Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
What if you could save 12+ hours per week in your business? Being a solopreneur sometimes focuses too much on the “solo” part: doing all the jobs, figuring things out yourself, and spending too much time in your business. But we didn’t start out own solo business to spend all of our time at our desk.
We did it because we want freedom: to travel; to spend time with our family; to watch a movie in the middle of a week day. That’s why Streamlined Solopreneur exists.
Each week, host Joe Casabona talks about how you can build a better business through smarter systems and automated processes. He does this by bringing on expert guests, and sharing his own experience from years as a busy solopreneur parent — so that being a solopreneur feels…less solo.
With every episode, you'll get insights, great stories, and 1-3 actions you can take today to improve your business processes and spend your time the way you want.
Joe Casabona: Real quick before we get started, I want to tell you about my free weekly newsletter, Build Something Weekly. You can sign up for it over at buildsomething.email. It has all sorts of things, insights, and questions, it has the top takeaways of each episode weekly, it has the latest content I’ve created, and it’s generally where I first announced new things I’m working on, like this new Beyond 8 workshop that I’m putting together to help podcasters fight pod fade. You can find out more about that and everything in my free weekly newsletter over at buildsomething.email.
Intro: Hey, everybody, and welcome to Episode 236 of How I Built It, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips for small business owners. Today’s sponsors are TextExpander and Nexcess. You’ll hear about them later on in the show.
Now sometimes you know you’re destined to run your own business. You work for companies and realize that you can’t really work within the confines of a corporate structure. It’s something that I realized pretty much in high school and it’s something that today’s guest Lauren Kennedy has known all her life.
Realizing that she took her drive and built a marketing automation company with a twist. While both marketing and automation can be termed associated with the in personal, she set out to build a people-first company. And that’s the main focus of our discussion today, how she keeps that personal touch in an increasingly remote world.
Of course, that didn’t stop me from asking about her own expertise, which is marketing automation. And in Build Something More, we talk about being active and helping people on social media as a way to grow your business, including Reddit.
If you want access to that conversation and all of the ad-free extended episodes of How I Built It a day early, you can join the Creator Crew for just $5 a month or 50 bucks a year. And you can do that as well as get all of the show notes over at howibuilt.it/236.
Now let’s get into the episode.
Joe Casabona: Hey everybody, and welcome to Episode 236 of How I Built It, the podcast that offers actionable tech tips for creators and small business owners. My name is Joe Casabona and I am so excited to talk to Lauren Kennedy today. She is the chief marketing nerd at Coastal Consulting.
When she reached out, she said that she wants to talk about HubSpot and marketing automation. She offers a service on that. And I am extremely bad at both of those. If you’ve been listening for a long time, you’ll know that I have a bit of a CRM problem where I try a real CRM, and then I’m like, “I’ll just use Airtable,” or “I’ll just use Google Docs,” or “I’ll just use my task manager.” So I’m really excited to talk to Lauren about that today.
Lauren, how are you?
Lauren Kennedy: Doing great. Excited to be here.
Joe Casabona: Excellent. I’m excited to have you on. We had a very good pre-show about imposter syndrome. So if you are a member of the Creator Crew, you can get that. If you’re not you can sign up over at buildsomething.club. All right, that’s enough of the shameless promotion.
Lauren, I’m really excited to talk to you about especially marketing automation today because I’m a one-man band. More or less I have a small virtual team that helps me with the production side of things. But as far as marketing and sales go, it’s something that I do when I feel like… it falls between the cracks a lot of times when I’m focusing on actually building the content. Before we get into that, though, why don’t you tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do?
Lauren Kennedy: Sure. So I am a people-first leader with a knack for HubSpot and Salesforce. I grew up with entrepreneurial parents and watched my mom start a variety of businesses from her own restaurant to a nonprofit focused on animal welfare, and have really observed the power in entrepreneurship throughout my life. I’ve been fortunate enough to be surrounded by a family that I also consider strong leaders who exhibit really strong leadership qualities.
As I grew to enter the corporate world, I found that psychology and marketing were my two favorites. And as I dove into those skill sets and combined my degree in psychology and my Master’s in Business, I found that marketing automation really spoke to everything that I enjoyed in the business world because it allowed me to connect with people through data and systems. And that’s really everything I was looking for.
As I grew in my career, I found that I often had a problem with authority and did not jive well with leadership at organizations that I worked for, whenever there came a time when I disagreed with the leadership position or maybe had a values conflict.
So a few months ago, when I had one of those final conflicts, I decided to just go out on my own and enable myself to do what I love full time and create an environment where the leadership values that I value are in the forefront of everything that we do.
Joe Casabona: I love that. We’re going to pick apart many parts of that because… people-first leader, I think we’re definitely going to build upon that later. But it spoke to me in a couple of ways, right? Problem with authority, you know, I’m very much if you tell me to do something, I want to know why. And people in corporate world or I came from a higher ed world, which is like weirdly cutthroat. It’s like corporate world on a budget, but it’s still just as weirdly cutthroat.
