Dave Charest: Today on episode 19 of the Be a Marketer podcast, you'll hear from a pair of owners who recognize that their differences make the business work. And I'm sharing how you should think beyond your product to make more money. This is the Be a Marketer podcast. My name is Dave Charesthe, director of small business success at Constant Contact, 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. Hello, friend, and welcome to another episode of the Be a Marketer podcast. Thank you for joining me here today. I'm grateful for your attention. You know, I was thinking, after listening back to the conversation you're about to hear today, I was thinking back to when I had first started my original business back in 2006. I really had no idea what I was doing when I started my business, but I always found myself learning and searching and looking for information that could help me get to those next stages that I needed to get to. I was fortunate enough along the way to find a mentor that provided me with a way to think about the different ways that I could actually make money through what it was that I was doing. And oftentimes when we have a product or service, for example, we think of that as the only way, right? How do we sell more of that product or service? But the reality is, if we pay attention to what we're learning along the way and how we're building and growing that business, you can actually make money in a couple of other ways as well. You can start thinking about what it means to be a consultant, of course, to other people that may be looking at what it is that you're doing and trying to do something similar. But then you can also think about that at another level of getting that towards a training situation, right, where those people that are looking to do something similar to what it is that you're doing, even if it's the particular skill set that you have. And you see this many times today with businesses that offer training courses and things like that that show you how to do something and achieve similar levels of success if you implemented the things that people have taught you. And this is an interesting way to think about it because it opens up the earning potential that you have for your business. You're not just trying to sell a $2 widget. Let's say you are now able to charge money for your time in terms of thinking hourly and what that would cost. But then you can also think about how can you create something that gives access to more people for even higher prices if you wanted to? And so thinking through that, as I mentioned, today's conversation, made me think about that a little bit, because it's a good idea to, as you're going through this process of building your business or even looking back at where you were, because I know sometimes you get to a point where you're like, oh, you know, I didn't think about that. Right. But it's really important to think about what can you do to document your processes and what can you do to help highlight those areas or the things that you did to achieve that success, because you can often turn that into something that allows you to generate more revenue. And you'll hear this echoed here today from our guests, who have found multiple phases of their business that allow them to generate income. So something to think about as you are listening to today's episode. Well, friend. Today's guests, Elisa Hammer and David Newman, are the authors of the book the Engagement Matrix and owners of Leadership Techniques, LLC, which focuses on leadership and project management training. Lisa and Dave met while they were at different companies working on the same project. The pair started chatting about the challenges that they had managing other people. Now, these two certified project managers started exploring these challenges further and brought a group of people together to talk about how they handled personnel issues throughout the day. Many people said that no tools or processes were available to help them with these challenges, but both Lisa and Dave knew better. At the end of the session, a couple of people independently approached them and said, you two are so passionate about this. Why aren't you teaching it? Lisa and Dave looked at each other and said, why don't we teach it? Things eventually got to the point where they had to either go full time or stop. And so over 13 years ago, they took the plunge to start leadership techniques. Now, one of the things worth paying attention to here is how well Lisa and Dave complement one another. And although they may be exact opposites in terms of personalities, the two clicked in terms of their philosophy and how they wanted to help people. So let's pick up the conversation with Lisa's response when someone asked about the business's mission statement.
Lisa Hammer: And we said, we want to make the world a better place. And, you know, someone looked at us and said, that's a pretty lofty goal for a two person company. And we said, yeah, but every little thing helps. You could do it one step at a time. And so we saw the results. We started teaching, and we had people come up to us and say, I love what you showed us today. I'm going to try it in the workplace. And they'd come back to us weeks or months later and tell us how it's helping them, it's reducing stress, it's making their company more efficient, it's helping with their personal life. Just couldn't be any more rewarding. Dave, on the other hand, believed in it all along. Right, Dave?
David Newman: Yeah, that's true. I told her from the first time we did a class that we would be eventually and that we were going to be, we were going to go all the way with this. I'm not sure when started believing that.
Dave Charest: It sounds like you were pretty confident in it, but did you have any doubts at all? I mean, have you run a business on your own before?
