Purpose-Driven Business

Episode 949: Purpose-Driven Business, with Stacey Kehoe

Purpose-driven business, a podcast with Stacey Kehoe. Learn from the expert herself on how you can start building a purpose-driven business.

Stacey Kehoe has worked in digital marketing and brand development for the last ten years. She is also a podcast host and chief editor of the small business magazine, The Vault, which has gained her countless media features and award nominations. Since establishing her first purpose-driven business, Brandlective Communications Ltd in 2012, Stacey has built over 500 websites, brands, and marketing campaigns.

As a highly-sought-after expert, social media trainer, and speaker, Stacey has developed the one-of-a-kind Gamechanger Six-Step Digital Marketing Methodology after being approached by client after client who were dissatisfied with other agencies. She published this methodology in her newest book ‘Get Online: 6 Simple Steps to Launching a Digital Marketing Strategy For the Non-Tech Savvy’. The method also forms a core part of Brandlectives services, facilitating campaign development and enhancing the speed at which its clients gain stellar results.

Stacey believes those with an entrepreneurial spirit should have the resources to rise above the noise, stand out from the crowd, and show their audience who they really are. These beliefs tie-in with her commitment to equality. She currently leads a movement called #1MillionDays: an initiative to reduce inequality through social, economic, and political inclusion of all people.

Originally from New Zealand, Stacey lives in London. She loves to travel and spend time with her family and friends.

What you will learn from this episode about a purpose-driven business:

• How Stacey and her team at Brandlective Communications launched their #1MillionDays initiative to align their purpose-driven business with the UN’s global goals
• How Stacey’s own experiences with inequalities after moving from New Zealand to the United Kingdom in 2006 informs her passion for reducing inequality
• What global projects Brandlective has become involved with, and how they have aligned their efforts with their work
• How Stacey and her team traveled to some of the destinations they have been supporting to meet the organizations on the ground, and why taking the team with her matters
• Why Brandlective doesn’t reveal their efforts as part of their marketing strategy but rather discusses their social work with clients in their welcome packet
• How the #1MillionDays initiative and Brandlective’s global efforts have had an impact on the company’s culture
• How the team at Brandlective proved they’re a purpose-driven business when they navigated the challenge of the global pandemic, and how they have worked to support their clients through the crisis
• What digital strategies and key advice Stacey would offer to business leaders, and why identifying and reaching out to your ideal client is key
• Why identifying the problems and pain points your ideal prospects are experiencing and then creating content to help solve those problems can be powerful
• Why Stacey recommends focusing on four key types of content: visual (video/graphics), audible (podcast/audio snippets), written (blogs/articles), and actionable (interactive)

Resources:

• Website: www.brandlective.com
• Website: www.brandmag.co.uk
• Website: www.thegamechanger-scorecard.com
• LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stacey-kehoe-b8b25319/
• Read about how Brandlective became a purpose-driven business by making a difference

Additional Resources:

• Sell With Authority by Drew McLellan and Stephen Woessner: https://amzn.to/39y7x13
• Predictive ROI Free Resource Library: https://predictiveroi.com/resources/
• Stephen Woessner’s LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stephenwoessner/
• Listen to a related podcast with John Dame on how you can lead with your purpose-driven business

 

 

Purpose-Driven Business: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success in creating a purpose-driven business from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built, and how they scaled their business. In fact, my team at predictive ROI, we recently rebuilt and we continue to rebuild the free resource library on predictive roi.com.

 

So you can now download free practical and tactical guides for everything you’ll need in order to how to build your own authority sales machine. Everything from creating your ideal client avatar, how to create a value ladder, a sales funnel, how to make sure your content strategy aligns with the ten truths to what makes someone an authority within their niche.

 

So just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources. And as always, everything you request we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Stacey Kehoe’s Introduction

 

Onward Nation before we welcome today’s very special guest, Stacey Kehoe. Let me share some additional context around why, when Stacey said yes to having this conversation, why I was over the moon excited, why I knew during this very challenging time, why this was going to be a great conversation for all of us to have.

 

So as you will hear, Stacey is a champion for small business. I mean, you will hear that passion in her voice. It is clear that she is a champion for small business owners like you and me. It just goes deep to her core and she believes that any business owner, any business, ought to have the opportunity to harness the power of digital digital strategies in order to level the playing field.

