EntreLeadership - #112: Mari Smith—Supercharging Your Facebook Marketing

Episode Date: September 14, 2015

We’re talking with one of the world’s leading experts on Facebook marketing, Mari Smith. She’ll discuss how to easily create content and build relationships with customers on the world’s largest platform. You’re going to like it! entreleadership.com/podcast Super Selling Cheat Sheet  Another great episode sponsored by our friends at Infusionsoft. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

helping business leaders grow themselves, their team, and their profits. This is the Entree Leadership podcast. Now here is your host, Ken Coleman. Coming to you from the Music City, this is the podcast of Leaders, by Leaders, and Four Leaders. Thanks for the download. Jam-packed episode. Here's the rundown. We have Coach John Falcons from our On Trade Leadership All Access and webinars here to answer your questions.

you the listener. That's right, your email questions. John will answer those. We also have another monthly tool to give away from you. This is on sales. I'll tell you more about that, but it's free and it's going to help you sell, sell, sell. And then our feature interview is with Christy Wright, one of our Ramsey personalities. You know her well. She sits down with Facebook expert, Mari Smith. Now, Mari Smith is such a big deal that Facebook has hired her to represent them at conferences. She's actually called the Queen of Facebook. So you're going to love that because Facebook is not just so you can see what your old high school pals are up to. It has changed the landscape of business. We'll break that down for you. You don't want to miss that.

And then finally, really excited about this. Eric, the producer and I are going through the entree leadership. This is the number one New York Times bestselling book, Entree leadership. We're going through the book. And we're looking at sections and we're going to give you the audiobook for free. Not all of it, just sections. But we're going to bring that to you over the next who, who, knows how long it takes until we just get tired of it ourselves. But it is the number one New York Times bestselling book. And we're going to give you portions of the audiobook free on this podcast. So there it is an unbelievable podcast. Eric's the producer. Very nice. Nice job, my friend. It's jam-packed. And I want to remind you we're getting unbelievable feedback from you. We love it. We've asked for it.

You're giving it to us. Two ways to give us your feedback. Email podcast at ontreleadership.com. That's podcast at ontrae leadership.com. You can reach out to us on Twitter. That's at Entree Leadership or at Ken Coleman. We love your feedback. Okay, speaking of feedback, we've got a ton of questions in Coach John Falcons folder. So we pulled out a few here, and let's get right to it. Ask the Coach with John Falcons coming to you right now.

In studio with me now, Coach John Falcons. John, how's everything going over here? Good, good. Thanks for having me. I heard from someone that you had a webinar the other day. with over 2,000 people attending. Our webinar's blowing up. Well, we had a ton of people, yeah, register,

and then a ton of folks show up just where we unpacked Dave's playbook how to run a business, and it is getting a lot of traction. All right, so I have to mention how can folks on our podcast who are listening faithfully become a part of the webinar? Yeah, the best way to do that is just sign up for the Entree Leadership newsletter, and we always post stuff about our webinars in there. All right, Coach Falk, his first question is from Steve. Hey, coach, how do I go about

diving in, researching, finding a company like the ones you feature on these podcasts that has tremendous culture and healthy leadership. You know, as I think about that question, Ken, I think we can reverse engineer that. If we look at how we, at Dave's company, find people, 75% are more of the folks that come here are internal referrals. So what that tells us is the people that come here are hanging out with the people that work here. And so if I'm on the other end of that transaction, what I'm doing is I'm taking a look at the folks that I'm hanging out with. If they're high performers, if they're going somewhere in their career, if they're positive people, if they're people that invest in themselves, then I'm interested in where they're working because I want to work with people like that.

And so I'm taking a hard look at the crowd I'm running with and making sure that they're high quality folks. You know, we hear it all the time. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And so that's where I would start. I know that's a little bit different, but I would be careful about who I hang around with and then start paying attention to what they're doing and who they're working for. All right, John, next question is from Travis. This is really interesting. I like this question.

Does anger or frustration at work show those around you that you care? Maybe another way to ask the question is, can a positive attitude appear lackadaisical or uninvested? Travis is really thinking about this. He is. Is he overthinking? Well, he might be overthinking. And I can almost hear the other side of a conversation that he's had in this deal, right? Because it sounds like somebody has talked to him about his temper at work or something.

