Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, I'm Jeremy Rivera, your unscripted podcast host. I'm here with Lorraine Ball, and she's going to introduce herself, and we'll get into her history and learn some more about her and what she do.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Hey, Jeremy, thank you so much for the invite. Today I'm the host of More Than a Few Words. It's a marketing podcast. I'm celebrating 15 years, and I'm still doing it, having fun.
Did own a marketing company. Sold it a few years ago, and now I do a little bit of consulting, a little teaching, and a lot of podcasting.
[00:00:32] Speaker A: Wow, that's awesome. So what kind of agency was it?
Who were you working with, and what did you learn from that experience?
[00:00:42] Speaker B: So I started the company in 2002, and we started as a traditional marketing company because if you know the history of social media, none of the platforms existed back then. So my world was small business. I worked very heavily in what I would call home services. I come out of the heating and air conditioning business. So roofers, H vac, contractors, plumbers. I understood that market. I understood what it took to generate opportunities for that market. So that. That was really my starting point.
And I did a lot of restaurants, neighborhood businesses, mostly, again, around service. That really was the common thread that ran through everything.
And then along came email marketing. And I went, ooh, this is really good. This really. This could be really good. Because I was sending out thousand, two thousand, three thousand postcards.
[00:01:40] Speaker A: Wow.
[00:01:41] Speaker B: And, you know, I mean, for my clients. Because that's what you did.
[00:01:44] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
[00:01:45] Speaker B: We were doing inserts in those neighborhood mails, and we were designing. Designing really cute ones that would stand out. I'm like, you know, email.
[00:01:55] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:01:55] Speaker B: So I did that. And then we started seeing rumbles with social media and put, you know, as soon as businesses were invited to play, we put our toe in the water, built some expertise, and turned around one day and realized I had a digital agency. And I did that for 19 years.
Stayed pretty consistent with the kind of companies that we worked for. Built a lot of websites, did a lot of content, and sold the business in 21.
[00:02:27] Speaker A: Up to how many people did you have eventually in your agency? How large did you scale it up?
[00:02:33] Speaker B: We got to 10 people. And I actually made a conscious decision. This was a business decision.
When we started looking at do we grow?
And I recognized having come out of a manufacturing environment, you understand capacity, and as long as your sales are right below your capacity line, that's great. But if you invest in more capacity now, if you have one more sale above that line, you kind of figure out how to get it in. But now you've got to sell a lot more to support that new capacity.
So instead of increasing our size, I raised our prices every time we got to that capacity line. What I made sure of as I added people to the company, did I have our skill sets covered. So I had a long form content, I had a short form content, I had a graphic designer, I had project manager, I had my bases covered, didn't have a lot of duplication. Then I started cross training my people and then I made the second decision that locked us into that size. I owned the building that I ran the business out of. It was a small house.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:03:49] Speaker B: And I could either A, renovate it or B, sell it and move into a bigger facility. And I chose to renovate and created a little bit more room, but basically locked us into a footprint. And, and so that was a very deliberate choice.
I was not going to get to 100 people.
Did not want to, but I could make more money with the same number of headaches if I just kept raising my prices.
[00:04:16] Speaker A: No, I think that's smart because I've worked in different environments. I worked at several different size agencies and agencies with different mindsets as far as, you know, oh, hey, we're growing the team and we're adding these salespeople and we've got these new. And you're right, there is a heartbeat to the company. And if you want to increase that, you know, you increase that capacity, you're also raising your stakes that you have to raise your sales levels to that goal. But you also, you know, there is a trade off of like you step away from being a lifestyle company when you're in that ski that level of pursuit. And I've also seen like the big fish syndrome of like a salesperson will hook a huge lead that's, you know, 2x3x5x10x beyond the existing capacity of your agency. And you know, I was with one agency and literally a notorious job posting site who won't be named due to NDA, but they're very well known and they wanted like a million dollars worth of content every month and they took it on and had to hire a whole fleet of people and third party and you know, set up internal structures.
