Speaker 1: 0:00

Welcome to the Cut the Tie podcast. Hello, I am your host, thomas Helfrich, and I'm on a mission to help you cut the tie to whatever it is holding you back in life. Nah, that's not true. Just from success. I can't do it all. We're only going to focus on success, and you better define that success yourself, otherwise you're chasing someone else's dream and you really won't know what it is you need to do to get to where you want to go. And today I'm joined once again by the very funny Amanda Fisher. Hello.

Speaker 2: 0:25

Amanda, hello, how are you?

Speaker 1: 0:28

I'm delicious, thank you.

Speaker 2: 0:29

Delicious yes.

Speaker 1: 0:31

It's been tantalizing. There's just words.

Speaker 2: 0:34

More adjectives, please.

Speaker 1: 0:37

You. It's funny, since you've been on before. It's going to be a different kind of show. So listen up, people. I work out every day at LA Fitness and the front desk guy, his name is Noah. One day he goes are you on like a radio show or a podcast? I was like, yeah, I have a podcast. And then the other people around that were working on it I knew it and like they had been discussing it, and I was like, well, that's funny, you could have just asked. I ass, I've been coming in here for over a year. I go tell you what. Here's my phone number. Text me three random facts about yourself and I will make a show about it for you on my other, on the Sexy Voice Guy podcast. And he did. I got to tell you I haven't seen him since. Alright, he may have not, maybe he actually in the show. I said you have an OnlyFans account about feet and maybe he actually fired that up. That's what he's doing now. Welcome to the show. Amanda, do you want to introduce yourself?

Speaker 2: 1:29

Sure, yes, I'm Amanda Fisher. I'm an agency founder and private marketing consultant. I've helped thousands of business leaders cut through the crap and zero in on strategies that create impact on people and revenue, and I'm also a standup comedian.

Speaker 1: 1:48

So all of that was not on the chair, just for irony when you're when you're up there to do your standup routine.

Speaker 2: 1:55

Oh, no, no, I got a pace. I got a pace like a crazy person, um, but also you want to talk to everybody. If the audience is, you know they're all around. You know you got to go to the right side and the left side and make sure that everybody feels like they're in it with you.

Speaker 1: 2:15

You know, you work bigger rooms and most of the little comments. There is no pacing anywhere. It's like a chair in the stool barely fitting on the mic.

Speaker 2: 2:23

No, that definitely happens, but actually my most frequent venue is about 50 people, so, um, it's not not. Oh, that's big um, but it's, you know, it's, I wouldn't. It's definitely not theater in the round, but yeah, there are people you want to make sure that you're attending to everybody, um, you know throughout, because otherwise they're going to be like. Why was her attending to everybody? You know throughout, because otherwise they're going to be like. Why was her back to me the whole time? I couldn't hear anything.

Speaker 1: 2:50

So yeah, you got to get the right 50 in there. That's the key, all right. So in your marketing world, tell me a little bit about what you do. That's unique, why people pick you for the job.

Speaker 2: 3:03

Yeah, what I do that, I think, is unique. I mean I have the agency, which is a full brand, I mean a full service digital marketing agency, but then I'm also a consultant. So people come to me and they might need help with, you know, integrating their marketing and sales. They might have, you know, very fresh level employees that need some direction and accountability and strategy and I help with that, whatever that is. But then they might find that they need execution, they need more assistance, they need graphics, they need social media assistance, they need all that, and so that having that agency as an additional resource is just really helpful because it's like it's an all in one solution.

Speaker 2: 3:46

But also I have resources that are outside of the agency as well. You know, pr people, anybody that, anything that anybody needs. I'm just like a good connector and not that other people don't do that, people do everything. So I'm trying to. How do I differentiate as a consultant? I think it is unique to also have the resource of an agency and have the team behind you, but also be able to work with people one-on-one.

Speaker 1: 4:14

Yeah, well, I think the differentiator is the and, honestly, this is different. Marketing is that I don't do everything, but I know who to get for the decision and a lot of times, and that's that's you know from my agency. It's set up nearly the same way. We do some things ourselves that we do really well. Everything else we bring a partner support from high-end branding to, like you know, website development. Like I'm not touching that, I'm going to hire somebody else to manage them and hold them, get them yelled at, not me.

Speaker 1: 4:40

Yeah exactly, I think that differentiated, because some places go, we do everything and then it falls apart, and that's where marketing is a bad name. So I think that is true.

Speaker 2: 4:48

So yeah, so I say we're full service and we are, but we also understand our limitations. And, like I also just mentioned, pr we do not touch PR. I have a PR background so I can advise on it a little bit. But if you need to be placed in the media, I am not your person, I'm not going to be. I don't have those relationships with TV producers that you need to have in order to place people Um. So I do, but I know the people that have those types of relationships and then able to introduce them.