And then it sounds like he's viewing other people that aren't like him as laxadaisical. Now, I'm kind of reading between the lines. But maybe that's some of what's going on. So a couple things. Number one, we need to be coachable. We need to be able to receive. input from those around us and do something positive with that. And at the same time, I would say, it's great to be passionate. It's great to be excited. It's great to be highly invested in what you do.

But at the same time, there's a certain set of people's skills, right? That self-awareness and diplomacy help us be effective in getting our point across. It's not, you know, this, it's not enough to be right. If you're going to win with other folks, you've got to get buy-in from them. You've got to relate to them. You've got to connect to them. And you've got to be able to position things so that they understand what you're saying and see the value in what you're saying, not just fly off the handle and let loose a bunch of frustration you have. I love this, John. This is good stuff. These are the kind of things you're discussing with our All-access group real quick. For those who've heard us talk about All- Access or may not have heard anything at all,

give us the 30 second on what All Access is and why there's tremendous value. All Access is our program to help people take what Dave is learned in his business and implement it in a winning way in their business. It is application. It's personalized application of the Entree Leadership Principles. He is coach John Falcons taking us to the old business blackboard in the locker room. Fun to have you here, buddy. We'll see you again soon.

Thanks for having me, Ken. All right, folks, we love giving you free resources. That's why we're here. This podcast is free and the resources we give you on this podcast are free. And this month, we're focusing on sales. My goodness, is there anything more important than sales? At the end of the day, we're all selling something. There's no disputing that.

And so we've got a super selling cheat sheet. That's right. This is a checklist for you and your sales team. It literally walks you through. These are the key things we need to be executing on to sell in a super fashion. It also comes with a disc personality styles cheat sheet. This is huge, by the way, so that you know the type of people you're selling to. Once you know the disc personalities and you really get it, how do you sell and how do you sell to them?

This is just reading people's mail. This is a huge edge when it comes to selling. And then we give you some sample closes. I always love the phrase ABC, always be closing. Well, how do you close and how do you close well? We give you some samples there. So that's all absolutely free. You get it by simply texting the word super sales.

All one word, super sales. If you text super sales to 33444, we will get this to you in a PDF. That's super sales to 33444. For those international audience members who can't text, all you need to do is go to Entreeleadership.com slash podcast. Entreeleadership.com slash podcast. and the link will be in the notes of this particular episode. Our feature conversation this episode is with Mari Smith.

Told you a little bit about her at the top of the podcast, but you need to know how big of a deal this lady is when it comes to what she does in social media. Forbes has called her a top social media power influencer, whatever that means, but that's impressive, nonetheless. And then she's also the author of The New Relationship Marketing, and she's a co-author of Facebook Marketing an hour a day. She gets Facebook.

She really understands how to help you win in Facebook for your business. And so she sat down recently here in studio. She's going to be speaking at Christy Wright's business boutique event that we launched here on this podcast. And so in preparation for that event, she was here in town. And Christy got her in the studio and you're going to love this. Get out the old pen and paper and learn how to win with Facebook for your business. So, Marie, you are known as the Queen of Facebook. You are a social media expert.

You have over 1.3 million followers across your various social channels. You're the author of several books. And Forbes has named you as one of the top social media power influencers in the country. So tell me about how it started, because we know it didn't start there, right? You didn't start on the mountaintop. You talk about in your story of coming to the United States with just 50 pounds to your name. So start there. Tell me a little bit about how you got here and how the stream got started.

Okay, so up into that point, I had never worked for myself. I had been an employee pretty much all of my life. And literally, out of the blue, I got an invitation to come to San Diego. And so 99, yep, January, I got on a plane and I had to get a return ticket because I didn't even have a visa or I didn't even know how it was going to work. I just trusted. I had total faith that I was supposed to go and it was supposed to work out. And I came with two suitcases and it just was incredible with a few short weeks, the amount of people that I met that were able to help me. And ultimately, within six weeks, I met a woman that needed help with her small business and publishing a book and developing an e-commerce website, which was one of the things that I really love to do, is to help people and with the technologies, my loves of relationship and the internet. And at the time, it was still very much new. And that was really some of the first steps that I needed to take in order to start my own business and launch from there. So how did that kind of transfer to now? This is your wheelhouse. I mean, you know this start to finish. So how does you go from there to where you are now in

