So tell me about your vision.
So my vision really started about four years ago when I decided to sell my own business
and start helping others stop spending money on the wrong marketing and start making money
with it.
Tell me more about that.
So literally, I've been in sales and marketing my whole entire life.
I had my own startup business and I actually started it six months before the first downturn
in the economy back in 2007 and I wrote it all the way through the pandemic successfully.
So I found over the years that there were several key factors in a successful business
and consistent marketing and having a strong marketing foundation is one of them.
The challenge that I found is that there's a lot of marketers out there that are selling
just what they sell, whether you need it or not, they're selling it to you and they're
saying that's going to be the solution and it's a one-off and it's going to be wonderful
and that's not necessarily really what works.
And so I decided once I figured out my special formula in order to be able to achieve success
in my own business, I decided to sell off that business and then literally start helping
others stop spending money on the wrong marketing, start making money with it and I think it
really starts with having a strong marketing foundation and then consistency is key as
well.
Thank you for sharing that, Cassie.
My next question goes directly into what you were just talking about.
What would you say is your why of why you do and why you want to help businesses with
this right strategy, why you get out of bed every morning?
I would say that my why is I think that everybody deserves to have a business that they absolutely
love, that fulfills a dream of theirs, but also works with their personal and professional
life and that's a really hard balance, but I think that people are more interested in
that nowadays.
And I myself have been through that struggle and journey and I've had a lot of pitfalls,
I've had a lot of errors, I've spent a lot of money, I've had a lot of successes, I've
had a lot of pivots in my life.
And so through that experience, I really, my goal is just to help other businesses like
myself that maybe they've done all that they can on their own and they're ready to get
to that next level, but they're not quite sure where to go, get there with, I mean,
my business name is Straightforward Consulting and Marketing, a very straightforward, transparent
approach that puts the clients in their needs first, gets them a strong marketing and messaging
foundation so that they can build the future that they're looking for with their business
and ultimately, eventually, if they'd like, like I did, sell it off for a profit and either
move on to something else or have a happy retirement.
Thank you for sharing that and for people listening out there, there's a lot of people
in marketing who bring a bad name to marketing because they are trying to give you strategy
that's not good for you, but that does not mean marketing does not work.
Correct.
You have to find the right marketing channel with the right assets that you have, you want
to make sure you have those assets with you and that combined with right procedures and
things together can be very, very powerful in place.
So thank you for sharing that, Cassie.
Yeah.
I think that you bring up another point as well is because just because something worked
for me doesn't mean it's going to work for you.
It depends on your audience, it depends on what you're selling, it depends on your budget,
it depends on even time of year, it depends on sales cycle.
So anybody that says that there's a silver bullet or that this is definitely going to
work with your marketing efforts, to me, that's a little bit of a warning signal, I guess.
So you can do your best, you can make educated guesses.
And so the stronger your marketing foundation, your messaging foundation is, I think the
easier it is to make those educated guesses to be able to move forward.
What you really want to look for is somebody who is keeping an eye on the ball and who
is saying, okay, this is working, let's keep doing more of it.
And okay, this didn't work, let's cut this off at the knees so that we're not bleeding
here and let's put money towards something else that might work better for you.
That's awesome.
What can someone do in that case, Cassie, before they even hire someone for marketing?
How can they vet them?
One of the things that I've noticed as far as when, because I mean, even with myself,
I'm not necessarily the right person for everybody that comes to me.
And also it's important to me that we have a really good rapport and are able to build
a strong working relationship because not only my goal is once I start working with
you, my clients typically stick with me.
They like my honest, straightforward approach.
They find it refreshing.
They can trust me with their dollars as if it was my own.
So I would say one, a lot of times people really don't know what their marketing budget
is and most often they don't even have a marketing budget.
And so doing research, if you look at it, most businesses just toe the line, you're
looking at a minimum of like six to 70% of your gross sales, which is normally like,
oh my gosh, because a lot of times people didn't even put anything in their marketing
budget and suddenly at six to 7%.
And then other people come to me and they say, hey, we really want to grow and we want
to double our sales within the next few years.
Well then you're really looking upwards to 15% of your gross sales in order to be able
to actually move the needle that fast.
So really taking a look at those parameters, figuring out what you're able to invest.
I think when people come to me, people don't like giving you a number, right?
But if you come to me and you say, I've got $5,000 or I've got $100,000 or I've got $350,000,
here's where I'm at.
Here's where I'm looking to go.
What can you do for me?
That's going to get me there.
I can give you a much better approach to use those investment dollars in a way that is
going to consistently steadily grow your business.
Then if you're hiding that from me or you don't know what it is and you haven't made
that commitment yet to, okay, I'm going to invest this.
It does become much more of a transactional and a project based, like I just need a website
or I just need marketing messaging or I just need advertising.
The other thing I would say too is really being open to hearing other ideas because
the whole entire point of a marketing expert is to bring their ideas to the table that
will work for you.
So being prepared to be able to share what you've tried in the past and what hasn't
worked and also being open to new ideas, I would say would probably be pretty key when
you're looking to work with somebody.
And then finally, I would say just making sure that your personalities mesh and make
sense because not all personalities work together.
And ideally, if you get somebody who's well rounded in marketing, they're going to be
able to help you for a number of years, but it's no fun working with somebody you don't
like working with.
So if you don't jive with the personality or you just can't wrap your head around what
they're trying to help you with, then maybe that's not the right person and you should
move on to somebody else.
Thank you for being here today.
I'm really happy that you tuned in to Vision Pros Live.
I'm looking forward to seeing your reactions as these episodes continue to move forward.
This is going to get more and more fun.
We'll have more and more engagement as well.
We'll invite people to participate in the show and thank you for giving us your time
and attention.
I hope you have an excellent time building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro
yourself.