Most of the people above me did not like to be questioned. And I question a lot. So I’m dealing with that same issue with my daughter right now. I want my kids to question everything, and then I’m like, “Except for me, though.” And I’m like, “That’s not going to work.” I don’t want them to just kind of blindly go along. So that really spoke to me.
And then the entrepreneurial parents I think is really interesting. I’m kind of the opposite. My dad got a job at Verizon, which was formerly New York Tell, which was formerly Bell Atlantic, which was formerly NYNEX. Like, he worked with that company through more names than he has children. He was very much like, get a job, stay there forever, build and build on your 401k, or pension or whatever.
So when I went out on my own, he was supportive. He made the first investment in the business. But I think it was a very difficult thing for him to accept, because he was worried about my future. Did you find the opposite with your parents? Were they like, “Why aren’t you getting a real job?” Or was it like, “Do your thing.”
Lauren Kennedy: By the time that I went out and started my own company, it actually was kind of like a sigh of relief for the people in my life. I’m what’s known as a bad employee and a job hopper based off of my resume, because I’m super passionate about what I do, and I’m also incredibly inquisitive and curious. And that doesn’t really work well with a corporate structure when they want to set you up to achieve goals that were set for you by someone else, and not really explain the big picture.
And so whenever I said, “I’m going to go out and do my own thing,” the people around me were like, “Great, that’s exactly what you need to be doing. Because we’ve seen you tried to fit the mold, and it’s not working.” One of my really close friends said, “Usually when people tell me that they’re going out on their own, I’m nervous and think that it may not be the best bet.” But he said that “I can’t see a better route for you in the future and I know that whatever you do you’re going to succeed.”
I was pretty surprised actually, that everyone around me was very supportive. There wasn’t really any negativity that I was aware of.
Joe Casabona: That’s so that’s so interesting. I have a very similar experience where it’s almost like… I mean, again, in the pre-show, we talked about imposter syndrome. But I went on my own and I’m like, “Am I a crazy person? I’ve got a three month old and I’m leaving a secure job and my wife is still on maternity leave.” I don’t know where you’re based. I’m going to guess one of the coasts of the United States. I’m in the United States too and family leave is not the best here.
So she was taking unpaid leave, and I’m like, “I’m the only income right now.” And all my friends were like, “Of course, you should do this. Of course, you should do it.” And I’m like, “Okay, all right. At least other people believe in me.”
Lauren Kennedy: Two things there. One, I’m based in Wilmington, North Carolina, very much on the coast, 10 minutes from the beach. And two, something that you said that I am actively working to break as a cultural norm in the US is I’m leaving a stable job. I think that no job is stable. No job is safe.
And from what I’ve seen as a freelancer and a full-time employee before becoming an official agency leader, you’re actually more stable whenever you have a variety of clients because a company can decide that your role no longer fits the strategic direction or what have you. But as a freelancer and an agency, you can shift your personal value prop or for the value prop for your organization, and find more clients and be more secure.
And like you said, family leave options are terrible, but whenever you’re the leader of a company, you can kind of direct what that looks like.
Joe Casabona: I love that. You’re absolutely right. No job is safe. Maybe that was the case when my dad was my age and was fully in the workforce. But I mean, you know, even that… Let me just say here my dad is my biggest inspiration and I am him. Like, if I want to know what I’m going to be like in 30 years, I just look at him.
He got a little… disenfranchised is not the right word… disillusioned by working for a corporate culture for so many years, seeing the people above him get really big paychecks and screwing the little people as he says. But I think you’re absolutely right. No job is safe.
In my last job, before I went out on my own, there was a rough patch that was basically industry-wide. And we weren’t making payroll on time. At one point my project manager was like, “Y’all, you’re going to have to work the weekend if you want to get paid on time.”
I was like, “That is the social contract that we have, that I get paid on time because I work for you. If I wanted to get paid based on deadlines, I would just do this myself.” I actually said that. This is why you and I are the same because I think some people would be like, “Oh, I’m not going to say that.” I will let you know what I’m thinking.
So I love that. No job is stable. Even like the tenured professors, it’s really hard to get tenure. And you can still get fired, it’s just harder. It’s harder to get fired for being bad at your job, but you could still get fired. They eliminate your department. They don’t need a computer science teacher, whatever. Awesome. This is such a fun start to the conversation.
So you are a people-first leader with a knack for HubSpot. Psych and marketing were your two favorite subjects in school. I think there’s been a bigger realization that those two kind of go hand in hand, right? I saw an ad from the 50s recently on Twitter that was just like, “We sell stuff,” or whatever. And I’m like, “That’s like the kind of copy that I write but that’s not the kind of copy that sells in 2021.”
