Latest / The Life-First Solopreneur / 204. Marketing Overwhelm? Here’s Where to Start (And What to Skip)

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204. Marketing Overwhelm? Here’s Where to Start (And What to Skip) · The Life-First Solopreneur

• 0:00
  Carly Ries: Ever feel like you're climbing the solopreneur ladder without knowing what comes next? In this episode, we chat with Behdad Jamshidi, the self made marketing matchmaker who built a business out of pure connection. From walking away from engineering to creating a whole new category of service, Behdad shares the evolution solopreneurs don't see coming, the biggest marketing mistakes to avoid, and how to find partners you can actually trust. So if you're wondering what marketing steps to take next or if you should be outsourcing at all, this episode is your roadmap. Bonus, you'll learn why the process beats the outcome every time.
• 0:33
  You're listening to The Aspiring Solopreneur, the podcast for those just taking the bold step or even just thinking about taking that step into the world of solo entrepreneurship. My name is Carly Ries and my cohost Joe Rando and I are your guides navigating this crazy but awesome journey as a company of one. We take pride in being part of LifeStarr, a digital hub dedicated to all aspects of solopreneurs that has empowered and educated countless solopreneurs looking to build a business that resonates with their life's ambitions. We help people work to live, not live to work. And if you're looking for a get rich quick scheme, this is not the show for you.
• 1:12
  So if you're eager to gain valuable insights from industry experts on running a business the right way the first time around or want to learn from the missteps of solopreneurs who paved the way before you, then stick around. We've got your back because flying solo in business doesn't mean you're alone. Okay, B We just told you offline that we have now published over 200 episodes, which is crazy and Joe, I feel like we need to celebrate at another time because we haven't actually said that to each other yet, which is nuts.
• 1:43
  But in honor of our two hundredth episode having been released, we thought we'd mix things up a bit. And we thought it'd be really fun to kind of have an icebreaker around before we dive into the nitty gritty things that solopreneurs want to know. But the ice breaker question still revolves around that. So we wanna ask you, what do you wish you would have known before becoming a solopreneur?
• 2:04
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. So it's a great question. Like a week and a half ago, actually did a presentation on the 10 things I wish I knew before I moved out of being a full time employee. And the number one thing for me was everyone knows that when you work as a full time employee, there's a business ladder. Right?
• 2:19
  You start as a junior, you move into senior roles, director, AE, and you move up. But not a lot of people tell you that there's a whole ladder on the business side as well. And so you always start out as a solopreneur and you go, I wanna make 10 to $15,000 a month and typically you wanna do that passively because you wanna live a good life. But then once you become that solopreneur, you start making that kind of money, you start realizing, oh there's things that I don't like doing in my business, and I'm gonna need to hire someone. And so you start hiring people, and as you start hiring people you start becoming a manager.
• 2:47
  And so all of a sudden you're like, okay, well now I'm managing anywhere from three to eight people, I'm the manager of the business. And then you get to a point where you're like, I don't wanna manage people all the time.
• 2:56
  So you start hiring people kind of underneath you in terms of the leadership role. And all of a sudden you become a business owner with some leadership there, not not full leadership, but some leadership to manage your team. And you start realizing over time, you're like, oh, the business is actually growing, people are actually doing things. Now, maybe I need to build up build out a full leadership team because I either wanna become the visionary of the business, or the COO of the business, or the operator.
• 3:17
  And so you build out a bigger team, and you get to a point where you fully do that, and that can take anywhere from like three to twenty years, twenty five years. Some people never get to that point. But let's say you get to that point, and then you go, well I have this money, this business is running, how do I grow this business? I either start going to M and A or investing and all this stuff. No one tells you that there is this ladder of evolution within business too.
• 3:39
  And I think the joy of when you run a business is at some point you decide what level you want to be at. And so some people will grow, realize it's not for them, and then they will back down to simplifying things for example. But that's the one thing that I wish I knew before I got into the business is that there are ladders on both sides and it's very similar to each other.
• 3:58
  Carly Ries: I feel like that even goes for people that don't even necessarily hire employees, but just bring on contractors. Because even if you work with a ton of contractors and you're still technically a solopreneur, you're still managing all the contractors.
• 4:11
  Joe Rando: Hopefully.
• 4:12
  Carly Ries: Yeah. Hopefully. Or you really will trust them and that they're doing a great job or there are other issues.
