Marketing Strategies to Grow Your Private Practice Online

Laura Doman

Hi, I’m Laura Doman, a voice actor who can narrate your videos and an on -camera actress with credits in film, TV, commercials, and industrials, but I can do more than just do it for you. I can help you do it yourself.

Laura Doman

If you’re an entrepreneur or a business professional and you need to be in your own video, well, I can help you become a lot more comfortable and, yes, charismatic on camera yourself. Check me out at lauradoman.com or with any of my free how -to YouTube videos at Laura Doman.

Laura Doman

But on to Joe. Terrific fellow and he can make you the best podcast guest you can possibly be, starting with his invaluable one-sheet to all his pointers. I’ve been on dozens of podcasts ever since he helped me.

Laura Doman

Furthermore, I was a guest on his as well, where we talked about the business of voiceover, so check it out. But now, you are listening to the Entrepreneur Journeys podcast with your host, Joe Metz.

Joe Metz

You’re listening to Entrepreneur Journeys, where I share insights and strategies based on owning and managing businesses while traveling and living on free continents. I also interview business owners about their journey, what they learned along the way and how that can help you with your business growth.

Joe Metz

For more resources to accelerate your entrepreneur journey, head over to gapbologist.com, where I share resources, events, community, and more. I’m your host, Joe Matz. Let’s get started. Hello, hello.

Joe Metz

Today, I have with us a fractional CMO, and he’s all about not wasting money and not throwing money down the drain in your marketing processes. He helps business owners take control of their marketing strategy so they can better utilize their resources and drive success.

Joe Metz

Josh Ramsey, welcome to the show. Hey, nice to be here. Thanks for having me.

Joe Metz

Well, it’s great to have you on here. And I have been through some of your material, man. It looks really good. I appreciate all the educational material there.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, you know, I mean, I, I believe in, you know, the clients that I work with, I love and really only work with those clients that are spending enough time to be educated on the material. And it really just takes relationships a lot further so that they know what to expect and what they get.

Josh Ramsey

Thus, they get more out of it, you know, so I love the education of giving people as much as I can to help them grow. And, and that’s just it. That’s the focus. You know, people love people, you know? Yeah, and we’ll get into all of that. But let’s start with this, Joshua, where do you hail from today?

Josh Ramsey

So currently I’m just north of Dallas in a city called McKinney, Texas. That’s where I live with my family. So, okay.

Joe Metz

And when you were younger, and I say that with trepidation, let’s say high school and middle school, was there any indication that you would own a marketing business?

Josh Ramsey

No, no. You know, the most interesting thing about high school and so forth was I loved the show called The Highlander. And The Highlander, the main part that I liked about that was it was fascinating to me that he was able to live in all these different time periods and experience the world.

Josh Ramsey

So when I watched it, you would see him, you know, in all these different settings. And I just found it fascinating that someone, you know, obviously it was not real, but I found it fascinating of what if and that was really kind of my dream.

Josh Ramsey

And I guess that kind of took me through phases in my life where I did a lot of things. You know, I worked with my aunt and uncle on a ranch, breaking and training horses, working with dogs, working cattle.

Josh Ramsey

You know, and then, you know, I played soccer and traveled in high school and then out of high school into college, played college ball and played a little bit of professional and, you know, so that was really kind of high school and and so forth is just being able to experience so many different things.

Josh Ramsey

And I was lucky to be able to do that.

Joe Metz

That’s so interesting. I’m very familiar with the show. I like the show. And that is a new perspective on the show and it’s inspired you to do different things, to get out there and experience the world.

Joe Metz

That’s fantastic. I would like to see all teenagers incorporate that spirit of adventure.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, you learn a lot. You put yourself in different settings and you just learn so much from different walks of life. So I’ve seen it, you know, from, from the slums all the way to, you know, the, the famous and glorious and private jets and everything else and, and everywhere in between, and it’s just, it’s really fascinating.

Josh Ramsey

And that’s where you kind of learn to appreciate certain people in your life and certain moments in your life. So yeah, it’s been a wild ride.

Joe Metz

Sure. You know, and I think it builds a lot of tolerance for different perspectives. I think it builds a lot of a very wide look at what’s going on. It’s not just your neighborhood, your socioeconomic class.

Joe Metz

There’s all kinds of levels of living out there, if you will, in different ways to live. And not one is more right than the other, depending on where your perspective is from.

Josh Ramsey

You know one of the things that I heard when I was younger was very interesting and it was someone a motivational speaker said said talked about you know if if you could walk into a room and you we only use one -third of our minds what is that one -third and it’s about walking into a room and what’s the first thing that you see and what’s the first thing that I see and it’s not that you’re right and I’m wrong or that I’m right and you’re wrong it’s more about the mindset of whatever someone sees this is called confirmation bias which is one of the things that I teach heavily on but it’s whatever they see is accurate it’s true so if I see a blue wall and you see you know a white line or a guitar what’s that first thing that we see and why do we see that and it’s really about understanding the other person’s perspective which does lead into marketing and confirmation bias in marketing as well but that was one of the set up just understanding other people’s perspective and why people make the decisions that they do and it’s based on how they walk into the room what’s the first thing that they see and why and that’s really applicable when it comes to marketing and we can get into that as deep as you’d like to go yeah…

Joe Metz

Yeah, you know, I would express this as my wife and I driving in the car, usually I’m driving so she’s in the passenger seat, and I will say, oh, you know, if I see a bicycle on the road, I could tell you if it’s a gravel bike, it’s a road bike, it’s a speed bike, it’s a time trial bike, it’s a mountain bike, if it’s full suspension, if they’ve got good tires, if the position on the bike is correct, and my wife says, there’s a bike.

