The Business Millennials Podcast

Growth Marketing for Small Businesses [Part 3]

• Ashley Dreager & Safa Harris • Season 1 • Episode 3

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This episode of the Business Millennials podcast focuses on the differences between maintenance marketing versus growth marketing for a business. Co-hosts Safa & Ashley explain that maintenance marketing involves keeping your current client base happy but not necessarily gaining new clients or growing revenue. It provides more comfort and less stress. Growth marketing, on the other hand, involves strategically and intentionally investing time, money, and effort into scaling your business to the next level. This often requires bringing on more team members, implementing new systems and processes, dealing with growing pains and discomfort, having hard conversations, and being open to feedback from experts. The hosts emphasize that business owners need to decide whether they want maintenance or growth, as you can't have the comforts of maintenance with the results of rapid growth. The key is being strategic and intentional, whether you choose to stay small or scale up. Bringing on knowledgeable managers and advisors is crucial to take in objective expertise.

Key Topics:

  • 1:16 Alternatives between doing marketing yourself and hiring someone
  • 1:27 Benefits of strategy calls for getting expert input over time
  • 1: 52 Importance of setting timelines when doing it yourself 
  • 2:31 Strategy calls help provide accountability
  • 4: 18 Hard for business owners to strategize while managing day-to-day
  • 5: 12 Consultants provide an objective perspective
  • 6:42 Consultants tell you hard truths you need to hear 
  • 10: 13 Doing right by the client even when it's uncomfortable
  • 15: 31 Need for department heads and managers as you scale
  • 16:31 Hiring people smarter than you
  • 20:28 Humility and receiving feedback as a CEO 
  • 23: 55 Jeff Bezos has advisors and listens to them
  • 24:04 Key takeaways about systems, processes and being receptive
  • 24: 39 Deciding between maintenance or growth

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Welcome to the Business Millennials podcast. This show brings you strategic insights through raw and unfiltered, real-world advice to accelerate your business growth. For long-term success, I'm Safa Harris. And I'm Ashley Drager. We are the founders of Scale and Thrive Co. Of Full-service marketing and business development firm. Helping visionary companies scale sustainably expect us to have the uncomfortable conversations that no one else is having. We'll break down what it really takes to grow and scale your business beyond six. Seven or even eight figures, as well as inspiring interviews with diverse leaders across marketing, product development, sales, and more via fly on the wall as we conduct strategy sessions with business owners, experiencing issues such as plateaued income, burnout, and generally dropping the ball, giving you the tools and resources to break through your own roadblocks, but also personal development methods to grow you as a balanced conscious leader amidst business growth. Let's jump into this week's episode. All right, you made it to the final episode of our series on growth marketing. I hope you enjoy the final part on this. And of course, if you guys are wanting more on growth marketing, we can definitely go into much more detail. But without. making you wait any longer, let's go ahead and dive right in.

Ashley:

And there are there are in betweens. I will say that there are other options. So strategy calls and consulting. Those are alternatives for like a done with you

Safa:

option. Yeah, it's gonna help fits in perfectly in that first where you're trying to do it yourself over time and trying to get that direction from an expert. So you're taking from the strategy calls, you're taking that information and then you're spending your sweat equity time. And I feel like that's kind of like the container it fits into. To doing yourself over time with the. Input and knowledge from, from an expert to make it happen over time. Yeah. Well, I was going to

Ashley:

say with that, it helps to keep your timelines set though, because you're going to have that accountability of, you're not just going to come, make a certain amount of progress and then let it sit for four weeks. And then you're like, Oh yeah, that was something that I was supposed to be doing. And then you work on it for a couple of days and then it sits right. And it's, you know, something where you can be a lot more consistent. over that span of time, which ultimately is going to condense it versus, you know, it's not necessarily like, The most intense trying to get it done overnight. Right. But it's not something that's going to end up being procrastinated.

