Ep 119: Tim Fitzpatrick: The Marketing Strategy Trilogy

“Every marketing issue comes back to a fundamental.” Tim Fitzpatrick

About Our Guest: Tim is an entrepreneur/business owner with expertise in marketing and business growth. He has 20+ years of entrepreneurial experience with a passion for developing and growing businesses. That passion served him well in operating and managing a wholesale distribution company he co-owned for nine years. The company grew an average of 60% a year before being acquired in 2005. Since then, he’s had failures and successes that have been valuable learning experiences. He started Rialto Marketing in 2013 and has been helping service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. Most people overcomplicate marketing. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Episode Summary:

This episode is powered by the Move to Millions Method

So many business owners are battling information overload when it comes to marketing. The fundamentals aren’t cool or sexy, but they are critical for marketing success. Yet, so many people skip them. I’ll share with your audience the tools and frameworks we use for our business and our clients to get more consistent, repeatable marketing results. The Marketing Trilogy aka the Marketing Fundamentals – knowing your target market, having great messaging, and having a plan to put that message in front of that target market is the key to making, moving and leaving millions.

Grab pen and paper and listen in to discover:

  • A 90-day marketing plan you can leverage now to see impact in your businesses’’ marketing
  • Why the fundamentals work in any industry, economy and generation
  • The keys to building your systems for your end game
  • Why marketing needs to adapt as your business evolves

Last Book Tim Read: Million Dollar Habits Brian Tracy

Quote: You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.  Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh

Tool Tim Swear By: Loom Video

How to Connect with Tim:

Incredible One Enterprises, LLC is not responsible for the content and information delivered during the podcast interview by any guest. As always, we suggest that you conduct your own due diligence regarding any proclamations by podcast guests.  Incredible One Enterprises, LLC is providing the podcast for informational purposes only.

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The Marketing Trilogy With Tim Fitzpatrick

This episode is powered by Positioned for Millions, my private advance training that breaks down the framework my clients and I are using to experience consistent 30 to $100,000 months in their service-based businesses. Learn more and apply now at PartnerWithDarnyelle.com. In this episode, I have such a treat for you. I chat with Tim Fitzpatrick. He says, “Marketing is the key to reducing the stress that you experience in your business.”

I know that probably sounds crazy and contrary and like an oxymoron because marketing probably gives you agita, but here’s what I got for you. I invited Tim so that we could have a conversation about getting back to the basics in your marketing. I’m excited because, as you understand the fundamentals that Tim lays out for you in this interview, it’s going to make your life easy peasy and you’ll be able to leave stress way behind and trade it in for significance. I know you can get excited about that.

Tim is an entrepreneur with expertise and marketing and business growth. He has many years of entrepreneurial experience with a passion for developing and growing business. That passion served him well in operating and managing a wholesale distribution company that he owned for years. The company grew an average of 60% a year before being acquired in 2005. Since then, he’s had failures and successes that have been valuable learning experiences. He started Rialto Marketing in 2013 and has been helping service-based businesses simplify marketing so that they can grow with less stress.

Most people over-complicate marketing, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I want you to read on because there are so many amazing parts of this interview. I don’t even know if I can give you one favorite, but what I will tell you is that Tim laid out an entire 90-day marketing plan for you. You’re welcome. That’s how much I care about you because I know that when you get this and you start to action it, it could be the difference between you finally positioning your business to make a move to millions. If you are ready to look at marketing as the skillset that will take you all the way to the million-dollar mark, get ready as we jump into my conversation with Tim Fitzpatrick.

—

Tim, I’m so excited to welcome you to the show. How are you?

I am fantastic. How about you, Darnyelle?

I am doing very well. Why don’t you take a quick moment and tell everybody who you are in your own words?

I’m a marketer at this point in my life. We help service-based businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. I find so many businesses battling information overload when it comes to marketing. There are so many channels and tactics. There’s no shortage of gurus saying you need to do this or that. We’ve got to bring things back to the basics and simplify things.

It is so easy to over-complicate marketing. When we do that, it’s the enemy of getting results. You got to take it back to the basics. That’s a little bit about me professionally. Personally, I was born and raised in Northern California. My wife and I moved to Denver in 2008. After I had sold the first company that I got involved in, we took the opportunity to move down to Denver. I loved being outdoors and hanging out with my family. The mountain is my happy place.

