Latest / The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson / The Real Social Media Game: Being Profitable vs Popular with Lamar Tyler

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The Real Social Media Game: Being Profitable vs Popular with Lamar Tyler · The SmallBizChat with Melinda Emerson

• 0:00
  3, 10, 1, 0, ignition, liftoff,
• 0:08
  Ending small business failure.
• 0:11
  Welcome to the Small Biz Chat podcast with a number 1 small business expert Melinda Emerson.
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  Bolinda's goal is to end small business failure, and she'll give you the information
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  you need to succeed and live the life you've dream of.
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  Now here's the small biz lady herself.
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  Melinda Everson.
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  Hi, everybody, and welcome to the small biz chat podcast.
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  I'm Belinda Emerson, the small biz lady.
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  America's number one small business expert.
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  I'm so excited to be here with today with my guest, Missy Lamar, Tyler.
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  Let me tell you, I have known Lamar and his wife, Ronnie, for a really long time.
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  Back in the day, I actually met them in person at the Infusionsoft icon conference, which is I
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  know at least 5 or 6 years ago when I met you guys and you know, he has had a tremendous run
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  since then.
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  He believes in the motto, the gatekeepers are gone.
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  He's levered social media to move his website black and married with kids from a small
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  personal blog to an international brand with over 600,000 social media fans and over 35,000
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  customers across 50 states and 40 three countries.
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  He has been recognized for his work He and his wife have been recognized as Eviti magazine
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  Power 100, which is the top 100 movers and shakers in the back community.
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  He's also been selected as a finalist.
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  For the Black Enterprise family business of the year and Infusionsoft's small business icon
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  award, which I think is how I met you.
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  Right?
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  You guys were up for that award.
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  I think the year that I met you.
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  So that was a while ago.
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  But now you run a digital media agency, which helps small businesses with solutions to drive
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  traffic, convert more online sales, increase their profit.
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  Hey.
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  That's what I'm talking about.
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  Profit is how we keep score in business.
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  Right?
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  And ain't about what you make.
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  It is about what you keep.
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  So I am so excited.
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  Lamar, welcome to the small business chat podcast.
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  Good.
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  Thank you.
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  I'm honored to be here.
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  Alright.
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  So tell me, like, how you guys went from, you know, this little blog about, you know, being
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  married with kids.
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  And and and and having everyone empathize with you everywhere to, you know, deciding to teach
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  people how to run their online businesses better.
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  How did you get there?
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  Sure.
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  Well, a lot of what was focusing clarity.
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  Now I'll talk about what that means for a second.
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  You know, we we started a blow up because we were and about showcasing positive examples of
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  images of of couples in the African American community.
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  And as we we did it, right, we said, okay.
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  This is cool.
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  But first thing we wanna do is we wanna run it as if it's a business.
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  Even though it's not a business yet, if it ever takes off, we wanna be in position so that we
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  can capitalize on actually what happens and not trying to go back and then get everything right
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  and everything professional and everything like this.
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  We started like that, and the site quickly took off because there was a need that was avoided.
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  And we were we were the couples that weren't represented, so we knew that.
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  That's why we kinda created it.
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  But as it grew, one of the things that happened, Melinda, is that we initially
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  monetized through advertising.
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  And it was advertising, you know, with, you know, brands from Pampers and Haines and Disney
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  and a lot of other folks.
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  But what happened with those advertising dollars is that We didn't control our own
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  revenue.
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  Meaning, a 1 quarter or 1 year African American community is hot.
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  Everybody's looking for us.
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  Everybody's checking for us.
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  The next quarter, they say, you know what?
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  We wanna reach a Latino community.
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  So Oh.
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  Y'all sit on the sideline for a second.
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  We'll be back.
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  Oh, oh, we had a great corporate connect, right, and they were just beating us working
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  contracts and and gigs.
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  And then they left all of a sudden.
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  Like, we we called and it's like, hey.
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  That person on the level works here.
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  Somebody new in that position, and they had a total different direction for the company.
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  So we said we gotta do something where we control of our own revenue and what we did is
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  start to create our own products.
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  So we started with documentaries.
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  We've done 7 full of documentary films, Absolutely.
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  Yep.
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  Yep.
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  Then Yeah.
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  We we actually that that was the first real product we had.
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  We did documentaries.
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  We would shoot them, create them, myself, and put them put them together.
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  Oh, so you were doing the whole Tyler Perry.
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  Thank you.
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  We we were doing it.
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  Right?
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  And and I I tell you what's interesting is we were doing it.
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  We were kinda growing the brand and growing our social media at the same time.
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  So what we would do, we wrote these documentaries we would look on our analytics,
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  right, our Google analytics for our blog and for our site and say, alright.
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  Where do we already have a market of people at?