Josh Ramsey

You’re right. You’re right. That’s that’s you know, that’s that’s the perspective. Yes, but…

Joe Metz

But if there was at the same time a dog hanging out the window in a car next to us, she’d be able to tell me all about the dog, the breed and the age and all of that.

Josh Ramsey

But you know, it’s interesting that you say that because again this goes into the another aspect that I teach about which is called your reticular activator and your reticular activator is a mental focus of searching for information that is either comfortable or Interesting and again, there’s other levels to that But it’s comfortable or interesting and it’s something that we search for in a subconscious Scan.

Josh Ramsey

Yes, and when we see something like the bicycle obviously through your messaging That’s interesting to you or comfort of some level and when she sees the dog she feels these emotions and again that leads into marketing of how you can use the brain of a human and We all buy and make decisions on what we purchase what we do how we live Based on the mental file folders in our brain So again everything that we talk about it’s really interesting when someone else will why a fractional CMO Which I think is one of your questions or they say, you know, well, you’ve never worked in my industry So how do you know and how can you work in my industry when you when you never have?

Josh Ramsey

And I just talked to number one if all humans make decisions based on the same thing and then number two I educate people and most people don’t realize this but the biggest companies when they hire CMOs they typically hire from outside their industry because as that person brings a fresh perspective to What they’re already doing and they then are able to reinvigorate whatever is happening.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, just a few other tidbits

Joe Metz

That makes perfect sense. You know, if two people always agree on something, one of them is unnecessary. And if you’re pulling people from inside your industry who grew up in the industry, has a perspective of the industry, learned from the chief, whatever in that industry, that’s their perspective.

Joe Metz

And it’s oftentimes like blinders. Would I be correct in saying that? It’s like blinders and they can’t see outside of a certain lane.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there’s a lot of different ways to look at that, but I would agree 100% with what you said. You know, I was just thinking about a meeting that I had the other day with a client and they talked about how when a new C -level position person is hired, you have about 24 months, so two years to really for them to really make an impact and be open to new insights and information and new strategies.

Josh Ramsey

And that’s not a totally different industry, nothing to do with marketing. That’s just the one industry that some other executive shared with me. And I, I look at that and go, okay, well, I’m not the only one that thinks that way and sees that it’s that fresh perspective.

Josh Ramsey

And it doesn’t mean that if you’ve had a marketing person for four years, that they can’t bring that to the table, but it does mean you should think about how they’re fed information, right? Podcasts like this, what information are they getting?

Josh Ramsey

I listen to podcasts all the time in a lot of different industries, a lot of different information, just to kind of keep myself fresh as to what’s out there. What are people doing? What are different industries?

Josh Ramsey

How are they marketing those industries? It’s just good to stay, you know, stay abreast of what’s going on.

Joe Metz

Right. And looking outside of your industry or your circle, if you will. So how did your journey begin as a marketing expert?

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, so it’s interesting, as I would say, of how God can work into your life at times. And for me, you know, I just didn’t really have a clear vision of what I should do. I knew, and I was always told, that I was good at sales, so I went into sales.

Josh Ramsey

So I worked for large companies, I don’t necessarily want to name them, but I did transit advertising, I did billboards, did magazine, newspaper, radio, different other types of print, did television.

Josh Ramsey

So I sold a little bit of everything, and I moved around quite a bit. Part of why I moved around was, I could not retain clients. And I couldn’t figure out why. I was great at selling them and building that relationship, but, you know, a retention of a client really comes from them making money.

Josh Ramsey

And if they don’t make money from whatever medium that they’re advertising in, they move on. And it’s just simple logic, and they would tell me, there’s no hard feelings, it’s just we didn’t get the ROI.

Josh Ramsey

So going through that was eye -opening at the end, when I realized, I want to be on the buyer side, I want to be on the agency side, not the sales side. Because here’s one thing that I’ve learned that not many people really acknowledge, and that is, when you talk to somebody in sales, they’re offering you and trying to convince you that whatever they sell is best for you.

Josh Ramsey

So if you talk to an ad agency, whatever they’re good at, that’s what they sell you. If it’s link building, if it’s on -page SEO, if it’s paid ads, that’s what they’re good at, so that’s what they offer.

Josh Ramsey

The truth is, you might not need what they sell, but they may be good at convincing you. So the difference of a CMO is to look at it and figure out what’s best for the company, not what’s best for me selling you that.

Josh Ramsey

Now I go down a rabbit hole just a little bit to kind of explain why my world shifted, but the world shifted because I got into the agency side and understood that aspect of my client wants to grow. So it doesn’t matter if I do just this or just that, it’s more about what is going to give the best ROI, and then depending on the product or service, that’s where you make a decision of where to place the advertising.

Josh Ramsey

So I worked uniquely in a top 100 ad agency, but was able to really understand the positioning of why this agency mattered, and then after leaving that agency, I was able to carry that forward, articulate it in a different way, and really, I love the word the maturation process because that’s what I believe I live in, and that’s what I really love, is that maturation process of growth and really learning what that next level is.

Joe Metz

Yeah, it makes perfect sense. I mean, I have spoken with folks who I don’t want to call them one -trick ponies, but you know what I mean. They’re really good at maybe networking or Facebook ads or LinkedIn ads or Google, local, Google, Google, my business would be.