 

But it goes deeper than that. You’ll also hear from Stacey how she has approached the building of her company’s culture with purpose and intentionality in that purpose. That purpose has driven her and her agency to apply maximum effort actually toward goal number ten of the United Nations. So you will hear the commitment that she has to reduce inequality and what they’re doing about it.

 

It’s not just lip service, what they’re doing about it. And more specifically, I asked Stacey to walk us through her goal of 1 million days of impact in. Yes, it’s inspiring, but it is so practical and tactical in how she’s done that. So this conversation will be an excellent illustration of how to build a business. Yes, absolutely. But how to build a business that is purpose driven and how to do that during crisis, stop while still reaching your goals.

 

So without further ado, welcome to Onward Nation. Stacey. 

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Aligning With What Your Company Stands For

 

Thank you. Hello Onward Nation. And thanks, Stephen, for having me here today. Well, I am just delighted that Christian thought to make the introduction. I’m delighted that you said yes, obviously. And I think this is going to be one of those conversations, Stacey, that is going to be not only extremely impactful on the marketing side, but also extremely impactful on how when a company really aligns themselves with mission, vision, values and so forth, how that can just create a tremendous ripple effect, which is amazing.

 

So before we dive into the litany of questions that I want to ask you, take us more behind the curtain. When you and I talked about this in the green room before we hit record about the 1 million days and your vision for that. Take us behind there or take us behind the curtain with that particular point and why is that so important to you?

 

Yeah. Of course. So we launched the 1 Million Days initiative in 2018. We have the idea for the 17th launch in 2018. And essentially it is a way of aligning the agency with being purpose led and with the very, quite incredible, really, the 17 global goals that are outlined by the United Nations, which they hope to achieve by 2030.

 

And the exercise that I went through with my team was to try to identify who we are as a business. What do we care about? not just within the business in terms of what we’re trying to achieve for our clients, but even as individuals on a personal level, what are we passionate about? What do we care a lot about?

 

And these were discussions that went on for, you know, a period of months. and we eventually decided that we wanted to try and align with the UN goal number ten, which is to reduce inequalities. And we started to get into some conversations with each team member to understand, you know, why? Why do we love that goal? You know, what is the motivation behind that?

 

And it was really fascinating exercises to go through because every team member had some story where they’ve either experienced some form of inequality or they’ve witnessed it somewhere. and certainly from my own journey. Just take you back a little bit to my background. I’m originally from New Zealand, moved to the UK in 2006. Everybody can remember what happened 2007-2008 as the world went into a recession.

 

And at that time, you know, I had lost. I was actually made redundant three times during that period, and made a conscious decision that I wanted more control, which eventually led to me starting this business. but, you know, some of the things that I experienced both during those redundancies and not feeling like I had control and that I was at a disadvantage, to others was part of my motivation.

 

I also, you know, saw some inequalities throughout my troubles of travel all over the world. And as a 22 year old and experienced lots of different things in lots of different countries. And so it’s always been something that’s very underlying to me. And then I guess in addition to that, being a female business owner, there are certain things that come up, even now, unfortunately, that we, you know, we have to combat and deal with.

 

So, you know, reducing inequalities both in the workplace and also throughout the world is something that is, is very, is a passion of mine, and it’s something that the team have also felt very passionately about. So it just made natural sense to us to try to embrace that. Yeah. And in the fact that you have embraced it, the fact that you have embraced it with gusto and aligned it with the agency is not only inspiring, it’s just amazing.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Reducing Inequality

 

And so actually, let’s take this piece a little bit deeper here because you have really because I’m trying to think of the right expression. I mean, you have really matched this with not just trying to be inspiring. You’ve matched it with commitment to work with. And that certainly comes with a cost to the agency. So this isn’t just, you know, some sort of, you know, fluffy campaign and feel good about this.

 

I mean, this is the commitment from your PNL. So let’s talk about how you actually move toward those days of impact, because that is awesome how you guys do it. Yeah. So you’re right. So we had decided that, okay, we want to be a business for goods or a purpose-driven business. It’s all well and good that we’re passionate about reducing inequality, but how are we actually going to do that?

