EPISODE 23 OF THE MARKETING SOLUTIONS PODCAST: FOCUSING ON THE THINGS THAT MOVE THE NEEDLE WITH EMMA FROM YOUR CEO MENTOR

Sonya M.:

Hi everyone. Today I'm here with Emma Green from Your CEO Mentor. I'm so excited to have Emma on the podcast, actually connected with her through my amazing account manager Elizabeth late last year. And I had a chat with you, Emma, about starting my whole podcast, and you gave me a bit of a kick up the bum, and asked some really good questions around, "Well, why are you doing a podcast in the first place? What's the goal? What's the point of it? Don't just make yourself busy for the sake of doing it." So thanks for that Emma, and welcome to the podcast.

Emma Green:

No worries. Thank you so much for inviting me on. I'm really excited. I love marketing and all things marketing, especially podcasting. So, yeah, really excited to have this chat.

Sonya M.:

So for people who might not have come across Marty and Your CEO Mentor previously, can you explain to me what the company is, who you are, what your role is, and who you help?

Emma Green:

Yeah. Well how long have you got? [crosstalk 00:01:25] So look, in a nutshell, I am the co-founder of a leadership development company called Your CEO Mentor. Our purpose is to improve the quality of leaders globally, and we do that through a whole different bunch of ways. I guess primarily we are a content driven business, so we've got our podcast, No Bullshit Leadership. We've got our online leadership program, Leadership Beyond the Theory. That's really my pride and joy, my baby. We do one on one mentoring, a lot of keynote speaking at workshops, and organizational performance development. So basically going into organizations, working with CEOs, founders, and executives to increase their leadership performance and capability. So we've got quite a lot of different things, different products, and different services, which means that no two days are ever the same, which is really, really exciting.

Emma Green:

In terms of what I do, I suppose I'm probably a lot of your listeners in terms of Jack of all trades. I don't like to say Jack of all trades, master of none, because I try and think, hopefully I've become a master at a few things. But I've only been full time on Your CEO Mentor for about two years now. So I have been wearing all of the hats really in that co-founder position. So whether it's producing the podcast or HR, PR, client facing staff proposals, creating content, creating strategies, social media, finance, all of the things that we do when we're starting a business. And then obviously, Marty works in with that when he needs to. So our skills really, I suppose they really compliment each other quite well.

Emma Green:

I came from a marketing background. So I've put a lot of an emphasis on the marketing of the business and really building our audience and finding our ideal clients and customers. And then Marty obviously does the execution. So he's the one that's doing the keynote speaking for the most part, doing the workshops, all those kinds of bits and pieces that are client facing. So yes, I do quite a lot of things, but at the end of the day, I just do what needs to get done. And I've been really lucky. I've just hired two amazing women at the end of last year who were helping me to work, I guess freeing up my time so that I can work more on the business instead of in the business, which has really helped. So I'm excited to see what the rest of this year will bring when I'm able to be a little bit more freed up to be strategic about what I'm doing instead of just being in the daily details.

Sonya M.:

Oh, fantastic. And congratulations. I wasn't aware of that. That's just going to be an absolute game changer for you because I know that you're always flat out. I mean, your marketing is absolutely incredible. And you've taken, I think it's something that... I don't know, I guess Marty, I don't how to word this, but I think, has it taken some convincing with Marty to be taking such a digital approach and really putting him out there in the way that you have been? Because you've built this amazing profile for him with what you've been doing behind the scenes. You've got the podcast that's happening, you're doing these incredible videos where you're taking snippets of his keynote talks. It's almost really Viralstyle content that you've been putting out there. Has he felt comfortable with that from the beginning?

Emma Green:

Oh, well first of all, thank you so much for the kind words about what I'm doing. As we'll probably get two further down in these interviews, a lot of what I just do is testing. And so I'm always kind of testing to say what our ideal community and what our ideal clients are reacting to. Honestly, I've got to say Marty is pretty relaxed. Sometimes, he'll... Not so much anymore, at the start he was a little bit more kind of wanting to watch everything before I put it out just to make sure that it was in line with how he wanted to, I suppose, present himself to the public. But these days, he's super relaxed. He's been putting content out now for, well, we just think about the podcast, 78 episodes. You can't be putting content out quickly and testing to see what's really resonating with people and then making even more content off the back of that.

