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The Virtual CMO podcast is sponsored by the strategic marketing consulting services of The Five Echelon Group.
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If you’d like to work directly with The Five Echelon Group and receive personal coaching and support to optimize your business, enhance your marketing effectiveness and grow your revenue, visit Five Echelon.com to learn more and schedule a free consultation.
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Welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
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I'm your host, Eric Dickmann.
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In this podcast, we have conversations with marketing professionals who share the strategies, tactics, and mindset you can use to improve the effectiveness of your marketing activities and grow your business.
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This week, I'm excited to welcome Karla Singson to the program.
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Karla is an award-winning writer, public speaker and entrepreneur.
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Her entrepreneurial journey started when she graduated college at 19 thinking companies would fight over her, turns out nobody wanted to hire a teenager.
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So she got a job at an ad agency, started doing freelance writing work and eventually opened up several businesses.
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She found her strengths lie in sales, marketing, and growth, and she started doing business coaching to help dozens of stay-at-home moms become first time millionaires.
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Now with over a decade of experience in physical and online businesses, she splits her time among the Philippines, Thailand, and the us, where she runs her ventures hands-free and continues to help small and medium enterprises grow their bottom lines.
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Please help me welcome Karla to the program.
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karla welcome to The Virtual CMO podcast.
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I'm so glad you could join us today.
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Hey, Eric.
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Thanks for having me here.
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And I'm excited to be a great resource for your community.
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I'm happy to serve your community for today.
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Oh, that's great.
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I appreciate your time.
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And I think we're going to cover a lot of very interesting things for the audience here.
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And I know right now you're over in the Philippines.
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You're half a world away.
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But I'd love to start out today's conversation and just get a little bit of your backstory, because I think it's very interesting.
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Tell us a little bit how you got started in business.
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Yeah.
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So I grew up in the Philippines and I learned how to read at a very early age.
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So I learned how to read a two.
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And so that's why I was always advanced in school and I entered college at 15.
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I finished college at 19.
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So when I finished college, I thought that all of these companies will be fighting all over me.
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Cause that was his genius.
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And I had these awards and stuff.
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And turns out, I kept getting rejected and rejected by my dream companies.
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I remember I actually cried when I got the call back from P and G from Proctor and gamble that I didn't even pass it.
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The first screening.
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And.
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My classmates, some of them who I thought, Oh, I'm smarter than her.
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Why did she pass the screening?
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something like that.
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So it really broke my heart.
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And so because of that, I was forced to be an entrepreneur.
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Really, at a very early age.
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So I did have a job how probably the only place that accepted my craziness, what's an ad agency.
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And I started writing ads.
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that was 2009.
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And back here in the Philippines, we still did radio ads.
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Newspaper advertorials.
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So those were the things that I did a TV ads as well.
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Translation.
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That was my job.
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eight months into it, I quit and I started my business.
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my first business was a flower shop and, I grew up, I grew that to six figures and now it's a franchise.
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We have 12 locations all over the country and, in one in Canada actually, but the owner is a Filipino.
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I knew him.
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So he started a flower shop in Edmundson.
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So that's fine.
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And then I started an events and PR company, and then after that, a few online businesses, that was just it
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so when you had the job and you were writing, ads and you lasted eight months in it, was it because you just felt at that time, this isn't for me, this isn't the direction I want to go.
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Was it a burning desire to be an entrepreneur?
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Yeah.
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I always wanted freedom, Actually and being in an office, we had, like a dress code.
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It's pretty shallow enough to quit a job over a dress code.
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And then, and then I had, I also, I actually also started when I turned 21, I had a brief stint of playing professional poker.
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So I had late nights.
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I know it's pretty crazy.
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So I had late nights and so I couldn't come to work at 8:00 AM, which is all what time works starts here in the Philippines.
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it just you know what, I want more freedom.
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I want to do other things than just be in an office for eight hours.
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So that was, I think freedom was really my big motivation.
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So many people who want to be entrepreneurs, they start up a business and then realize there's a lot that they don't know.
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did you experience that as well?
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When you opened up that first shop?
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Oh, yeah, absolutely.
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I had, I had the advantage of finishing a bachelor's degree in business.
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So there's that?
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I wouldn't say that it was all me, that I'm a genius.
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I had four years of study and I think that was a, that was an advantage.
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And that's why, when I talked to these entrepreneurs is that the college is useless.
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It's not, if you make good use of it, It is just like any other mastermind or any other coaching programs, the same thing.
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If you will make good use of it, then it's useful.
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If you don't, then it's not.
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my, I had a formula for starting a business without capital.
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my formula was number one, you had to be a profit first, this nest, as in eat.
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No, you can take your profit on your first transaction.
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number two, it has to have a high margin so that you can have a buffer.
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And number three, it has to be something that kind of everybody wants.
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So that was a very rudimentary formula, what fits into all those categories, flowers.
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Everyone wants flowers, maybe not to receive, but they will always give someone like, even you, you give your mom's hours, your wife, your girlfriend, your daughter.
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it's profit first because you have to pay a flower shop before they deliver it.
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So I take my profit right away.