 

There’s quite a few different ways. Obviously, as marketing agencies, there’s ways that we can work with small businesses, or purpose led businesses to help them get the visibility that they want. So that’s obviously on a commercial level, what we’re able to do. But also we wanted to take a level deeper than that and align everything that we do here actively with something positive that happens around the world.

 

So what that means is that, for example, every time that we sign a new client to the agency, we provide two days worth of business training to women in Kenya. For every 30 day contract that we complete for a client, we provide 30 days of access to clean drinking water, shelter and education to young girls at risk in Cambodia.

 

We’ve got lots of different activities, you know, for a website that is built, we provide a business loan to women in East Africa. Wow. Yeah. Really fun stuff too. So, you know, if a client celebrates a birthday or a team member celebrates a birthday, we plant a tree in Borneo to help support the environment there and protect the orangutans. 

 

So there’s lots of different projects that we’ve aligned our business to, but it’s just really nice for, well, obviously for us as a business, but equally for my team to know that every single action they take for almost every single task that they’re completing is taking us a little step closer to helping with, you know, achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Creating a Culture

 

Well, and we it sounds too overarching when I say that we all talk about this but it’s often the business owners who talk about creating a rock solid awesome culture and to create a purpose-driven business or to make sure that their mission and values aren’t just lip service. And then, you know, today’s teammates want to know that their work matters, that their work contributes to something more than just the PNL of the agency.

 

And it looks like you’re giving your teammates the okay, when we do this, then this happens. It sounds like that is something that they can really tangibly or have. Excuse me, have really, tangibly bought into. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely. They love it. And, I will say that it definitely helps when we have a client who’s a bit of a pain in the bum.

 

We definitely can say, okay, but the fact that we’re getting through this and making this happen is going to result in something really positive, somewhere else in the world. So, you know, we can make it into it. It definitely has become part of our culture. You know, it works really positively. And I think, you know, that is something sometimes that, you know, gets us through a challenging project, for example.

 

But equally, it’s completely bred through everything we do because, as you say, lots of businesses talk about, you know, what they want to do for their corporate social responsibility. But sometimes it doesn’t mean anything to the people on the ground that are actually delivering the work and I have a thought that there’s no real nobody really understands it, although it’s not inbred in everything that they’re doing if they’re not contributing.

 

So, you know, having their contribution, having their buy-in is extremely important and it’s become super fun. So we actually had a really, fantastic year last year, 2019, where we were lucky enough to actually travel to some of these destinations and meet with some of the organizations that have received either our loans or you know, some of the donations through some of these projects.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Make Team Members Feel Like They’re Part of The Business

 

So, I took a team member out to Cambodia, in June last year where we got to experience all of those projects. In September, I went to Kenya with another team member for them to be able to meet some of the women that we’re supporting there. So, it truly is inbred into everything that we do.

 

Okay, so it might seem obvious that I’m or this might seem like and maybe there’s an obvious answer to this question, but I’m really hoping that you’ll take us behind the curtain here. Like, why did you choose to take one of your teammates with you and how was that impactful? I chose to do it because I need that buy in.

 

I need them to want to contribute to this. and we, you know, we set little targets in place to whoever can, you know, when the trip essentially to go on and experience this. And actually, the year before 2018, I took one team member to Bordeaux as well to do some tree planting, in the jungle, which is obviously also amazing.

 

And to a conference in Singapore where we learned we met up with a lot of purpose-driven businesses and actually learned a lot more about this process. But yeah, the reason I chose to take a team member with me on each of these trips is because it’s not just about me as the founder of the business and what I’m driving towards, if I want real movement in my business and real vision to have these team members want to contribute to the business and grow with the business and become loyal to the business, then they have to feel a part of it.

 

And it flows throughout the rest of the team because on return, they’re absolutely buzzing. You know, they want to share their experiences when they’re speaking to a client. about what it is that we do or whatever. Then they can have real life experience, stories that they can share. I will actually add, actually a good thing, probably for me to point out is I don’t use this in our marketing.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Make Clients Feel Special

 

So something that I actively push out and say, hey clients, you should work with us because, you know, this is the amazing thing that we do. It is on our website. It is there for people to see if they want to find it. But it’s not something that I’m actively pushing, as in, I don’t use it as a marketing ploy.

