Which Marketing Channel Is Perfect For You? – Amy Hager | Podcast Ep. 045

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• Amy’s Website
• Amy’s Marketing Quiz Website
• Amy’s Marketing Facebook Group
• Amy’s Marketing Facebook Page

Interview Transcription

Morris: Welcome to CreateGrowProfit: Coaching Stories. Today I’m speaking to Amy Hager. Amy, thank you so much for being here. Where are you calling in from today?

Amy: Hey there! I am calling in from Virginia. I’m just a little bit of south of Washington DC over here in the US and super excited to be on the show today, Morris!

Morris: Yeah thank you and my first question, my opening question always here on the show is how did you become a coach and when did you officially start calling yourself a coach?

Amy: Yeah so I actually spent about 16 years in the nonprofit space prior to that I had a radio career for seven years as an on-air DJ and so a lot of the common thread through radio to nonprofit to organic marketing coaching is my ability to build communities and my ability to build I would say a vision around a larger mission or a larger goal.

The reason why I really left the nonprofit space is you’re managed by a board of directors and so you could have anywhere from like 10 to 12 to 50 bosses and the last nonprofit I was at, was just like, “Iis it time for me to move on?”

And I had been kind of practicing my coaching skills with what we were offering members and I would teach marketing classes and speak at conferences and help companies develop their marketing strategy. So I was like I think it’s time for me to do that piece on my own full-time. I can go into any business that way and not just be constrained by the members that I served at my nonprofit or my association.

I went out on my own in 2019 and actually partnered up with my partner, Shannon that year and we rolled right into COVID and had a wonderful experience because we were already doing everything virtually and online so that was a smooth transition but it was very interesting talking with people who weren’t sure if they were going to have jobs because of Covid and they were thinking about starting businesses on their own and really wanted our help.

It was a cool time and place I think to really go into this full-time as this is what I do day in and day out and you know sitting here in 204, it’s crazy to think like how the journey has been and how fun it’s been so far.

Morris: Man, 50 bosses that sounds like a nightmare! I know that shouldn’t be the main takeaway from what you’ve just shared but that sounds horrible.

Amy: Yeah I’m not a big fan of nonprofits who have large boards because then it is like you have to report to all of those people and hold space and time to have conversations with them because you value them and their dedication to the organization but it’s a lot of people to report to.

Morris: I can, yeah, I can only imagine. What is it that you and Shannon do?

Amy: So we really focus on the words that you’re going to say whether you’re posting on social media creating an email speaking in public or you writing an article or a blog post or something along those lines. We really really focus on creating from the right place for your energy and one thing that I see a lot of new coaches do when they come out of the gate starting their organization or starting their coaching, they think they have to show up on every social media channel and get into the front of all these eyes and they think like their ideal client is on a certain channel.

But they don’t really love that channel but they’re there because their clients are there and so what we’ve really done is kind of thrown all that out the window and said, “let’s, let’s focus on where you want to be and where your strengths are.” So Shannon developed our content personality quiz about 13 years ago and so when she released this quiz I was still in the nonprofit space and I’ll get into the story about how I used that to build out marketing and sales teams.

But really what it is is there’s five ways for people to experience you. It’s live in-person, visually maybe through a written piece of the content maybe it’s a video you recorded or maybe it’s something audio like a podcast or even picking up the phone. We found when people try to do all five of those things all the time they end up burning out and then they end up thinking they’re really bad at marketing and that’s usually not the case.

And so when you take the content personality quiz, you’re going to get one of those five results. That is the way we suggest. You create your marketing the way you interact with your prospects and your leads and the way you really enroll them into sales and so if you take the content personality quiz and you get written the best way for you to converse with somebody and for you to help them see the vision or enroll in what you’re talking about is through the written word.

So think about writing a blog, writing long-form social media posts whatever channel you’re on. Think about really having sales conversations via email or via DMS because that written word is what you’re really great at. Visual is another content personality type and so what that means is in order for you to best show up and best explain something you need something visual to go with the words that are coming out of your mouth or that are written and a lot of times visual people will actually create the main piece as a visual graphic and Canva or maybe they’re really great artists and so they’re doing hand-drawn graphics or paintings or things along those lines and having that visual interaction as you’re creating the messaging helps you explain it a lot better.

