🤝 You Need a Network, Not an Audience — Relationship Marketing with Michelle Warner

Amelia [00:00:02] [Music begins to play, overlapping with introduction to the episode] Welcome to Off the Grid, a podcast for small business owners who want to leave social media without losing all their clients. I'm Amelia Hruby, writer, speaker, and founder of Softer Sounds podcast studio.

Amelia [00:00:14] On this show, I share stories, strategies, and experiments for growing your business with radical generosity and energetic sovereignty. Download your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig and join us as we do it all off the grid [music jams and fades out].

Amelia [00:00:38] Hi friends. Welcome or welcome back to Off the Grid. This is a podcast about running a business with no or minimal social media presence. I'm your host, Amelia Hruby. I'm the founder of Softer Sounds, and on this podcast, I share creative marketing strategies for launching and growing the business that you want to bring to life while releasing a lot of the sticky shoulds we internalize about how business is quote unquote, "supposed to be done."

Amelia [00:01:04] So far in Season Two of Off the Grid, we've talked about breaking up with Pinterest, implementing SEO basics, how and why misinformation is bad for all of us— definitely go tune into that episode with Christy Harrison for that, and we've covered lots of other great things that you'll find in our feed wherever you get your podcasts.

Amelia [00:01:21] Today's episode is really for all my babes out there who listened to the, "Ten Things I Hate About Content Marketing," episode and wrote to me about it, and then were like, "This is great, Amelia, but what do I do now? [Laughs] I can't just be a hater. We got to do something else." I hear you, folks.

Amelia [00:01:38] So, today I am very excited to have a guest who's going to show us a different path forward in our businesses. I think this conversation is just going to be a game changer for so many of you, and that's why I'm excited to invite Michelle Warner on the pod to talk about relationship marketing.

Amelia [00:01:54] So, before we dive in, let me tell you a little bit about Michelle, if you're not already familiar. Michelle Warner designs tiny companies that are built to last with an MBA from one of the world's top business schools and over 15 years of experience growing small businesses.

Amelia [00:02:08] Michelle focuses on layering real-world experience on top of classic business fundamentals to design businesses that are sustainable and scalable in the long-term and resilient and adaptable in the short-term. It's the way she grew her first business to over seven figures, and it's what she's used to help over 300 CEOs create businesses that work for the important stuff— profit, energy, passion, and time. She's also the creator of Networking That Pays, the introvert-friendly, always awkward-free connection system that brings in reliable leads, consistent referrals, and meaningful connections for your business in five minutes a day. So, I know we all want all of that and I can't wait to talk about it. So, hi Michelle, thanks so much for being here.

Michelle [00:02:50] Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's my pleasure.

Amelia [00:02:53] Ah, so pumped. Can we start with you telling people a little bit about your business journey from that MBA at one of the top business schools to where you are now?

Michelle [00:03:02] Yeah, absolutely. It's— it's funny journey as everyone's tend to be, right?

Amelia [00:03:07] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:03:07] I went to business school at the University of Chicago and I went with the stated purpose of learning all their secrets so I could never look like someone with an MBA. I never expected [Amelia laughs heartily and Michelle joins] to go down that route.

Michelle [00:03:19] However, when you go to one of those schools, you have some very hefty student loans. And so, I assumed that for a year or two I would go do the consulting thing, right, pay off the loans, and then go on and pretend I had never been to business school. However, I managed to graduate in 2009, right as— in the middle of the recession. I remember our first day of recruiting, we were sitting in a room about to meet all the recruiters from Apple, and we got the news that Lehman had fallen—

Amelia [00:03:45] Ugh.

Michelle [00:03:45] The bank. So, my friend Peter and I looked at each other and we thought, "This isn't going to look the way we thought it was going to look." So, I had a year of school left and I spent that time— previously I'd had a background in nonprofits and higher ed, so I spent that time kind of reconnecting with that world, reconnecting with entrepreneurship.

Michelle [00:04:04] I actually created a social impact— or I was part of a team that got involved with the social impact nonprofit over in Africa during that year and just got reconnected to this entrepreneurship and do good world.

Michelle [00:04:17] And so, when I graduated, you know, the consulting jobs— none of that was there. And so, I just started embracing entrepreneurship and realized— just got started right away with what I always assumed I would do, right, of knowing all their rules so I could go somewhere and break them. And from there, you know, the story— story tells itself.

Michelle [00:04:35] I ran a social impact startup for the first several years out of school. I left that then and realized that I could help folks— these solo entrepreneurs are really springing up, and I thought, "Gosh, all these people have so much resilience and guts to start businesses or frankly, like maybe don't have any kind of idea of how to actually run a business, but out there doing it anyway because of life circumstance or because of whatever." And I thought, "I actually know how to run a business. If I can help you talk that down to size and by doing so, encourage that kind of courage that I was seeing and really—"

Amelia [00:05:11] Mm.

Michelle [00:05:12] "Reward you for that courage that felt really great to me."

Amelia [00:05:14] Oh, I love how you just centered courage and that I think that it's something that I don't talk about enough on this show that we collectively don't have enough conversations about just how courageous it is to start a business, to start your self-employment journey, and to really say to the world like, "I can do this." That's so brave.

Michelle [00:05:33] Yeah. The social impact org I was running right out of school, we actually sold low-cost internet into inner cities around the US where we needed it the most, where families needed it. And our hypothesis, again, this was back in 2009, 2010 was right when Target and Walmart were bringing all their hiring online. So, our hypothesis was if we could get internet into folks' homes who were struggling to find jobs, that would actually make it doable for them to apply for these jobs.