• 4:18
  Behdad Jamshidi: 100%.
• 4:18
  Carly Ries: Well, speaking of you leaving the corporate world, you were in engineering. So how did you go from that to starting CGM marketing? And what was kind of the biggest challenge in taking that leap from corporate into your own thing?
• 4:32
  Behdad Jamshidi: That's a great question. It's funny because I say I never really wanted to be an entrepreneur. It just kinda came to me, like I just would always try new things. I always worked as a sales engineer. I did that for seven out of the ten years that I used to work for TELUS.
• 4:45
  But throughout that path, I became a personal trainer, I picked up personal training clients, realized I didn't like doing that because it was more mental than it was actually physical to get people to where they wanted to be. I did a financial course, I did a whole bunch of stuff. And c gen marketing was the one thing that kinda like, I was doing it and I kinda kept iterating on it, and at some point it just started kind of working. Right? And so I was like, oh, I have something here.
• 5:08
  And it was fun to do because it was on the side of my full time job and I didn't have to put, you know, a ton and ton of attention to it, and it was kinda cool making, a couple thousand bucks on the month extra, and you're like, cool, this could be used for, you know, other things in life. But CGM at some point, it got to about between the year of '3 and four, as I kept running both businesses, or working full time and running the business, it hit this kind of flywheel. And I didn't expect it. Like the business from the January to the end of that December had 10 x'd. And I got to a point where I was like, wow, I'm not even putting my full attention into this.
• 5:43
  What happens if I go and put my full attention to it, what could it potentially become? And so I kinda hit this crossroads where I was like, I know if I continue to stay as a sales engineer I'll be very successful in life, I'll be able to retire early regardless because get paid well, but this other path, I don't know what the outcome is. And that was kind of exciting to me at that time, and I was like, I'm gonna go see what becomes of this if I put my full attention into it, because I could always come back to the old path. And so that's kinda where that shift happened, where I was like, gotta make a decision and go all in and just see what ends up happening.
• 6:16
  Carly Ries: So what was the difference in the feeling of personal training not working and you kinda being over it, to you hitting your stride with your current business? you said it just felt right, what was it that felt right?
• 6:30
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. that's a great question. So on the personal training front, I felt, okay, you look at the end run, for everything that you do, you look at what the outcome looks like. So when it comes to personal training, what is the kind of evolution of that business is one, I saw a lot of personal trainers having to wake up at five in the morning to take care of clients and do that, and then during the middle of the day nothing's happening, and then they have to work in the evening again because they have clients coming in. that's not the lifestyle I want. I already have a pretty cool like I like being a sales engineer, I learned a lot that there's a lot of things to learn, so it never really made sense for me to make that leap to that. On the CGM, the marketing connector side, what was interesting was I was building a business that had some form of passive income. And so as I connected businesses and stuff together, I'm getting passive income because I added value to both, and if both the businesses are growing, I was getting paid passively. And the passive income was more interesting to me because I was like, I'm getting my time back, I'm getting more of my freedom back, which I think a lot of people can resonate with, and that's what they're trying to build. And so I think that's what the alignment was, it's like, oh I found a business model where this works.
• 7:34
  That being said, connecting people is a lot of work. So a piece of my business is passive, but all of it is impassive. Right? So I think a lot of people don't see that aspect.
• 7:46
  Joe Rando: Yeah. Let's just briefly describe your business because we're talking about it, but we're not, we haven't told people what you do. So, yeah, give us a quick description of what your business is and what you mean by connecting people.
• 7:57
  Behdad Jamshidi: Sure. So my business is basically, I'll talk to businesses on the front end, understand what a business needs, and then I match them with the right marketing partner. So over the course of the last six years, I've talked to 35 different marketing agencies and experts, and my entire thing is talking to people, understanding what they need from a business sense, and going based on that, here's the avenues of marketing that I think you need help in, and based on the avenues that I think you wanna run, these are the people that I recommend you have a conversation with. So essentially, I'm just a matchmaker between marketing and business businesses together.
• 8:27
  Joe Rando: It's a really great idea. it's one of those things where you go, and how do you do that? And I won't ask you to go into the details of how you do what you do, but that sounds way simpler than it probably is.