Joe Metz

And, you know, that’s just not where I’m at. But that’s what they sell because that’s what they’re good at. That’s the solution that they see. It’s almost like the example you hear: if a man carries a hammer and that’s his tool, he’s going to fix everything by banging on it with his hammer.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah. Well, you know, I mean, if you’ll indulge me again here, another methodology that I teach and I talk about that’s really important is to understand that I’m building this off of what you just said.

Josh Ramsey

But when it comes to the simplicity that we think of building a website, oftentimes you’re hiring that one person and they have that hammer. And that’s all they’re good at is using that hammer. But if you look a little deeper at, again, there’s a lot of ways to look at this, but I’m just going to stick to one, a website build.

Josh Ramsey

What is it that you think? I tell, I tell people in my audience, whenever I teach conferences, I say, take a deep breath and envision being a consumer, not a business owner. And as a consumer, what’s the first thing you see when you look at a website?

Josh Ramsey

And the answer is really simple. It’s the visual. It’s whatever the user experience is of what you see. And I said, think about the person that should develop that and build that. And what do they thrive in?

Josh Ramsey

What environment? And the answer is beautiful environment, light and colors and flowers and something along that. And the what’s the second part of the website and that’s the code. So think about how a coder thrives and they’re very different, but too often companies hire one or the other to build one website and they don’t get the full gravity of how these two brains should work together.

Josh Ramsey

So when you just hire that hammer, you’re not getting whichever side of the world that hammer lives on. You’re not getting that other aspect. And if you’ll give me one more second here, the third part is probably the most important that most companies don’t even have.

Josh Ramsey

And that is the strategist, because the strategist looks at it and says, how do I make these two worlds come together? And then how do we make it so that the user has the best experience possible and what flow are we looking for the best user experience?

Josh Ramsey

So I love what you said, but I like building off of what you said when it comes to the marketing world. You know…

Joe Metz

Right. The hammer example is a very simple hammer. It’s one that I’ve learned. I learned very young about that. Yeah. And, you know, I promote podcast guesting a lot. And I understand that’s not the right marketing strategy or should I say a piece of marketing strategy that everyone should use.

Joe Metz

But it’s right for some people. But I always tell people if you’re doing this and you’re going to invest time into guesting on podcasts to reach new audiences, it should be a part of your overall marketing strategy.

Joe Metz

It shouldn’t be the only thing you’re doing. And you should make sure it fits with what you are doing. Yeah. Because there’s you know, that’s so that’s my hammer. I try to look at it with the perspective that I understand.

Joe Metz

That’s my hammer when I’m promoting reaching new audiences with podcast guesting. It’s not all I do, but it’s something I focus on.

Josh Ramsey

But I love that you do that and that’s one reason why I love that we were able to connect and I’ve loved it and I appreciate again that you had me here but you know what I would share with you and maybe someone else that listens to this can kind of work this into their business plan but you know Joe what I would share with you is you’re not just a hammer you’re a hammer that has a lot of other features to it.

Josh Ramsey

It’s a different style of hammer because you can offer things like link and connection you’re offering PR and I think there’s a lot of other aspects that you offer that I’m aware of when I do this podcast if I do another podcast which I’m on them just like you have guests right but there’s a lot too just having a hammer I think it’s more about the positioning right if you hold a hammer like this you don’t see a whole lot but if you turn that hammer sideways you see a lot more so I think now it becomes the angle that you share walking into that proverbial room and do you see the white or the guitar the bicycle or the dog and that just becomes to a degree one of the things that I teach is called unique selling position and that is just your USP that now you’re talking about you can sell a hammer and be great at it right I’m not saying that you should provide every tool in the tool chest but it’s that unique selling position of how you use that hammer and why it can be applicable to other businesses.

Joe Metz

Right. And what I found and the reason that I focus on podcast casting, I have my own podcast, obviously, and I just love it. And I think it’s a great way to get out there and a very economical way to get out there.

Joe Metz

But what I found, Joshua, is that I was doing so many things. And I’ve had over 10 businesses on three continents, I’ve lived overseas for 19 years. And I just found that I was confusing people. I had met people who knew me for two or three years every week at networking events.

Joe Metz

And some of the folks after two or three years came to me and said, Joe, I really just don’t know what you do or how you help people, which surprised the heck out of me.

Josh Ramsey

You know, what am I, what am I, uh, writings and sayings is, uh, your mom might hate if she loved you. She’d tell you the truth, which is you’re confusing people and you’re not really answering their problem and giving them a solution, you know?

Josh Ramsey

And so that my saying is, your mom might hate you, you know, just because again, that’s the interrupt value of what, why would you say that? And sometimes that’s inflammatory on purpose, right? To, to generate that, but yeah, I hear what you’re saying.

Josh Ramsey

And I think a lot of people fall into that trap, but that’s where a good consultant can help you get out of that trap, right? And they can help you see the new perspective. And again, that goes back to what we were talking about of companies hire, you know, CMOs that are from outside their industry to help them do exactly what you just said to say to you, the CEO, the business owner go, Hey, maybe we’re confusing people and then help you develop that faster.

Josh Ramsey

Be aware of that faster.

Joe Metz

Yeah, and that’s the exact process I went through. I hired a coach and he helped me define things. Absolutely. Yeah, that’s great. Would you like to get in front of more of your ideal clients and at the same time, build your brand and create evergreen content?

Joe Metz

Well, you can do that with podcast guesting. This very moment, you’re listening to a podcast that may have been published today or three weeks ago or three years ago. In a very real sense, you’re engaging with the speakers, hopefully enjoying yourself and learning something new at the same time.