Safa:

Yeah. And I think that's the hardest part of like trying to do it yourself over a five year plan. One, you got to like build out that plan. So this is what I'm gonna do in five years. This is what it's going to look like in three years. And then, okay, this is what my first year is. This is what like my 90 that's like really hard to think through in your mind and putting it on paper. And. And actually taking those actionable steps and then not letting your day to day of your business sidetrack you from it and being accountable to yourself. And that's where those strategy calls and those consulting sessions and things like that help because it keeps you accountable. Because I'm gonna get on that call with you and be like, So what'd you do last week? Where are we at? I wrote this out for you. how are things going? And then it really helps to just brain dump it out and having someone with the expertise coming out and putting it on paper for you to be like, okay, yeah, let me just take it and like, Plug and play and do the work. And then that way you can even use, if you do have a VA on a team, or a social media manager on your team, whatever, you can use those team members to kind of help do all of that. So you're taking out the one, the distraction of like, oh, well, like, I know I need to do this work and you just don't, and it gets away from you and then just never happens and you never get that traction. And it takes away the load of figuring out like, okay, what's my first step. Getting going, like making sure it's actually speaking to that larger vision and doing all of that, and that's the benefit. So like, if you are like, yeah, I'm gonna take that longer term, I don't have 100, 000 to just like chuck at someone to do this, like, for me, and just like make it happen and done with, done for you, it's like, okay, well, in this done with you fashion, it's kind of like best of both worlds.

Ashley:

Yeah, no, totally agree. Because it's As the business owner, there's already so much on your plate and trying to figure out what that first step is, or even the next step, it takes a brain powder, it takes a mental real estate and it can't, the mental load of trying to strategize and plan and project manage can be very. Paralyzing as a business owner, that's just the reality because you're, you're overseeing client work, you're overseeing your team, you're overseeing the finance, you're overseeing every other aspect. And to add this extra thing to your plate, sometimes it just means that you're not going to do anything about it. Yeah. So there is a lot of value in hiring that expertise and hiring consultants to come into your business to do that mental load and that mental work for you so that you can just execute and manage

Safa:

it. Yeah. Because when you're in that stage of your business, you are the manager of all departments. You are managing everything. And Yeah. Absolutely. Like you said, it's a mental load. It's hard. And then shifting into strategy for yourself, that's really hard. It's really hard to switch that flip and do that work. And then also manage the day to day and then also manage the strategy. So if you can kind of work to kind Outsource or collaborate on the strategy. It helps that brain function a little bit more because you don't have to create the space to do that. Like, okay, yeah, now I can just take it and function in the way I'm already functioning in this management role to get this executed and making, make it happen. So to like reduce the tension in that, of. Getting those foundations built and like that first little option of how to do it. If you want to put in the time and do the sweat equity, like every single thing has a pitfall. And this one is like creating the plan, keeping the traction, keeping the accountability into it. It's. Removing that barrier that's going to keep you from actually doing the work is going to be working with someone in a consulting in a strategy parameter absolutely. Yeah.

Ashley:

And I know that this topic isn't we're not specifically talking about this topic, but. The other value add that your director of operations and your director of marketing bring is that they have that objective perspective of your business. You, as the business owner, are so close to the business. You're so close. I don't want to call your business a problem, but when we're trying to problem solve and you're at the center of it, you You cannot see at a bird's eye view what the whole picture is. What is everything that's going on? What are all the options? Because you're emotionally invested in it. And we are not, we don't have that emotional attachment to your business the same way that you do as the business owner. We are still very much invested in your success. However, we are able to maintain that objective. Perspective, which keeps you moving forward, which keeps things efficient and optimized because we're not trying to be objective. While experiencing the emotions of it.

Safa:

Yeah. And like, how many times have we been on a call and we, there are client or whoever's like, This is what I'm struggling with. Like, I don't know how to get past this. Like, what, what am I, what can I do? I feel like I've tried it all. It's like, Oh, well, have you tried this one thing? And they're like, I didn't even think of that. It's because you are so close to it. And it's like, you're racking your bait day to day. On the same thing and you're just like turning your wheels. You can't get the traction. You can't move through it Because you are like deep In it and you can't be like, you can't pull away. Like you said, bird's eye view and see. Oh, look, there's, there's a path right there that you can take. That's of least resistance. Go there. But then also on the flip side, we're going to sometimes tell you the things you don't want to hear that are like the not fun things you have to implement where sometimes it may be. Hey, yeah, like you're struggling with that. And the reason why is because you're mismanaging your money. Like, you have overhired. You have to let people go. And that's telling your Like, usually people know that that's the issue, like, deep down. But admitting it is really hard and painful. But if we come in and be like, Hey, look, like This is what's actually happening here. We have to swallow this hard pill or it's not going to work and you're not going to get out of the place you are. It's almost like a validation that like, yes, it's okay. Yes, like we can get through this. Yes, it'll be okay. If I do this really hard thing that feels really bad to get through it. So it's kind of like that one not being able to see it. And two, being able to do something that's really hard and kind of sucks in business, to move into, move through a problem and move into that next stage. But as your