Speaker 1: 5:15

So yeah, Uh, so in your own kind of journey, talk to me a little bit about it. But before you do, how do you define success?

Speaker 2: 5:34

Ooh, I mean personally, I just want. I mean, success for me is balance, and I feel like that's an answer that everybody might say. But success for me is being happy and balanced in my business and in my life and making sure that I have the time for my family, the time that I want to spend on my hobbies like comedy, but also that I am doing a good job for my clients and that I am making money while doing that. So that is success to me.

Speaker 1: 6:00

That balance is actually not a very common answer.

Speaker 2: 6:03

Oh really what people usually answer. A lot of people say, Captain, their calendar is effectively going a very common answer. Oh really, what do people usually answer?

Speaker 1: 6:05

A lot of people say, captain, their calendar is the fact, like you know, they want to control their time, and a great other people are just, you know, it's still time related, it's it's like I want more time with my family, it's you know, or it's financial success. So the balance, which I think is where you're like I need to make enough, spend enough time at my hobbies and kind of keep it all in check that's keeping things in balance is a is a good indicator of success, Cause if you can't, you're always like you're chasing or you're behind. So it's a. It's actually one of the rarer company answers and one of the harder ones.

Speaker 2: 6:38

Okay, yeah, making sure, thank you, I mean making sure I have control over my calendar, I think is a big piece of that. So, um, I could see how those are connected, but yeah, no, the that's. The real success for me is the balance. Can you hear my dog right now?

Speaker 1: 6:52

he's, it's not even my dog, it's my parents dog that's barking I can hear your parents, but not the dog oh, that's weird, but okay which I can feel the emotion your dog saying take me out, I'm gonna pee on the.

Speaker 2: 7:05

No, I can't hear the dog.

Speaker 1: 7:06

Uh, but I, I I also am deaf, so I'm just reading your lips. So, uh, the the tell me about your journey a little bit and what the metaphoric tie is. You've had a cut to achieve the success you just defined.

Speaker 2: 7:18

Yeah. So I mean I did. Um, I went out on my own 15 years ago, so that was the first time that I really cut the tie and it was liberating. I I knew I had to make a change in the organization I was with and I was leading their marketing and sales. It was medical devices and I was looking for something else that would be a better fit for me and my values and my balance. And I got hired.

Speaker 2: 7:54

Basically, I was invited to work at three other businesses, but they all had the same issues they had no CRM to keep track of potential opportunities. They had no marketing materials or even a functional website, or their website was messed up. It wasn't something that you would want to have clients refer to. But then they had also no persuasive sales pieces and they also, funny enough, had no job description for the job. They thought I was so perfect for that they wanted to hire me.

Speaker 2: 8:26

So if you don't have the expectation set for success, then it's really hard to be successful in that type of in any position if nobody can agree on what is successful, in any position, if nobody can agree on what is successful. So because of that, I knew that I didn't want to take those jobs as a full-time job. So what I ended up doing was talking all of those companies into hiring me without the overhead, and so I was able to take on those first three companies as my first clients, which kind of I mean it really reduced the risk of going out on my own, and I felt very fortunate for that. So it's a big decision.

Speaker 1: 9:03

Yeah, I think people have gotten keen to that because I apply for marketing jobs all the times. I can't even get them to call me back. I'm like now I'm doing, I want to, I'm going to propose a different model to them. Like you hire me and you get a whole team, right, but I'll, I'll it's half of what you're asking Like, like once they get that HR kind of involved, we got to hire, they don't. They're like no, we don't, we can't know.

Speaker 2: 9:22

Yeah, well, it was. You know, they thought I was. I was it was 15 years ago, so as a young, like business, it was for business development positions, that's what it was. So it was business development. I was in sales, but I didn't have anything that would help me to sell. So these three very important things to be successful in my job were not in place, and so it would have set me back six months before I was able to produce anything, and I knew that. And so then I knew that by the time six months came around, they would be very angry at me for not having produced any sales.

Speaker 2: 9:55

So I reframed it as I was going to help them set everything up to have a successful business development, hire and um, and that that pitch worked. And you know, yeah, and then I was like, okay, guess, I'm going out on my own, you know. So it was kind of um, I had been thinking about it, and then I was like, well, if I can, if I can convince these guys to do this, then I will go out on my own. And I did. And 15 years later, here I am. So it worked out.

Speaker 1: 10:25

Yeah. And you're like never looking back. You know, along that journey you know there's a lot of things that happened. Do you have like a moment where you've had like a significant pivot or you know you took your business to next level?

