Top tips from Lorraine Ball.

1. You’ve got to remember that the tools change, but the principles of good marketing don’t.

You’ve got to remember that the tools change, but the principles of good marketing don’t. I have been doing this for a very long time, I have seen a lot of tools come and go. But no matter what rolls out, the questions are always the same. Is this a good fit for my customer? Is this going to help me deliver my message in a way that represents me well, adds to my credibility and answers my customers questions.

2. The primary is who is your customer.

The primary is who is your customer? And what do you do for them? What do you want them to know about you? The second thing, and this is not just marketing, I think it’s business in general and it ties to EOS. But I think even if you are not running an EOS business, it is about a process. It is about documenting your processes. If at some point down the road, you want to sell your business, the ability for that business to run without you without any of your key managers will rely on the process. So it is not too early to start documenting what you’re doing. It is never too early to look at it and take that time to step back and go you know what? This is how we do this. We’ve done it this way for three years for five years for a week and a half whatever it is, does it make sense? Are there too many steps are there gaps and cleaning up cleaning up the process? Especially with marketing. That process should include not only the content creation and getting the the marketing out there. But it has to include the metrics on the back end, measuring what you’ve done, and figuring out, what do you need to change for the next time.

3. Your marketing needs to be fun.

I think even I think your marketing needs to be fun, I think there needs to be a humanity. Even if you are a very, very professional accounting law firm, there needs to be a little humor or just a little bit of warmth. We did marketing for several years for a funeral home. Now, we didn’t do it funny. But we did warm and personal. And they are, you know, they’re very successful. This is not an inexpensive product, you know, you have, you have to be able to think about it as a product.

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

business, work, people, noise, graham, arguments, advice, win, dad, money, failures, day, failed, job, real, school, team, property, point, focus

Debra Chantry-Taylor  00:00

Welcome to another episode of Better Business Better Life. I’m your host Debra Chantry-Taylor. I’m a certified EOS implementer and FBA accredited family business advisor, and a business owner myself with several business interests. I work with established business owners and their leadership teams to help them live their ideal entrepreneurial life using EOS EOS as the Entrepreneurial Operating System. The guests on my show Come on, and they authentically share the highs and lows of creating a successful business, and how they turn things around in their business using EOS tools and traction. Or as it is, in this case, they’re actually experts who specialize in working with established business owners.

Lorraine Ball  00:55

The other thing I loved as an agency owner, when I would do podcasts is I would be having a conversation with a client and I’d be trying to get them to understand a principle or an idea or just convinced them to do something. And often I would say, you know, I had a conversation with insert person’s name, and they are an expert in this field. I’m going to send you a link, just listen to the recording when you’re in your car. When you’re driving to your next meeting. It’s 10 minutes, just listen. I was part of a mastermind group here in the US and we brought in Gino Wickman.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  01:52

And today, I am very excited because I’m joined by a lady called Lorraine ball who to be fair I’ve just met. But she is a marketing educator. She’s also had a successful exit from a midsize digital agency. And I found out that she loves traveling photography. So we’ve got so much in common. It’s not funny. Welcome to the show. Lorraine, lovely to have you here.

Lorraine Ball  02:08

Thank you so much, Debra. It is so nice to be here.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  02:12

We’ve had a bit of a chat before we came on the podcast. Obviously I always do that with my guests. And I just it was such a lot of fun. So I’m looking forward to seeing what we can share with you today. Now Lorraine, as I said in your introduction, you had a mid sized digital agency which I understand you deliberately built for that size. He tells a little bit about your your story. How did you get to where you are now why did you decide to build an agency? Start from the very beginning if you like.