Video is really really unique in their content personality type because it’s just the essence of you. So you could explain somebody or you could explain something to somebody and need no visual graphics, you don’t need to be on the phone you, don’t need to be face to face, it’s you talking through it and some sort of video recording and it’s really interesting.

I have a yoga instructor who is video and she ‘s really really great but what makes her a better yoga instructor is when she closes her eyes and she actually teaches the class with her eyes closed because she doesn’t have that human-to-human interaction anymore because when she does interact with us, it throws her off. It throws her energy off and so just thinking of ways that your video how can you get more videos out to your leads. Are you using it in social media? Are you using video in your email?

The other content personality type is audio and so if you’ve ever picked up the phone and like called customer service because you were mad about something and you got someone on the other line who was like able to calm you down, able to walk you through, and at the end of the call like you’re feeling really really good about that experience, I promise you that person was probably audio. So it’s someone who’s it’s their voice that you can really guide people through and really help them envision what’s going to happen.

And then the last one is live in person and Morris you scored live in person so what that means is you know those live to person interactions so like an interview series like you do here is perfect for a live in person. Maybe teaching workshops or speaking on stages or going to networking events.

And it’s interesting because out of all of those five everyone is still doing things a little bit differently there’s over 170 ways to market your business but when you break it down based on your content personality type there’s about 20 to 30. And so it’s interesting what someone chooses out of those 20 to 30 activities or things to do to really show up and give someone an experience so that they can really decide.

Do they like you? Do they trust you? Do they believe in what you’re saying? Or maybe they don’t. They think you’re not for them they think you’re speaking to someone else and this is not the right content or this isn’t the right person for me. And that’s okay because your marketing and messaging should repel as much as it attracts your ideal client.

So when I really start talking to new coaches, they try to do all five. They’re trying to please everybody and they’re like the more people I can get in front of the better and I say the right people that you can get in front of the better especially if you’re using the right messaging and the right energy, that’s for you because you’re going to attract those people who are for you.

And if you think too much of, “My ideal client likes to watch things on video and really hangs out on LinkedIn” but you’re not video and you don’t love LinkedIn, I guarantee you your marketing is going to become a chore and you’re going to end up hating it. So don’t do it. Do what you love and know the people will find you that way.

Morris: Wow! That is you. You’ve described the situation that most of the new coaches I speak to describe as well. Like that’s the situation they find themselves in. You’ve really described it so accurately and what I absolutely love about your, you know, your statement or your approach is you give permission to let go of the things.

And I have a follow-up question on that like so often from the experts, right, we hear these strategies and we want to be let’s say a good student, right? I fall into that category. I love to be a good student so when I read a book or I hear from an expert, I’m like I’m going to follow it to the t but so many times it doesn’t fit with who I am or what my strengths are and I think that permission, especially today where we’re so interconnected globally through the internet there’s even more opportunity to just do it your way.

As opposed to before when maybe there wasn’t so much opportunity you had to maybe squeeze yourselves a bit more into a box. I don’t know, I wasn’t marketing in those times but I just imagine that today it’s easier just thinking about niche, niche hobbies like small interest groups who can connect online and yeah so one follow-up question I have is right you mentioned how many new coaches feel pressured to be present on all platforms. Where do you think that self-imposed pressure is coming from?

Amy: Yeah so I really think as a society we believe more is better instead of better is better. The more eyes I get in front of, the more chances I’ll have to land a client. The more people who read my things, the more people who watch my videos and when we talk about things going viral, I think this is kind of the root of our current problem is you’ll talk about how yeah my TikTok video got 50,000 views or this blog post that I wrote or this social media post that I wrote got blah blah blah blah blah blah, right?

So as a society, we’ve been trained through these different social media platforms that when you go viral, you’ve made it. And I love asking the question of all right, how many ideal clients did that video going viral actually bring you in? How many people actually reached out to have a conversation with you? How many people engaged with you?