the area of social media specifically? Well, what's interesting, Christy, is social media kind of fell into my lap. In 2007, I got an invitation to be on a beta test team of a Facebook app. And I was a little bit of a holdout, quite honestly. I was like, oh, gosh, not another online social network thing. What is this? I'm a natural networker. I like to be in person. Do I really need this online site? And I thought, okay, let's go for it. And it was another defining moment in my life. I just, I remember being like just viscerally moved. Something magical is here with this platform, Facebook. And it was, there's the white space and the uniformity of the profiles, how easy it was to reach out and friend people whose books were on my shelf

and whose seminars I went to and whose emails I read and who had long admired. Now they're like my friends and we're chit-chatting away on Facebook. And so then what happened is I really began to develop my expertise in social media and on Facebook, my friends would say to be, gosh, Marie, it's like social media, the industry was made for you. It's like this perfect blend of your love of people and love of technology. And so, gosh, yeah, I just, I've been a raving evangelist for Facebook for, oh gosh, eight years now, yeah. What would you say to maybe some of our listeners that are still kind of holding out? Like, how important is this social media to the success of their business, especially for some of those people that may not see that and they may feel like,

oh, it's one of those next big things that's just going to disappear. How important is it really to their success? Right. Okay. So great question because there are so many people in business that their viewpoint or their perspective of what Facebook is is in relation to maybe their children or their old school friends or something like that. They see pictures of food and cats and dogs and whatever. And silly videos. Silliness. And so it's really hard to connect the dots to translate that and go, well, how an earth could this be used for business? So what's really critical for listeners to know is some stats and facts. 1.4 billion active users are on Facebook, 80% of which access

through their mobile device. So there's this wonderful saying in the social media world that eyeballs are monetizable. You have eyeballs looking at that news feed. Some people like all day every day. On average, people check their Facebook app on their phone 14 times a day. Wow. And so from a business perspective, even though you're reaching people whilst they're engaging with friends and sharing you know, fun content, they are also potential customers, whether you're at B2C or B2B. And so the ads component of Facebook is exceptional. There's no other platform that you can reach such a granular targeted audience, right down to zip code, to age, to likelihood to make a certain purchase, you name it. That data is available to advertisers and it's absolutely possible to get incredible

ROI. I mean, return on investment for me, I've gotten as much as eight times return on investment, put 100 in, get 800 back, you know. So it's just, it's a good. incredible the breadth and depth of the products that Facebook got. When I say products, I mean like the advertising products, whether it was video or images and whatnot. And that's what to most people, if you don't have a presence on Facebook to them, you don't even exist. That's a great point. And you really talk about this whole idea of relationship marketing. And so social media being the platform for this, what are best practices in relationship marketing? You're thinking about the long-term lifetime value of that client, a build-up.

and nurture that relationship and hope to service their needs for a very long time to come. I have people who've been on my email list maybe three years before they eventually made a purchase. Social media really starts with exceptional content. It's quality. It's relevant. It's in a specific niche. It's really it adheres to your own focus so that you can essentially become known as the

go-to expert for fill in the blank. That's a really good tip for your listeners. If they think, well, gosh, you know, I'm kind of a little scattered. I don't know where to go or how to use a social thing. Just pick one area of focus and start sharing content around that by simply being a go-to person for your target demographic that they want to come and learn from you. They'll know, okay, Christy share this. I trust her.

I like her. I know that her filters are good. She has only sharing great content. Therefore, I'm going to want to come, you know, and check your page out regularly. For our listeners that may not even know what that means, let's break it down. again, like, what do you mean by content? Let's give them specific examples of, okay, I'm, I sell used cars. I have a used car lot. What kind of content can I give? You know, give me some examples of how these business owners can actually do that. They've maybe never done it before. And so let's

give them some examples of how to do that. Perfect question. I am meeting and speaking to literally thousands of small business owners across the country. And that is their number one question and their number one challenge. How do I create content? You know, I run a spa or I'm a hairstylist or the cell cars or whatever the case may be. What happens is that we as the business owners, sometimes we can get a little too close to the product or the service and we don't necessarily see, well, gosh, how many more things can I say about this car? But really what you want to do is put the focus on case studies and behind the scenes and stories about how your product or service is actually made and ideally put the spotlight on happy customers and have your audience meet people in your