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  And then we will go rent out a private theater in those cities and do our own tours.
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  So for 5 years straight, the 1st 5 years us doing films, We release the film every year.
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  We would do anywhere from 7 to 10 city tour going to different cities where we had
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  audience.
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  We would out these theaters.
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  Sometimes we do multiple theaters in Chicago that gave us a 2 week run at a chain of
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  theaters.
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  We would sell product at the end of it.
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  Right?
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  We got very good at doing this.
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  And from there, it went from documentaries to ebooks, audiobooks, membership sites,
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  workshops, conferences, we've done four cruises with that audience.
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  But the thing is people saw us doing it.
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  And they said, hey.
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  Teach me out.
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  You know, we we we see you kinda growing this brand.
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  We see you making money.
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  We see you building audience.
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  Teach me how to do it.
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  And, eventually, after years, asking us to teach them how to do it, we create a separate
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  brand traffic sales and profit where, like you mentioned before, we teach people how to drive
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  more traffic, convert more sales, and grow the amount of profit in their business.
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  Okay.
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  So but social media's changed a lot.
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  Right?
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  Because I I've been out here in the game a minute.
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  And so I remember getting on Twitter when Twitter was one year old.
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  Right?
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  And so now it's a whole different it's a different game out here, and there's so much
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  content, so many hashtags, and, like, how how how have you seen social media change, and how
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  have you had to sort of, like, pivot your approach to social media that likes how to
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  kinda stay ahead of it?
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  Oh, Milan, we saw the black and red kids.
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  We saw it on my space.
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  You know, what I what I told me is the Belinda like, Myra, what?
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  What are you talking about?
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  Right?
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  You know, we we started on ModSpace.
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  And and there was at the time when my most we had a ModSpace page for the brand.
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  You know, we will post content.
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  We will post pictures of covers.
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  We'll do different things.
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  And that was when most people in my space, they just were coming through and posting flyers,
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  like animated flyers, with sparkles and stuff on it.
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  So we grew with the growth of Facebook.
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  We grew with it, but like you said, things have always changed.
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  So, I mean, just just one big example of change, is, like I said, as we grew this the
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  site, we now were over 500, 7000 people just on the Facebook page for Black and Mary with kids.
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  But at one point, in the beginning, Facebook was wide open, meaning whenever you posted
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  something, everybody that followed you, if they were online and would see it.
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  And, you know, we may well, I mean, we may have, like, a hundred thousand people on the
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  page.
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  Every time we posted something, 25 to 35,000 people would see it.
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  Wow.
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  So to grow the site, all we had to do is create more content.
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  At one point, we had 40 writers writing for Black and married with kids.
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  And all we had was a content machine where literally, we wanted to double the size of
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  traffic, which we did.
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  We said to double the amount content we created, double the amount of times we posted.
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  And and that grew the site, right, we've been doing probably a million, unique visitors every
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  quarter.
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  Mhmm.
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  It's great content, but guess what?
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  One day, we woke up and Facebook flipped the switch.
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  Right.
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  Right.
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  They said we got you.
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  I remember.
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  I remember.
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  Y'all are visiting.
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  We got we got you hooked into the to the ecosystem.
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  Y'all are visiting.
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  It's showing up on your own every day now.
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  So we're gonna flip the switch.
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  And now the only time people really see what you got is when they pay for it.
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  And it changed everything.
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  So like you said, I mean, face, social media in general, right, whether it's Instagram,
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  Twitter, no matter what it is, all of it is always changing.
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  So we always have to be abreast of what's going on.
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  We always have to be on a pulse of what's happening.
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  We always have to have a network of other people so we can reach out to other people just
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  to say, are you seeing the same thing that we see?
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  Because it could be just a blip with what we're doing, but, you know, we could be down in the
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  press for 2 months, and I didn't realize that everybody's being impacted by the same thing.
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  So, you know, and we always have to be ready to pivot.
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  That's the main thing.
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  And and if anything, if everybody listening, one of the main things we had to find out
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  really focused on with social is we had to make a decision at one point whether we want to be
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  popular or whether we want to be profitable.
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  Be because for a while, like, in the beginning, we had 100,000
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  people.
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  Man.
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  Like, you have 500,000 friends.
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  You were like, look.
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  We do it.
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  It's it it need to be clear.
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  I I had a friend that asked me one time.
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  He said, you know, he said, you gotta 100,000 people on that page, you gotta be making a
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  dollar for every one.
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  You wish.
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  Right.
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  Right.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  So we we had to get real clear about, alright, what are we doing to create these products?
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  How can we get them into the hands of the consumers?
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  How can we get the consumers to spend more?
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  We get them to come back and spend more often, increase the average order value, their
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  lifetime value, things like that, and we became better marketers.
