Latest / Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching] / 43. Stop Chasing Leads and Start Generating Clients with Lindsey Wagnon

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43. Stop Chasing Leads and Start Generating Clients with Lindsey Wagnon · Scrappy but Successful [Consultant's Personalities When No One's Watching]

• 0:00
  What's happening everybody? Welcome to Scrappy What Successful. It's a show where I sit down
• 0:04
  with your favorite consultants and we find out if they're successful today because they're sophisticated
• 0:09
  or because they're a little bit scrappy. I'm your host, Jack Tompkins, CEO of Pineapple
• 0:14
  Consulting Firm and Pineapple Analyst AI, always helping small businesses become more data driven. Fun
• 0:19
  fact of the day, we've got another Charlotte local guest. So Charlotte was actually the
• 0:24
  first gold rush in the US. well before California in Seventeen ninety nine, a twelve
• 0:29
  year old found a seventeen pound gold nugget, and it made North Carolina the top
• 0:34
  gold producing area for decades. So I just learned that. So yeah. Who knew?
• 0:39
  What? Wait, so wait, so are you telling me that I should quit my business
• 0:44
  and start just like sh digging in my backyard right now? I think we did.
• 0:49
  I'm saying we did it wrong, Lindsay. Yeah.
• 0:52
  This changes everything.
• 0:54
  Exactly. I know. But that is the voice of and I am joined today by
• 0:59
  Lindsay Wagnan. She's the founder of Lindsay Wagnan marketing. She's a fractional growth partner that
• 1:04
  becomes a a a legitim a legitimately that's a tough word to say trusted
• 1:09
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:10
  advisor. She helps small businesses break through the revenue plateau that she calls the valley
• 1:14
  of death. We're gonna get into that later. She's also a host of her own
• 1:18
  podcast, The Savvy Startup Marketer. So, Lindsay, thank you for joining us in your current
• 1:22
  career before you become a gold miner again. We know you're successful today,
• 1:26
  Yeah.
• 1:28
  but the question we have for you, do you think you fall more on the
• 1:31
  sophisticated side, more on the scrappy side?
• 1:33
  For sure, scrappy. And I can't get it out of me. It's like, but at
• 1:38
  the same time, I will say what now when you look back and you think
• 1:44
  about how scrappy you've had to be the whole time, it's like at the time
• 1:50
  I felt like I was being very sophisticated, like finding the tools that I use
• 1:56
  and mapping out the the blueprints and the strategies and you know, doing the SWOT
• 2:02
  analysis and all the things that come with being an entrepreneur that you're learning like
• 2:08
  are just best practices along the way, you feel like I am leveling up. And
• 2:14
  then you realize, no, we are just really working very hard and we are on
• 2:20
  a big learning curve. And we are trying and we're do being so resourceful because
• 2:26
  we have no money. And yeah, so I'm I probably live in Scrappy, but in
• 2:31
  my head I feel so sophisticated while it's in action. So I don't know if
• 2:37
  that makes sense, but that's how I feel.
• 2:41
  It makes perfect sense. Sometimes the scrappiness leads to sophistication and it's hey we have
• 2:43
  zero dollars to do any marketing, so
• 2:45
  Yeah. Yes.
• 2:48
  we're gonna say we've got all these systems in place, but it's just me clicking
• 2:51
  manual buttons three times.
• 2:53
  It is. It it is. It's like cobbling together all the free things you possibly
• 2:58
  can. and then hoping like you didn't miss the memo about you're gonna get charged
• 3:03
  for this in three months.
• 3:05
  Exactly. Yep. Give me a no credit card required demo and I will use the
• 3:08
  crap out of it.
• 3:09
  Yes. One hundred percent.
• 3:13
  I love it. where did you grow up? Did you have entrepreneurs in the family?
• 3:17
  No, I really don't. I grew up in Southwest Virginia, so about 30 minutes from
• 3:22
  Roanoke. If anybody's familiar with the Smith Mountain Lake area, it's gorgeous.
• 3:27
  Sure, been there.
• 3:29
  Highly recommend, kind of a hidden gem. not my family was not on the lake,
• 3:35
  but we were a couple miles from it and just a very pretty place to
• 3:42
  have a childhood. I lived in the country, ran around you know, the feet literally
• 3:49
  I we had horses and I rode my horse bare back, you know, barefoot. Like
• 3:56
  it this was my upbringing. So
• 3:59
  Ha ha.
• 4:00
  maybe this lends toward understanding like the scrappiness level. but yeah. So I grew up
• 4:06
  with a brother and a sister and my dad I he was Always worked for
• 4:12
  Lenox Heating and Air Conditioning from as long as I can remember, was his territory
• 4:18
  manager. So when I look back, he was not technically an entrepreneur, but he in
• 4:25
  essentially operated very similar to an entrepreneur because he had a home office and it
• 4:31
  was on him to manage different dealers of the equipment. And so he was always
• 4:37
  like on the road traveling an hour to three or so. To different dealers and
• 4:44
  doing sales and checking in and taking calls from his office. I don't think he
• 4:50
  ever went into a corporate office except for like one time a year when they
• 4:56
  had their big meeting in Dallas. And so when I think about that, I'm like,
• 5:03
  you know what? Even though he was technically corporately employed, he operated very much like
• 5:09
  an entrepreneur and worked fully remote, which It's so funny to me that that is
• 5:15
  such a sticking point with people and companies and such a trend now in 2026.