Joe Metz

And you’re getting to know the guests and how they help their clients, their customers and the problems that they solve. You may even be their ideal client and want to learn more about them and download one of their free resources you can find in the show notes or maybe even become a client of theirs.

Joe Metz

See, when you’re a guest on a podcast, you will enjoy that same kind of engagement. It is perhaps the easiest, most cost effective way to get in front of new audiences. Learn how you can be a guest on the right podcast and engage with your ideal clients with the free resources available at gapologist.com.

Joe Metz

Joshua, one of the things that you talk about is five things you should do before trusting a digital marketing company. What would be the, let’s go over all five if we can.

Josh Ramsey

I’m going to refer back to my notes to make sure I don’t mess it up. So I’ll go ahead and plug my book. This is a free book on my website so people can dive into it a little bit deeper.

Joe Metz

Right. Let’s have the name of that book, please. And can you hold it up again? Okay.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah. So how some SEO companies disguise laziness and hide poor strategies. So, you know, it’s not to say that all companies are lazy, but the first point is to set proper KPIs, key point indicators.

Josh Ramsey

You know, I’ll use just an example here of a client that came to me. We were working on a lot of different things and long story short, we wanted to redevelop the homepage, but it wasn’t just because we thought it was bad.

Josh Ramsey

In fact, we thought the homepage was very good, but the key was we were not getting enough user engagement where people were clicking through the site. So the main purpose of redesigning the homepage was to set a KPI and drive better consumer engagement to get consumers to stay longer and visit more pages.

Josh Ramsey

And if we could do that, that was our KPI. So when we set that measurable goal, we then made a change to the website homepage and we watched the metrics. Now in this case, it worked extremely well. But again, it just came to knowing what we wanted and why.

Josh Ramsey

So when someone comes to the business owner and goes, let’s change the website. Why? Like what are the measurable goals that we’re trying to hit? And what I would say, and I say in my book, don’t just blindly trust them.

Josh Ramsey

You should think for yourself, is this a measurable goal that’s going to lead me to what I want to achieve? And what do I want to achieve, which is sales, but we got to get beyond sales. We have to think through the first step, the first engagement, the first touch point, the first impression and every step throughout.

Josh Ramsey

So again, point number one is setting measurable goals and the right KPIs so that way you know what you’re looking for and how to track it.

Joe Metz

Exactly. And the first thing I ask someone when they say they want to be on more podcasts as guests, I ask them why. What are you looking to achieve by guesting on podcasts? And I think before you begin any project, you should know what you want out of that project.

Joe Metz

You should know what the results are. If I go to the beach and take out a kayak in the ocean, I want to get back to the beach alive and well, that’s number one. And I want to have fun and I want to get some exercise.

Joe Metz

So that’s my goal. Someone else might have a goal of fishing or riding the waves or taking selfies or something. Yeah, you got to know what your goal is. And it’s interesting right, I mean we logically think that way, yet we don’t logically make our notes in business to think that way.

Joe Metz

Hm.

Josh Ramsey

Right? It’s just second nature, which is operating in beta mode, not moving to alpha mode of problem solving of, we have a problem, which could be we need more sales, more lead, so on and so forth. But we don’t logically think through the process like that.

Josh Ramsey

It’s like when you get in your car, you don’t think about what the D stands for. You just know it means dry and you just go right. But that’s beta mode versus moving to alpha mode. So again, one more thing that I teach on principles.

Josh Ramsey

But yeah, you nailed it there.

Joe Metz

Yeah. It just makes sense. No, no. And I think I got that from Stephen Covey’s book, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and it’s, “begin with the end in mind.”

Josh Ramsey

It’s funny because I already have that written out of my notes for us to talk about.

Joe Metz

Well, we still have four other points to go through. I’ll let you decide. Should we hit the four points or should we talk about that?

Josh Ramsey

Oh, we’ll talk about that later.

Joe Metz

So number one, know what you want to get out of your marketing.

Josh Ramsey

Begin with the end in mind, or as I put it, set your KPIs internally before you talk to an agency. Know what your KPIs are, what you’re looking for, and see before you tell them your KPIs, see how many of those KPIs that they hit.

Josh Ramsey

How many of them do they go, hey, I think you should do this, this, and this, and if it matches or it’s close, and then ask them the second level. OK, well, these other two or three things you didn’t talk about, how would you achieve those?

Josh Ramsey

And see what they say, right? And then you’re able to really identify that first step. Yes.

Joe Metz

Okay, perfect. Okay, so what would step number two be?

Josh Ramsey

Number two is to check their reputation. Look at how reputable they are in the marketplace. One of the things that I would say that I really hang my hat on that I call one of my unique selling positions is that you can Google me as much as you’d like.

Josh Ramsey

I’ve been running my own companies in the marketing world since 2009. And there’s not one bad review about me online. None, you can look anywhere you’d like. And there’s a reason for that. And the main reason is that I do what I say I’m gonna do.

Josh Ramsey

When someone engages with me and hires me, I get it done. And if I can’t or something completely fails and I don’t meet the level of that contract or agreement that’s put into place, I will refund the money because I didn’t get the project done that was needing to get done, right?

Josh Ramsey

So the reputation I think is important, but not just the reputation. Look at why they have a good reputation or why they don’t. Because sometimes people just wanna complain to complain and you just can’t get around that.

Josh Ramsey

But I’ll leave this point on this part. Whenever I buy something on Amazon, if I’m looking at the reviews, I’ll typically look at the reviews or a restaurant is a good example. I’ll look at the reviews and I’ll look at the bad reviews and I’ll see if it’s an anomaly.

