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As a small business owner, you need to be a lot of things to make your business go—but you don't have to be a marketer alone. Join host Dave Charest, Director of Small Business Success at Constant Contact, and Kelsi Carter, Brand Production Coordinator, as they explore what it really takes to market your business. Even if marketing's not your thing! You'll hear from small business leaders just like you along with industry experts as they share their stories, challenges, and best advice to get real results. This is the Be a Marketer podcast! New episodes every Thursday!
Today on episode 36 of the Be a Marketer podcast, you'll hear from a business owner who turned a negative into a positive. And I'm sharing why only you can create the content that connects with customers. This is the Be A Marker to podcast. Be a marketer. My name is Dave Charest, director of small business success at Constant Contact.
Dave Charest:And I've been helping small business owners like you make sense of online marketing for over 16 years. You can be a marketer, and I'm here to help. Well, hello, friend, and thanks for joining me for another edition of the be a marketer podcast. You know, I remember when I first started my consulting business way back when. And at the time, I was blogging on a regular basis to share my point of view on marketing topics along with personal stories about my experiences and how they related to marketing.
Dave Charest:Now, there are a few things that were really important about this process back then, and and they're still important today. 1, writing allows me to organize my thoughts and get crisp on what I'm trying to convey. 2, the articles I wrote were great to share as a follow-up to conversations that I would have with current and potential clients. This action really was a valuable tool for getting us on the same page and getting buy in more easily. And 3, it also helped me participate in conversations that were happening online.
Dave Charest:As more people came to my site to read my writing, they got to know, like, and trust me enough to wanna do business with me or recommend me to others. Now for the reasons I just stated, this process is still important today, but there is a major difference now versus then. Today, there are many more people creating content and so much of that content is cookie cutter, meaning it doesn't matter much who wrote it. Add in the latest batches of content created with artificial intelligence and you've got even more meaningless noise for people to sift through. Now don't get me wrong.
Dave Charest:AI generated content can work great for what I would say promotional style messages. But when it comes to that more in-depth content, it lacks the human elements that actually connect people to it. Human emotion and experience are the items that bring content to life. So wherever you can, inject yourself into the content that you're creating. Your voice and experience are the things that can bring your content to the top and allow you to truly connect and build relationships with your customers.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, if there's a poster child for using personal stories to make with potential clients, it's today's guest, Ed Doherty, a business consultant and owner of Ambrosia Landon, LLC. After being furloughed during the pandemic at almost 70 years old, Ed could tell people weren't interested in hiring an old guy. Well, that's when Ed decided to turn a negative into a positive. He realized that if he was a consultant, people would think he was smart because of the color of his hair And so he incorporated and started his practice. Now Ed reached out to friends and offered pro bono consulting to stay sharp and learn his craft.
Dave Charest:Eventually, that turned into paying gigs. Now today, he's marketing his business by falling back on something he did when he was a supervisor and he's also learning some new tricks through Constant Contact's marketing adviser service. He meets monthly with his personal marketing adviser, Steven Norman, to discuss marketing strategies and the next steps for implementation. Now the reality is Ed never really thought he'd start his own business but he's found that it's actually worked out better for him. Let's pick up the conversation there.
Ed Doherty:Well, aside from a boss, my income has increased. I supervised for decades, and now I get to do the best part of supervising. I mentor people and coach people and train people, but I don't have to discipline them. And if they're not doing well, I don't have to really deal with that.
Dave Charest:Yeah. That changes the dynamic a little bit. Right?
Ed Doherty:I think the other thing about being in business for yourself is when you are a salaried employee, you have some interesting things and some boring things. I have nothing boring. I I'm working on someone's high priority, fast moving, fascinating stuff, all the time, and I'm switching from this to this to this to this. And so it's it's it's it's very stimulating.
Dave Charest:So tell me a little bit about that then. Like, what are the types of things that or what are the types of projects are you looking for? What are the types of things you're working on?
