Blaze Your Own Trail - An Early Lesson That Changed Everything With Kristin Zhivago

Episode Date: April 23, 2022

Kristin Zhivago is the president of Zhivago Partners, a digital marketing management company that serves both B2B and B2C clients in a variety of industries. Her digital agency is comprised of a core infrastructure team, and a variety of specialists in the various digital methods and media. Zhivago’s career began in the high-tech industry; she and her husband, through their high-tech agency, helped introduce and market all of the technologies we take for granted today. When the web emerged as a commercial medium, she branched out into other industries and re-invented herself to become a revenue coach, helping CEOs and entrepreneurs sell the way her customers want to buy.  Her 5-star book, Roadmap to Revenue: How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy was chosen by Forbes as one of the top sales and marketing books. Zhivago speaks frequently on the subject of the customer’s buying process, which she was one of the first to identify as being key to selling to today’s customers, and about building your business to compete effectively in our fast-changing, hyper-competitive markets. In this episode we discuss: Kristin's upbringing An early lesson in sales Going to school for music What gift her brother gave her  And much more! Connect with Kristin: Website: https://zhivagopartners.com/ Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristinzhivago/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ZhivagoPartners/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/KristinZhivago Thanks for listening! We hope you enjoyed this episode! Connect with Jordan: LinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordanjmendoza/⁠ Instagram: ⁠https://www.instagram.com/therealjordanjmendoza/⁠ Clapper: ⁠https://clapper.vip/jordanjmendoza⁠ Join my Facebook Group: ⁠https://www.facebook.com/groups/linkedintrailblazers⁠ Website: ⁠https://www.blazeyourowntrailconsulting.com Installing strategic sales systems & processes will stop the constant revenue rollercoaster you might be facing which is attainable through our 6 Week Blazing Business Revenue Coaching ProgramBook a discovery call with Jordan now to learn more! Are you an entrepreneur?Join my FREE Group Coaching Community where we have live calls, Q&A and more! Our Trailblazer Ecosystem also enables you to network with other entrepreneurs and creator hub eliminates multiple subscriptions and logins creating a one stop shop to take action!Use code: FOUNDING100 for 12 months access FREE and Founding pricing for life! (While Supplies Last)Join now! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

I had a total of 11 jobs between the age of 11 and 17, just trying to help and support my mom. When I gave away my ATS resume template, I used to charge $3,000 for it. If I were someone that wanted to work with you, I think the thing that would resonate with me the most is a fact that you have been as far as they will fall. I gave her all my videos, and today she's a message saying I got my first client, and I could not be happier for her. On my show, one thing I love to do is really get context into people's journey. I saw eggs and I saw vegetables door to door. I saw newspapers. I do it because they truly care to help.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail Podcast. I'm your host, Jordan Mendoza. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Blaze Your Own Trail Podcast. My name is Jordan Mendoza. I'm your host. And I've got a very special guest today. Her name is Christian Javago. And I'm going to have her tell you a little bit about who she is and what she does today.

So I am the founder and president of Chivago Partners, which is a digital marketing management company. So we basically run digital marketing for our clients, mostly mid-sized businesses, mostly established businesses. I spent years and years and years in Silicon Valley and I sort of burned out on startups. So I'm happy to just work with companies that are doing a great job and have a great product or service, but they're really stuck on the digital marketing side. And I'm helping them with that. Before that, I was a revenue coach for decades to CEOs and entrepreneurs, mostly in tech companies,

although when the web came out in 94, I started branching out to other types of companies as well. And my main goal was to teach CEOs and entrepreneurs how to sell more by understanding what their customers wanted to buy from them and how they wanted to buy it. So I've written a book called Roadmap to Revenue, How to Sell the Way Your Customers Want to Buy, which spells out exactly how you figure out what they want to buy

and how they want to buy it and how to make that work. Prior to that, my husband and I ran an advertising agency back in the day when those were the big thing in Silicon Valley. And then he retired when he was 52, and I went on to do the revenue coach work. Awesome, awesome. Thank you for sharing that context. And, you know, one of my favorite parts of the show, Kristen,

is really diving into my guest's journey. So we're going to rewind. And I would love, if you could share with the audience, you know, where were you born and raised? And if you can, you know, let's talk about really the formative years elementary up through high school and get a sense of what kind of kids you were, what types of things you were in, what type of hobbies. Did you play any sports?