Well, you know, things change. You know, AI starts to look pretty good to somebody that's spending that much and suddenly, oh, hey, we're going to scale back 5%. Oh, we're going to scale back 10%. Oh, you know, this month we're going to drop the European section. And then we're. The agency is left with all of this extra capacity and nobody left to fulfill it. You know, you get it.
If you get a ride with a whale instead of a fleet of fish, then if the whale goes down, you're going down.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: Well, and I came out of corporate, and I came out of a. The company I came out of was at the time the fourth largest bankruptcy in America. And in that process, one of the things that I saw happen was we had a really great advertising agency, very talented, two offices, but we were 90% of their business.
And so when we pulled back, they were gone.
Leaving there and opening up the agency, I made a decision.
No client would ever represent more than 30% of my business, ever. I mean, so if somebody came along and they were that big, I had to make a decision.
Was it worth it? Was it worth the risk? And it really wasn't. It just also, because they would require me to change everything about the business. And that was one of the things I. When I walked away from corporate and could have. You know, there were lots of things I could have done. And I decided I was going to do this, I was going to do it my way. And, you know, I mean, could I have made more money if I had stayed in corporate? Yeah. Would I have a lot less hair or would it be a lot grayer than it is right now?
Yeah. You know, and the beautiful thing was that when you start growing like that, you have to change your systems, you have to change your processes. There were things that we were known for that endeared us to our customers, that built a reputation in the marketplace. For example, in our building, phones rang once. Every phone call was answered on the first ring. And it was for new employees that that was the challenge. Could they get to the phone before one of the senior people? And the idea was whoever answered the phone, me included, didn't just take a message, would try to address the issue, and mostly could because we were small enough. Even if you weren't on the Joe's butcher shop account, you knew enough about it. When the cut. When Joe called and said, hey, I've got a new ad. And they could be like, okay, you know, Sam normally handles your account. He's not here right now. Tell me what the ads got to be about. I'll get to Leah on the phone. We'll figure it out. And. And go.
And it would stun people when the phone would ring and I would answer it because I have this voice that I guess sounds like voicemail. Hi, this is Lorraine, can I help you?
They would, they would pause for a minute or I do the thanks for calling round peg. This is Lorraine, can I help you? And they would be like.
And I'd be like, hello? And they're like, oh my God, you're a real person. Yes, yes, I am. Not only did we win sales that way and hold on to customers and we, you know, customers come and go, that's the nature of that business. But I had long term clients. I had a flooring company that was with me 11 years. I had Randall Beans, they were with me for about 10. That was fairly typical because we had those personal connections.
The other thing that we had was if you've ever tried to build relationships with local media, they're always working against a deadline on Friday afternoon.
[00:09:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:09:44] Speaker B: And we were the only agency that would answer a phone on Friday afternoon. Normally it was just me. The team was gone. I did bookkeeping Friday afternoon because I really figured that most people only needed to work until noon on Fridays.
[00:09:56] Speaker A: I personally agree, definitely.
I love that mentality too because so many businesses get caught up in these internal cycles of like, oh, I need to get every second out of my employees, I need to get every ounce of my clients. And you know, I've been in that situation, you know that I work for a website hosting company. It's where I started in digital marketing really. And we, when we started, we had a policy of, hey, if you pick up the phone, you stay with them for as long as they need you. Even if you're moving over a logo half an inch. And you got to refactor all of the tables because everything was in like this, like templates now for WordPress are magical in comparison. I'm thinking back, like, this was like a nested table with 37 rows to get the logo there. And like, can we move the logo over five, like to the middle of the screen? Like, yes, you'll have to stay on hold, but I'll do it. So we would do it, but we got a reputation in the market. And then we got bought up by Dominion Enterprises who thought that 2% raise annually is generous and then you have to wait six weeks for approval to get that, that raise.
Yeah, they started shipping away pieces and, you know, that policy went away, this went away. And, you know, eventually they outsourced us to another one of the other three companies they had bought to corner the market and they just ended up losing the market share of all three of them because their customer service sucked. Like, their Entire mentality just like sucked the joy out of being there, sucked the joy out of helping people and just drove customers away again and again and again.
[00:11:49] Speaker B: Yeah, a lot of times in acquisitions, companies do not look at what really makes the company that they're buying special.
