046 nichole kelly making your social media efforts pay off by EntrepreneursRadioShow

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

EPISODE #46: NICHOLE KELLY On this episode Travis interviews with successful entrepreneur Nichole Kelly. Nichole is the president of Social Media Explorer Digital that specializes in advising companies regarding social media strategies aimed in growing their business in the online world. Nichole provides valuable insight on strategies and common mistakes that companies commit when trying to market their brands online. Also, Travis and Nichole provide priceless lessons on how to funnel potential prospects and turn them into future clients through smart marketing. Common errors by entrepreneurs are highlighted such as relying on one social media strategy to retaining their clients. Nichole provides tips on how to avoid losing these clients and also emphasize the importance of planning for the future of their company.

Nichole Kelly - Making your social media efforts pay off Travis: Hey, it's Travis Lane Jenkins, welcome to episode number 46 of Diamonds in Your Own Backyard, the Entrepreneur's Radio Show, Conversations with High level entrepreneurs that grow your business. Sandra, my co-host is still at Sebring International Raceway in Florida, Sandra, we miss you; get back to us as soon as possible. Before we get started I want to remind you to be sure and stay with us until the very end if you can, I'd like to share a little inspiration with you, and I'll also reveal who I'm going to connect you within the next episode. One quick reminder, if you enjoy these free podcast that we create for you, we would really appreciate it if you'd go to DIYOB.com which is short for Diamonds in your own backyard. So it's DIYOB.com and click on the iTunes icon and then just post a comment and rate the show. This will help us reach, instruct, and inspire more great entrepreneurs just like yourself with each and every guest that we bring on the show. Before I introduce you to our guest today, I want to give her new friends that just started listening to us some perspective for the entrepreneur's radio show with diamonds in your own backyard. Every interview is basically a conversation between four friends, me, Sandra when she's here, you, and, of course, our great guest. Now even though we're talking with some of the brightest, high-level entrepreneurs and brilliant thought leaders around, this is really just as if we're sitting at a table with each other just having a casual conversation. So everyone that we're talking with has found success doing what they teach, and they want to help you by sharing what they've discovered. Normally, the only way to get this level of personal access to so many high level entrepreneurs beyond having your own show is to join a high level mastermind, go to seminars, go to events and just build those relationships over years and spend a fortune in the process. And now with this podcast and this

Page 1 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

platform, I get to share these great people with you to fast-forward your success and your connections that grow your business without of course you spending all the time, money, and effort. Our guest today is Nichole Kelly. Nichole is the president of Social Media Explorer Digital. Her team helps companies figure out where social media fits and then help some execute the strategy. As you know there's lots of social media channels to choose from, so hang-on this conversation can really go any direction. However, always, there'll be lots of value in helping you take your business to that next level. So without further ado, welcome to the show Nichole. Nichole: Thank you so much. Travis: How are you? Nichole: I'm excellent, how are you? Travis: Wonderful, I'm super excited to have you here; I know you're a very busy woman. Before we get into what you guys teach and how you help business owners grow their business, can you give me the back story of what got you here and how it is that you know what you know and do what you do? Nichole: Absolutely. So it's actually a very interesting story, so you can tell me if what direction you want to take this conversation but... Travis: I love interesting stories. Nichole: So I was in corporate marketing for 15 years, I was primarily responsible for running the show, running marketing teams, I was responsible for kind of everything, everything from print advertising to online advertising, to TV, radio, you name it. And so I worked for some interesting organizations, I worked for Sherwin Williams, I worked for a franchise company called Science by Tomorrow, which was very interesting to see a different business model there. I also started my career at the Federal Reserve and Deutsche Bank Alex, Brown. So I had some time in the finance industry and I about--I don't know, 4 years ago I guess, I decided that I wanted to a specialize in social and the reason that I did that is because I really saw what was happening in social and how it applied to business was really interesting to me. And more interesting to me was the fact that everyone said you can't measure it. And coming from Brand Side Marketing and kind of growing up in the board room, I learned how to measure everything, I had to and so I wanted to figure out how to measure this elusive thing we call Social Media and so I started to specialize and I took a role at a company as a Social Media Director. And then I subsequently, it was interesting because I had built a brand for myself, I was known for my brand, everyone knew I talked about measurement, I started getting opportunities to speak all over the country and things were kind of taking off for myself and for the company. And then I was given an ultimatum and told that I could either shut down my social accounts and my blog and all of the things that kind of made my brand what it was or I was going to be fired. Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur‟s Radio Show

