Focus, Strategy and Optimization with Tim Parkin

In this inaugural first episode, Lee interviews Tim Parkin, Global Marketing Consultant of Parkin Consulting. They discuss talk about marketing optimization and focusing your efforts around your strategy. Tim brings a wealth of knowledge from working with enterprise companies around the world.

Contact Tim Here: Website | LinkedIn

Lee Murray (00:00):

Welcome to the inaugural first episode of the exploring growth podcast. I'm so glad you're here today. I'm talking with my friend and colleague global marketing consultant, Tim Parkin of park and consultant. I sincerely hope you enjoy. All right, Tim. Welcome to the first inaugural episode of the exploring growth podcast.

Tim Parkin (00:21):

I'm excited to be here, Lee, and especially on the first inaugural episode, this is exciting.

Lee Murray (00:28):

Yeah. So, you know, I can't think of a better person to have as my first guest. We've had so many robust conversations over the last, however many years, probably six or seven, eight years. I don't know what it is, we've been, you know, colleagues and friends for a long time and we have very, deep discussions on slack across the board, you know, everything from personal stuff to, you know, business and clients. And it's been awesome to like really kind of walk through the, the life and journey of building a business with you. And I know you have, you always have lots of great ideas, and I, I have a really good handle on what you do, obviously. So, I, I think that you are the perfect person to bring in as my first official guest, to add value to small business owners. So, thank you for being here.

Tim Parkin (01:23):

Well, thank you so much. Yeah, it's been wonderful. You know, I think all the business owners listening to this and, and even, you know, small business owners in particular can relate that it's a lonely operation, right? You're on the front lines yourself. You're trying to wear many hats. You're trying to figure it out as you go and to have someone like yourself that you can talk to and bounce ideas off of and get feedback from and just have a reality check and grow together, you know, alongside each other has been tremendous for me. And, I really, you know, cherish our friendship and I think being able to talk about business and also outside of business has been so helpful. And I think that's really one of the things that all business owners need. Yeah. Definitely is someone to have that support network with.

Lee Murray (02:03):

Yeah, totally. And, you know, for me personally, just to sort of set the stage for what I want to do with this podcast, I love talking to business owners and CEOs about what they're doing in their business, especially as it's related to growth. And you know, that that's really, like, I spend almost all my time thinking or reading or talking to people about business, right. It's just what I enjoy, what I love about what I do, and I know you do this as well, is I love seeing the light go on for people, right. As they're trying to grow their business and they're trying to come up with new ideas of how to shift and be more efficient and more effective in all these things, I love, bringing new concepts into their world and the light going on.

Lee Murray (02:49):

So the goal for this podcast is really to do that at scale, right? So at any time someone can tune in and just get really good, rich, practical application that they can take in, you know, utilizing their business. And so with that said, that's why I thought you were the per perfect person for the, for the, the first episode, because I know you have always, you always have, you know, you love working with businesses the same way I do. You love seeing the light go on, you have a lot of great ideas. So, before we get into it, I want to just have you introduce yourself really quickly, just give the 1 cent version of who you are and what you do.

Tim Parkin (03:26):

Absolutely. I'm an advisor to marketing executives who have large teams typically, and I help them accelerate growth and improve performance. And so, you know, marketing organizations as a whole are spending a lot of money, putting a lot of effort to try to, you know, get leads, get business, you know, create sales. And there's a lot of challenges there and it's a noisy marketplace. You know, marketing continues to change. Culture continues to change. So there's never a dull day in advising and working with marketing teams. That's for sure.

Lee Murray (03:57):

Most definitely. All right. Let's just into it. I want to talk about your path as a business owner. So tell us a little bit about how you got to where you are and, and really, you know, I think this is very, helpful for, for who's listening because everybody has dips and turns and they, they, they think about why am I even doing this? You know, I know you and I have had a lot of these discussions. So tell us about how, like, where did you start off in your career and then how did you end up where you are?

Tim Parkin (04:29):

Yeah, it's been a winding journey. That's for sure. You know, I started off programming at a very young age around, you know, seven, eight years old. And so I always knew that I would be in technology, you know, in some aspect. And so I got into programming and did software development for many years, working for companies and then doing freelance software development on my own and realizing I really enjoyed working for myself, you know, being my own boss, choosing my own clients, choosing the products I take on. But during that time I was building all these products for companies and I realized they weren't getting customers. They weren't getting sales, you know, they didn't have a technology problem. They had a marketing problem. And that's when I made the shift into marketing. So I have no formal experience or background or education necessarily in marketing, but I realized that's really an opportunity.

