I just need to get your first name, last name, where you're located and the name of your business.
Josh Ramsey. I'm a fractional CMO. The name of the business is JRCMO. I travel nationally a lot
every now and then internationally, but primarily my home base is Dallas Tech.
Oh, okay. Okay. And so tell me about JRCMO.
So, JRCMO, basically, I have to maybe rewind just a little bit to give a little bit of back story.
I think it helps everyone understand what I do and how it works. So in the late 90s, I sold media.
So I did billboards, advertising, radio, television, traditional media, because Al Gore and I had not
sat down in the back room and created the internet is one of my really bad dad jokes. So, but, you
know, it was truly before the internet was a thing. And this is, again, late 90s. So what I was figuring
out in my young career, you know, over 20 years ago was the, I could sell clients really well. I
could place them in markets. I could get eyeballs and impressions on what they had, but they would
never retain. I kept losing them. So I identified and tried to identify why can't I keep a client.
Maybe I'm selling the wrong product. So I went from billboards to transit, advertising, to radio,
and nothing was really working. I ended up with an ad agency, a top 100 ad agency. I went in in 2003
as a senior project manager. Within six months became senior project manager. And within a year
and a half after that, I became two-tier sales and marketing. I elevated very quickly. And one of the
points of maturation of myself and growth was I was able to identify that the critical parts of
marketing isn't where you place it, it's what you say and the perception of your audience,
whatever that audience is. Because now you talk about inbound marketing with someone looking for
you. You see the pages. Now it's internet. And that inbound means they want to find you. They have a
need. They're aware of their need and they go look for it. Outbound is traditional media.
Traditional media is more along the lines of television, radio. It's branding to some level.
So your structure of your message in each scenario has to be different. And then you have to
communicate differently. What I do as a fractional CMO, I'll kind of tie what I just said in a
fractional CMO into one ball of education for you. And in that education, I would just tell you a
story. So I met a client that I work with. His name is Kevin. And what Kevin does is they build
special design packaging for all sorts of companies. One of their bigger clients is Honda.
So Honda has a facility that builds the parts and then ships it across the nation or across the
world to locations manufacturing that they put the parts together. So you have a facility outside
Chicago, another one outside of Dallas, and it all has to go to New York to be put together and
manufactured. Just kind of making part of that up. But you get the idea. Well, I asked Kevin,
I said, Kevin, how'd you get in this business? He goes, well, my dad had it. I go, okay, well,
why did your dad start it? And he goes, well, I don't know, but blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Kevin came up and he goes, hey, you know, here's the real deal. He said, ultimately why is that
started? Was he said his dad was ordering this type of product from another company. And
obviously, and what would happen is he ordered, let's say a thousand pieces and 950 would show up.
Well, you're not going to sit there and count out how many did I get a thousand? I got to check,
I got to count because it's a lot. Sometimes it was a hundred thousand. So you wouldn't count it.
But here's what his dad realized when he would order this product, these boxes, specialty boxes.
What he found out was he would do a thousand pieces. He ordered a thousand boxes, 950 boxes
showed up. So he would call that manufacturer that created the boxes and go, hey, I'm 50 short.
And they would go, no, no, you did something wrong. He's like, why are you arguing with me?
I know I did a thousand. I need to ship a thousand. You gave me 950. How am I 50 off?
So it became an aggravation. So through the aggravation, he became an entrepreneur,
which is what a lot of entrepreneurs do, which he said, Hey, I see a problem. I can fix it. I'm
going to do that job. So now you have a business that Kevin runs. Well, here's the problem. It's
not that Kevin can just stand and say, I'm a legit company. I'm real. My dad had it. We're
30 years in business. We're honest. We're ethical. Guess what? So is the guy next to you.
Yes.
So is the guy that only sent 950 and not a thousand. Right? So here's what I asked Kevin,
Kevin, what are the three questions that someone asks you all the time? They walk through the door.