Lauren Kennedy: No. The kind of copy that sells in 2021 is not focused on sales at all. It’s focused on knowledge and personal connection.
Joe Casabona: Yeah. I love that. It’s not focused on sales. It’s focused on knowledge and personal connection. Can you elaborate on that a little more? I think some people, like the host here, used to take a very Field of Dreams approach. Where it’s like, if you build it, they will come. But I never proved that I had knowledge in whatever I was selling. I never proved like why I was fit to sell. Usually, it was a course.
And then the personal connection, I’m like, How can I form a personal connection with each individual student? But if you write your copy a certain way, then you can, right? It’s not a one-to-one relationship. It’s a one-to-many relationship. You just need to write the right thing.
Lauren Kennedy: Absolutely. As a leader of this organization, we’re five people now, and I’m sales. And sales is something that has always made me cringe. I’ve never wanted to be a salesperson. There’s so much stigma around the word that I know that we need to actively break. And it’s kind of ironic because I do sales coaching as part of my offering for clients.
But whenever it came time for me to say, “Okay, I have a sales goal,” it doesn’t work with me. So I actually don’t have a sales goal at all. We don’t do anything like that. But the way that I have grown and a lot of people are like, “Oh, what a problem” is just organically. Because I don’t do outbound outreach.
We’ve just recently started running an ad campaign to see if we can be successful in that space. But every client that we’ve obtained since we started in March has been naturally showing up because of things I’ve shared online.
So I’m part of Facebook groups. I’m active on the HubSpot forum, and I just go provide value. I don’t try to say, “Oh, you can come buy my services and I’ll give you the answer.” It’s really like, “Oh, that’s an interesting problem you’re facing. Here’s how I’ve seen it done in the past. Here’s what I think you could do.”
And other people have seen me comment like that and have that type of participation on the forum and then they reach out and be like, “Hey, we have this issue and it seems like you know what you’re talking about, and we’d like to work with you.” So for me, what I’ve learned is sales is very much the authentic exchange of knowledge. And if you have knowledge that others need, they’ll pay for it.
Joe Casabona: Sales is the authentic exchange of knowledge. That is going to be the audiogram, my friends. Because it’s so true. I had Jennifer Bourn on the show—She’s a friend of mine and friend of the show—at the beginning of… I think we kicked off 2021 with Jennifer Bourn’s episode. And she said something very similar.
Like she would join Facebook groups, answer questions, and then people would be like, “Hey, you know what you’re talking about.” It’s so true. And it’s the same thing I tell people about, you know, be generous with your time and your knowledge.
I think a lot of people hold too much of what they know to the chest because they’re worried, right? Well, if I’m going to tell them how to do it, they’re just going to do it and not hire me. No, you’re going to tell them how to do it and then they’re going to realize that they’d rather spend their time for the people who see value in your work, right? They’re always going to be people who don’t see value in your work, and they’re just going to try to do everything that… they were never going to buy from you.
Lauren Kennedy: Mm-mm. I always say that your knowledge is not proprietary, your ability to do it is.
Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by Nexcess. Look, I know what it’s like to spend too much time managing your website instead of your business. In fact, the previous host for this very show made it harder for me to focus on creating content, because I was always trying to fix some problem with my website, especially on new episode days. And that’s why I switched to Nexcess.
With Nexcess‘ managed WordPress hosting, I don’t have any problems to fix because Nexcess fixes them for me, usually before I even know about them. I don’t need to worry about my site going down on new episode days or updates or backups. I don’t even need to worry about plugging vulnerabilities. Nexcess has me covered. That’s why I can be so consistent.
And now they have membership sites with WP Quickstart, a membership site, especially if you’re a creator or small business owner like me can be a fantastic way to increase revenue. But there are too many moving parts for most people who just want to set something up and start making money. Membership sites with WP Quickstart does it all for you. That is great hosting.
So check out Nexcess today if you want a website and not a project. For a limited time, you can get 50% off your first six months. Just go to howibuilt.it/nexcess. That’s howibuilt.it/nexcess for 50% off your first six months. Thanks so much Nexcess for being a sponsor of How I Built It.
Joe Casabona: So you offer HubSpot and marketing automation service. Tell me a little bit more about that. Because again, in the pre-show, we were talking about the angle that you took, right? Because marketing agencies, just like how to start a podcast course, which dig at me, they’re like a dime a dozen today. So how are you differentiating yourself?
Lauren Kennedy: So whenever I set out to start an agency… number one I didn’t set out to start an agency. I decided to just go out on my own and my client growth essentially pushed me to become an agency. And now here I am. Whenever I started that, essentially what I wanted to do was to be a strategic partner for as many people who wanted to learn as possible.
