you business, you want to know, like, these are the people that are really like, I should be pouring all of my human energy into making sure our relationship is watertight.

00:40:01 - Tayler Hollman
You want to track things like that. You want to know, hey, is Instagram actually giving me leads? Cause maybe it's not. And then you can just relinquish yourself of the pressure of needing to show up on Instagram all of the time or those advertise, right? Like all of these things that you're doing, all of these levers that you're pulling, if you don't know what it's actually doing for you, then you're just going to keep spending resources on it.

00:40:27 - Tayler Hollman
So the setting dollar like sales goals that are dollar based I think is a really good KPI to set for someone in the sales space. But then on the marketing side, it's like, where are the leads coming from? And then to go one layer deeper, to use like your website as an example, if one of your sort of bigger goals is, hey, I want to make sure that folks are finding us on Google, then you should be tracking how many visitors are hitting your website every month.

00:41:00 - Tayler Hollman
Because if you're investing more in blogging and SEO, then you want to make sure that that number is on the rise or how many page views are like, which means if one person lands on your website, how many pages are they going to? Right? Like, you don't want one person to only view one page. Cause that just means they're bouncing. You want one person to view a couple pages. So there are all these things that you can start to track based on where you're really concentrating your marketing efforts to know, hey, this works. This could work if we do things differently.

00:41:40 - Dana Kadwell
Do you feel like marketing gives you answers for the messy metal? Like, do you feel like there is a thing where you, maybe you put your effort in something and marketing, you're not hitting those metrics, not hitting the KPI or the sales growth or whatever. And do you feel like that then tells you either I'm not, I'm hitting the wrong client or I need to, I need to maybe scale back. Like, do you feel like marketing has that little, like, you know, whisper in your ear of, like, this isn't working, you should maybe like, pivot your business.

00:42:08 - Tayler Hollman
You know, that's, I wish that it, I wish that it did. Like, objectively. And this is why marketing is so challenging is because there's part of marketing that's just the mechanics of doing the things, which is tied to the consistency problem for a lot of folks. But then there's the art part, which is wrapped up in the messaging and the visual content, right. And like, how you make people feel with your marketing. And the art part is hard to do. Like, I, as a marketer, struggle with that all the time. Hi, my name is Taylor, and I am rewriting Ng's homepage for the third goddamn time already. And it's only been a year, right? Like, it's just a, it's just a hard thing to nail because, you know, we already talked about things are always changing, but also, like, you just have to go so deep on the psychology side of things to get to that point where like, dude, that works. So, you know, when we're talking about someone who is in the messy middle because they got lazy, then I would really just encourage them to spin your marketing machine back up. Focus on the mechanics of doing your marketing so that you are more visible. Because that's what marketing is. It's making sure that people can see that you exist, that you offer services, and that those services are valuable to them. So that's what I would recommend over there. But for the folks who are more established businesses, you know, sometimes they also got a little complacent and need to just like, focus on the mechanics again, because referrals, here's my, here's my asterisk soapbox thing about referral marketing. Um, for all the folks who have ever in their lives told me I don't need to do marketing because they all come from referrals. That means you're literally relying on other people to do 100% of your marketing for you, and that's terrifying.

00:44:05 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah.

00:44:06 - Tayler Hollman
So don't do that. But then if you are in finding yourself in the messy middle because you've grown, then that's the art, the messaging. That's what you need to focus on in order to feel like, oh, this is working. I'm feeling traction. I'm seeing traction in my numbers. So it's one of those two camps. Start doing it again or rework what you're putting out there.

00:44:35 - Dana Kadwell
That makes a lot of sense, too. I think it really tracks. Like, just even thinking about where we are, because we're definitely. I feel like in a season of messy middle, and that makes so much sense of, like, the. Even the visual mechanics versus art that resonates so much.

00:44:50 - Courtney Hopper
I think we're having an art problem.

00:44:52 - Dana Kadwell
We are having an art problem. Yeah.

00:44:53 - Tayler Hollman
Which is great, because we know that you know how to draw, so. Yeah. Wow.

00:44:57 - Courtney Hopper
There you go. So we do have that in our back pocket.

00:45:00 - Tayler Hollman
Yeah.

00:45:00 - Dana Kadwell
You know? Yeah, it's my next career.

00:45:04 - Courtney Hopper
Oh, wow. Okay. I didn't know that.

00:45:07 - Dana Kadwell
It is not.