Page 2 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

And so, I was 7 and a half months pregnant at that time and as an entrepreneur I said, "You know what...” or I wasn‟t an entrepreneur at that time but I was like, "You know what, maybe I should be an entrepreneur." So I actually said no, and I was terminated and started this company. Travis: Interesting. So they felt like that maybe you were working, you were dividing your attention and so they wanted you to focus solely on their business as oppose to all of this stuff that you had built on your own? Nichole: Yeah. I don't know if it was that, I think it just brings up an interesting for a company. It's a question of brand, right? It starts to become a question of brand and whether or not the company is comfortable having other employees and customers and prospects have a reflection on the brand. And that starts to say, okay well, you know, if you look at social media, showed our corporate account, like should we tell people who's behind the corporate account and should we have people that have personal brands or not. And they think that different companies will have different example or different answers for them, I would say that if I had to make a recommendation for a company that is trying to get into social media and has a budget to hire someone for social media, you will generate success faster if you get someone who has a brand in the space that people know and respect, than a college kid who knows how to tweet. It's the difference between strategy and having relationships that can be leveraged on behalf of your brand, versus writing a really good status update, I think. Travis: So are you giving advice to the entrepreneur or a big corporation or both when you explain that? Nichole: I think it could apply either way. I think for some reason when it comes to social media I think that we all--it's like, "Oh well, you know, my teenage kid knows how to use Facebook so I should hire an intern that's still in college." And I'm not saying that interns don't have a role in what we're doing, I think that interns are great and we certainly work with interns ourselves. I think the question comes down to the business in terms of, if you're running a business or you're a big company and are considering social media. Who is going to understand your business enough and understand this channel that we call social media enough to be able to figure out where it fits into the context of your business. It's not about, "Hey, every company needs to be on Twitter," quite frankly we don't even--there's a lot companies we don't recommend Twitter for it all because most of the conversations around their brand and their industry happen on blogs and forums. And so, does the person that you're putting in-charge of your strategy and that's making decisions on how social media's going to be used in your company. Do they, are they trying to answer with a tactic in a channel like Twitter or they're trying to figure out, "Can we drive business through this channel called social media and what might that look like for our company." Travis: Well. I think what you're describing is taking more of an overall approach of sitting down and coming up with a clear strategy and implementing that strategy through a multiple of ways rather than hiring your nephew that's really good on Facebook, right? I think that's the point. Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur‟s Radio Show

Page 3 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEURâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Nichole: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, absolutely. It's about figuring out what's going to work for your company. And then the people who implement it, it's a different story, right? So you can have lower level employees and you can train them on how to implement something like this. The question is who's making the decision in terms where it fits and how it's going to drive business. Travis: So there's so many different channels of social media. What are your specialties? Because there's so many different directions we could go here. Nichole: Yeah. I would say that our specialty is figuring out how to leverage digital marketing to drive business objectives. Sometimes that involves social media, sometimes it involves things like Twitter and Facebook. More often than not it also, at some level, actually I can say in every case, it always involves content marketing and how content can be used to drive new visits to your website, how you can leverage that through tools like social media channels. But ultimately it comes down to where does digital marketing fit and then does social play a role in that or not. And some of our clients are--we do social media for them and we build social strategies and other clients we build them content, and digital marketing strategies and online advertising strategies. I think it kind of runs the game of the digital space. Travis: Okay. So take me back, what did you say 4 years ago? You said you saw something transitioning with social media, tell me about that. Nichole: Yes. So I think that companies where starting to dip their toe in the water, you were starting to see brands on Twitter. You were starting to see companies start to take LinkedIn more seriously for things like recruiting and sales people were getting on there. What I saw is that there was a big question that needed to be answered and the question was we're trying something new, companies are trying something new. How are we going to know whether or not it works and there was a lot of conversation around? Social media can't be measured or we shouldn't measure social media, which was very mind-boggling to me coming from Brand Site because we measured everything. But it was like people--it was weird for me because I was like, you know, look, social media happens online and inherently, anything that happens online is measurable. It's far more measurable than a TV ad so why are we fighting this and why are we trying not to measure it. And so that's really what I saw, if we start measuring this then we can really make it sing for companies and we can really make it--optimize it to deliver value to the business. If we can't measure it, then really, should we be doing anything that we ultimately can't measure is always my question. And so that's really the opportunity I saw. I said, "You know what, if we can figure out how to measure this and we can figure out how to optimize it to make it work for companies in a way that actually drives the bottom line, then I think it's something super interesting. Travis: Well you know it's funny that you say that, or I guess it's not really funny, it's a common thing that I see. I mentor a lot of businesses and one of the missing elements is tracking. So they don't track

