IAM2114 – Speaker and Client Generation Expert Helps Entrepreneurs Grow Their Businesses

In this episode, we have Mary Cravets, a client generation expert and international speaker.

Mary shares her entrepreneurial journey, emphasizing the importance of creating a seamless and efficient client generation system to grow a business without overworking.

She discusses the common mistakes entrepreneurs make by adopting a piecemeal approach to client generation and highlights the significance of a holistic system where every component works together.

Mary offers insights into how she helps her clients, including tailoring strategies to their unique strengths and preferences rather than following one-size-fits-all methods.

She also talks about her personal experience with adrenal exhaustion, which led her to discover the simplest, most effective ways to generate clients.

The episode covers Mary's approach to team building, the value of focusing on one's strengths, and her strategy for setting ambitious goals to drive business growth.

Website: https://simplygetclients.com
Resources: Moreclientslessmarketing.com

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Transcription:

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Mary Cravets Teaser 00:00

The problem is people tend to do it like piecemeal oh I'm going to learn how to speak to sell and I'm going to get an online marketing funnel and I'm going to do a little blogging. It's all it's all messy. And the only way for a system to work is each piece fits into the next. And they all work together.

Intro 00:17

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 Harkness 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 00:44

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 Mary Cravets of Simply Get Clients. Mary, it is awesome to have you on the show.

Mary Cravets 00:55

Thanks for having me, Gresh.

Gresham Harkless 00:56

No problem. No problem. And what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Mary so you can hear about all the awesome things that she's doing.

And Mary Cravets is a client generation expert, an international speaker who helps entrepreneurs significantly grow their businesses without working nights and weekends. Using her methods, the majority of her clients quickly increase their income 50 to 100%. Clients include the former CFO of Microsoft North America, thought leaders in the coaching industry, and rising stars in a variety of other professions, including doctors, lawyers, consultants, graphic designers, and CPAs.

Mary is also an avid rollercoaster enthusiast and a kayaking volunteer for a wildlife protection program in Morrow Bay. Mary, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

Mary Cravets 01:41

I am so ready.

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Gresham Harkless 01:42

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. The first question I had is if you can build a little bit more upon your CEO story or in your bio and tell us a little bit more about your CEO story and what led you to start your business.

Mary Cravets 01:51

Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure. It was not that, smooth sailing. Everything was perfect type of story. I definitely grew my CEO legs by Discovering entrepreneurship, then going, oh, I don't want to do this. I want to do that. Along the way, I finally landed on what I'm doing now.

It just seems that I'm my brain works this way to organize things and to understand how to speak to people to, draw them in to become clients. And, but it didn't start like that. It started where I was just running, making the mistake that a lot of people do as I was CEO, I was the dishwasher, I was like everything in my business.

And so I was running in every different direction and I got quite sick. Actually, I was diagnosed with adrenal exhaustion and it made me do something that probably a lot of people take some longer to do, which is really hone in on the easiest, fastest, simplest, cheapest way to grow their business. And I did it at a crisis.

I had about 4 hours of energy a week, so I didn't really have a choice. Either lost my business for a figured it out. And so from there, that's where from that experience from the crisis, that's where everything else grew from.

This is where the client generation system comes from. And from the very early days in my business, through the burnout and after the burnout and up to now, my model has been to hire virtual teams.

So I'm still the only employee of my company, but the way that I can stay in my. Brilliant. My genius and really be the CEO is I've got a virtual social media team. I've got a virtual, I've got my admin team. I've got my PR team. I got these teams. They all work very independently. So we all maintain a high degree of independence and freedom, but we all get to work in what we're brilliant at.

I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper and hear a little bit more on like how you help your clients. So I imagine that because you have gone through, that period, you probably have really good insight into what a lot of the clients that you're working with have gone through and how to help them out.

Yes, I know that when I actually have in my story, I had an advantage, which was I didn't have a choice. I had to make money. And so I had the perspective of I was crystal clear that the answer to surviving in the business was to get clients. And what I find is a lot of my clients, they don't have that advantage.

They and so they're not as quickly able to focus in on the fact that what they need to do is generate clients. It doesn't matter if you're in the phase of you just open the doors to your business, or you're looking to scale your business, the 1 system that absolutely has to be streamlined. And consistent and predictable is your client generation system.

And the problem is people tend to do it like piecemeal oh I'm going to learn how to speak to sell and I'm going to get an online marketing funnel and I'm going to do a little blogging. It's all it's all messy. And the only way for a system to work is each piece fits into the next. And they all work together.

So if you work in one area, all the other ones are benefiting. So it's like you're getting compounding results. And the good news is, is that it's not like a one size fits all. I don't like to say, Oh, you have to do speaking or you have to do referrals or you have to do anything. It's really. Providing the structure to bring your brilliance, your understanding of your ideal client, how you like to work your strengths and creating a system that is unique to you and still consistent.