Speaker 2: 10:39

Yes, Well, there was a moment a few years in where you start to realize that you know your whole business is built on supporting small businesses, but that the energy that goes into supporting those businesses is much more and you get paid a lot less. So there was a shift in focus on helping. Localized presence for national brands is how I shifted that focus, because I was working with a lot of national and international companies that had a local presence in Washington DC, and so that's how I would frame it, that I would help their you know, domestic or local branch operate without, because they usually have a headquartered marketing department that's somewhere far away and not any kind of leadership you know locally, and so that's what. And that worked out for a while, but it was scary at first and, but I was right, you make a lot more money that way. Um, now I'm actually kind of, you know I'm not I wouldn't say I'm going the other way with it, but as I mentioned, you know, when we were talking before, that I've starting.

Speaker 2: 11:53

I'm rebranding into Ask Amanda, which is leaning into the personal brand aspect of things. I think I'm going to be focusing more on companies that are trying to grow and have lofty goals in an uncertain economic environment and things are changing and they might be losing employees, having to make cuts, but they still have to make the same amount of revenue, and so they might not have that kind of marketing oversight that they need, but they still have some people that are working in marketing and sales. Just not they don't have a whole cohesive team. So I'm going to try to step in there and help those businesses and so that those are varying sizes of business.

Speaker 1: 12:32

So I mean it's and it's you know I have, I have, we have billion dollar clients and we have solopreneurs uh, different levels of risk. You know, if you lose a whale of a client, you're, you're a company, so you have to kind of offset sometimes with that. But I think realizing where you fit best for serving too is really important, because then you have a competitive advantage because you know it better, like it. So I think what you discovered is a I mean it's super important for growth because you're like I want to focus my energy on that type of client. Um, and I know personally that if you don't do that you go mad.

Speaker 2: 13:06

Yeah, and I assume you mentioned something interesting. It's like when you lose a client, like a whale client, then you're, you know it's that's a hard thing, it's always hard. I think that sometimes when that happens, that's that's kind of what can light a fire where you're like, okay, I need to replace this now, and then usually you do so.

Speaker 1: 13:28

Well, and I've had that and we've had one, uh, that we really helped. Well, I mean, like it was at the time, it was like it was like about 10 K a month. It's a really good client and he outgrew us Like he was doing so well, he needed a bigger agency to do all the things that we could do, and our stuff just got absorbed into somebody else's stuff and I was like that sucks and it's. And then that that then you make a bad business decision Like well, I'm going at that. So that knee jerk reaction sometimes is it's important to take a moment and pause to see what happens, because I think you don't want to go the other way. And we did that for about a year. Oh man, this is not working, but it's all part of the journey Along the way. Would you have any advice you'd give to a listener that's a marketer? Maybe just start now.

Speaker 2: 14:17

Yeah, I mean I would. That's you said start now, and that's actually my advice. My advice would be that you should start before you're ready, because if you're waiting for a perfect time to do something, that time is never going to come. So starting now is good, and it's better to have to do something that's not perfect than not do anything at all. So, yeah, that that would be my advice. I need, I need to listen to it sometimes. Sometimes I have to get past myself with that. I, you know, I think, oh well, maybe I should wait until X, y, z before I do this, and then I'm just like I have to get out of my own way.

Speaker 1: 14:55

So it's hard to take your own advice sometimes. Yeah, 100%. Uh, you know, if you could go back anywhere in your timeline and redo the moment, whatever it is, when would you go back? What would you do differently?

Speaker 2: 15:09

you know and it's, I don't. There's nothing like catastrophic or that comes to mind anyway. Maybe there is, and I'm suppressing it, which is also possible. The one thing that has been when I moved to Florida six years ago, I did not network or go out and meet people Like I think that would have been extremely beneficial to be more proactive about that earlier. I guess I had just had a baby, but then COVID almost immediately, because this was May. 2019 is when I moved here. So COVID, fine, but 2021, 2022 is when I should have started. I think I started last month, or even, yeah, last month is when I started networking here. So most of my business building up until that point had been only in DC and I continued to maintain those relationships, which is also. It takes a lot of energy and time to do that, especially long distance, and I feel like I've done that successfully. But I need I need to build business where I live and I should have done that sooner.

Speaker 1: 16:15

So, yeah, that I am going through that exact same thing right now.

Speaker 2: 16:19

So you are.