Ashley:

marketing and operations team, we would be doing you a disservice if we didn't tell you those things. If we sat back and said, yeah, we know exactly what the problem is, but it's going to be really hard for our client to accept, so we're just not going to tell them, that would be doing you a disservice. Ultimately, that would be. us deciding and allowing you to throw money down the drain because we don't want to have a hard conversation. And you hired us to have hard conversations.

Safa:

You didn't, but sometimes that's putting our own business at risk. Right. So it's like, oh, they're not going to like this. They're not going to be happy with this, but we have to tell them and do that. And like that, like does put us at a risk of like, you know what, that they're just not going to listen. They're not going to want to hear it. And that they will end our contract. Right. But, right. We know that that is something that needs to be heard, and sometimes it's like, yeah, no, you're right, let's do this, like, we got this, we're gonna do this together, we're gonna get through it, and if you are hiring us to have this hard conversations, it's being in a framework and a mindset to hear them that goes through it, and if you aren't there, like, you might just fire us. Which, like, that sucks, but we can't not tell you.

Ashley:

Right, because we, we value that honesty and integrity so much. And I know that those are values that you hear a lot of people say that they have, and I don't think that anybody doesn't live into those values. Out of malicious intent, but it does, it is a really hard conversation to be able to maintain those values through and through with every client, every stage of business, every situation, because at the end of the day, like I said, we're very much invested in your success. Just like anybody on your team should be invested in your business's success. And to be able to do that. You, you have to be able to just do the right thing. I don't know if that sounds terrible to say, but it's, like,

Safa:

Well, it's, like, not even, it's, It's not even like, oh, this is like good or bad or putting that morality on it. Sometimes it's just like sometimes you have to fire people and that's like not the good thing to do and not the right thing to do, but it's like, sometimes you have to do the hard thing for the future betterment. So like, even if it's like, oh, I have to. Fire five people or I need to restructure and we're moving to W two. And then like all these other people aren't willing to work and it's taking money away from them. Like, I can't do that to my team. I love my people, whatever it is, but it's like, okay, well, if you don't do that, Your business is going to fail. And then you're going to be, you're going to end up putting those people in a worse position because they've done the work they've done all that. And now you can't pay them or whatever it may be. And it's. It's like doing the right thing may not even feel like the right thing right now, but it's like the hard thing right now, but it will be the right thing in the future. So it's like, you have to be ready to do the hard, uncomfortable things. And like, isn't that kind of like the theme here? It's like working through the pain, working through the discomfort to get the growth. Sometimes you have to do the hard things to get to that next stage and space. And it's not a matter of like assigning good or bad morality. It's If you're moving through with ethical intent, like it will be the good thing to do for the future in the way of like. A good person makes good choices. And then also in like the actual material matter of your business, choosing to make those hard decisions for the benefit and the of your vision and your longterm goals.

Ashley:

And in terms of your management team. To them of your management team doing the right thing of fulfilling their Obligation responsibilities. Yes their their obligation to you at The risk of them losing the contract because you may not want to hear it and you may not be ready to accept What that information or that news is. Yeah, because

Safa:

it's hard. It is really like even us as like business owners, like we've been in that position. We get it. We get it. And like, we've had moments where we're like, we need to talk to someone because we are too close to it, even though we are the expertise. It's so like, we talk about this all the time. It's like, Oh, my gosh, this is so much easier when we do it for our clients. Like, why is this so hard for us to build it for ourselves? This is why.