Lorraine Ball  02:37

So I whenever anybody asks me about my story, I tell them that in retrospect, it is a well crafted journey, each step fitting with the other one and the reality Yeah, not so much. My my undergrad degree, I was an educator, I actually was an elementary school teacher, realize that me in a room full of children was not a great idea. So I pursued marketing jobs. I ultimately got a master’s in marketing and went to work in corporate, I can honestly say that I loved I loved it 18 of the 20 years I spent in corporate. And at the end, I knew it was time to do something else. And I had this idea for a consulting business. Left corporate started this consulting business. I know a lot about marketing. I thought this is great I can I can provide advice I can share. I’m not really a graphic designer. I didn’t really think of myself as a writer. I was a strategist in corporate, I had people who did that kind of work. So I could just hand off what I found when you start out and you’re referring people. Number one, you got to find the right people. And sometimes they didn’t. Sometimes I didn’t. You have to give very clear direction. Sometimes I did and sometimes I didn’t. And I got frustrated. And so I started bringing more of the work. In house, I started hiring people who I could provide guidance to on a more direct basis to control the outcomes. We started as a traditional agency. This was 2002. You remember that? I remember that before Facebook. Before LinkedIn, I was on jigsaw and Willy loman.com And some of those other sites. You know, there were lots of other platforms. But it really wasn’t a business marketing tool. And then overnight, it was and so overnight, we became a digital agency, and we developed some really good expertise there. The agency grew and as you said, I made it decision, we got to a place where I started thinking, well, we need to hire another person and sat down with a friend who was an advisor who said, Do you really? So Well, I mean, I, I’ve got all this work, I need more people, will you make more money? And I say, well, actually, no, he says, so you’re gonna hire another person, expand you our management, headaches, your administrative hassles. And at the end of the day, you’re not going to take home any more money. And I went, Oh, yeah, that’s not a good idea. So instead, what we did is, we decided how many people do we need to provide the services we wanted to provide. And then whenever we got to capacity, we just raised our price. And we could be more selective about who we hired as clients and had a really nice business. And in 2021, I had a really nice offer. And I said, You know what, I’ve done this long enough, I’ve really done this long enough, it’s time to move on. And I let go with the business. But I had already broken off the things that were my intellectual property that did not make sense to sell the podcast, the online training, some of the other tools that I had created, that were really built around my expertise. So when I sold the business, I still had those things and continue to do those. And that’s what I do today. I do consulting work, I still podcast and I do some teaching. Yeah,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  06:43

I think that’s wonderful is there’s a real deliberateness there in terms of you know, I think Stephen Covey kind of said, start with the end in mind, you know, be really clear about what you want to do. And if you do that, not miraculously, but it just happens that you can make the right decisions to ensure that you actually get there. So subconsciously, consciously, you’re going actually, this is the sort of size you want to be this what we want to do. And I love the fact that you got really clear about what you wanted to deliver, I think that’s often where businesses tend to go wrong is that they, especially in the beginning, you know, they’ll grab everybody in anybody who’ll pay your dues. And then as we get more mature, and we employ more staff, we get a bit more selective, but sometimes you get lost, and you start to, you know, go off down tangents and do things that really don’t add value, or don’t get you closer to that end goal. So I really applaud you for having that that real strong vision and, and even beyond the sale, you know, knowing what you wanted to continue with, I think is really important. I’m going to ask you a lot more about marketing. Remember, what I’d like to first of all here is that, you know, business, as you said, if you look back retrospectively, you can tell beautiful stories about how wonderful it was and how it was all planned. And everything worked exactly as I wanted it to. And, you know, in hindsight, it looks a little bit like that. But it’s not it’s not all a bit always a bit of roses, is it? What were some of the, what were some of the challenges that you’ve faced in that business that you’re prepared to share with the listeners.