Emma Green:

You can't be doing that if you're right in the details being super nitpicky. One of our mantras that we say to all leaders, and we say to each other all the time is excellence over perfection. So really just focusing on, "Is this piece of content excellent? Yes. Is it perfect? No, but is it excellent?" If the answer is yes, it goes out. So we really just try not to get too caught up in, maybe he didn't say a word the way that he would have said it if he could go back and script it. Maybe he didn't like the exact way he explained something, but we're just always testing, always just trying to get as much stuff out as we can. So I suppose there was some convincing for him at the start, but now we're in a real rhythm where he just doesn't even think about it. He just trusts that me and the other people in our company that put the content together, know what's kind of best and the most valuable for the community.

Sonya M.:

Oh my goodness. I love that. And I think that's something that we you do when we work with clients for social media management as well, it really is about getting the content out, they're trying a whole heap of different things and seeing what resonates with the audience, because it varies from company to company, industry to industry, audience to audience. And we've actually just let a client go because the nitpicky getting too caught up in the details rather than realizing there's a bigger picture here and we're constantly looking at data and feedback to then shape where we're going to take things.

Sonya M.:

So yeah, I love that. And I think it's shown in the volume of content that you do get out. And the things that if he hasn't explained something the way that he would have liked to have, or he's missed a word or done something, it's things that people in the other end actually don't know. They don't know the difference. So only you are realizing, "Oh, I could have explained this better," but it gives you an opportunity down the track to sort of maybe reproduce a piece of that content as well if the first lot was something that people did respond to. I love that.

Emma Green:

Exactly. Absolutely. Yep. And that's what we're always doing. We're always going, "Okay, this specific is the content around high performing teams worked really well. What's some other content that we can make or some cuts from other keynotes that he's done that I can pull that are along that same vein that get to the same point but is said in different ways?" So you're exactly right. Looking at what works is really important and then building off that.

Sonya M.:

Absolutely. Okay. So obviously you've got a background in marketing, right? So in previous roles, how is that different to what you're doing now and selling consulting and programs with Your CEO Mentor?

Emma Green:

Good question. For me, I think the principles stay the same. So regardless of whether you're selling a marketing campaign, or an online program, or a mentoring service, or a candle, I think the principles, at least from my experience, have stayed relatively the same. It's just the content and the context that's changed. So I think there are some key things that I did when I was working in marketing agency that I still do now. And of what makes that sales process a lot easier. So I guess the first thing that we did in the marketing agency and that I do now is attracting clients. You've got to have that key way of attracting clients. Now I know my bosses in the marketing agency, they would cold call, they would ask for referrals, they'd go to events and those kind of things.

Emma Green:

And that's how they attract clients. For us, our podcast is our main client attractor. And obviously we have really great word of mouth and things like that. But we don't actually do any outbound sales at the moment. So first thing you got to be able to attract clients. You've got to then have a product or service that is great. And I know that that sounds really obvious, but you've got to have, those products and those services, they've got to fit that market need. And that takes away a lot of the buyer friction. So again, that's exactly the same in the marketing agencies as it was starting this business. We had to come up with some really great products and services that were really going to resonate and serve our clients. You then have to work together with those clients and those people who are wanting to work with you to make sure that it is a good fit.

Emma Green:

I think a mistake that a lot of people make, and I saw this in marketing agencies and I see it now, is that they try and square peg round hole. They want to make it work so much that it's not an easy, fun, valuable exchange of time or money or whatever it is. So making sure that you're working together to make sure that that is the right fit. I mean, Marty and I've let go, I don't know, probably hundreds of thousands of dollars of work over the past couple of years based on the fact that it wasn't a good fit, that we knew deep down that it wasn't going to be the right fit for them, and it wasn't going to be right fit for us. And that's totally okay. Other clients have come up. It's kind of weird when we've said notice stuff because it's not a good fit, another client comes up and it is a really good fit.