Page 4 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

their lead sources, they don't track their conversion, they don't track their sales, they don't track any of those things and so I try to explain that it's like driving a vehicle without a steering wheel. You don't know what is working, what's not, what to decrease, what to increase and it's all of those other things going on. And that's a critical part of dialling things in so... Now, it's really interesting that you come from the big business corporate side because in my experience, most people that come from that angle do a lot of brand advertising and you don't really--brand advertising is next to impossible to really track. I think it's a form of a scam, that's a harsh word, but it's a form of a scam when you can sell somebody something and they don't know whether it's working or not. So it really surprises me that you have a deep understanding on this considering the background that you come from. Help me understand that or have I just been naive for all these years? Nichole: Well, I remember like when I first started in marketing, it was definitely about, "Hey, we don't want to measure anything because we still want to be able to shoot our commercials in Cabo." And it was more about what can we get away with and executives didn't demand metrics but I really started leading teams through the recession. And when the recession hit I think most companies, big or small, really started to focus on their dollars and their spend a lot more. And I will say I worked for a lot of companies that are considered direct response companies that are very, very bottom line driven and everything is measured on a cost per lead and a cost per customer acquisition, and I think as a result of that it gave me a really good framework for measuring anything and figuring out what the core business objectives were for the company and being able to find a way to measure back to those and so for me I think I've always--I guess I‟m just a nerd, I've always liked measuring things and I've always liked to figure out how technology can solve business problems, and I happen to have a knack for marketing. I guess that's a little bit of an odd answer but I guess that's what I'm going to have to go with. Travis: You know Nichole, it's okay, embrace your nerd. Nichole: Embrace my inner nerd. Travis: Yeah, embrace my inner nerd. You're among friends here. Hey, are you getting weird feedback on your end? Nichole: Yeah, you're kind of cutting in in that a little bit on my end. Travis: Okay, I--let me see if I can-- I hear a slight reverberation, I didn't know if that was affecting you at all. Nichole: I'm not hearing the reverberation but you are kind of cutting in and out a little bit. Travis: Okay. So, I guess that explains why you have that level of clarity because the direct response marketing is the key piece because they track everything. And that's the key to successful business metrics and also marketing metrics as well. So what I hear you saying is rather than telling me a specialty of any one certain social media, it really, you say it's just based on the company and what the

Page 5 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEURâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

needs are. Nichole: Yeah, I think that whatever the business is trying to achieve, I think this is the difference. I think that businesses have problems, they have challenges, right? So we're all in business to do one thing, we're in business to make money. There's a lot of people that'll say, "Hey, the non-profit world isn't trying to make money." But yes, they are, they're trying to generate revenue to support initiatives, and they may not be able to make a profit but every company at the end of the day is in the business to generate revenue, or they shouldn't be in business at all. And so marketing is a tool that we use to be able to generate more revenue, and I don't care if you're responsibility is email marketing, or if your company is looking at online advertising. If we aren't measuring what is working for our company, then we aren't really being good business owners and I hear a lot, "Hey, we don't have time to do that." I don't have time not to, and I'm definitely a small business. I don't have time not to measure what's working for our company because we don't have a lot of time to spare because we have fairly small teams and everybody works really hard and while are growing like wildfire, so I don't have time to waste on not measuring things because I need to know what's working in my business. And from a marketing perspective, when small and mid-sized businesses spend such a small percentage of revenue on marketing, do you really want to leave it up to guessing what is and isn't working and conjecture and emotional feeling someone's working or do you just want to know. I'm like that, I want to know. Travis: Right. Yeah, rather than basing your actions on opinions. That's one of the reasons why I can't follow the political stuff because it's so much demo-gagging, they're really elevating things based on your emotions and nobody's talking about the facts. Nichole: Yeah, exactly. Travis: And in business, I have the benefit of looking at a wide variety of businesses and one of the things that is absent in businesses that have not crossed the chasm and reach the million dollar mark is, is they don't measure those metrics. Nichole: Yeah. Travis: You know, you got to understand those metrics in order to dial it in. Nichole: Yeah, absolutely. Travis: So a question for you, the name of the show is Diamonds in Your Own Backyard which really is kind of a play-off of Acres and Acres of Diamonds were a lot of times in life it seems like you've--things have shifted for the worse and I know that I had a real low point in my life to where I thought it was the end. And I really come to find that it was a paradigm shift of in my life and put me on the best path that I could have ever happened to me. Has there been a shift like that for you that brought you to where you're at today or has it been just a series of smaller things that nudged you to where you are now? Copyright ÂŠ 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneurâ&#x20AC;&#x;s Radio Show