audience and put the spotlight on them talking on camera or maybe they've written up a blog post and illustrated with photos visual media is always going to get much more reach and shares and engagement so photos videos is exceptionally popular right now on facebook and they just released a new live feature where you can actually stream live from your page it's coming to more pages but that kind of thing where people feel like you're you're bringing them into the fold if you will you're like hey come and peek behind the scenes and this is how we do things here at the office or behind, you know, making a certain product or something like that. And so when it comes to content, really thinking about what is the personality of your brand? What is the story that you're telling? What is

your story? Your personal story? What is the brand story? And what are your customer's stories that other people would find interesting that can then illustrate what it is that your product and service does and how that could help other people. And then what happens, it's very organic. The product or service almost sells itself because it's not about the product or service. You're illustrating and demonstrating stories, like I say, about how it's really working for others. How do you create content that people want to share? So it goes beyond your tribe and your area of influence and it actually spreads to gain more exposure. How do you find what that content is? I analyze Facebook pages all the time. People ask them,

new critique and you look at our page and you know what are we doing wrong and I'll look and I'll see hardly any engagement not that many likes or comments or shares well granted Facebook has reduced the organic reach but nonetheless even with promoted posts even with boosted posts we still want to be able to see some engagement on there and the telling factor is has this post being crafted in a way that makes someone see it in their news feed and feel compelled to share with their audience go, oh my gosh, this is a great piece of content. It's helpful. It's entertaining. It's useful. That kind of thing. I always say, like, if you can make people laugh, cry, or go, aw, then that will go viral. Okay. But also, anything around saving or making money,

around time, and then obviously, like I said earlier, about having your content be tied to a specific niche, being the go-to person for whatever that might be for you. I like to think of my content in three different buckets, actually, Christy. I think this will help your listeners. The first one is entertaining. So it's fun, it's funny. The second is informative or educational. So it's actually vast majority would probably fall into that bucket. The third one is what I call, it has a CTA, a call to action, is go to our website, sign up for this, get this free gift or make a purchase, something like that. The kind of the ideal situation is that you'd have a blend of all three. You're sharing educational, informative content in a fun and playful way, which is on brand, whatever's

on brand for you in a engaging way and that it has a call to action. So if you can include those three components, it really helps. Now, I know you talk about working with businesses and even individuals on Facebook, and I'm sure you run into some fears people have, where they're just kind of scared to put themselves out there, they're not sure how to embrace it. So what are some common fears that you that hold people back and how do you overcome them? What do you do about that? Okay, so probably the number one fear across the board of all businesses, of all sizes and all industries is fear of negative comments. Because back in the day, of course, before everything was all public and social, we all got complaints and negative comments from time to time, unfortunately, it's just part of doing

business. But they're behind the scenes. They're either phone calls or emails. So now it's like, whoa, okay, we've got to deal this out here in public. And I've had a number of, of audiences over the years where people have come up to me and they don't even want to have a presence on Facebook because of that fear. What if people make a negative comment? There's really a powerful way to deal with it. Number one, I would say, first of all, having some guidelines on your page, on your business page, and they've easily put rules up. These are our guidelines. You know, if you're promoting your own business and you're spamming or your whatever, you know, have a real clear criteria about around which you will then, you know, take action.

you're out of here. If you're being hateful, you've got to go. Right. You're teaching people how to treat you, right? I love that. You have the power. It's your page. Yes. You have the power to teach them how to treat you. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Then the second thing is invariably, there's going to come a time where someone just has a gripe. And whether it's something that they're unhappy with, they've made it purchase, whatever. They got stuck somewhere along the line. And they are a prospect or even a current client. You want to be able to take care of that as promptly as possible and as courteously as possible and framing it up and even in your own mind that this is a powerful opportunity to demonstrate exceptional customer service right out there in front of everybody in public going we got this and don't let these kinds of people to take you down and not necessarily

even taking it personally i have the saying that when when emotions go up intelligence goes down so i can testify that it's true in my own life so don't be trying to answer a negative comment when you're all reactionary and going, oh, that, you know what. Emotional. Yeah. So even have somebody else take care of it or just take a deep breath and give it some time and just really try to read between the lines and recognize maybe that person's really had a rough day and they really genuinely need some support right at that moment. Interestingly enough, Christy, Facebook recognizes that there are there are some challenges in handling customer care. And just recently they introduced a new feature where people who comment on your Facebook posts, you can now private message them. Oh, okay.

