IAM171- Entrepreneur Helps Companies Evolve Their Message for Bigger Impact

No matter your industry…no matter your size…your buyers have changed. 

They’ve gotten a taste of empowerment, and now? They’re never going back. 

That means all that messaging…all that content that worked even just a few years ago? None of it resonates.

That’s where Zach Messler comes in. Zach Messler helps you know what to say and how to say it so you make a bigger impact on the world…and your wallet.

• CEO Hack: CPR- Create, Publish and Repeat
• CEO Nugget: Simple wins; Answer three question, what is it? what does it do? Why does it matter to my audience?
• CEO Defined: Keep the car in tip-top shape so you can do what you want

Website: https://zachmessler.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachmessler/

Twitter: @zmessler

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zmessler

Full Interview

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Transcription

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Intro 0:02

Do you want to learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales and grow your business from successful entrepreneurs, startups, and CEOs without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresham Harkless values your time and is ready to share with you precisely the information you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 0:26

Hello, hello, hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Zach Messler of zachmessler.com. Zach, it's awesome to have you on the show.

Zach Messler 0:35

Yeah, it's great to be here. Thanks so much, Gresh.

Gresham Harkless 0:37

No problem. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Zach so you can hear about all the awesome things that he's doing. And no matter how, no matter your industry, no matter your size, your buyer has changed. They've gotten a taste of empowerment, and now they're never going back. That means all the messaging all that content that worked even just a few years ago, none of it resonates.

That's where Zach Messler comes in. Zach Messler helps you know what to say. And how to say it. So you make a bigger impact on the world? And of course, your wallet. So, Zach, it's awesome to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Zach Messler 1:10

Let's go. Let's do it.

Gresham Harkless 1:12

Let's do it. So the first question I had was to hear a little bit more about your CEO story, what led you to start your business?

Zach Messler 1:18

Sure. So I spent 20 years in product marketing for tech. And what that largely means is translating, it's translating deeply technical things to a non-technical audience, and also to a non-technical sales team that has to sell to that non-technical audience. And so I learned a lot about what works, and how to communicate in a way that's clear, compelling, and convincing. And the last place, I worked in an organization where they weren't really ready for a lot of the things that I was doing, you know, marketing messaging has changed. You just said it reading the bio, the way people buy is changed dramatically.

And how people consume information has changed. Because of this thing, the phone, your iPhone, it's changed. And if you don't adapt if you're using these old school ways, even from B School from business school teacher benefit or focus on the benefit even you're missing a nuisance there. So what happened was, I recognized pretty quickly. Yeah, this isn't right. And I started doing things the way I knew was right. And it was resonating with the sales team. And things started to really happen. I was capped at helping about 200 sales pros. That was it. And I wanted to help more people.

So I jumped. So now I help entrepreneurs, and I help mostly B2B tech companies. That's where the community I came out of, but really any entrepreneurial organization, because the stuff that I work on the stuff that I teach, the stuff that I do is foundational when it comes to communications, when it comes to engaging and communicating with a buying audience.

Gresham Harkless 2:54

Now, I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper. I know you touched on it. Can you tell us a little bit more about like what you do with your clients? How do you help them, kind of get that message in?

Zach Messler 3:01

Yeah, sure. So you said it, right? So I help entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial organizations know what to say and how to say it. So they make a bigger impact on the world in their wallets. So I do that in a few different ways. Starting with larger organizations, I do workshops. So it's messaging workshops, it's really Product Marketing workshops, it's laying this foundation for great communications so that everything else that grows from it then is easier, it resonates more it drives more leads, it drives more buys. It's understanding the audience.

So I have a whole process of how to do that. It's essentially when I used to go I B2B Tech, I cut my teeth in the startup, and I used to start out product marketing organizations when I would come in these workshops. This is exactly what I lay down in place before we started doing all these fancy programs. It's laying that foundation.

So that's the workshops then for those clients, and also for solopreneurs. For entrepreneurs, and small businesses, I have an advisory service called the sounding board, people have ideas, they have great ideas, and sometimes they don't know how to execute them, or they just go and do it. And that's great to go and take action.

But what if you had 20 years of product marketing experience and messaging experience right on your phone? And you could ask a question and get any question and get an answer and get that have that confidence, get an answer within 24 hours. That's what the sounding board is you ask a question about messaging about product marketing, marketing strategy, whatever, organizing your product suite, whatever, and you get an answer within 24 hours.

And then on top of that, we deep dive for a set number of hours a month on anything you want. So you have a marketing plan that you're putting forth. You want someone with marketing experience to really vet it with you. We could do that. It can be as strategic as that. It can be as tactical as Hey, I just wrote a blog post or I just wrote something for Facebook or LinkedIn, I'd really like to take a look at it with you.