Ashley:

Exactly. It's, no one's immune to it. It's just part of being a bit, you know, a business owner, but, you know, I think that, and to go back to the gripes that we have with the online messaging around business, when you look at corporations, and you may not want to operate as a corporation, I have my own gripes with corporate, but there's a reason why. there are department managers. There's a reasons why there are departments for finance, HR, marketing, operation, like there, everything has its own department because they are specialties and all of those managers or all of those different departments, they can bring that objective perspective for the CEO. and give the CEO all of the information that they need to make an informed decision about what to do with the business.

Safa:

Yeah, so like on a business structure and that kind of, it kind of is like when you're planning out your org chart, that's where it goes. It's like, so when you're growing, you need more people and you need experts managing those departments and because you're going to need more specialized expertise happening in each of those departments as you grow, as you're bringing more elephants into your business, the more you need to ramp up, you're going to need more of that specialized expertise, more than what's gotten you to that point. You're going to need people that like know more and are smarter than you in your business. And they're going to come in as those managers and they're going to, they're going to be managing those teams and they are going to give, be giving you feedback and input that is going to ultimately inform your future strategy of what you're doing. So as you're growing your business, this is something to when, when I was in corporate and I was hiring, I never promoted someone that wasn't smarter than me. I was like, if I'm going to promote you, I need you to be smarter and know more

Ashley:

than me. I was going to say, I don't think that that's something that is talked about a lot in, in our space is hiring people that know more than you do. I would just ask all of our listeners to sit with that for a minute. How would that feel to acknowledge that whoever you're hiring is going to know more than you

Safa:

in these areas? And they need to they need to because yeah, you're really good at like whatever you started your business in especially if you were like in a freelancer and you're moving into building a business like that's very indicative of knowing that one thing and you've like gained skill sets and things like that. But if you are. Growing your business and you're expanding into other things, you're going to need other expertise and you can't learn it all. You can't be an expert in everything. You are going to reach a capacity. You are going to hit a wall. Like there is no way that you can do it all and you're going to need to be okay with bringing in people that know more than you have them manage those departments and trust them in that and take the information and the feedback they're giving you from their expertise and their knowledge that is more than yours. And using that to feed your larger strategy. So even in these larger corporations, they have the C suite, you have the CEO, you have a CFO, you have a CMO, you have a COO, you have a CTO, depending on whatever the business is, and all of those people are expertise in each of those places, and they've usually moved up, like they, Everybody was entry level at some point, like you were a social media assistant, you moved into a marketing assistant, you moved into the D. O. M., you moved into the C. M. O., you gained all that expertise, and you're an expertise in this one area, and you're taking all of that information, and the C. M. O.'s job is to feed it's, All of that information from all of those layers and levels and that expertise to the CEO of like, Hey, like, we're working on like, this is our goal and what we're doing. And this is my interpretation of it. And these are the elements that I know that are important that you need to take account of. And then the CFO does the same thing. The CEO does the same thing. The CTO does the same thing. And then this you as the CEO, you're in that CEO seat, takes all that information. And it says, Okay, I generally know About all of this stuff. I have the vision in mind. Okay, I'm taking all this information that's coming in from my trusted advisors. And then now I'm developing a strategy based on all of that information and making a decision in an informed choice and strategic plan based on that because that's really where you want to be not controlling and doing it all and being in there. So. A big part of that growth is going to be bringing in people that know more than you, taking all their information, synthesizing it, even the things you don't want to hear, and then moving forward in that strategic plan and choice and decisions. Yes. And I think on that, like, on our strategy calls, I think that's like a big part of it. We're helping you develop that CEO strategic thought and decision making. Because it's like, okay, well, what's your goal? This is my goal. Okay, well, what are all the bits and pieces of information? These are all the bits and pieces of information from inside the business. Okay. Well, these are your options. Let's talk through the decisions on that. And then together we decide on what that strategy is. That's essentially working through a CEO muscle of creating that strategy and that feeding in of that information into that is everything that you're getting from the different departments of your business. And we're just like working through that for you to develop that muscle. Yeah. And

Ashley:

to give it a little bit of a more tangible example, I am not in finance. I'm, I'm, I don't offer financial services to clients, but so if we were going to be hiring a CFO, I would want them to know more than I do about that. Right. I mean, it's, it's not a bad thing for some, for the person that you are hiring to be smarter than you in that area. Right. It's not saying that you're dumb or that you are not. You're not smart.