You already said two things that were amazing. The first thing you said was, “I’m a marketer.” My initial thought in my head when you said that was, “Aren’t we all?” The reason I said that is because there are so many people who think they’re not marketers. That is probably a big part of their problem because they think they have to put on the marketing hat instead of just being who they have to be if they want their businesses to grow.

I’m biased. Most people who are successful get to this place where they realize that marketing is critical to the success of any business. If you do not have marketing, you do not have a business. You can have the best product or service in the world, but if marketing is not getting people aware of you, getting them to know, like and trust you and bringing those leads in, none of anything else matters. You need to have marketing. It’s a foundational element for success.

I always say marketing is the oxygen in any business. If you don’t have it, your business isn’t going to breathe very long. It’s so essential to understand that. The other thing you said that I loved is this whole construct of not focusing on the basics. If you don’t, that’s the enemy of getting results.

Marketing is critical to the success of any business. If you do not have marketing, you do not have a business.

Think about the fundamentals in any discipline. I don’t care what it is. If I’m trying to step up to the plate to hit a major league fastball, the fundamentals of standing at the plate, holding the bat, your hand-eye coordination are the same. They do not change. Those fundamentals are the same as they were years ago. They’re going to be the same years from now. Marketing is no different.

Darnyelle, think about it. Marketing can be boiled down to probably 5 or 6 pages and all the information that we get out there is people repackaging that and communicating it in a way that it makes sense to them. There’s not a whole lot of new stuff. There are new tactics, but the fundamentals of marketing are the same. They do not change, but they’re not cool and sexy. Nobody talks about them. When people get in business, they’re like, “I got to have a website and a TikTok channel. I got to be on YouTube and Facebook. I got to have a podcast.”

Facebook was a new thing when I first started my company in 2007, but I didn’t rely on social media. I relied on the tried and true. If Facebook didn’t work, how was I going to get my business to and beyond the million-dollar mark? I call it old-school marketing because nobody wants to do those things like networking, building relationships with people, picking up the phone and having conversations. Nobody wants to do that. They just want to slide in your DMs, which I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that, but there are so many things about the fundamentals that this generation of entrepreneurs doesn’t know.

They’re hustling and grinding way harder than they have to because they haven’t realized what they need to put in place in their business. This is why I was so excited to have this conversation with you. Our audiences aren’t new entrepreneurs. They’re on the move to millions. They want to have a $1 million company, but they’ve lost sight of the fundamentals because they’re not sexy.

We’re going to dig in and talk a little bit about what are these fundamentals. As business owners, what do we need to be thinking about when it comes to marketing? No matter what’s happening in the marketplace online or with all of the various tactics or marketing streams that are out there, there are some that are tried and true. If you leverage these, you will watch the needle move inside of your business. When you are working with your clients and you’re talking to them about the fundamentals of marketing, what does that mean to you?

I refer to it as the marketing strategy trilogy. There are three elements. First is your target market. Everything starts with your target market. When we talk about your target market, we’re talking about who you’re going to serve and how you’re going to serve those people. The second part is you need to have messaging that is clear and engaging to that target market. If our messaging doesn’t resonate, nothing’s going to click there.

The third part is we need to have a plan. What’s our plan for getting that message in front of those people? Without those elements, you’re building your marketing house without a foundation. We all know the houses without foundations may last for a bit but don’t last long-term. It’s not a good thing. You’re going to end up spinning your wheels, wasting time, money and come back to the fundamentals at some point. Almost every marketing issue can be brought back to a fundamental that was either missed, skipped or something wasn’t right.

It’s like a root cause. When we look at the fundamentals, we’re addressing the root causes of the symptoms that are causing issues within a business. We’re not just giving you medicine. If I have high cholesterol, my doctor can give me a statin to help me but maybe I don’t need a statin. If I don’t need to take a drug, maybe it’s my diet. I’m not exercising and those kinds of things. We’re far better off treating the root cause rather than treating the symptoms. That’s what the fundamentals help you do.

MTOM 2 | Marketer
Marketer: Almost every marketing issue can be brought back to a fundamental that was either missed or skipped or something wasn’t right.

I want to pull back the layers on what you said in case others missed it. It all goes back to these three target markets, which we call your audience as one. Marketing is a conversation. We would take the anxiety out of marketing if we thought about having a conversation with one person with one problem to which we can provide one robust solution. We call it your audience as one. We’re talking about your target market. Who are the people who have the problem that you can solve? Nine times out of ten, this is a problem they haven’t been able to solve on their own.