So it's not about cookie cutter. You just have the people driving crazy or the online marketers are like, everybody's doing this and this works for everybody. I don't know. It doesn't. You're literally lying.

Gresham Harkless 05:30

All right. Yeah,

Mary Cravets 05:33

It's a matter of simplifying it, giving people a simple structure instead of driving people in 20 different directions, simplifying it down to the essential what I think of in six essential elements of client generation and then bringing your brilliance, applying it to the system and then implementing.

Gresham Harkless 05:48

Okay. Perfect. Perfect. I've been listening very well. So, I truly appreciate that. And now I wanted to ask you for what I call your secret sauce. And this is something that you feel like distinguishes you. Some people even call it their superpower, but it's something that you feel about you or your business that makes you unique and sets you apart from that.

Mary Cravets 06:05

I think I've already alluded to it. And that is that there's not a cookie cutter system. Really being able to support people to find their way. I actually, a client hired me recently. She heard me speak a couple of years ago for a group and the thing that stayed with her for those two years while she was getting positioned to be ready to hire me, she said, you gave me permission to Not do things that felt wrong.

I didn't feel like I like all these experts and gurus out there saying, you've got to do this and you've got to do this and Mary, you allowed me to trust my gut and still have to apply a system, but bring forward the things that I am most, I have the most talent and I have the most interest in. The things I frankly enjoy doing, and I don't hear a lot of that, but that's really, if you want to look at what successful people do, that's what it is.

They play to their strengths. They focus on the areas of least resistance and most opportunity. So there's 2 pieces. 1 is that, it's not a cookie cutter and give a structure, but not a tactical system that you'd have to plug in and try to fit into square peg into a round hole. Maybe, but the other piece is.

Like when I work with my clients and they're throwing 17 different things at me, I can very clearly say, see the three things that are going to move you forward the fastest and say, okay, let's take away those other 14. We're going to put them on a shelf. They're lovely and I'm sure they're precious, but they're not going to get done and nothing's going to get done.

And I can see the top three things that are going to getting into their goal fastest. And when I see a lot of coaches, and I'm not technically a coach, but what I see a lot of coaches do is they teach people how to move forward from the inside out. Like you do all this personal work, you dig into your childhood relationship with money, and then you start to see different results.

I have an outside in approach and that is we take your top most effective, exciting, fun ways of growing your business. And then we break it down into the actions that are so simple, so suited to who you are So accurately speaking to drawing into your ideal plan, they're so simple and clear that you can't help but move forward.

And then you'll start to see outward results that are different. And then you start inwardly to believe them because you see your outside world changing.

Gresham Harkless 08:22

Exactly. Exactly. And now I wanted to switch gears a little bit and ask you for what I call a CEO hack. And this might be an app or a book or a habit that you have, or it might be something you already alluded to, but something that makes you more effective and efficient as a business owner.

Mary Cravets 08:35

The first thing, of course, is my team, just making sure to rely on my team. For me, the thing is, is always looking at. What's that next level? I no one else is going to do that. So this isn't so much of a hack, but it's more like the mindset. What is the thing that to move myself forward? I always have to be the person seeing the bigger vision.

Okay. So this is a little thing, but I keep my goal in front of me all the time. It's right. I'm like, literally right now, but it's not this year's goal. It's like the next big goal. So nothing else, the increments don't really exist for me. I know what they are. I know what my income increments are, but only having that number in mind because, and I read all kinds of personal development books and one of the things it says is you can't focus a lot on the how, and this was something I was very resistant to, by the way, because I'm very like, here are the stats you have to know, but the thing is to get to things you haven't done before.

You have to do things you don't even know to do yet. So by putting the goal, I honestly, I have no idea how I'm going to get there. I know how I get to the next increment, but to get to the big goal, I don't know how, and I have to be focusing on the goal that I don't know how to get to yet. So that my brain is working for me to pull me into those things.

Solutions that I don't know yet. Otherwise, I will never find them.

Gresham Harkless 09:53

I love that CEO hacking and it's something that you forget that when you have these really high goals, you're trying to figure out like, how the heck am I going to make that happen? But in reality, you start to become the person that you need to be and start to take the actions that you need to take in order to be that.

So it may not be top of mind of exactly how you can do it. But once you start to be and set it out and put in, you're in alignment with it, then you start to manifest and become that person that you need to be to do that. So I love it.

Mary Cravets 10:20

And I will tell you, and you probably know this is that it's not a linear process.

I had a spectacular fail. It's just, it was like spend 10, 000 and get nothing. Fail. But I don't have any doubt that it was exactly what I needed. I needed to know that that was the wrong path. And I kept thinking it was the right path for five years. I thought it was the right path. And finally, I was able to invest in it and it was the wrong path, but I would not have believed it.

