Welcome to the six Figure Business Mastery Podcast, where every week Kirsten

and Jeanie dive into the essential topics to fuel your business growth.

From copywriting to course creation mindset, to video

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Tune in for expert guest interviews on all things marketing and business and learn.

How to work on your business, not just in it.

So get ready to unlock your business potential and take it to the next level.

If your business has hit a plateau, these three marketing

blind spots might be the reason.

And our guest today, mark Faye, is here to talk about how to fix them.

So thanks for joining us today, mark.

We're excited to talk about that.

Great to be with you, Jeannie and Kirsten.

Thank you for having me.

We are so excited to have you and learn about these blind spots.

But before we do, tell our audience a little bit about you and how you ended

up in the business that you're in.

I got backed into the entrepreneurial world, so I was a teacher out

of college, coached football and taught English, and it was great.

First seven, eight years, and then I ended up in pastoral ministry for seven years.

Then I ended up in a nonprofit for seven years and did a. Fork in the road.

I just finished an MBA feeling like maybe I needed to retool and ended up leading

the marketing for a software company that grew very quickly, from 8 million

to 16 to 31 million over 24 months.

And I took a little team of 1.5 marketers to about 16 or

17, so it was white knuckle.

Hold on for dear life and.

VC capital and all of that.

So then from there I went and did head of marketing at a financial advisory firm

and kind of the same thing where, you know, growth had stalled and so we built

up a lot of productive digital channels and kind of out of that experience,

when I left that job, I thought, okay, lemme give this marketing and business

coaching a run, and I'll do that until I find my next assignment, my next job.

Eight years later, I'm still with my own business.

So it's been great.

Lots of ups and downs as your audience knows, but wouldn't trade it.

So you should be the eight years.

For the seven years this time.

I know.

Yeah, that's exactly right.

Yeah.

Hopefully I know when I get to that point, I think, okay.

Where's the change coming?

Getting through it is Okay.

I think we can.

Keep going here.

I feel like business is always evolving and changing.

So instead of a seven year change, you probably feel like you're facing changes

every 12 to 24 months because with ai, with innovation, with automation, with all

the things that are changing as business owners, what's keeping us on our toes?

It really is.

Even in my own business, in the last 24 to 36 months, marketing companies

had focused a lot on messaging, which I'm a certified StoryBrand guide with

Donald Miller's organization, and that's really about messaging in the last 24.

To 36 months.

AI has radically impacted people who are copywriters.

We can argue over it or go back and forth.

The fact is this has changed the industry.

It's, it's just a very immediate example of the fact that you have

to continually be recreating your business, looking on the horizon

while you are, of course, attending to your client's needs every day.

So true.

So I'm excited to find out.

What do you feel like are some of the blind spots that your clients

struggle with on a regular basis?

It's funny, the blind spots that I need help with myself.

It's hard for me to develop clarity for myself.

It's hard to step outside of my own business and then look in and get that

clarity that I would get from that third party, that external observer.

So one of the things I do is I just bring clarity where there's confusion.

Because I think clarity creates capacity, and so whether it's your messaging,

StoryBrand has a great model of the hero of the story as your customer, your

client, and you are the trusted guide.

It's amazing how many times we try to put ourselves as the business owner

or the product or service provider.

As the hero of the story, riding in on a white horse, saving the day with

our product or service, and that's not what resonates with our customers.

What resonates is when we are the trusted guide and our client is

a hero, and what we do is we help them solve the problem they have.

We don't solve it for them.

So a lot of clarity around messaging comes down to.

Really basic, but I think very powerful model of storytelling in messaging.

I also think though, it applies to our business, you can't delegate what you

can't define, and I think a lot of growth stalls out not because of a lack of effort

or because of even expertise, but a lot of times it's because of blur, because

of unclear offers, unclear priorities.

Unclear processes.

Too many processes, trying to do too many things for clients.

So that's clarity.

And the other way I've seen the value I bring to clients, it's

been my own challenge as well, is what money do you spend?

And when?

Clarity around how you allocate your resources is critical and spending

the right money at the right time.

So sometimes just giving my client the, uh, permission to buy the less

shiny tool, the good enough tool.

And when you use that tool to its capacity, now you can afford and maybe

you actually have to buy the higher.

Price tool that you really wanted right up front, and so now you need the better one.

You don't just want it, but you actually need it.

But I think clarity, you could say is the oxygen in your systems that

you need to breathe that without that clarity, things just get cloudy.

It gets difficult to see day to day where you're going and

how you're gonna get there.

It's fascinating.

We have a friend that says, clarity equals velocity.