That is why they’re looking for someone to help them to stop this pain. That’s the first part of the trilogy. The second part of the trilogy is messaging. It is how you get known. Without a strong message, you won’t get known. If you can’t get known, you won’t get found. If you can’t get found, you will not get paid. We have to make sure we dial in on a messaging.

It’s not just any message. It’s a message that is clear and compelling. I’m going to add in contrarian because consumers are programmed to notice the difference specific to that audience. If your message is speaking to someone other than who you want to attract, then you’re going to get a lot of people into your funnel that are not your ideal clients. Your numbers, KPIs and conversion rates are going to be off because you’re not talking to the right people. That’s number two in the trilogy.

When your ideal clients see your message, you want them to say, “They’re speaking to me. They’re talking to me. How did they enter the conversation I was already having in my head? How did they know that? Were they in my head when I was thinking about that last night or at our meeting two weeks ago? How did they know all this stuff?” That’s the kind of stuff we want to happen when they see your message.

One of the things that I have my clients do is we give them a document that is fifteen pages. We call it the ideal client worksheet. The only question we don’t ask in this document is what color of the underwear your clients have on. This allows you to think through the symptoms and the results of the symptoms all because of this problem. We call that problem your SPICE problem, Specific, Pervasive, Immediate, Clear and Expensive problem that your client has. By drilling all of this in, that is what allows your messaging to speak to the conversation they’re having in their mind.

They are disgruntled when they see this. They’re like, “Fifteen pages? Really, Darnyelle?” I’m like, “Do it.” After they do it, they’re like, “I know who my client is and I can speak to them anytime of the day because I took the time to think about them in this way.” I want to make sure you guys get that messaging piece. If you want to move to millions, you need to shift your messaging.

Your messaging has to focus on that ideal client target market audience of one you want to reach. The last component of this trilogy is your plan. How are we going to get this message to this target market so that when they see it, they’ll decide to take the action we most want them to take that moves them in the direction of becoming our client? How is that going to happen? This is where it gets murky for people, Tim.

Most people don’t have a plan.

Everything starts from your target market.

There are so many different things you could do. They don’t know how to figure out what are the right things they should be doing in their plan to reach their audience. I’m going to answer this and I want to hear your perspective as well. I feel like the answer to the plan and having the right plan goes all the way back to your fundamentals, the market and the message. Once you know those two, that will give you a clue into how you’re going to deploy that message to get in front of them.

We use a framework called the Marketing Evolution Index Checklist. It gives you ideas of what types of things you need to have in place for different marketing channels based on where you’re at. It looks at three different phases. It’s not foolproof but it gives people an idea of, “I’m in phase one of my website. What do I need to have in place for my website at this phase for it to be effective?” It helps hone-in a little bit. You can’t create messaging until you understand who your audience is. That’s why you got to start there.

The second part of knowing your target market is once you understand who you intend to attract, you can start to go through the process of, “These are the people I intend to attract. Where are they?” Create a list. One of the things that always stuck with me was what a mentor said to me, “Success starts with a list.” You create that list. “I intend to attract chiropractors. Where are chiropractors? What associations do they belong to? What influencers do they follow? What email lists do they subscribe to? What Facebook or LinkedIn groups are they a part of?”

I was doing a workshop on the target market and I put chiropractors in there. I don’t intend to attract chiropractors, but I said, “How long is it going to take me to put together a one-page list?” It took me 10, 15 minutes and I didn’t even know the space. The internet is a wonderful place. There’s so much information there. I had a list of probably 15 to 20 different places. I had influencers, associations, Facebook groups, podcasts and mini-manufacturers. What mini-manufacturers do they buy from? Some of those manufacturers could be good strategic partners or things like that.

If I had spent an hour or two, I probably could have 5 or 6 pages. That gives you an idea of, “These are all the different places that I’ve come up with where my ideal clients are” You can’t take advantage of all of them. You got to pick. “I’m going to focus on these areas to get my message in front of these chiropractors.” It gives you some focus and priorities so that you know what to do. Everything starts with the target market.

I love what you said about first, success starts with the list but secondly, taking ten minutes and doing a quick brain dive. Think about who, what, when, where, how and why. If you can answer those questions for whomever you’re targeting, you’re going to walk away with some concrete ideas of how you can get in front of those people.