And a lot of times when we think about marketing, we think about it’s something marketing is going to make a sale for you. Marketing is not meant to do sales for you it’s meant to get people into a conversation. And so when we take away that idea that marketing is going to close a sale and marketing is actually a conversation starter it’s also interesting to see what would shift in your approach and in messaging.

And I think that even though as a society we really value vanity metrics such as you know how many likes did that get, how many views did that get, how many opened email did that get? When we really dive in deep and look at the more intimate interactions with our content and with our experiences and really get to know those people, I mean, let’s be honest, you don’t need 50,000 clients in one month. You probably need two or three right that would be a game changer just to get a couple.

And so if we really focus on instead of being a mild wide and an inch deep in our marketing and we focus on being like an eighth of a mile wide and 10 feet deep and we go deeper with people that’s giving them a better chance to build that relationship to build that trust because as coaches we have to be trustworthy right? Like that’s that’s part of the main thing of coaching like people have to trust you and have to trust what you’re saying and have to feel aligned with you but if we’re spreading ourselves too thin and too wide, we don’t actually give anybody that chance to get to know us super deeper well.

Morris: Yeah yeah you’re so well-said. I think the vanity metrics have really taken over in and I don’t know about you, but I feel the pressure too sometimes in the sense that you know, I feel like I should have more viewers or more followers but then like one of my favorite stories is I had a YouTube video that had 10 views and you know 10 views on YouTube is nothing. It’s like it might have been me and you know my phone and five thoughts, right?

Amy: Yeah exactly! You were probably one your mom was probably one so let’s be honest it was actually only eight.

Morris: Yeah exactly! But then the week after, someone booked a call on my calendar and it was one of the easiest most effortless enrollment calls I’ve ever had and they booked the call because they watched that video and that person didn’t even care if it had 10 views or right and it just opened my eyes so much in the sense that the ideal clients unless they want to come to you to improve vanity metrics, they don’t really care but I don’t recommend working with people whose goal is to just improve vanity metrics. It’s kind of a losing game.

Amy: Well and so Morris I think what this really goes to show with your story of 10 views is one client, like one that’s all it takes but two I bet you that person felt like you had literally made that video for them. Like whatever you said in that video spoke to their heart and that’s where we really tend to not go.

Like we don’t end up speaking to one person to their heart. When I engage with something I want it to feel like it was made for me or maybe it was made for my mom and I watch it and I’m like oh my gosh, Mom you have to watch this! This is speaking exactly about whatever you’re having a problem with or a friend or a coworker right.

So when we can start envisioning our marketing and messaging touching the heart of one person and what they are going through what they’re thinking and we find this out from having conversations and really being very good listeners when we’re in conversations, when you can really touch the heart of someone.

Morris your experience of that enrollment call being the easiest enrollment call ever is exactly that enrollment call is to just kind of seal the deal. They want to make sure, one that you’re a real person they want to ask you some general usually general questions right? They want to be able to share their experience and have like that deeper connection with you and so you know that even though your marketing is not supposed to close the sale, it will make closing a sale much more easier because you’re going into a conversation of understanding each other on a deep level.

Morris: Yeah also the whole idea of speaking to one particular person that’s where I really see a transformation in like coaches who start with online marketing or organic content marketing, there’s this shift when they stop creating stop speaking to a faceless crowd and they start you can feel that there’s someone they’re speaking to. Maybe it’s a new client or a friend or whatever it it’s a huge shift.

Amy: Well and when we can talk through stories too right? Like our personal experiences, our personal life experiences, we’re full of stories and you know if you feel like oh I’m not a good storyteller, I would challenge you to actually do this exercise. Pick up your phone, go to your photos tab right? And just randomly scroll and just stop on a photo, open up that photo, see what it is and tell a story about it.

And so the example that I have is I just pulled up a photo of me and one of my college friends who happened to be at professional NFL football game at the same time and we hadn’t seen each other in years and I had posted on social media and his wife sent him a text and was like “Oh my gosh Amy’s at that game too!”

So we were able to connect and see each other but that really goes to the deeper root of the mission of why I do what I do is I love being able to be deeply connected with people. So that even if we have eight nine 10 years of not talking as soon as there’s that opportunity to be together, it’s like we never stopped talking, right?