Page 6 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEURâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Nichole: Yeah. My background is--it's kind of strange, I guess. I actually grew up in--my family was very poor when I was growing up and I think that that really drove me to try to provide a better way for my kids and I will say that I have always been--I enjoy my career, I enjoy working, and when I was given that ultimatum at 7 and a half months pregnant, I made us a pretty big deal. I definitely, from a financial perspective, for family, had to make a tough choice. I was going to lose my health insurance. I didn't get a single day of severance pay even though I didn't do anything wrong. I was unemployable. There was no company that was going to come and hire me at 7 and a half month pregnant despite my long track record. That was definitely not an option. So it really kind of forced me to start making some tough decisions for my life about what is it that I really want, and what kind of employee, what kind of business do I want to run and I knew that I was going to have to do consulting or something like that while I was pregnant. But to me it was tough; I started working again after 5 days after having my daughter. I didn't get a maternity leave and thank goodness I have an awesome mother-in-law who came and watched her while I was still working. And I certainly at that point, it was a question of do I want to start a consulting firm or do I want to run a business, and what value can I bring to the business world and I decided that you know what, I want to grow an agency, I want to grow an agency that's different, that serves clients in a way that I always wanted to be served when I was working for companies. And I want all of my employees to be able to work from anywhere. It's not necessarily about being able to work from home, it's about being able to work from anywhere because I really wanted to my life, I wanted to be able to travel and I wanted to be able to enjoy--I work so much and so hard that I wanted to give a little look at beautiful things when I'm working and I've always had this dream of going to Mexico and live in there for 6 months so I can become fluent in Spanish. So I kind of designed the company around, for me to be able to live that life selling, in turn I'm hiring employees that also want to live that lifestyle. Travis: I like it. So that sounds like that was your diamond, the turning point when you lost your job at 7 and half months then? Nichole: Yeah. It was life changing for me. I never thought that I would not be driving to a corporate office every day until I retire, ever, until that happened. Travis: And now how lucky or you had to hit your knot? Nichole: It's so awesome. Look, my husband works in our company now. We both work for the company and that gives us a tremendous amount of flexibility in terms of one of us has to go pick up our daughter or she doesn't have day care that day and we really can structure our lives and our business around the things that are important to us, and I will say it's tough though, as a business owner I definitely, I probably work too much and I work too many hours and all that kind of stuff because we're a growing company. But I love every second of it and I can't even imagine going back to corporate world now.

Page 7 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Travis: That's good stuff. So let's transition. What do you feel like some of the most common problems are, or what to do you see the common problems are with entrepreneurs that are trying to ramp up their success through social media. What's the common things that people are doing that they've just aren't getting it right? Nichole: Content. Travis: Content. Nichole: Companies produce the worst content, it's awful. We try to hide marketing messages in storytelling. It's like we aren't genuine about what we're trying to achieve, we try to put sales copy into a blog post and I just see so much bad content, content that is not interesting or relevant, or good. And we actually have been doing a lot of talking about content here because we produce a lot of content for clients and I just think that we should be throwing away more content. I think our bar for success and our bar for good is way too low. I think if it doesn't really make someone stop and go "Wow, that was the best thing I read all day", it's not good enough to publish. Travis: So do you have a framework for that? Nichole: Well. it's tough, right. Because producing awesome all the time is really tough. I think we look at in terms of--actually, Jason Fowls, my business partner has a really great framework and it is the framework that we use, and he calls it the Holy Smokes Concept. And essentially, if a piece of content or whatever you're doing doesn't leave someone saying, "Holy smokes!” That‟s blank. Whatever blank may be, that's useful, that's awesome, that's amazing, that's incredible, that really helped me. If it doesn't have some kind of a „holy smokes‟ impact on your audience, then it's just not good enough, and I know that with small companies, it's so hard to even justify the budget to get more content. But we have to find a way to do that, and we have to really push envelope in terms of--you don't have to post content every day, post content when you have something awesome to say, and if you do that you're customers and your prospects will start looking forward to your content. Whether it's in social or email or your print ads, whatever your company's doing, if you can't make someone stop and say, "Wow, that is a company I want to do business with.” Then you probably need to re-evaluate how you're doing marketing. Travis: Well, I like the Holy Smokes way of looking at it but that strikes me as a litmus test, right? Nichole: Yeah. Travis: "Hey, this stuff passes our test", but what's the framework? So maybe we drill down to a specific example. How about we take a specific business and draw a parallel to that so that we can give our listeners something to sync or put a handle on, does that make sense? Nichole: Yeah, here's a perfect example, Super Bowl, lights go out, Oreo's. They tweeted a photo of an Oreo that had a little light on it and said you can still dunk in the dark. It's brilliant right? How much Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur‟s Radio Show

Page 8 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

money did they cost them to do that? None. The quickness that they were able to respond and the applicability of that was amazing. And B to C, B to B, it doesn't matter. If you can give your customers the gift of laughter, of useful information, then it makes a difference. And another thing you can think about it would your clients pay for your marketing advice, like would they pay for the content you're putting out in marketing. If they would pay for it, if its valuable for them, if you're putting that much energy into it, then you're doing good marketing. And if they're not willing to pay for it, then you're just marketing, you're not providing value. Travis: Yeah, I agree with you although I think that a lot of people are confused because I see people writing headlines that are maybe more from a place of like "What?", and I think a lot of people think of grabbing headline is some type of salacious and while it can be salacious, you know I found that, or I was taught years ago that a great headline, a great way to figure out whether the headline is valuable or not is if you treated it as if it were an ad and you put a phone number at the end of it, would somebody call it? Nichole: Yeah. Travis: And so, now this is a complete different angle. How does a, say a B to C, local main street business make valuable content that is so compelling. Because I agree with you, if people wouldn't pay for it, they're either paying for it financially or they're paying for it with their time, right? And so I'm not going to invest my time if I don't value what you're putting out there. Nichole: So I think that the biggest advice that I can give a company is to stop thinking about themselves. Stop thinking about what they want to get out of it. I think if you start to look at what is your audience care about. If you're marketing to moms, what do moms care about? Do we care about your baby toy or do we care about taking good care of our kids, and you know what, if you help us provide really good, interesting information that helps us in our relationship with our kids, then we're probably buy your baby toy because you gave us something interesting. And I love this where every company is like, "Oh, sign-up for our newsletter.” When's the last time you signed up for a newsletter? A newsletter is like code for spam, I don't want any newsletter. Travis: Never. Yeah. Nichole: What I want is how are you going to make my life interesting? What good value content are you going to give me? And don't point everything back to your website, you should talk about other people's awesome 80% of the time, and that gives you the right to talk about yourself 20% of the time. Travis: I like that, I definitely--I like everything that you're saying. That stands out to me and I agree with it. I feel like dialogue with companies is less current than it used to be and it's more several brand evangelist, if you will, people that are talking. I don't know, very rarely, I am inspired to tweet to some company name where I'll interact with the person, that may be happens to be the evangelist for that company. What do you think about that? Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur‟s Radio Show