And we deep dive and I'll ask you questions about your audience, I'll ask you questions about your product, about your goals about all these different things. And then on that call, we will together collaborate and make it better. So that's the sounding board. And then the last thing that I do, although I'm very selective with who I work with, is I do content creation. And that's really on a case-by-case basis.

Gresham Harkless 5:25

Awesome, awesome. awesome. Yeah, I love all those pieces, especially the sounding board, especially because a lot of times most entrepreneurial people are creative people, they come up with new ideas or new ways to tackle certain problems. So to be able to have that opportunity to talk with somebody outside of sometimes yourself or your team to be able to get an idea of like, where there might be gaps, opportunities, how you're communicating that things like that are definitely something that's tremendous, I imagine. Now, I want to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is what do you feel kind of distinguishes you or your organization? So do you have an example you could share with her?

Zach Messler 5:58

So it's kind of I think everybody has their own secret sauce for sure. For me, it's I love that. First of all, I have 20 years of product marketing experience, and I've been living this for two decades. I love this stuff. I love it. Second of all, I just, I just get excited, man. And it's almost like a superpower, I can't control it. If I'm excited about something, you're excited about something. And that helps my clients too. Because it's motivational. It's inspirational. I really, truly love this stuff.

And the thing that I get the most joy from, it's nice to make dollars. That's not why I'm in this. I'm in this because I love product marketing, and I love helping people realize this stuff. Usually, it's pretty simple stuff. It's not crazy complex. It's not easy. But it's truly simple.

Gresham Harkless 6:50

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think that shows, talking with you, but also in I imagine it manifests itself in your clients, once you're excited about something, they become excited about something then it manifests itself in their product and how they're pitching their product, how they're talking about their product. So that's a pretty great example of a secret.

Zach Messler 7:06

Yeah, generating action is what it does. And I mean, action is the solution for everything.

Gresham Harkless 7:13

Yep, There you go in the true entrepreneurial form. So now I want to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an Apple book or a habit that you have, but it's something you feel makes you more effective and efficient.

Zach Messler 7:26

100%. So I hinted. So we talked a little before we hit record, and I hinted at this, and you do this now Gresh, and you've been doing this forever and ever, I think. But when I started out, I was focused mostly on content creation for clients, and I was doing passive referrals. I was relying on that because I didn't want to do lead gen, I didn't really want to do that stuff.

And I was relying on it. I know a lot of people kind of like that. What I found was that my business was starting to tank, because you get to a point where especially if it's not an active referral if you're just Oh, I do great work, and you so and so's gonna refer me and you will sit there and wait, eventually it dries up.

So I came up with the structure to it's not even really a structure, it's three letters to resuscitate my business, and you don't have to be in dire straits. This is now something that I do all the time. It's CPR, create, publish, repeat. and you have a purpose for what you create. But if you're true to your brand, and you're true to your company, create something helpful. Something useful for your target audience, then publish it and put it out there, it doesn't have to be perfect. Put it out there. And then repeat. Just keep doing it create, publish, repeat, you do that upfront. It's slow. It takes time you want to give up you don't give up, create, publish, repeat, you keep doing it.

And what happens over time, amazing things happen. You, sir, are the perfect example of CPR. I mean, seriously, this entire thing that you built, it's unbelievable. And it is totally because of CPR. You created you publish, you repeat, and you stuck with it and you still stick with it to this day. That is the greatest hack that I know.

Gresham Harkless 9:20

Yeah. And I love that acronym. I wish I would have thought of an acronym like that. That's amazing. And I love how a systematize everything because as you said at the end of the day, sometimes you just have to have action. Action cures all so a lot of times when you might be looking for more business or you might be looking for more publicity, whatever it is, you start to create stuff, and you continue to do that.

And then next thing you know, somebody might find something that you wrote three years ago, but because you've been doing that and been doing it consistently it starts to build up over time.

Zach Messler 9:48

100%

Gresham Harkless 9:49

Awesome, awesome. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget and this is a word of wisdom or piece of advice. Or if you can happen to a time machine. What would you tell your younger business self?

Zach Messler 9:59

Sure. So, we hit on this a little earlier in this conversation, simple wins, you get too close to your product, you get close to your idea, even the tactics and the things that you want to do to grow your business, you're too close to them. And what happens is you get in the mire of complexity. And you're not going to be understood. If you're down there, you dive into the detail, you get too excited about what your offer is, you're talking too fast, you're getting into the weeds, nobody's going to get you, simple wins.