I'd love to get that context. I was born in Stanford, Connecticut. And my dad was a dance teacher who was on Ed Sullivan, to taught ballroom dance to kids, mostly, 3,000 kids a year. And my mother was a performer slash artist. They divorced when I was a month old. And my mother moved to the West Coast. My brother, I had one older brother.

My dad married our babysitter and was married to her for 50 years, very happily. They had five kids, or four kids, rather. And then my mother remarried when I was eight and had three kids. And the first was autistic. That's Michael. And I'm his conservator now, and I love him like crazy. We're very close. He lives in California still. He's the one who taught me empathy at a very young age because he couldn't really communicate what he wanted, but he was very adamant about what he wanted. So for everybody's sake, you had to figure it out. And I really got good at figuring out what he needed. And it was just,

I mean, in a sense, that's what I'm still doing now. A lot of music and performance. forming. I had ended up with a degree in music. But at the same time, I was always selling. I mean, I was selling, believe it or not, rocks to the neighborhood housewives with a red wagon. I would find pretty rocks and go around and sell them. And at the time, I thought I was a good sales lady, but it was just because they were all so nice. You know, they felt sorry for me. And then I was the first woman to sell machine shop tools when I was 17 for a Pratt and Whitney distributor. And I learned the hard way. They just gave me a catalog. I had a mini skirt. You know, they were like, just go in. You're going to get the attention of the people in the shops. And I did, but nobody trained me. They just gave me a

catalog and said, wear a short skirt, you know. And one of the sales calls I made changed my life. This old guy came out with all the other workers. They shut everything down. They came out to see what I was doing. and the old guy said, okay, you're selling machine shop tools. So tell me why your drill bit is better than the one I'm using now. And I couldn't. And I walked out with my tail between my lakes

and I thought, I'm going to learn everything I can about technology and selling. And I've been doing that for the rest of my life. So those were sort of the pivotal moments that said, okay, this is the direction you're going in. And I've been doing that ever since. Yeah, he had a question that you

couldn't answer, right? And so that puts you on the path of figuring everything that you could out about how to make sure you could always answer those questions, which is, which is great. And I love, you know, those early lessons, especially from the sales world. I started at 14, you know, going door to door selling newspaper subscriptions. Oh, yes. And much like going business to business, whether it's businesses or houses, man, you've got to be able to think on your feet. You know, you. You know, You've got to be able to come up with a response very quickly. You've got to be ready for anything, you know, because and you've got to have tough skin because half the time you walk in and you're walking right back out because they're saying

no soliciting or, you know, we don't want it or. Yes, get out of your kids. You know, there's all of those different things that you get. So I would love for you to share because I'm sure there's plenty more lessons. So in your earlier days of sales, what are your thinkers, a few foundational things that maybe you did or you picked up in your earlier days of selling, whether that's how to effectively communicate, you know, things like eye contact. What are some, you know, foundational principles you learned back then that you're still teaching and training people to use today?

Yeah, actually, the big aha came for me when I started the ad agency with my husband. He was doing the graphics. He's an engineer too, but he was doing the graphics and I was doing the words and the client contact. And the big, big, big lesson, which is still driving me today. day is when I went in first started talking to the people in the company, they would say at some point, these are the things that are important to our customers. And it was a list of 10 things, whatever. And then I would go out and interview their customers and ask them and find out what was important to them. And the list was always different, okay? Which told me that all the things that the marketing and salespeople were doing were wrong, there was a gap between the

company perception and a customer's perception. So, and honestly, I've been trying to solve that problem and bridge that gap every day since then because it's still there. People assume they don't want to interview their customers. They don't want to find out what they're really thinking. And in my book, I have a chapter dedicated to figuring out, you know, how to get them on the phone, the open-ended questions to ask them, don't bother with surveys because those are your preconceived notions turned into a form. You know, it doesn't work. And then once you have that data, and by the way, you only need to talk to five to seven people of a given type to get the theme. Once you have that theme, and they all almost say the exact same phrase to describe the various

aspects of what they care about and why they bought it and who they think you are and all that stuff. once you have that, it's bankable. I mean, you can go for a whole year or more because the basic reasons that people buy don't change that much. And my sort of secondary big aha is in the last few years, I realize there's something that I'm calling mindset-driven marketing. Their mindset when they set out to buy is the most important thing. It's more important than personas and all the other stuff that people get.