Michelle [00:05:59] That didn't happen and it didn't happen because it was a lot of single moms who couldn't leave the house for jobs. So, what did happen were these single moms who are struggling, started becoming VAs, started creating all these jobs from their homes. And I'm looking at them like, "You’re single moms, you're up against it, and you have the courage to do that. Like, if I can make that journey a little easier for you, how— I need to do that."

Amelia [00:06:23] Yeah. I love this so much. So, tell us then, like, what's the focus of your business now? What's kind of— makes up your business ecosystem?

Michelle [00:06:32] Yeah, so I break all my own rules because if you [Amelia and Michelle laugh] work for me— what— at my core, I'm a business designer and strategist, so I continue to help people whose business models— maybe you've hit a plateau, your business is not growing the way you want it to grow, or you know you've created a business you don't like.

Michelle [00:06:47] I help people fix those models so it's back on the path to growth, whatever that means for you, or back on the path to something that works with your lifestyle, right? And in that work, I tell people, you know, it's usually smart to have one thing that is your core offer, etc., etc. However, as part of my work there, some previous experience I had in network science and in understanding how networks work and how we build relationships came to the forefront in that none of my clients had these skills and they all needed it. And so—

Amelia [00:07:19] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:07:19] I started— it started in a Google doc. I started writing down a system that I myself had used for 15 years at the time of how to build relationships and how to network and how to use that in building your business in a sustainable way. I started writing that down for my one-on-one clients, and long story short, started training for that. At one point, a friend who had a very large following said, "If you don't create this into a course, I'm going to steal it from you because all my people need it." [Amelia laughs heartily] And so, now I also have this— this networking and relationship marketing side of my business because honestly, it's just— there's demand for it and people need it and nobody else is talking about anything like this.

Amelia [00:07:56] I will second that or snaps to that or—

Michelle [00:07:59] Yeah.

Amelia [00:08:00] [Laughs] Support all day long. And I think really from my perspective here at Off the Grid— and as a relatively new business owner— I'm in my second year of being full-time in my business, I just feel like as, you know, online business really grew and kind of boomed over the pandemic when all of our businesses moved more online, we started to see these more online-focused strategies of especially content marketing really moved to the fore. And now I encounter so many business owners where the only type of marketing that's even on their radar is social media marketing or content marketing. So, let's go back to some fundamentals. What is relationship marketing and why do you love it?

Michelle [00:08:42] Yeah, so relationship marketing, let's think of the world of marketing on a continuum. It's just on a line.

Amelia [00:08:48] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:08:48] On one extreme is what I call relationship marketing, and that is marketing that happens via relationships, conversations, the most extreme form of it, if you're all the way magnetized to the end is a referral, right? Somebody—

Amelia [00:09:01] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:09:01] Loves your work, they send a friend, and think about how quickly that sale happens, right? It happens instantaneously. So, relationship marketing is heavy on the relationships, tends to be really high-quality leads, really high conversion. It's not all, like, 100% like referral conversions are, but it's pretty high. Other side of the continuum is traffic marketing or direct marketing, mass marketing—

Amelia [00:09:23] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:09:23] Whatever we want to call this classic e-commerce Amazon stuff, where the game is actually the opposite. If in relationship marketing, the game is fewer leads, higher conversion. In traffic marketing, the game is as many leads as humanly possible and frankly really low conversion. And that is completely appropriate for a lot of low-cost products. I always use the old Bed Bath and Beyond as the example here. Like, they're just going to pummel you with coupons all day long and it will work.

Michelle [00:09:51] But for those of us solo entrepreneurs, service-based businesses, traffic marketing is generally not in alignment with your most efficient mode of marketing. It is usually you are much, much better off doing some relationship marketing. However, relationship marketing not a lot of people know how to do that if it's not that referral, and those referrals obviously you're not in control of. And so—

Amelia [00:10:15] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:10:15] When people want to get away from referrals, they tend to overcorrect all the way over to traffic because let's face it, that is the easiest thing to teach, it's what everyone talks about, it's what we think of marketing. But there is a whole world, again, if you think of that continuum, there's a whole side, a whole left side of that continuum that is full of relationship marketing strategies that you can use if your business is in better alignment with— and none of that involves content factories.

Amelia [00:10:41] Yeah. So, you mention service-based businesses and I do think— you know, that's what I run, it's what a lot of this audience runs— and I do think relationship marketing is so well-suited and I love what you said about referrals or, like, the one end of it. And I too often hear people say like, "We all know word of mouth is the best way to get new clients, but you just can't do anything about that. Out of your control. Could never make more word of mouth happen."

Amelia [00:11:08] [Chuckles] So, what I love about Networking That Pays— just to go ahead and bring it up and put it on the table is it is this framework and structure for creating— generating word-of-mouth marketing and referrals. So, can you tell us, like, how did you create Networking That Pays and what is it— just tell the listeners what it is and how you created it?

Michelle [00:11:30] Yeah, Networking That Pays is both my course on— on how to build a network for yourself that is actually going to return leads, but it's also a system. And the way I came up with it goes back to grad school. I never knew this was a thing, but I took two semesters of classes on network science. There are people who make their career out of understanding how networks operate and how they're structured. So, I—

Amelia [00:11:53] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:11:53] Took two semesters of that, didn't really think twice about it. I found it generally interesting but didn't think there would be a future for it. And then I found myself in the social impact organization I was running, and my background had been at that time in nonprofits in higher ed, where frankly, I did a ton of traffic marketing. It was appropriate. I ran email lists of over 100,000 people, and now I was sitting in a position where in order to make sales, I had to build relationships with nonprofits and local governments in all of the major cities in the U.S.

Michelle [00:12:25] I was headquartered in Denver. I had to meet the local governments in Boston and Philly. And if you know anything about local governments, they are very uninterested A — in signing up for an email list or B— some random woman from Denver calling up and saying you were going to solve a major problem. Like, there's not a lot of trust there, right? They still operate at local levels.

