Cat Bradley, Founder, SewEthico
Cat Bradley is the founder of SewEthico, a Growth and Systems Hacker for female-owned brands. After a career in nonprofits, a Masters in Marketing and Nonprofit Management, and a stint in tech, she became a warrior for female-owned mission-based businesses in pursuit of a better world.
SewEthico empowers women through entrepreneurship by giving them enterprise-level customer analysis, and the systems to build their business around customer obsession. We believe 3 things: women should receive more access to funding, women need to know their ideas can and will change the world, and B-corp isn't a buzzword. Let's build the customer relationships and traction for you to achieve their goals.
https://sewethico.com/
https://medium.com/@catbradley
https://sewethico.com/scalingupservices
AUTOMATED EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
[00:00:01] You're listening to Scaling Up Services where we speak with entrepreneurs authors business experts and thought leaders to give you the knowledge and insights you need to scale your service based business faster and easier. And now here is your host Business Coach Bruce Eckfeldt.
[00:00:22] Are you a CEO looking to scale your company faster and easier. Checkout Thrive Roundtable thrive combines a moderated peer group mastermind expert one on one coaching access to proven growth tools and a 24/7 support community created by Inc award winning CEO and certified scaling up business coach Bruce Eckfeldt. Thrive will help you grow your business more quickly and with less drama. For more details about the program, visit eckfeldt.com/thrive . That’s E C K F E L D T. com / thrive.
[00:00:57] Welcome, everyone. This is Scaling Up Services. I'm Bruce Eckfeldt. I'm your host. And our guest today is Cat Bradley and she is founder of SewEthico and they help female owned brands grow and market their businesses. We're going to talk a little bit about the work that she does. We're going to talk a little bit about marketing, about tech. I'm excited about this. I think that service based businesses challenge when it comes to marketing a lot of times because they don't have hard products that they're selling. The marketing becomes really about how well you can measure yourself as a thought leader. And I think content marketing and marketing are going to be key to businesses that are that are trying to do that. So with that, why don't we introduce Cat to the program?
[00:01:32] Hey. Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to have this conversation. I think it's gonna be great.
[00:01:37] Yes. Thank you for joining me. So before we get into the details of marketing and how we really use content to grow our awareness and reach new audiences, tell us a little bit about your background. How did you get into this? What was your impetus to focus on marketing now with female owned businesses and mission based businesses?
[00:01:54] Yeah, of course. I feel like it's kind of funny. A lot of entrepreneurs, especially during the kinds of things that you and I do, I feel like we have this very long, winding road of how we got this. So ultimately my everyday goal is to build power for women. More badass women and business owners really need powered access like they never had before. And that means a bigger voice. It means more money. It means access to funding, especially access to funding, which is a huge part of the reason that venture capital working towards being able to gain venture capital for my clients is actually something that I really focus on. And that drive really originates from growing up in a single parent household and watching my own mom, who she was a data scientist at Lockheed Martin. You know, she was an incredibly smart woman and she still struggled with having real power in her life. And, you know, I recognize that that is not a unique story. The way that I grew up, that is common at this point. And, you know, I started my own career from working in nonprofits. You know, after getting my master's degree, working in tech, working at publicly traded companies that had over 5000 employees, you know, I was attending a leadership training workshops and seeing that out of the 200 people that were in the room, only 10 of them were women and few were even so were people of color. And the women who were recognized as leaders typically were in marketing and human resources. And I honestly just thought that was ridiculous. And so my goal was, what would it look like if more women gained true power, especially when they were building businesses and they could be in charge in deciding what the problems were that they wanted to solve? So now what I'm doing is I work one on one with women leaders and business owners to build their first marketing departments and rebrand and specifically to build enterprise level customer analysis into their companies so that they can really scale and grow.
[00:03:56] Yeah, to talk to me. I mean, I think that the you know, the interesting kind of aspect for me about this is that I think this is more than just about, you know, putting more women in traditional roles of entrepreneurship. It's actually changing the whole notion of entrepreneurship by having more women involved in the whole process. I mean, do you see, I guess, what you see as being kind of the the change of the dynamics when you start to change sort of the gender mix of the entrepreneurial culture?
[00:04:20] Are there are there differences that you see in the nature of the businesses, how they're run?
[00:04:24] What kind of problems they go after? How they go after those problems, strategies that are developed? Curious what kind of insights you see. Having worked with a lot of women, founded businesses, women, women, run businesses.
