Latest / Do Small Business Like a Big Boss Podcast / Stop Guessing, Start Growing: Marketing Strategy for Small Business

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Stop Guessing, Start Growing: Marketing Strategy for Small Business · Do Small Business Like a Big Boss Podcast

• Aisha Massengill: You've got to invest. Marketing and advertising and putting your business out there for the public to see is an investment. So you have to look at it that way. You can't look at it as an expense. Yeah, it's an expense on your P &L and things along those lines, if your tax purpose is yes. But for your business itself, it's an investment. So you have to look at allocating a portion of your, whether your net revenue or gross revenue. I recommend gross. Gross revenue as your marketing and advertising budget. whether it's 10 to 20%, something in there, has to be that. You have to know what that number is, and you have to be able to stay within that number. Identify what your true marketing and advertising budget is. Do it for a year, all right? Just do a 12-month average. Start with it that way. Other businesses will get a little more complex with the seasonality of it, so you're spending more or less. But nonetheless, just do a 12-month average of it, and then from there, you'll know what you'll need to spend within your marketing and advertising. What does a website cost, right? What does it cost to host and maintain it? That's it. So that's a hard cost you got to keep every single month. to Do Small Business Like a Big Boss, where we explore the real stories, hard earned lessons, and game changing strategies of entrepreneurs who've moved beyond the side hustle and build businesses that scale with confidence. This show is proudly sponsored by Project Icon. I'm your host, Aisha Jorge Massengill, your Small Business Legal Guide. Let's dive in. Hey bosses, welcome to Do Small Business Like a Big Boss. I am your host, Aisha Jorge Massengill, your Small Business Legal Guide. And today I'm excited to welcome George Ennis to the show. George is the founder of EAG Advertising, a full service marketing and advertising agency specializing in B2B, nonprofit and complex industries. With over 20 years of strategic agency experience, George brings deep expertise in brand development, paid media, account management, PPC advertising, sales enablement, and product launches. Welcome, George. Hey, heck, thank you. You said it's great to be here. It's really great to have you. Now, I want to start with something easy because you describe yourself prominently as a twin dad. Is that because you have twins or you are a twin? No, I have twins. Currently, my twins are five years old. So I'm in the thick of it right now. Fun. Here's breaking news. So I have twins. They're older, though. ⁓ The bad news, good news is like, you're always in the thick of it. bet. bet. My twins are 24 and I'm in the thick of it. Well, at least you'll be a great resource for me to rely on when I have some questions of, my Lord, am I doing the right things? Yeah. I always say it's like the Al Pacino scene from The Godfather where he's like, just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in. me back in. So I think I'm in the clear because they've reached a certain age and then you're still parenting them. It just takes a different... different shape, but in their boys do. So that's great. I wanted to get just a quick version of your origin story because you've, you've been in the game for over 20 years. How does a person end up building a career and then an agency around this stuff? Yeah, it's it's a great question. It's kind of a, I'm going to say a funny story, but a different story. Prior to me working in the marketing and advertising world, I worked in the armor transportation industry where I was managing, you know, some larger accounts for the company I was working with. I moved back to Philadelphia and I saw a local TV ad on TV. was like, well, what is that? I'm going to do that. So that's how I got entered into the mix of, you know, providing local advertising for small medium sized businesses within certain geographies. And then from there, I started learning more about business, more about the marketing and the advertising along with it. And my path is a little different as when they establish new roles within the organization I was with, the Comcast, they would offer me the opportunity to interview for them. And I seemed to get those jobs as they would come through and just learning from other people. I would say it's probably the biggest thing of having strategic conversations and just open dialogue about the reasons why this works for. whatever the reason may be and me being a part of so many meetings and discussions, I was able to see things a little differently to say, you know what, I think I could do this. Then throughout, you know, 10 year period of doing the work and working with a lot of businesses in different angles, you know what, I think I can do this and kind of started it that way. it's so interesting. I think for, for a lot of us, including myself, you go through that mental process of like, can I do this? Should I do this? So you started thinking like, can do this and then you do it. Tell me about the beginnings of that process. Like what did, what were those early days like when you went from ideation to actually doing? Yeah. So for, for my situation was a little different because we're like paid advertising and a lot of that is on trust. So as I was thinking of this idea of what it is I should do, can I actually do this? I actually reached out to some of my old customers and say, Hey, I got this idea. I want to do things a little differently. If I did this, would you be interested to work with me? Yeah, let's see what you got. So I built out a business plan, a business structure of what I would do, presented it to them. And they said, sure. So after, you know, the first couple came on board, okay, this actually works. Then now do you have any other, you know, referrals you can send my way of people that may need services that I offer? Yeah, here's a couple more. So I