• 5:21
  And I'm like, back when I was growing up, I watched my dad work full-time
• 5:28
  remote forever. Like it's nothing new. This is like why is this still such a
• 5:34
  hot topic? But I guess it, you know, that side of things, I felt like
• 5:40
  I I witnessed entrepreneur skills and action. but other than that, you know, my mom
• 5:47
  was a stay-at-home mom, and the trajectory that we were raised in was pretty strongly
• 5:53
  traditional. Like you will go to college, you will decide what type of work you
• 5:59
  want to do, and you will get the degree in that industry, and then you
• 6:06
  will work for someone else. And I did not really even consider entrepreneurship. having a
• 6:12
  business, owning a business until I was in my thirties, honestly.
• 6:17
  Yeah, it it sometimes it takes a while to kinda like break the mold. and
• 6:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 6:21
  I'm guessing your dad sounds like a guy who like made it really known that
• 6:25
  the importance of a strong handshake was like lesson one.
• 6:29
  that sounds like him to a T. He's never met a stranger. he will, you
• 6:35
  know, just chat with anybody. Like he'll want to know where you're from, what your
• 6:41
  background is, like what your interests are. He's very good at that.
• 6:46
  That's huge. It's especially in that
• 6:47
  Yeah, it is.
• 6:49
  quasi entrepreneurial but definitely sales world, like you gotta do
• 6:51
  Sales.
• 6:52
  that. Do you take that as well? Like are you are you walking into a
• 6:55
  room and then walking out with three new best friends?
• 6:58
  no, I feel like I'm the polar opposite naturally. I am a high introvert. But
• 7:04
  the funny thing is, I have definitely studied really great salespeople and growing up, you
• 7:10
  know, with a very gr a fantastic sales personality in the house. I do feel
• 7:16
  like it wasn't as much of a learning curve for me because of that, which
• 7:22
  I'm very grateful for. But I will say that it takes extra effort for me
• 7:28
  internally to, you know, put on like some of the extra charisma and the extra
• 7:34
  energy to like really have impromptu conversations with people. I don't I don't see myself
• 7:40
  as being particularly great at it, but I have certainly gotten better sheerly because I've
• 7:46
  practiced it and I've forced myself into those situations. I actually went to an event
• 7:52
  just this morning. And for me, the win is I walked back out the door.
• 7:58
  I mean, it was a pretty full room. I didn't know a single person there.
• 8:04
  I walked back out the door with two new contacts and already have a meeting
• 8:10
  set up with one of them. So I'm like, this for me is like we
• 8:16
  are winning here.
• 8:18
  Yeah. That's huge though. That's I
• 8:21
  Yeah.
• 8:22
  in in some ways I'm a extreme extrovert and in some ways I'm an extreme
• 8:26
  introvert. So I'm sure I'm somewhere in the middle. But
• 8:29
  Exactly.
• 8:30
  the anxiety of walking into a networking event for like the first time or one
• 8:33
  where you don't have an immediate like friend to go to or something like that,
• 8:37
  it's it's terrifying. What what's your move if you walk into a room? Are you
• 8:41
  are you finding a friendly face? You grabbing a drink? What's the move?
• 8:45
  I think I'm still figuring out what the consistent hack is. But what I have
• 8:50
  done at most of the events is I will find the person who's like already
• 8:56
  sitting down, hanging out, looks like they're sort of in a comfortable spot. They're not
• 9:01
  already in conversation. So hard to barge in on a conversation already happening. So I
• 9:07
  try to find the person who's, you know, not in that. moment and just sit
• 9:12
  down next to them and intro introduce myself and say, Hi, what brings you here?
• 9:18
  I'm Lindsay. And if I can't find anybody that's not already in conversation, I just
• 9:23
  suck it up and I walk up to like the least amount of people, the
• 9:29
  the group with the lowest number, or potentially like, you know, the the group that
• 9:34
  is hanging out by like the coffee or the food that makes it a little
• 9:40
  bit easier of a segue. and Yeah, but some people are just so they they
• 9:45
  just naturally w can break in and start the conversation. And it definitely like if
• 9:51
  you could see the wheels turning in my head, you know, and like the internal
• 9:56
  anxiety that happens the moment you're walk I'm walking into the room, like I think
• 10:02
  a lot of people can relate to that, but you just have to do it.
• 10:08
  You just have to. You gotta dive in. this is one of the scrappy verse
• 10:11
  sophisticated questions we'll get to later, but I'm gonna throw it in now since we're
• 10:14
  on it. If you're at
• 10:16
  Uh-huh.