David Newman: Funny, you should have. This is not my first startup attempt. First of all, I had a job for fully 13 years that I loved. I would have retired from there, absolutely loved it, got a second degree to support my love of that job, a specific industry related degree, and I just would have stayed there forever. And in 2002 I got laid off. So from that point I said, well, the whole world is uncertain, nothings ever certain. And so first of all, I tried to be a consultant on my own and that completely failed because I couldnt heal both sides of the business. And then I worked for other people and then I got the opportunity to be in a startup with a couple of partners, and that was serious startup where we raised millions of dollars. But in the end we failed. And so having that and understanding what that's like, when this came about again, I was definitely willing to and eager in fact, to go at full force. But I knew a few things. I knew I needed the right partner. And I know that you have to go in the deep end. There's no looking back. I mean, we did start time, but in my mind it was always with the intent of ramping it up to full time. So when we say we started part time, we were working full jobs, which were very demanding managerial, high tech jobs. And we met on Fridays, we met everybody at lunch to discuss what we were both going to do over the weekend. And then we worked two or three a week with one another, planning and doing things, and then the other nights of the week on our own, doing research and writing and stuff like that. So it was absolutely, almost was a second full time job right from the start. So finally building, you know, a client base where we could actually leave our jobs and take the chance. But it was a chance and it took, you know, people believing in us and, and certainly taking that risk on our own. And I would also like to add that I was much more willing to take that risk. The third time misses Newman was. She was, she was a little less confident. And Lisa also, they're really good friends with one another, and they were both like, a little bit has it more hesitant than me, let's put it that way. But I want to say something else about it. See what we do, what we provide, you ask first, I just realized I didn't answer the question, which was, what did we teach in the first place? We always split our original classes between project management techniques, math oriented scheduling and things like that, and soft skills, which are now called power skills. And we've established quite an expansion on that side of the business, the power skills side. But I also wanted to mention that what we present, as opposed to what a lot of people do out there, what we present is reality. In other words, we both lived in the trenches for years, for decades, in fact. And what we're presenting is data based research so that we're not telling people maybe these things will work. What were telling them is 80% of the companies out there that do these techniques, or rather, put it the other way, 80% of the companies, or 90% of the companies that are successful in project management use these techniques to become successful. So its much less opinion based and more data based and so proven techniques to help people get things done, which then in turn, reduces their stress in the workplace.
Dave Charest: Lisa, how long before you were doing this full time? Like, you could say goodbye to the old jobs.
Lisa Hammer: So it was about two years that we were doing it part time. Like Dave said, that was a lot because, you know, our full time jobs were full time. Dave was VP of operations of a web company, and I was a managing director of an interactive marketing company. So they were full time jobs. So it was about two years. And like we said, we got, you know, a couple of breaks wherever I, we were asked to do some larger things for the community college and other organizations. Ironically, one of the biggest contracts we got signed when we went on our own, we decided, okay, we're doing it, and we'll go ahead. And we got a government contract, and it was for a Tuesday, it was a holiday weekend, and that Friday they called us because the government shut down. So we thought, oh, that's not a good sign, right? That was our first gig going full time, and it got, well, postponed. But at the time, it felt like, oh, my goodness, what did we just do. But, you know, it all turned out. Obviously, we did it again, but it was a couple of years, and then we went full time and even the full time, you know, when you're an entrepreneur, you own your own business. It's up and down, especially in the type of work that we do, because it's contract to contract. You know, we have some clients who, we come in and we do training for them maybe once a month. We did a training this morning. We're working with a company. We're doing a half day session with them every other week. And then there's others where it's one and done. So we might go in one day, teach a class like tomorrow. No, Thursday. We're teaching a class on emotional intelligence. That's a one day class. And then that's it. So it's always, you know, we're always in the sales mode, always in looking for the next opportunity. And we're happy to say that so much of it has come through referrals and through prior clients.
Dave Charest: Trey, when you think of where you are now, what, we're going 13 plus years now, right? 14 years, if we. I guess, when you first met each other. Lisa, I'll start with you. What would you say is your biggest accomplishment in regards to the business?
Lisa Hammer: I'd say the biggest accomplishment is really making an impact on people's lives. And I really believe that. Like I said, we have so many people who reach out to us on a regular basis, who tell us that what they learned has helped them, not just at work, but at home. When we teach things like this morning, we taught time management. It's not just to use at work, it's to use in everyday life. So I think just that impact and the fact that we are regularly now at a point where we're just getting so many referrals to the point of where I. We're booking out months and months in advance. I mean, we're right now booked.
David Newman: Knock on wood.