Ed Doherty:I'm not looking for anything in particular, but in my repertoire, I helped a COVID test company penetrate from the United Kingdom penetrate the US market, working with a company that has an app for expectant moms to get their ultrasounds right to their phone that they can post on social media. I'm working with a public relations firm to help employee engagement, and I'm working with an agency on a strategic plan, their their 4 year strategic plan. And I've also done leadership training for many companies.
Dave Charest:Gotcha. Well, what can you tell me about, I guess, your background. Right? What are you drawing on to to kind of use at Ambrose?
Ed Doherty:I'm the oldest of 8 kids. So, mentoring is built into my DNA. For many years, I was in the restaurant industry in a variety of, situations. I manage restaurants and supervise restaurants. One time, I was the human resource officer for an 11,000 employee company.
Ed Doherty:I was also president of a franchise company with 22 restaurants. So I have a lot of varied experience with strategy, doing things to scale, developing people, and that's primarily what I do. I engage in strategic planning and leadership development.
Dave Charest:Gotcha. So I guess you're you're, what, you're 3 years into this now, a little over 3 years into this. Yep. What would you say are some of the first kind of, if you have run into any, what are some of the challenges that you've been kind of running into in in terms of starting your own thing?
Ed Doherty:Well, I'll go back to what I said about salary. I have clients, and I have to plan, but they don't have to plan. And they we're not married forever.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Ed Doherty:And so I had some very lucrative situations that, for one reason or other, business reasons, disappeared. And but when you are devoting your time to your clients, you can't really recruit or market because that's a separate activity, and you don't know if you're going to have the time.
Dave Charest:How do you try to combat that? Right? Is there anything that you do to try to make sure that you always have a pipeline of customers that you're working on? Like, talk me through that a bit.
Ed Doherty:Well, I don't know if you've heard of Constant Contact.
Dave Charest:Oh, I have heard of them. Yeah.
Ed Doherty:So when I supervised during the email era, I would send one email a week to my entire team. This is the deadline. This is coming up. That kinda stuff. But I would always end it with a commentary, what I call the commentary.
Ed Doherty:And sometimes the commentary would be a self management lesson. Sometimes it would be a business principle. Sometimes it would be humorous. Sometimes I ran the gamut. And as soon as I got furloughed, I made a list of the hundreds of contacts in my Outlook, and I started doing a Wednesday web log, which was basically a commentary, and I started sending it to them.
Ed Doherty:And I did it for a couple of reasons. I wanted to write. I wanted to stay in touch, but I also didn't wanna be forgotten. And I couldn't see all these people. I couldn't reach out.
Ed Doherty:You know, I didn't have a real reason. So I started sending the Wednesday weblog, and it's actually named Wednesday because I didn't finish it in time, and I had to send it out on Wednesday. And I send it to, hundreds of people every week at 4:30 in the morning on Wednesday, so I know it's at the top of their inbox. And working with Steve Norman, I have somewhere between a 72 and a 78% open rate.
Dave Charest:So we were talking a little bit about the extraordinary open rate that you have. Tell me a little bit about well, 2 things, I guess. You started doing that. What has been the response? And it sounds like people are looking forward to that content, and, like, what do you attribute that open rate to?
Ed Doherty:It's damn interesting. Are you kidding me? It's it's people can't wait to read it. And I think there's a couple of things. I think that I have been very thoughtful about the title.
Ed Doherty:So, for example, Wednesday's web blog was about graffiti.
Dave Charest:Mhmm.
Ed Doherty:And the title was painting without permission. Mhmm. And I compared the graffiti going into North Station to the graffiti going into South Station. And North Station graffiti is way superior.
Dave Charest:You've heard it here first.
Ed Doherty:Yeah. So I think it's the content. And I think that because some of what I write is inspirational and some of it is humorous and some of it is solid business advice. And remember, my hair, people know I'm old, and I've been around. And some percentage of the people that get it used to work with me.