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And, most of all, it has a huge margin.
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Like my, I hope my customers don't hear this.
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but my profit margin is somewhere between 300 to 400%.
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on each item.
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and the more they add, like a Teddy bear here, chocolate here, balloons there, the more that margin grows.
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So it just I don't have any flower arrangement experience.
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I'm not, I like flowers as a girl, but I'm not, it's not, I'm not skilled in it.
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So I just really picked it out of my formula.
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I still follow that formula actually to this day, whenever I start a new business.
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I'd love to drill down more on it, because I think you're hitting on something that is so important for so many businesses, many business owners, whether you're running a restaurant or you sell software or whatever your product or service may be.
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Many owners get so caught up in the product or service that they don't think about the business.
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And what you're talking about here is it doesn't really matter if you're an expert in flowers you saw an opportunity for a high margin business that could create profits quickly.
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So I know you consult with a lot of businesses today.
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Do you see this happening over and over again in the businesses that you work with?
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I do.
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I do.
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a lot of people are very, They're very attached to their idea and they feel like their idea is who they are and that if it fails that they are a failure.
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So those are two different conversations, right?
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So if something fails, it's not because you're a failure.
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It's because the idea.
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Is a failure.
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It's not, failure is an event.
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It's not your identity.
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And so I have been in so many difficult conversations with my clients where they would buy our service, any service, I still events I saw.
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VR.
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I sell customer support.
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I sell tech any, and then they would get frustrated if the offer doesn't work.
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But for me, the offer doesn't work.
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Like we were able to.
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To get to our KPIs.
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And sometimes, sometimes it's very hard to have those conversations cause you don't want to hurt their feelings, for lack of a better term, but you don't want to be the bringer of bad news on that note, you're absolutely right about trying to detach yourself from the idea and.
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And limiting yourself to just one idea, because I have also seen businesses, especially during this pandemic, Meet go pivot.
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specifically based on their skills.
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on their strengths, one of the, one of the pivots we did, I had a really big, events company here in the Philippines, like really big.
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And we were doing events all over the country.
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We were doing events in, Thailand and last year we actually expanded to Las Vegas, Nevada.
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so I was there, and I actually keep a home in Las Vegas, the airport's closed right now.
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and, but then depending on what happened and just like that.
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I don't know.
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I think our last bill was$600 from like March.
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those like six months ago.
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we had to make a quick pivot and I just asked myself, what are our top skills?
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And all of my, all of my top employees are really good at project management because we're event planners.
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in fact, I was training some of them to be some of the industry's very first scrum certified event planners.
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And however, obviously the world had other plans.
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So I just shifted into using my team to help push the projects and our online businesses.
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And so far, they still got to keep their jobs somehow and we were able to put that event to sleep.
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So I guess even with people, it's the same principle, nothing is really definitely, you just have to adjust and maybe don't get attached to one thing too much.
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Yeah, that emotional attachment kills so many businesses because they can literally run a business into the ground and I think the example you gave is great.
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So you have staff, they're trained, they do things well, but the current circumstances don't allow them to do that.
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So how could you apply those skills then?
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To something else.
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and not be emotionally attached to what you were doing, which really doesn't exist during this pandemic.
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Exactly.
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And the other thing that I find people also get very sensitive with is this thing.
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They call legacy a lot of family owned businesses have been doing this thing forever, and now they're forced to pivot or something.
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I'm a member of a lot of Asian groups in any US Asian Facebook groups, and a lot of restaurants in Chinatown close.
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And it's very heartbreaking, but I don't believe that these people don't have.
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Any other skills or that it's really all they know how to do.
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I don't, I really don't believe that because these people, especially immigrants are very hardworking.
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They're smart.
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And I just want them to see that, like more than going for the emotional, personal, emotional attachment.
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Your legacy doesn't mean that it's also tied to our business, but your legacy is actually how much you thrive, throughout different waves.
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And I would say the economy.
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Now, you've got a couple different kinds of businesses here.
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You've got physical businesses where you actually have to have people at a location, customer service and your businesses that can be more virtual, right?
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People can be working from home how are you seeing things change, obviously with more acceptance, to remote work, more acceptance of outsourcing to whether it's a VA or a technical support.
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How are you seeing things change?
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Yeah.
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We were very nervous, my partner and I, because we launched a scale wind at end of February.
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And then as someone else was actually leading it, and then I replaced him and then, I was very optimistic about it.
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Oh my gosh, let's do this.
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I was doing.
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12 to 16 hour days and then the pandemy happen.
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And we were getting very nervous.
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Cause most of the companies in our main markets in us, Canada, Australia, they were cutting back.
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So we expected to lose a lot of clients.
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And then, but at the same time, I don't want to.
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I don't want to tell my employees, that they're laid off or something.
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So it's really, it was a very hard, time for us.
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And then surprisingly, we realized that because of the lay offs that are happening on ground.
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more and more businesses are more, are got forced to be open, to hiring a global workforce.
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10 years ago, 15 years ago, I admit that there was a baggage with, hiring someone from the Philippines, hiring someone from India, Nigeria, whatever.