• 8:41
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. It is way simpler than it is. so there's people that are trying to replicate this model, and the way that they replicate it is by just sending a bunch of emails out, building out a database of agencies, and then businesses say they need something, and then they'll just shoot an email to those the database and say, who can do this? Right? And every agency will say they can do stuff, but they can't actually do it.
• 9:00
  Joe Rando: Never heard that happen before.
• 9:02
  Carly Ries: You'll experience that.
• 9:04
  Behdad Jamshidi: Right, exactly. And so my part and the hard part of it is, having to meet this amount of people. Like, when I'm saying I met a thousand thirty-five. I've jumped on calls with these people. I'm not even accounting for the people that I met in conferences and things like that.
• 9:17
  And so as you're doing that, you're just trying to assess what are they really good at? What are they good at in terms of the size of business and all this different kind of stuff. And so essentially you're matchmaking on both sides. And Joe and Carly, sure you know, as businesses are growing, they're broken as they grow. right?
• 9:34
  Every single time your business grows, you break. And it's no different on the agency side. so as an agency grows their business, they also break. So essentially, you're trying to do matchmaking with two broken entities at the same time where they're just the right amount of broken that they can help each other kinda grow together.
• 9:52
  And that's extremely hard to do.
• 9:55
  Carly Ries: What I love about your business is you identified your strength of being like, I'm a connector. I'm good at building relationships and finding a niche because I feel like people just kinda fall into whatever their background is or I can do my own marketing for people. But you're just like, no, I'm really good at introducing people to other people, and I'm gonna make a career out of that.
• 10:15
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah.
• 10:16
  Carly Ries: wading into your slang, because you just have found such a creative and unique way to do that.
• 10:22
  Behdad Jamshidi: yeah. it's funny. My wife said something to me yesterday, and she always says to me. She's like, Behdad, when I tell my friends, I'm like, Behdad basically just created this like magical role, and it didn't exist before, and then you got people to pay you to do it and found a way to make money out of it. I was like, I never thought about it like that.
• 10:39
  Like, the marketing broker thing never existed, and I just kinda like randomly made it.
• 10:44
  Joe Rando: It's pretty interesting because you don't see a lot of solopreneurs creating a new kind of business. I mean, you know, but it happens once in a while, and you're a great example of it. We talk about that in the solopreneur business for dummies book. And it's like, here, you can create a whole new business. Think hard before you create a whole new business
• 11:04
  Behdad Jamshidi: cause you're paving the road.
• 11:05
  Carly Ries: There may be a reason it doesn't exist.
• 11:08
  Joe Rando: Exactly. Exactly.
• 11:11
  Carly Ries: Right. So you have spoken to thousands of people. We'll include the conferences and everything and boost that number from the 1,035. Not that you need boosting, but we're solopreneurs just starting out. Of the conversations you've had, what would you say the first marketing steps they should take should be?
• 11:31
  Behdad Jamshidi: I mean, if they have something they love doing, like they already know that piece, the next piece becomes what channels interest them. Like, if you're a solopreneur you're running a business, yeah, there's gonna be certain channels that are gonna work really really well. Right? but the ones that you are gonna have fun doing, like have fun learning
• 11:49
  Joe Rando: Define channels. Define channels.
• 11:51
  Behdad Jamshidi: So channels you could be doing like SEO, you could be doing paid ads, you could be doing social media, and then when you break down social media, it could be literally Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, like, there's so many channels that you can choose from in marketing. And if you just do ChatGPT and go in there and say, this is my business, I wanna know what marketing channels might make sense for my business, that at least will give you a starting list of starting to go do some research and figure out what you like.
• 12:14
  Joe Rando: If ChatGPT tells you to try to use non local SEO as a solopreneur, it will.
• 12:20
  Behdad Jamshidi: Be aware.
• 12:20
  Joe Rando: It will. Don't listen. It's not a good strategy anymore.
• 12:24
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. Just use that as a way just if you don't know what channels are out there, at least to give you a little bit more insights, and then do your research. But then just start looking at the channels of which one you're excited about doing. some people like building out content on YouTube and they just love to do longer form videos. Right?
• 12:39
  Others might like to do the short term, like shorter videos for example. So Instagram and TikTok might make more sense. Obviously you have to know that your audience is on those platforms too. But I think whatever you wanna give energy to and you're excited about, I think start there first because you're gonna be able to do it for longer. And in marketing, sometimes you'll get really quick and fast wins, is like 1% of the marketing world, but a lot of it is just stuff that's done over time that ends up kind of just compounding and expanding and then hitting that tipping point.