00:45:08 - Courtney Hopper
You never know. Honestly.

00:45:09 - Dana Kadwell
My daughter even explained because she actually has some, like, some skill. And, yeah, during COVID we would, like, sketch things out, and she's like, you're terrible. I was like, I am aware. I am absolutely awful at this.

00:45:22 - Courtney Hopper
Yes.

00:45:23 - Dana Kadwell
I can't draw anything. Yeah. Well, this has been, like, so, so helpful. I feel like I just had a consulting session with you for free.

00:45:32 - Courtney Hopper
So send us your bill later.

00:45:33 - Dana Kadwell
Yes, I know, but so helpful. I think this is, like, really, really, really tangible things. But I know there's people that are probably going to want to ask more questions or be able to connect with you or even maybe hire you. So how can our listeners get in touch with you and find you?

00:45:45 - Tayler Hollman
Yeah, so, like I said earlier, geriatric millennials, so you will find me on Instagram. Don't try to have a conversation with me on TikTok because I just post content there, and I'm like, bye. Ng's Instagram handle is enjo. And that's where I'm spending the majority of my time. Because you all learn, when you launch a startup, that's 150% of all of the things go right there. But our website is Ng Co, and I'm on my phone always is telling me I'm spending too much time on it. But so, like, I'm always there to answer questions, bounce ideas around. I mean, if people are like, I dug what I heard. I would really encourage you to do a free trial of Enji because it's literally me as a marketing consultant turned into software that helps you create a marketing strategy. It spits out marketing ideas and tasks based on your goals and customers, and then it's got the tools baked into it to help you actually do the strategy, which was the thing that, you know, always made me sad about my, my actual clients and what they didn't do after getting the plan. So it's very much a make the plan, do the plan, and then track all those metrics that we talked about.

00:46:59 - Dana Kadwell
Oh, I love that. Yeah, that's like a game changer.

00:47:02 - Courtney Hopper
Actually sound like a game changer.

00:47:03 - Dana Kadwell
Yes.

00:47:04 - Tayler Hollman
I'm trying, I'm trying. So, you know, I'm trying to change the game because I honestly feel like, you know, business owners who have to do their own marketing have not been set up for success in this space. Right. Like, we've just had to mishmash together a bunch of pieces of software. And when you don't already understand the marketing machine that it is you're trying to build, when you're doing it across multiple platforms, you're like, you're just kind of like, hopeless and floating out at sea. So that's really my goal is to help people really understand what it is that they're even trying to accomplish with this thing called marketing and then make sure that they see where they're having successes and where they can, like, say bye bye to others. Because, you know, it's, I don't think that, I don't think it's fair that we haven't had something to do a really good job at this really important piece of our business.

00:47:55 - Dana Kadwell
Yeah, I totally agree. And, like, even, like, even for us, like I said, I said a couple of times, we have somebody, it's still something we have to constantly, I feel like because we're the visionaries and the owners CEO's, we still have to constantly, like, direct it, direct message, you know, and direct the message and all that stuff. And sometimes I feel very lost, like, what is my point? What is our point in Instagram? What is our point in all the other marketing that we do and our print ads and stuff like that? So that sounds super helpful. Yeah. Awesome. Well, it's been so great chatting for you today.

00:48:29 - Tayler Hollman
It's been, I love nerding out on marketing and business with people who also love it. So, like, I'm so glad that we got to have this conversation and I'm slightly bummed that I didn't just, like, take a leap of faith and yell your names across the room at the NC. Yeah, you should. I should have. I should have. Life fails.

00:48:46 - Dana Kadwell
Yes.

00:48:47 - Courtney Hopper
But we might see you in those circles, though, when we're at conferences and stuff. So maybe we'll run into each other.

00:48:51 - Tayler Hollman
Hopefully. Hopefully.

00:49:01 - Courtney Hopper
To learn more about our hustles, visit us on the gram at cndevents at the BradfordnC at Anthem House and Hustleandgather. If you're interested in learning more about our speaking training, venue, consulting, or our conference coming up, head to our website@hustleandgather.com.

00:49:17 - Dana Kadwell
And if you love us and you love this show, we'd be more than honored if you left a rating and a review.

00:49:22 - Courtney Hopper
This podcast is a production of your fluence. I'm Courtney.

00:49:25 - Dana Kadwell
And I'm Dana, and we'll talk with.

00:49:26 - Courtney Hopper
You next time on hustle and gather.