[00:04:33] Absolutely. So I will say that the differences that I see a lot of times is that in my personal experience, women start businesses to solve problems and men start businesses to make money. Exactly what I see from that, what ends up happening is you think, oh, making making money, that's important. Okay. Of course it's important. We're all trying to like this business. Yes, it's important. But what ends up happening is a lot of times when you are in business to make money as an entrepreneur, you make a lot of short term financial decisions. And that actually can can hurt your business in the long run. And it makes it so that you are more likely to lose money in the end. And so when you're after being obsessed with what the problem is, you're actually solving something for your customer. You end up being a much more success. In in the long run and I mean, venture capital numbers will back me up on that. It's pretty well known now in the U.S. community, especially here in New York, that if you have at least one woman on your founding team, you are something like 30 percent more likely to to reach profitability within five years. So it just what ends up happening is that women a lot of times are much more focused on how do we actually really get to know the customer and how do we really get to know how to solve their problem. And just the men that I've seen are like, how do I I'm I'm really excited about it.
[00:05:54] But, yeah, I think it's fascinating. And I think that and I know it's that super countries, I think it's Sweden or Norway now that is doing requiring public companies to have a certain number of women on their boards and things like that. So I think there's like there's a we're starting to become more aware of, you know, the impacts, not just in terms of, you know, a justice point of view, but actually a change in the success of business or the change in which people approach businesses. I like this kind of longer term thinking and problem solving rather than wealth creation or money making, I think is a great one that really changes the dynamics to talking about this kind of understanding of the customer. I mean, from my point of view, that's kind of key to marketing what you're trying to reach or you're going to talk to. If you're trying to talk to everyone, you're talking to no one. Tell me a little bit about how you approach or how you work with your clients around this conversation of ideal customer, core customer. What does the process look like? What's the conversation look like? What kind of stages of developing?
[00:06:47] Oh, my gosh, I have so much. Just where do I begin?
[00:06:53] So I will say that I have met leaders before who who have this kind of general idea. Like we have several buckets of who we want to talk to. But that they end up coming up with not only marketing content or marketing strategies, but just business strategies in general that end up being very watered down. And so the reason that you really want to develop a strong ideal client, it's not for your clients, it's for you as the business owner so that you can make better decisions, because the more specific you can get, the more targeted you can make your problem solving, whether that's problem solving that you're doing through creating content, whether that's problem solving related to the different kinds of products that you're putting out, be those digital products or, you know, work is all products or what have you. The more specific you can make, the problems that you're solving, the more interested your customers and clients will be. And so I think developing those relationships, the way that we the way that I do it with my customers or with my clients work with Swango is we we do testing. We do a lot of data. You know, I'm pulling from Pew Research, I'm pulling from academic journals at the same time, just because I do think that having those kinds of studies make leaders a lot more comfortable, because ultimately when you're, you know, getting to know someone on this deep level, it can be very intimidating and it can make you feel vulnerable, which I think is challenging for business owners. But really, what I do is I can give you a couple of examples. One company that I've worked with for the last six months.
[00:08:21] They create post maternity care for four new moms. And so this is they're putting together these boxes that it's it's like products that literally help you to put your body back together after you've had a vision. So very you know, this is a very physically demanding thing. And we kind of help you to do that. So we had kind of a hard time figuring out exactly who the ideal client wasn't. So literally, we had several sessions where we sat down at this one restaurant for coffee and we would have our session. And this restaurant happened to have these windows that opened up onto the street. And I would literally stop people and ask them questions. And I taught, you know, I honored the woman who owns this business. I taught her how to do this. You can ask these questions. It has to be very targeted. And so, you know, I'm getting like very general kind of communication like that, too, to doing polls, to having. The one thing that I really like doing is I teach my clients how to give interviews to their ideal clients. This is something that I've gotten very, very good at over the years where I know and understand how to ask the kinds of questions that are really open ended and allowed the customer to drive the conversation. And so it's a process that probably takes about an hour and a half. And the number one tool, honestly, that I have picked up from this is is teaching my clients how to completely revolve conversations around their customer and to just shut up listening.
[00:09:55] Yeah, listen.
[00:09:56] Because a lot of times what ends up happening is you're so excited about the product that you're putting out and you've worked so hard on it. You've spent so much money and you're so excited. And all you want to do is talk about it. And that's nice, but that doesn't solve anybody's problem.