Michelle [00:12:44] So, I had to figure out a way to gain trust and build relationships with these people so I could bring them on as customers. They were not going to be a mass marketing gain. And so, I'm an introvert. I had [laughs lightly] no idea how to do this. And I thought back to those network classes and I was like, "Wait, I can figure out a system based on how I know now that networks operate and I can create a system for myself that will actually make those introductions happen in an easy way that is not cold calling, right?" Relationship marketing—

Amelia [00:13:11] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:13:11] Is not cold calling. It is looking for ways to build relationships with people. And so, that's what I did. And again, I'm doing this in 2010, 2011, you know, and fast forward to— to a few years ago when I realized that everybody else kind of had to— would benefit from— [laughs lightly] from understanding this system as well.

Amelia [00:13:30] Yeah. So, you kind of lay out the system and its widest sort of form in your free training—

Michelle [00:13:37] Yeah.

Amelia [00:13:37] Five Minutes a Day to a Network That Pays, which I will, like, now insert air horn sound, tell everyone they just need to go to the show notes and get it. Like, pause the conversation, go download the free training. It's so good [laughs heartily] but could you maybe give us in brief what do your five minutes a day look like? How does the— the system work?

Michelle [00:13:54] Yeah, so there's two halves to the system. The first half of the system is science-based, and that just talks about who needs to be in your network, right? Let's get intentional about this. A lot of times when we're networking, the awful part about networking is that we just feel like we're supposed to just go meet everybody and, like, make friends with everyone and walk into a room.

Amelia [00:14:12] Yeah.

Michelle [00:14:12] Like, no, I hide in the bathroom at those events. So, step one is understanding the science of how many people can actually be in your network. And it's not your—

Amelia [00:14:19] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:14:19] Social media followings, it's not your LinkedIn followings. There's very few people who can actually earn a spot in your network and that you have room for so let's get intentional about who those people should be. So, that's kind of the science-based half, and that's critical because if the right people are not in your network, this is not going to work and most people have the wrong people in their network.

Michelle [00:14:36] So, we do that in the first half and then in the second half we, then, figure out how to keep those people in our network because the other thing we screw up is we allow people to come in and out of our networks. And then you have those moments where you're sitting around and you're thinking, "Oh crap, I really want to ask Sally for this thing, but I haven't talked to her in a year. This is about to get awkward." Right? And if you're intentional about who should be in your network, now you have a manageable number of people that you can care for, and you have a reason for caring for them because they actually have a reason to be in your network.

Michelle [00:15:07] And so, over the course of a year, how do you stay in touch with those people? How do you build those relationships so that you don't have these awkward moments? You just have stable relationships that are win-wins for everyone. And that's where the five minutes a day kind of comes in because what I have— and again, this is a system I built for myself— is there is a theme to every day Monday is the thank you note, Tuesday's connection, and every day you are reaching out to someone in that network with one of those themes and you're keeping them active.

Michelle [00:15:34] Sometimes you're asking for something, a lot of times you're not, but when you have the correct people in your network in a manageable way, then it's very easy to reach out. You know, you're not on endless, like, death circles of 30-minute coffee chats that go nowhere. You're actually having directed conversation for people that you know are win-wins in your life.

Amelia [00:15:55] I think both pieces of that are so important. And just to recap what you said, like, both the, like, who needs to be in your network and being really intentional about that. And I think— I totally empathize with your, sort of, like, go to a networking event, meet anyone and everyone out there, they could be useful for your business. You're like, "That's just not how it works [giggles]."

Michelle [00:16:15] Mm mm.

Amelia [00:16:15] And I think so often when we become self-employed, we realize, like, the network you may have had as a student or in your career just may not at all be the network you need for your business to be successful. And that network is probably totally different than just your straight-up, like, friends. And I think one of the things social media does is, like, mix all that together in a really unhelpful swirl of people. So, I'm wondering— well, I guess I said I was going to recap— and then there are the five things you do every day. And I love this. And [laughs] now I can sometimes even tell when someone— when I'm getting, like, a Networking That Pays—

Michelle [00:16:51] Oh no!

Amelia [00:16:52] Email from someone where I'm like— now— but it feels good.

Michelle [00:16:54] Yeah.

Amelia [00:16:54] It's still this sort of like, "Oh, yeah, they were thinking about this, so they sent it to me." Like, I think that's what I wanna say to you. Like, it feels good to stay connected to people where you're mutually reciprocally benefiting each other's work and lives. And I think that both the intentionality of the network and how good it feels to be genuinely connected really make relationship marketing so distinct from social media, and they make your network really distinct from your followers.

Michelle [00:17:24] Mmhm.

Amelia [00:17:24] And I'm wondering if you could maybe tease that out a little bit more, like how is a network different that a social media following or just a straight-up audience?

Michelle [00:17:31] Yeah, so I think this goes back to relationship versus traffic marketing, right? On that—

Amelia [00:17:37] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:17:38] Relationship side of marketing. If we're not going to— like, let's look at how referrals happen. Referrals happen because somebody who used your work or who knows you're good or whose client you know used you before they used them, whatever, they made that referral. And so, how do we continue to do that? It's not by trying to meet your potential clients over and over and over again. That is much more of a traffic thing where you're just constantly trying and constantly trying to replace your whole following so that you can constantly find more leads so that they can sign up for your services.

Michelle [00:18:05] Instead, on the relationship side, what you're actually trying to do, if you're doing it the correct way, is build relationships with folks who are always going to have access to and know your potential clients so that over time you are building the relationship with the people who will essentially be your referral partners in some way or another. It may not be a direct referral. It may be that they invite you to train their audiences. It might be that they invite you to an event to speak. They invite you on their podcast, right? There's all these things. I call it borrowing an audience where you can go out and borrow the audiences of folks who are your ideal clients, but somebody else has— has gathered them in a place.