I mean, you know, I mentioned I sold my agency and it's really unfortunate. But the guys that bought us, it's not that they had a bad business. They really didn't understand our model. They just assumed we were selling web services, they were selling web services that our clients would happily move into their system. We were doing content, they were doing content and they really didn't understand the personal touch that was what made our relationships and our long term relationships with those companies last. So they ended up losing most of the clients, which is really a shame because had they let our entity run the way it had always run, I'm pretty sure it wouldn't have gone that way.
[00:12:41] Speaker A: It's definitely something to look at like from the small business perspective of fostering and making conscious choices as a leader, thinking about that growth scale, like you're going into it, like, why don't you take a minute and think about how do you want your existence to be in the meantime while you grow your business? You could be the mentality of every penny matters. We're going to pinch, we're going to offshore and try to scale as quickly. We're going to get, you know, do cold outreach, you know, like you can extract value quicker.
But you know, like even Amazon now, they've already hired and cycled through most of the workforce in south and southern, the southern parts of America. And now they're facing a crunch of like, you know what, nobody wants to have like a one minute break and they're starting to run out of employees.
[00:13:38] Speaker B: So yeah, you know, again, every business, every business model has pros and cons. As a small business owner, you're never going to be at the Amazon level where you're going to run out of people who will work for you. But you have to decide if you're going to have the attitude of, well, if you don't like it, someone else will take your job and yes, they will, but what does that do to the energy in your company? You know, not only did I have long time customers, I had long time employees. Yes, people came and went, but my graphic designer was with me seven years. My lead web guy was with me seven years. And then the guy that he trained who took over his job was four years until I sold the company. So you Know, there's that consistency.
And I have always believed in the Southwest Airlines model. Hire for attitude, train for skill. Yes, you need to know something about web design.
But my lead web guy who stayed with me seven years had never designed a website when he came to work for me. So you can, you know, now, fortunately, the tools changed. You know, if we were still doing coding, that would never have happened. But we were at this moment where with WordPress, I saw that I could teach anybody who was technically savvy, who was interested in learning, who had an eye for design, how to do that.
[00:15:06] Speaker A: Yeah. And I think that is one of the current challenges in the market. As tools become more capable, the higher the output that skilled hands can make from it.
While most people are looking at it from a perspective of, okay, well, now I can hand it to a total newbie and get the basic stuff done, but the opposite value is what we should be looking at is what can a senior, what can a skilled person potentially do with these new tools and capabilities?
Where have you gone in that world as far as new capabilities?
[00:15:48] Speaker B: I love, I love AI for the basics.
I love that I can upload. I think smart people need to create original content. Okay, let me start there.
But I love that I can take my original content, hand it over to AI and say, turn this into, turn this 10 minute video into five shorts. Take the transcript and give me a summary. But when you write the summary, here's what my voice sounds like and I've already done that work. Make sure it sounds like me.
I love that I can give it. I just did this. I was on five podcasts last month and I pulled snippets from each of the five podcasts. I wrote the first paragraph, gave it to AI and said, turn this into an article. I didn't say, go out and make shit up because it's not really good at that. But here was good original content and I was using the tools to reformat, to recombine, to present in a structure that I could use. Do I still have to read over the content and look for those phrases and expressions? And I'm like, okay, nobody in America uses that phrase. Get rid of that. Yes, but the more you work with the tools, the more it becomes representative of you.
And I've also used it.
I use it for brainstorming.
I'm working with a client right now and I wanted to generate years worth of content topics. Not the top, the content itself.
But I gave the tool. Here's my target customer, here's the business. Give me Some ideas, and it gave me some really good ideas. There were some that are just not plausible. Yeah, there was a lot that really was right.
So I. And that saved me hours.
Hours.
[00:17:48] Speaker A: Yeah.
So you've niched down and you're doing podcasting. It seems like having conversations comes pretty natural to you. So what is your line of attack? What is your process and who you fishing out of the pool to consult with? Because obviously, like, you get to choose, like at this stage. So.
