IAM2140 – Understanding the 8 Business Pillars: 6. VISIBILITY

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Intro 00:00

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO Podcast, and this is a special I AM CEO Podcast because we're gonna be focusing on the 8 business pillars. I hope you get to enjoy taking a lot of these different pillars that came from the 1600+ episodes we did at the I AM CEO Podcast, which became the 16 themes, which eventually now became the 8 pillars that can help you level up your business.

And, really, what we're trying to do is increase the business success rate, and this is going to eventually become a course. So you hear some of these snippets actually be in that course in that library of content and information we're gonna put together to help you level up. So sit back and enjoy this special episode of the I AM CEO Podcast.

Gresham Harkless 00:38

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh here, and this is pillar number 6. Pillar number 6 is gonna be all around visibility, thinking about your marketing, your sales, your advertising, your public relations. All those aspects of business is probably gonna be one of the beefiest ones because I think when you are usually trying to level up and go to the next level, usually, sales plays a really big part of that. Marketing is, I think, more of the operations, which we talked about before, and pillar number 5 around systematizing your marketing, which leads to more sales.

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So a lot of what you really wanna do when you're thinking about visibility is understand exactly, like, how you want to be found or online, what that looks like. And when you're tapping into the human part, which is pillar number 4, it lets you have a strong offering that is unique and really impactful. And number 3, you have the strategy and you can understand that journey and what it looks like. Then they really can build up into a really strong marketing strategy, advertising strategy, and, of course, sales when you're having those, conversations as well too.

So know that visibility is such a huge part of what it is that we do. Obviously, we are and have a digital marketing company, so we're always always talking about how, we're not in the web design support, SEO services, or Google Ads services. We're really in the visibility game. We're really trying to increase the likelihood of people in organizations to be found online. So we're really thinking from that lens on how we're ultimately doing that.

Now while we don't do all the things, this has probably been one of the, for lack of a better term, beefiest parts of the podcast. Getting to hear from other marketers, getting to hear from other people that approach aspects of marketing, sales or advertising and PR, but also just their philosophy and how they look at things and even from a holistic standpoint on what that looks like. So understand that if you just are listening to this, we're drilling down to the 8 pillars. These 8 pillars came from the 1600 episodes, 1600+ episodes that we did at the I AM CEO podcast.

They became hacks and nuggets, which were in every single episode that we drove down on. Those, hacks and nuggets ultimately became the 16 themes, which originally we called pillars, but they became themes because we really want to focus on 8 pillars. Those pillars were actually 7 pillars became 8 pillars, and they became 8 pillars because pillar number 8, which I'll talk about in a little bit, a little bit I'll just touch on, was such an impact with pillar that I felt like you have to include that in some form, shape, or fashion.

So with that being said, I'll give you a little bit more of a touch on each of those different pillars if you're just listening to this. Number 1, entrepreneurship and the journey. Number 2, you're talking about strategy. Number 3, you're talking about your offering or your product or service. Number 4, you're talking about people/human part of business, in organizations. Number 5, you're talking about operations and legal. And number 6, we're going to drill down more into visibility. Number 7, we're gonna talk about the financial aspect of business. And then we're gonna go and drill down more on technology, which I believe is truly the great game changer for a lot of organizations.

So with that being said, visibility, marketing, sales, advertising, PR. I say a lot of times it's all about getting and getting your name out there. I always ask the question, and I sometimes bring it up in the podcast. If a tree falls in a forest and nobody's around, does it make a sound? That's the age old question philosophical question. Does it make a sound if no one's there? What is sound? Is sound something that happens regardless of if people are there or does it not? I say much of the same thing when we're talking about visibility. If you have a phenomenal product or service or offering, but you are not able to market it, sell it, advertising, or generate public relations for it, are you making the impact that you ultimately could? Is that product or service really great?

Because I think the product and service and offering becomes great when it starts to make that impact. If it doesn't make that impact, you could argue how great is it. So very much so something from a marketing standpoint. But know that this is all around building that strong brand presence. And as you start to see, there's a great influx of people talking about building personal brands and what that looks like. But also know that your brand is ultimately the thing that is going to be communicating to your clients and customers and potential clients and customers, sometimes even before they hear from you. Your brand is something that, a lot of people will define as being a promise that you're making.

And what are you standing on? What do you represent and what that looks like? And as we start to become, unfortunately, I think, more divided as a society, sometimes when you make these grand promises, it could potentially push people away or repel them, but it can also attract the people that you want to serve. So important to make sure that you are developing that strong brand presence. You understand who you want to be as an organization, what that looks like, and then you're able to make that impact.

But we talked a lot around, pillar number 2 around strategy. That strategy part is usually around your business plan and things like that. But a strong part of your business plan is gonna be your marketing plan, your marketing, advertising, sales plan. How are you going about that visibility piece and what does that ultimately look like? What things are you going to put into what we like to call your marketing recipe? What ingredients you're gonna choose? We I talk a lot around, building a media company, building that media company because everybody's in the media business whether they know it or not.