Lorraine Ball  08:00

So one of the first things is there was something I was really good at when I was in corporate, which was building high performance teams, I would get moved into a department that was to politely put it broken and dysfunctional, and my job was to lead the team but but really, to fix it. And on more than one occasion, after I’d been with the team for a while my boss would pull me aside, or a manager would pull me aside and say, you know, if you hadn’t fixed it, we just shut that whole team down. Because because he just wasn’t working. So that was really a gift. And I thought, well, I can teach other managers to do this. The problem was back in 2002, and I don’t know what the economy was like in New Zealand. But in the United States, we were at a place where there were way more people than jobs. It’s not like it is today where there are more jobs than people. And so employees were disposable. Companies thought, well, if you’re not happy, there are 100 people who want your job. And so the idea of me coming in and saying, hey, I can help you build these high performance teams, and improve improve your employee retention. That was a really hard sell. So the marketing piece of it, I had this marketing services for smaller businesses, I had these team building services for larger businesses. The mistake was trying to do both. And I did that for about a year. And I’d go to a networking event and people would ask me what I did. I couldn’t give them a good sound bite because well they do this and I do this and the those two things weren’t even like related. You know, they were completely unrelated. And except in my mind because they both tied to my skin. upset. And there was that moment where I finally had to step back and go, Okay, I need to think about this. And I need to figure this out. And I need to figure out which of these I was going to do. The mistake was waiting so long. And I know, you know, a year doesn’t year and a half doesn’t sound like a lot. But when you’re trying to get a business off the ground, that back and forth, is a pure distraction, I could have been so much further along. Had I just figured out, you know what, I can’t sell this, I need to move on. So that that was an interesting process. I eventually call up a friend of mine who was doing team building and was doing it successfully. And I said, Hey, I got a present for you. I’m going to send you my whole database, I’m going to send you all my leads, go forth and have fun. You sell any of these. You buy lunch, she said, Cool. Yep, there was no going back that was burning the boat. And because I had sailed to the island, I had made a commitment. This was what my business was going to be. And I couldn’t go back. Because once I gave her the contacts, she was marketing to them. I was done. And so it took me too long to get there. But I am glad that I had the courage to finally really let

Debra Chantry-Taylor  11:26

Yeah, I just said, I think that’s always a bit of a challenge at the beginning. And you know, you know that by burning the boats, you’re actually burning a revenue stream as well, which you’re gonna go, Oh, what are we gonna do with that, you know, with that that revenue, but actually, I always believe that you have to make space for the right type of clients to work with, whether that is, you know, I think that can be product and service based, you know, it’s like, actually, if you’ve got the right price, and you’ve got the right offer, and you’re doing the right things, then you you’ve got to have space to allow those kinds of people. Otherwise, you start to vary what you offer and vary how you price it and vary the quality of service you deliver in some respects, as well. So absolutely. You know, what also happens later in business too, that doesn’t, it was not always when you’re first starting out. I mean, I’ve got businesses I’ve got, you know, hundreds of employees, and they, especially with a vision, they get distracted by a bright, shiny object and decide to go down that track. Now, sometimes you have to, sometimes you have to pivot, sometimes you have to change as the marketplace changes, but there is a danger of being distracted by things that aren’t really part of the core of who you are. I

Lorraine Ball  12:29

think there is two sides to that. I think there is a point where you completely split your focus, or you allow yourself to have a skunkworks, a little, a little project kind of off here on the side, where you don’t devote a lot of your attention you, you give one employee and say, hey, look, or one team, depending on the size of your organization, we think this has got potential, I do not want to distract the rest of my team pursuing this, but you go investigate it, you you look into it, and you figure out, is there an opportunity? How do we do it, who’s playing there. And then if we start getting some traction, then we’ll bring it back to the main organization. And so I think that is how you can explore opportunities without completely losing your focus.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  13:29

And keep the innovation alive, a little mini incubator, if you like, for ideas to see if they have legs before you kind of throw everything at it. Yeah, I love it. You

Lorraine Ball  13:37

know, for us. On and off over the years while I was running the agency, I always taught one course a semester at a local university. So I had a steady stream of potential interns. And these wonderful, enthusiastic and totally impractical. College students would come in and they’re like, Hey, we think this would be great. And I’d be like, You know what, go try it. It’s not going to cost me a lot because I’m not paying you a lot or times anything to be here. And we had some glorious failures, and some really successful projects. My podcast more than a few words. I just finished my 14 year started. Because an intern came to me and said, you know, you should do this. And I was like, I don’t even know what this is. So you figure it out and tell me what I need to do and would never be here had I not allowed him to do that. But at the same time, I wasn’t taking resources away from clients and projects that we really needed to be focused on.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  14:54

I love it. And that 14 years that’s you know, that was probably right at the beginning of when podcasts were happening. I I find it fascinating because I think we’ve been going for about I must be two and a half years now. And I consistently record at least one or two episodes every week, but there’s so many people who get into it, give it a go do two or three episodes and then give it up. Why? Why do you think that is?