This is going to really help. I work with several financial industry clients, and they unfortunately tend to get quite a lot of negative comments, insurance, for example, things like that, or in the mortgage world. And they want to be able to take conversations offline as quick as possible before escalates. This is a really good new feature. I love that. That's a great example and an opportunity to really serve your customers well and make a great impression and hopefully build loyalty. Do you see that that kind of translates to building loyalty in your customer base? 100%.

And the beautiful thing is you never know who's watching. Interestingly enough, even Facebook, they cottoned on to this not long ago. One of the many, many changes to the news feed algorithm that picks the stories that you see is how long you tend to hover over a story. You might not click or comment or like or do anything. But if you're kind of paused and hovering over that, then Facebook's like, oh, well, you must like this person or this page. We're going to show you more of it.

So I know for me, I'm extremely careful about what I interact with on Facebook. I'm real careful about what I click, you know, like or share a comment. Do you think other people are? I do. I absolutely believe. So to that point, we're talking about negative comments and handling it positively, you just never know. Somebody might private message you and you go, you know, Christy, I've been following you for six months or whatever the time might be or six years, you know.

I was like, I really loved how you handled that case, blah, blah, blah. But maybe they've never really interacted with you. people just want to be heard. They want to be seen. They want to be heard. They want to know that they matter. They are important in your eyes, whether you're a small company or a major company,

personality or a big brand, that you really genuinely care with a passion about your audience. And interestingly enough, there's a great company called Social Bakers, they're based in Prague in the Czech Republic, they're an social analytics company, and they actually have

some incredible stats that revealed that the United States is one of the lowest in terms of social customer care. Well, that's very pitiful. That makes me sad. Right. Now, listen to this because it's basically, that means the time that businesses are taken to respond, if at all, and the number, something like five out of six questions or comments on social are going ignored.

Brands are ignoring them. But just like we're saying earlier, this is a golden opportunity. Companies of all sizes can rise above all of the noise and become exceptional in the eyes of their audiences by providing exceptional customer service, not going for more and more and more. Let's all we need a bigger audience. We need more likes. No, take care beautifully and amazingly, impeccably of your current audience. And out of that, it will actually grow. You will automatically start getting more shares and people will be wanting to engage with you more when you really take time to.

engage with others. As we wrap up, just a really practical tip. I know many business leaders, they are thinking, I am thinking about my bottom line. I want to close sales. Like, Mari, tell me how I can make some money. So give me just some maybe some best practices to wrap up of how you can turn those clients and those fans and those likes into actual dollars. Are there best practices of what people can do? Beautiful. Okay, so I actually have a real simple three-part model. I've been teaching it for years, it's applicable to whatever social network you choose to use, and it goes like this. So you start with content, all starts with content. And that might be video, written, audio, visual, on your blog, other people's content, as I call OPC, so that big bucket there with different

kinds of content. Next step is engagement. We've talked quite a lot about it on this show here, of making sure people are served, you're engaging, you're interacting. The third component is where people tend to fall down. And they come to me, why? I've been putting, great content out. I'm gauging all the time, but show me the money. You know, where's the profits? Where's the sales? And the third part is what I call conversion. And you've got to be able to convert all that activity into sales. So one of the key tips here in best practice is, first of all, don't be afraid to ask and put calls to actions and put links in your post. You can still share fun and engaging, informative and educational content. And oh, by the way, if you want to

sign up for a newsletter or get this free gift or come to my event or purchase this book or product, here's the link. Additionally, what's so important now to really optimize Facebook in particular, but also Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, all the major sites are offering paid promotion. And Facebook by far is the most targeted traffic that your advertising dollars can buy. So you want to ideally get help with that. It can be a big confusing mess and not knowing where to start and then hitting that boost button and going, oh, Mari, no, I spent $50 on this post and it got nowhere or I didn't make any sales

or I get that all the time. People say, I tried Facebook ads. It didn't work for me. And I'm like, uh-oh. As soon as I hear that, I know they didn't do it right. And it's user error and I want to help them. And so that's the bottom line there. I say, if you think about content, engagement, and conversion,

that's really the master success secret right there. And having all of those. Yes. Yes, exactly. Being able to drive people ultimately to email lead capture, nurturing relationships through email and getting them on to know about your website and offers. That's perfect. And I know that's really applicable to our audience because they're thinking, where's the money?