Ed Doherty:You know what I mean? So it's a it's a way for them to keep in touch. I think the other thing is I write like I talk. And so I had someone in North Carolina send me a note, someone I hadn't seen in 25 years, who's on my list, gets the weblog. He sends me a note saying, I can hear you when I read it, and so I just have one voice.
Ed Doherty:This is how I write.
Dave Charest:Yeah. How does, I guess, the response, you know, the open rates, the you know, your clicks, all of that stuff, like, how does that make you feel, I guess?
Ed Doherty:Well, it makes me feel confident enough to put them in a book, which is what I've done.
Dave Charest:Oh, tell me more about that.
Ed Doherty:So I have about, I wanna say, 300,000 words so far I put in the Wednesday web blog. I narrowed that down to 83,285.
Dave Charest:Is a roundabout?
Ed Doherty:Yeah. That's a rough rough estimate. And I put them into book format in chapter format. So, for example, when I was 60, I started running, and I ran my first marathon at 70. And so I write stories about running a marathon.
Ed Doherty:And what was that like? One time, when I was practice running in my town, one of the American flags from the poles light poles was on the ground. And it was 6 o'clock in the morning. There were I saw I picked it up and ran with it. So I'm running down Main Street with a flag, and everybody's honking.
Ed Doherty:You know, I write about that. And so my the title of my running stories is not running on empty, and I put those in. I also have a son who uses a wheelchair, and I write stories about how we developed we played ping pong, and I sat in an office chair and played ping pong in a chair with him. And so the title of that chapter is Rockin' and Rollin'. And so I have 15 or 16 chapters, each with 3 or 4 stories in them.
Ed Doherty:My first summer job in college, for example, I worked in a shipyard, and I was a pipe fitter, 3rd class unskilled. That was my official title. Now you want someone's self esteem to get high, you call them 3rd class on skill. And that's actually the first story in the book about when I worked in the shipyard.
Dave Charest:What are you moving towards with the book? Like, what's the ultimate goal with that?
Ed Doherty:The ultimate planned goal and the ultimate actual goal, I think, turned into be 2 different things. The the actual goal is it's gonna be my legacy because it's gonna live long after me because there's personal stories and messages that I've been preaching or espousing for years. Originally, my goal was just to say I wrote a book. There was just something about that. You know?
Ed Doherty:When I was in college, I was a sports writer, so I I've been published, if you know what I mean.
Dave Charest:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Ed Doherty:I do a lot of reading. I just wanted to be able to say I was an author. It might actually help my business, you know, because I can say I'm a published author. But what's actually interesting now, kinda going back to Constant Contact, because I've been I have, what, a 170, maybe, weblogs that I've written since I start this. Sometimes when I'm consulting with someone, I will say to them, I'll tell you what.
Ed Doherty:I wrote a web blog about this. I'm gonna send you the link, and it illustrates my point. Yeah. So it's come in handy so far.
Dave Charest:I love that. I think it's similar situations when I was consulting too. I I would do that all the time. It's, like, amazing to able to have a conversation with somebody and be like, here. You know what?
Dave Charest:Let me send you this because this will help cement the idea a little better. And then it's like, oh, okay. It really helps kind of a low effort way to I shouldn't say low effort way, but, like, an easy way to get people kind of on board with your ideas and things like that too. I love that.
Ed Doherty:To me, credibility is kind of a 360. It comes from various angles. Yeah. If it came from this was published or someone else referenced me or something like that, I mean, you never know what's gonna make the difference.
Dave Charest:So when you think about where you are with your business now, what are your priorities right now?
Ed Doherty:I want my clients to kiss my ass.
Dave Charest:Elaborate, please. Or maybe not. I'm not sure.
Ed Doherty:I want my clients to absolutely love working with me and the results I get. Mhmm. And I just wanna impress the you know what out of them.