Lisa Hammer: Knock on wood. But we're booked now, I would say, every day until at least the end of May and then some. But, you know, that's quite a bit for a company like ours, because we're really split in three ways. One is when we go into companies and we do classes. Another one is when we do public classes. A lot of people call those open enrollment classes, where we just put out a class and anyone from anywhere could sign up. And then the third thing we do is consulting. And we're doing that with some organizations where we're helping them get organized. Maybe put some project management tools in place. There's a company we're working with now where we're helping them. It's called standing up a PMO, which is a project management office. So we're helping them do that. That's a six month plus long process. So we do the consulting, we do the internal training, and then we do the public training. So we really have three different aspects. And over time, it's evolved, it's changed. It used to be mostly public classes, and now that people are getting to know us, I'd say we're mostly doing internal classes and consulting.
Dave Charest: Do you prefer one over the other? What's your perfect mix?
Lisa Hammer: That's an interesting question. I think I prefer them. I like them all for different reasons. I think the internal classes are the best because we get to know the organization. We don't do package classes. I mean, we have a catalog with hundreds of courses we've written. But every time we go to deliver a course to a client, we meet with them first. We have a conversation. We decide what they want to accomplish. What are their pain points, what are they looking for us to achieve? And then we customize the class so then we could have the class where we could really use examples from their life experience rather than just generic examples. So, for example, if we're doing a public class and we want them to analyze a project, we might say, okay, let's do a community project. Homelessness. Every community has homelessness. So everybody could relate to that, and it works really well. But when you go into a company and you say, what is something going on here? What is one of your, what are one of your problems? They could really give us something tangible that's affecting them.
Dave Charest: Dave, for you, in terms of just biggest accomplishments with the business, where are you on the spectrum here?
David Newman: Well, I agree, Lisa, that it's hard to pick one example, but it's always been a focus to add value in everything we do. And like she said, we've gotten a lot of feedback that we have added value and help people's lives, and that always feels good. But I'll tell you, I constantly reflect on the fact that we've supported ourselves, both of us, full families, for almost 14 years now, almost completely off of our own ideas. And I think that that's like we didn't franchise to anything. We didn't buy. We didn't buy into some, although we did recently, we finally franchised into disc, so we're certified in disk, but we only did that within the last year, and that's an add on to our business, you know what I mean? Those years, I remember, I used to joke, we'd be walking into a place loaded up with suitcases, flip charts and stuff, and I would say to Lisa, I don't know how we're going to do this when we have to fly. And she would laughing at me. Right. Well, before the pandemic, we were flying. I don't know, Lisa would have to say, because she's missed logistics. But it was a couple of times a month, we were traveling a lot all over the country, so we figured out how to condense, I'll tell you. Yeah. That's what I think is being able to support ourselves and add value and do some good in society along the way.
Dave Charest: Yeah. So, Dave, when you think about, you know, you've done this a few times before and, you know, had some things that have kind of failed along the way, how does that accomplishment make you feel?
David Newman: It makes me feel very confident in my abilities. First of all, I'll, for anybody else, I'm, you know, getting sorted towards the end of my. Don't worry, Lisa. There's no, I don't have any plans. But, you know, definitely in the final third year, right?
Dave Charest: Yeah, sure.
David Newman: In fact, the one thing I always say to myself, Dave, is that I wish I had realized 30 years ago how important this would be to me, because I always thought working for other people, doing my job, doing a good job, that's all fine, but I was always frustrated by office politics and things like that, working myself. We have all the power and control, and it doesn't feel like it's about power and control, but the reality, it takes a lot for a two person company to, for instance, fire a customer, but we've done it. If our values don't match, they don't match. There's been situations where people have said things to us where we're like, we don't have to be treated this way, and we're not going to. If we can't be respectful with one another, then we're not interested in doing business. So there's that level of control, and there's a lot of freedom and a lot of creativity. I have to admit that Lisa, I always tell people with 50 50 partners, and Lisa is 100% in charge of, and she always jokes about the fact that I show up here with 99 ideas a week and stuff like that. And that may be true, but I have a lot more freedom to go forth with ideas. And sometimes she'll hold my feet to the fire and go. Okay, good idea, Dave. What's going to be the ROI on this and pursue this and things like that? But as far as creative freedom goes, it's the imagination is the limit here, and I really enjoy that. So it may, I feel great about everything. Really.
Lisa Hammer: Yeah.