I love that.

You can't go faster to actually know where the heck you're going.

That's exactly Pack with you.

Yeah, I'm gonna write that one down.

That's added to my talking points.

That you can live on that one every day.

Exactly right.

Yeah, it's a good reminder because again, I think we get so excited about all the

things we can do and all the ways we could help people, but at the end of the day.

We only have so many hours and so much energy.

So we're better off to focus that energy with clarity to move our

businesses along quicker than if we try to scatter our energy because we have

so many ideas and so many interests.

So I'm sure that sometimes that's like herding cats to get your clients

to realize that yes, you can do.

800 things, but why don't we just do two really well, and then we can grow on that.

That's right.

Yeah.

One of the things that I find is it's very simple.

Sometimes what we do for our clients is so simple, but it's the thing

that they need to be reminded of.

And in this idea of clarity and the hero of the story is I

just help my clients remember.

That as the trusted guide, the most important things they have in connecting

with their clients is empathy.

What it feels to be challenged with that, to be facing that challenge.

Maybe the frustration, maybe the confusion.

You might know just the disappointment or discouragement, whatever that product or

service is addressing, but slowing down enough to feel that with your client.

Is critical.

And sometimes with messaging we throw in these phrases, Hey, I know

what it feels like, but I always say to my clients, wait, slow down.

Do you really?

Let's stop for a minute here and think about it.

How is your client feeling right now?

Because that changes the way we engage then.

It's not just words on a page, but it is a relationship.

I like to say that if you're selling widgets, I'm not really your guy, but

if it's about building relationships of trust, then I'm all in because I

think that businesses that take care of trust go a long way, and the meaning

of what they bring to their clients remains center for them as well.

We always tell people we laugh.

We always have trouble with our messaging 'cause we're two very different people

and so we articulate things differently.

The core of us and our business is the same.

And so sometimes we go off in different directions.

And I think the other thing we do sometimes is we get too in the weeds

on the features versus the benefits.

I wanna talk about we can do this and this and this, when you're just overwhelming

someone and you're not actually, like you said, simplifying and clarifying

something that's really on their mind and frustrating them right now.

Yeah.

So a lot of times it's not solving the problem, but what you need to

bring to them is the confidence that if you take this step, it's gonna be

the step that leads to the solution.

And so that's part of.

The StoryBrand methodology is this trusted guide has empathy, but also authority.

The trusted guide knows how to help the hero of the story, get to the

solution, but the challenge is how, and it begins with a very simple plan.

So even if it's a complicated or difficult problem that needs to be overcome, what

the trusted guide gives is a simple plan.

Take this step.

I'm gonna be with you.

You will be able to solve this problem.

But it's these three things.

So that's one of the disciplines on a lot of StoryBrand websites is, look, you

have to give a plan that's actionable.

And so it's step one, step two, step three.

Oh, I can do that.

Then I'll trust you to guide me through the rest of it.

So what you're saying I think is dead on now.

That's amazing.

And so true.

Once people have clarity, what trips them up after that, they can become

a victim of their own success.

So I think when things start happening, you start growing, you start being

able to bring more clients in.

Systems.

I think the second blind spot is that my clients don't know when to implement

systems because systems turn effort into results, and I always say that the

time to implement systems is yesterday.

It appears I have to feel the pain first before I am convinced

that I need to slow down enough.

To implement a system, and this is a big topic, you could probably do a whole

podcast on systems because it is so key to the six figure business for sure.

But I think the main idea of it is this idea of repeatable results.

My experience being on your podcast, for example, was really frictionless.

It was a great experience and I know you didn't pick up the phone every

time and give me a call personally to make sure I had that experience.

You've implemented a system that in my coming on the call today, you probably

noticed I was anxious to be here.

I was excited to be here.

I felt like I already knew both of you because of the system you have in place.

Once you put that heavy lift up front to put it in motion and

you've worked out the kinks, then.

The customer, the client gets to experience that positive is really

fulfilling your brand promise.

And the brand promise is a brand is simply the promise you deliver on every time.

Whether it's a customer or a vendor or one of your own staff, you wanna be delivering

on that same promise in every interaction.

So every system has a stage.

Some people invest too much too early, but that's where I think I help

clients in my world, is making the right investment at the right time.

It's funny because when you think about systems, standard operating procedures

and things like that, we joke about how business owners wear a lot of hats.

They wear a lot of hats, but what's crazy is when you start a business.

You don't even know what some of those hats are.

You don't know what's gonna be on that hat, and you definitely don't know

what's entailed in wearing that hat.