Dave Charest:Yeah.
Ed Doherty:That's my goal. Because I have no other validation. I don't work for someone who can give me a raise
Dave Charest:Right. Right.
Ed Doherty:Or give me a certificate. I need that client feedback, and so that's where I am. Now with everything I just told you, one of my best courses is time management because I know how to manage my time.
Dave Charest:What you're learning, right, from moving to working for somebody else than working for yourself and running your own thing, I'll start with strengths. What are you discovering are your strengths in that scenario?
Ed Doherty:My strengths are I walk into most conversations with the attitude that you weren't around when I made my mistakes. I have been shocked at simple things that I say, and people go, oh, I didn't really think it was revelation revolution. I didn't really think it was innovative, but oh, And I think it's because I have so much experience. The 15 years before I went into business, I managed a nonprofit, and I got to interact with c suite guys here and leaders here. And I just it was kind of a capstone on my management or leadership career.
Ed Doherty:So that is really what I tell people. And the if your question was, what surprises you about being a consultant, it would be how smart people think I am.
Dave Charest:When you look at this then, right, and you're doing these things, how do you think of it then from, like, a a business perspective or a marketing perspective? Right? Like, what is that allowing you to do by sharing these stories?
Ed Doherty:Well, I think anybody who's in business by themselves is selling themselves. I mean, that's what you have to do. You have to sell yourself. And so I'm selling my knowledge, my humor, my history. If you are reading my weblogs, you know me pretty well, and you know what I've overcome.
Ed Doherty:I had cataract surgery earlier this year, and I wrote about it. And that it was I can see clearly now. But it was terrifying living through it, and I shared that story. So I think people know me. I think that anybody who keeps reading it is more likely when I have time and I approach them, is more likely to utilize me.
Ed Doherty:Yeah. I had lunch with someone, well known name in Boston. I had lunch with him on Wednesday. We're just catching up. I was talking about the book, told him a couple of the stories, and he said, you know, we really should hire you to do some stuff for us.
Ed Doherty:And it wasn't what I intended, but in my prior life managing a nonprofit, I used to describe myself as a professional lunch eater because I was either going for donations or volunteers or both. And so I'm comfortable, sushi or pizza, I can work it out.
Dave Charest:We'll make it work. Well, tell me a little bit. What's a typical day look like for you these days then?
Ed Doherty:Well, in the virtual world, I do a couple of days where I am just on Zoom. I schedule meetings. I have as many regular meetings with clients as I can. So same time every week to enable me to schedule that. On Fridays so that's Monday through Thursday.
Ed Doherty:On Fridays, I do pro bono work. I help people that I know or work with me or are looking for a job because I don't supervise anybody anymore. I wanna have that feeling of helping and developing. Tuesday Wednesday night, I volunteer. I have several organizations that I volunteer for, and I've managed to direct those Zoom calls or events to Tuesday and Wednesday night.
Ed Doherty:Every Monday night is date night. I take my wife out to dinner every Monday night, and on Saturday morning, I take her to breakfast. And I have my 50th wedding anniversary coming up next year, so who's gonna tell me I'm wrong?
Dave Charest:I was gonna ask how long. Yeah. My we we have our 20th coming up soon, so congratulations to you.
Ed Doherty:It's a big milestone. Yeah. Right. Making it through 5 is a big milestone.
Dave Charest:All of it. All of it. Particularly these days. Congratulations to you both. I wanna talk about some marketing stuff and some constant contact specific stuff.
Dave Charest:But before we get there, I guess, what would you say is the the biggest thing that you've learned over your experience and over the years that you find yourself applying to the business now?
Ed Doherty:Work hard when no one's looking. I actually developed that when I worked at the shipyard because I saw how people work when no one was working. I think we're all whether we realize it or not, we're our own judge. We judge ourselves, and I find when I work hard, I just feel better about myself. My self esteem is higher.