Lorraine Ball  15:14

Because podcasting, sustained podcasting is a lot more work than people realize. They’re like, oh, I’ll just talk. Yeah, well, you know what, that’s, that’s not really enough. You need to, you need to be prepared to do it regularly. And you know, having podcast every week, you’ve got to have content, you have to have guests, you have to have people that are, are interesting to talk to. And you have to have that steady stream. And people don’t realize that after they run through the first 10 guess, the friends and family, friends and family, that that it’s allowed to keep it going. So I always tell people, if they think they’re going to have a podcast that before you launch, you need to have five to 10 episodes in the can. And you need to have a list of 2010 1520 Depending on how many episodes a week, you’re going to do. Guess that you think you’re going to be good candidates going forward?

Debra Chantry-Taylor  16:27

Yeah. And I don’t know, if you I mean, we tried to be really, really consistent as in a podcast every single week without fail sometimes true. Which means also that, you know, if you’re thinking about taking a break, I just took three weeks off and barley, you’ve actually got to make sure that you’ve got all that content kind of lined up as well. So it can continue, even if you’re not actually physically there. So you’re right, it is, there’s a lot more work involved, pre the podcast, even, you know, I mean, I’m really reasonably lucky, I can usually wing it in a podcast, but you’ve got to prepare early on knowing who your guest is knowing what you’re gonna be talking about. And then there’s all the post edit stuff, which I don’t do, I’m sure you don’t do the team does it. But it’s still, there’s still work there that either you’ve got to do, or you’ve got to pay somebody to do as well. Absolutely.

Lorraine Ball  17:07

And a lot of people don’t realize, well, they don’t realize how much work it really takes. And there’s also there’s a lot of crappy podcasts out there. There. There are a lot of podcasts that people don’t take the time. And editing doesn’t have to be a lot, but clean it up a little bit. Make sure you’ve got a good microphone, make sure if you’re doing video, that it’s something somebody wants to look at, you know, a little bit of attention. And just like in any kind of marketing, sometimes that’s more than people want to put into it. Yeah,

Debra Chantry-Taylor  17:44

I must admit, I’m a bit excited. I’ve actually got a session with a podcast expert this afternoon, who’s actually going to take me through live on a podcast, and show me where our podcast is doing well where it could be doing better. And I’m really excited by that. Because I mean, I love getting that kind of feedback. It’s really helpful. But from a marketing perspective, what is the point of podcasting? Like, why, why do you do it? What do you see it adds value to a business?

Lorraine Ball  18:08

So oh, it definitely does. And especially right now, I don’t want to go down the AI rabbit hole, but I am just for a moment. With the advent of AI, the internet is flooded with mediocre generic content. And so as a marketer, as a business, if you want to stand out, you have got to have good original content that you’re putting out there. And what’s wonderful about a podcast is it is this conversation is unique and one of a kind, even, even if we’re talking about things that you talk about every week on your show, our conversation is unique. It is one of a kind. And as a result, you have video, you have audio and if you’re smart, you have a transcript that you can then turn into blog posts, turn into social media shares, share the whole video Share snippets, suddenly you’ve got this wealth of reusable content. So that’s number one. Number two, podcasting establishes you as an expert in your field, even as you’re inviting on guests who know more about a niche than you do and you’re the one asking questions. That conversation raises your credibility in the eyes of your audience, either because you know, the questions to ask, you’re asking the questions they want to ask, and you are connected enough to have these amazing people come and talk to you. And so the podcast establishes your credibility. The other thing I love have as an agency owner, when I would do podcasts is I would be having a conversation with a client. And I’d be trying to get them to understand a principle or an idea, or just convinced them to do something. And often, I would say, you know, I had a conversation with insert person’s name, and they are an expert in this field, I’m gonna send you a link, just listen to the recording, when you’re in your car, when you’re driving to your next meeting. It’s 10 minutes, just listen. And so I had the advantage of what I would call that third party expert, telling them exactly what I would have told them. But now it has more credibility, because it’s not me.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  20:52

Yeah, I must admit, I’ve done that with my head. I’ve got a couple of you know, amazing people who’ve done podcasts, I’ve been very fortunate to get some really super people, yourself included, who have shared things about all kinds of offers, or all parts of the business, I should say. which means I’ve actually said to people, hey, look, if you’re having a challenge with people challenge, go and listen to this podcast. He talks about what you can do with that, or they’re having a challenge with this, go listen to this. And it is it’s really, really helpful to do that. The other benefit I got from it personally or get from it personally, is also the ability for me to continue my learning journey as well. Every time I meet with a guest, I’m kind of going Oh, yeah. So either a reminder, or it’s something completely new. And it’s like, I love that part of it. Absolutely.