Tim Parkin (05:16):

You know, it's something I'm interested in. And simultaneously, as you know, because we've been friends for a long time now, I have a passion for magic. And so, I've always been, you know, interested as a kid in magic. I thought I'd be a professional magician one day.  It wasn't until I realized that they work, you know, nights and weekends when all the parties and dinners are that I abandoned that idea. <laugh> but never gave up on magic as a passion, as a hobby. And so with magic, you know, it's really interesting because you get to see how people think and how they react and how they behave. And combining that with my, you know, experience in technology, I realized that's what marketing is. It's the technology combined with psychology of how people think and perceive and respond to things. And so I just really love it.

Lee Murray (05:59):

Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. I know. I've seen you do a few tricks and , magic has always sort of mystifies me, you know, it's like a lot of slight of hand, but what I think is crazy about it is that to learn these tricks, you have to spend a lot of time in energy and repetition of doing these things to make them look like they aren't really what you're seeing. And then on top of that, this is a lay person's observation, obviously. But on top of that, you have to have an act, right? Like you have to have this sort of, you've got the mechanism down, but then you also have to tell a story or you have to act on top of it. , and I always thought that was fascinating because it really, it really shows to the discipline that it takes to do something. , but then you also have to be able to sell it on it.

Tim Parkin (06:54):

It's so true. You know, it's funny as I know, you know, but one of my favorite tricks that I do, you know, there's a part where I mess up, you know, supposedly, and, , it's always fun because you know, people feel bad for you, you know, when you quote unquote mess up, but then at the end, you know, you fool them because you didn't really mess up. It was part of the trick. And so it's always fun, but you're right. You know, you have to remember what to say. You have to remember how to respond. You have to remember the, the moves you're making with your hands, you know, with the cards you have to kind of remember some things people have done during the trick. And then on top of all that you have to, you know, have some improvisation and be able to respond in the moment with what people say and, you know, have a rebuttal to that or comment on it or control their behavior. So there's a lot that goes on behind the scenes. And I think it's not dissimilar from marketing, right? There's a lot that happens in marketing and we can't predict what the competition will do and how users will respond. So there's a lot of parallels for sure.

Lee Murray (07:45):

Most definitely a lot of slot of hand too. <laugh>

Tim Parkin (07:49):

A lots of hours of practice that no one ever sees.

Lee Murray (07:55):

What is your favorite magic trick and kind of describe it for us, how it works.

Tim Parkin (08:01):

Yeah. My favorite magic trick I'd say is called twisting the ACEs. And it's by dive Vernon. If you want to look it up, he goes by the professor. He's no longer alive, unfortunately, but he was a brilliant magician. And in the trick you just have the four ACEs and they start face down. And then one at a time you give the cards a twist, you just spin them, you know, in circle and then you count them again. And another ACEs turn face up and the next day turns face up and the next day turns face up and it looks like you're doing no moves. It looks like all you're doing is just spinning the cards around. And somehow in the middle, these ACEs are turning face up. Obviously there's a lot that happens behind the scenes that people don't see, but it's such a beautiful trick because of the simplicity of it, you know, from the layperson's perspective, nothing is happening, but magic is happening.

Tim Parkin (08:40):

And it looks like you're doing no moves. Yeah. So it takes a lot of practice, but I've probably done it. I don't know, hundreds of times, at least. And that's one of the secrets of professional magicians is you have a handful of tricks that you do over and over again for different audiences. Whereas amateurs, you know, keep buying new tricks to do them for the same audience, their family and friends. So I've been fortunate to be able to perform for clients and conferences. And it's a great networking tool. I've made so many wonderful connections from magic.

Lee Murray (09:07):

Definitely, definitely. It reminds me, of, marketing automation and how you can set certain triggers to happen behind the scenes that kind of look like magic on the, on the public facing side. And there's a marketing automation platform, similar to HubSpot's called sharp spring. They're at a Gainesville, Florida. And when they first came out with their offering, they had what they called a magic trick where you could click a button on an email and then it would perform, it would perform almost like an algorithmic type of, , I don't know what you would call it, whatever it did behind the scenes. And it would, it would, it's like they did a little card trick with their automated, software. So, it's kind of cool cause it was showing you like, look, we can do very complicated things and make it look like magic. Right, but you're probably not going to need that level of sophistication, but we are able to do that. And I thought that was really cool.

Tim Parkin (10:10):

Yeah. That's awesome. That's a smart way to demonstrate, you know, that, like you said, the capabilities of their platform and give people ideas too. Cause I think that's one of the, the challenges of automation is people think of really basic things to do. , but when you can expand your horizon, expand your mind, there's a lot you can do with automation, but people often don't think outside the box. That's a really cool example.