Michelle [00:18:45] And if you build the relationships with the owners of those audiences, then guess what? Like you can go back time and time again and continue to meet the audiences. And it's a win-win, by the way, because you're coming with great knowledge and you're helping that audience so that's a win for the quote unquote, "owner of the audience." But it's a win for you too because you're not out there trying to get people to notice you instead, you're inserting yourself into where they already are. And so, you are building the mechanics of what a referral is, but you're a little bit more in control of it because you're out there proactively building these relationships and building enough of them so that enough leads show up.

Amelia [00:19:23] Just to interject my own experience as an example here, like I ran a podcast studio for small business owners. So, when I'm relationship marketing, I'm just always connecting with people who have communities of small business owners. That's where I want to be. That's who I want to be in touch with. That's who I want to be in front of.

Amelia [00:19:40] I actually have very few people in my network who are in the podcast industry, like my space I try to be in is always like small business owners, generally, like, women or non-binary folks and who are into some sort of, like, intuitive things [chuckles], like when I find those communities I am present, I am there, I am offering support because those are the people— the leaders of those communities are the ones I want in my network, and then I can show up and bring value to the space and get clients. And it always is— you know, I think, sometimes I'll talk to other founders of podcast studios and realize that they're doing all of their networking in the podcast space, which the people who run podcast studios don't need podcast services [laughs lightly], they don't need editors. We have editors, we are editors.

Amelia [00:20:28] And so, your framework really helped me make that shift of like, okay, this is who I actually need to be connecting with and I love my podcast industry folks, and I do need some of those relationships so that when I have a super technical question or when I need to connect for a client like they're not unimportant in my network, but I recognize they're not the ones that I'm getting new client referrals from because they get their own referrals for podcast services [laughs].

Michelle [00:20:53] Exactly. Exactly.

Amelia [00:20:55] Yeah so—

Michelle [00:20:56] Working the phase gold star to you. Yeah—

Amelia [00:20:58] [Laughs heartily] Yeah. You know, it's been a— it's been a journey. I'm wondering if you might share another example or two from, you know, your clients or your experience of how people have kind of figured this out.

Michelle [00:21:08] In terms of how to set up their network and kind of who they should be connected with?

Amelia [00:21:11] Yes, exactly.

Michelle [00:21:12] Yeah. So, one thing that we look at a lot with— with clients is looking at what are the natural patterns of people who are in I call them parallel, but noncompetitive spaces, right? And so, who are your— if you're thinking about who you should be connected with— I call these ideal connection avatars, the same way of an ideal client avatar— who when you're thinking about who are my ideal connection avatars, a lot of times I'm thinking about who are folks working with right before they work with you or right after they work with you or at a little bit of a different stage.

Michelle [00:21:42] So, two of my favorite partners— folks I'm connected to, one of whom, again, I shared when my business model work— I work with people who have a little bit of advanced businesses, they've hit a plateau, something's going wrong. Well—

Amelia [00:21:54] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:21:54] I get a lot of people who are new to business, who reach out to me, and I know that I'm not a solution to them. And so, I have a referral partner who works with a lot of people who are brand new to business. I don't— I'll be honest, I don't trust a lot of people who are business coaches to people who are brand new in business. This individual—

Amelia [00:22:11] Yeah.

Michelle [00:22:11] I trust deeply. I believe in her methodology. And so, I send all my new people to her, and at the same time she— when all of her people come back to her and say, "What do I do now? I'm stuck." She sends them to me. That's a fantastic type of referral partnership— we're both business strategists, on the surface it might look competitive, it's not competitive at all. And we're able to, not only help each other, but help our clients.

Michelle [00:22:35] I feel bad when a new business owner who really wants to learn the correct way reaches out to me, I feel bad saying I don't actually know how to work with you because I don't, like, I'm not a mindset person— like, so much comes up in those first couple of years of business. I'm not really a good match because I'm so, kind of, tactical and let's fix it mode as opposed to—

Amelia [00:22:53] Yeah.

Michelle [00:22:53] Let's discover it mode. So, I feel fantastic that I can send them to her and know that they're well cared for. At the same time, she doesn't like it when her clients come two years later and they've gotten stuck and she can't help them so it feels really good to have that connection.

Michelle [00:23:06] Another one that I have in my personal business is, again like I work in a fix-your-business model— I have a very dear friend and colleague and ideal connection avatar who works on high-level sales strategy. So, I work with a lot of B2B service providers. They're selling into corporate. You know, they're selling maybe 50-100K deals at a time, that requires some sales skills on top of just having a business model in alignment.

Michelle [00:23:33] So, she will get a lot of folks who think they have a sales problem, but their business model is actually messed up so she sends them to me first, says, "Go let Michelle get you sorted, then come back to me," or I will get a lot of folks who we finish our work and then they say, "Okay, and also what do I say when [chuckles lightly] I'm about— you know, how do I put together this proposal for a 100K deal?"

Michelle [00:23:54] And so, I send them to her. So, that's a lot of those really positive connections. I try to point out the examples of where on the surface it might look competitive, but if you dig a little deeper, there's actually really natural connections of the journey that your clients are taking, right? Let's take that conversation of what their journey is beyond just you. Who are they working with right before you? Who are they working with right after you? And me looking for some of those folks to build relationships with.