Page 9 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Nichole: I think you have to think about why would someone be reaching out to the company? So if I have a customer service issue, if I have a problem with the company, it's very hard to find the individuals behind the brand because a lot of times they may put in their bio that they work for our company. I'll probably tweet at the company at that point or I'll go to their Facebook page and I'll say, "Hey, I'm having this issue, can you guys help me?" Travis: Yeah, I agree with you there. Nichole: And in that case I'm going to be looking for the company. Travis: I agree with you. Nichole: But if somebody from the company interacts with me in conversation and provides value where they have really good articles and the just share really good stuff, and it makes perk up and say, "Hey, who is that person?" and they happen to work for our company, I respect that a whole lot. Travis: And that's kind of where I come from, that's the school of thought that I come from, is I've got to like what they're talking about and then where they work is a by-product of the process. Nichole: Exactly. Travis: Or what they use a by-product. Nichole: But then if you need something that that company provides and you have a choice between them and their competition, do you go and buy from the person, or you buy from the company that has somebody that you would like and respect or do you buy from the company that has the best deal? Travis: I buy from the person that I like and respect. Nichole: Yeah, me too. We buy it from people; we don't buy it from brands. Travis: Yeah, I will pay more money. I'll pay top dollar for higher perceived value and people that understand me. I have a company that I bought a few trainings from and I sent 4 or 5 messages and never got a response. That I've had a problem, I've submitted a couple of helpdesk tickets and things. And I'm really tempted. We have a couple of Twitter followings or a couple of different one for the company and one personally that we really have quite a large following and I'm tempted to float something out there at Twitter although that doesn't align with my values. It's just after 4 or 5 times of asking for help and you don't get it, you really get frustrated. I see a lot of people doing that, what's your belief on that? Nichole: So I've done it where I've been frustrated and usually if I go to Twitter, it's because I'm looking to get a response and I've already tried somewhere else. It's never my first step but if I don't get a response I will use Twitter and it's interesting, a lot of times that have a much better experience if I do that. Like I've reached out to Comcast a couple of times because I just like 3 times--I remember one time, they were coming to install our cable at our new house and they didn't show up 3 times. I was Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur‟s Radio Show

Page 10 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

pretty upset because at the time I was a corporate employee, I'd taken off of work and the third time you don't show I'm a little upset and I'm going to tell my friends that I'm upset. And you know what, they've responded. They had someone out to my house within like 20 minutes, I don't know what happened, it's the corporate office or the regional office I was dealing with but man that corporate office got involved, I'll tell you, people started jumping. And then they like gave me Showtime and HBO free for a year, like they really tried to make it right and I really, really respected that about them that they tried to make it right. And they've come a long way, their regional offices are much better. But then I had another situation where on behalf of a client I was trying to reach out to a company and get some questions answered because it's a software company and we were--it was Solve 360, they're a small business CRM system and I was reaching out to them on behalf of client, I was doing a client a favor and I called them and their voice mail said basically, most importantly, leave your email address so we can respond to you. And I had a like a really technical question that I couldn't even figure out how to type out because it was an integration question, I want to figure out how to trigger something, and it wasn't in their FAQ, I already looked there, and I was like, "Okay, well, I'm not going to leave my question because I really want them to call me back. Like why do you have a phone number if you're not going to answer the actual phone?" So I didn't leave my question and I said, "I have a question about these integrations", I was trying to figure out if their integration with, I think, Mail Chimp or Constant Contact, one of the email providers, if it would trigger a certain way, like how sales people could move people in and out of those triggers. And so I said, "I have a question about this integration. Can you please call me because it's a pretty specific technical question? I need to talk through with somebody." And I got an email, like a basic email response that sent me to their Help Center. Now I'd already been to their Help Center, and I didn't even tell them what the question was and they didn't ask if they'd address the question, it was like, "Hey, I'm trying to check you off my list." So it was just frustrating. I tweeted out and I said, "Wow, I--", mainly I tweeted because I found it interesting that they had a customer service number and they tell you leave your email address. And I believe that when customers reach out to you, whatever channel they reached out to you on is not about the company, it's about their preferred method of communication. And so I had reached out over the phone because that was my preferred method of communication with them and then they send me an email and they try to force me to respond by email. Travis: Exactly. Nichole: And so I tweeted that I found that interesting. Man, I tell you what, they--it turned into a huge public debacle with that company. Now I didn't engage in this debacle but some of my followers were like, "Wow, that is weird and I can't believe that they did that." And then they jumped on some of my followers and started like really just being really rude and inappropriate. It is absolutely a case study to go down in the history books because the post that was written by Jason Falls, my business partner about that still ranks very highly when you search for them and the comments that ensued, they ended