wrapped up in. And the mindset is their desires, their concerns, and their questions. And if you don't address those, I don't care how well you communicate, how shiny your shoes are, how wonderful you are as a person, nothing's going to happen. People will just be polite, say thank you very much, and go back to looking because you haven't solved their problem. So it's their desires, their concerns, and their questions. And your website should be answering all of those things. Love it, love it. Thank you for sharing those nuggets.

So let's talk a little bit about, you know, those high school years. I know you said that you were performance driven. So did you play any instruments? Were you into dance? Like what side of performance did you get into? Primarily, I was a singer. I was a really good singer. I mean, I could hold the audience in the palm of my hand.

It was wonderful thing. It was a super high. And when you get off the stage, then you have to deal with normal life. So I realized, and I also knew a lot of people in show business because my mother continued there. My dad was always in it. And I really wasn't that excited about the people. They're very narcissistic. And also, if you really are a super success as a singer, you end up singing one song for the rest of your life in Las Vegas.

And it just didn't appeal to me. So I veered towards the selling side of things. But I also played the flute from the time I was eight. I can still play just about anything by ear. I've taken up a small accordion recently, which I enjoy. And I played the guitar. I sang my way through college. That's how I, that was one of the jobs.

I had three jobs and went to college, which is how I got through school. But life really began for me when I was in college. I think high school was more just trying to stay out of trouble because it was really easy to get into trouble in high school. I think everybody can relate to that. Very easy to get in trouble then. So you go to college, you have one job as a performer. You're singing.

So share the other two jobs that you had because, you know, there's going to be people listening to this and they may watch clips of this. And they may have had a job into college. You know, so what was it like, you know, balancing the three. And if you had to do it all over in 2021, how many do you think you can balance knowing what you know now? It's an interesting question. I also worked at a drive-in theater. So the performing was at night, the drive-in theater was at night. On the nights I didn't sing, I was tickets, you know, back in the days when people had

drive-in theaters. That's aging me for sure. But it was in industry and people come watch movies in their cars. And then the other job I had was the same guy who gave me the job selling machine shop tools had a machine shop. He opened up a machine shop. And he was a good entrepreneur. I always respected him.

And I ended up working in the office. You know, I was basically doing. the stuff in the office, the normal administrative, secretarial kind of stuff, you know, back in those days. That's kind of what you did. Even before I started my own company, I'm ashamed to admit, but I had about 27 or 29 jobs. I can't remember my husband has that number in his head, but mostly selling, mostly getting people set up and doing what I needed and then getting bored because I kind of got ahead of myself. And I realized, finally, I'm a consultant. So once I made that switch, then I could work for a lot of companies, and that worked out really well. I get bored really easily.

Thank you for sharing that. And so, you know, all different roles, right? One at the, obviously, singing, it's something that you're passionate about. You had a love for it. You mentioned, you know, being on stage, things like that. The driving, I mean, that was probably just to collect that check, right? Yeah, yeah, it wasn't a very exciting job. And then you had the office side. So it seems to me the office probably gave you the least amount of energy from the other. one's right. I mean, the ticket collecting, you've got that face-to-face communication office, you're kind of in more of that administrative role and you seem a lot more extroverted, I guess, at least from what I've heard. Yeah, but you still lean to learn that stuff.

I mean, honestly, I have very efficient bookkeeping and accounting systems. I can pay people and we do invoicing all that stuff with a minimum of fuss. I'm really It was actually my husband who convinced me of the power of process. Because when we were in ad agency, I used to place like, you know, millions of dollars worth of advertising with the publications within like 20 minutes because I had the equivalent of a spreadsheet and I could see which thing hadn't been done because there was an open square, so to speak. So he made me a process fanatic.