Amelia [00:24:19] Yeah. Yeah. And I can think to just knowing some of the more, like, B2C of businesses in the, you know, Off the Grid community, you know, folks who are tarot readers or folks who are acupuncturists, you know, thinking about your clients are on healing journeys, what other types of practitioners might they need or be coming from or looking for? Even in just my personal life, I give referrals to my astrologer so often [laughs heartily]—

Michelle [00:24:47] 100%.

Amelia [00:24:48] Because everybody— you know, astrology has blown up over the past few years and people are like, "I need a natal chart reading, do you know a person?" And I'm like, "Absolutely, I do. Go talk to Davis." So, it's just thinking about what type of journey— I love this focus on the journey your client is on and what are the other people they might need or encounter before or after you. And those are the folks you want and your network so that you can be referring each other.

Amelia [00:25:11] And I also love this— like referrals are mutual. It's not just a one-way street. And I think that that's another thing that differentiates a network from an audience, right as an audience is so one way are conceived of in that way. It's like you're on a platform, it's literally called a platform and you're speaking to the masses [laughs].

Michelle [00:25:27] Yeah.

Amelia [00:25:28] But a network goes all directions and we all help and support each other.

Michelle [00:25:32] Yep. Can I share one of my favorite collaborations that has ever happened? And I'm going to—

Amelia [00:25:37] Please. Please

Michelle [00:25:37] Botch up the story, but it was so good. So, we have a local— I live in a small town along Lake Michigan and we have a local yoga studio that is phenomenal at collaborations. This is why I remembered it while you were talking about that I'm always encouraging them to collaborate with all the healers in town. That's so natural.

Amelia [00:25:52] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:25:53] However, one Friday night they collaborated with the ax-throwing bar in town, and I thought it was genius [Amelia laughs heartily] because I don't remember in what order it went, but it was something about like, "Get your aggression out and then go ground yourself," or you know— and I just thought—

Amelia [00:26:06] Beautiful.

Michelle [00:26:06] That was hilarious and creative and super applicable on a Friday night. Who doesn't want to go throw some axes and then, you know, go chill out in a yoga studio? I just thought that was genius to think through—

Amelia [00:26:18] Yeah.

Michelle [00:26:18] How they do have the same clients.

Amelia [00:26:21] Yeah, it's an emotional journey—

Michelle [00:26:23] Yeah.

Amelia [00:26:23] In that case, right? Like, go get all of the anger out, all the frustration from the week, and then go rest—

Michelle [00:26:29] Yeah.

Amelia [00:26:29] And then, go to bed.

Michelle [00:26:29] Yeah, exactly.

Amelia [00:26:30] [Laughs] Which is what I want to do on a Friday night.

Michelle [00:26:31] I think it was one of the most genius things I've ever seen. Yeah.

Amelia [00:26:34] Yes. I lov— thank you for bringing up that example because I also think it's so creative and so much of what gets lost in marketing when— especially when people are teaching traffic marketing. It's, like, small business owners want that because they want to believe there's like a step, step, step, step, step that will guarantee their success.

Michelle [00:26:52] Yeah.

Amelia [00:26:52] But the best marketing is creative and innovative and a little weird and very fun—

Michelle [00:26:58] Yep.

Amelia [00:26:58] And based on real human relationships and really understanding—

Michelle [00:27:02] Yeah.

Amelia [00:27:02] People's lives and journeys.

Michelle [00:27:03] And, you know, if you want to guarantee your success, let's stop relying on the algorithms to put you out in the world, right? When you're on—

Amelia [00:27:11] Yes.

Michelle [00:27:11] Your platform, you are trusting the algorithms to do a job for you. I would much rather trust built up relationships to do— you know, my friends at this point—

Amelia [00:27:22] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:27:22] To help me get out in the world than an algorithm that changes every single day.

Amelia [00:27:26] Yes, exactly. And on top of that, I think one of the points that you make in, either your webinar or somewhere I've read in your work, is that, you know, your network, no one can take it away from you.

Michelle [00:27:36] Yep.

Amelia [00:27:36] I wouldn't really call it like an owned channel like you would in marketing, but it kind of is, like, it's yours. It's not mediated by anything except yourself and maybe, like, calling someone or texting or emailing them, but like, you get to have those relationships no matter what an algorithm does or a platform does or the Internet does, like, those relationships are still real and will support you and your business, which I think is what we all want for our business.

Michelle [00:28:00] Absolutely.

Amelia [00:28:08] [Music begins to play as Amelia reads an ad] Hi, Off the Grid listeners. Amelia here interrupting our conversation today because I want to share with you one of my favorite marketing tools. When I left Instagram, I invited all of my followers to subscribe to my mailing list in order to keep in touch with me, and I promised to send them monthly-ish notes on a lot of the themes I used to talk about on social media. I've used many email service providers in my day, but my favorite of all of them is Flodesk. Flodesk is a gorgeous, easy-to-use email service provider. It helps you create beautiful, thoughtful emails, and even better, it's really set up to help you create easy-to-use landing pages so people can join your list and workflows so you can automate sending messages to folks who sign up through different pages. Flodesk is how I run all of the welcome sequences and lead magnets at Softer Sounds. It's also how I run the Leaving Social Media Toolkit that you might have downloaded after listening to this podcast. I'm surely not sending those emails out myself manually. Flodesk is doing all of that automagically. If you'd like to give Flodesk a try, please use my affiliate link below in the show notes. You'll get a discount, I'll get a kickback, and we will all send our beautiful emails together. Again, check out the affiliate link in the show notes. For now, we're going to get back to this episode of Off the Grid [music fades out].

Amelia [00:29:40] Going back a little bit to this spectrum that you're talking about between referral to traffic marketing, relationship marketing, traffic marketing, where do you put social media marketing and or content marketing on that spectrum? How does it fit in?

Michelle [00:29:55] Yeah, so it is traffic marketing 100%. You know, your referral marketing— and I'll get into my caveats for that in a second.