Page 11 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

up shutting down their Twitter account. I think that they ended up restarting it, but they were just jerks you know, but at the end of the day, they were jerks but it was because the people behind it were jerks. And I've had an exchange with the CEO of the company and they were just jerks and I don't want to do business with companies like that. And they not only lost my client as a client, who still to this day says he really liked their tool but could not work with them after that because I was really trying to help him out, and they switched, and I'm sure there are definitely people in the comments of that thread that said that they didn't use them as the result of that. And I think that companies don't realize that people are watching. That wasn't necessarily about a conversation between me and them; it was about the fact that people were watching the conversation. Travis: Oh yeah, well it's a compounding effect. That's one of the reasons why companies jump on Twitter so quick is its equivalent of getting on a loud speaker inside of a stadium and announcing the problem, right? Nichole: Right, yeah. Travis: And I don't want to be perceived as a jerk and I know dealing with the public can be very tough and so that's why I post a couple of things on Facebook, nobody said anything, crickets you know. I submitted a couple of help tickets, nothing. And then, also, I cancelled my subscription to their email newsletter, and they asked why, may we ask why. And so I left them a detailed message, never heard back. So 5 times, never heard back from them. So I really thought about going on Twitter because I've spent over a thousand bucks with them and can't get them to return the message. So should you tell us who this company was that was not very nice to you? Nichole: Oh. I'll tell you, it's public, it was a company called Solve 360. They're a CRM company, like a small business CRM, and this is what I'll say about that. So, reaching out on Twitter, we have this perception that everybody's watching what we do on Twitter. If you go on Twitter, it's like a megaphone. If you tweet directly at that person and you do at reply to them, the only people who can see that conversation are people who follow you both, so that's different than saying, "Hey everybody, this company sucks" and putting their Twitter handle there. If you're a legitimately trying to get help for an issue you haven't been able to resolve otherwise, I see nothing wrong with politely reaching out and saying, "I'm really struggling here. Can you help me?" Travis: Right. Good point. So what else do you see, what other problems beyond terrible content, what other glaring problems do you see entrepreneurs having? Nichole: Not optimizing the path to conversion. So here's a good example, if you have a blog and or you have a Facebook page, and you expect someone from that blog to then go and figure out what you sell and go look for how to buy your product or service from the blog, and you haven't put a clear cut call to action with a form that someone can fill out to opt in to your emails and a way to trigger the sales process whatever that may be. It's the biggest missed opportunity I've seen. Offering content in

Page 12 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

exchange for contact information helps you build your funnel. So they may not be people who are ready to buy right this second but if you combine that with just a little bit of smart email marketing on the back end of it, you will generate more high funnel leads and I'm not going to pull any punches about that, they are high funnel leads, they aren't ready to buy right now. But if you market to them the right way and you nurture them through the sales process and fill your funnel that way, you can greatly increase the amount of leads you generate online greatly. Travis: Yeah, and correlate that into some math for people because I know what you're talking about, and the numbers are quite impressive. Nichole: Yeah, I mean, we have one case study that I've done as client of ours called Bolero, they're a live chat software company for small and mid-sized businesses and some large enterprises as well. And when we started working with them we created what we call decision making content that directly correlated to the sale and showing that somebody was in the decision making process. And then we also created informational content that was just kind of interesting to the industry. And at the time they were doing online advertising, they were generating a good, solid amount of leads through their website already. And when we started adding that high funnel content, they increased their leads 76% in the first month. Travis: Wow. Nichole: Because it's about capturing, like those people are already on your website. So do you want to get contact information so you at least know who they are and you can follow-up with them and send them other good content, or do you want them to leave and never come back? It was just astounding, 76% in the first month and it's held, we've held at that level and now we're just trying to beat it. Travis: Nichole, I'm going to go with choice number A. Nichole: Yeah. Me too. Travis: Okay. So quality content and then the conversion funnel itself, is that what you're talking about, refining the conversion funnel? Nichole: Yeah, optimize the path to conversion. Travis: Okay. Nichole: If you have a Facebook page and I go to your Facebook page and I see this all the time. I go to your Facebook and I'm like, "Wow, this company is really cool, I wonder what they sell", because a lot of times you can't tell even what they sell. If you think I'm going to go to your info tab and I'm going to click on your website, I'm going to go to your website and spend the time to figure out what your company does, you're wrong. You should have a tab that is dedicated to generating leads for your company that positions what you do, why you do it better, offers a piece of content and has a form that I can fill-out without ever leaving Facebook. Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur‟s Radio Show