Lee Murray (10:32):

Yeah, it's true. So you know, I think one of the things that, I mean, this is really a, a, an expertise of yours. But one of the things I think you can add a lot of value to toward listeners are, , is in the vein of, optimization, right? , you spend a lot of time really working with enterprise level companies, , globally. , I mean you're working with big marketing teams and big brands, , helping them optimize revenue. , because at that stage of growth, that's a lot of, they've got a lot of their systems in place. They've got a lot of their tools in place, got their team in place. And obviously they're managing that and, and tweaking it, their, their different talent, but optimization is very key for a CMO. Right, and that's what you're in there helping them do.

Lee Murray (11:22):

I'm interested to, like kind of get into this idea of like how can small business owners and CEOs of these small to midsize companies, how can they think about optimization of revenue? Right, because a lot of the companies I'm working with, they have small teams, they may have one or two marketers, and they're growing, and they need to build their team. So, what we're doing is putting in processes and systems and, you know, putting together tools and maybe even implementing a, an automation like we, like we talked about, but we're, we're really not talking a lot about optimization yet. We're, we're putting all of the mechanics in place so that we can get enough data that we can then optimize. Right, and I, I find the optimization stuff very fascinating. And I, I think it'd be interesting for small business owners to, to know like what if they have stuff in place, right. If they're, they're already running campaigns, let's say paid ad campaigns or even content strategies, what can they do practically to optimize what they're currently doing?

Tim Parkin (12:31):

It's a really great question. And I'd say there's a couple things they can do at any level. Even if you have, you know, a small team, or a small budget, or you don't have the time, you know, especially to embark on all these activities, optimization is, kind of the second part. The first part I would say is the fallacy of optimization is what I learned from Jerry Weinberg, which is the law of raspberry jam. You know, the more you spread it, the thinner it gets. Okay. And so you really have to focus and prioritize, you know, that you can't do everything, you know, with a small team. And so, like you said, automation and processes and systems are so important because of that. And so I think often there's this idea in, in small businesses that, , you have to do everything, you know, you have to be on every social channel, you should be blogging, you should be doing email and ads and all this stuff.

Tim Parkin (13:17):

And I don't think that's true. I think you really need to focus. And I tell all my clients, even to prioritize ruthlessly and find out what are the things will actually move the needle, focus there, and then you can optimize those things rather than trying to do everything and not have time for optimization. So I think that's step one is before you can even optimize, you have to have the time to optimize and the resources to optimize. And often that means cutting away things that are not being conducive or productive or delivering any kind of results.

Lee Murray (13:48):

Definitely. And I see that all the time too, for the work that I do when I go in, I'm generally telling them to do less marketing, , because they're trying to be all to every platform and they're trying to, they spread themselves too things, like, like you said, , I, I think that's a great, , it's a great thing to mention as far as just fallacies that, that, that companies will, will run across. Cause it happens at all levels. Right. , I know we've had this conversation a lot where I'll say, you know, working with a client doing X, Y, Z, and, and, and it's kind of funny because I know you probably don't do what this problem and you're like, well, no, actually we still dealing with that problem even though our bigger company. , sadly.

Tim Parkin (14:29):

Yes. So yes, I know we talked.

Lee Murray (14:30):

About I's that policy too. I think that.

Tim Parkin (14:33):

Oh, sorry. I was going to say yes, absolutely. We talked about two shiny object syndromes, you know, where, companies are so distracted where they see, well, my competitor is blogging. Now we should be blogging. Or they just ran this big Facebook ad campaign. Let's do that too. It must work and it's not true. You know, you have to stay true to yourself and focus and you can't be distracted by the next technology or platform where we should be on TikTok. Well, maybe, but do you have the time, do you have the resources? Do you have the people to do that? You know, so it's really a matter of focus and like you said, it's, it's not being distracted and it's also not trying to be all things to all people. So yeah, it happens, like you said, in big companies and small companies, everyone is susceptible to this.

Lee Murray (15:15):

So what, you know, as a consultant, you go in and, you do assessments on the front end typically either as part of your discovery or, when you're starting to work with a client, you know, keeping in mind the small to midsize this, , company, , what, what's one of the major things that you think would translate to them that you find when you go in and do an assessment, right? What are some of the major things that you find when you're peeling back the curtain and looking at what they're currently doing and saying, you know, Hey, here are some things that we, we may want to address.

Tim Parkin (15:48):

Yeah. There's two or three things that are really big. The first is having a clear strategy, a documented strategy and approach for the whole year. So, for some of my clients, I created a roadmap, which is basically a giant docent. It's like 60, 70 pages. And it outlines here are the things tactically that we're going to do this year. And, and we're going to stick to this, and this is what we're going to do. We're going to commit to these things. And that really helps because a, it makes sure everyone is aligned to what we're going to do, how we're going to reach the market, what campaigns, all that good stuff, but then B it helps you to make sure you can check those things off as you go throughout the year. And it keeps you focused, because you're not now distracted. You have a docent. You've all agreed to, to say, this is our plan.