Amelia [00:30:03] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:30:03] But referral marketing, as we've been talking about, that is all about getting off your platform and talking to people in other places. So, here are my caveats to, kind of, content marketing. A very important thing you need to do in relationship marketing is when you go and borrow that audience, you better go say something that blows people's minds [laughs]. You cannot go be generally useful, right? And when we have—

Amelia [00:30:25] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:30:25] Kind of a content factory, a content mill, you're just churning out as much content as humanly possible. And I don't say this to be harsh, but when you're putting out that much content, you can't blow people's minds with every post. It's just not humanly possible because you have to— there's—

Amelia [00:30:38] Yeah.

Michelle [00:30:38] So much volume, right?

Amelia [00:30:39] Yeah.

Michelle [00:30:40] So, it's not that content's not important in a relationship marketing scenario, it's just that you're always going to a new audience when you go and borrow that audience so you can say the same thing over and over and over again, and therefore it can be really freaking smart and blow people's minds so that— it's not that content doesn't have a place in relationship marketing, it's just more of that like—

Amelia [00:31:01] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:31:01] Core content. And, you know, the thing that— the one or two or three things you really, really care about as opposed to day after day after day churning out the content. And then—

Amelia [00:31:11] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:31:12] The other place that content marketing can work in a relationship funnel is to move people through. I call it like the logistical part of the thing, right? Like, if you need to move them, after you go and borrow an audience, you need to invite them to do something and come over to your platform. So, sure, there's probably going to be some content involved with that, right? And you need to stay in touch with them so there's going to be some email involved with that. But I don't count, in a relationship funnel— I don't count on that content to do any of my selling or any of my actual strategic moves for me.

Michelle [00:31:42] I just look at as a logistical tool to keep people moving through the funnel so that I can intercept them, if you will, and insert relationship strategies along the way, but the content keeps them in my world as opposed to in traffic, it's only content and you're relying on them to find you as opposed to you going to find them. And then, you're also relying on the content generation to sell them. And that's the big difference. So, it's not that content doesn't exist, it just plays a very different role and there's much less volume of it.

Amelia [00:32:14] Oh, I love that emphasis so much because I do think it's very disappointing if you, like, hear someone give a great talk and then they go to their website and there's, like, no way to go further with them and you're like, "Wait, I loved— what do we do?" Or it's like, you go to their website and all you can do is buy a $10,000 package. And you're like, "I need another step between this amazing thing you said— like what— what fills?" So, I love that, like, some core content can fill that in.

Amelia [00:32:38] And I see this in, you know, your setup as well, right? You have a webinar, you have five minutes a day, and then, you know, you have some emails that talk about Networking That Pays. And then, from my outside view, so tell me if I've got your— your journey wrong— but then [laughs] you invite people to your monthly table talks and it seems like that's your ongoing connection point. So, can you tell us about those and how they fit into your ecosystem?

Michelle [00:33:04] Yeah. So, when I think about marketing, I think about three stages— awareness, engagement, sales.

Michelle [00:33:09] People need to know you exist. That's awareness.

Michelle [00:33:11] Then, they need to engage with you—

Michelle [00:33:13] And then they need to buy something from you.

Michelle [00:33:14] So, awareness with— again within the relationship framework, awareness is something that never happens on my platform. I never expect people to find me via— I don't expect them to Google and find me. Part of that is because there was a murder of someone with my same name so if you [Amelia laughs heartily] Google me, like, I will never win the SEO awards. Yeah, it's dramatic.

Amelia [00:33:32] Yeah, well, at least you're still alive [chuckles].

Michelle [00:33:33] Exactly. Exactly [laughs]. So, call that a lesson in how SEO can't always work for you. So, I am always taking that awareness stage off of my platform into other borrowed audiences. And I have my couple of things that I say to folks that kind of blow their minds, right?

Michelle [00:33:48] Then, in engagement, what a lot of folks think about engagement is, again, they just try to pummel more information at people. And this is a lot of our social media and content strategies. Well, once they follow me, I'll just throw information in their faces all day long. That's not what you want to do. You— if you did a good job at awareness and you've blown people's minds, now you want to show them how to apply it, right?

Michelle [00:34:09] And say, like, if they have that moment of doubt and they say like, "Wow, that was really smart. I get that about relationship marketing, but would that really work for me? Is that really my business?" You know, they start to have these doubts.

Amelia [00:34:19] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:34:19] And so, instead of pummeling them with more information about how to build a relationship funnel, I say like, "Come ask me a question," or like, "Let's do an audit or a diagnostic or an assessment of some kind so that you can understand that, yeah, you do fit into this category."

Michelle [00:34:34] So, that's why I do a monthly Q&A roundtable so everybody who meets me at awareness can come and I just hang out and ask questions— and answer questions for folks about all these concepts, hear their individual situations, and explain to them how, yeah, it— it does fit for them. And there's a million different ways you can do that engagement piece. That's one of mine.

Michelle [00:34:54] I have another blog post. If you look at my site, I don't have a ton of blog posts, but I have a couple of core ones that do act as kind of diagnostic things. So, just to totally break down my funnels for you on the relationship versus traffic situation, you know, we have a conversation like this, then I ask them to come into the Q&A. I, also, from my business model piece of my business, I talk a lot about sequence over strategy, meaning it matters a lot less what you do.

Michelle [00:35:22] I don't care if you know how to run a perfect webinar, if you're running it at the wrong time, it's not going to do anything for you. So, I talk about sequence over strategy, doing things in the right order, and for that, I use a diagnostic of the five stages of small business growth, and this is, like, seminal research out of Harvard in the early eighties that talks about how every small business grows within these five stages.