started building that out. So you learn some of what you know, what you're great at, right? You're great at X, Y, and Z. And I was great at distributing paid advertising within specific geographies, reaching audiences. So what I was great at, but then you start learning so much more about what's most important to the business owners, to the managers of the stores that are really taking care of the day-to-day operations. You learn so much what's going on. How do you identify the best ways, avenues and things along those lines to get them to their overall goal of increased revenue and customer base, whatever it may be. And you build all that together. So when I started, it was really just placing what we call spots and dots. Get a commercial. I'm going to put it on TV at this time. I'm going get a commercial and put on streaming at this time. And that's going to be it. But then it evolved into so much more to be that full service marketing and advertising agency. Because what I found was is that most business owners, they're experts in their business. They don't have about 20 to 30 other salespeople trying to sell some product or service that they believe, which it's right for them to believe it, is going to help that business in some way, or form. But they don't put into consideration everything else that goes along with that day to day operation the business owners to get into. website, social media, pay-per-click, TV ads, content creation, whatever it may be. There's so much and they get frustrated with it. So I'm able to come in and really identify the good. What's working for you? What's not working for you? The bad. Okay, this is all right. It could be better. So we can optimize that and the ugly, what I call it. Like this stuff just doesn't work for you. You bought from that person because you like them or you just were over dealing with all the phone calls and wanted to do something. It's time to get rid of those things and restructure a marketing and advertising plan that fits your business with your needs. And your budget in mind, not my budget, I'm not going to sell you a package of, here's $20,000 for you to run, you know, 200,000 impressions or whatever it may be and hope and pray. No, we're going to build a strategy behind all that. So it evolved from having a conversation with trusted partners that knew me from when I was a young little Georgianus to growing up to where am today. It's just, this is what I'm thinking. Would this be an opportunity for us to work together? They said, yes, we tested it. We worked. It's been successful and we are expanding and growing and we're continually expanding and growing. Awesome. And in that beginning, you talked about reaching out to existing clients. How prescriptive were you in that? Because there's so much talk about specialization and niching down and even when reading your company's materials, you specialize and dot, dot. In the beginning, as you were thinking about who's my ideal customer, did you care in the beginning or you were like, I'm just reaching out to all of these customers to see who will come on board with me? Jerry? No, I was very strategic. Tell us about that. Yeah. So I really wanted to focus on automotive. Automotive industry, it's cutthroat. It really is, right? From the consumer side, believe me, they're not that bad. They're really nice, genuine people. But inside of that industry itself, there's so many changing things. So I reached out to some automotive folks and said, this is what I'm thinking about doing. And three of them said, yeah, we'd love to be able to see more about this, explain more about it. Cause they knew I had their best interest at all times. And I'll also, to preface this, they weren't customers of mine at that time when I was reaching out to them. As I moved down to Maryland from Philadelphia area, I wasn't working with them, but we just kept a personal relationship. So I was very strategic in who I was reaching out to. And I wasn't going to just take on any business just to get business. I wanted to see that this could scale and I could do this properly before going down that road of, let's, create a business and hope it works. I put a lot of thought and a lot of time, a lot of late nights, just building this up and thought process. It was really very strategic in that. then from there, the partners that are the other partners that I brought on were from referrals and say, you need to trust George. George got this avenue and it may not be everything that I wanted to do for them, which also helped me position my organization as to how we structure ourselves is where do you need your most assistance with them? We can provide help or guidance within that or be a consultant for you in some way, shape or form. But it was, it's all about strategy and really starting that out and having your friends to be open and honest and transparent with you. No, that's a horrible idea. Or no, that's a fantastic idea. How can you do this better? What would be your differentiator? I know you can do it X, Y, and Z, but what makes you different from somebody else? And it can't just be price. Yeah. Yeah. I had, I was in a conversation earlier today and the person said, yeah, you need that person to... be willing to tell you your baby is ugly, right? Like you have to have that person in your life that you think you're doing amazing things, but they're like, yeah, man, that baby is ugly. So that you can course correct. But I did want to pull the thread a little bit on the networking piece and the getting business, because one of the hardest things in the beginning for a newer business owner is getting the business. And you talked about networking. So can you tell me you had an existing client base and you talked about the importance of kind of staying in touch with those folks. What are some of the other kinds of strategies from a networking and staying on top of building those relationships did you deploy in order to build that base? Yeah, that's a great question. And I don't find that traditional networking ways work for me. My life is all about building relationships, And strengthening