Show me the money and how do I convert this audience. I'm working so hard to build into dollars. So now you're going to be speaking at our business boutique event coming up this fall, which I'm very excited about. So I'm going to wrap up with a question for you just around women specifically. Give some words of encouragement to women in business, why you love helping them and maybe something that would just encourage them, those that are listening or maybe, you know, men that have wives that are stepping into businesses and give them a little bit of encouragement as we wrap up. well interestingly enough my like my own personal story you'll see that I will often say to people that do not compare the inside of yourself with the outside of others so people might be feeling like that oh that is brilliant right thank you say that one more time I will so one more time slowly I love that so stop comparing the inside of you to the outside of others that's good is what happens is people women they might be having a bit of a down day and they're struggling their business and they just can't quite get it to work and they go on Facebook and they see oh, there's Jane and Mary and Jeannie, and they're all doing amazing.

They've got it all together. Well, maybe they don't. That's just what they're sharing on Facebook. Right. Right. And so what I want to say to people, if they might look at anywhere, they see me online or meet me in person and assume, you know, oh, Marie's just got it all together and she's born with a silver spoon, blah, blah, blah.

But gosh, no, I was painfully shy as a child. I was very soft-spoken. I used to get teased a lot. My dad was a single parent with five girls. I'm second-old as a five girls. and we never had any money. My dad was just always struggling to make ends meet. And I just really took it upon myself.

I left school really young. I went out into the workforce. I had some struggles with debt. Fortunately, I've been debt-free for 16 years now. Yes, that's awesome. And I just really, my relationship to money really had to shift. And it took me a while. I learned a lot of lessons and along the way, just really self-taught.

And I really feel that working with women And leading by example of just being able to be real and to let others know, see the inside of you, to see, to be vulnerable, to be intimate, to share, you know, it's not always perfect, but I do the best I can. And I'm very blessed to have a sunny disposition. I'm very positive and optimistic. And even when things might get me down about, I can turn myself around. And I love to empower women in particular in business to have a similar attitude.

It's a pretty short life. And we've got to enjoy the ride. Yes, I love that. I love hearing just your heart for encouragement because I've been inspired just spending time with you today on the show. But I know our listeners as well. It's just so encouraging, especially hearing from someone so real. So, Mari, thank you so much for being here. I know you're going to be such a blessing at our event in November.

And I'm just thrilled to learn more from you about Facebook and all of the social media platforms that all of us can get better at. So thanks so much for being here. My pleasure. I am thrilled to speak at your event. It's going to be awesome. Thank you. If you'd like to learn more from Mari, you can do that at Mari Smith.com. That's M-A-R-I.

Mari, M-A-R-I-S-M-A-S-M-A-Smith.com. Remember, she will be speaking at Christy Wright's Business Boutique event. That's November 6 and 7. Just go to businessboutique.com or Dave Ramsey.com. Click on the events tab. And by the way, this event is almost sold out. It is flying off the shelf. And Mari will be in Nashville for that event.

Again, it's November 6 and 7. I always learn when I sit down and talk with Jeff Mask from Infusionsoft. We use them. They help Entree leadership win big. We want you to know more about them. But we love giving you value-added content. That's what this is. One question with Jeff Mask from Infusion Soft.

Jeff, systems are so important. But you and Clay preach centralizing a system. So let's break that down very practically. How do you centralize it? What does that look like? And then how do you know that it's working throughout the organization? It's great. Think about your business right now.

Most often, you'll have the following. We found this in consulting with literally hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs over the years. We've learned over and over and over this same problem happens. You've got all kinds of systems. So think about your business. You likely have something that you keep track of your customers, some type of contact management. You likely have something that will capture payments. And as you grow, at first it's okay.