Michelle [00:35:42] And if you look at that, everybody is actually focused on the wrong stage, like 90% of the time, people are putting their energy into the wrong stage.

Michelle [00:35:49] So, if I'm talking about the business stages in sequence over strategy, I say go read this blog post. It will walk you through how to figure out what stage you're actually in and which one you're operating in, and then you can figure out how to refocus your priorities, right? So, I'm saying— I'm blowing their mind by the fact that, like, you have to do things in the right order—

Amelia [00:36:05] You just blew my mind [laughs heartily].

Michelle [00:36:05] Yeah. Yeah.

Amelia [00:36:07] I was like, "What?"

Michelle [00:36:08] Yeah.

Amelia [00:36:08] I've literally like— need to go to your blog right now [laughs heartily].

Michelle [00:36:11] Yeah. I will get you the link. But so many people worry about like, "How do I run a webinar?" It doesn't matter if you're— if you're doing it in the wrong order, you know, you can run a perfect webinar and it's going to be a bust. And so, if you can go to that blog post and you say, "Oh, I'm actually in stage two, but I'm operating in stage three," which is super, super common, then you can course correct. And you know like—

Amelia [00:36:31] Mm.

Michelle [00:36:31] How you want to prioritize yourself. So, that's an example of how I use an engagement strategy to not pummel them with more information. I don't send them 100 different posts about how to do this, I just say in this one post like, "Go look— look, are you doing the wrong thing? Okay, cool. Then come to the roundtable and tell me what you're doing and we'll kind of sort you out."

Michelle [00:36:49] And that is the type of thing that works because then when it's time to ask them for the sale, A— I don't even have to ask people for the sale, they just come to me and say, "Oh my God, I read the blog post. I'm operating in the wrong, you know, in the— in the wrong zone, like, how can you help me?" And then, we have a conversation about what it looks like to work together.

Amelia [00:37:06] Wow, this makes so much sense and I really appreciate you kind of pulling back the curtain— sharing so transparently about how your marketing works and how your ecosystem is set up with, you know, the core talk and then the core webinar that you might give anywhere and then the blog posts that support that so people can understand a little more and they get shared maybe in— either directly or in an email sequence.

Amelia [00:37:31] And then, through these monthly table talks, like once-a-month opportunity to come actually meet you, which I think is really important when people are making a large investment in your— particular one-on-one services or something like that. Yeah— what large is is different depending on who you are, but I'm wondering how— how do you sort of see that working for maybe a more— again, thinking back to like we're both B2B service providers and so I find that that's, like, a slightly different the stakes are a little different, the numbers are a little different, the— the functionality is a little different than if you are working in more of a B2C service provider environment, like a yoga studio or— I'm trying to think of services that are still— you're not selling shoes, it's not just like a straight up product, but you're also maybe not selling, you know, a multi-thousand dollar package.

Amelia [00:38:20] How does this sort of relationship marketing function there? Do you see this sort of same, like, core content? Do you think content is even useful at all in those instances or no?

Michelle [00:38:29] So, yes and no, when you're kind of in that in-between space, right, because we're on a continuum. So, you can be half—

Amelia [00:38:35] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:38:35] Relationship, half traffic and something like a yoga studio probably is that you're not full on—

Amelia [00:38:41] Yeah.

Michelle [00:38:41] Amazon experience. I would actually go back to the example I gave about the yoga studio and the ax-throwing bar, because what they did was, of course, they don't have like core content at the top where they're going in delivering some speech like I am, but they are borrowing audiences at that top, right?

Michelle [00:38:56] They're each borrowing each other's audience. And I still think that is super, super important for that top awareness piece. If you have to have any kind of relationship thing, again, let's not count on your marketing channels to go and find those people for you. Go and be a little proactive at that awareness stage, come up with, you know, borrowed audiences, collaborations, and all that.

Michelle [00:39:20] And then sure, after that, you are probably going to be hitting some traffic stuff, you are probably going to have a social media account if you're a yoga studio, that comes into it.

Amelia [00:39:29] Yeah.

Michelle [00:39:29] But again, this is not going to be about having to dance perfectly on TikTok or, like, hit the Instagram reel— like you're still using that as a little bit of a logistical tool from people who met you because they were patrons of the ax bar, [laughs lightly] but they met you, you know, through your collaboration, and now they're just going to follow you and keep in touch with you via your social media as opposed to making your social media be that awareness thing. That's where people just get burned, frankly.

Amelia [00:39:58] Yeah. No, I think that you're pointing to something that I hear and say a lot, which is that social media particularly, I would also put podcasts in this category, like we think they're going to work on awareness, like we think they're going to be an audience growth channel for us, but they're not. They're an engagement or what I would call, like, a nurturing channel for us, they're where we continue the relationships such that people can stay in touch.

Amelia [00:40:22] And for me it's like when they're ready to do what I offer, I'm still on their mind because I encounter a lot of people who [chuckles], like, enter the Softer Sounds world and love what we're about, but like aren't making a podcast yet. But then when they do in three years or, you know, for me at this point, like in 18 months, they're like, "You're here, I'm ready. We did it [giggles]!"

Michelle [00:40:40] Hundred percent. Yeah.

Amelia [00:40:41] I am wondering, how do you think of podcasts in, you know, a marketing ecosystem for relationship marketing? What do you think the role of podcasts is for people in their businesses and marketing?

Michelle [00:40:53] Yeah, you nailed it. They are 100% an engagement strategy, so they're a great place for you to talk through— so maybe you're not interacting with people, but you can be talking through deeper concepts about—

Amelia [00:41:05] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:41:05] What you share during awareness, welcoming folks over, you know, sending them to those blog posts, talking them through some of your diagnostics and just allowing them to to work out for themselves. And the binge factor is huge as well, right? So, they're an engagement strategy.