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  And now does we teach other businesses how to do?
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  So when you realize that, is that when you took your business to the next level and then
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  became, like, a finalist for the icon award?
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  Because I remember, I believe that was the 1st Infusionsoft conference I ever went to was the
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  one that you and your wife were finalists.
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  And I remember being so impressed that a black owned business was even recognized in that way
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  because that wasn't typical.
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  And so and I remember being like, what are these people doing?
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  Like, I remember I remember I remember, like, I I I really enjoyed going to sort of like the
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  icon sort of like showcase where all four final has got a chance to, like, tell their story But
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  I guess my question is, so when you guys kind of focused on the whole, yeah, it's cool to
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  have all these followers, but we gotta turn this stuff into cash.
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  Is that when you kinda got tight with your marketing?
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  Is that when you invested in infusions off?
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  Like, Like, how did all of that kinda happen?
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  Yeah.
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  And that's it.
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  All of it kinda happened around the same time.
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  Right?
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  We said, alright.
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  We gotta get real systems in place because at the time, We had one thing taking payments, one
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  thing for events and screening something else.
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  We were selling t shirts on.
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  We had, like, 20 different things, and none of it talked to me.
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  I know somebody listening right now on those what I'm talking about.
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  No.
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  No.
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  Exactly.
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  Wait a minute.
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  I know exactly what you're talking about.
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  We we had to get, like, our systems in place.
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  And once we got the systems in place, like I said, we had to figure out what are we selling
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  and who are we selling it to?
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  Cause even I mentioned the fact that in the beginning, we did most of our revenue around
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  advertising.
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  And at some point, we realized, alright.
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  They're coming to us because they want access to our audience, but we're not even leveraging
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  our audience.
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  As well as we should be.
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  So we really just had to learn a lot and and educate ourselves.
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  And like I said, get clear on not just growing all these social media fans, how do we really
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  monetize it?
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  And and making that shift saved us because a lot of, contemporaries and friends that that
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  kinda came up the same time blogging and just having websites creating content when
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  advertising eventually dried up because nobody was clicking on banner ads.
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  And nobody was, you know, watching the stuff on the website.
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  They used to watch.
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  Because everything kinda transitioned to social.
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  Their sites died.
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  Their revenue shrinks up, and then they had to go back to work.
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  So that's interesting.
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  So you you made that transition.
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  So all those people that were like, mom bloggers and some of that other stuff, they
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  they ended up going away.
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  Yeah.
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  A lot a lot of people went away because at the time, not only was advertising the key, what
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  was one of the big keys and ways of monetization for a lot of bloggers, were
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  advertising display networks, where it wasn't even like you worked directly with Disney and
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  all these companies, and we got the chance to work with them because we were the biggest ones
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  in our niche.
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  But a lot of companies, what they would do is there was a company called Mode Media.
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  You speak Lamb, and they would just sell all of the advertising positions on their site to
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  Lamb.
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  Right, or Mode Media.
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  And then Mode Media will be the one that had the contract with all the Fortune 500, one of
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  the companies.
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  And they would just you put a code on your site, and they would just run the ads on your
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  site.
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  But guess what?
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  One day, Moe goes out of business.
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  Oh, wow.
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  And they they owe some bloggers up to 5 figures worth of revenue Right?
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  Like, they literally wanna hook the money, and guess what?
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  When they went bankrupt, the bloggers were not the people that were 1st in line to get paid.
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  It was all those big advertisers, the nissan, the Ford, You know, all these people have spent
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  their money and said, hey.
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  You know, we're at the lawyer.
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  We won't get there, and we're getting our money back first.
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  So a lot of people got stuff.
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  But by the time, we'd already made a transition to where the bulk and majority of our income,
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  we created ourselves, and we own it.
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  Okay.
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  Okay.
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  So that's that's a very, very key thing.
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  So So let's talk about creating your own customers, right, creating your own business.
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  Now is is organic search, Dave?
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  I mean, is it is it all about paid ads now or what, you know, can content still sell?
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  Cause because I I'm I'm looking at what you talk about on traffic sales and profit.
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  You you're a big fan of Facebook ads.
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  So I I just wanna know, you know, or, you know, how how are you suggesting that people do this
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  thing now?
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  Yeah.
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  What what I think most companies need is they need a a mix.
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  And that's probably just the opposite of what most customers do.
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  I think a lot of people we depend on organic too much.
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  And the reason I say too much is Organic is great.
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  Right?
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  I'll always say those are the your ride to die fans, and and they become your customers.
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  And, you know, they they have seen your journey in you know, it's like the equivalent you
• 13:18
  digitally going out and shaking hands and kissing babies.
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  So it's wonderful, but most people listen to realize is that organic growth is slow.
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  And it can take months.