Emma Green:

So the universe is funny like that. And then I guess the last thing is just executing. This sounds simple as well, but just executing on what that product or service is, delivering it seamlessly. And something that's really important to me and it has been important to me through my entire career, marketing agency, and at Your CEO Mentor, you've just got to exceed the client's expectations. Every single time we work with a client, whether it's someone, a student in our program, whether it's a podcast listener, whether it's an organization that we've worked with really closely in their executive team, I want them walking out going, "That was incredible value. That was such a good use of my time and money." And so really kind of going back to your question, how does it differ selling marketing campaigns to selling consulting programs and stuff with your CEO mentor? Only the content has changed, but the principles have stayed exactly the same for me. So I hope that answers the question.

Sonya M.:

Yeah, that's fantastic. And I love that you're talking about product market fit as well. I mean, so we're a marketing agency and we say so often people trying to craft a product or a service and sell it to people when they don't actually want it. And no matter how good your marketing is, it's never going to work. You're going to be spinning your wheels a lot. So I love that point. So something you and I bonded over is Amy Porterfield. So you follow along with what she's sort of putting out there at the moment.

Sonya M.:

And I know that we've sort of had a discussion around we agree with some things then maybe not with others. You're a really big believer in, "Okay, if you're going to produce marketing or do something, what is the reason that you're doing it?" As I touched on before, "What's the end goal and what's the strategy behind it?" Rather than just spinning your wheels doing the things that people tell us we should be doing. So can you touch on that a bit more? You've sort of taken from her. As I said, it seems that there are a lot of gurus out there telling us all the stuff that we should be doing, but what have you found is actually working from her advice and what have you sort of left?

Emma Green:

So I really think that you should, when we use the word should, what should we be doing? I think you should only be doing what is right for your business. You are the only one who knows what the right value ladders are to push, what it is that is going to create value for you and for your clients, and ultimately push your business in the way that it needs to go. You need to be really clear about that first and foremost. With Amy's podcast in particular, and I listen to maybe 30-35 different podcasts a week. Yes, hers is one of my favorites. I've been listening to it for years and years and years, well before I started this business. But I like to take all different bits of learning from all different types of people.

Emma Green:

With Amy's podcast I would say it resonates with me a lot because I've run online courses like an online course, the same as she does. So the relevancy there for me is really high. I would probably have put in place maybe four to five of her strategies. And they've worked really well for me because I've given them a proper crack. I've really taken the time to go through all the strategies and actually implement and then been patient and consistent with what I've done. So in terms of what Amy talks about, if it is a similar business to what she runs, then I would say most of it is going to be relevant for you and it will be effective if you give it a proper crack and if it is in line with what's going to create value for you.

Emma Green:

But like anything, there's so much out there. As you said, there's so many gurus out there that are telling you to do this or that in marketing. Really, I think the most important thing is, and I say this to our students as well when they're going through our leadership program, is "Just pick two or three things that are relevant. Don't be changing your marketing strategy every week because a new podcast episode's come out and it's given you a great idea." You need to get back to what you can do to create value in your business, what's going to get you to your goal and if that specific episode brings up something for you that you go, "Yes, this is perfectly in line. I've got the time, I've got the money, this is going to get me to my end goal." Then work on implementing that, but don't try and implement 50 new things at any one time.

Emma Green:

It's just never going to work. I see so many people flip flopping. One week they're going, "Okay, I'm going to really focus on my SEO. And then a couple of weeks later I need to hire someone to do my social for media marketing." And then the next week it's something else. So like anything you've got to do what is right for you in the context of your business, but also be realistic about how long something's going to take to achieve, how much effort you need to put into it, what's the time and resource investment that you're going to have to put into it to make it happen? So I think I've got a lot from Amy's podcast, most importantly, I think it's episode 176. I'll let you know once we get off this call, but I think it's called Steal My Podcast Project Plan.

Emma Green:

That is what I used to formulate how we did the podcast, how we created the podcast. And that's ended up being our biggest, I suppose, lead generator, you could call it. So I knew that I had to create something that would attract our target market and that would help them kind of self sow it, and the podcast seem like a really great way to do that. And so I listened to that episode and I thought, "Yep, I'm going to commit to that, I'm going to do that." And that episode really helped me formulate how we do things today. So yeah, it is really relevant, but you've got to figure out if it's right, if bits and pieces are right for you, and you've got to put everything into something if you're going to give it a go and you're going to start it.