• 10:16
  a networking event, having a decent conversation, but it has certainly run its course, how
• 10:19
  do you get out of that conversation? Yeah.
• 10:21
  So painfully.
• 10:27
  Awkwardly.
• 10:28
  Awkwardly. yeah, it's tough. I usually just try to say, hey, I would love to
• 10:33
  follow up. And like, but I am on my way to whatever. And a a
• 10:39
  lot of times I actually have kind of a natural segue because I have two
• 10:45
  elementary age daughters. And oftentimes I really cannot just hang out for super long amounts
• 10:50
  of time. So it's either, you know, in the evening and I just gotta get
• 10:56
  home because it's getting late. And I I will tell people, hey, gotta get home
• 11:02
  and tuck my kids into bed. Or I will say, Hey, gotta go to this
• 11:07
  school function happening today. Because that y generally is true. I do often kind of
• 11:13
  have a a hard stop. but if I don't and I feel like I'm just
• 11:19
  getting caught by somebody who just won't, you know, give any room. then I I
• 11:25
  have to kind of break in and be like, hey, let's follow up about that
• 11:30
  sometime. Great to meet you. And then honestly start walking away. There have been some
• 11:36
  moments I've honest like the group is a little bit bigger too. And somebody just
• 11:42
  almost almost is hijacking the conversation a little bit. You know what I'm talking about.
• 11:47
  And I will just kind of walk do the Irish goodbye and just literally walk
• 11:53
  out of the group. Like I don't know how these other people are going to
• 11:59
  to get out of this, but I just need to walk away.
• 12:04
  Yep. and there's always one other person. So somebody's hijacking, and in a big group,
• 12:06
  somebody goes, tell me more about that. It's like, no, that was our chance. We
• 12:09
  gotta pause. That's when the Irish
• 12:11
  Yeah, yeah, no, we did not want to know more. No. Nobody wants that.
• 12:16
  command. Right. I love it. Okay, so all right, so take me to the business.
• 12:19
  So you've been running the business for what, it's it's over seven years, right? How
• 12:22
  did you start?
• 12:23
  Yeah, I it's actually right at seven. I was in a corporate marketing position, sales
• 12:29
  marketing director for a mortgage company for about five years. and it was 2019, actually
• 12:36
  August 2019. So we're coming right up on the anniversary. And I look I was
• 12:42
  thriving in every area, but it was like too much, too much of a good
• 12:49
  thing. So I was promoted like three times in four years in that company. and
• 12:56
  at the same time my husband and I have always been very involved in church
• 13:02
  and ministry. And he is actually a pastor, a church pastor. And the whole reason
• 13:09
  we moved to Charlotte was for him to pursue that career. And so his like
• 13:16
  weekly rhythm was just very weekend heavy. And of course, I was fairly involved on
• 13:22
  the weekends with different ministry stuff. And then he would have Friday, he still actually
• 13:29
  has Fridays off. we had had our first child when I was like a year
• 13:36
  into this corporate career. And I had so I have a very little baby, and
• 13:42
  I am starting to actually travel for work a little bit and do, you know,
• 13:49
  more point leadership. In the marketing department, leading a team of like 13 creatives and
• 13:56
  project managers. And I I absolutely loved it, definitely thrived at it, still have fantastic
• 14:02
  relationships with all all of my colleagues, have fond memories. but the lifestyle side of
• 14:09
  it was just a strain, a real strain, just never being Having a day off
• 14:15
  with my husband because we actually did Saturday stuff at church at that point. This
• 14:22
  was pre-COVID. And we had not had a day off together in five straight years.
• 14:29
  yeah. And we have this baby at home. She went to daycare in at six
• 14:35
  weeks old, which now breaks my heart. And I'm like figuring out how to be
• 14:42
  a new mom, you know, very awkwardly. And it just the whole. structure of the
• 14:49
  traditional corporate office hours and and not that I didn't like what I did, but
• 14:55
  the structure and the rhythm of it was very hard. And I was simultaneously thriving
• 15:02
  and miserable. And so I just started to kind of collect work on the side
• 15:09
  for about a year. And I was nervous for a second because it looked like
• 15:15
  you froze. Okay, okay. so
• 15:18
  I did. To be honest, I did. We're we're we're doing on scrappy Wi Fi
• 15:23
  right now.
• 15:24
  I had collected some freelance clients on the side and felt like, you know what?
• 15:29
  I am not even trying to side hustle, and it's just sort of happening. I'm
• 15:35
  not even trying that hard. And kind of made a plan, started saving up some
• 15:40
  money, talked to my husband, and said, I really feel like I could go out
• 15:46
  on my own and be successful pretty quickly. I don't, you know, it feels that
• 15:52
  way. and of course my mind was a little made up at that point. So
• 15:57
  it wasn't r as much of like a let's f figure this out at or
• 16:03
  a suggestion as much it was as it was like, yeah, this is the decision.