But the larger you get, the more chaotic these systems become, they're disjointed. It's literally like you're trying to duct tape them all together to make it work. If you're nodding your head, you know what I'm talking about. If you spend multiple hours a day trying to help your systems talk to each other to know, wait, who did I market to? Did John Doe get this email marketing? Oh, I can't remember. Oh, because it's in another system. It's just a nightmare.

It weighs so much time. It causes so much more anxiety. And as you grow your business, the more you grow it, the more anxiety that creates. And the more inefficient it is, and you know in the back of your mind, there's got to be a better way. And because we saw that over and over, first in our own business, we thought we've got to solve that. We've got to figure this out. At first it was about saving time when we started this business. But then it became about marketing, about automating your sales and marketing and getting it all centralized into

one core business platform so that you could have peace of mind, so that you could finally get organized, save time, grow your sales instead of just feeling like you're just so close to just tapping out because it's just too chaotic and too crazy. We are big believers in centralizing your systems. Hey listen folks, I've been telling you about the special offer. It is the playbook. It is their customer playbook. Wouldn't you just love to have the other team's place? I mean, wouldn't you? What kind of advantage is that in sports? I'm a sports junkie. Well, that's what InfusionSoft gives you absolutely free. Case studies, playbooks from customers like you that they have engaged with and help win big.

It's absolutely free. All you got to do is go to infusionsoft.com slash entree. Infusionsoft.com slash entree. In less than 30 seconds, fill out some information, and you're going to get the business playbook absolutely free. Do it now. One of the great things I love about being associated with Entree leadership, it's a term that Dave created. Like, that's fun. Like, it doesn't have to show up in Webster's dictionary to be a word.

We know this now, right? I mean, there's all kinds of words that are pop culture words that just come out of nowhere, like selfie, for heaven's sakes. That's not a real word. By the way, for you trivia junkies, I'm told that the actual term selfie originated in Australia. That has absolutely zero value other than maybe it'll help you at a cocktail party. Maybe you'll look like you really know your trivia. But the point remains that when you could create a word that's

Dix like Dave Ramsey did with the term entree leadership. Now it is a number one New York Times bestselling book still sells like hot cakes. It is a top five business podcast, the Entry Leadership podcast. But more importantly, it represents values. It represents a vision. It represents a style. It represents a philosophy of how to lead. And ultimately, I make no apologies here.

The word entree leadership means winning. It simply does. You don't start with a card table and end up where we're at. And by the way, I shouldn't even say end up because we're not even close to finished. And I'm proud to be associated with the word because it's a brand that actually is helping men and women all over the country. And so we thought it would be fun. Eric, the producer and I got the idea. We went to our publishing team here and said, hey, we'd like to pull some of the audiobook of Entree leadership and play portions of it.

They said, go for it. So since we're talking about the idea of creating a word, I'd love for you to hear if you haven't read this, this is going to be a special treat. If you have read it and haven't heard it in a while, you will enjoy this. This is Dave reading from the book, how he came up with the term, Entree Leadership, why he came up with it, and then what does it mean? You're going to really enjoy this. Dave Ramsey reading from his number one New York Times bestselling book, Entree Leadership. Looking out the window of my personal office, I was watching the sun come up. I had come to the office extremely early because I couldn't sleep and I needed some answers.

Our business was officially bigger than me, and it was scaring the crud out of me. I was going to have to add more layers of leadership, which meant I was going to have to relinquish control or not grow. Sounds simple, but I'm a control freak extraordinaire. So turning loose tasks and responsibilities is not easy. tons of books have been written on growing leaders. There are famous leaders in all walks of life whose leadership principles I have learned from. As I sat that first morning trying to find a way to communicate to our next new leaders what we wanted them to do, I thought it might be as simple as

teaching leadership. What is a leader? When I teach this course live, I ask the audience to picture the face of a wonderful leader. Then I asked them to write down the best one-word character qualities these great leaders have. What one word best describes the character of a great leader? When we do this, we always get character qualities like integrity, servant, humble, visionary, decisive, disciplined, passionate, loyal, listener, influential, driven, charismatic. Taken together, this is a good definition of leadership. You must intentionally become more of each of these every day to grow yourself and your business. And to the extent you're not doing that, you're failing as a leader.