Dave Charest: So I want to talk about this a little bit because I think this is what's cool. Like, I mean, similar to you, Dave. Like, I've, I've run my own business in the past and realized very quickly that I'm not very good at, good at what I do, but not very good at the running the business part of it. Right. And I think even when you're working for a company and you're building a team, for example, finding people that, you know, supplement your weaknesses and, you know, you can work together really well, that obviously helps making sure things work the way they should work. And so it sounds like you two have a good mix here of supporting each other. Right. And filling that in. And so, Lisa, from your perspective, and I'm hearing some things as we're having this conversation here, but what are your strengths and where does Dave come in to kind of fill in the gaps in terms of the weaknesses and vice versa? So we'll start with you, Lisa, to your last question.
Lisa Hammer: I thought Dave's answer would be, I picked the right partner this time. I was waiting. He never got to that.
Dave Charest: But that, you can have that conversation after.
Lisa Hammer: That's ok.
Dave Charest: Sorry, Dave.
David Newman: That is what I should have said.
Lisa Hammer: When will you learn? What's your question? No, I'm just teasing. I certainly have always been on the business side of things. I was a director in a very large organization, and so I had large teams reporting to me, and I was much more focused on the business side of things. And I had technical people like Dave, who worked for me. I had engineers and analysts and folks who really understood the technical side, and I didn't, but I had great people and I did the business side. I handled the communication. So when Dave and I got together, clearly Dave's background, which we didn't tell you much about that yet, but he's a mechanical engineer and his background is very technical. And so it was clear to me that he loved doing the research. If he doesn't have ten books open at a time, he doesn't have anything. So it really was a good split, and we sort of, it fell out. We never really said, I'll do this, you'll do this. You know, we joke from time to time that Dave does the research and I do everything he doesn't want to do, but in reality, it does work out that way. He does most of the research, he writes most of the courses, the original courses, and I do everything else. The one thing we have in common is we both teach. So most of our classes, our webinars, our presentations, we co present. Now, when it comes to certain topics, he probably would be more heavy into the technical discussions, whereas I might be more of the, like he said, the power skills, talking about communication and emotional intelligence and creativity and things like that. But we really do have a good delineation in the way that I enjoy the business side. I enjoy the marketing, the communicating with folks, the handling the finances. I do think it makes my job stressful at times because I put that on myself to communicate with people immediately. Like, I have a 24 hours rule that any email I get, I'll respond to in 24 hours. And Dave has a lot of pressure because he has to get material ready for class. You know, we have a joke, like, it doesn't just write itself. Right? So he really has a lot of pressure. You know, we have, like I said, classes every day between now and the end of May. That's all material that has to be written. Not everything from scratch, but a lot of it customized for our clients. So it worked out really well. I don't think there's any area that we've really discussed. Wherever neither one of us were willing to do it, of course we'll do whatever it takes. But I don't know that there's anything that we haven't really found that one of us is better at handling. It's been a great mix. Now, if you look at all the things that are written about whether or not we should get along or not, every study, every personality assessment we've done, we are total opposites, 180 degrees. But I think thats what makes it successful.
Dave Charest: Trey? Yeah, I was going to say thats usually the thing that makes it work. Right. It sounds like youre both very on the same page about what it is that youre trying to accomplish and what youre trying to do. And then that makes the differences work.
David Newman: Right.
Dave Charest: Because you are marching towards the same goal. So on that, Dave, if I go to you, what would you say that right now where you are with the business, what are your top priorities?
Lisa Hammer: Now this is being recorded, Dave, make.
Dave Charest: Sure you get this right.
David Newman: Top priorities right now. And that is a tough question because, so, first of all, we have some immediate goals going on. We have a two and a half day conference come up that we're hosting out here at the beach. We call it our teach the beach conference. So that's my top priority at the moment. But you mean as far as goals for the business go, Jeff? Yeah.
Dave Charest: When you think of the business, do you guys get together and kind of discuss that stuff, like at the beginning, at the end of the every year, beginning year? Like, how do you guys work that out?