What do they ask? Kevin thought about it and he talked and I said, Kevin, what are the three
questions they should be asking you? Now it hits different. So we start talking about, he goes,
he tells me that story. So I said, Kevin, what do you do to achieve and make sure that you are
ethical? You are honest. You're giving them the thousand that they ordered. He starts telling me
about their infrastructure and how they have sensors and products and conveyor belts and how
they put it together and that he has barcodes on everything that moves through his warehouse.
Okay.
And I said, why is none of that on your website? You're sitting here speaking in platitudes in the
same message that all of your competitors speak on, but no one's talking about the innovation of
how you made it better, your innovative idea that's not spoken about. So when we talk about why a
chief marketing officer can help, there's two or more levels to understand about a CMO.
A chief marketing officer can come in and identify your unique selling position,
but be careful when you look at chief marketing officers, because a lot of times what's being
sold out there is that a CMO, this chief marketing officer really is only an owner of a digital
marketing company, an ad agency. And they just want to upsell you on, hey, we'll give you more
strategies if you pay more money. Rather than being a true CMO and saying, look, I'm not going
to just sell you what I'm good at. I'm going to tell you what you need. That's a paradigm shift.
Yes. So kind of gave you a whole lot there. I'm here. I'm totally here. So the chief marketing
officer, which is what you are, you are the ones that help people that have innovative ideas,
be able to market that so people can understand what they really have done and the difference
between their companies and others. Yeah. Well, I mean, that's a part of it, right? Yeah.
But then you go to where do you spend budget? How do you calculate your ROI? So again, I'll tell you
another quick story here. Hopefully I'll try to keep it quick for you. But they're insightful.
So one thing that I offer is a program called the high voltage training. And the high voltage
training is I tell stories about this all the time, and then I allow Q&A. So it's kind of like
a podcast, but it's not a podcast. It's more of a training session. So it costs $9 a month. But
in that $9, you get two sessions where I bring up a topic and then answer questions on the topic.
And then I go through open Q&A once a month and say, Hey, it's open Q&A. Ask me any question
that you want. Right. And then I just start spinning whatever knowledge I have. So this other story
I was going to tell you is a client came to me and we're looking at their marketing budget.
And with this particular client, they're spending about $6,000 a month on direct ROI marketing. So
direct ROI marketing is that we track and we go, what's the lifetime of a client? How long does a
client to come in our funnel and then close? And we've been calculating that. But then we had a
conversation as we looked at 2025, because currently we're in 2024. So we start to project
a quarter, one quarter out from the year ahead. So as we start to set that budget, the conversation
became, Hey, why are we just looking at our current client base? Why are we not looking at
looking at branding marketing, the top of funnel to move them down the funnel? Because you have
people out there that maybe they know who you are. Maybe they don't, maybe they want to know. We want
to get more education. We want to draw them in because maybe the buying cycle isn't what we
thought it was, which is 45 days. Yeah. Maybe it's six months, but we've never got them into the
funnel to know why we're here, what's unique about us. So now we've dedicated the budget in this
particular case, we've broken it apart. We now call it top of funnel and lower funnel. So our lower
funnel budget is 6,000. That's not changed because the company's being very successful. We're doing,
you know, over $2 million a year spending $6,000 a month because we're very accurate in what we do.
We've honed it in over the last six to eight months to get it deadly accurate. Now I've worked
with this client for over two years, but he, I won't go through that story, but over six months,
specifically, we really dialed in. He brought me in at a higher capacity is ultimately what happened
and we've dialed that in. But now we've separated another budget that we're building and we're
identifying what are the KPIs, the key point indicators of what this fluff budget is going to
be if you want to call it that. Top of funnel where you can't calculate it and go, okay, I know we're
going to get this many leaves because we spent this much, but now what we're trying to do is build the
top of the funnel so we get more at the bottom because this has not changed over the last few
years. The bottom of the funnel continues, but we need to dive more in. So how do you grow this
bottom of the funnel? Put more into the top. Got it. Okay. Okay. And then how did that turn out for
the individual? What was the outcome? So right now we're setting the KPIs. So we're still early
stages with this particular client. We have another client that is a little bit ahead of that. So
there's a new system out that a lot of people are learning about. It's called programmatic.