Josh Ramsey

Maybe that server was having a bad day. Maybe that chef doesn’t work there anymore because it was three years old and the chef is no longer there, right? There can be a reason as to why something, you got a bad rating.

Josh Ramsey

So, but the reputation does matter. I think it’s something to be paid attention to and that’s point number two.

Joe Metz

Yeah, you’re touching something very close to my heart. I managed a full full restaurant bar, sports bar, family restaurant. And we got great positive reviews about the food, the service, the experience.

Joe Metz

And we got some negative reviews. It was in a tourist location. So the summer there were hour and a half, two hour waits. And we got one star. I had to wait two hours to get a seat. Well, yeah, it’s the middle of the summer.

Josh Ramsey

We can’t kick someone out like they’ll give us…

Joe Metz

It’s hot. The sun was on the porch and it was very hot, one star. It’s like we really can’t control that. Yeah. So I do that. I’ll look at the five star reviews and then I look for the one or two star reviews on Amazon.

Joe Metz

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. So number three.

Josh Ramsey

I say, make sure they’re always learning. And what are they learning? So I would tell someone, ask them what the most recent article was that they read, or what do they subscribe to? Who do they follow?

Josh Ramsey

And what do they, and then go do your own research on who they’re following or what they’re reading. That can also deepen your knowledge as to what’s happening. And you can learn a lot around that of what they’re going to do.

Josh Ramsey

It also allows you to hold them responsible if, for instance, John Mueller is a name in the SEO world. He works for Google, he’s very vocal, he’s one of their PR guys that works internally but says a lot publicly.

Josh Ramsey

And that’s one of the people that I listen to whenever he talks. And it’s not always that I agree with him, but I at least understand why he’s saying what he’s saying. And a lot of it’s very foundational, it’s a base build, but always learning is really important.

Josh Ramsey

What conferences they go to, who do they study, what methodology do they follow and why, and kind of understanding that type of information.

Joe Metz

Yeah, great. Love that. Number four.

Josh Ramsey

My statement is lead from the front. And ultimately what that means is, are they teaching what they’ve learned and what they’ve experienced, or are they just sitting in the background just taking in information and not really challenging people’s thoughts?

Josh Ramsey

And I find that the majority of agencies out there do not have a leader that leads from the front. They have order takers and sales people. But either A, they don’t have a good strategist, and if they do, then they are probably leading from the front.

Josh Ramsey

So they’re the ones speaking at conferences. They’re ones that are on podcasts. They’re the ones that constantly have a presence online, even if it’s small, right? Even the cobbler kids don’t have shoes.

Josh Ramsey

So it may be small at times, but find out how much they’re teaching. I mean, myself, I’m doing a minimum of eight conferences speaking at eight conferences a year. And I’ve been doing that since 2009.

Josh Ramsey

So it’s something to be said that people are wanting to follow. They are listening to somebody. They keep coming back. That kind of gives you an idea of the following or are they leading from the front.

Joe Metz

Yeah. And this ties into the aspect of what books are they reading? Who are they listening to? What are they learning? Because the marketing tactics of 1994 are not really valid today in the grand view of things.

Joe Metz

Yeah. So, yeah, being out there learning and sometimes even pushing the envelope. Yeah. We’ve come to number five.

Josh Ramsey

Number five is a little tricky and some business owners don’t like it, but this is what I believe to be the best way to do business in the marketing world. And that is make sure that the agency gives you work to do and homework.

Joe Metz

Oh, but I don’t want that. Wait a minute. I’m paying you a bunch of money. Wait a minute. Homework.

Josh Ramsey

There’s always something that the business owner should be doing that should be a KPI back to the business owner. And if the agency responds like you did, then I don’t believe that the agency is doing their job well enough, because the agency’s job should be to ask questions.

Josh Ramsey

So as a CMO, my main job is to work with the business owner and be the executive at their roundtable, their executive leadership. What that means is that I need the CEO to help ensure that I have the right vision for the company as they see it.

Josh Ramsey

So sometimes that’s the KPI, or the demand that I have from them, is to make sure that you’re reading what I’m sending out, that you’re reviewing what I’m doing. That way we don’t go a year down the road, and all of a sudden they’re angry.

Josh Ramsey

It’s knowing that I have them involved and that they’re giving me the feedback. And the best relationships that I have are those clients that don’t blindly trust, but when I give them homework, I expect them to give it back to me.

Josh Ramsey

And let me be clear, it’s not about, listen, it is not about you having to do hours and hours of work, but it is about when you’re going to work in the marketing world, you know what to look for. You know what to look at.

Josh Ramsey

So that starts with that education that I talked about, but then it goes to me looking at my client, and again, I’m just going to use myself as the example here, but me looking at my client and saying, OK, Joe, I need you to look at these metrics.

Josh Ramsey

And I send you an email, but I tell you exactly what to look for. I’ve got a client right now that came to me, and he’s working with this ad agency. And the metrics since this new ad agency launched his site, in two months, he has gone from 600 rankings to 300 rankings.

Josh Ramsey

In under two months, he’s just dropping like a rock. And part of the problem is that the agency didn’t give him the metrics and the KPIs that he should be following. So he wasn’t doing his homework because he didn’t know to do his homework.

Josh Ramsey

So that’s why I say the business owners should be doing homework and the agency should tell you what that homework is. But then that goes back to the beginning, setting proper KPIs. And when you know those proper KPIs, that becomes your homework.

Josh Ramsey

But again, all of these five points really should come from an agency to the business owner as you interview them. And if they don’t, then I would say that’s cause for concern. It doesn’t mean don’t hire them, but it is cause for concern to identify why they haven’t done that.