• 13:09
  Carly Ries: Well, for solopreneurs, a lot of times they'll start the business and they're not marketers, they're just focused on the one thing and the reason they started in the first place. So when they're flying blindly, how should they assess their own marketing needs before they seek outside help? What should they look out for?
• 13:27
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. I mean, educate yourself as much as you can. there are courses that you can take on, like, high level marketing stuff. There are books on it. Like, educate yourself a bit. at least have a foundation aspect to it. And if you're, a solopreneur and you have a full time job, for example, use some of money that you're making in your full time job to just help you learn faster. Like if it means hiring a consultant at 200 to $300 an hour to just give you some ideas around marketing strategy and that kind of stuff, that might be money well spent because it'll actually fast forward the amount of time that you have to actually learn that stuff. Like $300 per an hour might actually save you a year of time. Right?
• 13:58
  And you don't need to do it ongoing, just find the expertise, reach out to your network, and see if you can get some people to kind of help you push you forward and give you those ideas so that you don't have to keep hitting a wall. So that would be kind of two ways. Like if you don't have the money, there are books, there are really cheap courses that you can get, if you just do some searching around marketing, and then if you have the money, just invest in some consultants every now and then. You don't need to hire them full time or ongoing, but you can pay them one time to learn different things.
• 14:25
  Carly Ries: So let me ask you, if solopreneurs are overwhelmed with everything related to marketing, they're like, well you say I can read books. There's a million books on marketing. You say I should reach out to a marketing consultant. There's a million of those. And then if they type in that list for ChatGPT just to see their direction, and are like, well, I like long form videos.
• 14:44
  I like short form videos. Love TikTok trends, but I also like connecting with people on LinkedIn, and they're just all over the place, what would you recommend they do?
• 14:54
  Behdad Jamshidi: Choose one. just choose one that you wanna start with, because if you're all over the place and you're trying to do everything at once, it's gonna be just too hard. Right? So find the one thing that you like to do, and it's okay, there are all of these, rank them. Like as an engineer, I always do selection sort.
• 15:07
  So let's say I have five options. I'll literally take the top option, I'll put it on the right hand side, and then the second option I go, do I like this more or less than the first option? And then I put it in, put it on top. And then use the third one, same thing. Do I like it more than the second one?
• 15:20
  And then you just basically selection sort this list, and all of a sudden you're like, oh, this is the top one because I like this the most. Go that way. Right? The thing with business and entrepreneurship and all this stuff is there's gonna be so many avenues to take all the time, you just need to make a decision and just start moving forward with something, and then just reevaluate every two or three months, be like, is this working? Do I still like this?
• 15:39
  And the thing is, a lot of times with marketing, you have to do things for a long time until they actually hit, right? a lot of people that you see, for example, I have a friend of mine and she looks up to me, but she doesn't realize how much I look up to her. She started basically doing videos in the automotive industry. She's working there making probably I think 40 to $50 a year. And she was really good at video editing, like really good at video editing, and you could just see that talent.
• 16:06
  And so she started playing around with it, started getting in front of the camera more, started becoming more confident in front of the camera Around like a year three and four, kinda the same as me, she started getting different projects. A company started reaching out. She became an influencer. She has like over 500,000 followers on TikTok. She has Instagram at 400,000 followers, but it built over the last four or five years.
• 16:26
  And she was just at Procter and Gamble this last week, doing videos for them. it just blows my mind on just how it grew because she just chose her channels, Instagram, TikTok, stuck to them, met other creators, kept improving, and just insane what she's been able to do in the last five years.
• 16:43
  Joe Rando: Yeah. That's great. Wow.
• 16:44
  Carly Ries: Yeah. Joe, we were talking about the two hundredth episode, but I feel like we were kinda like that even with this podcast. Like, were just kinda we were growing steadily. We were constantly growing. And then I would say just like six months ago or so, you saw it go like this to zoop.
• 17:00
  And we're on Apple now for solopreneur, and I mean, I wanna say it's because we cracked the code and changed things, but also we put in the reps too.