Sonya M.:

Yeah, I love that. So, so many businesses have shiny object syndrome, they jump from one thing to another. They don't stick with something. It sounds like you've sort of grabbed four or five key things, worked out what you can commit to, what your skills are, but also what's going to resonate with your audience as well. And you've run with that. And I think so often again, the analogy of square peg, round hole. So many people take a marketing strategy and go, "I'm going to force this to work. I'm just going to force it to work." And if it's not working, don't do it. Stop. Or have you given it the due diligence that it needs to actually make it happen? Or is this again, a product market fit issue as well? Okay, so you mentioned that-

Emma Green:

I'm nodding over.

Sonya M.:

So you mentioned, and this is something that I constantly get. I mean, I think we're all... I mean none of us are immune to shiny object syndrome. I listen to so many podcasts as well and I often get to the point that I'm like, "I've just had information overload. I need to step back and stop consuming information and actually start taking action." That said, what are some of your favorite podcasts and resources and people you follow it outside of Amy Porterfield that you're getting a lot of value out of at the moment?

Emma Green:

I am always listening to GaryVee, and I know that's a really obvious one, but I so believe in so many things he says and he just gives me a pump up. I don't know, I just love his energy and everything that he says around creating value. That is all we focus on. We do not focus on... Obviously, we're looking at the numbers and we're keeping really close with that. But we are every single day, how are we adding value? How are we impacting our community? And so I subscribed to a lot of the things that he says, so love GaryVee. Who else do I... I like the Marketing School, Neil Patel and Eric Siu. Really short little snippets. They just get my mind thinking about, "Oh yeah, we could potentially do this or little tips and tricks." So I really like them. And Eric Siu's also got another podcast called Leveling Up, which I really like.

Emma Green:

There's another podcast that I like as well called Building a StoryBrand. That's one of the go-tos, one of my favorites. And recently I have been loving the Tony Robbins podcast. I know I'm saying all these really cliche podcasts, but I don't know. I'm very I think holistic with my life, my health, my family, my work, all of it has to kind of be in sync. And I like some of episodes that he's been bringing out recently, it's in pieces about grit and how to build that. And yeah, that's probably what's on my list most recently.

Sonya M.:

Yeah, I love that. And do you know what? Don't worry about them being cliche. They're so popular and they built such a name for themselves because they're so good at what they do. So I think everyone should keep that in mind. And personally, I know a lot of people aren't, but I'm big fan of Tony Robbins and GaryVee as well.

Emma Green:

Oh, good.

Sonya M.:

I sound like you, I'm a bit of a podcast junkie. Again, it could just feel like I can consume so much information sometimes. Talk to me about the early days when you were just getting started, just starting to build sort of traction. Obviously Marty has had this amazing corporate background and he's got the credibility, but how, I mean you guys have seen incredible growth. How did you get that momentum online when you were just starting out? Because I can know that it can be really slow going in the early days with actually trying to reach an audience when you're starting from scratch.

Emma Green:

Absolutely. It is always going to be slow going in. Don't let anyone tell you any differently. the podcast was how we created momentum, but momentum does take a lot of time to start building. So in the early days we were having, I don't know, maybe 150 to 100 listens a week on the podcast, and that was for a long time. That was kind of four months or something like that. But the consistency of that, bringing it out every week, telling people to share it, creating downloadable resources that had people going onto our website, consuming more and more and more. That is eventually what created the momentum that got us to where we are now.

Emma Green:

So we've had almost half a million listens, which is awesome.

Sonya M.:

Wow!

Emma Green:

I know, it's crazy. I mean, obviously, you've got people like Joe Rogan who is probably getting like a million listens a week, but it's pretty good for us. I'm pretty happy with it. But I think the consistency of the podcast and just being okay with that slow movement, that's really what built it. And then people were talking about it and sharing it. I'm always saying in the podcast, "Share this with your friends. Share this with a colleague or someone who you know who might be going through this or being challenged by this," or whatever it is. And yeah. That's kind of how a it grew.

Sonya M.:

Ah, fantastic. And I think that comes back to a really cool principle when it comes to marketing. Consistency is key. I don't care what you're doing, if you're focusing on social media or I didn't know, outbound fails, or your podcast. Being consistent and taking daily action with it is going to be what gets you moving. If you have one big push and then don't touch it again for two months, then you've lost anything that you've built, essentially. It's really, really important.