Page 13 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEURâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Travis: What if you don't sell anything right away. So let's say that really, you're just providing valuable content and you're building your database, your followers, and you don't really have anything that you want to sell right now? Nichole: That's totally fine. Travis: But you still optimize that funnel process, right? Nichole: Yeah, you're still optimizing the process to collect information. Look, the social media, the online world changes so fast, if we're stupid enough to think that somebody's not going to come and overtake Twitter and Facebook in the next 18 to 24 months, we are preparing ourselves for failure. Don't put all your eggs into that basket and expect them to still be there years from now. You have to get something you own and the only thing that you can transition that too today that you own is their email address, because their email address is a mechanism to reach out to them. Facebook overtook MySpace in a matter of a year; nobody ever thought that was going to happen when MySpace was at the top of their game. So if something like that is a possibility then behoves us to collect contact information so that it if did happen, we could at least communicate out and say, "Hey, we're over here at this new social channel where everybody else is playing. Come follow us over there." Travis: Right. You know Nichole, I think that advice right there is worth its weight in gold, worth this entire call. We've covered a lot of great things but I was speaking with a wonderful woman that has a radio show herself and she had built several thousand followers through a platform something with Yahoo! and they shut it down. Nichole: Yeah. Travis: And she had not set-up an email list or a database and started collecting emails and just was really in trouble. Nichole: Yeah. Travis: New things come and go all the time so that's great advice. Hey we're getting close on time, we have a little bit more time, do you have one other thing that you perceive as low hanging fruit that you find as a common, "Uh-oh" or a mistake with entrepreneurs? Nichole: A mobile version of your website, and not like this 5-page junk that people are putting out there but you should have a website that is built in responsive design that no matter what platform I'm on, if I'm on my tablet or I'm on my phone, or I'm at my desk, I can get to your website and I can actually get the information that I'm looking for. More people are using their mobile devices to make business decisions and buying decisions than ever before and it cost a little money but it is so worth it, like mobile apps, all that kind of stuff, a lot of people say, "Oh you need a mobile app." I'm not a huge proponent of mobile apps except for a very targeted situation but if you build a responsive design it will continue to serve your business for years to come. Copyright ÂŠ 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneurâ&#x20AC;&#x;s Radio Show

Page 14 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Travis: Excellent advice. Let's transition into the lightning round, I sent you 3 questions, so that you could prepare, have a little time to prepare for those 3 questions. Nichole: Yes. Travis: Are you ready to move into the lightning round? Nichole: I am sure, I sure am. Travis: That was a rhetorical question; you're quick on your feet so I know you would be. What book or program made an impact on you related to business that you'd recommend and why? Nichole: I am still a huge fan of Good to Great, it's one that I consistently reread to make sure that we have our fly wheel concept and that we're nailed in on the things that we need to do. I also really like Wind Without Pitching Manifesto, it's called. It's only about hundred pages but it kind of asserts to for our business and the way that we approach clients. It was really transformational for how we do business. Travis: Is Wind Without Pitching, is that something new? Nichole: Barely new, I've recently read it this year; I don't know when it actually came out. It was recommended by a friend to me. Travis: Okay. I haven't heard of that one and I was wondering if that was something new. That is a precursor for whether something's good, one of my favorite book is about 70 years old, so... Nichole: Yeah. Well, and that one is definitely geared towards the service industry. So if you're in the service industry, it was specifically written around advertising agencies but it has a model for how to approach clients and hourly versus project-based billing and stuff like that that really was kind of transformational for us. Travis: Okay. What's one of your favorite tools or pieces of technology that you've recently discovered, if any, that you'd recommend to other business owners and why? Nichole: I have 2. The first is a tool called Decisionaire, and Decisionaire basically allows you to create assessments for clients or for prospects on your site that essentially allows them to use these as tools for lead generators for their business, and it creates like reports on the back end of it. So we're actually using that right combined with a net promoter score to be able to use it for internal reviews of managers. So I like that one. The other one that I just added this to the Social Media Explorer Site in the last week, it's called Lucky Orange, and it does heat mapping and tracking on your website so you can see where people are actually clicking on your page and where they're spending time. And it also allows you to do dynamic surveys so you can always capture one more piece of information from somebody. So if I know your name next I'm going to ask your title, and then the next time you come o our website I'm going to ask what company you work for and it helps us build our database.