• 17:11
  Joe Rando: Well, that's absolutely true. I mean, really a lot of these things come down to putting in the time and the energy and just, you know, making it, happen week after week. And you can't shortcut that stuff sometimes.
• 17:25
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. That's a 100% it.
• 17:27
  Carly Ries: Well, B, let's say somebody's listening to this, and they're like, oh, I didn't know your business existed because nobody did because you're kind of your own unique little, in your own unique little world. But they're like, that's exactly what I needed because I don't know what to look for in outsourcing my marketing. I don't know what's considered good and what's not. So can you walk us through kind of the process? Let's say a one person business owner is listening, they need marketing help, and they're like, b, help me.
• 17:54
  What does that process look like?
• 17:56
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. So with businesses that are typically one person, I typically work with businesses three to thirty million, like that's my range where I do a lot of the connecting, but people that are typically like businesses that are smaller than that, you almost have to work from the ground up. And so I typically just offer one or two consulting sessions to kinda get them on the right path and what to think about. And so the way that typically works is one, talking to the solopreneur, understanding their business, how it works, what they're doing, what kind of customers they have, all that different kind of stuff to just understand where they're fundamentally at and what revenue range they're at. And then really understanding like, is there profit left in the business? if there's no profit left in the business, there's not much you can do. Right? Like you just gotta keep hacking at it until you have a little money saved up so that you can go, hey, I now have, you know, 2 or $3,000 a month that I can dedicate to some form of marketing. And that doesn't mean hiring an agency. Like it could literally mean hey I'm doing social media posts and I don't wanna be posting them on the weekend anymore or scheduling them myself. So it's like, cool. you should probably be hiring a BA for social media. You don't even need to start working with agency at this point, you just need to get the execution stuff off your plate so you can do more of what brings you money.
• 19:01
  Right? So my recommendation always kind of in the beginning is figuring out what your key channels are, and then how do you basically get people to help you execute those for the least amount of cost possible. And then as you keep growing, then you can start using the bigger players. Typically, once you start hitting that like 2 or $3,000,000 range is when you start working with more legit and stronger agencies. Up until that point, I think you're kind of like bringing things together. case in point, I have a call later today with one of my good friends who's now a customer of mine, and he literally just wrote me out a marketing strategy, and he's like, I don't know how to resource this. I wanna do all of these things, but I don't know how to resource this thing. So I'm doing a consulting session for him to literally go, hey, based on the stuff that you have here, you likely need some sort of marketing director for this piece. You likely could use this kind of contractor for this specific thing, and then these other things have to be filled in by someone else. Like, and just organizing how he'd be able to do all that, and then also resetting expectations, because he's expecting for things to happen in the next three months, and I'm like, this is probably gonna take way longer than that, and I just need you to mentally be prepared for that, because it's gonna probably take you six months to twelve months to do the thing you're trying to do there.
• 20:08
  Does that help answer that question?
• 20:10
  Carly Ries: Oh yeah, for sure. Absolutely. Well, for people, so like misunderstood timelines, but for people that decide they're like, oh, I don't need your service right now, I'm gonna go this alone, and they try to look for a marketing partner by themselves, what mistakes do you see people make when they try to find them on their own?
• 20:28
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. This is fun. So one, I just wanna talk about the how much it hurts when you pick the wrong marketing partner, right? and I've seen this multiple times because I mean Joe, sure you know too, like whenever you hire a marketing agency or partner, you have to ramp them up. And so it takes you three to six months typically to ramp these people up, find out they're not good, let them go, and then you have to go through the whole process again.
• 20:51
  Right? And typically it takes three to five tries to find one partner you really like. And so that hurts. It could take you two years to find someone you really like to work with.
• 20:59
  Joe Rando: And a lot of wasted money. Because they don't do that ramp up for free.
• 21:02
  Behdad Jamshidi: Exactly. So that's like one of the biggest factors. The other thing is people will just go through their network and just whoever they get, they won't talk to enough people. Right? So they'll go to the network, people recommend two or three people to talk to to the two or three because they don't want to do the extra work.