Emma Green:

Whether you're doing a podcast, whether you're blogging, whatever that is, it's just getting that consistency around. It could be "I'm going to bring out a blog every two weeks." It doesn't have to be a full podcast episode. It takes us about 10 hours per episode to put everything together, make sure that we're hitting the right points, creating the downloadables, all the backend of the website, and show notes, and bits and pieces. Probably takes us about 10 hours a lot, including recording. It's a really big time chunk to be giving one activity, but it's our most important activity, and we know that that is how we give value to our community and that's how people find us. That's how people work with us.

Emma Green:

So whether it's the podcast, like what we do, it could be a blog, it could be you're doing daily Facebook lives or whatever it is. Just making sure that that consistency is there, and that you're always thinking every single thing that you put out there, don't do it just to do it. What is someone going to get from this? What is the value that I'm going to give someone through this post, or this blog, through this podcast? Having that lens on is going to keep you kind of in the right direction I think.

Sonya M.:

Absolutely. And as you said to me as well, what is the big picture of why you're doing this? What's the strategy behind it? What is the end goal? And I mean it's something so simple, but you certainly got me thinking. So I feel like we've touched on quite a few, but I mean do you have any little juicy marketing tips or something that you've been using lightly that you're like, "Oh, that's a really quick win when it comes to marketing." Any advice? Oh, quick win.

Emma Green:

I know that's so vague. I would have said, if I hadn't have just gone on that rant, I would have said just make sure everything that you're putting out is creating value. Marty and I have this really good saying, income follows impact, and so we just we're always focusing on the impact and the income does come. It just does. If you're just focusing on "How am I impacting people? What value am I bringing them?" That's probably a little bit more vague. I think in terms of tactical, one of the things that works really well for me that I've been doing for maybe a year now, is sending videos, sending personalized videos to people who sign up to our newsletter and our programs and things like that. So I use a program called BombBomb, which is really seamlessly integrated with Gmail. And you create this little video, and every single video that I send out is personalized.

Emma Green:

So it's like, "Hey Sonya, just seeing that you downloaded the curriculas ebook, really hope you enjoy it. Let me know if you've got any feedback, would love to hear back from you." And the number of conversations that I can have with our community, once I started doing that, I don't know, 10 fold, 20 fold. As soon as people saw that I was sending them an actual personalized video that it wasn't canned, that it wasn't something that everyone got, that enabled me to get in these one on one conversations with people and actually talked to them about "What can I cover on the podcast that would help you? What are the things that you're struggling with?" And that has helped our content. That's formed our content and what we're putting out there and what we're covering to really help people instead of us guessing. So I would say BombBomb is probably my secret weapon. And it's just such a great way to connect with your community and really hone the content that you're creating.

Sonya M.:

Oh, I love that you're really taking digital online marketing, which can often be quite impersonal and cold and making it really friendly and that sounds amazing. How do you spell it? I've just had to Google and I cannot find it.

Emma Green:

B-O-M-B-B-O-M-B. BombBomb.

Sonya M.:

Excellent. All right. I will link to that in the show notes as well. Can you think of a time when you've made a really big marketing mistake or you've tried something and you've put all this time into it and it's just been an absolute flop?

Emma Green:

All the time. Yeah. Every day. Yeah. I think this question's a bit funny for me because I don't think about things in terms of that was good, that was bad, or that was a mistake, or I nailed that. Really, I'm very neutral about the things that happen within the business, not so much in my personal life, which is interesting. My husband will tell you, I go from zero to a hundred in about a second. But I actually make little mistakes all the time and I'm really comfortable with that. I'm constantly trying new things. I'm constantly just giving something a go and just testing, testing, testing. So I'm actually screwing up all the time. And when you're doing those little things all the time, it kind of course corrects you so that you don't actually end up making huge mistakes because you're making all these tiny little mistakes along the way.

Emma Green:

You just got to make sure that you're not kind of getting down on yourself about this didn't work, or that didn't work, or something hasn't worked again, or whatever it is. Mine's usually go towards the negative. They focus on the negative and the worst case scenario over all the good stuff that's happened. So I've just kind of taught myself just to go, "Okay, that didn't work. Let's move on." So a really good example of that is over January, December, we were working on launch for our Leadership Beyond the Theory. And [inaudible 00:30:06] who is amazing, she helps me with all my paid ads.