• 16:08
  so it and then to add to that, I really did Give my fair shot
• 16:14
  at talking to my boss, trying to get him to help us to have a
• 16:20
  little bit more flexibility with the marketing department as a whole, just having that conversation
• 16:25
  that I know so many workplaces and so many teams have been having for a
• 16:31
  while around, hey, can we have a hybrid situation here? Like, you know, I know
• 16:36
  we've got this beautiful big building that we just built, and you want everybody here
• 16:42
  all the time, but There are some people in this department that could really use
• 16:48
  a little more flexibility, and it really just wasn't going to happen. And so I
• 16:53
  had spent quite a while trying to talk us in that direction and really not
• 16:59
  getting much out of it. and I was like, okay, I don't think that's going
• 17:05
  to work. So I ended up leaving August 2019 and left with like a a
• 17:10
  bank full of clients already. Some of them friends and family. Some of them were
• 17:16
  people that found me online. And I'm honestly to this day not even sure how
• 17:21
  they found me.
• 17:23
  Yeah.
• 17:25
  But I was and I was doing a lot of random projects. It it was
• 17:30
  not like the consulting as much as it was I was designing websites for people
• 17:36
  and doing a lot of copywriting and doing a lot of brand messaging type things.
• 17:42
  so stuff that falls under marketing, but it was like a little a project here,
• 17:48
  a project there, and a little bit less full service, but I wanted to launch
• 17:54
  more as a full service and actually help people lead their marketing. but the irony
• 18:00
  is six months later, COVID shut everybody down and that same marketing department was all
• 18:06
  working from home. So I always like to throw that in there because it's like,
• 18:12
  you gotta be kidding me. But I still feel like it was the best decision.
• 18:18
  I honestly have no regrets. And I did launch as a full service marketing agency
• 18:24
  and did well for several years. And then the in the last year I've really
• 18:30
  started to pivot more as no, I'm at the place now in my career where.
• 18:36
  I'm a fractional CMO and I'm I really need to be in a leadership role
• 18:42
  with businesses. because it I just can't help myself. Like I will get into the
• 18:48
  weeds with a business owner, and I will just inevitably be like, hold on a
• 18:54
  second, let's zoom out, let's do it right. You know, like let me help you
• 19:00
  do this right and not just fix. this one piece of your marketing or you
• 19:06
  know, help you out with this one aspect of it or manage this one platform
• 19:12
  because, you know, we're we're off on several levels on on the strategy, on the
• 19:18
  plan, on the revenue goals, on the don't even get me started on the market
• 19:24
  research. Like usually there's just so much of a gap because nobody's owned the marketing.
• 19:30
  And I'm like, if I'm going to be on board I you need to let
• 19:36
  me help lead here. So that's where that shift has come from.
• 19:41
  to a bunch of entrepreneurs and most of them say that they act after a
• 19:44
  little bit of being an entrepreneur, it would be tough to go back to corporate
• 19:47
  because they would be a terrible employee. Because that that situation
• 19:50
  Yes, yeah.
• 19:52
  of like, hey like go make this ad, you'd be like, but why? But the
• 19:55
  strategy's wrong. Let's go fix that first.
• 19:57
  Yeah. So honestly, one of the things that I actually am very fond of when
• 20:03
  I look back at my corporate time is that I actually had a boss in
• 20:09
  leadership that I looking back, I'm like, they were very patient with me because I
• 20:15
  did that. Even in a corporate setting, I was I would freely push back, not
• 20:21
  to try to be difficult, but I would You know, have the one on one
• 20:27
  conversation and just be like, hey, why are we doing this? This feels like total
• 20:33
  sideways energy. Can we understand the why more? hey, can I take this entire marketing
• 20:39
  department and can we sit down next to some of our OG salespeople and like
• 20:45
  get a true workshop training on what they do day in and day out? Because
• 20:51
  most of what my job was was supporting our sales reps. across the US. And
• 20:57
  I felt like I was working with a team of creatives that there was a
• 21:03
  and this is very common, I think, in a business setting, whether it's corporate, whether
• 21:09
  it's a startup, no matter what. It's like you've got people that are focused on
• 21:15
  producing creative and, you know, very passionate about the art, about the data, about, you
• 21:21
  know, the whatever they're good at within marketing, the copywriting, messaging, whatever. They're very into
• 21:27
  that and they want to be good at that, but they've never really been expl
• 21:33
  very clearly explained to around what is this business? Like what is this model? And
• 21:39
  who are we actually supporting? Who is actually closing the deal? Because the marketers are
• 21:45
  not usually closing the deal. And so we're trying, you know, to help generate the
• 21:51
  deal closing, the conversions. And we're somewhere in the middle of that. And if we
• 21:57
  don't understand the that part of it, the f the full context, then a lot
• 22:03
  of what is produced really is sideways energy, really is just taking up people's time,
• 22:09
  costing money along the way. anyways, so yeah, I am fortunate that I was in
• 22:15
  a corporate position where I I did have a couple different bosses in that position.