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  It can take years of you building communities.
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  If you're building backlinks and traffic to your website, you know, you're building this
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  organic social media page or social media group.
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  What paid traffic, whether it's Facebook ads or it could be Pinterest ads or LinkedIn ads now,
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  no matter what it is, what paid traffic gives us the ability to do is to get our product to
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  service in front of a lot of people in a short period of time.
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  Now in saying that, what I will say is even though you can you can get to them fast in this
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  you know, cutting on the water faucet, right, and all the leads are coming out.
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  You can cut it right back off and they stop.
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  And and in terms of getting that, that's great.
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  But you need to know when you're spending money, who you're spending money on.
• 14:03
  You gotta be dialed into exactly who is the perfect customer, the perfect lead to me to get
• 14:08
  in front of.
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  You gotta make sure that you're messaging.
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  Like, once they get there, I gotta have the perfect product for the perfect person at the
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  perfect time.
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  And if any of that is out of alignment, guess what?
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  I'm a be not just spending money, but wasting money.
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  So, you know, that paid you know, traffic is definitely the fastest way to get it, but you
• 14:24
  just need to be aware of what you're doing.
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  And be aware a lot of times what people don't realize is they think, alright, I'm a put this
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  first little bit of money on, and I expect to see immediate results.
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  And that's that's not how this works.
• 14:36
  That's always the expectation, but that's not how this works.
• 14:38
  What they need to realize is that when they're they're putting this in and they're making this
• 14:42
  investment, the number one thing they're getting back is data.
• 14:45
  The number one thing they're learning is less than.
• 14:47
  So even if they're not getting immediate conversions, They're learning about the people
• 14:51
  that don't convert.
• 14:51
  They're learning that, okay, this this audience is clicking on my ads.
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  This audience isn't.
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  This audience clicked on my ad and went to the page.
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  But they didn't purchase on the page.
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  And then once we get more data, we can start to dissect.
• 15:02
  Is the problem with the ad?
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  Is the ad working, but the problem with the page we're sending them to is the problem with
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  the offer, is it some tech glitch, something like that, but we gotta have data that we can
• 15:12
  begin to learn from begin to increase our perspective on what we're doing throughout
• 15:16
  That that's really, really good stuff.
• 15:18
  So but what about things like Lookalike Audiences and retargeting?
• 15:24
  And is that all a part of the soup you really just need to know who it is, who you really
• 15:28
  need to be targeting.
• 15:30
  Yeah.
• 15:30
  I mean, that's that's definitely part of the suit.
• 15:31
  What I tell most people before they even dive into this is that they need to either spend a
• 15:36
  lot of time focusing on it, or they need to just hire somebody to spend a lot of time
• 15:40
  focusing on it, right, because what most people do is they really don't dive into it enough.
• 15:44
  Now 3, 4 years ago in the earlier days of Facebook ads, when it weren't as many people on
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  it, you literally could just put up an ad and send them to a page and people would buy.
• 15:53
  But now you need new audiences.
• 15:55
  So what, you know, the custom audience we're talking about is the ability for you to upload
• 16:00
  a customer list in the Facebook Facebook can talk not only target those people, but then you
• 16:04
  can say, alright.
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  Go out and find me a million people just like these people.
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  You can put a a snippet of Facebook code on your website.
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  Right, called the Facebook Pixel.
• 16:12
  And then you can say, alright.
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  You know, I wanna segment people that land on this specific page.
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  So for black and married with kids, for example, We have pages split out by the pain
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  points couples have communication, infidelity, intimacy, money.
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  Right?
• 16:25
  That could be a pain point.
• 16:26
  And when you land on that page, we build custom audiences around whatever that pain point is.
• 16:31
  So then if we have a product around money and finances, we could target people that read a
• 16:36
  money and finance article on our website.
• 16:38
  But not only that, then we can create a look alike audience of a million other people that
• 16:42
  look just like these people that had this issue.
• 16:45
  And then, like you said, we can retarget those people, meaning that only on average, right,
• 16:49
  like 3% of people are landing inside and ready to buy the first time they get there.
• 16:53
  Mhmm.
• 16:54
  Most of us, what we do is we let the other 97% walk straight out the door Right?
• 16:59
  We tell them, buy a do see you later.
• 17:00
  Oh, we we had a great time visiting, but but that's the end of it.
• 17:03
  And we all know the fortune is in what, the follow-up.
• 17:06
  Right.
• 17:06
  So we can do it retargeting is for the 3% that rate divided is great for the other 97%.
• 17:11
  We keep putting our offers in front of.
• 17:13
  And for the people listening, that's why when you go in your shopping, you're looking at
• 17:17
  those shoes, you're looking at that suit or that dress, and it's following you around
• 17:21
  everywhere.