Tim Parkin (16:28):

This is what we're going to do, nothing else. And you can still change it of course, but you shouldn't change it, you know, just on a whim, you need to be strategic and thoughtful about that. So that's the first thing, the second thing is being clear about how people do business with you. I can't tell you the number of times I've seen, you know, websites where they say we're not getting leads or people aren't contacting our business. And if you go to the website and try to contact them, it's impossible. It's either hidden or the form doesn't work or it goes to the wrong address. So just, you know, quality assurance, checking out your own marketing. And when you launch something double checking it, triple checking it and having it on a regular basis, you know, every quarter every month go and try to fill out a lead form, go and try to do a purchase, add something to cart.

Tim Parkin (17:10):

You wouldn't believe the number of times. I mean it's every week I see with my clients, something they've launched or released or had out there doesn't work. And, you know, fortunately we catch it before it's too late, but can you imagine going, you know, a quarter or a year and your lead forms don't work or your ad campaign isn't running properly. So really checking that stuff is so important. And when you're a smaller business, when you have a limited budget or a smaller team, you know, that becomes even more important, cause again, you don't have the time to be doing that, but you really need to set aside the time to do that. It's so important.

Lee Murray (17:42):

I agree a hundred percent, , I see it all the time, too, lack of focus, you know, and, you know I demonstrate that myself, I think we were just having this conversation today. , you know, having, being able to block stuff out all the distractions and just focus on the high priority things, , committing to those, , with consistent, you know, inputs essentially, , is what's going to get us there, but we have shiny objects, right? People will hear something like on a podcast or will hear something, , you know, out there in the ether and we'll say, oh, maybe we should try that. , which I think a lot of the times goes to that short term mentality, right? I think a lot of, business owners and marketers, they have this, short term mentality that they're, they're really trying to do sales with marketing, right?

Lee Murray (18:32):

Yes. And if they're not focused, they end up having a shorter timeframe, , that they play within, that doesn't ever play out for benefiting, their perspective client or buyer. , but no, I think that's very, that's very true. , and it's something to not, not glaze over. , so from, from a practical standpoint, , okay. Let's say someone has a strategy in place. Let's say they are, they're doing a lot of content marketing, right? They're posting blog posts, they're posting them on LinkedIn, they, they have an SEO strategy and that's, you know, it's rising them in the ranks, for certain keywords. and let's see what else. Maybe they're doing some email, right? Some cold email outreach or some email nurturing. If you came into a situation like that, what practically should those business owners be looking our marketers be looking at to optimize that content strategy?

Tim Parkin (19:37):

Absolutely. So there's, there's two steps to it. Really big picture. The first is you have to map that out and I like to actually draw it out. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, you know, in a, in a whiteboard type of fashion, mm-hmm <affirmative> what is the flow? How do we get eyeballs? And how do those people start to engage with us, move down the funnel, how do they fill out a form or, or make a purchase, et cetera, what are all the steps in the customer journey? And let's really map that out and show how they're connected or interrelated. So, for example, you know, someone finds us on Google, because they search, they click, they read a blog post from that blog post, they read our products or services page. Then they decide to contact us. Now they're on our email. Now they get nurtured, et cetera.

Tim Parkin (20:15):

So that's the first step is mapping that whole process out to see what are those touch points. Then the second step is looking at the data that you have to see, where is the bottleneck? And there's two things to think about an optimization with bottlenecks. Obviously you want to see how do people flow from one step to the next, but where you want to focus on is obviously first the biggest bottleneck where people dropping off the most, let's say that's people read your blog post, but then they leave and they don't ever explore the rest of your site. They don't ever contact you. Things like that. That would be a good place to focus. The second, depending on your type of business, if you're more retail or B2C would be closest to revenue. So, for a lot of my clients, they're, you know, director, consumer or B2C. And so there we focus on the checkout process itself because people are getting to the cart to getting to the checkout process, but then they abandoned there. They were right there, they were right the finish line. And if we can optimize that and push them over the finish line, then we're not throwing away all that money, all that work to get them that far mm-hmm <affirmative>. So it's really, what is the biggest bottleneck when you look at that customer journey, where are people falling up the most and, or start closest to revenue and work backwards because any optimizations you make the closer to revenue, they are the higher benefit you'll have more immediately.