So when we are looking for a new client, we’re looking for people who are personally invested in what they’re doing, who really want to know how to do what they’re doing and who wants strategic direction and partnership.
So when we start working with a new client, we start with something called a customer journey map, where we sit down with sales, marketing, service, and leadership of the organization, get everyone at the table and decide: this is what our customers are experiencing with us. Because the biggest problem facing most organizations is misalignment internally between sales, marketing, and customer service. And your power as an organization and your ability to speak to your customers is really tapped into when you get everyone at the same table and agree on your message, your process, etc. So we kick off our engagements with that.
From there, we essentially work backwards to fill in the gaps that we’re seeing in that customer journey and we work to make what we do have work better. Usually, that’s in HubSpot or Salesforce. So HubSpot is the leading marketing automation platform in my opinion, which is somewhat biased, but also I’ve worked in all of them. So take that either way. Reddit thinks I’m biased, but-
Joe Casabona: Reddit is known for strong opinions from what I understand.
Lauren Kennedy: Yeah. I started using Reddit this week and it’s been an interesting experience. But anyway, Salesforce is the number one CRM for now. HubSpot is actively on a mission to change that. And I do think that they will succeed with that in the next five years, especially with the new leadership. She’s amazing.
But essentially, we get into those systems, make sure they’re working well together, and build out the backbone of your customer journey. So maybe that’s an emphasis on customer onboarding or lifecycle management, or that’s getting more people in the pipeline at the front end.
Our agency is very much focused on your strategic processes as organization and not just creating a blog or a deliverable, or taking a list of items that you’ve decided that you need help with. Because that’s better suited for other agencies that are more staff augmentation oriented, or a freelancer. So we very much are a strategic partner that’s looking at how we can make your systems work better for you as people, rather than just checking off a list and not really having an impact on your organization more so than taking stuff off your plate.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, that’s a really good point. First of all, I just want to pull this out there. You mentioned that you started on Reddit. Maybe in Build Something More we can talk a little bit more about that, seeing you mentioned being in like Facebook groups to help add value, what’s kind of the difference between being on Reddit and being on some of these other places? Because I’m-
Lauren Kennedy: That would be good.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. So if you want to hear that conversation and learn why I’m afraid of Reddit, as well as get some good advice, you can, again, sign up over a buildsomething.club. You mentioned that you’re not just checking things off a list. And I think that’s really important.
Because you see a lot of services that are like, “Build a $500 website” or “build a thing in a day.” And full disclosure, I do have a guest on the show who talks about building a website in a day, building a content plan in a day. But this is like she sits down with a client for eight hours in a room with them. It’s not just like I’m going to rock this out as one hour of my day, and then send it to you 24 hours later. But you do see those things.
But there’s no personal… especially like build a $500 website, you’re getting a template with your logo and your name on it. That’s checking it off of a list. I think you said it’s a people-first way of doing business. What inspired you to do that sort of thing, do the people first part?
Lauren Kennedy: I’ve been an employee at many organizations that tout being people first. They say that “we have educational allowances, we’ll support your continued growth, we’ll work on career development.” What I’ve come to see is that a lot of organizations just say that. Like recently you’ll see the trend of diversity is now the hot topic. “So, we now have a black woman on our board and we’re diverse.”
And it’s not really a part of the cultural foundation. And that’s really felt when you work there. There’s a lot of companies that look at that, and like, “Oh, really? Because my department is white men entirely.” So whenever you lead with a statement that doesn’t match your values, you’re very much inauthentic.
Brené Brown is a big inspiration for me. I’m very much vulnerability and authenticity. That can’t be my message because it’s hers. But I like piggyback on it. But if you’re not living your values, then you’re really misaligned internally. And that shows whenever it trickles down in your organization.
So I’ve seen that and I’ve had great managers and leaders in the past that have helped to counteract the organizational misalignment. So in our bubble, it was okay. But the problem with organizations that are fundamentally flawed is they push out good leadership and management. So when those leaders and managers were pushed out, I went with them.
So I saw that and thought that was such a broken system and I wanted to create an environment where people actually wanted to be and where they were truly put first. So whenever I first started, it was basically just like, “Bye.” I resigned and started an LLC the next day and started figuring it out. So I built my website in a day because it was a checkbox. Not my current one, but my previous one.
But anyway, as I looked to hire my first employee, I thought about “why would someone want to work for me? Why would they want to help me on this mission? What can I do for them?” And so I’ve really looked at hiring people who want to grow in this area because marketing automation, specifically, the HubSpot and Salesforce integration, which we specialize in is a super niche specialty.
So it’s not like there’s a dime a dozen people who know how to do it. So oftentimes they need to learn and I want to teach them but not if they don’t want to learn. The biggest thing I look for in hireability is adaptability and willingness to learn, and also excitement about learning.