Lorraine Ball  21:33

I, especially last year, when when, as AI was exploding, and people were trying to figure out how to use it and use it effectively in their marketing. And I was experimenting, but I had a couple people on who were just this much ahead of me on the learning curve, and listening to their experiences and taking their suggestions and trying it. It was great. It was fabulous. And it was really a great way to get up to speed on something in real time as it was changing.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  22:07

Yeah, I was the same. I actually must admit, I was very hesitant about AI in the beginning. I think it’s because of the media, what we read. And I was like, oh, it’s going to take over the world. Like we have robots everywhere. And then I had a couple of experts on it was like, Oh, my goodness, this, this thing is actually so powerful. It can go horribly wrong. And it’s not always the right solution, but used effectively. It is brilliant.

Lorraine Ball  22:26

Absolutely. I am teaching marketing right now at a university. And I tell my students at the beginning of the course, I’m not going to tell you not to use AI. But I am going to tell you to use it well. Because if you don’t use it well what you’re going to get is generic boring content, that doesn’t answer my question. And when I get a generic boring paper, that doesn’t answer my question, you get an F. And I had a couple of students who who tested me on it. And you can still tell if you don’t take the time to rewrite and really double check what you’re getting. And you just copy and paste from Ai. It’s not really good.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  23:16

Yeah, and I must admit, just talking about chat GPT, which is what most people know, you can put stuff in then you say, you know, I want to be casual and professional. I tried this the other day. And honestly, it had it was like a college student kind of like Yo, that’s, that’s no that that’s sure it’s casual. I get that. But it’s certainly not professional and it just wasn’t language I would ever use. It’s like no I, but it does. It does help you to get started. I think sometimes it helps you to condense things down. So I’m very verbose. And it’s really helpful to actually bring that down to a more succinct thing and then I and then I put it back into my own words. Absolutely.

Lorraine Ball  23:50

Well, I I’ll tell you what, I maybe three months ago, I started uploading the transcripts for my episodes. And I just said write a three paragraph summary. Write it in the first person from me. And I typically say I say use a conversational but professional. Don’t use casual because that that voice I describe it as the bro voice. It sounds like it’s being written by a frat boy, that just a college student, but it’s a frat boy. And I’m like, No, there is nothing about this. That says frat boy.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  24:32

Oh my gosh, that’s a pillar. I absolutely agree. Okay, conversation that there’s my mic. Well, not more than one nugget. But that’s my nugget for the day. I’m gonna take away give it a go. Let’s get back to just marketing in general now. So we’ve talked a bit about AI. We’ve talked a little bit about, you know, podcasting what that can do. But for even some of my larger businesses that I work with, often they’ve not dedicated time to market. I’ve always got salespeople, salespeople are kind of a given. And then marketing is kind of seem like the fluffy color crayon department, we don’t need that, you know, brand is considered to be a logo. And it’s like we’ve got a logo. It’s like, Yeah, but do you have an actual brand? That’s not that’s not the same. So if people haven’t even really considered marketing, and they’re brushing it off as, oh, we don’t need it, it doesn’t work, what would you say would be the first steps for them to consider?