• 17:21
  You go on every website.
• 17:22
  It's in your apps.
• 17:23
  You're trying to play scrabble.
• 17:24
  On your phone, and then that ad pops up.
• 17:26
  And you're like, what are they doing?
• 17:28
  Like, it's the the reason this time, Linda, is amazing.
• 17:32
  Is because all of these tools and resources that were set aside for the big boys, we got
• 17:37
  access to them now.
• 17:38
  Right.
• 17:39
  The thing is we have to take the time to learn them.
• 17:41
  We have to invest in them, but we do have access to them.
• 17:43
  And that's what's amazing about this time we live in right now.
• 17:46
  I I couldn't agree more.
• 17:48
  I mean, that's kinda what social media did for us.
• 17:50
  Remember when you used to have to call these gatekeepers and be calling and calling and
• 17:53
  calling
• 17:53
  is And
• 17:54
  he had to be nice to the secretary and hoping that they would put the call through, like, you
• 17:57
  know, and so that's what social media did.
• 17:59
  It sort of, like, eliminated the need for that.
• 18:01
  They was online.
• 18:01
  You can find them.
• 18:03
  But now with social media, it's sort of like the same thing.
• 18:05
  It's like the landing experience that all important landing page is really important.
• 18:10
  I wanted to ask you about sales copy, whether it's sales funnel copy or landing page copy.
• 18:17
  Is that something somebody that writes blog should write for themselves, or should they
• 18:22
  hire a professional?
• 18:23
  It's different.
• 18:24
  What I'm saying is definitely different.
• 18:25
  So writing for your blog is not writing persuasive sales copy to get somebody to
• 18:29
  actually take action and buy something.
• 18:31
  But, you know, what's interesting, if if I can say, wait a minute.
• 18:34
  I think it's a huge opportunity for people that love to write and it loved to blow to actually
• 18:39
  look at careers in creating sales copy.
• 18:42
  Because one of the biggest needs I see for small business owners is actually they are
• 18:46
  always looking for people that can write copy form, that can write persuasive sales emails,
• 18:51
  deck and write landing page copy, a sales page copy, or, you know, funnel copy like you're
• 18:55
  talking about or even copy in their Facebook ads or different ad creative like that.
• 18:59
  So it definitely is a different skill set.
• 19:01
  It definitely be something you need to, you know, train yourself study on and work on
• 19:05
  because it's not, you know, telling your story about what happened, you know, over the past
• 19:09
  weekend that just retreat your tenant is not the same as getting somebody to say, okay.
• 19:13
  These are the the the emotional tone they're feeling right now.
• 19:16
  Here are the pain points that they're facing, and here and it's how my practice service helps
• 19:20
  them overcome that challenge and gives them a transformation totally different conversation,
• 19:24
  but one that a skilled writer could possibly make the transition to if they put the work in.
• 19:28
  I couldn't agree with you more.
• 19:31
  So tell me what are some of your favorite tech tools?
• 19:36
  Sure.
• 19:36
  Some of my favorite tech tools.
• 19:38
  For 1, so I'm I'm super basic.
• 19:40
  So I just like the Google suite.
• 19:42
  Right?
• 19:42
  It's like, like, my Google calendar, my Gmail, like, all that stuff.
• 19:46
  We used to kinda, like, enterprise corporate level.
• 19:49
  All that stuff is my favorite stuff.
• 19:50
  For Instagram, we use later, which is pretty popular.
• 19:53
  Right?
• 19:54
  Later later, late or later, allows us to kind of schedule and and pre post, you know,
• 19:59
  Instagram content that we get out when we push out.
• 20:02
  For people, hey.
• 20:02
  How about this?
• 20:03
  For people doing Facebook ads since we talked about earlier.
• 20:06
  A neat tool they may wanna check out is add espresso if they're doing their own ads.
• 20:10
  Add add espresso, like the kind of coffee, add add a d espresso, allows you to actually go in
• 20:15
  and create Facebook ads, but then you can create multiple test variations up to 250
• 20:21
  different variations.
• 20:22
  Oh, wow.
• 20:22
  A one at right in a software, and it'll actually run the test, and then it'll show you
• 20:27
  what the winners are.
• 20:28
  So you can have and the things you could test, you could test, different subject lines,
• 20:32
  different body copy of it, different images of different videos in it, and it'll actually
• 20:37
  bring you back all the data even different audiences as well.
• 20:39
  So to say this audience performs, you know, 60% better than this one.
• 20:43
  This image is not performing well, and you literally could just, you know, click yes.
• 20:47
  I want this.
• 20:47
  No.
• 20:47
  I don't want that until you really get it down to the perfect audience.
• 20:51
  And then like we said, once you know that perfect audience is, we can try to duplicate
• 20:54
  that.