Ed Doherty:I feel I sleep better. Full speed ahead. Let's go.
Dave Charest:Love that. So tell me a little bit about what's your point of view on marketing and how important would you say it is to your business?
Ed Doherty:I would say marketing is important to my business right now from a reputational point of view. As I mentioned before, I'm sharing my knowledge, my humor, my toughness, if you will, for overcoming this, that, or the other thing, my wisdom. And I think that I'm creating maybe a glow, and the book is in that same vein for when I need it. I have not had to solicit. I've intentionally stayed away from, if you're interested in a time management class, in my web blog.
Ed Doherty:I've kept it completely innocent. Occasionally, because I've done some charity fundraising running, I will solicit in that for things like that. But to me, marketing right now is a 100% image, and that is the way that I'm going to get more business is based on my image.
Dave Charest:So you're using Constant Contact. You got your web blog. You you're sending your newsletter. You're using LinkedIn, you mentioned. Anything else, or are those your main is that your focus?
Ed Doherty:That's it. That's what I'm doing.
Dave Charest:How much time would you say you spend on, I guess, those marketing related activities?
Ed Doherty:Well, if I'm writing an original weblog, and sometimes I repurpose them. Like, every 4th July, I do the running with the flag thing.
Dave Charest:Gotcha.
Ed Doherty:I have a waffle or snood I do on Thanksgiving. What I do is I sit down. I write. I try to write it all in a burst. That usually takes 45 minutes to an hour.
Ed Doherty:Takes about that long to get it into Constant Contact and paragraph it and format it in photos. I use a lot of photos in my blogs. And then I print a copy for my wife to proof, and I accept all of her changes.
Dave Charest:And this is why you've been married for 50 years.
Ed Doherty:And then once once that's done, then I I preschedule it in Constant Contact for Wednesday at 4:30, and I prepost it to social media. And then I just sit back and wait for the accolades to come in.
Dave Charest:Well, so tell me about do you get a lot of responses back once you send those out?
Ed Doherty:Yes. Yes. And it depends. Sometimes, I'll give you an example. I got a trophy as the most improved skater when I was 15 at a hockey school, but I really couldn't skate any better.
Ed Doherty:I didn't think I could. I got knocked on my butt the 1st day of this hockey school. And by the 5th day, I just said, oh, the heck with it, and I flew around the ice. I got this long letter from a woman in South Carolina whose son didn't make the travel hockey team and was distraught. And she had him read it, and it remotivated him to try out again.
Ed Doherty:You know, you can't buy stuff like that.
Dave Charest:Amazing.
Ed Doherty:You know what I mean?
Dave Charest:Yeah. So, you know, you mentioned when you first get started and you're sending to, like, your contact list and these people that already know you, and then, obviously, they're I will talk a little bit about this. I'm gonna talk about how you're kinda growing that. But I guess, what can you tell me about the role of this community, I guess, that is yours? Right?
Dave Charest:What role does that play in your success and as a as a business owner, do you think?
Ed Doherty:Well, I think they're there for me, and I think they are future customers or clients or whatever you I think think this way. For 3 years, some of these people have been getting messages from me. They open it. It goes out at 4:30. They open it at 6 o'clock.
Ed Doherty:Okay? And for 3 years, they they may have never talked to me, have never seen me, but they are are getting Ed Doherty every single week, and they're not disappointed. And I know that because they keep opening him up. I had a situation where I needed someone who knew something about architecture. I was referred to someone in New York City that had an architectural firm, and they wanted some advice from me.
Ed Doherty:And I had the president of an architectural firm in Boston who was a reader, and I reached out to him even though I hadn't seen him in years. And he he sent me a long explanation that helped me in my conversation. So it's not somewhere out there, among the hundreds of readers, I have a personal board of directors. I just haven't given them that title yet. But I have these people that I know that I can draw on.
Ed Doherty:And in fact, my current clients were not clients 3 years ago, but were subscribers to the Wednesday webinar.