And I'm really big on that. So the administrative stuff was influential in the sense that it taught me how important it is to be well organized and have good systems. That's good. So when you finish college, you have a degree and what was the degree? It was in performing arts or what? No, it was music. I was going to be a teacher. Yeah. That was that was there were no teaching jobs. And I thought, okay, well, I'll just keep selling. Okay. So what was the next, what was the next role in sales after you got your degree? Oh, golly. I can't even remember it so long ago, but I sold a lot of different things. I sold advertising in publications. A lot of the work we did as an agency was for

trade journals in the tech market. We worked pretty much with every major publisher like McGraw-Hill and other companies and just promoting media, understanding it and promoting it. I can't even remember a lot of the jobs I had. Some of them were just working with the CEO and making sure that the company ran successfully in project management and that kind of thing. Okay. So, So kind of a mix, but all through the lens of sales and helping people, you know, solve problems. All right. Awesome. So when did you decide to launch the, the ad agency?

This is really going to date me, 1979. I've been around a long time. That's good. That's good. So I'd love to hear about, you know, what were some of the early goals with it? How long did you guys, did you guys have it? And, you know, what are some of the biggest lessons you learn and that you think maybe help, you along your journey.

That was 12 years. One of the lessons I learned is that if you're going to work with your spouse, you better not argue. You can't meet deadlines and argue at the same time. So we actually became really, really good friends. I don't want to talk about my husband too much because he died three weeks ago yesterday of cancer. So it's been tough, tough battle.

Yeah, he actually shot himself because he was basically dead and he just couldn't stand it anymore. So he did what I think is a very brave thing. But anyway, so we did that. The lessons I was talking about earlier in terms of the gap between the company mindset, people have no idea how terrible that is and how insidious it is, how much it keeps you from making money. If you put on your seller hat and you say, okay, I want to go buy something and I'm getting some physical thing to fit in a physical place. And I need to know the measurements. If you go on even Amazon,

Amazon is like the best question answerer there is. You still can't find measurements sometimes of a physical object. It's like, excuse me, but so the basic questions are not answered. And you know that as a buyer, but you forget it as a seller. You're so wrapped up in your own movie and you know, you know the thing. You live, eat, sleep, and breathe it. And you just forget about the basics. So I learned a lot of those lessons on the advertising.

I also learned how political and I guess argumentative is probably the best word. It is for anybody doing marketing and especially marketing and sales because the salespeople are talking to people all the time, customers all the time and they don't think marketing has a clue. So there's this big gap between those two groups as well. Those were some of the big lessons. And the other big lesson is it's really easy to be taken in by somebody who is super good at selling the client, the company on what they want and get them all excited and spend millions of dollars on campaigns that don't work because it's easy to tell somebody what they want to hear. If you have to come in like I did and come back with the truth of the matter and say, you know what? you think they care about this, they don't care about that,

they care about this, and we need to figure out how to address it. The good news is when you do that, and I think every marketer should do it, you get power that you didn't know existed. Most marketers are just people treat them like dirt. They don't really, everything's subjective, so there's no power.

But if you come back with a report that says, everybody said this, and you summarize it at, explain all this in the book how you do it and you present it to management, suddenly the whole room is living in the customer's head, and you've got one source of truth, and all those arguments go away. It's wonderful stuff. That's great, and those are definitely some really great lessons.

And I would love to find out, you know, what was that next venture? You mentioned you had the ad agency for 12 years, so I'd love to find out, you know, what was that, next venture that you guys decided to become part of? I just reinvented myself. The Mac was coming out. I looked at my husband and said, they're all going to take the easy stuff in-house,

the data sheets and things like that. And that's bread and water work for an agency. And I didn't want to be begging for crumbs at the table. You know, I wanted to make a difference, as people say. So my husband retired. He was an inventor and engineer, and he makes beautiful but functional stuff.

and then I started out being a revenue coach. And I called myself a revenue coach because I knew that CEOs and entrepreneurs didn't care about whether it was marketing or sales. And there were a million marketing and sales consultants out there. If you talk to them about revenue, their ears perk up. That's what they want. They don't care how you get there. That's what they want.