I would not have taken my energy fully back from it. I would not have sought out what's the better path. Had I not had that universal two by four, that 10, 000 two by four across the back of the head. To get me back on track.

Gresham Harkless 10:58

Yeah, it's unfortunately sometimes how life goes where you have to, you have to get the lesson first and within you pick up the lesson that you get, you have to experience the feeling first, then you get the lesson.

So sometimes you have to have that. It's like you have to understand in order to understand good, you have to experience bad. So you have to go through those difficult times in order to know exactly where you want to go. So I think that's a great CEO hack and I appreciate you for sharing that with us.

And now I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. And this might be something that you've already mentioned or that you tell the clients that you work with, but it's something that might be a word of wisdom or piece of advice you might have for entrepreneurs and business owners.

Mary Cravets 11:34

This might sound very counterintuitive, but you can't negotiate with time.

You just can't negotiate with time. The biggest mistake I see business owners make is they think that someday they will have a superpower to transcend time. And so they, their to do lists are overloaded. Most of my clients, my higher level clients who I work one on one with, the first thing I do is I do an evaluation and assessment, of course, but I look at what they have.

On their plate, what they want to do. And majority of the time, I say, the first thing we do is we have to reduce your workload because it's not possible. You can't set yourself up for failure on a daily basis and expect to win long term. It doesn't, it just doesn't work that way. So whether it's better planning, whether it's more delegation, whether it's overwhelmed becomes a habit.

And if you are constantly overwhelmed, if you get out of it, you will snap back to it. I watch it over and over and over again. So keeping your, it's such a simple thing. Keep your to do lists realistic.

Gresham Harkless 12:40

That's huge. And I think especially for most entrepreneurs and business owners, definitely high achieving people that want to conquer the world and take over the world.

And sometimes those to do lists. do get rather lengthy. So making sure that you make it sure it's manageable. So again, like we talked about before, you have those wins that you can continue to build that moment. Yes.

Mary Cravets 12:57

You've got to feel a sense of accomplishment. You can't carry over list day after day, after day, after day and feel like you're moving forward because those feelings, you have to align with the feeling of success.

And I'm, by the way, I'm reminding myself of all of these things as I'm sitting here. So when, if you, for people who take their eye off the ball and everything, it's a constant reset. It's a constant coming back to it and coming back to it and coming back to it.

Gresham Harkless 13:21

Yeah. Just like any muscle or any exercise, you have to keep doing it and doing it, and then it starts to become a habit.

So yeah. Definitely. I love that. So, Mary, I truly appreciate your time. And now I want to ask you for 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 this podcast. And I know you have a team that you're managing as well.

So I want to ask you, what does being a CEO mean to you.

Mary Cravets 13:44

Being CEO means that I'm going to take October 24th off to go ride roller coasters. It means that freedom to not have to be the person that's always, always working. The wheels don't fall off because I don't show up. It's freedom.

Gresham Harkless 13:59

I love it. And you lose perspective of that when you, when you start to build the business and you start to work in the business that you're doing so much that you can't get away, but you need to make sure that your cup is filled.

So we all have our thing, whatever we need to do to, to fill up our cups so that we can be even more present, so that we can look for the vision, look and see like, How we want the business to go. I truly appreciate your time again. And what I want 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 how best people can get ahold of you.

Mary Cravets 14:25

Yeah, absolutely. I have two resources for you that are really fantastic. One is my website. I have, so it needs a little facelift, but there's a ton of, there's a ton of resources there. There's my blog. There's, there's free and almost free page. It's got a lot of other things. It's got tools, curated tools.

So you can go there if you want to, if you'd like to dig. If you like the straight shot little education on how to simplify your client generation, best place to go is more clients, less marketing. com more clients, less marketing. com that has a short video or kind of introduced what you're going to get.

So you see, if you want it, if you want it, you just get over to the other page and there's. A webinar about how to simplify and systemize your system ties, your client generation, just making it really simple. Some education, a lot of value. It's not just fluffy. It's not theory. This stuff works for my clients and for me.

So you can get a good knowledge of what it is that we do. So more clients, less marketing, that's the real streamlined approach. You can go to simply get clients. com. If you want to look at the expanded view of what we do.

Gresham Harkless 15:24

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. And we'll make sure to have those links in the show notes, but Mary, I truly appreciate you for everything that you're doing.

This was an awesome chat that we had, and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Mary Cravets 15:33

Thanks, Gresh. I appreciate it. You too.

Outro 15:35

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO podcast powered by CB Nation and 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.

Don't forget to schedule your complimentary digital marketing consultation at blue16media.com. This has been the I AM CEO podcast with Gresham Harkless Jr. Thank you for listening.

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