To me, the best and most powerful way to leverage any of those things is through speaking. Find a way to get yourself interviewed, book to speak, do a workshop in front of those people, demonstrate that you not only understand their problem but you already have crafted a solution that will work for them and it will make it very easy. That’s how I built my business to the million-dollar mark.

I got myself booked to speak. I got on a plane, so I spent my “marketing budget” on plane tickets and hotel rooms versus spending money on Facebook ads or any of those things. I got myself out where people were gathering my ideal client together. I showed up and shook it, Tim. That’s what I did. I came and did my signature talk. I still do it and market like a rock star. I wrote a book on it. I have an MBA in marketing. I would go and speak to these audiences about marketing in a way that made it easy for them to understand.

MTOM 2 | Marketer
Marketer: We’re far better off treating the root cause rather than treating the symptoms, and that’s what the fundamentals help you do.

That’s what I love about your trilogy. It’s easy to understand. It’s the fundamentals. It’s not sexy but it could create massive cashflow if you follow the fundamentals, stick to it and figure out the answers to the questions that they pose for your audience. Talk to me about a time in your own business where you forgot about the fundamentals. If you don’t have your own story, maybe a story about a client who forgot about the fundamentals and how getting them back on track began to create additional traction in their business.

We all, at times, forget about the fundamentals. They’re easy to forget about, especially if we don’t keep them top of mind. We have a client that is a CPA firm. She came to us because she was struggling with her marketing gaining traction. We always start with fundamentals. I said, “Who are your ideal clients?” She didn’t have a good indication of who those people were. It was small business owners. It’s pretty broad. We need to try and hone in on.

What I like to do when I start with clients that have been in business for a while, existing or past clients, is I start by, “Ask yourself three questions. Who do you enjoy working with? Why do we want to work with people that make our lives difficult? Let’s work with people we love working with.” Two, “Who are your most profitable clients? If we’re going to stay in business, we need to work with profitable clients. Three, “Who do you do your best work for? Who do you get great results for?”

If you work with people who you get great results for, they’re going to refer you, continue to work with you and do more work with you, those are all good things. If you ask yourself those three questions and you have a subset of current and past clients that you answered positively to all three of those questions, that group is where you start to dig into the demographics. All those details of who those people actually are and the psychographics are more about the feelings. “What aspirations do I have? What are my problems? What goals or results am I looking for?”

When you dig into the demographics and the psychographics of that subgroup, inevitably, what happens is 1 to 3 subgroups from that come out. Those are your ideal clients. When we went through that process, she came up with two, the dentists and veterinarians renowned for both. You have that, so then we go through that process of creating that list. “Where are they?” That brings so much clarity.

When we don’t have clarity, it’s super stressful. That’s why we have tons of stress as entrepreneurs because we don’t have clarity, but when we have clarity, it reduces stress. We know what our priorities are and what to focus on. It helps eliminate all those distractions. That’s why it’s so important to do this. The common roadblock I hear is, “If I niche down, I’m going to lose business.”

The exact opposite becomes the case because our messaging resonates so much better with who we intend to attract. We generate more leads and convert more of those leads. I’m not saying those are the only people you’re going to do business with. I’m saying those are the only people that you are going to direct your marketing efforts towards.

There are other people that are going to come to you. You can choose. “Do I want to work with you? Do I not? Can I do great work for you? If I can’t, I can refer you to somebody else. I can still serve and help you but we have to have focus with our marketing.” Unless you have an unlimited budget, you can’t target everybody. We’re not Amazon. Frankly, Amazon didn’t start out that way either. They nailed one niche, then they started to expand from there.

We can’t outline what we need to do to get to our goals until we know where we’re starting from.

It’s the rule, not the exception. You’re always going to get other people who come in and decide whether you want to work with them or not, but you have to create a rule. If you don’t create a rule, then you’re loosey-goosey willy-nilly. That means that you’re not focused, which means that you’re probably not getting enough of anything coming your way to make a difference inside your business.

People also have fear with this because they’re like, “Once I decided, this is set in stone.” It’s not. Our businesses are evolving. As your business evolves, your ideal clients may change too and that’s okay. We have to know what we’re focusing on. That may change down the road and that’s okay. When I first started Rialto Marketing, I wasn’t doing anything remotely to what I was doing. I was selling mobile applications into the K-12 education space. That’s what I was doing.

About three years in, there was a shift in that market, some serious changes. I said, “I got to shift gears. My business is too reliant on the policies of Apple and Google.” As I got more experienced in the K-12 education space, I was like, “I don’t know if I want to be tied to this market long-term.” I shifted. That’s okay. It happens.