 

Yes, it’s one of these sorts of, what do you call it? Like a, almost like a surprise and delight element. So, for example, once we sign a client and then they receive their little welcome packet and the welcome packet says, you know, because you become a client, this is what has happened. So it almost becomes a little like a cherry on top type of thing for the client.

 

It’s really smart because then it keeps it in the right context that you’re doing it for all the right reasons. You mentioned marketing employees and honest to goodness, I was thinking of that exact same three words before you said them. And I was like, okay, that is really smart that they’re doing this because they want to do this.

 

They’re not doing it because they think it gives them an edge or competitiveness or whatever. And then when a client finds out about it, they’re like, oh, that’s awesome, right? Absolutely. Yeah. It’s one of those things that people don’t expect. And I think once somebody has made, you know, for example, that first one that they receive, which is obviously when they sign a contract and they receive that welcome back.

 

And that’s the first time a lot of the time that they even hear about it for them. They just feel like I’ve just made a good decision. But that makes me feel good and I feel like I’ve made the right decision and I’ve chosen the right agency. This feels good for them. And then, you know, for us to be able to, you know, commit to them every 30 days, we’re like, right, for the last 30 days.

 

This is what you’ve helped us to achieve. And we’re really grateful for that. And thank you. And it just becomes very natural. We, you know, we don’t do anything too showy about it. We would do it anyway and actually for probably the first almost a year, I would say we didn’t really even communicate it to clients.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Be Helpful, Don’t Sell

 

So it was just something that happened behind the scenes. And it was done more, culturally within the agency. But now we do talk about it a little bit more actively with clients and I think people are becoming more passionate about these sorts of things. But equally, just as you’ve kind of mentioned, when you hear the word marketing for, you know, people are worried about greenwashing and, you know, putting all these things out there to try to look good when there’s actually no real substance behind it.

 

Which is why I don’t actively speak about it in our marketing. But equally, I think, you know, these are the sorts of things that people can see through that stuff now. I think they see it immediately, you know? So there’s no reason for me to be promoting it. If people want to find out about it, they’ll find out about it.

 

I’m not going to be that person that I see. Once I start working with us, they see how ingrained it is and absolutely everything that we do that’s never really a concern for us. Here’s the other reason why I think this is so awesome and grateful that you’re sharing this. Really behind the curtain view is what you’re doing.

 

Why you’re doing this is just so amazing. Here’s why I think this is really, another level of awesomeness in our nation. So at the time of this recording, Stacey and I are recording this on April 28th, and obviously this is airing in late June. But just a few weeks ago, literally two, three weeks ago, Edelman, the global PR agency, released a study that they did very, very quickly in response to the coronavirus, a very special report, which was awesome.

 

You can go to Edelman’s website. You can download the PDF for free. It is incredible. And what the reason why this report or research was so helpful was because they, they, I think that they surveyed, I want to say there about 12,000 different, 12,000 respondents in 12 different countries. I might have that mixed up a little bit.

 

So forgive me if I’m getting the numbers wrong, but it was a lot. And so the sample size was very significant from a statistical perspective. But one of the key findings out of that was that consumers, business owners, people who are making buying decisions right now, what they want from us Onward Nation is to be helpful, not to sell.

 

What they want is us to be helpful in not selling, realizing that selling will come at some other point down the road when we’re fully past everything that all of us have been dealing with with respect to Covid, what they want are to be able to work with organizations, have people within their sphere of influence who are so focused on helping.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Navigating Your Business During Covid

 

And so, Stacey, when I hear you talking about this mission, this purpose that is driving you, that’s what I’m hearing. I’m hearing the world. The word helpful, in addition to other things, champion inequality and all of the stuff we talked about. So I’m certainly not trying to minimize those things. But what I’m hearing from you is this drive to be helpful, not sell the fact that you’re doing it, but just being helpful.

 

And it’s amazing. Stacey, thank you. I really appreciate you saying that. Yeah, I think in terms of what it does for the culture in the business, it is, is pretty incredible. and we’re really proud of the work that we’re doing. Obviously, the goal is to achieve 1 million days of impact by 2030, in line with those U.N. goals.

 

We just hit over 100,000 days. So, yeah, where, we’ve got a way to go but we are. Yeah, we’re really proud. You know, it’s an amazing 10% of the way there. That’s incredible. Let’s talk a little bit about, Covid. Certainly not from, like, a public health and safety or I mean, we’ll leave that to the medical experts, but I would like to give Onward Nation just some perspective.