[00:10:09] It's an interesting because I think and I think that happened so often, as you know, you kind of go into this market insight, market research, customer insight process and and you end up slipping into sales.
[00:10:19] Right. You end up trying to. Sell the product or sell the service or sell. So what you're trying to do and I think that it's staying in that kind of anthropology anthropologists kind of mindset of being super curious, being good at observing, noticing things, noticing more than what's being said, but how it's being said, body language, all those things which is so key to really developing this insight.
[00:10:40] So one thing that I do. One kind of assignment that I give my clients to to learn this skill. Right. Because it really is a skill is I will assign them parties and different things to go to all find things around the city that I'm in New York. So I find things around the city that they know I know they're going to be interested in. And then I assign them stories where you have to go find five people and you have to learn their life story. And then you are required to essentially give me a report on five random people.
[00:11:09] I learned it's like a scavenger hunt. It really is.
[00:11:12] I want you to I and I want you to walk away from the conversation with them, knowing nothing about you and you knowing everything about them. And then you have to report back to me. And it just it just gets you in to that pattern and into the habit of asking questions, allowing someone else to guide the conversation and to not make it about you and to just stop.
[00:11:34] It's amazing. And you mentioned something earlier I wanted to touch on. I just kind of triggered something for me. Was this idea of kind of the intimacy or the information that you can get or you end up having to talk about. And if you really get into this, if you really get into to insights with the customers, you could you can end up talking about or learning sometimes difficult things to hear. And I remember a case this was years ago.
[00:11:55] We were doing some work with Biograph. It was there when Bigler was just coming out.
[00:11:58] We did some market research we were doing and the original Web site where Backman but we had these sessions, we had these focus group sessions, and these are people that had Bisley men that had medical conditions that that prevent them, that had erectile dysfunction. And in hearing the stories of, you know, how this impacted in their lives and their relationships and their marriages and things like that, it was it was tough. And I think I just I really appreciated that in order to do this work really, really well, that you have you have to be comfortable with that uncomfortable conversation or that sometimes difficult conversation.
[00:12:27] How do you create space for that? How do you tease that out? How do you be respectful of that? And I think that a lot of people, either they don't go that deep or they get that deep and then they get kind of thrown off because they're not prepared for that kind of conversation. And I think that comes up a lot, particularly when you're dealing with, you know, these kind of services and products.
[00:12:43] Absolutely. And actually, I have that company that I was just talking about. They're called Postbank momma talking about postpartum depression is very hard. And it's not something that in our current society we give a lot of breath to when we give a lot of room for. And so I do see a lot of exactly what you're saying. And that's another thing that I actually do see from women founders is that I see a lot more of an ability to get that space, which is great. And ultimately, it makes your company better in eight million different ways because you're much more able to serve customer, you're much more able to give them a very legitimate way to be seen and feel heard, which ultimately is the number one thing that we all want it right.
[00:13:29] And being able to get that deep and then actually do something with it. Exactly. Oh, you turn your customer from a repeat customer to a loyal customer. You know, the difference is a repeat customer is someone who decides, oh, yeah, I have this problem. I need to find a solution. They find you, they use your solution. And then another problem comes around and they say, OK, I had this other problem. Let me compare lots of different companies to see what works and then they might choose you again. And that's great. The difference between that and a loyal customer is someone who that second time that they go to solve a problem, they don't look for other companies. They just go with you because you've developed a really strong relationship with them. And that relationship will let them know that you have their back so much that they don't need to go look anywhere else.
[00:14:17] I like that. That idea that you've you've solved the problem to a level they didn't even either they didn't know they had a problem at that level or they didn't even know that it could be solved to that extent.
[00:14:27] I think that's where this kind of insight, if you really dig into these insights and really kind of uncover these needs, allows you to do. Yeah. To talk to me about. So you mentioned kind of the types of questions and using open ended questions, but what are what are some examples of how questions you can ask or questions that you ask in these situations to get to these deeper levels of insights that help you really understand this ideal customer and and try to drive down the product and service strategy that you're developing?