You have to be open to the shifts. Sometimes the shift will happen invariably when you ask yourself these three questions. You started out wanting to work with dentists but when you look over the clients you enjoy working with, the ones that have been the most profitable and the ones you do your best work for, you’re doing your best work for CPAs.

It’s like, “I need to switch. There are 100 different events that happen every single year specific to CPAs. If I put my time and attention there, then I could make a name for myself for these people and then become their go-to,” which would be a messaging shift that makes it easier for people to be able to find you, which is massive. I do want to talk a little bit about the plan. Our audience desire to have $1 million company.

I know you’ve built $1 million company in the past. We’re blessed to be put in a position to sell that company. That might be a whole other episode altogether. When it comes to the simplicity of the plan, what would you share there to be able to help people who are trying to get back to the basics, want to spend some time noodling on their audience of one or target market, their messaging and want to sit down and start to create a plan?

I’ll give you a 6-step 90-day marketing plan. If you had spent thousands of dollars on a one-year marketing plan in March 2020, you would have burned it. Most of us would have because all of our businesses changed in some way, shape or form. The way I look at planning is our businesses are evolving quickly and our marketing needs to be able to adapt and evolve to that. There are so many things beyond our control within a year’s time frame. Setting things in stone for a year is a waste of time, so I look at marketing in 90-day sprints.

The first step of the plan is the target market. I want you at a minimum. Have a paragraph for each ideal client type that you intend to work with, no more than three. You talk about your audience of one. You should never have more than three. If you do have three, ideally, they’re not super distinct. Our ideal clients, coaches, consultants and professional service providers from a marketing standpoint are all the same. They have the same problem.

MTOM 2 | Marketer
Marketer: Focus your marketing because unless you have unlimited budget, you can’t target everybody.

They’re separate, but they’re related and intertwined enough where it’s still very similar. I want you to have a paragraph. Who are those people? What are they like? What are their goals, common problems and aspirations? Do they have certain titles? You can get the demographics in the weeds a bit, but you need to have at least a paragraph. If you have a paragraph on each of your ideal clients, you’re ahead of 9 out of 10 of your competitors. Most people don’t have any of this stuff.

Let’s start simple. At least have a paragraph of who they are. The reason this is in the plan is we want to keep this top of mind. If it’s not top of mind, you’re going to forget about it. Two, what’s your goal for the next 90 days? This should support and help you get closer to whatever your 1 or 3-year goal is. It’s a stepping stone. It’s going to be specific and measurable. It’s going to be time-bound because it’s a 90-day plan. “I intend to bring on five new clients in the next 90 days.”

We need to have an idea of where we’re headed. I like to remind people with the goal like this because it’s an outcome-based goal. There are things beyond our control that could impact our ability to hit that. You need to focus on it and know what you need to do. If things happen beyond your control and you don’t get there, don’t get disappointed, but we need to know where we’re headed.

The third step is what your budget and what your resources are. This allows us to identify what we have to work with. “Do I have $500 a month? Do I have $5,000 a month? What resources do I have from a time and capability standpoint? Is it just me? I’ve got three hours a week to spend on my marketing. Do I have staff that can do it? Jenny on my staff has five hours a week to spend on social media. If she doesn’t know social media and she’s not good at it, that’s probably not going to be a good fit.” We need to have an idea of what we have to work with. That’s all we’re outlining in this third step.

The fourth step is, “What’s my current marketing plan?” A lot of people don’t have a current marketing plan and that’s okay. All I want us to do here is get down on paper where we’re starting from. This gives us a baseline. We can’t outline what we need to do to get to our goals until we know where we’re starting from.

It’s like my GPS. I want to go to Denver International Airport. “Tim, where are you starting from? I can’t tell you how to do it until you tell me you’re starting from Highlands Ranch or Inglewood.” That’s what we’re doing here. When I look at marketing, I look at eight channels, strategy or the fundamentals so your target market and messaging. You then have a website, content, blogs, podcasts, videos, whatever that may be, search engine optimization, social media, email marketing, paid ads, so Google, Facebook, that type of stuff and then offline marketing.

Speaking, networking, direct mail, partnerships, all those things are examples of offline marketing. Every tactic is going to fall into one of those channels. All I want you to do in this step is write down what you have in place and what you continue to do in each of those channels. You don’t have to be in every one of those channels to build a million-dollar business. Don’t think, “I’m not doing paid advertising.” It’s not the end of the world. We just need to figure out where we’re at.