So I can touch on that here in a minute if you'd like to understand that, but it's kind of more
of what I would consider. I get asked a lot of times, what's the new thing? Like what should we
pay attention to? And it's programmatic. Okay. So again, we can go to programmatic advertising
if you want me to explain that for you, but staying kind of in this realm for a minute,
this other client is running programmatic and they're doing a lot of branding on social media,
but they're a roofing company. The problem that we've identified with them is different than other
companies that I work with because in roofing it's more typically lower funnel is all they talk about.
That's all they focus on, but this company has come to me and without them realizing they've
already built the top of funnel. Okay. Their problem is unique only because that's how they're
structured and they've not identified what I'm able to identify. So with them, they're running
programmatic on the top. They're running some social media on the top, but then they're really
focused in the CEO had started that, but not really aware of what that meant, but he's really
focused on the bottom of the funnel because he's so focused on, I need this many leads, this many
sales every month to grow and hit my sales goal. And I get that, but what he hasn't realized is
that the top of funnel has done him very well going through the maturation, right? Maturation is the
maturity of a lead, a wine, whatever you want to talk about, right? As consumers, as we learn about
a product or service, it becomes a maturation, right? So with him, he's doing really well, but
he hasn't leveraged it well. So in marketing, I use the word leverage a lot, which is you find
something that works, but how hard and how fast can we push it? That's the question. Because if we
go, okay, we're spending X amount of dollars in paid ads, Google ads. Well, at what point do we
keep putting money into it, but we get lesser returns? Right. Right. So that part of leverage
is law of diminishing returns. Right? So that's one part, but now when we leverage programmatic,
the programmatic and the branding is drawing leads in. And some of the leads go real fast. Boom,
they hit. But a lot of it is making them aware. So I don't know if you ever have a jingle,
but or if you could think one of like progressive, this isn't a jingle, I guess, but everyone knows
progressive or you know Allstate. Yes. Yes. And these branding companies, if you think about a
jingle, then it's like that kind of sticks in your head. Right? Yeah, definitely. When I was a kid
living in Dallas, there was a jingle that says, the next best thing to do is downward clean. So
that's stuck in my head. And even here I am in my 40s, that's still in my head where I'm like downward
clean. And I remember what they do because of the jingle. That's branding, and it can live for a
long time. But you have to control your budget of what you're doing with branding and what are your
KPIs, because they're different than your KPIs and ROI of return on investment. And then at some
level, you have to understand that high tide raises all shifts. So your overall brand can go up,
your leads, your visibility, you know, and part of SEO that people often don't talk about is
branding. It is that you're out in so many places that Google's coder, this algorithm that is a
machine tracks your brand. So again, this is like, hopefully this is good information for you.
It is definitely. It's really good information. Yeah, absolutely. Because I think when you point
out a lot of things in regards to marketing and branding, and funneling and filtering your leads
and understanding, as you mentioned before, you had a product and you didn't understand why your
leads didn't stick. And so this is definitely answering or helping others to understand why
they may be having the same situation going on. Now, Joshua, one thing I do is I see your passion
in all of this. Like, you're so passionate. And as you see it, I'm intrigued. So I'm like, I see it,
I feel the passion. What's your why? Give me the definition of what you mean by what's my way. Why
do I do it? Why do you do this? And why are you so passionate about it? Yeah. I mean, great
question. So when we get to what's my why, I think that part of what I tell people, I teach them to
do of your unique selling position, right? Like, because a unique selling position, a lot of times
has to be your narrative. So an interesting thing is people want to look this up, is there's
something called the trauma egg. And a trauma egg is a psychological profile for yourself to draw an
egg, and then, and then draw pictures inside that egg of your first memory at the bottom to your most
recent memory at the top that have affected you positive or negatively, it doesn't matter, but
they're memories that you feel like have had impact in your life to where you are today, because
that's your narrative. That's kind of like an anthill, because an anthill, you only see so much
above the ground and everything else in the tunnel below it is massive, right? So when you go to what's
my why, I share that, you know, on the front end to explain my why. And part of my narrative that
I'm very open about is what what's known as abandonment. So I lost my mom unexpectedly in
2014, in the middle of the night died of a heart attack. That's a level of abandonment. It wasn't
anything that she meant to do, right? What she didn't choose to, but that level of abandonment
had such a massive impact on who I am. There was another one where I was living in a condo, a town
home next to somebody. And I told him I said, Hey, I want to change our life. He has his side, I have
my side, I want to change our life. But I'd like to make a match. Are you good paying, you know, 50
bucks, and I'll put them on for him. And he was like, Yeah, no problem. I was like, All right,
well, I'll buy them and I'll put them in. And I went and did it. And he comes back one day and goes,
Wow, you actually did it. And I was like, What do you mean? I told you I would. Well, most people
say one thing, but they never do it. Yeah. And those types of moments are so big in my narrative.