them, right? Everybody has some type of commonality within our lives, some way, or form. And it's finding that and having those conversations and then, you know, we're growing up together. So that's how that would work. Now, as the business starts to grow a little bit, I am then doing some, let's call it social networking, where I'm reaching out to people through LinkedIn, through Facebook that are connections. They may not be friends. We probably know each other or connected some way, or form, but reaching out to them in some way to talk about some of the success. That's one area of networking that we did that we focused on to help build kind of our growth in its own. But then it's also positioning our business through where our target. audiences, right? So they're spending a lot of their time within social media platforms and it's talking about our brand reasons why we do things a little differently and showing that way. So my networking from a non-person to person type of in-person networking was more of using the social platforms that are out there to show what we're doing, but then also reach out to people individually through there and see if there's an opportunity for us to partner together or, know, if they're having struggles within something, hey, can I provide some insight for you to provide some assistance and guidance? So the relationships we build are all in trust. And that's one big thing for us is trust. you start working with somebody and then you show that you actually care. You are a trusted advisor to them and you're not pushing a product. You've now moved from a trusted advisor person to, hey, he's actually a friend of mine. I got it. There's the saying, I got a guide. I got it. I was that guy for a lot of people and I still have a lot of people that are, those are my guys. They'll help with X, Y, and Z. So it's about building that trust relationship, being open, honest, and transparent, but then utilizing the platforms we have out there to network, to expand our digital footprint as a business and then do some follow-ups with individuals. I was part of some organizations that I never had any business from. And I was okay with that, but it was also me getting my brand out there, me, my business brand and me, my personal brand out to an area that I've never been in before. And I'm okay that I didn't generate a business from it, but I built some lifelong friends from that. And I know down the road, there's going to be something coming from it, but worse comes to worst, I can call somebody and Hey, let's go ahead and open a happy hour. like, yes, let's do it. Different industries. But to me, it's all about building that relationship and being open, honest and transparent. And also, you know, being, you know, a little. a little open to having your baby being called ugly. Yeah. And I'm curious on your thoughts because this is your business. I see a lot of blowback about selling in the DMs. And as a business owner myself, I get messages and I think I have a different perspective now because I am a business owner where I don't immediately recoil when someone slides into my DMs. But what is your... your thought process and approach, you know, as a marketer, as a business development person, when you are trying to create those relationships within the LinkedIn platform? It's a great question. And just like you, I'm getting a ton of messages, ton of sponsored ads and all that other stuff. I approached it a little differently. We're connected for some way, or form, whether you start following me, I started following you, something called our interests. I'm rarely selling through that. I'm more of, I do what I coined as pre-search. Now I'm looking at you, I'm looking at the business that you work with or the business that you own. And I'm seeing some things and in reality, I'm dropping by to say, great job. Great job in having your website be very usable for the consumer. Your social media posts consistently doing it. It's fantastic. Good job. I'm very proud. I'm very happy that you're doing it the right way. I'm reaching out with, you know, a positive type of thing to build that relationship with them. messaging on purpose, not messaging just to draw business. Let's just say, hey, you're doing a great job in what it is that you're doing. Keep it up, And kind of then if they respond back, which should be a minimal response back, then you can hopefully open that conversation to saying, hey, here's some things that we offer. it potentially be a fit for you? But I'm never out there really just peddling and pushing, trying to tell via DMs. To me, it's kind of annoying and a lot of people are doing it. How many BDC, business development? Centers are not even individuals. The centers are out there just blanket emailing cold calling sting all of that It's a distraction now. It's a negative way So I take a little spin of like talk about their business like we're connected great job in doing this or hey I found an area of opportunity for you just on your website. There's a little nugget. You should know this and there's times I'm getting ads delivered to me in Annapolis, Maryland somebody in California I'd love to work with them, but I'm gonna call that store and say hey, just so you know, I live in Maryland I haven't been out of California in a while I don't plan on going out to California in unless there's a baseball game I want to go see. And I'm seeing ads. Just whoever's running your ads, just have them check their geography, please. And that's it. Yeah. Yeah, I get that too. In fact, a young man, he said, hey, I've been checking out your YouTube page. And I think that there are some things. And I think it was automated. So was like, well, tell me about it. And then I haven't heard from him. Because again, a couple of things that I've learned is like, to divorce myself from the feeling of rejection just because someone is not interested in what I'm doing, but also to be open like, shoot your shot. Like, I don't mind. I don't mind if you shoot your shot. I mean, you know, ask me nicely first. It can't be after like the first time we connect. The