Lorraine Ball  25:21

So, wow, it is so depressing that in this day and age, people still say things like that. And they do. They do. To me, marketing and sales work hand in hand, when you have a good marketing program, you will deliver better leads to your salespeople. But not only will you deliver better leads to your salespeople, because you’re driving the right people to your business. When the salespeople have the conversations, if you have good marketing, you have good follow up material, like you were talking about when somebody has a problem with HR and you send them is a natural course of a video or an audio recording, that helps you fill in the blanks. So good marketing at its core, the number one thing marketing needs to do is answer a very important question. There are a million people out there that do what you do. Why should I buy from you? And to answer that question, you need to get very clear on who your customer is, you need to get very clear on what they want. Not what you want to sell, but what they’re looking for. And then how do you deliver that. And when you craft that into a position statement that really clarifies that everything else gets easy. Now, every ad, every marketing strategy gets evaluated against that. Oh, we should be on tic tac. Really? You said your your target customers are 50 years old and older? Do you really need to be on tic tac? We need to have a great big retail outlet. Really? Your consumers are Gen Z. They live in their houses, they’re working from home? Couldn’t we just build an E commerce site? I mean, and it’s not a one size fits all? It really is? Who is your customer? Now? What do they need to know about me to believe that I can solve their problem? How do I present it? Where do I present it? And when you do those things? Well. Now the people that call that fill out a form on your website are the right people? Have we got time for a funny story? Oh, please. Yes. Okay. So and this actually goes back to my corporate days. And this is in the early days of the internet. And companies were just starting internet promotions. And my boss came to me, he said, Okay, we have a brand new website. We want people to come to the website, we want them to give us their contact information. And we want them to look at different pages on the site. Okay. Site visits, page views, contact info. Got it. We put together this massive contest, fabulous game, where you came and you entered. And you had to answer a trivia question. And the answer was actually somewhere on the website. So you had to spend time, and we had fabulous prizes. If you, you know, you got the question, right? you’d advance to the next level. And it was like a month long promotion, if you could imagine. This was a big company, our basketball team, we just built a brand new stadium. My company was actually the title sponsor at the stadium. So when you came into the game, imagine a soccer or rugby match professional. How many people are coming in? We had a row of computer terminals, you could enter right there. We collected 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of names. How much insurance did we sell? Yeah, that would be none. Why? Because at that time, who was playing games online, who were entering contests, young men at 18 to 25. Who was our average customer, a 55 year old woman. And I was like, you didn’t say You wanted sales, you said you want to traffic pageviews? I said, Well, the good news is, we can keep all that contact info and 30 years from now they’re going to be married to our target customers.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  30:14

Oh, my goodness. I’ve got, yeah, it’s it happens regularly, right? It sort of it comes down to being really clear about what the what success looks like, what are the outcomes you actually want? And then, and then you can develop the campaign for the right people. And I think people get, you know, I always find, because in Eos, we actually do talk about who is your ideal customer, we’re not saying every customer you’re ever going to have who is the ideal customer, what they look like. And it’s sometimes really hard for people there. But they said, Well, we can we can serve this person, we can serve this person. Yeah. But actually, who is the easiest customer? Who is the customer, like you said, 55 year old women buy insurance. That’s the customer that you should be aiming for. And then you need to talk to them in a language that appeals to them use channels, tools that appeal to them. Yeah,

Lorraine Ball  31:00

Absolutely. You know, we, we actually were an EOS company. Back at the agency, we we use the EOS model. And one of the kind of things that came out of that whole process, as we were trying to identify our target customers, is we would do an exercise that I just loved. We’d sit at the table, you know, 10 people in the agency. And the question was, if we could only work with three clients, which three would you pick? And everybody pick their favorites? And we talked about what did they have in common? Why did we like working with them? And so how do we get more of them? Don’t even worry about defining a niche? What is it about? You know, the flooring company, the bean company, and the heating and air conditioner company? What do they really have in common? Was it the services we provided? Was it the relationship, and that helped us and then we did the other side of it. If we had to fire a company, we don’t have the capacity, who do we fire. And that led to some really interesting and lively conversations about the clients that were bad fits. And also one of the times we had this situation where everybody in the company said, fire Mary Mary school, and one woman who was my web designer said, Really, you guys would get rid of Mary, I like working with Mary. Okay, here’s the deal. Raven, you now have, you are now point of contact for that client. You like working with them, you’re going to be their account. Rep. I know that you don’t normally account rep. But she got a relationship with him. It was a development thing for her. It helped us maintain the client who was profitable. And it protected everybody else in the organization from the crazy.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  33:16

Love it. Okay, so I had no idea that you ran on the US. So that’s a little bit of a big I should have asked beforehand. I suppose. I I worked with an advertising agency for quite a lot with EOS. I think it’s a great structure for them to use, because I think it gives them a frame. It’s not it doesn’t tell you what to do, but gives you a framework to have that focus that accountability and discipline. Sometimes when I talk to agencies that are big, and they’re gonna go, oh, but we’re creative, but it’s gonna take away all our creativity. How would you answer that given that you’ve used it in your creative agency? So