Yeah, as micro as one of them was, and as massive as another one of the impact of losing your rock
in your life, you know what I mean? Like that, that she was just that person for me. Yeah, that
now I can tell you a story that's going to make more sense. And when I started my company in 2009,
everyone remembers the economy. And I barely had enough money to drive to Chicago and speak at an
event. And I told my wife, Hey, if I can't sell something, I don't know if I'm gonna have enough
money to get back home with gas. So from Dallas to Chicago, didn't have enough money. I was worried
about having enough money to get back home with money for gas. So I had to sleep in my car for
half the night and then get up and go speak at a conference. I spoke at that conference, and I'm
gonna I'm gonna do my best to not get emotional. Because sometimes when I say this story, I'm like,
I well up and you're understanding my wife, but I did the conference and I was lucky enough to take
a guy to dinner and finish explaining to him my why as you asked it, and what I could do for him.
And he hired me. I then had enough money to come home and like, I was like, wow, again, I'm not
gonna get emotional because there's a lot of like emotion within that. That builds my narrative.
These pieces of people don't say what they're going to do. Why not? You know, losing somebody,
that emotional abandonment, I don't want to abandon. So I want to do what I say I'm going to do.
And I don't want to abandon somebody. And I want people that are in small businesses to have someone
they can lean on and get real answers. Don't get sold by some media person because we all need
marketing. Work with someone or get answers from someone that's passionate that wants to help you.
Because what I know, to wrap that part of my why is that I met a guy, good buddy of mine. So shout
out to John Graziano. And John Graziano, I've met him, he came into a conference in I think it was
2010. And he sat down and listened and he was like, wow, dude, Josh, this is awesome. And he comes
back and he says, we became friends. We didn't do any business together. But in 2015, when I really
needed a piece of business, he didn't know that. But he showed up and said, hey, started working
with this company. It's a window company, they do minimal frame. And they need a CMO, they need
someone to help them open up in the North American market. It was such a godsend that I created a
relationship, I gave him a lot of free advice. We became friends. But because of my free advice,
my passion, my interest in helping him grow and his growth, and him being able to get to a place
in his life that he can go, I'm at that next level. He gave me an opportunity. And with that
opportunity, it propelled me beyond. And that's why I do my why. Because of all those reasons,
and when you put them together, that's my narrative. That's my story. That's my why. And
that's why I do my best to give back and put myself on podcasts to share as much information as I can.
So people make good choices, and they grow, and they get to where they need to be and don't get
sold what someone's good at, get sold and make decisions on what you need and what you're going
to move to that next level. And that's that's so cool. You say that because a lot of, well,
some people will say that they have a product for you to help you to get somewhere else. But you
got to go through A, B, and C when really all you just need it was D. And they're just trying to
fill you up with all of these things, having you pay so much more. So you're the difference between
you and others would be the fact that I'm going to give you what you need in the area in which your
business needs it. Anything else that we find out that can become a part of a discussion later.
So I like that. And your why. And now I get it. You know what I mean? When it comes to communication
and stories and and you designing a company and a business that tells you I'm here for you, I won't
abandon you. I am committed to helping you figure out your business. And we're going to understand
what that is. And then I'll release you. But then in the meantime, I'm just going to share as much as
I possibly can. Because when you pour in or you pour out, you're guaranteed to pour in.
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. Have an excellent time
building out your vision and becoming a Vision Pro yourself.