[00:14:53] I can give you I can give you an example of one of the things that I've kind of run through, but I kind of. Yeah. So I have this client reprise active where they make leggings ultimately like bottom line, that's what they do. They make leggings. But really what they do is reprises looking to change the way that we look at Activewear and Lesra wear. And they are looking to give us healthier options because the majority of active wear, the things that you wear at the gym or the things that you're wearing when you're hanging out around. House are actually made of plastic, which originally. It's a petroleum based product. Anything that's made out of poly or it's all plastic. And especially when you're working out, your pores are like little mouths and they eat anything that's on your skin when they basically off. If you were in plastic, then you're working out and you're sweating in your paws or opening up. You are ultimately just breathing in plastic. Your body so reprises. They're an awesome company and they make an incredible product. I can personally say that I own several of them. I love them.
[00:15:51] So. So Mary, the owner Overprice was with a customer of hers one day. And one of the things that she does pointing at at the break company is she will take her clients to two workout sessions and then kind of hang out and just get to know them better. So she was with one of her customers and that customer was wearing something that was not Mary's products. Mary said, I really like those leggings. And they were like a light purple color. And her customer said, thanks. I really don't like them. I only wear them on laundry day.
[00:16:25] And so Mary said, well, what do you mean? And she said, well, you know, I bought them online and they were on sale. And they look way better on the model than they looked on me. And I really only wear them on laundry day because I just have nothing else in my clothes in the drawer. Yeah. And here's what that rolls out to once you really dig deeper into it. I only wear these on laundry day and they make me feel terrible because the light color makes it so that they're actually kind of see through. And so whenever I wear them, I'm constantly thinking about why everybody is staring at my butt. And really, it just makes me uncomfortable. But then I don't have anything else in my closet because I'm just so busy trying to, like, grind along in New York City. Why can't I afford to do laundry? Drop off is something that I have to actually put into my budget. And like, I can't even figure out how to have clean clothes in my house. What is wrong with me? I can't believe that I made such such a stupid decision buying this color. That definitely wasn't going to work for me. I bought them online. I didn't even get to try them on in the store.
[00:17:29] That was so irresponsible of me to do. And then it just piles and piles and piles on into this like thing where it comes down to I feel like I'm an irresponsible person. What's wrong mean? And that is actually something that if you really get into the emotional decisions that we make, because ultimately anything that we do, anything that we buy, anything that we experience, we make decisions with emotion and then we communicate why we made that decision with logic. Sometimes those two things don't actually match up. We're just like really putting information out to the world to justify our choices. But ultimately, every choice that we make is actually emotional. And so when you break into those decisions that you're making, when it comes to purchasing from, you know, consumer goods to the things that you're doing in your business. Business is super emotional. Every decision that we make, it really is super emotional. And so, you know, when you are having those conversations and asking those kind of leaning or not leading questions and allowing your your customer to really drive the conversation, that's what you're looking for is how do I break into what this is actually making someone feel.
[00:18:41] So it sounds like what you're looking for in these conversations is what is the kind of emotional underpinning that is driving this decision or the choice that a customer is making. And so that you can then figure out how does your product service kind of fit or address that? Yeah. Always. We always say that people make decisions with emotions and justify them with logic that's done to us.
[00:19:02] You know, you've got to you've got to deal with both and you have to appeal to them emotionally and then give them the logical justification for purchase
[00:19:09] But interesting, too, I guess once you kind of have this raw material, what are you looking for in that data in that, you know, the information you've collected that is going to drive kind of the marketing and strategy process?
[00:19:21] So one of the things that I like to say is that a lot of the problems that our businesses are solving and I mean any business, a lot of the problems that businesses in general are solving, because that is why business exists to solve the problem. They are actually shared human experiences. And when there are shared human experiences, there are solutions. So this is kind of something that to me almost feels a little bit like, you know, when when we were in grade school or when we were in high school, your teachers would say, raise your hand to ask a question, because if you had the question, then someone else in the room also has the question. And if nobody asks it, then we don't learn. Well, I think that this is kind of the same thing. You know, if if one person has the problem, lots of people have the problem. But if nobody solves it, then we're all just gonna be like, you know, walking around aimlessly. And so, you know, it's it's your job to really figure out how to how to get in there.
[00:20:12] No.just I'm looking for examples or what kind of information you're looking for. So you collect all the data. You do the. Beauty of the conversations. What is it that you're looking? What are the kind of nuggets that you're looking for in that see that that's going to drive marketing?