Speaker 1: 16:20

I'm in Atlanta and I'm like why don't I just focus my entire podcast in this part in Atlanta? Why don't, you know, put that top of funnel, try to connect to as many it's 9 million people in this general area or something like that or some odd number and it's like in the area I live in, there's lots of founders. There's like 3,000, according to LinkedIn, ceo founders like within eight miles of me. I'm like I only need like 20 people a month that really have a really awesome business. I'm like, what am I doing, you know, talking to you in Florida. Florida's on our walls. I like Florida people. It's a reason to come down and visit. You'll get global. You don't start there day one, and so it's interesting.

Speaker 2: 17:04

There's. There's a lot. There is a lot of opportunity here or anywhere where you live, and you might as well do it where you know. Build business where you live, because that's going to save you time and money in the end.

Speaker 1: 17:17

So go grab a coffee with a customer, your, your customer retention goes up quite a bit.

Speaker 2: 17:22

Yeah, and it just can't do that in DC. I mean somebody, I it's. I was just asked to lunch by three different potential clients in in the DC area and it's crushing and I try to pass them off on. You know other people like my business partner and say, hey, maybe he can do it. But you know other people like my business partner and say, hey, maybe he can do it, but you know he's got a full schedule too.

Speaker 1: 17:49

So, um, yeah, you get enough of them lined up, but hey, listen, I'm actually going to have a vet next week and you fly down and you just tell them jokes for 30 minutes.

Speaker 2: 17:53

Well, you do have events that do not include jokes as well. Uh, we and we did just have a party in in DC on like a rooftop rooftop a month ago or something in May yeah, more than a month ago, but anyway, it was really fun, it was nice, but it's like, oh, if they miss it, sorry, I won't see you for maybe a year.

Speaker 1: 18:19

That's true.

Speaker 2: 18:32

If you're going to say, read one book, what's the one book you tell people to read? I'm actually making better decisions and choices and, you know, I don't know optimizing myself subconsciously because I don't remember it, but right now I'm reading Thinking in Bets by Annie Duke, and that is a poker player. Yes, yes, it's very interesting about how to view decision making in the form of bets and less around how, what the results are. People tend to judge their decisions by the results, when that doesn't really tell you whether you had a sound decision or not. You could get an unlucky result to a sound decision, so it just is very interesting.

Speaker 2: 19:25

Also, I just want to say my friend recently wrote a book. His name's Derek Coburn and he wrote the book let's Retire Retirement, which is a very interesting book because it talks about how you shouldn't spend your entire life just saving up for your happiness. You shouldn't spend your entire life just saving up for your happiness. You know, oh yeah, I'm going to just work and I don't, you know, never have time for anything other than working and not making time for your family, all of that stuff, whatever you know, you should do all that stuff now while you're working and enjoy living before retirement.

Speaker 1: 20:05

And so I would love to interview him. Because that's Okay, Because it's true. I feel like I've caught myself. I'm 49, so I feel like I've caught myself early enough to say I don't want to ever retire. I want to be doing something, Because every person I've ever met who's retired they look miserable. Yeah, I don't think I've retire. I want to be doing something because every person I've ever met who's retired.

Speaker 2: 20:25

they look miserable yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:26

I don't think I've met anyone who's like truly happy in retirement. There's a few, but they're still doing stuff, they're still on boards, they're still, they're having fun, but they're still adding value to something, commercial or not for profit wise. They're just not, like you know, golfing every day Like those guys look miserable.

Speaker 2: 20:41

Well, I mean and that's the other piece of it it's like you could still, you know, have worthy efforts as you get older. It doesn't need to be so. You know, work, your, you know, butt off your whole life and then stop working immediately, and that's when you can be happy. It is more of a balance that he focuses on, and I think it's a really great message, and yeah, I couldn't agree more.

Speaker 1: 21:09

I was just like oh my word. So yeah, we'll connect on that afterwards. You know who's giving you inspiration.

Speaker 2: 21:16

You know, the person that gives me the most inspiration is actually my 10-year-old son. And the person that gives me the most inspiration is actually my 10-year-old son. He is just like the most pure, kind person, succeed and it shows through, and he's just so optimistic. So, um, because of that, I find myself trying to remind myself to be like Max. Um, because, uh, you know, it doesn't come as naturally to me.

Speaker 1: 22:03

That's fun, that's a good person to be inspired by.

Speaker 2: 22:05

like that's yeah yeah, I mean, you know there are plenty of people to be inspired by, but it came. You know he just returned from um sleekway camp, so that was fresh in my mind and we're just like we need our, we need our hype guy.

Speaker 1: 22:17

But like the vibes in the house aren't as good without him, like he's just yeah so that's our kids are at camp for two weeks and I'm like, uh, I missed them, but it's been nice having acquired her home same time.