What are gonna be the essential ingredients that are gonna help you to get to you to where you wanna be? Are there social media platforms, or are they going to be more, I think, strategic heavy platforms or ingredients like SEO? Or you how are you developing and designing your website? Are you not going to have a website? Are you gonna have a, landing page and go strongly into social media? So all those things are really big factors, but the important part is to make sure that you have strategies around it. So to me, I think the awareness of what you're doing is going to be super helpful.

You wanna know if you're experimenting, when you're experimenting, what that looks like versus if you are going to lean into a platform or ingredient, like I like to call them, because your target market is there and you're just gonna execute on it in a different way. So all those things play a really big part, but I'm thinking Mark Cuban has a quote and we hear it's we hear it so many times around sales and and how you're selling no matter what you you're selling even sometimes when you don't realize that you're selling.

So when you're thinking about, techniques, you're thinking about relationship management and what that looks like, you wanna make sure you're not forgetting about the human part of business, pillar number 4, because that's going to play a really big part. When you're trying to sell, you're not selling just you, I think. Pitch people whatever is their product or serve. You're trying to create transformation. And when you try to create that transformation, you're tapping into that human part because you understand exactly what that transformation is and what that's going to look like, for your potential clients and customers.

So while, of course, during the episodes, we talked a lot around, sales techniques and things that you could do to improve, keep in mind that being able to provide value is sometimes one of the most impactful things and being able to communicate the way that you're gonna provide value is huge. So as you're starting to really understand how you can provide value for your ideal clients of customers, those humans that you want to serve, know that you might have to leverage sales techniques. But understand that sales is something that's over is compass encompassing all different aspects, whether you're not you're a parent and you're trying to get your kids to go to sleep or trying to eat get them eat vegetables or whatever that might be.

You're, to some degree, using that type of sales, but also know that when you're trying to, maybe, convince people on your team to champion a new initiative, you might have to do selling to do that. So understanding that, and, of course, in the quote unquote traditional way, I'd be able to get clients to customers who would know that it's skills that are very, strong, and necessary in many different aspects. Advertising. Advertising use goes hand in hand with marketing. Your re-marketing advertising is just generally, being able to put some type of, budget around that.

And usually, it's a little bit more operation process systematized the way that you're doing that. So usually, there's a a lot of more of a structure around this, and sometimes there is around marketing. However, you can argue that good marketing strategies also have that structure as well. So public relations is less about paid media. It's more about earned media. How are you getting the story of what you do out there to certain publications that want to feature you?

We really do get a ton of PR pitches and outreaches of people that are doing phenomenal things. That's a lot of how we get some people that are on our podcast and on our blogs and feature. But know that that's a huge thing. Reputation management is being able to understand exactly what your reputation is. I think that aligns very much so with your brand and being able to understand exactly how those things are entailed. So that's just a little bit into the visibility part. Obviously, there's loads and loads of information, that you can have there. One of the things that I usually say is that you there's so many different aspects of, business, and that's why we really want you to drill down into the 8 pillars because if you could take some time and spend on one of the aspects, it might be more impactful than others.

And I would argue that the visibility marketing sales ends up being a big part of that because you can have all the things in place. But if you don't have the sales, then you're going to struggle. But keep in mind that after a certain point, if you are, quote, unquote, leaking oil, if your operations isn't in place, you don't have the right people, your technology is a top notch, all those things start to become more interconnected independent as you start to grow. So it's important to understand, like, when is that right place? But I would argue that you never want to stop focusing on sales in some form, shape, or fashion. You might not tweak it. It might not be a huge initiative. But I think it's something that you always wanted to look at because you could take that additional revenue that you're bringing in and you can invest it into hiring another person.

You can invest it into more patience and relate it to the entrepreneurship journey and what that looks like. You can be able to have that money be invested into some technologies, some things that you're testing out, or you can develop a better system or a purchase or have a custom system that's made. So all these things can happen, but you just wanna make sure that you're aware of how impactful I think visibility is and what that does when people know about who you are, what you do, how you do it, why you do it, and all those aspects. So that's the visibility part, pillar number 6. And we're gonna, of course, drill down more and more and more in our community and what that looks like. You can check out our library, loads of information there to try to level up from that aspect and see, like, how impactful that's going to be and the things that you're ultimately doing.

Outro 11:33

Hello. Hello. This is Gresh again, and I hope you enjoyed that special episode of the I AM CEO Podcast. Just like I mentioned in the beginning, we're really trying to laser focus on these 8 pillars and show you as a builder how you can leverage these 8 pillars and really level up there so it helps to level up your business and organization.

So hope you enjoyed this episode, and definitely please check out the show notes so you can learn more about the color, learn more about the person that I guested on their episode, and, of course, learn more a little bit more about us as well too. This is Gresh signing out. Hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

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