So I have a structure where we do $200 a month towards education. So if you want to go to a conference, you stack that up. If you want to course, even if that’s not related to your specific job role, if you want to learn more about something completely not related to what we do, you can put that towards that. Just continuing to like foster that thirst for knowledge.
And on Fridays, we block for personal development. So that might be getting another HubSpot course, or HubSpot certification under your belt. That might be an SEO course through Moz or what have you. It’s really whatever is going to help you feel more confident in your position and more confident in your life.
So obviously, sometimes that gets pushed aside because of an urgent thing. But nine times out of 10 Fridays are blocked for personal development. And my employees really enjoy that because in the typical agency structure, you’re working more than the amount of time that you’re scheduled to and you’re on a salary basis. So it’s not overtime, and the learning and development you were promised, you never get time to do that.
So my employees are also all eligible for overtime. So if they work late, which has not yet happened, they’ll get overtime. But I’m really big on, “Okay, it’s five, go be with your families.” But if we do have a client project that’s running over or something crazy, they will get overtime and they’ll be compensated. And whenever we win big projects that will ramp up stress on the team, there are bonuses that go along with that project being secured by me, because I don’t believe in creating a profit organization for myself and then making other people work their asses off for me to earn that.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, that’s incredible. And I mean, it shows. I mean, I think we both established that we’re kind of unemployable at the beginning, which I don’t know if I could use that term because that’s like the name of Brian Clark’s podcast. But I think I see it the same exact way.
Again, I don’t have employees, I do have some virtual assistants. I have a VA who I work with. And we did a six-month check in—she’s based in the Philippines—I was like, “Hey, I just wants to see how everything is going. Do you feel challenged enough? Are there things…?” She’s like, “Thanks so much for this check in. Nobody ever does this.” And I’m like, “That’s weird that nobody does that. Because I’m paying you to do a thing and I want to make sure you’re happy doing that thing.” Right?
Lauren Kennedy: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: The same thing when I was an employee, right? We didn’t get paid for overtime. It was an agency and I kind of knew that going in. They made it clear. But I felt appreciated in whatever way. I’d get a small bonus, or I’d get some time off or whatever. Their paternity leave was incredible. Like I got a month full paid leave as the dad, which it’s sad that I have to say that’s incredible. But it’s extremely-
Lauren Kennedy: But that’s awesome.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, it’s extremely uncommon. But then I worked at places where it’s like I asked if I can work remotely, or if I could go to the beach for a week with my fiancé’s family and they’re like, “Well, no, the other web developer is on vacation.” And I was like, “I will have a laptop.” And they’re like, “No, we don’t want you to work remotely.” And I’m like, “That’s super weird that you just want my butt to be in this specific chair.”
So making sure that your employees are happy just generally leads to better work. And finding that thirst for knowledge and fostering it I think that’s really super cool.
Lauren Kennedy: Thank you. It’s been an honor to be able to build this culture. And I am very grateful every day to all my employees for them taking this like leap of faith and coming to work with me. We’re onboarding a new employee on August 30 and I’m going to fly to Charlotte to meet her in person on her first day, and we’re going to go to a coffee shop and just do onboarding in person.
And she was blown away that I’m doing that. She was like, “I’ve worked in several remote positions and none of them have really taken the time to invest in getting to know me personally.” And I know that relationships are really important to her so I bought a flight and get to go out and meet with her for the day. And I’m really excited to be able to do that.
Joe Casabona: And Charlotte is beautiful. Right?
Lauren Kennedy: Yeah.
Joe Casabona: That’s fantastic. It’s so interesting that my VA said that, your new employee says that. Because I feel like to you and me and it’s kind of intuitive, right? Like the relationship is the important part. But maybe it’s just I’m an elder millennial. I’m going to assume that we are similar ages. Maybe I’m slightly more elder millennial than you. So maybe that’s a function of our generation, right? That we view these relationships as even more important, especially as more things get remote.
So the people-first way of doing business, the teaching, does that translate to your client work at all too? Because you mentioned you don’t just want like checkboxes. I assume that you treat your client projects the same way.
Lauren Kennedy: Absolutely. We meet individually with each stakeholder on our projects, and we go into that meeting with the goal of getting authentic information from them and getting to know their true pain points. So in a typical click kickoff call with an agency, it’s you, your boss, their boss, and five other people. And the desires that are expressed in that meeting are very much your top-line growth goals. It’s your organizational needs, and it doesn’t really speak to you as a person.
And often when solutions are built off of those top-line growth goals, they don’t work for the people that are going to be using them every day. So we try to isolate, okay, each marketing member we’re going to get on the phone with you, each sales member we’re going to get on the phone with you, and tell us how you do things every day.
Because oftentimes in a company, you’ll see that the sales team is not following the sales process. And as marketers, we like to roll our eyes and say, “Ah, sales is just a herd of cats.” But the sales team knows how to sell. They have done sales their whole life. They were hired because they know how to sell. Why would you try to force something that you think is better because of industry best practices on the sales team?