The fifth step is, “What am I going to focus on in the next 90 days?” What you focus on depends on where you’re starting from, the budget and the resources that you have to implement that activity. If I don’t have my target market and my messaging in place, that might be my next 90 days and that’s okay, but at least I have some priorities and focus in place so that next week when somebody says to me, “Tim, you have to be on Clubhouse.” I can have the discipline to go, “I’m going to put that on my list, but right now, my marching orders are my target mark and my messaging. I’m not doing anything else until I get that done.”

When you break complex things down into the simple steps you need to make, it becomes so much easier.

The sixth step is, “What metrics am I going to track?” The metrics help you determine whether the actions you’re taking are having an impact, what’s working and what’s not. We can get into the weeds on metrics. I was a math major. I can dig into this stuff, but there are so many vanity metrics when it comes to marketing. “How many people are on my email list? How many people visit my website? How many followers do I have on Facebook?” To me, none of that stuff matters if you’re not generating leads and you’re not converting those leads to customers.

Start small here. The easiest place for a lot of companies to start because they’re not tracking this stuff is how many leads are you generating and how many leads are you converting to customers? That is so powerful. If you know that you need three leads to generate a customer, you can start to work things backward. It’s like, “I convert 30% of the leads that I get. If I need X amount of customers, then I need X amount of leads. What do I need to do to generate X amount of leads?”

Track only a few metrics, no more than a handful to start. The more sophisticated and used to this you get, you can start to track more but keep it simple in the beginning. That’s your 90-day plan. This seriously can be on 1 or 2 sheets of paper. At the end of 90 days, you look at what worked, what didn’t, where we ran into issues, make modifications and update your plan. Wash, rinse and repeat.

The great thing about 90 days, too, is you can look back and go, “We got these 2 or 3 things done.” We get overwhelmed by it because there’s so much information, but focusing on those little wins helps keep us motivated and focused. We are making progress, but if we focus on everything, we get lost and we don’t do anything.

I love marketing and everything about it, which is why I got my MBA in it. I feel like it’s such an essential skillset. You have to learn. Earlier I said, “Tell me who you are in your own words.” The first thing you said was, “I’m a marketer.” We all are marketers. We’re all in the business of marketing, products and services. Understanding these fundamentals is essential.

For those of you who haven’t yet crossed the million-dollar mark but desire to, this is the plan that can get you there. It is focusing in on the fundamentals. That is what it is all about. That’s what I found it be. Anytime I’ve deviated from making sure we have the right message for the right audience and are clear about how we’re getting that message to them, things wavered, but once I focused in on that, I spent the majority of my time focused in on that message, identifying additional symptoms and how those symptoms look for other people.

I can sit down and write a sales page in an hour because I know my ideal clients so well. I took the time to get crystal clear about who they are, what they most want and the belief that they would fight to protect. All of those things that are holding them back and keeping them from getting to the solution they want are essential to get your business on a trajectory to generate millions of dollars.

I love that you said this, which is part of the reason why we also work with service-based entrepreneurs. Coaches, consultants, attorneys and accountants are typically who we work with. People say to me all the time, “Why are you working with attorneys?” The way you grow a business is the way you grow a business.

MTOM 2 | Marketer
Marketer: What you focus on depends on where you’re starting from and the budget and resources that you have to implement that activity.

We are able to take these fundamentals and leverage them until the wheels fall off. The cool thing about it is that the wheels aren’t going to fall off because these are the fundamentals. This doesn’t matter if Facebook goes down tomorrow. I remember years ago when Instagram and Facebook were down and everybody was panicking because their whole life was in Facebook or Instagram ads.

First of all, you should never have all your eggs in one basket. Secondly, if you know the fundamentals, even if that happens, you can quickly rebound. If you know who your client is and you’ve got a compelling message, you can quickly rebound, pivot and put yourself in a position to be able to do different things and still move your business forward.

I was not expecting COVID-19. We were having a live event in May of 2020. I was not expecting that two months before, the world would shut down and my live event would cease to exist, but we had our best multiple million-dollar years because we have the fundamentals. I want to impress upon all of you to get these fundamentals down. If you do, it will be the difference between stress and significance. We know that here in this community, we are all about significance. We do not want any stress. Tim, is there anything else you feel we’ve left out that will be important to share with those who read this episode?