David Newman: We used to, we used to have a thermostat that we set up in the office, set up financial goals and everything for each year. I was going to say when Lisa mentioned that theres very few things that neither of us have ever wanted to do. When the old economic scale was totally at the bottom and we were thinking about making cold calls, I dont think either one of us was lining up to do that. Thats when we created thermometers and said, okay, were going to have to make a certain number of calls, were going to have to do a certain number of things. But heres why its been so tough. We wrote a book, so we that done right. We set really big goals and then we kind of reached them. So right now, I think our goal is to just create an ongoing pipeline that keeps us going for, you know, I think were looking out as far as three years. But the reason its called to answer that question is because we wanted to move to the beach. We moved to the beach. We wanted to buy a boat. Everybody's been against buying a boat. So we joined a boat club. So now we have access to a boating that you could imagine. So we, the book, we've been reaching goals. The other thing is there have been two times, one during the recession and one other, our business was really way at the bottom. People weren't doing training, was just dropping off. And so we called a friend of ours who was very successful business guy, and he came over and we said this was about halfway through so far, right about seven or eight years ago or something like that, we said, what should we do? We meant how should we expand our business to be able to survive? And you know what he told us? You should quit, get jobs. So we escorted them out and we were like, okay, so nobody asking anybody for advice if that's the kind of advice we're going to get. So we expanded into strategic planning. We expanded our power skills side. We picked up disk. So we've expanded into a bunch of different areas. As far as goals like that now go, its keeping current with our certifications. We have roughly a six month pipeline, right, as far as I know. And dont just ride a wave forward. Right. You drive and stay on the front of it. And so that really is the goal for me.
Dave Charest: Lisa, anything you want to add to that?
Lisa Hammer: Well, a couple of things. I think that on a smaller scale, we have one company were working with, I mentioned were helping them put a PMO in place, a project management office. So we're excited to see that through. We're excited to see when that actually goes live, how that'll be and how that will be over time. So we'll spend time with that. As Dave mentioned, are always coming out with new options for clients. So that's exciting. Since we did relocate to Delaware a year and a half ago. I don't know if Dave mentioned that, but we relocated to the east coast of Delaware a year and a half ago. I'm excited to build our pipeline here in Delaware. Most of our clients were in the DMV area, the Delaware DMV DC metro area. And this is how this happened. When Covid hit, we were teaching in person. We never taught online before, and in fact, we were opposed to teaching online. And when Covid came, within 24 hours, our pipeline went from about 80% for the year but down to zero. So we said we either have to learn how to teach online or we have to find another business. So we did everything we could to teach online, and we really did research all the different platforms and all the different methods, and within two weeks, we were back up and running and had very, very successful classes via Zoom. And then we realized that this will work. And we're happy to say that. I mean, every year has gotten better. This is our best year ever in the business. And one day we were sitting in the office on Zoom, and we looked at each other and said, why are we still living in western Maryland? We both want to live by the ocean. So we were able to relocate. So that was a big goal, obviously. And like Dave mentioned, I think the other really big goal that we just achieved was writing that book. We had been working on it for a couple of years, and we published it right before the end of 2022. So that was a huge lift for us. It's available on Amazon. So that was really exciting. And now we're really, you know, starting to tell people about it and getting the word out and marketing it a little bit. The name of the book is the engagement matrix. Dave, you want to hold it up? You don't want to hold it up.
David Newman: I did, but I did hold it up. But this, I remember, this is a podcast. We got to say the name, the engagement matrix. And we also had the goal of being interviewed by somebody famous. So now we've got that one under our belt as of today. So, you know, it's time. You're right, it's time to set some new goals.
Dave Charest: A couple things I want to touch on. So I'm going to start with the book, since we're, since we're there. Why was that important to you both to write the book we created?
David Newman: The engagement matrix itself is a tool to help people with informal moments management. That's where it begins. And we originally presented that at the University of Maryland back in 2014. Pretty sure it was 2014, and it's been growing and expanding, and we've added on elements over the years and over time presented it, and we had a lot of feedback that it was a very, very useful tool, that people were really finding a lot of hands on, being able to go to this reference, being able to use it, we gave out pieces of it as handouts and classes and so forth. We really wanted to get it into book form, to be able to get it all out there, to be able to explain what this really is all about and in depth, so that in classes we can introduce the concept of the engagement matrix, and then depending on the depth of the class, say, there's more information available. Here's where you go. And what it ends up being is 192 actionable options for managers. So they can go right to it and say, this is the situation I'm addressing. Here are some things that I can try. So it's a lot of research broken down. We put all the references in there, too, so that if you want to dig deep and go and find the original stuff on it, you can go right to it and, you know, get whatever depth of information you want. But that's what's. Because everybody's looking. There's so much going on in the workplace, everybody's looking for, but what do I do right now? I don't have time to go read a book. I don't have time to go to, you know, an eight hour class. I need an answer right now, today. So that's what we wanted to provide.