Lee Murray (21:32):

Yeah, that's great. , and I think people listening to this are probably interpreting it all differently, what you're saying because of the business they're in and what they're currently doing, you know, , what I'm hearing you say is really sort of a mechanism for getting rid of distractions and getting rid the short term mentality, , by mapping it out, right? So you have clarity and then, and, and it's a good hypothesis. If you don't really know what your buyers are doing, you have to map it out. Cause you have somewhere to start now that you can look at and it's manual and then starting at the end and working back up the, the process or the funnel that they've mapped out. And, , I love that because you can, you can find some immediate return on those optimizations on the bottom of the funnel. , and then, and so it's sort of like you are pulling the sales lever a little bit, you know, in your marketing strategy as you work your, your way back up.

Lee Murray (22:32):

But then I would add on the top end, right? To, so that you have this long term approach at the same time and gets yourself out of the short term mentality as you're working on those optimizations, go ahead and, and, and start, , implementing the, the few things that you are, think you think will work. , if you don't know, , or do more of what you know, will work on the top end on that top and middle of the funnel. , so that you're doing these two, two things so that the top and middle can start to drive awareness and engagement while you're working on optimizations.

Tim Parkin (23:01):

Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. And I think it, you illustrate an interesting point that a lot of businesses struggle with and even large businesses, but particularly SMBs. They have this mentality that if we just get enough attention, we just get enough traffic. We just get enough eyeballs, we'll get some leads and some sales from that somehow. And that is completely untrue. And, and this is where you have to focus on the bottom up approach and really your ideal clients and where they're at and how to reach them. And so, you know, an example here is Starbucks. , I go to Starbucks a lot with my wife and we were driving through the other day and on the menu before you, , order at the drive through on the menu, someone had pasted this lost cat sign and it was a picture of the cat and it said, lost call this number if you've seen this cat.

Tim Parkin (23:45):

And I thought, this is genius. You know, think about during the busy time, how many people drive through this Starbucks, hundreds, if not thousands of people are seeing this cat sign, but they're all the wrong people because I'm not going to get out of my car and look for this cat mm-hmm <affirmative> I probably haven't seen the cat. I drove from my house, so Starbucks and back home. So from an eyeballs perspective, brilliant. But are they going to get any results from this? Yeah, no. And this is how most people think about marketing is let's just cast a wide net and get in front of as many people as possible and hope that something comes from it. Yeah. And guess what, nothing's going to come from it. I can guarantee you and you can waste thousands and millions of dollars and thousands of hours and lots of effort and stress trying to do that. So focus on the bottom up, as you said, and you'll have a much more higher chance of success.

Lee Murray (24:30):

So right. A hundred percent, I think about that a lot, actually. , how, how simple a concept that is, but how many people miss the fact that it doesn't matter if you have a lot of traffic to your website, it could be all the wrong people, right? , or, or any other platform that you're getting eyeballs from Google ads, right? You could spend a ton of money on Google ads and you just got scammed. I mean, the house won, right. Because

Tim Parkin (24:55):

Exactly you,

Lee Murray (24:56):

You didn't get anything from it because you're not targeting the right people or, or, you know, you don't have the right offer or whatever it may be. , that reminds me of this when I never watched the super bowl, but I heard enough about it that I knew it was happening. , and you know, the, the Coinbase had a, , an ad and I was talking with another friend of mine about it.  who's into Bitcoin. And we're talking about like, you know, did that ad actually work because, well, part of the que the discussion was that their website went down. Right, during the, during the, the process there, which obviously shows that they had high, awareness and high attention. Right. Which you're going to get when you have that many eyeballs. Right, but I kind of thought about it, like, it's, it's sort of like Groupon where you have a lot of small businesses get into this.

Lee Murray (25:46):

,I personally think Groupon's kind of a scam. Yes. Because it really, you know, it's like predatory lending, right. It shows it's, it focuses on the small business owner and says, Hey, if you give us your product for a fourth of the price, we'll, we'll sell it for half the price. And then you get a bunch of customers who want stuff for half off. Right. And then they're never going to stick around. Right. Cause all they want to do is go to the next deal. , and if you, you know, I think there, there maybe is a 1% of business owners who really, if they strategically knew how to, to work that offer and, and retain some of that business would, would, could do something with it. But I think most of them just sort of get scammed where they get a bunch of people through their door, you know, overhead goes up and they really didn't get anything for it.