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But I have met so many people in countries, in developing countries who had like way better English than me were very intelligent, very organized.
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And because of the leverage of, the U S dollar the Be and Be can give a certain level of standards, a certain standard of work.
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That is a par with someone from in house, but also.
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But at the same time the company gets to save and and it might initially it also, it might sound like, Oh, they're, there they go again and taking our jobs, but you know what else I found.
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It actually encouraged because it's now, they're more open to it.
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It also encouraged people who were laid off the finally started their own business because they can hire their first virtual assistant.
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Who can pitch for them who can do a customer support for them who can source our products for e-commerce for them.
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And they didn't even know that these things existed before as low as so let's say$9 an hour, or like our customer support, offer a dollar an hour customer support, they were now open to these possibilities.
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that sort of brings up another great point.
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And you hear this a lot from many of the big business coaches out there, but you want to be an owner of your business, right?
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Not an operator of it.
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So you want to figure out ways to leverage talent so that a lot of the day to day tasks and can be taken on by others.
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So you are not such an operator of your business, and you certainly have to do that with you.
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If you're managing multiple companies, you can't be doing it all yourself.
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Yeah, absolutely.
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I actually have assistance 24 hours for both times zones.
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So I can have someone, reply to something right away.
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Or I even actually did them, the authority to even wake me up in my sleep, if something is really urgent, I want people, I want more people to be more open to that and to see the ad too.
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Also appreciate that the leverage of how much they could make and how much the global workforce allows them to give high quality service, at a more inexpensive, price is, it's almost.
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illogical to not take advantage of it.
00:14:51.287 --> 00:14:54.136
Hey, it's Eric here and we'll be right back to the podcast.
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But first, are you ready to grow, scale, and take your marketing to the next level?
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If so, The Five Echelon Group's Virtual CMO onsulting service may be a great fit for you.
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We can help build a strategic marketing plan for your business and manage its execution, step-by-step.
00:15:11.986 --> 00:15:14.537
We'll focus on areas like how to attract more leads.
00:15:14.807 --> 00:15:18.947
How to create compelling messaging that resonates with your ideal customers.
00:15:19.307 --> 00:15:22.876
How to strategically package and position your products and services.
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How to increase lead conversion, improve your margins, and scale your business.
00:15:27.947 --> 00:15:35.716
To find out more about our consulting offerings and schedule a consultation, go to fiveechelon.com and click on Services.
00:15:36.167 --> 00:15:37.427
Now back to the podcast.
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Well, you know, you started your career writing ad copy, and obviously this is a marketing podcast.
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So I'd be interested to hear a little bit more about how you coach your clients and how you've deal with some marketing challenges in your own businesses.
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Certainly getting the right message, understanding your target customer is so important.
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And it's a topic we discuss here on the podcast all the time.
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But when you're working with clients, do you find that this is still such a huge problem, that they don't even know who they're marketing to?
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Oh, yeah, absolutely.
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You know what?
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It's so not sexy, but a lot of clients still resist market research.
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it's the same thing as having an idea and, Oh, this is who I want to serve, and this is what I want to do.
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And this is the offer that I have in my mind.
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even this dollar an hour offer my partner and I.
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This cost it for hours and hours, several meetings.
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We were disagreeing on a lot of things, and in their other offers, these conversations have to be done.
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So I would say.
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Market research is still, no, still one of the things that a lot of business owners really resist with because it's not sexy, it's tiring.
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And I don't know, it's made, maybe it's something that nerds like me only, But even a very, you can do very simple things so I can share our.
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Some of our, the things that we've been doing.
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of course there's competitor research, you can use Google for that.
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And then, my favorite is really going to.
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Reddit, subreddits, Cora.
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Facebook groups and really seeing how they talk.
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another good strategy is going to Amazon and reading the Amazon reviews of certain products that, that, that are selling, the same thing as you.
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And even if you're not selling the same thing, if you're solving the same problems.
00:17:25.741 --> 00:17:33.511
So if you see how these customers talk or how they praise, like the five star reviews, how they praise these.
00:17:33.541 --> 00:17:40.061
Products basically, you get two, you get more insight on, what's really important to, your customer.
00:17:40.342 --> 00:17:43.192
and so yeah, four ohms, Amazon reviews.
00:17:43.592 --> 00:17:49.162
Competitor research, obviously, you can go underground, from, for Facebook groups as well.
00:17:49.521 --> 00:17:54.531
And I would also encourage you to have one on one conversations with some people.
00:17:54.781 --> 00:18:00.872
of course you have to dangle a carrot and maybe give them like an Amazon gift card or something, but.
00:18:01.231 --> 00:18:06.301
These deep conversations really give you a different kind of, insight.
00:18:06.872 --> 00:18:15.912
And for housekeeping purposes, these cautery, this data also helps you and your business partners to not fight.
00:18:16.311 --> 00:18:17.301
Because there's like a.
00:18:17.632 --> 00:18:19.251
It's like a third party, right?
00:18:19.251 --> 00:18:23.271
It's like a third party saying, Hey, this is what they said, so this doesn't come from me.
00:18:23.301 --> 00:18:24.291
It is not my ego.