[00:18:12] Speaker B: So the kind of companies that I like working with are organizations that have been in business for a while that have spent money on marketing and are not happy with the results.
What I want to do is go in, audit what they're doing, and give them a plan for where I think they can get better.
I'm no longer interested in doing the execution. I'm happy to audit a website and then help you find a web designer who can take my ideas and turn them into a reality.
I.
One of the things that I found when I was running the agency because I would do a lot of marketing audits back then is most marketing agencies will do an audit, but the funny thing is if their expertise is web design, at the end of the audit, you need a website.
If their expertise is SEO, wow. You know, that's your biggest problem.
I don't have that agenda. Yeah, I, I have no skin in any of the games. You're paying me for the strategy, you're paying me to think through the ideas. I'll do one hour working sessions and I do plan development. And that's.
It's really funny. Right now I'm working with another digital agency and I get paid to work with their team every week. We talk about two or three of the clients and I help them develop the strategies for their clients.
That's fun for me.
[00:19:41] Speaker A: I like teaching the teacher scenarios.
[00:19:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:19:48] Speaker A: That'S awesome.
It's definitely.
I myself have done plenty of SEO audits. And. Yeah, you're right. At the end of the audit, just like you need to do SEO, you need to fix these things.
So having, you know, more of that strategy, higher level, you know, not knowing which path is going to be optimal.
That's legit. Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:20:15] Speaker B: You know, and it's.
It's not for every business because a lot of companies are really not there. They want you to tell them that everything they're doing is right. And yeah, don't pay me, don't pay me to come in and do that.
Everything you're doing may be good. There is always that place where, you know, if you made these adjustments, it would be better.
[00:20:37] Speaker A: That makes sense.
So kind of heading into the home stretch, what is the most actionable thing that you can advise people listening to this podcast to do? Now, most people listening to this either are SEOs or they're small business owners, or they're at least aware of digital marketing in some way. Like they're, that's probably why they're listening. So with that context, what is your most actionable golden rule or piece of advice?
[00:21:14] Speaker B: So it's a little bit long. Bear with me just a sec.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Bear away.
[00:21:18] Speaker B: So the, the advice is actually answer the questions. That's, that's the advice. Now how do you do that in order? If you want to win SEO, if you want to win sales, if you want to get noticed on social media, if you want to be stand out in a crowd at a networking event, all of those things really rely on one thing, your ability to answer the questions that your ideal client has. Now, if you don't know who your ideal client is, then that's where you need to start. Okay, you need to get really specific on who is your ideal client. And it's not everybody. And it's not even all women age 20 to 35. I just did an exercise with my class, I teach class, local university and my students and I gave them five pictures of five women who were all in that age range. But each photograph was so different. One was a mom, one was a woman working at a Starbucks, one was obviously a student, one was at an office. I said, each of those women is 25 to 30. Now, yeah, there are some products they will all buy, but there are a ton of products that only a small group of those women care about. And when you define your ideal client, you got to really niche down. Now you know who your customer is. Now you got to start working on what are the questions that they really want the answers to. When you figure that out, you write content for your website. Hello, SEO people, don't worry about keywords, worry about answers. When you do that on social media, you get engagement because that's what people are looking for. Nobody is looking for long plus pigeon plus cage. You know, they're like, I got pigeons in my roof. How do I get rid of them? And you got to have the answers. And there's all sorts of ways you can do that. But at the end of the day, doesn't matter how much traffic you drive to your website, doesn't matter how many phone calls you get off your lead generation tools. If you can't answer the questions, you aren't going to make the sale.
[00:23:25] Speaker A: That's super legit. I love that.
Just share where you're at. The name of your podcast, Plug anything you like. That's your stage.
[00:23:34] Speaker B: So the podcast is more than a few words. It's available wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to reach out to me, find lorraine ball on LinkedIn. That's where I hang out the most. And go to morethanafewords.com there you'll find in our archive hundreds of conversations, workbooks, white papers, and all sorts of tools for small business owners.
[00:23:59] Speaker A: So smooth. So smooth. Thank you so much for your time. This was amazing.
[00:24:04] Speaker B: This was fun. Thank you for the invite.