• 22:21
  I'd say, you know, one of them I I probably held back a little bit
• 22:27
  more than the other. But the by the time I made, you know, the exit,
• 22:33
  I was like, you know, you've been so gracious in hearing me out along the
• 22:39
  way. And I had a lot of confidence in my expertise leaving that company because
• 22:45
  the leadership was great about like letting people speak up. letting people have their opinions
• 22:51
  and here and genuinely hearing them out. And other other than the work from home
• 22:57
  flexibility, that was like that
• 22:59
  Yeah.
• 23:00
  was the thing that I felt like, this is just going nowhere. and it's fine.
• 23:05
  But as far as you know our day-to-day skills in production, but if I went
• 23:11
  to a different company, yes, I I would say To your point of like we
• 23:16
  would going back, I would be a bad employee. I think if I did end
• 23:22
  up going back into a corporate setting or a company setting full-time, I would be,
• 23:27
  I would be vetting like who am I being led by? And
• 23:32
  Yeah.
• 23:32
  are you genuinely going to, you know, hear me out? Am I going to be
• 23:37
  able to, you know, partner with you in a true sense? Or are you just
• 23:42
  going to be like, hey, just make this happen and we're not gonna, you know,
• 23:48
  talk about the whole picture of it.
• 23:51
  Yeah, it's a reverse interview at that point.
• 23:53
  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
• 23:54
  Yeah. Okay, so take me to today. So this is why like obviously you've got
• 23:57
  you've got the just natural instinct to kind of question, hey, like what's what's going
• 24:01
  on here? We don't want to be sideways. Take
• 24:04
  Yeah.
• 24:05
  me to today. You're you're this true, I don't wan I don't necessarily want to
• 24:09
  say integrated, but true trusted partner. How do you work with clients? What is an
• 24:13
  ideal client and how do you actually how did you find up or sorry, find
• 24:17
  out what your ideal client ended up being?
• 24:20
  Yeah, that's a good question. I think it honestly adapts with each client. I have
• 24:26
  been, I have served across a lot of different industries. So early on it was,
• 24:33
  you know, because of the mortgage company ties. And we have a good a friend
• 24:39
  who is invested into a lot of high end real estate. And so it was
• 24:46
  real estate heavy, mortgage heavy type work. and then along the way ended up working
• 24:52
  for an education charter school as they set up a bunch of different branches. I
• 24:59
  worked for an e-commerce jewelry seller for quite a while. and an automo more recently,
• 25:05
  like an automotive retailer local store. So there's been like kind of eclectic mix and
• 25:12
  It's been, you know, businesses of different scale. So your true small business that is
• 25:18
  kind of hitting like trying to hit a million and feels like they just are
• 25:25
  really falling short, very yo-yo-y along the way over the past few years, as as
• 25:31
  truly like many businesses have experienced just in general with how things have gone. And
• 25:38
  then, you know, the ones that are have pretty strong funding but are just lacking
• 25:45
  the leadership and don't know what to do with it. Like, hey, yeah, we've got
• 25:51
  the budget. We can make all these different marketing things happen, but is it the
• 25:58
  right thing to do? We don't even understand how this platform works. We don't know
• 26:04
  what the current trends are versus what it was five years ago. and so that's
• 26:11
  where you know I come in and I am helping somebody scale, whether that's scaling
• 26:17
  through the, you know, just a revenue stagnation. and or it is, no, we are
• 26:24
  scaling, we are building something, but we don't want a ton of wasted effort because
• 26:30
  we just are doing things and we don't know what we're doing. so usually one
• 26:37
  of those two things are the biggest pain point for the business leader. and I'm
• 26:43
  coming in and focusing either that direct one of those directions, but inevitably it looks
• 26:50
  like There's just nobody taking ownership, honestly, of the marketing side. A lot of cases,
• 26:57
  there's also nobody taking ownership of the sales. So you might have a business owner
• 27:03
  who is very good at what they do, but and and they're kind of trying
• 27:10
  to be that front-facing salesperson. And they genuinely just, that's not their forte, it's not
• 27:16
  their element. and that's the that's a huge struggle. And so it sales and marketing
• 27:23
  a lot of times are kind of like merged together with a business that is
• 27:29
  trying to scale. A lot of times that is a gap. and I will come
• 27:36
  in and just say, hey, let me act as a true business partner here and
• 27:42
  own this. And we will either I will either support the team members that you
• 27:49
  have got. running some aspects of your marketing and help coach them, help train them,
• 27:55
  help them get better at what they do. If that's truly what they want to
• 28:02
  be doing, I mean, that's another piece of it is like a lot of times
• 28:09
  early stage companies or stagnating companies or brands have somebody doing some marketing and it
• 28:15
  really wasn't what they signed up for. And they're like, you know, doing paid ads
• 28:22
  and That those platforms are just insane, honestly. Like when you really get into them
• 28:28
  and then they start realizing that and they're like, my gosh, I don't even know
• 28:35
  if I want to learn any more about this platform because it's it's so in
• 28:41
  the weeds. social media management is usually some somebody on the team is doing it
• 28:48
  and they're like halfway doing it and they're very reluctant about it. It's it feels
• 28:54
  very cool at first, and then it's just becomes this chore. and so it it
• 29:01
  looks a lot like that. but basically just coming in as like an interim business
• 29:07
  partner, interim executive level leader, and s having somebody finally just own the thing.