first thing, hi, can you spend $10,000 with me? I think I got a great platform that could help you get your business X, Y, and Z. You don't know my goals. Right, right. Or when they say like they identify the wrong kind of practice. And I'm like, well, then now, now I don't trust you because you haven't. I had a boss who told me once like, when you're putting numbers in a presentation, if one of your numbers is wrong, no one trusts the rest of your presentation. I agree 1 million percent with that. So you're in my DMs and like, you don't have those details. I'm like, yeah, it's easy for me to move on. But you started talking a little bit about some of the ways that, you know, people can improve in terms of how their marketing efforts. And when you're seeing early stage businesses or just your, your owners, are there mistakes that you see? over and over again with people where you're like, you've just seen it. Like what are some of those things? Yeah, we see it a lot. see that. So one of them is the building the website themselves. And believe me, I did it myself too. Yeah, go on Wix and create a website. are no problems. It looks good for what it is that I was doing, but for your actual business growth and the user experience or what they call UX isn't always the best. So a lot of it is building the website for themselves to save them money. True. It's saving you money, but it's actually hurting you in the long run, depending on your business itself. That's one big thing. Another thing is their digital footprint. Like how do you show up to people? And that's extremely important. It's your first impression for the most part. So it's your social media and a lot of folks just make it very political. And once it's a political industry, stay away from it in my personal opinion and professional opinion. But it's also like the infrequency of posting and what they're posting and doing things kind of the wrong way. I'm so happy that you're doing it you understand the power behind it, but you kind of do things a little differently. Another thing is really just having synergy. Your website name should look the same on your business cards, on your LinkedIn profile. It should all be the same. Your phone number should be the same in your Google business profile or in Google. It's just having those simple things that are there. Broken links that are on your website, not going to the correct pages. Like those little things are overlooked because we're looking at those. But when the user starts experiencing those, those come to some issues. So what we always do within our pre-search is we just do a digital footprint audit. And this is why we see so many commonalities of these issues. Is that, hey, cool, they got the homepage up, but then their information just doesn't make sense. I can't fill out a form so they can contact me. There's just broken things within their website itself. So the user experience is a little negative. Then how do they show up within a Google search? What does that look like? And then what does your Google business profile look like? And what does your social media look like? How does that pop up? What other social media avenues are you using? Are they the right avenues for the people that you want to draw into your business? That's what we do within our pre-search initially to say, hey, this is all really good. We can focus on other areas of opportunity, but a lot of the times we're tied up on, we've got to fix your website. You got to fix how people find you first and how you show up to them. Your story is important, but is it important to them? What's important to them? And how do we reword that? And some people, you know, they don't want to make any changes because it's their baby. All right. I'm not going to call your baby ugly, but that's how close we are. But it's really, you know, there's areas of opportunity to fix it. So commonalities are just... Those little things that you think are cost cutting that are helping you save money are actually hurting you in the long run because of that person who came to your site for the first time has a bad user experience. Not that your content's bad or your product's bad or your services are bad, but that experience isn't working or the phone number's wrong on the site and they can't get ahold of you, they're moving on to the next one. So we've got to ensure that our digital footprint is set up and that's a big thing I see across the board all the time, all the time. That's so important and you actually touched on something else that I wanted to talk about. Cause you work with, I think I heard you say you work with nonprofits and there you talked about the challenge that some businesses may have about a penny wise and a pound foolish, not wanting to spend the money upfront. When you have small business owners who feel like they can't compete with bigger brands in terms of marketing spend, how do you help them get into the mindset of what needs to be done? that's a great question. And it's actually one of the reasons why I started EHE is I wanted every business, fairly small, medium sized businesses to have the same capabilities. to market and advertise within their primary marketing area, just like the big boys. They absolutely want this. It can be done. It's gotta be done strategically. Within all of that, you gotta invest. Marketing and advertising and putting your business out there for the public to see is an investment. So you have to look at it that way. You can't look at it as an expense. Yeah, it's an expense on your P &L and things along those lines. If your tax purposes, yes, but for your business itself, it's an investment. So you have to look at allocating a portion of your, whether your net revenue or gross revenue. I recommend gross. Gross revenue as your marketing and advertising budget, whether it's 10 to 20%, something in there, it has to be then. You have to know what that number is and you have to be able to stay within that number. That's the first thing. Identify what your true marketing and advertising budget is. Do it for a year. Just do a 12-month average. Start with it that way. Other