Dave Charest: Gotcha. Now, Lisa, I want to follow up on something you said earlier, just in terms of, you know, you were against doing online classes. And then obviously we got into a situation where, well, you don't have much of a choice. Right. And so what was that like for you? Like, just what was going through your mind at that point?
Lisa Hammer: Well, you know, honestly, immediately my reaction was we have to figure out something else to do because we don't want to teach online. We've been asked for years about doing online teaching, and we said no. We like being with people. We like putting out breakfast. We like, you know, having that conversation by the coffee pot. And so my initial reaction was, we have to do something different. But then I knew we had a PMP exam prep course. We teach certification. We had that course two weeks later with an internal company. And Dave and I thought, well, we can do it. We can figure this out. So we did, we really did a lot of research on Zoom and to the point of where we started teaching other companies how to teach online, how to work online. And now, I mean, we're never teaching even a 1 hour presentation with hundreds of people. We do breakout rooms, we do polling, we use every tool available because we know the importance of the interactivity. So a couple of the greatest things that came to us was when we started doing this. We got some unsolicited testimony from some people, testimonials, who said, you know, I actually like online better because you could see everyone's face, sort of like, they called it Brady Bunch style. Right?
David Newman: Yeah.
Dave Charest: Interesting.
Lisa Hammer: As opposed to, you know, being in the classroom, you usually wind up just talking to the people at your table. Whereas if we have a class of 30 people, we keep doing breakout rooms with different people every time, and they get to meet a whole lot of people. You know, a lot of people also like the fact that they don't have to go anywhere, they don't have to travel. And certainly employers like the fact that they can have their staff from all over the world on a call without having to pay those expenses.
David Newman: So, in fact, we had somebody from Egypt this morning.
Dave Charest: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Lisa Hammer: Yeah. So I actually, you know, embraced it, and then I really started loving it. And then when people started wanting us to come back in person, I was like, oh, my God. But we did. We were in. We were in Houston a few weeks ago for the week, and it was great to be back in person. But there is certainly something to be said for ending the class at 05:00 and being home at 05:02.
Dave Charest: Yeah. Well, it's amazing that many of us now really just have this flexibility. I mean, the fact that we're having this conversation now is also amazing, and I think that's really great. So I want to talk a little bit about. I know we've got a little bit of time left here, and I want to start talking about some marketing in general and then talk about some how you're using constant contact as well. And so I'd love to start with just what's your point of view on marketing? And by that I mean are you. Yes, I love marketing. I hate, you know, where are you on that spectrum of relationship with marketing? At least I'll start with you.
Lisa Hammer: You know, I'm torn. I don't like marketing. That's annoying, I have to say. So, you know, when I get, well, first of all, I like targeted marketing because when I get marketing and I, I get an email that says we know all about your business and we can help your employees with their phone systems and like, okay, we're two people. You really don't know anything about us.
Dave Charest: Yeah.
Lisa Hammer: So I get very frustrated when I see marketing that they didn't do their homework. I also like to have the ability to not embrace certain marketing. But there is marketing that I feel is great. And I know for our business and yes, we're going to get into constant contact. I know for our business, the marketing is unbelievable in the way it's helped us. You know, I know that if I put out an e blast in the morning, within 2 hours we get someone sign up for a class. So, you know, talk about ROI. The ROI on that can't be beat. So there are some people who don't like it. You know, we certainly get people who unsubscribe from time to time and we get offended when they do, but we get past it.
Dave Charest: It's amazing how much that hurts sometimes, right?
Lisa Hammer: In fact, I showed Dave yesterday, I got the report. We had two new signups from our website and one dropped. So when it's more people adding than deleting, I'm good, I'm happy. But I think it's critical. I think it's critical to our business. Like Dave said, the cold calling and things like that, that's not our style. We don't do great with that. But to be able to send out an e blast or send a message, it's been really, really positive for us.
Dave Charest: Dave, what's your relationship with marketing? And I guess how do you guys kind of work that together? Are you both involved in that or how does that all work out?
David Newman: Probably not. Lisa does all marketing, but all of marketing. And I agree that the eblasts and the things that she does, we've also done certain things website, but the constant contact and the e blasts are the most active element of our marketing from the perspective of sending things out to people the way we do. The other thing that we do for marketing is free presentation. So we've always, right from the start, imagine being tuned into the training business. All of our friends said to us, what are you nuts? What are you crazy? First of all, you don't even know each other, so how are you going to be partners with one another? And second of all, there's a million trainers out there. How are you going to compete with them? Okay, well, that's what everybody says. So how did compete? How do you compete with anybody?