And so creating those deep relationships personally and in business and just throughout life because I believe your business and your life are so intertwined. It is one thing you can’t have a business life and a life life like when we can embrace how it’s intertwined and how it’s one thing and how you are one person and there’s not a professional Amy and a life or normal Amy you get Amy than either of those right?

When we can really embrace that, that just gives us so much more freedom. To again, let things go. Let weaknesses go. Let visions that we had of ourselves that maybe aren’t truly aligned, let them go and it also gives you permission to talk about what you’re comfortable with.

Like I am comfortable talking about my friendships and that I love going to sporting events and I’m a foodie and I love drinking wine and cider and traveling. A lot of the clients that I end up attracting are similar. They’re foodies, they love going to travel. We do four or five different events a year globally because Shannon and I value travel so much and for those who don’t love to travel typically we end up not working with them and that’s okay.

They end up finding someone else who does everything virtual that fits their needs but when I travel and we have a client who maybe can’t travel or missed out on that experience, it makes my heart sad because I want them there and so instead of feeling sad about them not being there, I would rather, they find someone to work with who does everything virtually 100% of the time so that they can have that need fulfilled and I can still have the need fulfilled of getting to hug this person and like be in their space for a few days.

So I think as we’re building out our offers as coaches too we really need to look at like what does fill our cup. What fills our energy? If being on Zoom all day drains you then don’t do Zoom all day. My business partner Shannon, her and I are both live-in content personality types but our live-in interactions are so different.

I can zoom for nine hours and my cup is full. I’m excited at the end of the day. I love all the conversations I’ve had. She’s only got like a couple hours of zoom in her so a lot of times that is spent her teaching in larger spaces and not doing as much one-to-one interactions.

And when we think about how we build our teams out, you know, Shannon and I are live in person, we don’t necessarily need any more live-in people on our team. So when we are looking at bringing new team members on, we have them take that quiz and we talk to the people who we need to fill the gaps of written visual audio or video.

The last time I was at a nonprofit, I actually met Shannon when she developed the quiz and released it. I took the concept and used it to build sales and marketing teams in the nonprofit space and the last place that I did this at we were a standardized coalition for construction contracts.

So think about like the people who build really big buildings in cities, they have to have like legal contracts with subcontractors like plums and cement people and all those things. So we had this coalition I was working with, created all these standard construction standardized construction contracts, clearly I did not go to law school. Clearly I don’t build things either but when it was me a coordinator and the CEO who first were together when I came on board, we took we all took the quiz.

I’m live in person, the CEO ended up being written and the coordinator being visual. Well, the CEO was speaking at a lot of conferences and he was not good at it. But he felt because he was the CEO he had to go represent the organization. He had to be the face of the organization. He had to speak on these stages and so once I got comfortable enough with the information, I started to speak on stages.

But on all of my slides and all of my handouts, I had his email address because he was written. If anybody had any questions, they were to email him. Not ask me those questions especially if they were legal questions. He went to law school I did not. And so we really started to turn the conversation around and I told them you can’t pick up the phone and call people. You can’t go have coffee with them like you have to respond via email and he started to get himself in more publications.

He started to write a book. So he started to do written things. We were able to bring a video person in as a volunteer. So I had all the volunteers take the quiz too there was someone who was really great on video like they looked good on video, they sounded good on video. So this person made all of our videos for us and I just needed someone to pick up the phone and be audio and like actually make sales phone calls.

So when I did the interview, I only interviewed people who scored audio on the quiz and the first interview I did with them was over the phone, great interview. Second interview, I brought them in person to see me, they all flopped because the in-person energy like is too much for them.

So the last interview was on the phone again and again I didn’t expect them to know anything about construction or the legal. I figured if I could learn that stuff, anybody could learn it. And so I was like sell me on something that you absolutely love and I just showed the photo of the football team I was at, was the Minnesota Vikings.

Well, this guy was a Packers fan which like if you know anything about American football like they there there’s a battle there. But he told me the story about how his parents moved from Wisconsin to California and this just kept a tie back home that felt good and so every Sunday they could watch the Wisconsin Packers and or the Green Bay Packers and really like feel like they were home in a time where they were trying to build a new home in California.