So yes, we want to formalize their process, but we don’t want to bulldoze what works for them. So talking to the sales team and learning what are your pain points? What is this organization not doing that they could be for you? And be honest with us because we’re not going to report back to your boss. We’re going to make your lives better.
And something that I’ve observed as an internal employee is agencies and third parties that you hired to help often get a louder microphone than the one that your employees have. I don’t know why that is.
Joe Casabona: It’s so crazy to me. I’ve noticed the same exact thing.
Lauren Kennedy: It’s so weird. But I often felt bulldozed by agencies as an employee. And I knew what I was doing as well. They were really supposed to be in partnership and it was never that way. And so when I look at how can I help the team at the company we’re partnering with, I’m very much like, “What have you thought about to solve this? Why does that not work? What do you have in mind?”
Because usually they have something in mind. And then I can take their personal mission if we do agree that that’s the right way to go, and we can refine it together once I work with them to build that out, and champion that to leadership because my microphone is, for whatever reason, louder. And I can help the actual end-users get what they think should be happening because they use it and know what works. I can make that a reality.
And so I’m very much an internal champion for my clients as is my team. We really try to connect with the people on the team rather than just say, “All right, here we are, we’re going to put our standard process in place and you’re all going to follow it. It’s worked for this many clients, and you’re no different.”
Joe Casabona: Yeah, that makes perfect sense. I have lamented on this show about that very thing where I’m like, “I don’t understand…” Maybe it’s because the organization feels like they’re paying the agency more money all at once. I don’t understand, though.
When we worked with consultants when I was at the University of Scranton, I had a little confab with them. I was like, “Look, we kind of know each other, we swim in the same circles, we respect each other. They are going to listen to you way more than they listen to me. So we should like work together. And I’ll let you know what I’ve noticed, you let me know your expertise.” That worked really well.
And then like in sectioning the marketing manager because I did a lot of work for their team, even though I was in the tech department. I would just make her think that my ideas were hers. Like, “Oh, hey, I found this article. This is really good. Well, we should do this. Oh, that’s a great idea.” It’s just weird that it has to be that way.
Lauren Kennedy: It’s all manipulation. To succeed in corporate America, you either have to not care or be very manipulative.
Joe Casabona: Right. Right. Again, I think you and I are not very manipulative. We’re very straight shooters, I would say.
Lauren Kennedy: Yeah, it depends on who you ask. But yeah.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Awesome.
Sponsor: This episode is brought to you by TextExpander. In our fast-paced world, things change constantly, and errors in messaging often have significant consequences. With TextExpander, you can save time by converting any text you type into keyboard shortcut called a snippet. Say goodbye to repetitive text entry, spelling and message errors, and trying to remember the right thing to say. When you use TextExpander, you can say the right thing in just a few keystrokes.
TextExpander lets you make new approved messaging available to every team member instantly with just a few keystrokes, ensuring your team remains consistent, current, and accurate. TextExpander can also be used in any platform, any app and anywhere you type. So take back your time and increase your productivity.
But that’s not all it does. With its advanced snippets, you can create fill-ins, pop-up fields, and more. You can even use JavaScript or AppleScript. I can type out full instructions for my podcast editor, hi, Joel, in just a few keystrokes. Another one of my favorite and most used snippets is PPT. This will take whatever text I have on my clipboard and convert it into plain text. No more fighting formatting if I’m copying from Word or anyplace else.
Last month I saved over two hours in typing alone. That doesn’t even take into the account the time I saved by not having to search for the right link, text, address, or number. You have no idea how many times I want to type out a link to a blog post or an affiliate link and I can’t remember it and I have to go searching for it. That generally takes minutes. But since I have a TextExpander snippet, it takes seconds.
TextExpander is available on Mac OS, Windows, Chrome, iPhone, and iPad. I’ve been using it a lot more on my iPhone lately because I’ve been working from my iPhone more because there are days when I’m just not in front of my computer right now. If you’ve been curious about trying TextExpander or simple automation in general, now is the time. Listeners can get 20% off their first year. Just visit textexpander.com/podcast and let them know that I sent you. Thanks so much to TextExpander for sponsoring the show.
And now let’s get back to it.
Joe Casabona: Let’s talk about your service, right? Because again, I feel like I talked this up a lot right at the beginning. But we got… I wouldn’t say sidetracked, but there’s a lot of ground that we’ve covered here. When it comes to HubSpot and marketing automation, what are… you know, maybe we can abstract out the tool. When it comes to marketing automation, what are some things that small business owners should think about? Is it just like, “I set up a funnel in ConvertKit. I’m all good to go.” Is that the thing? Or what should I think about?