Joe Metz

Now, all of these five points, I almost want to put them all under an umbrella of forming a partnership between the company, maybe it’s the CEO and maybe it’s someone he has delegated, but between the company and the CMO and yourself.

Joe Metz

You’re forming a partnership because you want information, you want feedback, you want them to do homework. And I’m sure they’re giving you homework too, and you’re looking at the KPIs. I’m sure some of the discussions are as simple as, how are we doing on these KPIs?

Josh Ramsey

Well, I mean is it I agree with you but I would say isn’t it the same thing as a CFO? Sure. I mean logically you look at a CFO and you go what’s my AR, you know what’s my P &L, what’s my cash flow. I mean you ask your CPA or your CFO or your bookkeeper you ask them these same questions so that relationship is driven there and one thing I can say for sure as a business owner is we all have someone that’s doing our books even if it’s ourselves very few people unless you’re a CPA little asterisk there you have the CPA you have someone that’s helping you with your books even if you’re the greatest bookkeeper if you’re in any other industry you have somebody and you have that bond so if you have that bond and it’s that important then you have operations you’ve got to have something in the sales and marketing world and a good CMO typically can touch and work in the sales department but again the sales and marketing that’s why they call it sales and marketing right because it does kind of go together and I personally do have experience in sales as we talked about my background but it’s kind of understanding that I love the way you explain that but yeah I mean when you take that to the next level I just use the example of what a CFO would do and how you would build your relationship with them and the trust with them and how you hold them accountable with the KPIs and again it becomes the same thing.

Joe Metz

Really? Yeah, it’s definitely a partnership. I mean, you I don’t know how long it takes to get into a company and understand their culture. But I imagine it takes a little bit of time and there’s a lot of communication back and forth.

Josh Ramsey

You know, I don’t disagree with that 100%, but I’ve done this long ago, long enough I should say, that long ago I created a business evaluation for businesses to fill out. And I believe, again, I know that I put it together, so I’m gonna be a little biased, but I believe that it’s one of the strongest business evaluations that you can find out there.

Josh Ramsey

So I invite everybody to go download it, review it yourself, copy it, paste it, and write it for yourself. But it really does, the questions that it asks, 90% of business owners that fill it out and talk to me, they all say the same thing, which is, wow, this was eye -opening for myself.

Josh Ramsey

This asked me questions that I never really thought about before, and it gave me a new perspective on what I should be doing. And their answer is, right off, this alone, this business evaluation alone took me to the next level without even having to talk to you, Josh, it took me to the next level.

Josh Ramsey

So then the only problem with that is, now I have a higher bar that I have to make sure that I get them where they want to go. But the business evaluation, my business evaluation does give me a lot of insight, but it also fast tracks the conversation where I can ask more insightful questions, more pointed questions to get to that level.

Josh Ramsey

And that’s why I think we were gonna talk about this. That’s one reason why I do a two-hour consultation for free. Because with that business evaluation, I can go do my due diligence, research the company and the competitors, and then sit down with a mountain of knowledge to do a two -hour consultation and really hit on the key, what I call leverage points, to improve the business.

Josh Ramsey

And I do all that for free because I don’t think a 20 -minute conversation, a 20-minute free consult is gonna give you what you need as a marketing agency or company. It’s not gonna give you what you need to understand your narrative.

Josh Ramsey

And again, I use that word very strongly, your narrative of where you’ve been. And Joe, you’ve asked me this question in a different way, but you said, Josh, what’s your narrative? What was high school like?

Josh Ramsey

What did you do after high school? How did you turn into the business? Where are you at now? These are the questions that you asked me organically, and that is my narrative. So for me to understand a business owner’s narrative and all the little leverage points details that I need to know, that’s how I go about doing it.

Josh Ramsey

So again, that’s me, but I found that it’s very effective in the specific questions that I ask.

Joe Metz

Yeah, I would agree with you 100%. I don’t know your questionnaire. I have not looked at it, but it reminds me a lot of mine. I ask a lot of questions to my private clients and they’ve come back and said that was amazing.

Joe Metz

When I had to answer those questions, I had to dig deep to answer those questions and it takes me hours to go through it. And it is the seedlings for a full blown, full blown garden of conversations, if you will.

Joe Metz

And the longest response I ever had, and the only reason I know this was because I was reading the fellow’s responses. I said, I got to check how many words this is. 10 ,000 words in the answers to my questions.

Joe Metz

Now that’s an extreme example. If you remember the bell curve, it’s way over. That’s 25 pages in a book. Yeah, well he’s very prolific, very smart individual and very deep thinker. But I got with that questionnaire from that client and other clients, it kind of shortcuts the path to learning what they’re all about and where they want to go.

Joe Metz

So Josh, we have come to the section of the podcast that I like to call the lightning round.

Josh Ramsey

Are you ready? I’m ready, I’m ready, let’s go.

Joe Metz

How has your entrepreneurial journey transformed you?

Josh Ramsey

It’s taught me to trust my gut a lot more. When I have something that’s going on and I feel a certain way, I’ve learned over the years to know when to trust my gut. And that gut has turned into instinct and that instinct is something that I definitely trust now.

Joe Metz

Very good. What most surprised you as a business owner?

Josh Ramsey

I would say there’s probably two things. One is how hard, and this kind of goes to your other question about challenge, but how hard it is to keep up with the books. Because when I talk about the different mindsets, my mind does not do bookkeeping very well.

Josh Ramsey

My brain doesn’t work in that fashion. But the other one is really gonna be, it’s definitely difficult to find good people, people that have your best interest in mind, the company’s best interest in mind.