And it's not your fault, like just you didn't take a class

in any, probably anywhere.

I don't even know.

When you got your MBA, did you take a class on creating systems?

Whole different world and especially because you are.

In a lot of cases, especially when you start your business, it's just you.

And so you have all these big learning curves, whether it's your bookkeeping

or setting up your SOPs, or just like you said, figuring out what

is your customer's journey and how do I communicate my message brand?

There's so much going on.

So for all of you who are listening and you keep hearing

systems and you're thinking.

I don't know what that is.

Definitely reach out to Mark because none of us were taught that.

And so if he can hold your hand and help you figure out what

systems you need to create, that can change everything for you.

Any help that I can provide, because I know the experience myself,

the pain of that, the need for that outside in view on things.

Yeah.

So systems to me like to say systems don't kill creativity.

'cause that's usually the knock against them.

And so they're gonna.

Take the heart out of my business, or I'm gonna stop doing personally by hand what

I think my customers love or clients love.

But I think systems don't kill creativity.

They protect it from chaos.

And so I agree, they free up room for us to keep building

and reinventing the business.

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Yeah.

Kirsten always says that if it's something that has at least three

steps and you do it at least three times, it has to have a system.

That really simple kind of way to think about it.

Mm-hmm.

I always did systems naturally because I would forget things.

I wasn't doing it every day or every week.

I'd forget a step and that would be a really important step.

So for me, I just naturally put 'em together because I needed to for myself,

and I didn't create that 3, 3, 3 thing.

I read it somewhere and it is brilliant, but it's something we just

don't think about documenting what we do, how we do it when we do it.

Yeah, and it just doesn't come natural.

And I'll have a confession 'cause I made this confession in our

mastermind meeting yesterday.

We do have fantastic systems and I am the worst at falling off the wagon.

Like a healthy eating plan or whatever.

Yeah.

You do really well for a couple of months and then you fall off the wagon.

Yeah.

So for those of you who have systems in place.

And you're not using them.

I think also acknowledge that's normal, but you can check yourself and then

recommit to getting in there and using those systems and testing them.

If something's not working in the system, then tweak it and

change it so that it does work.

I think our systems are pretty dialed in the ones that I'm talking about

where I fall off the wagon, so it's a me problem, not a system problem.

Acknowledging that we're human and I know how much.

Uh, more smoothly things go when I follow through with our systems,

but I don't always do that.

Yeah, that's my commitments in my mastermind group on Monday is nice.

Getting back on track with my systems.

I think too, the reality is that you do have to slow down

and make the investment in it.

When you start a system, it takes more effort than if you were to

just do it, just take care of this.

But if you discipline yourself with a system that will scale, then you may

not see that save time right away.

'cause you're.

Busy implementing the system, staying consistent with it, pulling up the

spreadsheet or whatever, when all you had to do is make a quick phone call.

But staying consistent, the long-term benefit, the long-term play, and then.

Systems allow you to leverage, don't they?

That's your next point, if I'm not mistaken.

That is systems give you the chance to focus on what's most important,

which is people, not tools, leverage people, not just tools.

And that really ties into this idea of starting with your sales funnel when

we talk about it being a sales funnel, but it's not a funnel, it's people.

It's people you're building relationships with.

And I think that delegation, I think systems, I think clarity, all of this.

Frees us up to put our attention on what's most important, and that's

the people, whether it's our own staff or the clients or even a

vendor or somebody that is part of.

Your ecosystem of your business because when we are able to focus on people, I

think there's an experience people have with our brand, with us, with our business

that creates a, a positive experience.

And none of my business owners intentionally go out and create

a negative experience in.

Anyone's life, but they're overwhelmed.

They are uncertain might, maybe they're living a little bit of fear that what

if this doesn't work out or this isn't achieving the goals that I had set for it.

We all have those pressures, but if we let those pressures overflow, then we create

an experience of who our business is that isn't positive, but as we create margin.

We can focus on what's most important.

And I think then we can leverage people, not just tools.

We're really leveraging, not people, but we're leveraging what good

relationships produce, and that's healthy interactions, clear communication,

positive results, all those things that we're seeking in our businesses.

What are some examples that you would give to people for leveraging other people?

So obviously my mind automatically goes to outsourcing because that's what we do.

Outsourcing task to other people so that you free up your time to focus

on what you're really awesome at.

But do you think of other ways that people are leveraging people?

Yeah.

I think that when we outsource, depending on the degree of distance

from our business, if it's outsourced to offshoring for example, there's

not a lot of relationship with that.