• 21:16
  They'll just pick one of the two or three people and go, it's good enough, I'm going to do my thing. But good enough a lot of the times in marketing isn't good enough. You don't really get anywhere with it. So that's the other piece. The second one would be communication. you have to be able to communicate and understand the other side. Right? So if you have a very basic level of marketing experience, and then you're hiring an expert, and that expert is talking at a level of let's say nine out of 10 on Facebook ads for example, and you understand it at a zero one out of 10, there's gonna be a lot of context and a lot of information missed, and you're just gonna blindly trust someone, but not realize that they're actually not good potentially. Right? and other one, because it's actually happened the last three weeks twice now, a business will hire someone for some form of marketing, so say Facebook or Google ads, and never actually go into the accounts to see what's going on, and this is where both these businesses actually hire business consultants just to look at a high level, like I'm not a massive expert, deep level expert of Facebook or Google Ads, but I know my way around to go, hey, this Google Ads account, they're spending a ton of money on so the business for context is like a physio clinic, anyone who meets physios, chiro, that kind of stuff.
• 22:29
  And they were basically spending 80% of their budget in RMT, registered massage therapy. And he's like, Behdad, I've actually let go of one of my RMT's, went from two to one, we're not even trying to fill that service, so why is 80% of my Google Ads budget going into that? And then we went into his negative keywords, and he's like, there is information on recovery after an ACL injury, or like program for an ACL injury. Those were in his negative keywords, which I found bizarre because I go to my physio, and the thing he talks about the most is they have an entire program on how to get back from ACL and MCL injuries, like that's what they do. And it was in the negative keywords list, and then I was like What?
• 23:09
  Joe Rando: This is worse than what we went through, Carly.
• 23:14
  Carly Ries: I didn't have to deal with the brunt of that because I was on maternity leave.
• 23:17
  Joe Rando: Yeah. It was But it's stuck with that. It's amazing. Yeah. And we're fortunate now we found somebody very good for that.
• 23:26
  But oh, boy. You know, that's incredible. Yeah. Let me have negative keywords for the things you want for business.
• 23:34
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. And he was shocked. He's like, Behdad, what does negative keywords mean and why is this under there? And I was like, it's exactly what you think it is.
• 23:42
  And he's like, oh, okay. So you can even do this stuff yourself. Like you probably don't even consult. I haven't looked on YouTube, it was like how to audit in the Google Ads account. I'm sure if you search that, someone is gonna teach you how to do it.
• 23:54
  Joe Rando: They teach them to do anything.
• 23:56
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah, exactly.
• 23:57
  Carly Ries: Well I think this episode is just so helpful for people that are starting out, or are in their business a little bit, and are like, okay, it's time for me to outsource some marketing, and just kinda where to start, the red flags and everything. But I have to ask, since you are in the marketing world, what kind of trends do you think solopreneurs should keep track of over the next few years?
• 24:16
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. So it's interesting. I got asked this question also yesterday, and I had a jumbled up answer. And then I thought about it and I was like, it's jumbled up because it's so crazy right now. Like everything is kind of shifting in the marketing world right now.
• 24:28
  And when you simplify it down, it's like, oh, execution is becoming so much easier to do for smaller businesses. Right? There are so many AI tools out there that you can now start creating really good creative for your Facebook ads, for example, yourself without needing a ton of experience. you can create copywriting that can be a four or five out of 10 level without needing a ton of experience. it's not like getting to average now is so much easier with AI that it allows smaller businesses to basically have more things that they're able to do because they have better like, they can use the resources more effectively, if that makes sense.
• 25:01
  Joe Rando: But what does that really mean in the big picture? If everybody's, you know, I always think of, Lake Woolby Gone. I don't know if you remember that radio program where all the children are above average. And it's like, what does it mean when the average moves up like that? Does it really help, or is it just raising the bar and now you've gotta do even better to get noticed?
• 25:22
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. So that's exactly it. So what it'll help is the solopreneurs who need to get from let's say a level zero to a level five. Right? at least people will have some sort of solid foundation. more people are gonna have a solid foundation. But the difference is gonna be in the experts. And so I don't think AI is gonna take over any strategic stuff, expert level type work. Like to use AI effectively, for example, for storytelling, you need to be an expert level storyteller to know if what it's giving you is good. Right?
• 25:49
  And it's gonna be the same for literally everything from development to creative to whatever it is to branding. you ultimately need to be an expert in that area to be able to create great and expert work. So I think it's just gonna be the level of person has to amplify to just become even better, and those people are gonna become even more valuable. What I'm noticing in the marketing agency space is that if people are gonna sit into execution, like those marketing agencies are really gonna struggle, it's gonna be the marketing agencies that shift over to strategy and truly understand marketing strategy, which I would say a lot of them don't. Like when I'm saying a lot, I'm saying like 90% don't.