Lorraine Ball  33:45

I you know, what I would do, I would actually ask them about brand standards, put it in language that they understand. Any marketing company worth their salt knows that a brand standard good brand, standards, colors, fonts are not limited. They give you the guide rails within which you can be creative. And I would say the same thing about EOS that it gives you guide rails. It doesn’t it doesn’t change your business. It doesn’t change your creative output. It gives you guide rails to play within. And it also helps you have those planning sessions and conversations about the business. Take the operational hassles out of the way and now your meetings become about the creative process when you’re not spending every meeting. Going over and going over and going over the same things that aren’t working exactly separates those two. So you have two different conversations you have The operational conversations and you have the Creative Conversations. We loved it. And actually, I got introduced to it. I was part of a mastermind group here in the US. And we brought in Gino Wickman. No, it No. And he and he spoke and after lists, and we brought him in because one of the agencies was already an EOS agency. By the time he left, and we came back together again, six months later, I would say about half of us had switched to an error, or were implementing some portion of an EOS model.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  35:42

Yeah, I mean, do you know it’s amazing, I’ve I’m very, very privileged to meet him a couple of times. And obviously, he is not the owner of Eos anymore, but he’s the guy who came up with the entire concept many, many years ago. I love that. I mean, he can describe it better than anybody else’s. It’s his baby. But you know, he talks about the fact that we’re not going to change your business does what it does, we assume it’s profitable, we assume that it kind of you know who your target, you know what you’re doing, we’re just there to, as you said, provide those guide rails to give you more clarity, to give you more focus to give you more accountability. So you’ve got the vision, that traction working together perfectly, and therefore, the business just gets better and better and better.

Lorraine Ball  36:17

Yeah, absolutely. As they were two things, you know, I talked about the two mistakes that I made or the mistakes that I made early my business, there were two really good decisions I made. The first was to, to get some sales training. I’m a marketer. I did not think of myself as a salesperson, and learning how to have high quality sales conversations, learning how to apply what I knew about consumer behavior and decision making into those sales conversations was invaluable. And then the second thing was implementing EOS as a part of how we operated and lived every day.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  37:04

I’m really pleased to hear that. And again, I would reiterate that I think that the sales thing, just because you’re a marketer, sales doesn’t necessarily come easy. And I think that, again, if you do some sales, when they give you a framework, they give you some some guide rails, they help you to understand how to better do that. So I wholeheartedly agree with you. Okay, we could no doubt talk for hours because there’s so much we have in both in common but also a passionate about, but tell me, I’d always like to ask our guests for three kind of top tips, tools, strategies that they can actually take away, hopefully put into practice straight away, that will help with their business. What would be when you’ve given us so much stuff already? What were the three key things you would say?

Lorraine Ball  37:41

I would say that first and foremost. You’ve got to remember that the tools change, but the principles of good marketing don’t. I have been doing this for a very long time, I have seen a lot of tools come and go. But no matter what rolls out, the questions are always the same. Is this a good fit for my customer? Is this going to help me deliver my message in a way that represents me well, adds to my credibility and answers my customers questions. So not you know, number one, remember that no matter what, you know, this this month, it’s Tik Tok. You know, it was Facebook, it was Instagram it, you know, there was a time when it was TV at whatever it is. That’s all secondary. The primary is who is your customer? And what do you do for them? What do you want them to know about you? The second thing, and this is not just marketing, I think it’s business in general and it ties to EOS. But I think even if you are not running an EOS business, it is about a process. It is about documenting your processes. If at some point down the road, you want to sell your business, the ability for that business to run without you without any of your key managers will rely on the process. So it is not too early to start documenting what you’re doing. It is never too early to look at it and take that time to step back and go you know what? This is how we do this. We’ve done it this way for three years for five years for a week and a half whatever it is, does it make sense? Are there too many steps are there gaps and cleaning up cleaning up the process? Especially with marketing. That process should include not only the content creation and getting the the marketing out there. But it has to include the metrics on the back end, measuring what you’ve done, and figuring out, what do you need to change for the next time? And the third thing? Wow, there’s so many. I think even I think your marketing needs to be fun, I think there needs to be a humanity. Even if you are a very, very professional accounting law firm, there needs to be a little humor or just a little bit of warmth. We did marketing for several years for a funeral home. Now, we didn’t do it funny. But we did warm and personal. And they are, you know, they’re very successful. This is not an inexpensive product, you know, you have, you have to be able to think about it as a product. But there was just something very warm about how that company was perceived. And it was very much a reflection of of the owner that drew people to them that made people comfortable with the choice to use them rather than a dozen other funeral homes in town.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  41:33