Josh Ramsey

And I find that common. Nowadays you can hire people, you can find people to do the job, but to really commit to the vision of the company is a lot more difficult.

Joe Metz

It is more difficult, yes, yes, wow. So when I was running the restaurant, we had 42 employees and that year I did 140 W2s. So we had 98 people come and go within a year and just finding the right people and people who incorporated and embodied the vision that I was trying to create in that restaurant.

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, I use just I guess a quick bullet point to that would be I use some different methodology when it comes to interviewing people and one of the things that I asked them is, you know, I asked him some of the narrative questions.

Josh Ramsey

Tell me about your background, how you grew up and it’s much more conversational than it is interview type and I try to do it in a relaxed environment to see what their body language is and what their personality is.

Josh Ramsey

And I do my best to try to kind of catch them off guard on some things, but ask them about their family, about their kids if they have kids do they want kids. What do they enjoy doing and see how relationship driven they are and what their passions are.

Josh Ramsey

And I think it does give some insight. And again, I’m going to tell you right now. I’m not perfect at it. I still believe that I suck at it because I believe in the good in people more than I look for the bad.

Josh Ramsey

So therefore I gravitate to the positivity that someone will give me rather than a negativity, and that can make me a bad hiring manager at times. But I am good at looking at the insights and asking those questions when it comes to ad agencies on technical efficiency.

Josh Ramsey

So that part, I know, but everything else.

Joe Metz

What unexpected challenge have you had to overcome?

Josh Ramsey

I just said it a minute ago, it is bookkeeping. It’s just how books are run and why they’re run that way. I’m like, I look at the book, the bank account and I’m like, look, it should just be this simple.

Josh Ramsey

You know, this is the money, dude. This is the money I got, but instead it’s just, yeah. And I’m lucky enough to have a great CPA that I hired in 2014 and a bookkeeper that I hired two years ago. But when you talk about the restaurant and hiring people about two years ago, I went in a matter of 45 days.

Josh Ramsey

I went through 15 different bookkeepers and it was a nightmare until I finally found one that I just, I absolutely adore. And it’s been a year and a half, two years now, two years now. So yeah, so I’m lucky now, but it’s been terrible.

Joe Metz

Yeah. Sometimes it takes a lot of work and going through a lot of people. Yeah. Yeah. In all industries, I’m sure. What book has made a big impact on you and who would you recommend it to?

Josh Ramsey

I’d recommend it to everybody and anybody. And the book is what we talked about earlier, The Seven Habits by Steve Covey. Oh, wow. Okay. I mean, it’s all about psychology and whether you try to apply that to your business life or your personal life, it’s applicable, right?

Josh Ramsey

It’s very, “Begin with the end in mind.” If you’re dating, what’s the end in mind? Is it to get married or just have fun with an individual? Right? I mean, it’s, everything is tied. I hate to go down a rabbit hole, but I’ll try to keep this short on this part, but dating and personal life is just the same as business.

Josh Ramsey

Right? I tell business owners, no one cares what your name is. And when I tell people that a lot of times they get offended and I say, look, I married my wife, not because of her name. I married her because of the ethics, morals, and values that she brought to my life that I felt like made me better.

Josh Ramsey

It gave me something that I don’t feel like I had before. So that’s why I married her. If she wanted to change her name tomorrow or today, I would say, okay, cool, let’s talk about it. If it’s that important to you, go ahead.

Josh Ramsey

But that’s why no one cares what the name is, but then I go back to the seven habits. It’s the same thing. It’s the commitment, the consistency, it’s the authority, it’s the social group. It’s all of these elements that go into it.

Josh Ramsey

So.

Joe Metz

Now, I read that book a year or so before I had children, and some of the lessons in that book, and he does talk about raising his child, and some of the lessons in that book I applied directly to raising my children.

Joe Metz

And thank God I had the book and read that and saw things from a different perspective.

Josh Ramsey

And I will plug one other thing. I would also recommend my book.

Joe Metz

I wouldn’t expect anything less, very good.

Josh Ramsey

It didn’t be so vain to not.

Joe Metz

And of course, we’ll have links to all of those resources in the show notes. Last question, what advice would you give to an inspiring entrepreneur in your industry?

Josh Ramsey

Yeah, number one, you’ve got to build a USP. Your unique selling position is everything. And that can be hard to do. There has to be a maturation process typically to that. But your unique selling position is really what defines you.

Josh Ramsey

It is who your company is. Different people call it different things. If you looked up “unique selling position” or what’s the number one thing to do when you start a business, it really is your unique selling position.

Josh Ramsey

And I would say within that, you’ve got to get rid of the platitudes. I do conferences, and one of them that I do is a training session on how to write a marketing plan for today’s age. And I ask people, I walk around and I put them on hot take.

Josh Ramsey

And I say, tell me what makes you unique. And I hear the same platitudes. I’ve been in business this long. I’m great. I’m ethical. I’m honest. I’m above board. Other people don’t do this, and I do it.

Josh Ramsey

And I usually sit there and I start going like this and counting all the different platitudes that they give me. And then I look at them and go, you gave me seven platitudes in 30 seconds. It’s not good enough.

Josh Ramsey

And then I go to the next person and the next person. And it’s interesting to see how many times this happens. And you’ve got to get away from those platitudes, and you’ve got to work on how you are unique to the marketplace and what makes you more important than anyone else.

Joe Metz

And you have to stand out. So I did a blog post one time, it was just, say no to platitudes. And the other thing I used to do on live webinars, I would say, let’s find out why websites are not differentiated, why websites all look the same.