Dave Charest:Got it. Love that. Love that. So, okay, let's talk a little bit about here then. How did you I guess, what brought you to Constant Contact?
Ed Doherty:I had heard of it. I hadn't really used it or seen you know, I I wasn't really sure. I had heard of Constant Contact, and I was looking for, I guess, what I would call one stop shopping expertise. I knew I was gonna do this on a weekly basis. I knew Constant Contact was an email oriented, email driven platform, And I figured, why not start there?
Ed Doherty:Why not dive in, try to master it, and go from there? Because I I don't spend a lot of time on accounting. I don't spend a lot of time on marketing. You know what I mean? I spend a lot of time servicing my clients, so I wanted something that was efficient.
Ed Doherty:And I have to tell you, I was in shock once I learned how to post on social media as you know, look at this face. This is not a social media guy. The other thing I really liked about it and I still like about it, like, maybe the most, is these monthly check ins. It's so valuable to I I guess you theoretically call me a small business owner. Well, I don't think of myself that, but I'm a small business owner.
Ed Doherty:But, like, I'll be cruising through the month, and I'll wonder about something. You know? So I'll make a note, and then we'll have a conversation, and I'll think of something else. And sometimes I get everything done, you know, that I talk about, and other times, I don't. But you would earlier, we were talking about my open rate.
Ed Doherty:So I pay attention to those segments. Okay? And I track who opens my stuff. And I'm at my brother's house now, and he didn't open a bunch of my web logs. And let me tell you, I reached out to him right away.
Dave Charest:Does it make family dinner weird now? Is this No. No. No.
Ed Doherty:He was my only sibling that was. Anyway but I do reach out to people that don't open, and I say with a friendly email, I say, I noticed that you haven't been reading it. Do you wanna you know, should I stop sending it? Is it going to spam? And that's one of the ways I've gotten my my open rate up is that I I'm paying attention.
Dave Charest:So you mentioned the monthly check-in, so I wanna talk about this. So this is obviously part of our marketing adviser program. So you meet with with Steven, and you meet with him, you know, monthly check ins to talk about marketing stuff. I guess my my first question, I guess, tell me a little bit about your experience with that. How else has that been working for you?
Ed Doherty:Well, the first thing you should know is he spoon feeds me. He knows how old I am and my retention level, And so he just does little stuff at a time. Now I try to prior to our appointment, I do some tracking. So I try to send things to him in advance of our conversations. I know that he reads some of the web logs.
Ed Doherty:Yeah. I know he doesn't have time to read them all, but he he definitely reads some of the weblogs. But, for example, I might say, I had no idea what a hashtag was. Okay? And so, you know, 1 month, we hashtagged it.
Ed Doherty:And my LinkedIn views doubled or tripled. You know what I'm saying? So it's not we're not really I guess we're talking theory, but we're talking stuff that I need to know right now.
Dave Charest:Gotcha. So you when you started, you had a list that you kinda brought with you, and then you've, I assume, you've been trying to grow that. Are there any particular things that or strategies you've been trying to do to help you get more people on the list?
Ed Doherty:I have a link in every edition. I've done some limited posting on LinkedIn, like, if you'd like to join the other smart subscribers. At the end of my web log, I list the states and the countries where I have readers. Oh, cool. And so sometimes someone will say to me, hey.
Ed Doherty:I know someone in New Zealand. I'm gonna ask them to subscribe. You know? So it's that it's that kind of thing.
Dave Charest:Are you doing any type of once you have people in there, do you do any list management? Do you, like, segment people? Are you doing anything like that? Talk me through what you're doing there.
Ed Doherty:Yeah. So once a month, believe it or not, once a month, I generate I download an Excel spreadsheet with everybody on it, and then I go into each person individually, one at a time, and I make a note of the last weblog they opened and what percentage of the weblogs they opened. And then I target those that have a lower percentage or haven't opened it in a while, and I reach out to them. So I aggressively manage that list.