Lee Murray (26:32):

And I, and I kind of look at that Coinbase ad as the same thing where, okay, well, you got a lot of eyeballs there and maybe you converted a lot of, I think there may be an article talking about conversion somewhere, but maybe you converted a lot of those people into customers, new customers that now have accounts. Okay. Well, how many of those actually invested money and how many of those are actually going to be here in a week or a month or, you know, I mean, so to me, I, I think it's such a glaringly obvious thing that owners and marketers should be thinking about is who is our buyer? And are we putting this message in front of the right buyers? Because if we are, we only need five, we don't need 5,000. Right. But I think absolutely big numbers make you feel like you're, you're making progress even though you're not,

Tim Parkin (27:23):

It's so true. And this is a question I ask all my clients, which is, what does success look like? If this is successful, you know, what will happen? What will that look like? And to your point, no one ever says, well, we're going to have 20 million people come to our website. You know, that's not success. Success is we're going to have more customers. They're going to spend more money with us. They're going to spend, you know, stay longer as a client, you know, that's success. And so if that's what success looks like, if you answer to that question, then dictates how do we measure that? And what do we do to drive real success? Not vanity metrics, not traffic, not, you know, a bunch of stuff that doesn't matter. So understanding and focusing on what does success look like? And then as we said, working backwards from that, how can we get that as fast, as possible, as cost effectively as possible? That's all that matters. All this other stuff. Like you said, Coinbase, I'm sure a ton of people know what Coinbase is now, but they probably don't understand crypto. They're probably not going to do business with it. They're probably not going to invest in crypto mm-hmm <affirmative>, they're just now aware of it. And maybe that's the first step for them because of the scale that they're at. But I don't think so. I think a lot of people are not an ideal customer for that.

Lee Murray (28:27):

Yeah. Agreed. And you know, the price you pay for that amount intention at that level of the funnel, those economics could work out. Right. Because I'm not saying that you have to have an ROI, right. You could say, I want to spend 15 million on a, a super bowl ad and no, it's a lost leader. I mean, it, it depends on your business strategy. Right. So, I, I can't sit to say it's a bad idea or not, but I just think, you know, thinking through that conversion process and how what's the long-term stickiness, is something that business owners should be thinking about. Right, are they working with the right people? Are they going after the right people? You know, I talk, I've talked to clients before that have clients on their book or customers on their books and they're not profitable, but they're there.

Lee Murray (29:12):

Right. I, I, I think, you know, a percentage of effectiveness because they're con contributing to cash flow, right? So, they're, they're helping them with cash flow, when they bill them and they get money in, but they're either losing money on them or they're not making much money and it's taking their staff's time and et cetera. So I always say, well, have you considered maybe just letting them go or firing them, because that would really help you to free up the capacity of your team to go find people you actually want to work with. , you know, that you probably could meet through the people who are good customers. , right. But, you know, I think all of that is very, very important.

Tim Parkin (29:49):

People are afraid yeah. To change the status quo or to, to let go of things, but it's necessary again, ruthless prioritization and, a real keen focus. We have to be laser focused on what matters what's going to drive results and what success ultimately looks like. And we have to abandon and jettison everything else, cause it's just a waste of time and resources and capacity. And as a small business, you know, you don't have much and you and I being, you know, at least myself being so entrepreneur, you know, it's, mm-hmm, <affirmative>, I have no time, you know, I'm too busy serving clients and doing marketing stuff myself. So I have to be very careful about where I spend my time and small businesses are no different. We need to be very, aware and careful of where we invest time and resources.

Lee Murray (30:33):

I agree, just as a side, what is your, your, flavor of the week, you know, you, you do your own marketing, right? Like what are some of the marketing efforts that you're deploying right now for yourself? Cause I know there's probably a lot of consultants and small, small, small business owners that are listening to this that could benefit from that.

Tim Parkin (30:54):

Yeah, absolutely. I would say first podcast like this, right. Getting my, getting the word out there and sharing everything. I am, I'm very fortunate to work with these big companies, as you mentioned and see inside and see all the good and the bad. So I love coming on these podcasts and sharing, you know, what I've seen, what I've learned and gets me exposure. And whenever I do these things, I, I have people contact me. So that's wonderful. So, podcast is a great avenue, I also have a PR agent, which is tremendous, and she's helped me get, you know, ad age, ad week ink Forbes. I'm a contributor to MarTech. So I mean, that's been tremendous and just to have an outlet, you know, outside of my own audience and I have my own email newsletter as well, you know, which I send out stories here and there and it's a fun place to just <laugh> vent sometimes.

Tim Parkin (31:38):

And also share some observations. I have, you know, talking about, testing your marketing. my newsletter this week is about McDonald's mm-hmm <affirmative> I saw McDonald's was hiring and it said just text, Texas number, you know, to, to apply. So I said, why not? So, I texted the number to apply to see what happened. And I got a response back that said, yeah, this number is not connected. You know, doesn't work, you know, by again. And I thought, imagine the name of they have a sign on their location saying text this number to apply. And so a month later I went back and I saw the same sign. It was still up. I texted again, thinking they must have fixed it, right. Still an error message getting back from them. So it goes to show you large companies have the same problems here. You need to test what you're doing. So, newsletter's a great place for me to share stories like that because, I need someone to tell these things too <laugh> and it's a frustrating to see it happen. Yeah.