Joe Metz

Give me a city, give me an industry, and I’ll Google it, and I opened up, you know, four, five, six, seven tabs, whatever it might be. Every single website looked the same. It doesn’t matter if I was looking at painters or yard work or lawyers, because, and I told them, you know, when you build a website, you go to a web designer and you say, I want, I’m a plumber, and I want a plumber’s website.

Joe Metz

I want, what’s the website guy gonna do? He’s gonna go look at other websites from plumbers and say, oh, that’s what they look like. That’s how we do it. So that’s why they end up looking the same, for the most part.

Joe Metz

I mean, it’s, I did it live, and I was confident they would look the same. And they always did.

Josh Ramsey

If you ever want to know someone’s stress level psychologically, when you talk to them or they talk to you about something, the higher on the face that they go of rubbing, the more agitation they have.

Josh Ramsey

And when you talk about that, I literally just, I lose my mind because you just nailed it. The catch that some people like to tell me is, well, I’m a plumber and I got a rank for plumbing, so I have to talk about plumbing.

Josh Ramsey

Yes, but you still can position it different. You can still come up with a unique selling position. Do you need to have a plumber with his crack? No. Do you need to show pipes and tools? Maybe, but a lot of times you have to figure out what your unique selling position is and paint that with images.

Josh Ramsey

And I’ll leave you with one other thing on this thought process. And again, this kind of goes to my methodology. But if you think about, if I say the word shark, something pops into your head. If I say the word fish, something pops similar into our heads.

Josh Ramsey

If I say the word computer or phone, something visual pops into our head. But when we say the word famous or popular, everyone has a different thought. So you have to learn how to paint the USP with pictures, your unique selling position with pictures to really paint that story and work on that engagement and identify, are you the USP?

Josh Ramsey

Or is something that you do with a methodology the USP? And then you work on positioning that with the designer rather than just telling the designer, hey, go build me a website. And again, that goes to the three brains, right?

Josh Ramsey

The designer, the coder, and the strategist. That’s why a strategist is extremely important because the strategist can extract that unique selling position from your mind and then help you apply it with a design.

Joe Metz

Yeah, perfect. That sounds like a process that makes a lot of sense to me. Well, Joshua, do you have any final words or any gifts for our listeners today?

Josh Ramsey

So we’ve talked about it a little bit throughout. Again, I appreciate you having me. I appreciate everyone that’s listening now. I offer a free two-hour consultation. And the one thing that I’ve learned in my business is, you know, I’d leave it at two things that I’ve learned that are my primary.

Josh Ramsey

And one is that if I give the best user experience and I give the best knowledge to everybody, that those two – user experience and knowledge – that I give away for free, they’re gonna come back. It’s like, why do we all use Google?

Josh Ramsey

Because when we search for something, we find answers. So I try to model my business like Google has modeled theirs in the way of business will come to you. You can make revenue if you have something good to say.

Josh Ramsey

So I have something good to say, and I try to say it well and say it often, which again is another principle to use. But I like to give a lot of free information. If nothing else, I get to learn something.

Josh Ramsey

I get to meet someone new. I get to learn something new and see how they see the world, which we talked about. And that’s fascinating to me. It’s fascinating to hear people’s stories and their narratives, where they came from and why.

Josh Ramsey

So I just, I love that. And that’s my main offer is that free two hour consultation. And then again, there’s a ton of information on my website. And I think you were gonna put the link up there, but it’s jrcmo.com.

Josh Ramsey

Think Josh Ramsey, chief marketing officer .com. That’s the website. And on that information, I have the world’s largest SEO library. I have a lot of free information throughout the site, including my book and a free download of my book.

Josh Ramsey

So I’m happy to help anybody out there that’s just trying to get their feet under them or have some frustrations or questions and wanting to vent and talk about it. That’s what I’m here to help with.

Joe Metz

It’s one of the things I admire about you, Joshua, and the way you run your business is that you are helping the folks who just want to DIY it. And if they find that that’s what they’re thinking, but they find it’s, it’s more complicated, more complex than, than they have time to invest and learn, then they can hire you.

Joe Metz

But they can get started. They can learn about it with all the free information that you have out there.

Josh Ramsey

You know, my biggest clients have come to me because I’ve met them years before and I’ve given them free information as a startup and they’ve grown to massive companies. And now they’ve come back and re-engaged with me.

Josh Ramsey

And I attribute that heavily to I gave them free information in the beginning, you know, I just helped them when they felt like no one else was going to help them. And as I’ve helped them grow, I feel good about what I’m doing.

Josh Ramsey

And that equals my ethics, morals and values. That fulfills my purpose of being able to help. And that’s really my number one thing is I want to help people as much as I can. And that means I’m willing to give my time to help give them a direction.

Joe Metz

Yeah, you’re walking the talk, my friend. Joshua, this has been a great conversation and very informative and fun conversation. Thank you so much for your time and sharing your knowledge and your wisdom.

Josh Ramsey

Thanks for having me, Joe. I really do appreciate your time as well.

Joe Metz

Thank you. My pleasure. Bye now. Thank you for listening to Entrepreneur Journeys. Remember to subscribe so you catch all the episodes and check out the show notes for any free giveaways or gifts that were mentioned during this show.

Joe Metz

Entrepreneur Journeys is brought to you by Apexical, providing the insights, tools, and transformative structures to help you reach your business summit. I’m your show host, Joe Maxx, and until next time, I hope your journey is filled with breathtaking views and successful outcomes.