• 29:14
  sense and that's how you get through this sort of valley of death, right? You're
• 29:16
  you're at this revenue plateau,
• 29:17
  And so
• 29:18
  so like this is this is option one of your ideal clients, I think. you're
• 29:21
  at this plateau and you're like, yeah, we're we're doing stuff and and people are
• 29:25
  kind of owning this and we get new leads so something's working and we get
• 29:29
  a new client every now and then so we got something but
• 29:32
  Mm-hmm.
• 29:33
  it all kind of nets out to be kind of plateaued. And so you come
• 29:36
  in and say, All right, let's take charge of this. Let's actually put some motivated
• 29:40
  people behind it, some resources behind it, some processes, I'm assuming as well. And you
• 29:44
  come
• 29:45
  yeah.
• 29:45
  and kind of just have to lead the charge, implement some processes to get through
• 29:50
  that value death.
• 29:51
  Right. A lot of it on the front end is the system side. And that
• 29:56
  makes a business owner's eyes glaze over. And I get it. But I don't think
• 30:01
  I've ever come into a situation where I mean it would be glorious. Maybe I
• 30:06
  will one day, but I don't think I've ever come into a situation where I'm
• 30:12
  like, the back end is fully built. And
• 30:15
  Yeah.
• 30:16
  There's this like nice streamlined pipeline and we got all the metrics in front of
• 30:22
  us and you know the analytics are cranking. It's it's just beautiful. Like I'm and
• 30:28
  I know this is like your area. and so for us, the this is what
• 30:34
  we have what we build from. Like this is what helps make decisions and helps
• 30:41
  set strategy. and then we're talking about okay, so who is your ideal? Customer, like
• 30:47
  let's create an avatar, a profile around who these people are. And then they're just
• 30:53
  like, well, they kind of have an answer, but it's probably shifted as they're, you
• 31:00
  know, doing the actual business. And and now, now it kind of morphs into just
• 31:06
  this net that's probably too broad. And so we're drilling down on that. We're, we're
• 31:12
  doing a lot of online and system I guess improvements, troubleshooting, getting rid of some
• 31:19
  things, figuring out, you know, how to make how how to make things work in
• 31:25
  within the optimal budget. And I know that that is usually just like so blah
• 31:31
  and tedious to a business owner, but I have to be good at explaining how
• 31:38
  critical it is. And when I start to ask the questions and the the answers
• 31:44
  are just not there, then the light bulb goes off. And I'm like, okay, this
• 31:50
  will tell you what it is. We gotta set it up. And and this is
• 31:57
  going to help you you know, choose the quality leads. And so we've we've got
• 32:03
  to set that up. We've got to make sure these things are functioning first. What
• 32:09
  I am always trying to Talk through with a business owner. And this is where
• 32:15
  you know you put the coach hat on. and you just have to be diplomatic
• 32:22
  and you and you have to be encouraging, but also you have to explain. And
• 32:28
  this, I know every marketer is going to be like, this is like 100% true.
• 32:34
  But the difference between lead generation and the you know quality of leads act that
• 32:41
  are actually gonna turn into conversions. Like in marketing world, you watch and you learn
• 32:47
  that lead generation is not the magic fix that a a lot of business owners
• 32:53
  default to and think a marketer is supposed to do. And so it drives me
• 33:00
  crazy when I, you know, ha there's this language out there all the time. It's
• 33:06
  like lead gin, lead gin, lead gin. and yes, like that's a piece of it,
• 33:12
  but that's I I'd say a much later component to focus on for somebody who
• 33:19
  wants to do the marketing right and who has a long-term vision. Like what are
• 33:25
  we talking about short-term fixes, short-term band-aids, or are we talking about like long-term, this
• 33:31
  is how you're you're gonna grow and this is what you you want as your
• 33:38
  foundation to support something long term and to save money long term. A lot of
• 33:44
  businesses are just like throwing money at ads and things that are that top of
• 33:50
  funnel, bring the lead in and it's they're just not quality at all. And so
• 33:56
  I end up really examining the quality level of the leads. and examining from a
• 34:03
  revenue side of things, like, hey, if we're gonna hit this revenue goal, like what
• 34:09
  services and products are we really going to focus on? What makes the most sense?
• 34:15
  What is maybe less competitive that you you know more are more guaranteed to and
• 34:22
  to not have to work honestly as hard to market as well. And with all
• 34:28
  of that considered, then let's figure out who your your true target customer is, the
• 34:34
  workflows we need to set up for them so that when they come, you know,
• 34:41
  in the door or you know in the CRM, they are taken care of. And
• 34:47
  then we're gonna focus on on that. And yeah, your your leads, your lead generation
• 34:53
  going from high volume. Crappy leads to lower volume, higher quality leads that are actually
• 35:00
  going to get you to the revenue point, it's gonna look different. Like your lead
• 35:06
  volume is going to come down probably. That's but it's that is a hard thing
• 35:12
  for somebody to accept and swallow at first. But it when when you're working with
• 35:19
  a great business owner, they get it.