Lee Murray (32:26):

Oh, your text probably didn't go through because you have an iPhone. I'm just saying

Tim Parkin (32:30):

Let's not get, start on that debate. <laugh>

Lee Murray (32:34):

<laugh> oh man. that's awesome. so, okay. So what, what has worked for you? So, so far, what would you say is the biggest thing that has added contributed to your growth.

Tim Parkin (32:50):

Referrals? Definitely. , undoubtedly is the biggest, you know, I, I am fortunate that good work brings more work and that I've had referrals unexpectedly. , and when I, you know, ask for them, , making that more of a discipline, I think is really important for every business, not just, , so entrepreneurs or consultants, but you know, even if you're in B2B, B2C referrals, work, ask your customers to bring in other customers because guess what? They already trust you. They already like you, they already know you and they know who would benefit from your services and your products. I mean, you saw my LinkedIn post this week about remarkable the tablet called remarkable. Mm-hmm <affirmative>, it's like a Kindle that you can write on. And it's absolutely amazing. It's changed my life and I made this LinkedIn post gushing over it and how wonderful it is and how everyone should buy one.

Tim Parkin (33:34):

You know, you can't buy ads that speak that well to people. I mean, I would, I would almost sell my left kidney or something, you know, to, to get people, to buy remarkable. It's that amazing? You know, people need to try this thing., yeah, the same thing with my desk, I was standing desk that I bought and it's, you know, $3,000 desk. It broke, I contacted company, they fixed it. They sent me even more stuff as a, as a favor. And now I tell everyone, you know, go to organ office and buy this desk. they're an amazing company with amazing products and amazing service. So referrals, I think are the lifeblood of marketing and of all business. And so if you're not getting enough referrals, you need to fix that immediately.

Lee Murray (34:13):

Yeah. On the remarkable story. I was there when you at the conference in DC, that we were at sitting at the same table there and you're like, what is that guy sitting next to me? What is he writing with? And I was like, oh, that's one of those new kind of fend agonal things. And I saw you like, make a note about that. You're like, yeah, I got to look into that. And now you're like, you know, an evangelist for remarkable. I'd be so interested to know. I meant to ask you on that LinkedIn post, did they reach out or did they say anything? The company,

Tim Parkin (34:44):

I just made it yesterday, you tag them in that post. I did tag them. Yeah. But you, your point is really interesting about the conference because that's, that's true. How I found out about it from Orio, who was sitting next to us and that goes to show what I'm saying. Yeah. That, you know, word of mouth and referrals, you know, if, if he had not been there and I had not seen it, I would not know about it really. Or I'd see an ad and say, that looks, that looks crazy. I don't know if that's true or, or good, but seeing it and hearing him talk about it is what convinced me to check it out. And that's how I got into max too. You know, my wife, told me for years, she was always a Mac person. I was always a windows person.

Tim Parkin (35:16):

And she said, you know, you need to buy a Mac. Max are better. And I said, I don't know, max or crap, you know, I don't need a Mac. I, I have windows. I'm a technical person. And then I went to a programming conference and literally everyone had a Mac except for me, you know, you stand at the back of the room and you see all these apple logos lighting up. And so next to me, I talked to the guy next to me and said, can I just play with this for a second? And I played her for a couple minutes. I said, it's pretty cool. I'll buy one. If I don't like it, I'll send it back. And here I am later. Now we have gone through, I don't know, seven MacBook over the years. I'm on an iMac here, you know, we've got an iPad, we've got iPhones, we got everything. So, I’ve got Air Pods.

Lee Murray (35:52):

I've had, I've had Mac for years. Yeah.

Tim Parkin (35:55):

It's amazing. You know, but all through again, referrals and word of mouth and, and have me talk to someone who owns one and, and see it myself and hear that it's, it's worth it. So, and my wife who also, you know, NA me for years and now doesn't let me live it down that she told me first, but referrals, referrals, referrals, we got to do referrals.

Lee Murray (36:15):

Yeah. Yeah. So putting in, putting in mechanisms that will kind of aid in a bed referrals, right? Absolutely. , I think that's what we should, small businesses, you know, you build your business typically, if you're the, if you're an owner operator, you know, , typically, you know, kind of husband and wife, spouse duo, you see that a lot. Those are, those are the majority of the businesses that are out there in America, right? Yeah. They start these businesses or they buy business. It's small and they grow it themselves. They do their own sales and, everything's built off of the referrals, of good doing it work and, you know, getting reviewed and all those things. So, so you're right. I mean, that, that can't be missed and ha it has to always be thought through.