Dave Charest:What do you think it would be like trying to run your business without Constant Contact?
Ed Doherty:Honestly, I probably wouldn't have the passion for the business that I have now. It's done a couple of things. So it's allowed me to express myself. It's allowed me to stay in touch with a wide population. You know, to be honest with you, the thing I'm most proud of is that I've made every Wednesday at 4:30.
Ed Doherty:I haven't missed the week. And so that when you work for yourself, having self discipline or having no one setting deadlines for me except constant contact, and that's I've made it every week, and I'm very proud of that. I haven't missed a week. I have missed a couple of 4 thirties, but same day. And I think that it's part of me.
Ed Doherty:I think people think if you said the word Wednesday, weblog, and you said weblog to hundreds of people, they would think of me. And if you said Ed Doherty, they would say, oh, Wednesday weblog. So it's part of my identity. My book title couldn't be Wednesday weblog. I guess it could be.
Ed Doherty:But my book title is observations at the speed of life because that's really what they are. They're my observations about challenges, business. One of my most popular ones has to do with the psychology of returning supermarket carts to the corral or inside in the different I
Dave Charest:feel like this is a big, like, Massachusetts thing too. We're always like, come on. Put the cart back.
Ed Doherty:Unless it's raining, in which case you can leave it any way you want. Go ahead. Leave it in the handicap space. No one cares.
Dave Charest:So on this idea of of observation, what would be your number one tip to someone else getting started with Constant Contact?
Ed Doherty:Learn it. Learn it. It's so efficient. My skill level with Constant Contact today is incomparable to when I started. I would say that I spend a third of the time physically managing the process.
Ed Doherty:I can find a photo, take a photo, download it, put it in and bang. It's in the story just like that. I have the app on my phone, and that is the best way to get photos into. And I do a lot of photos, so I probably have 5 to 10 photos a week.
Dave Charest:Ed, best piece of Business advice for other businesses out there.
Ed Doherty:Deliver. Deliver. I think everything would be better if people delivered what they said they were gonna do. I believe that we are about to enter or already in the era of authenticity. I think once this election's over, I think the era of America is gonna end.
Ed Doherty:I think people are tired of being led around, and and you can even see it in television ads now. It's just more authentic. It's more straightforward. It's not it's not the snake oil salesman anymore. And so I think deliver and be authentic.
Ed Doherty:I think that's the best message I could give somebody.
Dave Charest:Well, friend, let's recap some items from that discussion. Number 1, write to illustrate your points and provide insights. As I mentioned at the top of the show, your stories, insights, and expertise are what separate you as a consultant. Lean into that with the content that you create. You'll keep people engaged while starting and strengthening the know, like, and trust process.
Dave Charest:Ed has found this to be an invaluable tool for gaining him new business. Number 2, don't dismiss the simple things. Ed joked that he's surprised at how smart people think he is, especially when it comes to things he would consider simple advice. Remember, your clients aren't in it as much as you are. By looking at things through a beginner's eyes, you'll find your insights more helpful than you may have thought.
Dave Charest:And number 3, do what you say you're gonna do or as Ed says simply, deliver. When you do what you say you're going to do, even when it's the little things, you signal to people that you're reliable and trustworthy. 2 great qualities to a spouse as you build your reputation. So here's your action item for today. If you're looking to talk with someone about your marketing strategy, to review your email campaigns or to help with list growth tools, social media setup and more, check out our marketing adviser service.
Dave Charest:You can find the link in the show notes. I hope you've enjoyed this episode of the be a marketer podcast. If you have questions or feedback, I'd love to hear from you. You can email me directly at dave.charest (at) constantcontact.com If you did enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a review.
Dave Charest:Your honest feedback will help other small business marketers like yourself find the show. Well, friend, I hope you enjoy the rest of your day and continued success to you and your business.