We gave people a lot of things to think about. I’ll leave you with this thought. I know as entrepreneurs, we have so many things going on in our heads. There are so many things that we have to do and it can be overwhelming all the time. One of the things that stuck with me from a mentor of mine was when he said, “Focus on the next measurable step.” What’s the next baby step that I can take that’s going to help me get to where I want to be? When we break complex things down into the simple steps we need to take, it becomes so much easier. The complexity that we feel maybe there starts to evaporate and go away. Focus on the next measurable step.

What I love about that is not just focus on the next step but the next measurable step. That, for me, is the biggest gem. This conversation was packed with gems. You don’t just take steps. You take measurable steps that you can track and validate. If you look back after every measurable step, you will have a plan if you didn’t have a plan when you started. Tim, I can smack you. That was so good. I love it.

Before I let you go, I have to ask you our three closing questions to round up the interview. I never know what direction our conversations are going to take. I always like to be grounded in business talk because our audience is entrepreneurs. My first question is what is the last book that you read? I believe that readers are leaders and we always are adding value and becoming better.

The last one that comes to mind was Million Dollar Habits by Brian Tracy. There’s so much information and gems in there. Even if you just took 2 or 3 of them and implemented them, you’d be far better off.

I love Brian Tracy. He gave me one which is live in the eights. Eight hours to work, eight hours to sleep, eight hours to enjoy your life. I still live in the eights. I don’t work long, drawn-out hours. I am focused. Also, Stephen Covey’s set an end to your day. Those two together have changed my life. What is one quote that inspires you when you have a bad day that keeps you focused, moving in the direction of changing lives?

It’s a quote from Christopher Robin to Winnie the Pooh. He said, “You’re braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think.” Anytime you run into a roadblock, if you can remember that, it helps you push through.

Lastly, what is one tool that you know will help you to keep moving to millions?

The one tool that I use every day, multiple times a day is Loom. Loom is screen capture software. It is amazing. There are others out there, but I use it to communicate with my remote people, put standard operating procedures together, review stuff with clients and prospecting. I use it all the time.

This is such a great conversation. We’ll see you next time. Take care.

—

I told you it was going to be good. There was just nugget after nugget that was dropped by Tim. There were so many moments that I loved. I loved how we started the interview and when I said, “Tell everybody who you are in your own words,” he said, “I’m a marketer.” I immediately thought, “Aren’t we all?” How different would your business be if you looked at yourself as a marketer and you saw yourself as a person who’s in the business of marketing their products and services? I love that he talked about the fact that the fundamentals are the same now just like they were 50 years ago. I could have jumped out of my seat. I wanted to smack him when he said success starts with the list and broke down how you can use a list for your ideal client and come up with more ways to be able to get in front of them.

He also said every marketing issue comes back to a fundamental that has been off. When you learn how to focus on the fundamentals, you shift the way that you have the potential to show up inside of your business. The last thing he said that I thoroughly enjoyed, I definitely wanted to smack him on. He said, “Focus on the next measurable results.” Marketing is all about measurement. It’s all about making sure that you’re crystal clear about how your efforts are stacking up to create conversions inside of your business. If you desire to make a move to millions, you’re going to have to get good at marketing. Take a course or buy a book. I have a perfect one out there. It’s called Market Like A ROCK Star by yours truly but actually spend some time breaking down those fundamentals.

He called it the trilogy. That’s what you really need to do. The marketing strategy trilogy, your target market, or as we call it, your audience of one, your messaging and your plan. Who am I focused on? What is the message I’m using to get their attention? What is the plan that I’m using to get that message out in front of those people? It’s that simple. When you take me up on this lesson in marketing, I have a feeling your millions will be way closer than you think. I’ll see you next time. Take care.

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About Tim Fitzpatrick

My name is Tim Fitzpatrick. When it comes to marketing, it’s so easy to fall prey to information overload. We understand how overwhelming marketing your business can be.

At Rialto Marketing, we help service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. We do this by creating and implementing a plan to communicate the right message to the right people.

Are you making common and avoidable marketing mistakes? Have you wasted money on marketing that provides little or no return? Have you tried every marketing tactic and nothing seems to work? It doesn’t have to be this way.

Stop over-complicating marketing. Marketing shouldn’t be difficult. All you need is the RIGHT plan.

It’s time to breakthrough your marketing roadblocks and get more clients. If you are ready to become confident in your marketing, the Rialto Marketing team is here to help you.

 

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