I think you’re absolutely right. I mean, yeah, maybe funds not the right word. But it does have to kind of people like doing business with people. So there has to be a human element to it. And you know, whether you’ve got a small business and a large business, there is still a personality that generally comes from the founder, but that needs to shine through. We’re not dealing with robots, we’re not dealing with AI, we’re dealing with actual human beings who enjoy the warmth that comes with other human beings. So yeah, so just to repeat those back so that the first one is like know your customer know absolutely your customer that one of the tips and tools you gave us earlier, as you know, think about the three customers that you love to work with and why and what it is you love about them. And also think about those that you would fire and what you would do and then when you’ve got that really clear, make sure you’ve got the right tools, the right you’re using the right channels, you’re speaking the right language for them. process. I love that you bring that up. It’s been it’s been a little bit of a challenge for me over the years because I thought I didn’t like process, but actually it is because we were overcomplicating it. And as you said, if you don’t have processes, you cannot sell your business, your business relies on you, there is nothing to sell. And the third is very much about, yeah, you bring some personalities and want some human into your messaging into your marketing funnel. Okay, there’s a whole bunch of other stuff that I’ve written down that I’m gonna probably put in the notes as well. But you know, so just things around, you know, if you’re thinking about why, why do I need to do marketing, we’ve got sales, we don’t need it. Remember that marketing leads to better leads, it gives you better content to share it, it drives people down that funnel, the sales funnel. So do keep that in mind. And I’m never going to forget, do not ask for casual in chat GBT. Otherwise you’ll get frat boy over conversational. That’s brilliant. been an absolute pleasure to talk to you. All right, I want to now ask you if people do want to work with you mentioned you’ve got a podcast, obviously more than a few words. You’ve got some online training, you obviously do a lot of educating. If people want to work with you, who do you love to work with? Where do they find you.

Lorraine Ball  43:30

So I love working with business owners who I do love startups. I think that’s a fun process. But I really love business owners that feel that they’re at a tipping point, they’re ready to take their marketing to the next level, they’re ready to take their business to the next level. And maybe they don’t even know what they don’t know. And they’re looking to have a conversation about either the marketing in general, maybe have someone who has no skin in the game, look at their website, look at their social media, and give them some feedback and some some ideas on how to improve. And so I love spending what I call office hours, and it’s just a great way to realign kind of what you’re thinking you need to be doing in your business. And if people want to have an office hour session, if they are looking to get in touch with me to places, I’m on LinkedIn, if you search Lorraine ball, yes, there are other Lorraine balls in the world. They all have my name, whatever. But I’m active enough on LinkedIn, you’ll find me and then the other places. If you go to more than a few words.com you’ll see a link to my toolbox. You’ll see a link to office hours. You’ll see lots of episodes and conversations

Debra Chantry-Taylor  44:55

going on. That’s once more than a few words.com and of course on LinkedIn Trump. Hopefully most people listening to this love the power of LinkedIn and what it can do for us. Hey, look, I’ve really really enjoyed talking to you this morning for me this afternoon for you. Thank you so much for your time. We’ll continue this conversation offline and no doubt keep in contact. But thank you. I appreciate it.

Lorraine Ball  45:16

Debra, thank you. This was wonderful.

Debra Chantry-Taylor  45:20

Thank you very much thanks for listening to better business better life. If you want more information or want to get in contact about using iOS in your business. You can visit my website at Debra dot coach that’s dub dub dub dot d b r A dot coach. From there you can also download a free ebook six secrets to get a grip on your business. Thanks again for listening.

=======================================================================================================================================================

Debra Chantry-Taylor 

Certified EOS Implementer | Entrepreneurial Leadership & Business Coach | Business Owner

#betterbusinessbetterlife #entrepreneur #leadership #eosimplementer #professionaleosimplementer #entrepreneurialbusinesscoach

Certified EOS Implementer New Zealand

Certified EOS Implementer  Australia

Certified EOS Implementer UK

Certified EOS Implementer NZ