Emma Green:

We were creating some copy and imagery and stuff for these ads, and we spend quite a lot of time crafting the message and mood boarding and thinking about exactly what we wanted to put out there. Spent maybe a day actually creating the content, and then we'd been running ads before that, so we had a little bit of an idea of what was working. Anyway, we put these ads out, press play, and after about two days there was just such little traction. It was ridiculous. It was just not resonant.

Sonya M.:

Those are Facebook ads, Emma?

Emma Green:

Yeah. Yeah. And they were just not resonating the way we knew they should because we've been running ads prior to that, so we kind of had a benchmark. And the creative was just wrong. The creative just wasn't resonating with the with our community. And so I didn't go, "Oh my God, this is terrible. All this time, all this effort." I just said, "Right. [inaudible 00:31:15], let's start again. Pull them down, turn them off. And I'm going to spend this afternoon making some new stuff." And so I just didn't wallow in it. I just said, "All right, this is not working. I've got to change it up."

Emma Green:

So I just ended up testing more stuff, coming up with some different images and some different bits and pieces that I thought were that would work, but that were different enough from the ones that didn't work. And we put them up that afternoon, or that evening. And then we got really great results from them. So I could have just gone, "Oh my God, all this time and effort that I've spent on this creative and it's all for nothing and I don't know what I'm doing and this is a huge mistake," but instead I just went "Yeah, no. That's not working. Scrap it, let's try something else." And if that second lot hadn't worked, I would have just scrapped it and tried something else.

Sonya M.:

So in the end, how many different ad variations or creative concepts did you end up trying? Were you testing say like eight or nine different ads at once or had you sort of put all your eggs into one basket and had one ad that was running?

Emma Green:

No, we had lots of variations. Yeah. So we probably had over January and December we probably had about, I don't know, 20-25 different creatives out there. Videos, quotes, carousels, whatever it was. And then tweaking as we went. So when one ad wasn't kind of performing the way we wanted to, we turn it off and let the money go into the ads that were working really well and we just kept creating more. So we were just staying really agile and just kind of creating things that were working for people.

Sonya M.:

Fantastic. And I think that's the only way that you can make Facebook ads work. I think a lot of the time people think that you put an ad up and you leave it to run and that's it. And there's actually so much involved in the backhand with testing and optimizing until you hit a campaign that works. And then once that campaign is working, it's not like you can leave that up for six months and expect it to keep working. It's something that's constantly moving and changing.

Emma Green:

Exactly. And I think that's why you need to be working a lot with your organic content. So making sure that your testing what you think you might put in ads with your unpaid content and seeing what kind of reactions it's getting. Whatever it is, make sure you making a note of that if something worked really well, writing that down and making sure you can come back to it when you're putting your paid ads together and going "Yeah, my people like this." Or "My people click through on this." Or "My people love this podcast episode." Or "They love this format that I did it in," or whatever it is. Do your testing with your unpaid stuff so that when you go into the paid stuff, your money's going to be well spent.

Sonya M.:

Ah, so true. So true. So Emma, if people want to find out more about you and Your CEO Mentor, where can they find you? Again, what's the podcast called? What's your website? Tell me all the things.

Emma Green:

Well, they can just go to our website, yourceomentor.com. If they go to yourceomentor.com/freebies, there's a whole bunch of stuff there you can download if they are a leader and they're interested in all things leadership. And our podcast of course is called No Bullshit Leadership. So that one is pretty easy to find. I think you just type "leadership" in your search bar and it should come up. So yeah, the podcast is probably my pride and joy. Go over there if you're a leader, and have a listen. And yeah, anything else that tickles your fancy, you can find on the website.

Sonya M.:

Amazing. Well Emma, thank you so much for that. I have so many show notes to add in on this. And yeah, I'm so happy to have you on. I think there's a lot of valuable pieces of information in here for all businesses, not just if you're selling online courses. Thanks again.

Emma Green:

No, it's been great. Great. Love having chats about marketing. So thanks for having me.

Speaker 1:

You've been listening to the Marketing Solutions podcast with Sonya McIntyre-Reid. Don't forget to get your hands on our awesome freebies that will get you on your way to marketing success. Head to kissmarketing.com.au/free.