And, for me, the best way to get to that simplicity, for a conversation r for content, it's and this isn't what you publish, but this is an exercise you can do to get to the right level, it's answering three questions, right about your offering, or about your idea about whatever it is you want to communicate. What is it? What does it do? And why does it matter to my audience? So what is it is quite literally, what is it? So if I'm thinking about like, I've used a car as an example, right? This is getting really simple.

So if I say to you, what's a car? What is it? It's a hunk of metal with wheels and an engine? I mean, that's the level it has to its crazy high level, what's it do? It gets you from point A to point B faster? That's what it does. There are lots of nuances, lots of ways you can dive in. But that's what it does. Why does it matter? Well, it depends on who you're talking to, if you're talking to the CEO, I am CEO, podcast listeners, why does a car matter? Well, sometimes in the middle of your day, you realize you got to run to the store to get something and walking is going to take you way too long.

And you don't have the time because you have all these other things you have to do with your business. But you're out of milk, your kid needs milk, you got to go get it.

So you jump in your car, you get to the store so much quicker, you get your business, you get home so much quicker. You just saved all this time, why is it matter if you can take those three things? Answer those three questions, what is it? What does it do?

And why does it matter to my audience, you're going to be in a way better position to communicate it without getting into the weeds. You let your audience say, oh, that sounds amazing. How do you do that? Or Wow, that's incredible. That reminds me of blah, blah, and then you start the conversation, then you can get excited and dive into the weeds because they want to know, but before they want to know, you got to be clear. That's how you do it. Simple wins.

Gresham Harkless 12:37

Yeah, I love that again. And I love the simple questions, because it really drills down on the most important thing to kind of get that conversation started sometimes or get somebody to go to your website, or whatever it is for them to take action. Because I've been in like sales positions as well. And one of the things that you do is you go through this training, and you pretty much get all this information on certain products and services, how to sell so on and so forth.

And the first thing you do is the first client you talk to, once you get out of sales training as you do the information throw up where you literally tell them everything you've learned in training. But in reality, they don't want to know all that you answer those three simple questions that you touched on. And then if after their interest is piqued, then you can start diving in and showing them a little bit more product and service.

So I love that simplicity. Yes. And now I wanted to ask you my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote unquote, CEOs on the show. So Zach wanted to ask you what being a CEO means to you.

Zach Messler 13:32

It's funny, like, I know, I'm a CEO, I don't think of myself as a CEO in the traditional sense. But to me, it's about I guess you can tell because of the examples I'm using, I love to drive, I love my car, I could wax poetic about my car, on and on. Being a CEO is keeping the car tuned that's what it's about. It's dry, and I drive the car, cars, my business, right, I drive the car, and I love it. It's fun, I take it wherever I want to go, I'm in control of it, and that's great. But if I don't keep that car tuned, I'm not going as fast as I can go. I'm not going as far as I can go. And it's not as much fun.

And so sometimes it's expensive to keep that car tuned. Sometimes it's a pain in the butt to keep that car tuned. But you got to keep that car tuned. And so for a CEO to be a CEO, that's what it means to me is making sure that I keep that car in tip-top shape, so we can do exactly what I want it to do.

Gresham Harkless 14:31

Well, I truly appreciate you for taking some time out of your schedule. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak, to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and our listeners know and then of course, how best they can get ahold of you and get their car tuned.

Zach Messler 14:42

Sure. So the only other thing I'd like to add, I love this stuff. If you're having challenges with messaging with marketing, you're not sure how to get the word out. You're not sure how to get the right words out. Maybe you have a bunch of products and you're not sure how to organize them. Send me an email at zach@zachmessler.com, shoot, hop on my website I would like to offer to CEO Blog Nation, I regret this. But I'd like to offer a free call to go through a quick problem, I can tell you more about the sounding board.

And if you're interested, we can move forward. But a call to really dive in on one thing that you'd like help with and no obligation. I'd like to offer that. So email me at zach@zachmessler.com and mention the I AM CEO podcast and we'll make that happen. And that's about it. I mean, you can reach me at zachmessler.com. And I'm also on LinkedIn. I'm prolific, dare I say it on LinkedIn, my CPR is largely on LinkedIn. So you can follow me there. And the only other thing I'd like to say is Gresh. I said this to you before. Thanks so much for having me on this. I really appreciate it. I'm happy to be a part of it.

Gresham Harkless 15:58

Yeah, well, definitely happy to have you on Zach. And I appreciate all the awesome things that you're doing to simplify everything. Yeah, definitely. We'll have your links in the show notes as well. And, you have a lot of great and awesome posts as well on LinkedIn. So definitely be sure to check you out there but we'll have all the links in the show notes. But Zach, I truly appreciate you and your time and your expertise and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Zach Messler 15:58

Thanks, Gresh, you too.

Outro 15:58

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co

I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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