• 35:22
  Yes. Who cares about lead generation when you can have client generation?
• 35:25
  Exactly. Yes. Like we we have to think all the way through this scenario.
• 35:30
  Exactly. Yeah. More leads in the door. If it if the door is empty after
• 35:33
  that, then who cares?
• 35:34
  Mm. Yeah.
• 35:36
  all right, let me hit you some scrappy verse sophisticated lightning round questions. take me
• 35:43
  inside the inbox. How many emails unread is too many?
• 35:48
  One.
• 35:49
  One. Okay. Pretty good. Pretty good.
• 35:52
  I am O C D about it. I can't not I can't let I can't
• 35:57
  let notifications sit there. It's just bothers me. So I have to take my my
• 36:03
  my work emails off my phone. Like I have to just, you know, only like
• 36:08
  let things be in the correct pocket and place, or else it will just nag
• 36:14
  at me. So I'm pretty good about staying up on my emails.
• 36:19
  Okay, I'm betting you don't work from the couch very often, do you?
• 36:24
  I only will do that, you know, if it's like a mom necessity. If
• 36:28
  Sure, okay.
• 36:30
  I feel like I've gotta be like in the same space as my kids because
• 36:35
  they just will not stop fighting or whatever it is. Every now and then I'll
• 36:40
  take the computer to a different space, but I am pretty attached to my office
• 36:45
  setup and having the second monitor and like, yeah.
• 36:48
  Okay. Okay. How many monitors are on the desk? Is it just laptop and then
• 36:51
  one monitor?
• 36:52
  Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's it.
• 36:53
  Okay. All right. Not bad. Is there a docking station or is it a bunch
• 36:57
  of wires just getting plugged in?
• 36:59
  it is wires everywhere. I have a little a little docking station for my phone
• 37:06
  and my AirPods, but that's it.
• 37:09
  Okay. Okay. And it looks I mean, from what we can see in the background
• 37:11
  here, it looks like a pretty tidy office. Anything I don't
• 37:14
  thank you.
• 37:16
  know if you just did that for the show or what, but anything super unique
• 37:20
  in the office? Any any mementos or anything like that?
• 37:24
  I probably yes, I mean w I've got the typical family photos. and what you
• 37:29
  don't see off to the side is another side of my OCDness, which is the
• 37:34
  twenty twenty six big wall calendar that I am obsessed with. But I'll give you
• 37:40
  like more of a personal fact. I have a piano in my office on the
• 37:45
  other side of the room because I do I play. So Every now and then
• 37:50
  I like shift gears and go over and do a little bit of a music
• 37:56
  thing. And I'm giving my daughters piano lessons. So right now what is sitting on
• 38:01
  the piano is like like a beginner piano book for my 10-year-old to learn with.
• 38:07
  That's a pretty unique office setup. Okay, I like
• 38:08
  Yeah.
• 38:09
  it. if you are trying to schedule a meeting, are you saying, hey, I'm I'm
• 38:15
  free later this week or are you sending a calendar link?
• 38:20
  It okay, that one depends. Right now, because of the summer schedule that I'm on,
• 38:25
  I am hesitant to send calendar links because I constantly have to shift things around
• 38:31
  kids. but the majority of the year, if they're in school, I will do a
• 38:36
  pretty good job at keeping my Calendly availability up to speed and accurate. And then
• 38:42
  I can trust that if I send the Calendly link. People are going to choose
• 38:47
  a time that I'm actually available for. And I do prefer that. I prefer to
• 38:53
  let them like pick it. but right now I pretty much just have to say,
• 38:59
  Here's the next availability, like, can you do it? 'Cause my calend my calendar is
• 39:04
  really, you know, up and down.
• 39:07
  Okay. Okay. That makes sense. the the link is always like it giv it gives
• 39:10
  the up to date availability too, which which is always nice for me. Cause some
• 39:13
  people will wait a couple days and then I get three meetings booked and it's
• 39:16
  like, hey, sorry, that one that one's no longer there.
• 39:18
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:21
  okay, have you ever done anything where you're like, yeah, like totally can do it,
• 39:24
  absolute, hundred percent confidence, but you've never actually done it before if a client asks
• 39:28
  for something like that.
• 39:30
  I think I've done that many times. Not
• 39:33
  Yeah, same.
• 39:34
  as much lately, but well, for sure, when I was first building websites for people,
• 39:39
  I so those projects would typically start because somebody said, I need the copy done.
• 39:45
  And I've got a good amount of copywriting in my background. It's actually how I
• 39:51
  started in marketing, and so that I'm super confident in. But then it would be,
• 39:57
  you know, some a solopreneur who is, you know, just launching their business. They have
• 40:02
  nothing online yet. And they would ask me to do copywriting. And then they would
• 40:08
  say, This happened so many times. They would say, I'm trying to build this website
• 40:14
  on like Squarespace or Wix or whatever platform. And I don't know what I'm doing.