[00:20:26] We're looking for the small things that people are continuing to repeat. And I have this whole Excel spreadsheet and that's that's where this came in, because if one person owns the problem, many people have a problem. And so I have this spreadsheet that I have I have a system or workflow that I kind of put my clients through where we just the small things that we hear over and over and over again. You know, I want you to understand that what your customer is saying to you is actually just the tip of the iceberg. And so once you start to get this large emotional explanation from your customers and get to know them really, really, really well, what you'll notice is that they have similar phrases that they'll use that X that started this head of the iceberg.
[00:21:02] And so, for example, with Mary, one of those phrases for the tip of the iceberg is I don't use them on laundry day, you know, because that tells me that there's this huge like there's a reason you're only using it on laundry day. You don't love it. You know, other other customers that I've worked with, their customers kind of tip of the iceberg, saying it's something like I have one client that they make literacy, learning products for public school teachers to teach them how to teach kids to read much, much better than our current system does. And so, you know, they're kind of tip of the iceberg. Phrases are things like, you know, there are dressed kids that just will not ever be able to read those kinds of things.
[00:21:44] And we know that that is actually that has a huge emotional kind of push behind it. And then on top of that, there's this whole like logic piece that we kind of that we tell ourselves to justify. And honestly, I would really like to give in to the more specific details of this, but I'm concerned about time because it is something that I know would just take so much time for me to explain. But I have I have a whole system that I put my clients through where where we track those small sayings and phrases and then we find the emotional behind it. We we explain, OK, what physically what actions physically occurred to make this person feel the way that they do. Like you were just to watch this on a video. What would you see on the video? And then, OK. What is it that this person is feeling from the situation? What made them feel that way? What's their pattern of thinking that got them there? And then what would a solution look like? So we practice we I we track the entire spectrum. So that way when eventually after we have all of this data that we've collected, we can take just that original small iceberg, kind of saying that that you hear in the very beginning. And then we know that it means all these other things. And because we already have the solution tracked from pulling this data from, you know, speaking to multiple clients and from those experiences, because we don't have the solution tracked, then we know exactly how to solve this person's problem based on the very first thing that they're saying. And it means that we can just alleviate so much stress much, much more quickly.
[00:23:16] Yeah. I like when I like, you know, looking for the patterns in the data, you know, figure out what is the common, what is the repeating, what is the repetition that I'm seeing here that indicate something indicates a commonality, you know, and then kind of doing this kind of emotion mapping, you know, what's what's driving, what are the activities and events that are driving these emotions?
[00:23:35] What can we do to solve these and address them and then kind of developing a strategy around that make sense. Talk to me.
[00:23:41] You know, in terms of the clients you work with, it's something that I see a lot is, you know, as a company grows and scales and the founder kind of moves into more of a CEO position, they're starting to bring in other folks, other experts, both in kind of leadership and skill sets and expertise home, because how have you worked with folks or how do you advise folks on the difference between bringing in, you know, making a full time hire for someone to focus on marketing and strategy in this way versus using consultants outside resources, either, you know, agency or independent consultants? What's what's kind of the process or the decision making that you would suggest a leader does to help figure out how they should go about getting getting this expertise, either on a full time basis, you know, full time hire or through third parties. What do you recommend?
[00:24:27] Right. So I'll say one of the first things that happens. One of the first problems that I think that a lot of founders experience here is that a lot of times they their company is growing and scaling and they're realizing like, OK, we need to start having control over the conversation and having control over the content that's kind of put out there. And so we need to just get somebody on board to start guiding things. And so they will just hire someone, they'll hire a consultant, they'll hire clever, you know. And what ends up happening is a lot of times the founder or the founding team doesn't necessarily know how to actually communicate with their needs are and they don't actually know how to communicate exactly what it is that they want put out into the world. They just expect the marketing percent to just snap their fingers and magically they know that would be nice.
[00:25:10] I know. Right.
[00:25:12] And Michael Gerber actually talks about this also in in his book, The IMF. So a lot of times what? Happening and this is where scaling comes on four continents, something that I love doing so. A lot of times what ends up happening is you get somebody in and then you expect them to read your mind. And then all of a sudden in like six months go by and you're like, I don't understand what is going on. And this wasn't the direction that I wanted it. And I don't know how we got here. And also everything that this marketing person has done is wrong. And it's not even I don't feel like it's even usable now. The real problem here is that there was from A to see the B was missing. So there there wasn't the adequate communication to actually give good direction. So the first thing that any company needs to do, no matter what it is. Get a really good definition of what your marketing needs to accomplish and not in terms of like we need the marketing to sell the product. We need the marketing to help us. No, not in terms of that. In terms of how does the marketing. I really like to think about more as communications and building relationships, which coming from the nonprofit world.