Speaker 2: 22:34

It's all right let's be real, like I didn't really until like the last three days. You know he he was gone for four weeks and it's like the last three days I was like, oh my gosh, I can't wait till he gets home. But before that I was like, oh, this is not really nice.

Speaker 1: 22:46

Yeah, you know, if there was a question, I probably should ask you and I didn't what would that question be?

Speaker 2: 22:55

Hmm, I think that Gosh there are so many, gosh there's so many um, like something that people obsess over, you know, like what do people obsess over in marketing? That they shouldn't be obsessing over, like what doesn't matter? I think is a good question um, that actually is a great.

Speaker 1: 23:18

I think that's how it's like. Which. What are people obsessing over that? They shouldn't be, because I think that's a yes and it's how it's like. What are people obsessing?

Speaker 2: 23:22

over that. They shouldn't be, because I think that's a question and it's really like vanity metrics. So how many likes you get or how many followers you have is not the thing that moves the needle. I guess it makes people feel better. We all want more likes and follows, but it's really like did it convert? Did they engage? Are they buying from you? Are they a client? Those are the things that matter, not the likes or how many follows you have. If you have an engaged audience of a thousand people, it's way better than a disengaged audience of 10,000 people.

Speaker 1: 23:57

It's true. Every month I remove about a thousand connections from LinkedIn. That really it hurts my metrics from a vanity standpoint because it looks like you're losing followers. It's intentional for long-term to get a more engaged audience.

Speaker 2: 24:09

It is because the algorithms they see that so many people are going to see your post and if not enough percentage of people react in a certain amount of time, then it's not going to be seen by any other people, like it gets seen by less and less people, but if people are reacting the people that see it are reacting then it's going to get shown to more and more people.

Speaker 1: 24:31

So yeah, I'm pretty close to doing this. I'm finalizing kind of the strategy, but I have about 30,000. I'm at max connections. There's more followers than that. I'm actually about to nuke anybody who's not in marketing or founder and replace it all with marketers in the US and founders US. These are the two main clients we serve top of funnel, specifically with the pivot I'm going to be doing with my company soon, Because that's who I'm going to engage around is like you know how to build a very good, verifiable agency. Right, it's like here's what it takes to be a good agency and that group will care. My current group is all over the place between consulting and some founders and some marketers and some people wanting jobs and it's like I'm just going to nuke. If you don't have marketing, agency or the word founder, I may just go through a big campaign and nuke 15,000 people out.

Speaker 2: 25:16

That might actually make sense for you. I was trying to think of another way. I do know people that have hit 3,000 connections and then if you try to connect with them they send out a note saying you know, I've hit my max connections. You know, I'd really love to be in touch with you here. The other ways that we could be in touch, something like that, but for what you're doing and you know probably that's your mode is the best.

Speaker 1: 25:42

So it's going to hurt, but I don't care about the measures. What I care about is, two years from now, that that group is fully engaged into the content that we'll be doing. So you take a short-term hit and I'll just be open about it. I'm like I'm nuking my environment. So start engaging with the pros. We've tried everything on LinkedIn. I mean, we bought followers, we. So we've tried everything on LinkedIn. I mean, we bought followers, we see what it would, it would work. But you know, and we were like, and then we're like, oh my God, linkedin, can you please remove all these bots they did? I'm like, thank you, I was horrible. Um, cause, I mean it was. It was terrible.

Speaker 2: 26:25

Um, anyway, I hear and then we're leaders would be you know that need marketing assistance. That often helps, or any founders or business owners that have a gap in their marketing and need marketing and sales integration specifically, or just help navigating a new environment for how to produce revenue in a changing environment. So I'm really focused on revenue production as a marketer, that's. I guess that's another unique thing. A lot of marketers are like you know analytics and you know just on, you know digital analytics and making things pretty, but I'm really focused on growing revenue.

Speaker 1: 27:02

Yeah, well, and how do you want them to get ahold of you?

Speaker 2: 27:05

Oh sorry, you can email me at Amanda at gradeallccom is one way. I don't have Ask Amanda up yet, so it's Amanda at gradeallccom. Get-e-a-l-l-ccom.

Speaker 1: 27:25

Get that? Ask Amanda.

Speaker 2: 27:27

That looks so much easier. Linkedin is yeah, ask Amanda. It'll be Ask Amanda now, but because you know, I guess somebody that doesn't use AskAmandacom still has it.

Speaker 1: 27:38

So that makes me mad. Thank you so much for coming on. It's always a pleasure Very fun If anybody's still listening watching you rock. And if this is your first time here I hope it's the first of many. If you've been here before, you know what to go do next. Go cut a tie to something holding you back, but first define your success, thankfully.