• 20:54
  And find more people just like them.
• 20:56
  Okay.
• 20:57
  Now a quick question about about Instagram.
• 20:59
  Is that is that the best converting platform?
• 21:02
  For us, it's still Facebook.
• 21:04
  Okay.
• 21:05
  So for us, it's still Facebook.
• 21:06
  But when we look at on a social landscape and and always tell people right depends on again,
• 21:11
  who you're selling, who you're selling to.
• 21:12
  So we always keep coming back to you have to know who that avatar is, who you're speaking
• 21:16
  to, and different people live on different platforms.
• 21:18
  But for us, Facebook is still number 1.
• 21:20
  Even though that the landscape has changed, it's still number 1 for us.
• 21:23
  We'd go pretty heavy into Instagram.
• 21:26
  And then our number 3 that we're looking to grow into a number 2, and maybe eventually a
• 21:30
  number 1 is gonna be YouTube.
• 21:32
  Okay.
• 21:32
  That's interesting.
• 21:33
  So my mine are different from yours.
• 21:35
  So what what what are y'all's?
• 21:37
  I'm curious.
• 21:37
  So I am definitely still pretty influential on Twitter.
• 21:42
  And then Facebook and then LinkedIn for me.
• 21:45
  Like, LinkedIn is huge for me, but I'm but I do b to b.
• 21:48
  So so I don't really do
• 21:49
  a lot of
• 21:50
  b to c.
• 21:50
  So So LinkedIn link LinkedIn's probably even maybe even a tad bit more effective than
• 21:56
  Facebook for me.
• 21:57
  So, yeah, see it again.
• 21:58
  Right?
• 21:58
  It's like that proves it.
• 21:59
  It's all about who you're talking to.
• 22:01
  Sure.
• 22:01
  Sure.
• 22:01
  Knowing where those people are at.
• 22:02
  So the LinkedIn, we actually are doing more testing because we wanna do some testing on a
• 22:07
  track sales and profit side there to see if our customer and our avatar is there and what we
• 22:12
  can do because they haven't advertised us when we wanna run ads and get in front of them quick
• 22:15
  to see what happens.
• 22:16
  But it's interesting too, right, knowing what the objectives are.
• 22:18
  So for us, safe for Black and Mary with kids, we have a nice size following on Twitter.
• 22:24
  Right?
• 22:24
  It's probably 30, 40, 50,000 people over there, but we can't get them to click on anything.
• 22:29
  It's like, they they're engaged.
• 22:30
  They like stuff.
• 22:31
  They retweeted.
• 22:32
  Like, come on, y'all.
• 22:33
  The party's over here at my house.
• 22:35
  They will not come back to our house.
• 22:38
  Right.
• 22:39
  I I as someone with 300,000 followers or Twitter.
• 22:42
  I can tell you even more about that.
• 22:44
  So what about online courses?
• 22:45
  Do you run online courses and what platform do you run it off of?
• 22:49
  Yeah.
• 22:49
  We run online courses.
• 22:51
  Our courses are integrated through a platform called memberium because we use Infusion
• 22:55
  Software back end.
• 22:56
  So we we look for programs that kinda integrate directly with it.
• 22:59
  So we use, and bearing for that, which is a WordPress plugin.
• 23:02
  It kinda between it's kinda like a marriage between, WordPress, and then learn dash as a
• 23:08
  company management system.
• 23:09
  Got it.
• 23:10
  And then the next question I have for you is Tell me about your this traffic sales and
• 23:15
  profit conference that you have.
• 23:17
  Isn't it like what you do once or twice a year?
• 23:19
  Tell me about that.
• 23:21
  Sure.
• 23:21
  We do it twice a year.
• 23:22
  It's always here in Atlanta.
• 23:24
  The next one is the last weekend in June.
• 23:26
  Right?
• 23:27
  So it's a a VIP day and 2 main days.
• 23:29
  So 24th, 25th, in 26th June.
• 23:32
  And really what it is is is a gathering, a homecoming, a intensive, it's a boot camp.
• 23:39
  We if it's thing we call a 2 day hands on sales and marketing boot camp where, essentially, we
• 23:43
  go from 8 or 9 AM to 10 o'clock at night, bringing in some of the the top African
• 23:49
  American sales and marketing experts that really dive deep into specific strategies that
• 23:54
  these business owners can use.
• 23:55
  And, I mean, to to talk about the influence and the growth of it, we did the first one in June
• 24:00
  of 2016.
• 24:01
  There were forty seven people in the room.
• 24:03
  And here, June of 2020, we'll have just over 700.
• 24:06
  So it's it's amazing.
• 24:07
  Everybody wants information, you can go to www.tsp like traffic sales and profit,
• 24:12
  tsplivetickets.com, but we've been able to do is really, you know, I'm speaking a lot of
• 24:17
  places like you, Linda.