That's a very transactional, but paying attention to that continuum

of that relationship from purely transactional to purely relational.

There's some outsourcing we do or some partners that help us with our business,

where the quality of our relationship with them bears significantly in.

The value they deliver or the experience that our clients get.

And so taking care of those relationships is really important.

And so I like to think of that on a continuum.

So there's almost a purely relational, like an inside salesperson on your team.

That's a relationship you need to take care of and know what motivates them, know

what incentivizes them, but also what they personally get out of their contribution.

And so I like to think of people in terms of their heroes in their own story.

And so in the same way that I'm.

Trying to express empathy and demonstrate authority to my clients.

I wanna do the same for my team, whether that's an internal

team member or external.

And a lot of that does come down to being able to decide where

they're at on that continuum.

Sometimes we don't treat the closest vendors or closest

partners, outsource partners.

As well as we should, and sometimes we give too much time to the

one that's just transactional.

So having wisdom about how central or how key that outsource relationship is to our

mission is I think an important skill.

I think somebody was talking about connection.

Is going to be the new currency.

Mm-hmm.

Because as AI comes to play, we are all longing for more

connection and relationships.

And it's interesting because when you think about, you use the word leveraging

people, it doesn't sound nice, right?

It sounds like No, it doesn't.

No.

You're using them, right?

That's a terrible thing.

But when you think about leveraging, I think about.

Some of our referral partners who send us clients, they're so trusted.

When someone needs something we don't do, we can refer it over to them.

That is a huge asset to us to know if our client has a problem that is

not in our wheelhouse, it's not meant for us to take care of that for them.

That we have trusted relationships.

That we can refer people to.

And then that also makes me think about affiliate marketing.

Whether you are offering someone an opportunity to be affiliate

for what you do, or you're an affiliate partner with someone else.

Those relationships really are important and it is about

the relationship because one.

I'm not gonna refer or promote anyone or anything that I don't really

believe in, but part of that has to do with how well do I know that person?

Yeah.

And how well do I know that company or that, or that their culture.

So I think we don't really think about, because again, leveraging

people doesn't sound good.

Yeah.

But that's what we're talking about, is having real significant relationships

so that you can help your clients, you can help your business grow,

and ultimately, sometimes you're helping someone else's business grow

while you're helping your clients.

So relationships are huge.

Yeah.

I think the way you said that relationships are the new currency.

Mm-hmm.

I like to think about, this is more what I do in my business coaching with

executive teams, but talk to them about trust and that you don't come into

the room expecting trust, but you come into the room giving trust and you

do that by being who you really are, your authentic self and in appropriate

ways you share levels of who you are.

If you're on an executive team and you guys are.

We're trying to accomplish a great thing in the world over time, you should know

each other in deeper and deeper ways just because you're developing trust and then

there's trust that's competency based, and my clients find that separating

those two is really helpful 'cause you can address somebody's competency that

broke trust, but it's not personal.

So look as a person, but in work, when you let me down like this, my confidence in

you, my trust in your ability to deliver on what you're supposed to deliver.

And so all of that is about being good at building relationships,

stewarding relationships, strengthening relationships.

And so I think the point you're making is really good.

I think people who are good at building strong relationships will have the

competitive edge, the advantage over time.

I love that.

So Mark.

Thank you for sharing today.

We talked about clarity systems and leverage, and we do love the StoryBrand,

the whole concept and the way that works.

So we're grateful for people out there like you who can help

other people who don't have their messaging dialed in, simplified or

clarified of what they're doing.

I know there are people listening who are saying, wow, I love what Mark has to say.

I'm a hundred percent there.

I'll need help with that.

What's the best way for them to reach out to you?

The easiest website to get to is mark fay.com.

That's just the one.

That's my name.

M-A-R-C-F-E y.com.

Mark fay.com.

Also MKF strategic marketing.com.

That's my business website, but there are links for my.

Personal website to the business.

Be happy.

I do have a free business assessment that was created by Business Made

Simple and it's really a great tool.

It's free, and anyone who would take that assessment, the report is all free

for them, and if they reference this podcast, I'd be happy to walk them through

a personalized analysis assessment.

And that would be of course, just my pleasure to do.

Oh, that's so generous.

Thank you.

Getting a report back within, having someone actually talk to you about

what all the results mean and how you could implement those things is

really important, so that's awesome.

Thank you.

Thank you Jeannie and Kirsten for this time.

It was really a pleasure to be with you.

Oh, it was a pleasure for us to have you.

Thanks for joining us today, mark.

Alright.

Have a good day.

Thanks for listening to the six Figure Business Mastery Podcast.

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