[00:26:18] That's like what my bread and butter is. But it needs to be about how can the marketing help our client to solve even another problem? Which of course you have to get to know them really well to know what all their smaller problems are in order to do right. So. And when I say get to know them also, I do think that that kind of can feel like a vague term. So. So let me define that really quickly. What I mean, it's literally find your ideal client and setup weekly meetings with them where you buy them dinner and get them talking. I mean, like, really fine one person and become their best friend. Get to know them really, really well. So just to make sure that I'm not being vague about that, I mean, to actually pick somebody know and when you have a problem, when you have a question, don't call me your consultant, because I'm going to say, I don't know. I think your colors look nice. That's cool. But my opinion isn't what matters exactly. Like I can't even tell you how many times I get that phone call.
[00:27:12] That is always my answer. I don't know. You need to ask the person who matters. So when it comes to actually building this team that's going to do this, the first thing is you need to to be able to communicate what your needs are. And I know you do that really by building a system, which is what makes your content and your communication actually scalable. From there, the difference between hiring a consultant and hiring a full time team, I really think has to do with kind of what the needs. Gosh, that's that's a super big answer. I will say that for typically for smaller companies that are solving one problem at a time. I think it's fine to to outsource, but you need to be working with the right consultant for you. And the way that you figure out who the right consultant for you is, you create the system and then you get to know them. And you you define what your needs are very clearly from the system that you've created. And then you you will probably have to, frankly, try a couple people out just because that's kind of the way that you learn to make mistakes.
[00:28:16] Right. I mean, I think I think it happens in most service businesses and there's a little bit of an exploration process.
[00:28:20] Right. And then when you get to the point that you are hiring somebody on full time, I think that that's the point probably where you are putting out. I would say that's the point at which you are the one company that I have two companies right now that do have one company that's about to get to the point that they need to hire a full time team. And one company that does have a team, but also is working with me, a company that does have a team. They are bringing in $8 million a year and they have been around for they open. I guess their product started in nineteen eighty one and they brought on a full time team at the point honestly where they it took them being acquired to bring on a full time team. People were hired by a conglomerate company. And since then bringing on that team has resulted in like two hundred like two hundred extra. They're, they're qualified leads. You know the other company. They are bringing on a team because they are releasing their first set of digital products and they've been around for about 11 years at this point. This is the first time they're building marketing department where do and together and they are releasing their first digital product. And they're no longer you know what this is? This is a good way to define it. It's at the point where word of mouth is no longer the only thing that's going to be working for you.
[00:29:40] Yeah, yeah. They kind of grow referral, just natural referral process. They need something.
[00:29:46] I would say for both of those companies, actually, that's exactly what it was. You know, they and they're both tech companies. One is a database software company. The other one is creating digital products for poor teachers around the world. Around the world. They're a global company. They're both global companies, actually.
[00:30:01] Yeah, I think that makes sense is like when you kind of need to gear up the marketing effort, you know, you've got a process or you're building a process, you can start to move something else.
[00:30:10] But I think earlier stage, you know, acquiring kind of the expertise and the talent through, you know, third party consultants or a consulting agency, as you know. A more viable strategy both in terms of budget, in terms of time. One other kind of topic I wanted to sneak in here in terms of things I think are important for thought leadership and helping companies that are particular on the service side is this whole kind of scaling content and the kind of repurposing content. You know, we spoke a little bit about this, but the the ability or the strategy of, you know, you don't you don't use a piece of content or an idea once. Talk to me about how how you kind of approach this. And what are some strategies you use to help use content in multiple ways, multiple channels, multiple platforms. Talk to us about that.