And just hearing him tell that family story about a team that I despise, I was like well, if I didn’t hate them so much I may be on board and go buy a t-shirt, right? So I ended up hiring him and I tell this story because we were at like 750k a year as an organization but when we all started to work in our content personality strengths, we grew that organization to 1.2 million in less than 18 months with one lawyer on the team the rest of us didn’t really care about construction or contracts but we really loved working in our content personality type.

And so as you think about, you in your business and working in your strength and bringing in team to fill out those weaknesses, this is such an easy way to go about it.

Morris: That is mind-blowing, how often do you see like people working with you that they assume the wrong personality for themselves and then they take the quiz?

Amy: All the time. All the time actually Shannon always thought she was written and um when she finally started to embrace her live-in content personality and teaching in small groups, she doubled the business on her own in one year.

But there was a woman that we worked with who is a holistic health coach her name is Annette and she had been creating Facebook ads to bring people into a webinar so she had about 700 people register for this webinar of a Facebook ad. Good number, right? 20 showed up she made no sales and so when we had her take the content personality quiz she ended up being written. So I’m not shocked from that webinar experience that she didn’t make any sales and I’m not shocked that her well-written Facebook ad got 700 people to click, right?

Morris: Yeah.

Amy: So here’s what we ended up doing, is we ended up taking what she covered in that workshop and we created an email series to those 700 people. She ended up enrolling five via email.

Morris: Off of one Facebook ad?

Amy: Off of one Facebook ad and off of her written content personality type and so where, we want to focus is getting your messaging working well organically and then if you want to go do ads and stuff like have at that but a lot of people out of the gate think they need to buy ads and if it’s not working organically, why do you think spending money is going to make it work?

Morris: Yeah that’s a good point.

Amy: And so really taking that step back and even you know talking about your business organically and on social media and through email and such but I say your best time to start marketing your business is after you’ve had a few clients.

And if those clients had made referrals or if those clients repeated and wanted more from you, then you’re really ready to do marketing messaging but until then your offer is an experiment almost and it’s really hard to sell and it’s really hard to message and experiment and so if you can get some clients and get them through your process and be able to use what you learn from that process what you hear them say during that process. And use that to build out your marketing messaging that’s the flow that I suggest you go but like starting out the bat and like buying Facebook ads, I think is just going to be a big waste of money.

Morris: Yeah I hear that all the time from other established coaches too that you know, your offer is going to morph initially. You make your best guess and then as you’re working with people it’s going to crystallize and clarify and you’ll know. For this for such an experiment to get the first you know couple of clients to do the experiment, what would you recommend to new coaches to get those first few people in?

Amy: Yeah yeah and when I think about like the first few clients, well again I came into a brand that was already established and so when I think about even though the first few clients that I was having conversations with as the new marketing mentor in this brand, it really came down to again, me listening very very well and me being willing to have conversations with people.

And there were a lot that weren’t the right people for me to be in conversation with yet but I didn’t know enough yet about the marketing and messaging of how I wanted to position myself to really say you are the right conversation for me and you are not the right conversation for me. So I, again, live in person ended up having a lot of conversations with a lot of people.

And if I saw someone maybe and that’s how I ended up in this brand. I saw Shannon struggling with something and you know as someone who ran nonprofit and Mission-driven organizations I could see and it was her struggle of building a team and finding the right person to help her with sales and to help her with marketing because it had grown so big, she couldn’t do it on her own anymore.

And so we needed someone who could balance out a little bit more and do more one-on-one work where she could do more group work, right? So I came in and said, “hey I see that you’re having a problem with this thing, would you want to talk about it?”

And that was the first step of me coming into this brand and so when I first came into this brand and I saw people really struggling with their marketing or really struggling with their mindset or like they were making seven posts a day every single day and their posts were just like flat and emotionless and really didn’t connect to anybody, I would always reach out and say, “hey how is it going? I see that you’re posting every day all the time, you must have a ton of clients.”