• 24:18
  Right?
• 24:18
  So what we do you've been to a lot of conference and events.
• 24:21
  And you said, just don't work.
• 24:23
  Or, you know, you've been there and say, I hate it when they do this.
• 24:25
  Right?
• 24:25
  So what I did is I kinda reverse engineered.
• 24:28
  All the things I didn't like about conferences and events I went to.
• 24:32
  As as a speaker, even as attendee, I didn't like when you go somewhere and they give
• 24:36
  somebody 30 minutes to because I can't I can't learn anything in 30.
• 24:40
  You can't teach me anything in 30 minutes because I need you to take 5 minutes just
• 24:43
  telling me who you are.
• 24:44
  Right?
• 24:45
  And then if we go through 30 minutes, most of the It's no time for I hate going places, and
• 24:49
  you can't get your questions answered.
• 24:51
  So we do longer sessions, every session that we do, We never do a session about Q And A, so
• 24:56
  it's always a chance for you to get your questions answered.
• 24:58
  I tell people you should not leave wondering anything.
• 25:01
  Get your questions answered.
• 25:02
  Most of our speakers, the majority of them, they hang around all conference.
• 25:05
  So they don't just come in and then dip out.
• 25:07
  They hang around all conference.
• 25:09
  They're in the lobby all night.
• 25:10
  Talking and working with people.
• 25:11
  They're connected and that, you know, so they're not like a looping missing somewhere,
• 25:15
  but but it's just a different environment for African American entrepreneurs.
• 25:18
  Where they get top level education and and information that's sitting next to next to next
• 25:22
  to 6, 7, 8 figure business owners that have been where they are and that are willing to
• 25:27
  actually share the progress and the story as well.
• 25:30
  That sounds really awesome.
• 25:31
  I would love to come and chat at your conference, so we gotta talk about that.
• 25:35
  So tell me about the best business advice that someone gave you?
• 25:41
  That's a good question.
• 25:42
  The best advice someone gave me.
• 25:44
  Alright.
• 25:44
  So I'll do 2 things.
• 25:45
  Like like, I gotta I have one quote that I normally use, and I'll keep it in my head all
• 25:49
  the time.
• 25:50
  And it's from Jim Rome.
• 25:51
  He didn't give it directly to me, but I I read it somewhere, and I loved it.
• 25:54
  Right?
• 25:54
  This it's been one of my principles for one of the things most favorite posts I got from him
• 25:58
  is not what your work is what you negotiate.
• 26:00
  So I always keep that in mind.
• 26:02
  And and even when I work corporate, I kept it in mind when I went in to ask for arrays or
• 26:06
  salary adjustment.
• 26:07
  Right?
• 26:08
  And even in business now, because so much of our business, we're negotiating different
• 26:11
  things every day of every week.
• 26:13
  Right?
• 26:14
  So, like, I'm always kinda keeping that in my mind.
• 26:16
  Hey.
• 26:16
  It's it's nothing for me to get bent out of shape about feeling this way that way.
• 26:20
  It's not what I'm worth.
• 26:20
  It's what I actually negotiate each situation.
• 26:23
  And then talking about specifically advice someone gave me.
• 26:27
  Like like I said, that that popular versus profitable thing probably was one of the
• 26:30
  biggest things that really hit home.
• 26:33
  That conversation I had, like I said, one of my mentors years ago, and he he he asked that,
• 26:37
  hey.
• 26:37
  You should have a dollar for every person, and I and I said no, right, and he kinda set that
• 26:42
  goal for me.
• 26:43
  And then from that day on that path, I was was after it, which, you know, we we got there
• 26:48
  quickly, and we you know, quickly surpass that way, way beyond.
• 26:52
  But it really put things in a perspective for me.
• 26:54
  And is that probably, like, the top advice that you folks, like, when they come to TSP, you're
• 26:59
  like, look, this traffic is one thing, but profit is the goal.
• 27:02
  Right?
• 27:03
  So is that really, like, I
• 27:04
  mean, it's definitely one of one of the main things.
• 27:06
  Just getting them to focus on.
• 27:08
  We have to be able to drive revenue.
• 27:09
  We have to be able to sustain profits in our business.
• 27:12
  And and since I, you know, speak directly to African American Entrepreneurs, there's some
• 27:16
  community based things that I really impress upon.
• 27:19
  Like, I want us to grow businesses that employ other people.
• 27:21
  Know, majority of our companies are are, solar panelships, which is cool except for the fact
• 27:26
  that our community is underemployed.
• 27:28
  Right?
• 27:28
  And and we're always unemployed in the reason that is, most people hire other people that
• 27:32
  look like them.