• 40:20
  Can you just do it for me? And that's how I got into actually doing
• 40:25
  a lot, a good bit of website design, which is honestly not really my forte.
• 40:31
  And I probably have no business doing that for people. But at this point I've
• 40:37
  just done it. And I'm like, I mean, it is kind of a a side
• 40:43
  skill that I'm a little proud of, but don't really push. but that I probably
• 40:48
  should not have been doing for people, but I did it.
• 40:53
  But it's revenue at the time, right? It it worked.
• 40:55
  Exactly. I'm like, yeah, it's kind of fun to figure this out. I built my
• 40:59
  own site. How hard can it be? and if you're decently technical and can want
• 41:04
  to spend the time figuring out those sites, like then it it is kind of
• 41:09
  fun to do it. I am not a web developer by any stretch. So I
• 41:14
  I will not I cannot do a WordPress site. Like we cannot go that far.
• 41:19
  but I have at this point built on like four or five different types of
• 41:24
  platforms.
• 41:25
  Okay. Have
• 41:28
  Yeah.
• 41:30
  you ever had to play the credit card timing game where you wait till tomorrow
• 41:34
  to charge something 'cause that's next month's statement? Yep.
• 41:37
  Yes, I absolutely have had to do that. Yeah, one hundred percent.
• 41:42
  Okay, I love it. the any clients that you had early on that you regret,
• 41:47
  and you don't have to name them or anything, but you know, engagements that you
• 41:52
  shouldn't have been a part of.
• 41:55
  I mean do we have another hour? I think that has been one of the
• 42:00
  big biggest lessons I have learned in seven years of owning my own business and
• 42:06
  particularly being a service provider and doing what I do. I could go on and
• 42:11
  on about the people
• 42:13
  Yeah.
• 42:13
  that I wish I'd never worked with and had to learn that the hard way.
• 42:18
  But I, yeah, unfortunately, it at least three or four. And I think I'm I
• 42:24
  think I'm at about 22 total businesses I've worked with over the last seven years.
• 42:30
  And like, so I guess that's a good ratio. but yeah. I not now I
• 42:36
  can
• 42:37
  Yeah.
• 42:37
  now I can spot it. I'm glad I can spot it a mile away when
• 42:42
  somebody is just, you know, that business owner that is either clueless about business in
• 42:48
  general and is just gonna be like beating your head against the wall to like
• 42:54
  get anything accomplished. Or they're a great business owner or they're they're really good at
• 43:00
  like advancing something. but their communication is so tough, you can't even understand like what
• 43:05
  it what is it you want me to do? I am I am having the
• 43:11
  hardest time understanding what you are saying right now. Like those are the two types
• 43:17
  that I've worked for that I'm like never again.
• 43:21
  Yep. Yeah. The client that calls out of the blue didn't even know they had
• 43:24
  your cellphone number, but calls out of the blue, and then
• 43:27
  Yeah.
• 43:28
  you call them back and then they don't answer for a week and a half
• 43:31
  and it's the communication's tough.
• 43:32
  Yeah. And the worst are the ones that pay late. Yeah, we don't want that.
• 43:35
  Mm mm.
• 43:36
  Yes. Yeah. Nope. Can't have that. Can't have that. I love it though, Lindsay. I
• 43:40
  you know, mostly scrappy, but there's some sophistication going on for sure. She got a
• 43:44
  piano in the office. That's pretty good.
• 43:46
  I appreciate that. It's good.
• 43:51
  we're gonna go we're gonna go eighty percent scrappy, twenty percent sophisticated. there you go,
• 43:53
  okay. What is
• 43:54
  Perfect. That sounds like me.
• 43:58
  the next twelve months look like for you? Anything you want the folks out there
• 44:01
  to know?
• 44:02
  goodness. yeah, just continuing to I think shift the perception of my business, my offers
• 44:08
  into that true executive leadership level. you know, that's been something I am going really
• 44:14
  hard on right now. And I'm very much enjoying it. And so that's honestly my
• 44:20
  full focus right now. At some point, I would love to get to a a
• 44:26
  place where I have more of a team and I I I had that more
• 44:32
  when I was doing the full service just out of sheer necessity. But I just
• 44:39
  I love leading and so I love you know having like point people that I
• 44:45
  can coach and lead and like maybe help get to the n next level in
• 44:51
  their own marketing careers. So however, whatever that looks like, I would really enjoy doing
• 44:57
  that and I have a side project that is more ministry oriented where I am
• 45:03
  working on publishing some Bible study curriculum. So that's a whole whole other focus and
• 45:10
  project that I'm working on and like getting a lot of help from AI with,
• 45:16
  which is exciting. Yeah.
• 45:18
  Nice. Okay. Everybody, links are in the description. Check it out. The savvy startup marketer
• 45:23
  is the podcast. Lindsay Wagnan, thank you so much for for joining. And everybody stay
• 45:28
  data driven.
• 45:29
  Awesome, thank you.