businesses will get a little more complex with the seasonality of it, when you spend more or less. But on the last, just do a 12-month average of it and then from there, you'll know what you'll need to spend within your marketing and advertising. What does a website cost? Right? What does it cost to host and maintain a website? Right? That's it. So that's a hard cost. You've got to keep every single month. Right? Then what's, what are ⁓ the other things that you have as hard costs? What signage do you need on your stores? What mailers do you have to have for your business or whether they may be going out somewhere or they're napkins that you need printed? What are those hard costs that are part of your marketing that have to be in there? Then what's leftover? Then whatever's leftover, what could be utilized for a marketing and advertising strategy? So it's really identify what your gross revenue is on a yearly basis, divide that by 12. There's your monthly number. Then what are your must keeps? You must have the internet. They must have those things. And from there, what's remaining, that's your pool for outreach as I like to call. And what that outreach looks like is going to be different for everybody. Every audience, every person does something a little differently. You can create a general, um, you know, audience segment of flourishing families. doesn't fit necessarily a business that, you know, that I'm looking for. I'm looking for parents with kids who have a household income less than $50,000 and need X, and Z. So either which way, you get to start building that out and understanding your audiences. Then based off of that audience, tactics and strategies are out there. Most businesses won't be able to compete successfully in the pay-per-click world. you're a small window installation company, you've got the likes of people with endless pockets, and they will throw as much money as possible to get that first space on Google. And a couple hundred dollars per click, and they're okay with spending that. You got to find other ways to do that. So how do you do that? You have to then be more of a local voice. So what avenues can you do that where it's not going to cost you money? It may just cost you time, but what's not going to cost you money then within that, how do you support that with some other low cost entry points, I guess, to put your brand out there? And we do some, animal donation type of events throughout the year with some of our partners. And also they come directly through us and we're building plans like that with them. Like, know when this needs to be, this is what you're going to need to do to launch those campaigns. And some of them only spend a couple hundred dollars and we're making it work for them. You know, we can always get back to them and ⁓ now if you invested more, this is what it would be. But that's not how we position it. Your budget is your budget. This is where we need to go. This is how we get there by utilizing all the means that are available to us, which there's millions of them. But then which ones are the best for your business based off of your budget? Not what my thought process is on what packages you should be buying from me because my corporate gave me a quota to hit. And regardless of your success, After 90 days, I'm going to hope you resign or come up with a different plan. To me, that doesn't work. Yeah. It's interesting you talk about the pay-per-click in particular, because I had to realize really early, I was attracting a lot of individuals and I don't represent individuals. I represent businesses. So I was like, I can't be in the pay-per-click world because even people who come in through my website, it's a lot of individuals who were booking calls for me. And so I was like, I would... just know my budget would be blown with individuals clicking to explore. I very quickly figured out like that wasn't the play for me. Yeah, it's tough. A lot of people don't know that till they waste the money. And it's very tough for them to do that. So as a business owner, you're starting out. That's why the website is so important. If your website is set up properly and you have an expert actually do it for you, which they're affordable and they do great work. I promise you, they're out there. We don't necessarily build the websites, but I got a guy that can definitely do it for you. got multiple guys that can do it for you. but it's set, you set it up properly that your digital footprint is already set up for you to be successful in ranking on that first page of Google, which nobody goes past page two anymore. Come on now. So it's like, gotta have that. Then you continually maintain that. So then that's an added cost, but it's a low cost, low investment costs for you to continue to be up there. So now you don't have to pay that, $3,000 per month on your pay per click budget, hoping for quality leads to come in when it could be bought traffic or anything under the sun. That's not your right audience. You've got people that are actually going in there and searching for the services you offer and they're clicking on a non-paid ad. So that's an organic growth to your business from an investment you did months back. Yeah. All about the investment of it. It's extremely important for business owners to understand that building your website on your own is going to be costly to you in the long run. So I want to, I want to go deeper on that because I don't know if it's, it is people who only deal with consumers who hold this opinion. But I keep hearing a lot of people saying like, your website doesn't really matter. For me, it is the proverbial storefront. And I felt like that was one of the first bets that I placed in terms of really investing in that website. Because if I'm pitching to... other business owners, I need to look legit and not like something thrown away. But I just keep hearing people say like, oh, no one checks your website anymore. So tell me why you think they're wrong. They're 100 % wrong. Yeah, 100 % wrong. look at analytics on a daily basis. And my team, we look at analytics on a daily basis, which is