Lauren Kennedy: As a small business owner, typically the goal is to get as much done in as little time with as little resources as possible. So whenever you’re looking at marketing automation, there are a lot of blogs that have taken this buzzword and just blown it up into this huge thing.
And what companies like Amazon do with marketing automation is not what you’re going to be able to do with marketing automation. And just setting that reality like checkpoint for yourself because Amazon’s marketing automation is also revenue operations and customer experience mapping. It’s a combination of thousands of people that go behind the emails you get.
So when you look at marketing automation, it’s really using technology to build the personalized relationship you have with your customers. So you basically look at why do my customers work with me? What value can I add for them? And then you find a way to use a system to enhance, increase, scale that experience.
So for me, it’s the personal connection that I have with people and the ability to instill trust and share that I am authentic in our processes. So something that I do with marketing automation is personalize my website based off of it’s a customer or a new client. That’s something that’s really easy to do in HubSpot. If you use their CMS, which I do, you can put in a very simple tag that says “if they are a customer, show them this. If they are not, show them this.” So that’s a very basic win with marketing automation.
And another basic win is making sure that you’re not leaving people hanging. So if they reach out and book a meeting with you, you’re sending a meeting confirmation. [unintelligible 00:38:51] meetings tool does that for you as soon as they go online and use your schedule to schedule or to book. It’s very similar to Calendly, which is a free option if you’re not ready for marketing like HubSpot yet.
It also does deal stage automation which is very helpful when small business, where you say, “Okay, these are the six deals I’m working on,” it’ll let you know, “Hey, this one hasn’t been touched in six days. You should follow up on it.”
So marketing automation is really kind of like an admin function almost of being able to send emails for you, remind you what needs to be done, set your tasks for you. And so when you’re getting started in marketing automation as a small business, don’t look at every feature HubSpot has because that is an extensive list. And all the features are great, but not every business needs an automated customer service ticketing system from the start. But they probably do need basic email automation, basic form capture, meeting scheduling.
So whenever we started we started with HubSpot, CMS, HubSpot, Marketing Pro, and HubSpot Sales Pro. The reason that I invested so heavily in HubSpot as a small business owner as HubSpot is what I do. And so to me, with my values being authenticity leading the way for us, how am I going to use a different CRM and marketing automation platform and say that HubSpot’s the best?
I truly believe that it is the best. It is a larger investment for some as opposed to some like smaller getting the door systems. But the benefit to HubSpot is everything’s all in one place. So my meetings tool, my website, my email marketing, my CRM, my deals, everything is in HubSpot, which saves me a ton of time, because I can go hop in look at one dashboard and see where everything is every morning. And so it quickens that process for me so I can get that out of the way and spend more time with my clients.
Joe Casabona: I think that’s a really great point. You talked a lot about HubSpot tools, but website personalization, I think is something that I’m not necessarily doing enough of that. You can do with other tools. I mean, I use WordPress a lot. WordPress has tools where you can show logged-in users one thing, logged-out users another thing, etc. There are tools like Write Message that allows you to add personalization to any website no matter what CMS you’re using.
And make sure you don’t leave people hanging thing. I think is a really good one. I had an experience recently where someone reached out via one of the many social media DM features. And they’re like, “Hey, do you want to be on my podcast next week to talk about blah, blah, blah?” And I’m like, “Yeah, sure.” Nothing after that. Like an hour before we were supposed to record I was like, “Are we doing this?” Five hours later, he was like, “Hey, sorry, I lost track of time and we just did the normal thing.” And I was like, “Okay.”
Meanwhile, you’ve experienced my automation process, you fill out the Calendly, you get an email you. You will have another email in your inbox shortly with a follow-up like, “Hey, thanks, here’s where you upload your audio.” That’s that stuff is super important to me.
And people have said to me, “Your podcast communication is really good.” I’m just like, people are taking time out of their day… It goes back to people thinking about other people, right? People are taking time out of their day to be on my show to give me good content that I’m going to make money off of. The least I could do is make it easy for them and let them pitch at the end. Those are the two minimum things that I can do.
Lauren Kennedy: Yeah. I think that, like I said, marketing automation has become such a buzzword. But essentially, marketing automation are the tools that you use to remove friction from the sales process and the customer journey for your customers and yourself. That’s all it is. It’s finding little ways to remove friction. And that’s what I love about it. Because it’s people first on both sides.
Joe Casabona: And you know what? The less friction there is the better the experience is, the more someone will remember you, and the more likely someone is to hire you. As a quick sidebar, I do again, podcast consulting. I recently added a payment button right to the sales page, where I was like, “Here’s everything I can teach you. Book me now for 500 bucks for an hour or so consulting or whatever.” And people have been using it. They’re like, “I can do it right now. I’ll book a time. It’s great.” It’s literally converted to more sales for me.