So I created this little mini industry of one person, me, and became a revenue coach. And I have to say for the next two or three years, I often didn't know what I was supposed to be doing when I got up in the morning. It was not established. I was always getting some new kind of project and who knew what it was going to be like. Over the years, it started getting more stable and predictable, let's say. But at the beginning, it was like stepping off a cliff. Talk about reinventing yourself.

That was a very painful period in that sense. I just kept working at it until I started making sense of it. And so from a visibility standpoint, what were some of the things that you did to market this new business, whether it was paid advertising or word of mouth or I'd love for you just to kind of share some of the ways that you decided to try to grow? Well, the first thing was in the ad business, and I don't know if this would help anybody or not, but it's kind of interesting. most of the agencies were selling directly to customers. I didn't do that. I sold the media buyers. In other words,

there are the media reps. The guys that went around and visited all the clients were people who sold advertising for publications. And I really worked hard on developing relationships with them, and they started to respect me. That's one of the reasons I got so many accounts for publications because I was talking to those folks. But they would then refer me.

So I got a lot of referrals. So the idea of finding the partner who's already out there and already talking to your folks, at least trusted enough to be able to recommend somebody because they'll often say, especially for B2B services, every buyer has always told me the same thing for decades, which is the first thing I do is go and talk to my network

when I'm looking for somebody. Yeah, I might go to Google, but my real first thing is, who do you know? So try to find those people and try to work with them somehow and make it easy for them or do whatever they need to help them. So that was how I grew that. And then when I started doing the revenue coach work, it was a matter of just sort of shifting that and they knew me already. I also got lucky in a few cases.

I ended up working for IBM for about 12 years. I rewrote all of the marketing instructions for their content, ended up creating this whole big marketing thing for their partners and interviewed hundreds of their partners. So, you know, once I got into a company, things continued. I had another CEO who brought me into three different companies that he went and worked for. And each time he went, he'd have me come and do a marketing

or sales department turnaround for him. That's great. One good thing leads to the other. Yeah, yeah. so referrals can be huge, right, as long as you're treating your customers right, right? Yeah. You're actually making a difference. So I would love to find out what was your strategy from a value perspective with those guys in the media buying?

So would it be, hey, I've got some tips I'd love to share with you. Like, what were some of the things that you did to kind of get your foot in the door there? Yeah. And I should have mentioned that the other thing I did, and I started this way back in the 80s, is writing content. For one second, it wasn't selling content. I've been giving people marketing advice, written marketing advice, and I now do a lot of podcasts, same thing, trying to help them figure out what they should be doing and explaining these things, these traps that they get into and how to avoid them. My ultimate goal, and by the way, this is the thing that has been driving

me my whole life, is helping other people realize their dreams. people work for me. I feel that way now and all my clients. These are people who are out there trying to do good in the world and I have this one rule. I don't work with jerks. It's a great rule. Absolutely the number one rule. No jerks, no divas. So I work with wonderful people all the time and my whole goal is to help them realize their dreams and it's a lot of fun. So that's what the revenue coach work ended up being overall. That's great. That's awesome. And so I know you did that for for a while and you know work with a lot of different groups of big organizations small organization so i'd love to find out when that next pivot happened and you know when you started

your new agency and then also um when you made that decision that ultimate decision to write the book actually wrote the book in 2011 and i'm proud to say since i just went through the whole audible book process that it's still 100% valid today. I was very careful because I've been in the tech industry so long. I knew what would be out of date and what wouldn't. So I was careful when I wrote it so that it would still be valuable years later. And so far it is. I'm happy about that.

The big thing happened to me as a revenue coach, the thing I was getting discouraged about is that people who had established businesses were, as I mentioned earlier, like deer in the headlights when it came to digital marketing. And to use a colloquial term, they were getting screwed. It was just not a good situation. They would hire somebody to do SEO or social or whatever. And they'd spent all kinds of money. Nothing would happen. They wouldn't get any leads. And they just kept doing that over and over trying a different channel each time. And I just thought this is not good. This is not the way to run the railroad. So I actually went into business with one of my clients and we did an

agency for a couple of years. He turned out to be not the nicest person. So I ended up saying, okay, I'll take the clients I brought in. I actually left him one big one that I did bring, that I did bring in. But we split up and I started my own agency in July of 2017. And I have to tell you, one of the most gratifying things about running this company is the whole leadership thing and how to be a good leader. And I learned a lot of those lessons doing marketing and sales department turnarounds, but now I'm able to exercise all of it. I have my own team. We have all our own systems. The first thing I did was I hired a core infrastructure manager. I built the systems first. That's so essential and so important. The reason that Jeff Bezos is,

is so rich is because that's what he did. He started with a process, not a product. The books were just secondary. So most people start with a product or an idea. So I'm just having a hell of a time. I'm having more fun working than I ever have because I'm working with nice people. And we do bring in leads for our clients.