 

Granted, we’re recording this in late April. Like I said, April 28th, the fact that, you know, you were talking about culture and togetherness and collaboration as a result of all the things that you do within the agency, gives us a little bit of insight. First, within, brand elective, within your agency and how you and your team have been able to navigate this as a team.

 

Yeah, it’s been an interesting situation, isn’t it? I think a lot of businesses have had a lot of struggles. I think as a digital business for us that hasn’t been a huge difference in the way that we carry out our day to day business. Okay. So yeah, we do have a physical office. but we’ve always been quite flexible and lots of people have always worked from home and had remote options.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Making Strategic Realignments

 

So in terms of delivery perspective, for us individually, it hasn’t had a huge impact. I will say that the biggest piece for us to navigate has been supporting clients. So clients that either have, you know, don’t operate remotely at home have had to navigate that themselves. and some of the things that we’ve been doing to support them is, which is not a general service of ours usually, you know, we’re a digital marketing agency, but we’ve had to jump in and sort of help support on, you know, how to run zoom calls and, how, you know, the privacy and security and things around some using some of the technology.

 

I found that we’ve had to jump in and support clients on, you know, we’ve started running some webinars and training on LinkedIn and, and how to use different platforms, for clients to have little Q and a drop in sessions and things like that. So I think those are the sorts of things that I’ve noticed that are quite different for us as a business, but we’ve been able to implement quickly just to help support clients.

 

But I think the observation that I make, you know, looking at businesses across and a majority of our businesses are UK based, but we work with a few in the US and out in Australia as well. The main thing that I see there is just that people have a lot more thinking time. So they’re thinking a little bit more strategically about how they want to manage their marketing or their businesses moving forward.

 

That’s been interesting because I think that will most likely dictate some changes to, oh, perhaps not changes to what the packages that we offer. But I think we will probably implement some new options based on the new requirements from certain industries that we work with. Okay. So interesting. So let me give that back to make sure I’m tracking with you.

 

I don’t want to sound so trite, if that’s the right word of talking about silver linings or opportunity through this, because I certainly do not want to sound disrespectful to what this has been as far as a very severe public safety and health pandemic. It absolutely has been. With that said, I think what we have seen though, from Covid is that this pressure on industries have forced all of us as business owners to, you know, think of pivots or think realignments or strategically.

 

Well, this what used to be, you know, opportunity for us now it’s going to have to shift over here. So I think what I’m hearing you say is that you’re also seeing because of this time that we’ve had to kind of step back from our businesses this way to either pivot or maybe kind of navigate through.

 

This is a way to find calmer waters, but maybe having to be bold enough to make some decisions that maybe we wouldn’t have made had this not happen. Absolutely. Yeah. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head there. I think that’s been it for everybody, hasn’t it? And even for myself where we haven’t been severely impacted in terms of losing clients or anything like that.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Doubling Down on Strategic Thinking

 

There are decisions that I tend to make myself a little bit more, less emotionally, perhaps. And just because we’re sort of pushed, you know, to make decisions a lot quicker than we perhaps might not have done under these sorts of circumstances. So yeah, you’ve absolutely got it right there. You know, it’s interesting.

 

It was just reading a study from or that was published in the Harvard Business Review, not from the Harvard Business Review, but published in the HBR. And the authors of the study went back and looked at how companies survived and potentially even thrived during the last six recessions, global recessions, not just, you know, here in the United States, but global recessions and the companies who did what you’re suggesting, the companies who took a step back. They made some decisions on operating costs, not to reduce team members like to really cut into the muscle, if you will, but to reduce operating expenses that would allow for greater efficiency. 

 

And then conversely, also doubled down on the areas of strategic thinking around marketing, R&D and so forth. What they labeled in the study as progressive companies, those are the companies that on the other side of the recession, like what we’re in right now, the other side of the recession came out even stronger, lower than how they went into the recession.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Embracing Digital Technology

 

So I think Onward Nation, if we’re taking the advice of Stacey here, how can we use this time to think about the existing business model and then think about where our clients need us to be helpful in the future? Could actually position as pretty well would. Would you agree, Stacey, or disagree? Yeah. No. Completely. I think that’s exactly it.