As I sat in my office with a sun coming up, writing the first lesson and thinking what to name our little leadership course, I hit a snag. I know that the title is supposed to give an indication of what is in the material. Duh. When I thought about calling this material leadership, I knew that wasn't right, because there is so much more to business than simply leadership and leadership theory. I have sat in management classes and leadership seminars, and for a practitioner, a doer like me, they weren't enough. I learned something. I always do. But those classes were too much about concept for a guy who has stacked his own boxes and answered his own phone. I concluded, I didn't want to grow my business simply with leaders. That was a little too dry, a little too theoretical for an entrepreneur like me. Entrepreneur. Maybe I was trying to grow entrepreneurs. Maybe I wanted a company full of little mini-meas.

After all, when you think of an entrepreneur, what words come to mind to describe that animal? Risk taker, visionary, passionate, driven, work ethic, creative, out of the box, determined, courageous, motivated, learner, maverick. As I thought about what a pure entrepreneur is, I decided in three seconds I didn't want to grow a company full of us. Leading that group would be like hurting cats or trying to nail jello to a tree. I do want the spirit of the entrepreneur woven into our cultural DNA, but a whole building full of us would be a really bad So growing leaders was too refined and calm for me, but growing entrepreneurs was too wild and chaotic for me. So I decided we needed to grow a combination of the two, and thus the entree leader was born.

I want entree leaders who can be passionately serving, mavericks who have integrity, disciplined risk takers, courageous while humble. motivated visionaries, driven while loyal, influential learners. Are you getting the idea? We wanted the personal power of the entrepreneur polished and grown by a desire to be a quality leader. We wanted big leaders who have the passion and push of the entrepreneur. These character qualities are what we look for in potential leaders and what we intentionally build into our team every day to cause us to win. Words matter. When we call someone a team member instead of an employee, it means something. It means you are more than a renegade lone ranger, and it means you are

more than a corporate bureaucrat who treats people like units of production. A leader, according to Webster's Dictionary, is someone who rules, guides, and inspires others. The dictionary says an entrepreneur is someone who organizes, operates, and assumes risk for a venture. The root of the word entrepreneur is a French word, entrepreneur, meaning one who takes a risk. So for our purposes, entree leadership is defined as the process of leading to cause a venture to grow and prosper. Once we had our title and definition, we had to determine the components of our playbook. We began the list what is essential for other new and growing entree leaders to know about starting, operating, and leading a business the way we do. Because we're practitioners, we ended up

addressing mechanical things like accounting and contracts. Because we are very concerned about our culture as well, we needed to explain how a team is grown, motivated, compensated, and unified. Because we are also marketers, we knew we needed to sell some stuff in order for all of us to eat. So our playbook has truly become everything you want to know about building and running a business, but didn't know who to ask. All right, folks, in our last episode, we introduced you to Brian and Shannon Miles from EA Help, and that's a fun story because they are like you. They are true entree leaders. And we told you about their special offer to you. This is so cool. And you can submit for this incredible giveaway, which let me remind you that is one year,

12 months of a virtual executive assistant. That's a $40,000 value. They're giving that away. No strings attached. All you've got to do is submit to win. We're going to take submissions until September 25th. So as you're listening to this, make sure you're looking at your calendar because people listen to podcasts at all different times and places.

One year, that's 12 months of a free EA help executive assistant, virtually. That's somebody here in the United States helping you get to the next level. You can submit all the way up until September 25th. Here's where you'd go. Entreleadership.com slash giveaway. Entreleadership.com slash giveaway. Fill out the form and one of you lucky entree leaders, well, you're going to get an executive virtual assistant from EA help for one year.

That's a $40,000 value. So go right now. Sign up Entreeleadership.com slash giveaway. Man, oh man, I hope your mental bellies are full. because we gave you a lot this episode. It was chock full of leadership goodness. So I want to thank Mari Smith and Chrissy Wright for contributing to a great conversation. As always, we appreciate the good folks at InfusionSoft.

Coach John Falcons, appreciate him coming by as well. On behalf of Eric the producer and our entire team at Entree Leadership, we appreciate you listening so very much. We'll talk with you again very soon.