basically website traffic. How are people getting there? We look at that all the time. It's extremely important. There are some industries that a website doesn't matter if you are selling strictly on Amazon, only a website Amazon your website right there. You just gotta make sure your page on Amazon looks good. That they will buy from you and deliver on time and you get reviews like that's a different side of the business. But for most business to consumers and business to business, we're gonna research you. We're gonna research you right away. So if I'm looking for a product or a service as a twin dad, right? Five year old twin dad, I'm looking for a product or a service. I'm gonna Google you. I'm gonna read your reviews. I'm gonna go to your website. I'm gonna go to your social media platforms. I'm going to see what you're going to be saying, what you're looking like. And I'm going to see what people are saying about you. Then if I'm interested or still need your products or services, I'm going back to your website to learn more. Those are engagement, right? So if you're looking at a, if you're looking at your website analytics and you're 200 people coming to your website on a monthly basis and you have an 80 % plus engagement rate, you have people that are actually utilizing your website to learn more about you. It's needed. And believe me, I was in that seat. I created my website on my own like What do need a website for? If I'm meeting with somebody, they already know me. What I need to do that for? So then as we started to grow, and I'm going after business to business for my organization, or my team is, we're going after business to business, but we're helping really business to business and business to consumer to grow their businesses. People that didn't know, like in Trust George, they're then looking at my website, like, who is this guy? What is this going on? What is this EAG advertising? I don't know anything about them. And then that first view, and when I saw somebody look at it for the first time, said, I need to invest in my website. So we invested heavily. in our website. And I didn't want to make a website that looked like everybody else. I wanted to be more personalized because that's the service that we offer from a client that spends 500 bucks a month to $750,000 a month. You're getting the same exact treatment across the board here at EAG. So websites extremely important because as consumers, we look over things. As a business to business and I'm looking for a business to possibly partner with, oh yeah, I'm looking over your stuff. I'm seeing what you've got going on. Even if the bottom of your website has the wrong year on it, how about attention to detail? You actually have. Is this somebody I want to partner with? So, yeah, everybody looks at your websites. If it's a needed website type of thing, if it's just how you can book a call with me on Facebook, all right, that's your avenue, but your Facebook needs to be set up properly. Doesn't matter what your destination point is, is that it looks proper. It's set up to talk about the services that you do and it's welcoming and engaging for the people that are looking to buy from you. But you your website to be set up. Yeah. Thank you for that. Cause like I said, I've been... just hearing that a lot. Okay, we're going to pivot a little bit because you're not just a marketer, you're a business owner, you're team leader, you're a salesperson. So what part of that transition from practitioner to the leader was hardest for you or was it all easy? No, none of it was easy. It's still not easy. I'm finding myself still doing what it is that I love to do. I still love having these kinds of conversations. I still love meeting with customers, meeting with prospects, looking through data and doing all of that. I'm an ex-baseball player. And that's my thing is like a team. all support each other to be successful, right? No one wins in a baseball game by themselves. Even if the pitcher throws a perfect game, they still gotta score runs and you're not hitting the ball. So we all worked together to get to the goal. It was more of created something and expand on a business that's already out there, the marketing advertising industry. I expanded on that and simplified it for every business and became extremely transparent on everything that we do. So you know what's going on and build it from there and just showed the team as we started to grow. Like this is what this is. This is the goal for every one of our clients. Honestly, transparency, always doing what's right for them. And from there, let's just build into it. Here's the avenues that we're going to play in. That's what we're going to do and just go from there. And I'm in it. I'm in it with them every single day. I have calls today with different team members about different clients, different opportunities, just training them so they can be the best version of them. I don't have a deadline on them knowing as much as I know. want them to continue to grow every single week, every single month to be the best version of them. That 1 % better every single day, it's a true thing. What did you learn today? What did you do a little differently? Now, I think I really learned this when I was in sixth grade. Now, the teacher in sixth grade, I love this. The teacher in sixth grade would always have me be the last person at the end of line. We had to tell the teacher before we left class that they will be learning that day. And she saw something in me. I don't know what it was. She saw something in me. She's like, you're always the last one. So I'd go, boom, get in there, already said, go back to the end of the line, go back to the end of line, already been said over and over and over again. So I would learn what we did so many times and I'd have to pay attention. So I guess maybe I had ADD on, I don't know. But she would force me to do that. Then at the end of it, the Greek alphabet for me. So in sixth grade, I knew the Greek alphabet. And then I paid attention to everything we had going on. But it goes back to like learning and being the best version of you