• 27:33
  So if all of us that a business owner's aren't hiring anybody, right, we can't kinda fix that.
• 27:38
  And one of the other things always impress upon our community is the fact that we are the ones
• 27:42
  we've been looking for.
• 27:43
  So we can't expect or wait for somebody to save us or to change economic condition.
• 27:47
  We need to do that ourselves.
• 27:49
  We need to, like I said, build these massive companies.
• 27:52
  We need to be able to bring other people in and and provide opportunities for them.
• 27:56
  And we need to work together in order to leverage the different things that we're
• 27:59
  growing individually.
• 28:01
  Love it.
• 28:01
  Love it.
• 28:01
  Alright.
• 28:02
  So everyone that comes on the small business chat podcast are asked the same 2 final
• 28:07
  questions.
• 28:08
  So what is your favorite business app and what is your favorite business book.
• 28:16
  Okay.
• 28:16
  So my favorite I don't know if this qualifies as a business app, but it would be LastPass.
• 28:22
  L a s c p a s s, which is a tool that actually keeps your passwords together.
• 28:29
  So a lot of business owners, right, once you get into it and you work with different people,
• 28:33
  you got somebody developing your website.
• 28:35
  You got somebody creating emails.
• 28:36
  You got somebody doing all these things.
• 28:38
  But half of these software tools don't give you multiple user accounts.
• 28:42
  So every time you're working with somebody, they're like, hey.
• 28:45
  I need your admin password.
• 28:48
  And and if it doesn't scare a death out of you, I'm letting you know that I should scare a
• 28:51
  death out of you.
• 28:52
  So last pass is a great way for entrepreneurs to be able to set up a password to give
• 28:56
  somebody access to the account without actually giving them the actual password.
• 29:00
  Alright?
• 29:01
  And I'm sorry.
• 29:01
  What was the second question?
• 29:03
  What is your favorite business book?
• 29:05
  Okay.
• 29:05
  Wow.
• 29:05
  I got a I got a lot of I'm a I'm a book head.
• 29:07
  So I would say succeeding against the odds, right, which is the story of Johnny Johnson and
• 29:13
  Johnson Publishing Ebony, Jet Magazine, fashion fit cosmetics.
• 29:17
  It's it's his biography, but when I read it, it just just put a fire inside me.
• 29:23
  He said if he accomplished everything that he accomplished, being born on the banks of the
• 29:27
  Mississippi, right, in a community that that was so poor, they didn't have a high school.
• 29:32
  Like, in order to stay out of trouble, and once he graduated 8th grade, it was gonna be a year
• 29:36
  gap before him and his mom moved to Chicago.
• 29:39
  So he took a break again.
• 29:41
  Like, just to stay out of trouble.
• 29:42
  Right?
• 29:43
  They didn't have a high school, but for him to come from a community like that, to be one of
• 29:47
  richest men in America.
• 29:48
  And a black man at at that time, you know, we talk about all the ways that that, you know,
• 29:52
  society and the community and all these things are doing is wrong now.
• 29:55
  But can you imagine doing it did 40 years ago.
• 29:59
  No, sir.
• 30:00
  No, sir.
• 30:01
  No, my parents are from Alabama and Mississippi.
• 30:03
  No, I cannot.
• 30:04
  And I'm really glad I can't because It is amazing what our folk endured without question.
• 30:11
  Listen, Lamar, thank you so much for coming on.
• 30:14
  And can you please remind my audience again how they can get more information about you and
• 30:19
  Ronnie and traffic sales and profit.
• 30:21
  Sure.
• 30:21
  Like I said, if you want information on our event, that's www.tsp livetickets.com.
• 30:28
  More information about the community itself.
• 30:30
  You can visit the website traffic sales and profit.com, or If you're on Facebook, the hub
• 30:35
  of the whole community is really in a Facebook group.
• 30:37
  You're searching traffic sales and profit with Lamar Tyler.
• 30:40
  You'll find us.
• 30:41
  It's totally free.
• 30:42
  We'll invite you in We'll give you all types of nuggets and great information to help you grow
• 30:45
  your business.
• 30:46
  You can drive more traffic, convert more sales, and grow the amount of profit, and your
• 30:50
  business
• 30:51
  Awesome sauce.
• 30:51
  Well, listen.
• 30:52
  I'm Melinda Emerson, the small biz lady, and I wanna leave you with this.
• 30:56
  You never lose in business, either you win or you learn.
• 30:59
  Alright.
• 30:59
  I'll talk to you next time.
• 31:01
  Bye bye.
• 31:03
  Thank you for listening to the small biz chat podcast with Melinda Emerson.
• 31:09
  For more resources and small business success strategies, visit succeed as your own boss.com.
• 31:15
  Subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen to podcasts and join us next Wednesday.