 

It’s you know, and that’s an exercise that we should be doing all the time, isn’t it? We should always be looking at our PNL and deciding, you know, where we are spending and where we can be more efficient. And it’s interesting. I’m sure there’s a whole psychological study we could go into on this too. It’s interesting to see that it’s only in these times of panic where people are forced to look into things. That you actually start looking at ways of being more innovative and, and, you know, relying on new technologies like automation and, you know, these strings of all different things that people have gone into.

 

And I’ve definitely found that even with a lot of, you know, I work a lot with quite traditional businesses that are just navigating online. Like my big mission in life is to get businesses online. In fact, I wrote a book called Get Online last year and what sort of happened off the back of this pandemic when everybody’s gone into lockdown and we start to see that all of these businesses physically cannot operate, that are forced to embrace it.

 

And, you know, some of the feedback that I’m getting from new inquiries is just how much more efficient their businesses run and how much more productive their businesses are now that they start to embrace some of these sorts of digital technology. So yeah, I think that’s fascinating. And I would love to read that study that you’re, that you’re talking about because I’m definitely seeing that with the businesses that I’m speaking to.

 

Blog about how Brandlective became a purpose-driven business by making a difference

 

Purpose-Driven Business: Wants Vs Needs

 

Yeah. I’ll be sure to share it with you. It was really, really well done by the authors. And so, let’s talk about some of the efficiencies, some of the digital strategies that you think that business owners like. If you could recommend a few nuggets to business owners because that’s who’s listening right now, you know, what would those things be?

 

And I know that there’s a myriad of them and it requires a significant marketing strategy. I understand all of that, but if you could pick just a couple because of time constraints. If you could just pick a couple nuggets that you’d want Onward Nation business owners to walk out of this conversation with, what are some of the best recommendations that you can think of that would be helpful to our audience?

 

So I think the best place to begin is really thinking about who your audience is. And I know that might sound really simple and lots of business owners who think that they already know who that is. But pay some special attention to right now, especially going through, you know, coming out the back of this sort of pandemic is who are my ideal clients?

 

Like who is the client that I absolutely love and how do I replicate them? So redoing the exercise of going through a customer avatar, really trying to identify, who is that perfect client of mine and what are the challenges and problems that they have, and how do I solve them? So I think, you know, something that’s going on when we’re re-strategizing and we’re looking at different ways to approach new customers coming into our business is that we will often look at, you know, what’s a rational decision making process versus an emotional decision making process, for example.

 

So it’s want versus need usually. I think right now what is happening and what we’ve seen sort of happening over the last couple of months is that people are no longer as concerned with want. I think we’re being much more savvy and much more strict with the sorts of things that we are doing where we are totally focused on the need.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Using Audio Content

 

So where do we need to spend the money? What do I actually need for survival? Or, you know, to help my business thrive? Versus what? So doing a customer avatar, really understanding who the customer is, you know, all the demographics, information that you need to know about them. But really, really digging into pain points. So what problems do they have?

 

What negatives have they uncovered? What are those big problems? And then creating content or marketing materials around those challenges and kind of what you talked about earlier, which has been helpful, you know, how do you be helpful to your ideal prospects so that it becomes a no brainer that they choose to work with you? So I think identifying the challenges and problems and then what you want to be looking at is what kind of content could I create that speaks to that challenge or problem that is not self-promotional. That is not our product and here’s our service, and here’s how we solve that for you.

 

But I really like helpful, informative educational content. Yes, you can have a call to action where it’s directing them towards more information about you. But the piece of content isn’t about you. The content is really about how to solve that challenge or problem for the business. And one thing that I talk about a lot with prospects is we really need to focus on four different forms of content, in my opinion, one of which is something visual.

 

So I think that needs to be some form of video content or really great graphics images that tell a story. So something very visual. We also need something audible. You’ll agree with me on this. Something like a podcast. or you know, some kind of audio snippets. I do this a lot with clients and I actually find clients.

 

Really? Buy into audio over video sometimes. If I ever have a nervous client who is, you know, not super excited about getting in front of the camera, a nice, easy way to do that is actually start with audio, I think audio form, I also think written. So some written forms are blogs, articles, you know, social media posts, etc..