Dave Charest: Right?
David Newman: Well, you try to be as good as you can be. You try to provide value. That the simple answer to that. But from a marketing perspective, we recognize we're just two people. You don't know us. You don't know anything about whether we'll be in business a year from now or, you know, and we're out there trying to get contracts with people. So we told them, come in and do a 1 hour presentation for you and your management team. You pick a topic, if we don't already have, we'll create it. We will do a 1 hour presentation with not 1oz of sales in it. We won't even mention our phone numbers. It's not about sales. We want to show you the product that you'd be buying. And then we took that and we volunteered to do presentations for anybody that'll have a speaker. And so that's PMI, shrm, asq, you name it. If there's an organization, we presented for them. But what does that do for us? Well, it gives us a chance to get them on our mailing list. And then Lisa sends those e blasts out. And the bigger that mailing list gets, the more sure it is that that hit rate will, will hold true. And it sounds small, right? It's like, oh, man, she's sending an e blast to a few thousand people. We're happy that we get one sign up. And, you know, how often can you do that? Well, Lisa has the balance and I can't, I don't, I don't know the frequency offhand. I. It's one, I don't know, maybe once a week and then something special once in a while. But nobody has ever complained about it being over spamming them or anything. People are appreciative of the information, and we always know that we're going to get at least one sign up. And then that kicks things off. Kind of creates a positive cycle because once people start signing up for something, other people sign up for it. I don't even know why that, because they don't really know it. But it happens.
Dave Charest: So what's your approach there? Like, how do you approach just your marketing, and how do you think about it in terms of, like, yeah, like, how often do you send, or what's, what's your approach to that?
Lisa Hammer: So we have a calendar of events for the year, you know, and that's what we market our public events. And as Dave was mentioning, when we have those public events and people sign up for them, they're sort of what we call our lost leader sometimes because we may have a class and not have a lot of people in it, but somebody from that class works at a company that needs us to come in and do a day or a week or a month or several sessions. So I always send out an e blast when we have things coming up, usually a few weeks before, a month before. I just try and do an eblast every week or every couple of weeks. Sometimes I do a couple in a week and nobody has really gotten upset about it. But like Dave said, we have this conference in Rehoboth beach at the end of April, a three day conference. And so I've sent out several e blasts about that, and people will immediately write and go, oh, I still want to come to this. I have to get approval and things like that. You know, it's usually based around our calendar. On our website, we have a registration page that shows all of our public courses for the rest of the year. So it really is just based on the regularity of those courses. And then I usually send a targeted e blast. Like, for example, we have the emotional intelligence class on Thursday. That is a public class. So I'll highlight that, but then I'll list everything else under it so people will see all of that we have to offer.
Dave Charest: I love that idea of focusing on a particular thing that you want to drive action around, but then also making those other things available to people. People. So I'm making the assumption here that, Lisa, you're the one that's inside constant contact, doing all of that stuff, right?
Lisa Hammer: Correct.
Dave Charest: So what do you like most about constant contact, then?
Lisa Hammer: I love the fact that it's easy to use. Well, first of all, I've rarely had an issue where I couldn't figure something out, but when I did, I got support quickly. So that's wonderful. You know, I like the fact that I can copy old eblasts and revise them and make them new. And, you know, there's a lot of options as far as their appearance. Maintaining our mailing list is great. I like the fact that we have our website hooked up so that if someone signs up on our website to get on our mailing list, it goes right into our constant contact list. And, you know, and I like the data. I could see there. I could see how many opens we have, how many, you know, bounces and things like that. So there's a wealth of information. I looked at a lot of different programs before we decided on constant contact. And even now when we work with our other organizations and they name some of the others they use, I'm like, nah, you have to go to constant contact.
Dave Charest: One, I appreciate that. Two, do you know if you had to narrow it down, like, what was the number one reason you decided to use constant contact then or choose constant contact?
Lisa Hammer: I think it was the different things it offered. Now, to be honest, we haven't taking advantage of all of them, but just the fact that you can do eblast, you could do surveys, you can do targeted emails, things like that, I like that fact quite a bit. The mailing list and the ability to maneuver that and control that, I loved and the reporting. So I think those were the main things that really set us on constant contact. And the pricing was okay. Of course, when we were smaller and we had a smaller mailing list, monthly pricing was lower and obviously goes up with the volume. My accountant is the same way. The more money she sees I make, the more she charges us every month. But, yeah, so I think all those factors contributed to that.