Safa:

Competent as a CEO. Or

Ashley:

competent. Yeah. But it is important for the person that you're hiring for that specialty to know what they're doing in that specialty and to be able to lead you in that specialty. Yeah. Like I

Safa:

think a big part of like moving into a CEO seat is like, I feel like this sounds bad, but like humbling yourself. Like being receptive. We could totally talk about ego. Yeah, like humbling yourself and to be receptive and open and hearing all of these things and being like, I don't know it all and that's like, I talk about this a lot with my with my leadership clients. It's like, you don't have to know it all to be able to lead a team. It's probably better that people know more on your team than you do. You are just leading a vision. You are just like, sometimes, maybe you're doing some project management. You're just saying, Hey guys, let's go together and do it together and we got this, let's go, here's the plan. But like, all that information came from people that know more and that's a part of that's like being okay with not knowing. With asking questions and developing a plan together and accepting of that feedback and just humbling yourself to being like, I don't know everything and that's okay. And I'm going to do this with my, my group of expertise experts here. We're going to put this plan together and we're going to do it. And I'm going to trust them in that because I don't know. And that's okay. Right. And it's.

Ashley:

It's normal. It's fine. It's not an issue. It doesn't mean that you're incapable of comprehending or like you said, incompetent. And ultimately, if you were smarter than everybody on the team about everything, and they all relied on you, you're still not, you're not in a scalable business anymore because everything is still dependent on you and your knowledge and your expertise and your

Safa:

leadership. Yeah, and that's part of removing yourself from the business. This is about the business. This is not about you. And that's like that big mindset transition from being a freelancer to a business owner is in a business builder. It's like, okay, yeah, as a freelancer, it's all me. It's like, that's, that's what I'm doing. It is me. But if I'm growing a business, like I am no longer the center of the business's universe. The business is there and I, I just happen to be. A piece on there, and then something to remember, like, I have my issues with this man, but Jeff Bezos, he has mentors, he has CMOs all of those things, and he's listening to those advisors. So like, if Jeff Bezos is doing it, like, why are you not?

Ashley:

Yeah. Oh my gosh. Ego and mindset. That

Safa:

should be. Yeah.

Ashley:

Yeah. So some of the takeaways I think from this are systems, processes, and the foundations of your business. Being able to be receptive to information being given to you about your business and how to move forward and being prepared for The growing pains that are going to come along with growing your business.

Safa:

Yeah, and then and then you can Exponentially grow and take off your marketing and put a ton of money into it and do all that And then if you don't want any of that, that's fine. You can just be in maintenance

Ashley:

Oh, yeah. Like, like I said, there's nothing wrong with maintenance marketing or maintenance mode for your business, but you can't have the comforts of maintenance and The results of scaling.

Safa:

Yeah. And I think that's like the big thing you can take away from this episode is making that decision of, okay, do I want growth? Do I want maintenance? And then being like, okay, I've made that decision because I know everything that comes with it. Like, do I want the comfort of maintenance? Do I want the growth more? Am I going to put the work in there, deal with the discomfort and go there and then making the decision of how you're going to go forward based. On those things. And now you really know the difference between maintenance and growth and what it looks like. So I think we achieved our goal here.

And that wraps up another episode of the Business Millennials podcast. We hope you found this conversation, thought provoking, inspirational, and helps you make a larger impact with your business. Growth is not just about profits or revenue. It's a journey of personal development, contribution, and bettering ourselves in society. Our challenge for you. Take at least one key lesson from our time together today that you can apply not just to your business. But your relationships, creative expression, well-being and personal evolution too. We appreciate you tuning in. If you enjoyed this show, we invite you to pay it forward. Share it with an entrepreneur, creative student or community leader who needs an infusion of insight or inspiration right now. And make sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen so you never miss a single episode. And if you like what you heard, leave us a five-star review. See you next week.