Page 15 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Travis: Interesting. How do you spell both of those, if you don't mind. Nichole: So Lucky Orange, L-U-C-K-Y, Orange, O-R-A-N-G-E.com. Decisionaire is, I have to look at this really quick, it's Decisionaire, there it is. D-E-C-I-S-I-O-N-A-I-R-E.com. Travis: Oh okay, A-R-E. Nichole: A-I-R-E Travis: Oh, A-I-R-E. Nichole: Yeah, Decisionaire, with an E. Travis: Okay, alright, that makes sense. Alright, what famous quote, although it doesn't have to be famous. But what quote best summarizes your belief or attitude in business? Nichole: So I like this one, it's, "99% of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses." It's George Washington Carver. I'm a no excuse kind of gal. Travis: I can tell, you're a very a matter of fact, I like it. I'm going to sneak an extra question on you alright? Nichole: Alright. Travis: What do you dream of? Nichole: I dream of being able to travel full time and run my business at the same time. Travis: I have a similar dream. So du habla Español? Nichole: Not yet, I'm close. I spent 5 years learning Spanish and I can't remember hardly any of it. I go to Mexico and they laugh at me but they understand what I'm trying to say. Travis: The submersion technique is the best way. Now I don't know have you stayed in Mexico very long? Nichole: No, I've never spent a significant amount of time there so it's something that I'm looking to do though. Travis: Well you know, it's interesting, I went there and stayed only I think 7 or 9 days or something but the weirdest thing is I used to speak quite a bit of it and day 3, since I was just submerged with people speaking Spanish, I started speaking almost fluent. Nichole: Really? That's amazing. And you got to get off of these American resorts, that's the problem, you go and you go to these resorts and everybody speaks English. You got to get into the actual culture, so that's what I really want to do. Travis: Yeah, and my wife is like, "What's come over you?" and I said, "I don't know." For the first time

Page 16 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

I'm not only speaking a huge amount of Spanish but I'm thinking in Spanish because normally you have to think in English and then flip it over into Spanish, or I do. And it was a first time that I made that shift and it was just a crazy experience. So that's one of the benefits of going there and being submerged around people that want to talk Spanish to you all the time, it's kind of a shift that happens for you. Nichole: Yeah, I'm excited, I want to do it. Travis: Yeah. So listen, how do people connect with you? Nichole: You can go to SocialMediaExplorer.com or I'm on Twitter, it's Nichole Kelly, my mom threw an H in there for some reason. Travis: Yeah, I noticed that. Nichole: It's Nichole. Travis: Nichole. So listen, you've been a wonderful guest, can you hang out with us for a couple more minutes? Nichole: Absolutely. Travis: Okay, great. Now listen, I want to remind you that I'm going to put all the show notes and the links and everything down at the bottom so that you don't have to type these things out yourself, you can just go there, click on them, connect with Nichole. And then just move forward from there, obviously she's brilliant. Nichole: Oh, thank you.

End of Interview Travis: You're welcome. Also, I want to remind you to go to DIYOB.com so that's short for Diamonds In Your Own Backyard, DIYOB.com. Enter your name and we'll send you the 2013 Business Owner's Guide, title From Frustration to $70 million. It's a candid, behind the scenes look at what you need to know to grow your business to incredible levels of success, no matter where you're at in your business or the size that you want to build your business to. What I tell you in that guide is some critical elements to your success that no one's talking about because it's not in their best interest financially. So when you opt-in, you'll become a member of the Authentic Entrepreneur Nation, which is basically a network of people, tools, and resources that you can trust to grow your business. This is our private rolodex for myself and Sandra that we use and we recommend. We'll give you access to that as soon as it goes live. In the next episode, I'm going to connect you with Ingrid Elfver. Ingrid is a celebrity consultant for Copyright © 2012, 2013 The Entrepreneur‟s Radio Show

Page 17 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

Creative Entrepreneurs to build brands with a big impact and personality. So it goes without saying you will definitely want to join us for that one. Today I want to close the show with a quote from Jim Rohn, and the quote reads, "If you don't design your own life plan, chances are you'll fall into someone else's plan." This is Travis Lane Jenkins signing off for now, I want to remind you that what you're contributing as an entrepreneur and a leader really does matter, no matter where you're at in the process. To your success, may you inspire those around you to go after their dreams too. Take care.

Page 18 of 19

THE ENTREPRENEUR’S RADIO SHOW Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs that Grow Your Business

How We Can Help You We know that finding someone that you can trust online today is hard and that so many “so called gurus” are self-‐appointed and have never really even done what they teach you to do. That‟s exactly why we created the Double Your Profits Business Accelerator. This is an exclusive offer for our fans at a fraction of its normal cost. Here's what to expect. We'll Schedule a 'One on One' private session, where we'll take the time to dive deep into your business and tell you what is missing, so that you can have your best year ever! We'll do this by performing a S.W.O.T. Analysis. This tells us your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats within your business. This will be an eye opener for YOU, for several reasons, however some of the most common reasons are. As the 'Business Owner' it‟s difficult to see the big picture of your own business because you‟re in the middle of a daily management. And you are too emotionally involved to completely impartial. This is a common problem for EVERY business owner. It doesn‟t matter if you are a one-man army, or an army of 150, the problem is still the same.

Travis Lane Jenkins Business Mentor-Turn Around Specialist Radio Host of The Entrepreneurs Radio Show “Conversations with Self-made Millionaires and High-level Entrepreneurs That Grow Your Business"

Page 19 of 19