Dave Charest: So if you were to offer a tip to maybe a similar business using constant contact, what would that be?
Lisa Hammer: Don't be afraid to use it. I mean, don't be afraid to use it. I think so many people are. In fact, I was on the board of a nonprofit, and they did events and they had this policy, they would only send an eblast out once a month. And I said, that's crazy. You need to remind people who you are. And they were adamant about, no, people don't like it. So here's what happens. You get maybe one or two people complain, and that's what they take, right? Instead of looking at the 29, 98 people who did not complain of, you know, out of 3000, I would not worry about those two people. You know, maybe you do need to contact them and say, hey, sorry, or whatever, but people, you know, and it's the old rule, you know, you could do 99 things right and one thing wrong and you are going to focus on that one thing. It's the same thing with the eblasts. So we had many organizations. This one board, I was thinking about in particular. They were so afraid to do eblasts because a few people, you know, said they don't like getting too many eblasts. And I just said, you know what? They could unsubscribe. They could delete it. They could have it automatically go into a different folder. There's a lot of things they can do. So I think that's the biggest advice. Now, I'm not saying that because I want to get a million e blasts a day from anybody, but finding that balance. And like Dave said, I don't know that we've found anyone who really said, you guys are killing me with all your eblasts.
Dave Charest: All right, Dave, I want to come back to you. Sorry, we had a tangent there to.
David Newman: Go, but I want to say something. There's people unsubscribing. One of the most important lessons I learned along the way about sales is that if somebody's going to say no to you, it's great if you can get them to say it right away before you do any work. Right. And so that's one of the unsubscribe is that somebody coming off of your list that you no longer have to worry about. They weren't going to do business with you, but they were taking a son your list. So now they're gone. And then we can put in there that we have some potential of doing business with. So there really is an upside to that anyway.
Dave Charest: No, it's, it's a funny thing. Just the human nature, right, that gets involved in here is like we were talking about when someone unsubscribes or just like you focus on the negative thing when there's so many other positives to deal with there.
David Newman: Right.
Dave Charest: Dave, for you, what would your best piece of business advice be?
David Newman: Get debt free. A few years ago, one of clients said to us that he was debt free. And I said that when we started the business, it took some people believing in us. We create a line of credit in order to smooth out that cash flow. And a few years ago, this friend of ours, hes a client. He started as a client. Now hes a friend, said that it really relieved his mind to be operating his business debt free. And so its another goal we did for ourselves, thanks to Lisa, her incredible financial im really being honest, our incredible financial prowess. Weve been debt free for quite a while. So it really is a great way to, it gives you a lot of freedom in business, just like it does in your personal life.
Dave Charest: Lisa, anything to add there?
Lisa Hammer: Well, mine might sound cliche but I would say do what you love and love what you do. Almost daily says to me, I love what we do. And you know, they say if you love what you do, you won't feel like you're working. We don't. We have long days. I mean many days. We're working 1214 16 hours a day because we teach all day and we do webinars at night. But we absolutely love what we do and we love making a difference. So if you can find something that makes you feel good and makes you feel like you're accomplishing something, it's the best feeling.
Dave Charest: Well friend, lets recap some items from that discussion. Number one, find the right partner. Now whether youre looking for someone to run a business with or building a team around you, its important to find people that share your vision but complement your skillset so that you can go further. Number two, create multiple ways to make money. Now as I mentioned at the top of the show, look for other ways to make money from your business. Lisa and Dave do in person private and internal classes, public classes and consulting. Now if this isn't something that makes sense for you now, lay the groundwork for the future by documenting processes and lessons learned around your area of expertise. And lastly, focus on a calendar of events. Now when it comes to marketing, a calendar is often your best friend. Look at what's coming up during the year and schedule communications to spread the word and fill those gaps with other marketing holidays you may be able to piggyback on. So here's your action item for today, friend. Build your marketing calendar now if you write it down, it's more likely to get done. I'm going to include a link to our online marketing calendar template and marketing holidays list and a link to a tutorial on how to use the marketing calendar within your constant contact account. You'll find both in the show. Notes I hope you 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@constantcontact.com. If you did enjoy today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a review. 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.