And nine times out of 10, I would get the no. Why don’t I have more clients like I’m posting all the time no one sees this stuff and I could then ask some questions about their thoughts like why are you posting this often?

Well, because I have to get in front of more people and to get in front of more people, I have to make more posts. Well that’s not actually how it works. If you make better posts, more people are going to read it and engage on it. So talking to people and getting them to take that step back and again talking to them in my craft and you know I have again I’m going to go to this another holistic health coach situation you know.

I just was interacting with this person and I was having some health issues and eating like this really wonky diet and she’s like tell me more about what you’re eating like what is in that bowl? What are you eating? And so it was the general curiosity that she approached me.

We just had a casual conversation and she’s like you know I’m a big believer that sometimes the universe puts us in the right room with the right people. She had a similar experience which is why she started holistic healthy coach business.

And when I worked with her, it is the first thing that had ever made me feel better in over 20 years and so yeah it took me 20 years to find her but gosh I’m so glad I found her now! And I’m glad she asked me about what the heck I was eating that day because I don’t think I would have forth come with that information.

Like I’m not out there walking around saying I don’t feel good and I eat these weird things but it was curiosity that she came in and it was curiosity with kindness. So if you’re just getting started out and you’re seeing people in your space, if you’re seeing your connections, your family, your friends who are struggling.

Ask some questions. Be curious and see if you can have a conversation with them and it may result into working together it may not. But I feel like you learn from every conversation that you have.

Morris: Yeah. It’s you have one Golden Nugget after the other. I feel like we need a follow-up episode at some point.

Amy: Anytime my friend. Anytime.

Morris: I really want to bring it back to your personality wheel here in the last few minutes because I mean at this point, I think anyone should be sold on taking the quiz.

Amy: Oh yeah! It’s a free quiz too please take it.

Morris: Yeah like you got to take the quiz so when they take, I mean the quiz it’s the one that I took right? It was it was super easy like it was surprisingly easy but.

Amy: 30 seconds. Answer those question, questions based on your gut. No judgment. You can’t get them wrong. I promise you will pass this quiz, okay? So just go in and just answer them quickly whatever comes to you first and then you’re going to get an email with your result.

And you’re actually going to get a guidebook based on your result. And that’s going to help you implement this and really think through it. You’re also probably going to get an email from me because I try to email everybody who takes our quiz because I am curious some people are super shocked by their results.

Some people are not and they’re like oh this makes sense and we can have a conversation of what do you need to shift and change. Can you give this a try for the next two weeks and see if you like it and one of the questions that I always ask first is did you enjoy this thing?

And if you didn’t let’s dissect why. Because if you don’t enjoy it, you’re never going to do it. So we want to break it down that easily.

Morris: That is the point of marketing like yeah if you don’t enjoy your marketing, no chance.

Amy: No and you’re going to think you’re bad at it and I promise you’re not and I don’t think anybody can market your business better than you. When you are able to talk and message and market about your business then maybe someone can help you.

Maybe someone can help put together that newsletter or make that social media post or get something up on your website for you. But really especially if you’re a coach, people are enrolling into you, in your strengths and don’t ever empower anybody else to say they can say things about you better than you can say about yourself.

I promise it’s in you. It’s just finding the right situation to pull it out of you. To pull it onto the paper or into the video or over the phone or whatever that may be. And if you’re struggling, that we have an entire Facebook community that you can come hang out in and ask questions in. So come check us out.

Morris: I’m going to put all those links below the video and below the Spotify episode as well. What are the links that so where can people take the quiz?

Amy: If you go to joyfulbusinessrevolution.com/joyquiz and then if you want to join that Facebook, itsjoyfulbusinessrevolution.com FB and if you’re trying to find me, I’m on Facebook like Facebook is my social media platform of choice. I’m Amy Hagar, A-M-Y H-A-G-E-R, feel free to friend me and ask me any questions and if you’re like what were those links I will send you the links.

Morris: Perfect! All right a link to the quiz, a link to the Facebook group, and a link to you.

Amy: Awesome! I appreciate it, Morris. This was so much fun. Thank you for having me.

And don’t forget to subscribe on my YouTube channel, @creategrowprofit.