every single day by, you know, taking your... taking steps to do this, getting uncomfortable to be comfortable. And that's what we do with our team. So yes, I'm a leader, but I'm also a leader coach, right? Player. I'm involved with it to show them the success. Then what's the successful within that? Let them grow. Let them do their thing. Have confidence in your team to be the best version of them. They're never going to be you. I want all of my staff members, all of my teammates to be better than me. And that's goal is to help them get there. That's such a great answer. I'm a baseball gal myself, that's my first love. And even if a pitcher is dealing, right, and they're throwing a perfect game or no hitter, there's always one or two amazing plays by the teammate that preserves that game, right? It's never just the person up front. There's always someone else on the team that's making an amazing play that keeps the thing going. So the importance of teamwork can't be understated. Yeah, a hundred percent. there's a big thing that Clint Hurdle was a coach for Pittsburgh Power, Colorado Rockies for a long time. And I was lucky enough to spend a lot of time with him. he's like, baseball is a game that you're always going to fail. Seven out of 10 times, you're going to fail and you're going to make it to the Hall of Fame. A business of failure. Right? You're going to a round ball with a round bat squarely. Right? The only way you get good at this is by continually doing the work and learning from your mistakes. And you're going to make a lot of mistakes and learning and growing. and adjusting, right? But be there, be present, learn and grow and grow and grow. So I love the baseball analogies because it's true to what we do in business, right? We do it in life, right? All of us working together to reach a common goal. All ships rise together. We do it as a team, do it as a partnership, right? And we open arms and transparency, right? I need to make sure that the code, their base coach is giving me the right sign and that I paid attention. So I know it's a steel sign. Otherwise I'm going to be putting the batter into a bad situation. So now we're not working together as synergy. Yeah. All important for us to be on the same page and learning and growing together. Yeah. Don't, don't run through those signs. Don't run through those signs. When you're a bass writer, it's really stressful. I'm like, ⁓ my God, was that the sign? I catch the sign? Did I miss it? So we, we had opened up our time talking about the fact that you have five-year-old twins and for someone who's leading a business, having kids that little. is a challenge. was about to say, can imagine. I don't have to imagine because I was there. You've been there. You've been there. And I actually, have an older son who's only one year older. So had three little people running around in chaos forever. How do you think about balance in your work and in your home life when you got those little people around, particularly, you know, being a business owner and an entrepreneurial parent? Yeah. Lucky enough, I got great support, support system from my wife. My wife is amazing. She also works in the medical field. she's helping sick people. And we tell our kids she's helping sick people walk. But my wife is really the support with it that we have that she's able to see my vision and to see what we're doing and then really assisting with it. But I also this year, past year and a half, I did not necessarily focus on my personal health and things along those lines. I just wanted to focus on the business. know, over the past five, six months, it's like, what do we need to do that's focused on our personal health? And so setting up a structure where we're having quality time. with my kids, right? Or I'm present, you know? I'm very early riser. So if you get a message from me at 5.30 in the morning, just know it's just me on my normal day. So very early riser, so I have my time to get things done. And then as soon as those kids wake up, until I drop them off at school, I'm with them. With them. And then when they're at school, I'm day care at the moment, when they're there, we're getting time to get things done. When they have any extra activities after school, I'm there. I'm there. I force that to happen. Work can be done. throughout all the hours, only a nine to five. It's not a business owner, 24 seven, 365. But it's finding those times and making sure that you carve time out for the people that matter most to you. Cause if you don't do that, what are you running a business for? For your own self growth, right? You have some legacy you can leave behind for your family and for your kids or for whatever it may be. So it's truly blocking out that time to be there, to be present. know every single Monday at 3.30, I'm out the door. Every single Friday at three o'clock, I'm out the door. know, what happens throughout the week, I'm there, present. And I have to make that work, otherwise the family portion won't be there and the support won't be there. it really comes from the support from my wife. ⁓ And it's a little different for us, our whole family, everybody we know is up in New Jersey. Nobody's down here, it's her and I doing this together. So it's that core support and that's all goes to my wife. Well, first of all, you're going to have mad brownie points because this is gonna be, you know, on recorded forever that you paid homage to her, right? So make sure like for Mother's Day or whatever you play this for her as part of her tribute. She'll appreciate that. And I would say for the parents out there who are doing this stuff as hard as it is, I a thousand percent agree about presence. Some of the best advice I ever got about balancing between your professional life and being a parent is presence. And I just remember this woman, she was on a panel and she said, Your kids don't care that you're in PTA. Like PTA is important, okay, but they don't care. They care that you're present. So every stinking recital, every sport athletic contest, the first thing I would do for my boys is like wave and make sure that they could