Michelle [00:41:19] However, my also hidden strategy for podcasts, I'm actually not going to use this on my own, but it's— another one is when you know those ideal connection avatars, who you have to meet, sometimes it can be hard to meet those people. And I talk—

Amelia [00:41:33] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:41:33] About a lot of different ways to get introduced. One of my favorite ways to get introduced and actually the one that I used with my social impact org was to create a platform that you can invite people to. And so, I always encourage my clients— a lot of my clients have to go through a network rebuild because we have this aha that their networks are all the wrong people and it's intimidating.

Michelle [00:41:53] But if they have a platform in place, if they have a podcast in place, we start finding who do you want to meet? Let's invite them on guests as podcasts, let's hand them an audience first. Now you have served them, and now the door is open to actually build a relationship with them, right? You're not entering with some sort of cold ask and so, that's a really great bonus of having a platform like a podcast. I wouldn't necessarily start one just to do that, but if you have it and it's working that engagement role, it can play an awareness role for you by getting you introduced to people that you want— that you know— that you want to borrow their audience. That wasn't English, but—

Amelia [00:42:30] Yes.

Michelle [00:42:30] People are following me [laughs and Amelia joins].

Amelia [00:42:31] No. I follow completely and it is definitely something that I talk through with Softer Sounds clients, like, what is your goal for your show?

Michelle [00:42:40] Yeah.

Amelia [00:42:40] And, you know, some of the podcasts I work on, I would say success looks different for everyone. Like, the "standard," quote unquote for success in podcasting would be like, "You've got a million downloads or whatever."

Michelle [00:42:51] Yeah.

Amelia [00:42:51] It's going to be download metrics, but that's really not that important for a lot of the shows I work on for small business owners. Like, what they need is either to be talking— consistently talking to a small group of the right people or building their network by bringing on the guests of the people that like they really want to talk to. And what I can say from firsthand experience on Off the Grid too, is if you create something that enough people are excited about, then like the network you desire will come to you.

Michelle [00:43:17] 100%.

Amelia [00:43:17] Like, this season, I've definitely gotten pitched by people where I'm like, "Oh my God, I thought you were so out of my league, I wouldn't even have pitched you." And here they are in my inbox pitching me. And I'm, like, honored and overwhelmed and so excited. And your network grows through that. I agree with you. It's such a great way to connect with the people you're talking about. And I can say from experience with some of my clients, like some of the most successful shows for network building, have very small audiences because the person didn't make them to get tons of downloads. They made them to connect with the right people and grow their network in that way such that, you know, they're getting business through those relationships to do relationship marketing down the line.

Michelle [00:43:53] 100%. And let's remember what a relationship funnel requires, right? High-quality leads, not a lot of them because they're going—

Amelia [00:44:00] Mmhm.

Michelle [00:44:00] To convert like crazy. So, you start counting downloads. That's a traffic metric. And yeah, if you have a relationship business, the metrics are all different.

Amelia [00:44:09] Yeah, exactly. So, Michelle, tell us what's coming up in your business? How can folks connect with you if they want to go deeper, which I truly think they will at this point?

Michelle [00:44:17] Yeah, please come on over. You can find me at themichellewarner.com. You're always welcome to drop me a note over— a direct message on Instagram or LinkedIn. You will not see me posting there very often unless it's my dog. [Amelia laughs] But I do respond to DMs there when I can and come on over, like, hang out at the roundtable. Those happen the first Wednesday of every month. You can just come, listen to me riff on this, answer people's questions.

Michelle [00:44:42] And then, this summer I do have my boot camps coming up, so I run a two-day boot camp for what's called Map Your Model, and that helps you if you're, kind of, confused about what the heck you're doing with your business. Super affordable way to work with me over a couple of days with a group and start diagnosing what's going on with your business and where you might want to shift it.

Michelle [00:44:59] And then, I also have a Build Your Relationship Funnel boot camp where over three days we actually get in, build that awareness engagement sales strategy for you, and of course, if you just want to learn how to network, come on into Networking That Pays. I would love to see you there and geek out on all things networking.

Amelia [00:45:15] Ah, I love it. Well, thank you again so much for being here and sharing your wisdom with us. Thanks, listeners for tuning in. I look forward to all of you becoming relationship marketing experts. And after you take five minutes a day for Networking That Pays, please flood my inbox with all your connection emails. I'm ready for it. Come at me [laughs heartily].

Michelle [00:45:32] I love it! Send thank you notes all day long [laughs].

Amelia [00:45:33] I'll be here [laughs].

Michelle [00:45:34] Yes.

Amelia [00:45:36] Yes. I would love dozens of emails thanking me for this podcast episode specifically and/or Michelle, but I don't know how you— if want your inbox flooded. Mine's open to you all.

Michelle [00:45:44] Mine is open too. I will take a [Amelia laughs] thank you note all day long and I will be happy to forward them to you.

Amelia [00:45:49] [Outro music begins to play] Oh, my gosh. Beautiful. Well, thanks, Michelle. Thanks, listeners. We will be back next week with more of Season Two of Off the Grid. And until then, I will see you Off the Grid.

Amelia [00:46:06] Thanks for listening to Off the Grid. Find links and resources in the show notes and don't forget to grab your free Leaving Social Media Toolkit at softersounds.studio/byeig. That's softersounds dot studio slash b-y-e-i-g.

Amelia [00:46:22] This podcast is a Softer Sounds production. Our music is by Purple Planet and our logo is by n'atelier Studio.

Amelia [00:46:29] If you'd like to make a podcast of your own, we'd love to help. Find more about our services at softersounds.studio. Until next time, we'll see you Off the Grid [music fades out].