Lauren Kennedy: Mm-hmm, it’s really easy.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. We’ve been talking for a while now, we’ve covered a wide range of things. I do need to ask you my favorite question, which is, do you have any trade secrets for us?
Lauren Kennedy: So my trade secret is more on how to be a good person and a successful member of society. Something that I really enjoy, which is basic and everyone’s heard of before is to be a sponge. I think that every interaction that you go into, regardless of your title, your degrees, where you’re at, you need to go into it with an opportunity of what can I learn from this person, from this opportunity.
And similar to being a sponge is you absorb water you need to squeeze it back out. So people have asked me what’s the best way to retain knowledge. “How do you keep your thirst for knowledge alive?” And my biggest thing is sharing it. Make a blog post, find a person, get coffee, talk about it. So as you collect knowledge, be sure to put it back out there and share it. Because like I said earlier, knowledge isn’t proprietary. And it’s important that we keep growing as people and sharing it.
And then second is to be an effective leader, say yes to opportunities. So two months ago, I wasn’t planning on being a thought leader or having speaking opportunities. And now I’m actively doing so because enough people have told me that I have a viewpoint that’s worth sharing that I’m now investing time in sharing that and meeting new people and doing opportunities like this. And it’s been really great for me personally and also my business.
Joe Casabona: Yeah, fantastic advice. Be a sponge. I think this is really important to me. I always tell people I never want to be the smartest person in the room despite the fact that I sometimes act like I’m the smartest person in the room. Because I want to learn from everybody. And when I realized that previous jobs that I was the smartest person in the room, I was like, “It’s time for me to move on.” Because I don’t want to stagnate.
And then squeeze it back out. I’ve heard the first part of that. Be a sponge, learn. But squeeze it back out, that’s the second maybe even more important function of the sponge, right? Because that means you get to reuse the sponge. And you’re right, knowledge is not proprietary.
When the pandemic started, I read a blog post from my friend Chris Lema, where he said, “Be generous with your time. Right before I published, I decided I’m going to offer free 15 minute calls to anybody who wants to start a podcast.” It didn’t land direct sales at that moment, people didn’t buy my course right after the call, but it did help me. More importantly, it helped other people launch, which is kind of I want more people to podcast and make money podcasting. I think that’s so great.
And then say yes to opportunities. I don’t know if you’re familiar with yearly themes from Cortex. Cortex is like my favorite podcast but basically, they say instead of like New Year’s resolutions, you should have a yearly theme. And it’s kind of like a guiding principle to help you grow that year.
There is an episode for this podcast on my yearly theme that I’ll link in the show notes over at howibuilt.it/236. Our conversation has been so good, I think that’s the first time I actually mentioned the show notes link. So but my yearly theme for this year is the year of opportunity because I felt very [unintelligible 00:46:56]. Like I was saying no to more things because I was like, “These people are just trying to whatever.”
I decided to start saying yes—it’s landed me more work it’s given me more opportunities and I got a sweet pair of noise-canceling headphones because Wix reached out and they’re like, “Hey, we want to send a gift to WordPress influencers.” They didn’t say what the gift was when I was just like, “Sure why not.” And it was $400 headphones. So I was like, “Yeah, cool, I’m really glad I said yes to that.” I would have said no probably.
Lauren Kennedy: Yeah, that’s incredible.
Joe Casabona: And I got to give my old ones to my brother. So, say yes to opportunities. I think that’s so great. Keep an open mind. In my head, I’m like, “Be cool.” Like someone’s like, “You want to speak at my summit?” and like give you affiliate income or whatever. I generally don’t like that. But I’m like, Be cool. Just see they’re reaching out, they’re putting themselves online. Awesome.
What a fantastic conversation! We are going to continue it in Build Something More. But for people who are sadly leaving us after the sign-off, Lauren, where can people find you?
Lauren Kennedy: You can find me on LinkedIn, Twitter, recently, Reddit, also coastalconsulting.co is my website. Not dot com, dot co. And my speaking engagement here was honestly more about my philosophy than what we tactically do. So if you really need some actionable insights into marketing automation, Salesforce HubSpot, go to our blog at coastalconsulting.co/blog. I am a huge share of knowledge and our blog is pretty incredible when it comes to actionable insights. So check it out.
Joe Casabona: Awesome. Once again, I will link all of those over and howibuilt.it/236. Lauren, thanks so much for coming on the show. This was such a great conversation about kind of philosophy and work life and what all that means. So thank you so much.
Lauren Kennedy: Yeah, I really enjoyed it. Thanks for having me.
Joe Casabona: Thanks to everybody listening and thanks to our sponsors. You can see everything we talked about, learn more about the sponsors, find Lauren, of course, and sign up for the Creator Crew over at howibuilt.it/236. If you liked this episode, tell a friend. Be like, “Hey, you’re thinking about quitting your job? Learn from these people who have no tolerance for nonsense.” And until next time, get out there and build something.