[00:30:50] So ultimately, when it comes to marketing, being able to scale your marketing is incredibly important because really especially and this is something especially for funded companies that I really think about because it allows you to have control over the conversation. And a lot of times and it allows you to bring out your best points and it allows you to help your customers even more than you can with just your products. Like that is the importance of scaling everything. And so that's where content comes in. And content is is a very strong way that you can provide more assistance to your customers or to your leads or, you know, to the entire market as well. So one of the ways that I do this is I have created a system where and this is actually something that I have as a free downloadable on my website. So anybody is open to receiving copies of this system. You start out with the content that you built. I really suggest that you do at least one piece of strong content every week. So that's one blog post, one you know, one video blog, anything like that. So you start off with that. And then I go through a set of questions. There are nine questions for each piece of content that ask you things like what is the most important take away from this? What what are the top three things that your customer is going to have help with? As a result of this, what's something fun about this? What's something that's going to catch somebody's attention? So we write all these these different answers and then from there it automatically funnels.
[00:32:15] And this is in exile because I do everything I possibly can about being a systems person. I love automation. So you you answer all these questions and it funnels through and it allows you to redefine each answer for the different platforms that you're on. So on LinkedIn, for example, I want you to have nine different posts that you can use for each piece of content on LinkedIn. And I don't want it to be hard for you to figure out how to say it. So that's where this comes in. You have these questions and you make sure to edit it for LinkedIn. So you've got, you know, any tags or anything else that's important in there. And then from there, it automates into a content calendar. You don't you don't even have to do anything. It literally just automates in there for you because the magic of Excel. So, you know, those are the kinds of things that I'm doing in order to be able to scale your scale, your content, just creating really simple automation strategies to make it easier to share things. Because ultimately, if the point is getting out there to help people more, I want you to be able to do it as much as possible. And so if I can make that easier for you, I'm going to do it.
[00:33:19] And I think that that's a key point for people that are trying to figure out how to kind of amp up their marketing is. I think they get very caught up in, oh, it's going to create lots of new original content. And, you know, the fact is, is, you know, a handful of good content pieces can be used in so many different ways without without having to create new content. You just repurpose that and find out new formats, you know, snippets, ways of getting it out there.
[00:33:42] You know, I think people underestimate the ability to do that or they assume that they've got to create more content than they really do.
[00:33:48] It's really about remarketing, going to get out there for a million different things that we could even like go into from here. But again, for the sake of time or not, you know, we could be talking about the importance of SEO just on this one thing. There are millions different things that I can give you for SEO, which, by the way, if anybody is interested in, I will say this. I'm a certified SEO expert. I want to make it very clear that I believe that a lot of SEO companies that are out there are making SVO seem much more complicated than it really is, because that is how you pay them a lot of expenses. I totally get it. But at the same time, I really think it's important for everybody who is hiring and SEO expert to understand the fundamentals so that they really don't get taken advantage of, because I do think it's one of those places where it's easy to have that happen. So I highly recommend Mozz has a free course on udemy, I think. And I'm my certified, so I give them the gold star. I think they're great that it's a free course. You can take it. It will take up a lot of your time, which sucks. But just having a baseline understanding, I think when you're hiring an expert is is very important. So something that I highly recommend.
[00:34:58] I'm a big advocate of udemy and getting educated yourself a little bit before you dig into these things.
[00:35:03] Oh yeah. There have been great. We're going to we're going to have time here. If people want to find out more information about you, about the work that you do. What's the best way to get that information?
[00:35:11] Yes, I am online at. So I think, oh, dot com, if you want to read more about some of the things that I've been talking about. Here I have an active cow on medium that I definitely post to and I am very interested in sharing information. I'm not going to like cloud anything up. So I mean, this the kinds of strategies that we're even talking about on this podcast today I totally write about on there and I even have like the sections that I use for my excel sheets. I publish those on media because I really do want you to be able to have as much information as possible. And then I'm also going to have access to the spreadsheet that we were just talking about for the scaling up services audience. So if you want to check that out, it's going to be. SewEthico.com slash scaling up services.
[00:35:55] Awesome. I will put the links for all those in the shownotes, to be able to click through and get that. This has been a pleasure. Thank you so much for taking time. Great conversation. I think that, you know, this this is something that service based businesses often struggle with. I think they don't have to do it because we've covered a lot. I would encourage people to check out the links and look at how you can really be more strategic about that. So thank you again for taking the time. It's really been a pleasure.
[00:36:21] You've been listening to Scaling up Services with Business Coach, Bruce Eckfeldt. To find a full list of podcast episodes, download the tools and worksheets and access other great content, visit the website at scalingupservices.com and don’t forget to sign up for the free newsletter at scalingupservices.com/newsletter.