We figure out, we find the magic bean. It's always a little different for each client, but we do. And it's just the most gratifying thing. That's great. and you're doing the same thing you've been doing your whole life, right, trying to help solve people's puzzles, you know, which is cool. So talk a little bit about the three things that people are going to get out of the book.

And I know we're going to make sure we get a link to it so that people can access it. But what are, you know, one, two or three things that they're going to take away from the book if they grab a copy of it? I think the first thing is realizing that you, the, minute you become a company owner, you start thinking like a seller and you stop thinking like a buyer. And that is where all the problems start. And when you realize that that's the problem, and you put your buyer's hat on and think, you know what, she's right. I have had trouble buying things. It has been difficult to buy things. It's shockingly difficult to buy things when

you consider how much the seller wants to sell. So that's the first couple of chapters. And then chapter three, I go into absolute depth on how to set up those interviews, prepare the reports, do everything you need to do to get everybody on the same path, and then what you do with the information, how you put it to work. And the last part of the book is dedicated to the four types of buying processes there are in the world.

Light, medium, heavy, and intense scrutiny buying processes. So if it's light, they just see it and buy it, big deal. You aren't going to do a newsletter on how to chew gum. Okay. So it talks about all their questions and their concerns and how you address them. I do that for light, medium, heavy, and intense scrutiny products and services for both B2B and B2C. So it's just, it is literally a roadmap. It tells you how to get there and how to get more revenue by understanding what your customers want to buy from you and how they want to buy it. Love it, love it. And I think that, you know, people that read it are going to get a ton of value out of it.

So, folks, make sure you go to the show notes. You click on the link and check out the book. And, you know, I would love for you to share outside of your book, which we're going to make sure the audience has a resource. Are there, you know, any other books that you can just think of top of mind that have added value to your life that you would also recommend out to the audience? Yeah, good to great is a great book. It's one of the better ones. Simon Sinek, I think, is how you pronounce his name, the book about why. Start with the why. That's good.

I find that the books that look at the big picture and help you change your perspective about how you go out about doing something are the best books. Honestly, I've read hundreds of marketing and sales books. And I've been very disappointed in a lot of them because they start with one idea. and the rest of the book is just a bunch of examples, which doesn't really tell you how to put this to work. When I used to speak all the time prior to COVID and things like that, and you'd go around and speak in person,

I always called some of the people who were coming and asked them what they wanted to get out of it. And they all told me the same thing. I want to be able to take at least one idea and go back to the office and put it to work. So to me, that's what a book should do. It should give you a recipe that you can then put to work and just change what you're doing and make everything better. I love it.

Yeah. And I agree. I think there should always be some type of practical application. Yes. If we're going to consume something, let's consume it. Put it into action and then see what the results are, right? Because then you can actually start to measure things. Yes, that is correct.

your point, you know, getting those systems and processes dialed in first before having the products. That's really great advice as well because if you're not documenting, if you're not, you know, putting people through a workflow where you can essentially duplicate those processes for each person, it's going to come to bite you later. Well, this has been great. It's been very educational and informational as well. I appreciate you sharing some context into your journey. Condolences again. So sorry for the loss of your husband. I'm going to make sure we get all the link to the book and the show notes. Is there any other place that we can send our listeners? Any website you'd love to send them to? Yeah, Javagopartners.com has a blog and other resources.

There's a couple of guides in there. There's a guide to mindset driven marketing and a number of podcasts that I've also done. Very good. Well, thank you so much for coming on the show. And I know we're going to continue to see you blazing your own trail. Thank you. It was very good. You were a good interviewer. Thank you.