Tim Parkin (36:58):

And it's so easy, right.

Lee Murray (37:00):

Easy.

Tim Parkin (37:00):

And it costs nothing. Sorry, last comment. It's, it's easy and it costs nothing. So there's no excuse here. You know, you think about spending hundreds or thousands of dollars on advertising or on marketing, you know, referrals is free. It just takes your time. It takes having a process and a system as you talked about before. So there's no excuse here. It's, it's the most cost effective, form of marketing. There is

Lee Murray (37:21):

Most definitely looks like we have a little bit of a lag here. I don't know what that's all about. I'll have to try to get that worked out. , but, , but overall, , pretty good experience here, you know, with the technology and everything we got going on. , before we wrap up, , I wanted to ask you kind of like one final question here. , you know, again, keeping these, , small to midsize company in mind, if you could change their mind about anything, it doesn't have to be optimization or, you know, referrals or content strategy or focus. So, things we've talked about so far, what would you, what would you say to change their mind about what

Tim Parkin (38:02):

Marketing is a lot simpler in terms of.

Lee Murray (38:03):

Terms of.

Tim Parkin (38:04):

Growth? Yeah. Marketing is a lot simpler than you realize, and the key to all marketing and the key to all growth is understanding truly understanding your customer and what even the large companies are missing that small companies have a huge advantage with is you can talk to your customers and you should be talking to your customers, survey them, talk to them, get them on the phone and find out what are they going through in there, in their lives. Why did they choose your business to help solve their problem? What do they like about your business and use those insights? , but then also capture those as testimonials and as quotes and as social proof, , and really rely on your customers in that way. , too many small businesses and businesses in general think that they know better than their customers or that they're serving their customers.

Tim Parkin (38:54):

Mm-hmm <affirmative>, and really it's a partnership with your customers. And the more you can align yourself with your customers, the more you can understand your customers at holistically, the better you can be as a business and the faster you can grow and the easier you can grow. And so I call this customer proximity, whoever's closest to the customer wins. And we often think of this as an, a, a, a challenge, you know, us versus the customer. And we have to think of it differently. You know, you have to be next to the customer walking alongside them. And so all of marketing in my opinion is built on that foundation. And so the closer you can be to the customer, the more clarity you'll have of where you need to go and how you need to proceed to grow.

Lee Murray (39:34):

Yeah, that's great. That's awesome. I love it. Well, so as I've, you know, we've now launched, this is the inaugural episode. Number one. , my intention is to have all kinds of different guests on this podcast. , people from other types of marketers, directors, VPs, CMOs, , vendors like marketing automation companies, , other consultants, business consultants, , succession planners, , there there's, there's a wide range of people in the ecosystem of growth, , or even in risk mitigation for small to mid-size companies, you know, , I'm intending on bringing in some, , some experts in the search fund. , so investment funds that are focused on searchers who are looking to buy businesses, right. , that at the micro level, , some micro PE, , the private equity, , companies, , I think that's, , super interesting right now, especially since we have, , so many, , baby boomers that are trying to retire and they don't have succession plans and, , in place.

Lee Murray (40:42):

And, you know, it speaks to a lot of the, the, the things that I do with companies, you know, , trying to set them up for success and higher values. , I think there's a lot of people to talk to in that, in that realm. So excited to talk about all talk with all those people, financial planners, , I've got a whole list of people that I've met and worked with over the last decade or more, , just colleagues and friends and new people I've met on LinkedIn, , that we've talked about, , that I want to invite on here and just have some good, robust, , kind of practical marketing growth conversations. So I, I'm super excited to have you as the first one. And I intend, intend to have you back probably at least like every 15 or 20 episodes I need to have you back. You know, you know, like these talk shares, they have their, their main guest person that comes back or they're at the anchor. You know, that's what I want you to be.

Tim Parkin (41:42):

I love it. I'm up for it. Let's do it.

Lee Murray (41:45):

Cool. All right, Tim, thanks again for joining us and, looking forward to getting this thing going and, yeah. Thanks for all your wisdom.

Tim Parkin (41:56):

Well, thank you, Lee. And if you're listening to this, go ahead right now to whatever platform you're listening or watching on and leave a five star rating and help get this thing, the traction and awareness that it needs. You know, having a small business, growing a small business is a challenge. And, you're benefiting by listening to this, but help others in your industry, in your network to do the same. So, go ahead and drop that, five-star review help everyone out.

Lee Murray (42:22):

Thanks, Tim. All right, we'll see you in episode number two.