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Actionable Content

 

And then the fourth form of content is something actionable. So people need something to do. So whether that’s, you know, downloading a checklist where they check off the 17 things they need to do to equal or whether that is an online quiz or a test or, it could be, you know, some kind of questionnaire, something that they complete, something actionable.

 

And the reason that I think that is that every individual person consumes information in different ways. So some people will be very visual orientated, others are audio focused, others are written, but equally just myself. For example, I embrace all forms of content, different times of my day. Obviously we’re currently still on lockdown, so hopefully that doesn’t last too much longer.

 

But on a normal commute to my office, I’m quite fortunate that my commute is about 60 minutes. That is not enough time for me to read a book. Therefore, I will listen to a podcast episode on my commute, so I’ll listen to something audio. Whereas on the weekend I quite happily read a book. in the evenings. Oh, you know, consume video content.

 

So even just throughout my day or throughout my week, as me, as one individual person, I consume information differently. When I’m researching a business that I want to buy from or want to do, you know, do business with. So, you know, doing those four different forms of content, I think is really, really important for making sure that your ideal prospect understands what you stand for as a business and how you can support to help them, and is really about value.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Summary of Stacey’s Recommendations

 

How much value do you give them so that you become the no brainer total, you know, obvious choice to do business with? Well, okay, so that is awesome. And from a value perspective, just like way over delivered there you know. 

 

So Onward I ask Stacey for, you know, one recommendation to start with. She just gave you two really, really solid ones with an avatar and walked you through that process and the why behind it.

 

Like why that really matters. And then the four forms of content, which is really smart, you know, so that we aren’t we don’t fall into the trap of being a one trick pony, and we pay attention to the fact that each person on your, you know, dream 25 prospects or your broader prospect list wants to consume content differently.

 

They have different preferences and so forth. So you want to make sure that you serve up your smarts in a way that is super simple and easy to access. So, Stacey, I know that we’re quickly running out of time, but is there one more that you can share with Onward Nation business owners that you think would be helpful?

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: Final Advice from Stacey

 

So I think that what was my one tip? I think it is just to keep your customer in mind. I know I sort of talked about that with the avatar, but it is really about keeping them front of mind. Don’t think about what you have to sell and what you have to give and what you’re trying to get in front of them.

 

It must be about them. It absolutely has to be about their big challenge, their problem, big goals, their ambitions. What they’re trying to achieve needs to drive everything that you do. And I guess my last little tip on that would be to make sure that the platforms that you’re choosing to use are where your customers are, because I kind of feel it’s something I see happen a lot with business owners, as we tend to gravitate towards a platform that we love.

 

So we love video or we love using Instagram. Therefore, I will do my marketing there. That is absolutely the wrong thing to do and we need to totally understand who our customer is, where they are, what they want? And that is what we need to be producing. So it’s always thinking about the customer, not ourselves. That’s probably that sounds like a negative thing to leave people on, but I think that’s a really, really important thing for businesses to be considering.

 

Yeah, it’s not negative at all. It speaks right to the bias that we all have. And it doesn’t matter, like you said, if you as a business owner, Albany should like to spend a lot of time on X platform, but your dream prospects and clients aren’t, then you have no chance of being helpful.

 

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Purpose-Driven Business: How to Connect with Stacey

 

If you’re not being helpful where they’re at, then you’re not being helpful. So that’s really, really smart advice, Stacey. So, I know that we’re quickly running out of time, but before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, please tell Onward Nation business owners the best way to connect with you, Stacey. The best place to connect with me is LinkedIn.

 

I definitely would love to connect with all of Onward Nation. I think it would be brilliant. and then obviously, through our website, which is brandactive.com. Okay, Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back and relisten to Stacey’s words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do. The key is as Stacey just said in The Four Forms of Content where she talked about visual audible writing, that last piece was actionable.

 

You have to take the smarts and the insights and the advice and recommendations that she so generously shared with you. Take what Stacey shared and apply it. Put it into action. And Stacey, we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day and I am grateful that you said yes to come on to the show, to be our mentor, to be our guide, to help us move our businesses onward to that next level.

 

Thank you so much, Stacey. Oh, thanks, David, for having me. I really appreciate being here. 

 

This episode is complete. So head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

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