see me. And my oldest, played college football and he would get annoyed if he didn't see me right at the beginning. And I would scream for him and he'd like, dude, where were you? was like, babe, I was there. Like it matters. to them, so you absolutely have to prioritize. And I always say, everyone's busy. And what I've learned as an adult is you make time for the things that matter. The time and the people. You make time for the people and the things that matter. But in order to do it successfully, there's got to be some kind of tool system or process or habit that you've adopted in order to make this thing hum. So is there a tool or a process that you run every day that helps you be able to be up at five and then... be with your kids and make sure you nurture your relationship with your wife. Like what do you rely on to make this thing go? Calendar? Really? That's really what it is. But it's blocking out time. I mean, that's really, I'm not using a specific tool to do all of this. And of course I got my wife and I got calendars all over the place. But the calendar just kind of keeps me organized as to what's going on. But I'm not using anything other than what the old school folks used to do, right? Just block out that time and be there. That's it. Even for the business itself too. Like there's no one tool that we utilize. as everything we use Google Analytics as a source as data to identify the good, the bad, the ugly and areas of opportunity and growth. But, you know, we're utilizing multiple tools and sets to get things going and just what works best for, for, for my business. It's very difficult for a lot of people came in that are very seasoned in the marketing and advertising world. Like how do you put all this together? And I'll show you the process, but they're through different forms and we'll get it into, you know, a simplified area for everybody. But for me, it's just making sure that time is blocked out and it's in my head. I know every single Monday, 3.30, I'm out the door. I'm not going to be back home until seven o'clock that night. Seven o'clock, then we do our routine with the kids. And then I come back maybe nine o'clock and I'll start working for an hour or two on some stuff that I may have missed. And then Tuesday, I'll pick it back up. And at 5.30, there's no alarm. It's literally my body clock just waking me up, which is crazy. My wife hates it. Yeah, same. Mine is minus. Uh-oh. me ask you this. When you hear the phrase, do small business like a big boss, what does it mean to you? In corporations, my whole entire professional career, I was groomed on big corporation mindset. So I've told a lot of people, right? We are a boutique, even though I don't like that word, but we use it, a boutique agency. But we have the mindset of the big corporate world. of how we structure ourselves. But we have the boutique touch and feel of we care about you, family, your business, and to be a partnership with you regardless of the size of your business. And it's true and relevant. Small business, big boss. Yeah, I'm a small business. Regardless of how big that we get, we're going to keep that small business mentality. But the big boss of the corporation actually trained me from, you know, my age is 18 years old, 19 years old when I started in the arm tissues industry. So where we are is all about big corporations to take the best of that world, make it into a small business boutique. It makes you extremely unique and extremely powerful. You're a differentiator because you care and you show that you care. You're not just a number to me. I'm not going to fire you because I need to worry about my shareholders. I'm not going to press you to purchase a package of something that's not going to benefit you in your business because I got shareholders beating down my neck because my boss needs me to get to 102 % of our budget for this year that they created out of nowhere. don't believe in. do that. So everybody knows anybody's trying to sell you their enhance their quota. It's a made up number. We care about the structure of the organizations. to act like a big boss, but be the small business owner, combine together and learn unstoppable force. when we go up and play it against anybody, and any corporation that's hearing this, we go up and play it against them, we will come out on top. Not because of product. of gun services is because of who we are and the attention detail that we get into it and the honesty and transparency. That's what we do. That's an A answer right there, George. That's an A answer. Where can our listeners find you and follow your work and tap into everything that you got going on? Yeah. So you can find me on LinkedIn. Find us on LinkedIn at EAG Advertising. It's E.A.G.Advertising on LinkedIn, or you can follow and find us at EAGAdvertising.com. And then within there, you can reach out to me directly. You can fill out a form or there's a couple of phone numbers in there. can give us a call. Well, George, thank you so much for being on the pod today. really enjoyed from one twin parent to another, enjoy chopping it up with you. And so really appreciate your time today. It's been great. Thank you. love having these conversations and I love that there's a focus on assisting small medium sized businesses. And with the ability for them all to grow and be successful, it's out there. There's people out there that want to help. And that's the biggest thing is there's people that have been in your shoes that want to help you, right? There's people that are experts in areas that want to help you give them the opportunity. You can't do it all by yourself. promise you. can't So it's all about being together and you got there. You're the expert in your business who can be the experts and trusted partners that can help you get to the next level. And that's what you need to find as a small business owner. That's a perfect way to end it. All right, bosses, you know the deal. Build it messy, build it scared, but just don't build it small. If you got any value out of this episode, please like, follow, and subscribe. And until then, we'll see you next time.