• 26:25
  And so they're gonna have to upscale. And then it's the people that are able to bring multiple aspects together now. So it's no longer gonna be the Google Ads person, and then you have a landing page person, and then you have an email person. Right? I think because execution is gonna become so much easier to do, agencies have to bring all of these services together and say, hey, we run your Google Ads, we take care of your landing pages, we also do serial, and we do email.
• 26:48
  And we do it well, because we can actually do it effectively. And so I think for solopreneurs it's just being aware that this shift is happening, and so a lot of marketing agencies right now, I don't think are gonna survive in the in the longer term, they're gonna have to shift into becoming different, but the marketing fundamentals always stay the same. You're still dealing with people. You're still dealing with their emotions, and you're still dealing with what they want to be. Right?
• 27:09
  Joe Rando: I think that you said something that I think is a little bit unlikely, but you said they're gonna have to upskill. I don't know that people can upskill into being strategic. That's a leap. I mean, you think about somebody that's, focused on tactics and execution as a business, you know, shifting that business into a strategic I don't know, it sounds hard to me.
• 27:34
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. It might not be them, it might be they have to bring a partner in that thinks that's a strategic piece. we both know, there's visionaries and executors of companies, right? and so the executors are gonna have to understand, like, we probably need a visionary to come into here and help us with strategy because we're not gonna figure it out.
• 27:48
  Or it's not their strength, which is gonna be
• 27:50
  Joe Rando: And the visionaries need the executors too because the visionary is always having tested as a visionary, which I thought was great when I took the test, and then realized, no. Not so great. It's visionaries need reining in. So, yeah, that you're right. That's probably the best thing is for those people to come together and keep each other focused and in check and but anyway so for all of our, executing solopreneurs might wanna be thinking a little bit about finding a way to get a little more strategic because I just think about making like like you said, a level four or five out of 10 copywriter is now $20 a month.
• 28:36
  Behdad Jamshidi: Yeah. It's not expensive anymore.
• 28:39
  Joe Rando: It's crazy.
• 28:40
  Carly Ries: I think this episode will help lead so many people into or hopefully give them some direction of where to go with their marketing efforts and how to outsource it and what to look for. And so you will help them find success with that. So thank you. So we have to ask, what is your favorite quote about success?
• 28:54
  Behdad Jamshidi: It's not about the outcome, it's about the process. I think I just really internalized that like in over the last two years. Right? So we all have this expected outcome that we wanna hit, and I think the more you tie to I need to hit this thing, I think the more you're gonna struggle within business versus just enjoying the process of what you're going to. So having the goal, having the thing you wanna do, but just enjoying the process of it, I think this becomes more and more important, and who you become as you go through that process.
• 29:20
  Carly Ries: Could not agree more. Well, if people want to learn more about you, where can they find you?
• 29:26
  Behdad Jamshidi: Two places. So LinkedIn is somewhere I'm quite often, so looking up Behdad Jamshidi. I put a lot of content on LinkedIn and try to help people not get caught by marketing agencies and tactics. And then the second aspect, if you go to my website www.cjmmarketing.com, in the resource section, there's a bunch of questions that you can use for vetting agencies, the top questions to ask, and just how to think about hiring partners. So feel free to use those resources yourself.
• 29:51
  Joe Rando: And that's c as the letter c, jam marketing.
• 29:54
  Behdad Jamshidi: Exactly.
• 29:56
  Carly Ries: Cool. Awesome. Well, thank you so so much for coming on the show today. We so appreciate it.
• 30:01
  Behdad Jamshidi: Thanks for having me.
• 30:02
  Carly Ries: And listeners, thank you so much for tuning in. We would love that five star review. We'd love it if you'd share it with a friend and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform, including YouTube. And we will see you next time on The Aspiring Solopreneur. You may be going solo in business, but that doesn't mean you're alone.
• 30:20
  In fact, millions of people are in your shoes, running a one person business and figuring it out as they go. So why not connect with them and learn from each other's successes and failures? At LifeStarr we're creating a one person business community where you can go to meet and get advice from other solopreneurs. Be sure to join in on the conversations at community.lifestarr.com.