IAM559- Founder Helps Consultants Leverage Content

Ruthie is a US Army Veteran, wife, and mother to four. She is the founder and Chief Content Strategist of Defy The Status Quo, a B2B content marketing firm for consultants. Starting out as a freelance writer working for pennies, Ruthie now works with top-tier clients creating website content, case studies, videos, and more.

• CEO Hack: Book – Profit First
• CEO Nugget: My understanding of my audience may evolve
• CEO Defined: Freedom coupled with responsibility

Website: https://defythestatusquo.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ruthie-bowles

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Intro 0:31

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 0:59

Hello, this is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast and I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Ruthie Bowles of Defy The Status Quo. Ruthie, it's awesome having you on the show.

Ruthie Bowles 1:09

Thanks for having me. I'm happy to be here.

Gresham Harkless 1:11

No problem. Super excited to have you on and what I want to do is just read a little bit more about Ruthie so you can hear about all the awesome things that she is doing. Ruthie Bowles is a US Army Veteran, wife, and mother to four. She is the founder and Chief Content Strategist of Defy The Status Quo, a B2B content marketing firm for consultants. Starting out as a freelance writer working for pennies, Ruthie now works with top-tier clients creating website content, case studies, videos, and more. Ruthie, are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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Ruthie Bowles 1:39

I am.

Gresham Harkless 1:40

Awesome. Let's do it. So to kick everything off, I want to hear a little bit more about what I call your CEO story, what led you to get started with your business?

Ruthie Bowles 1:47

All right. So for me, like you mentioned, it just started out with freelance writing. I served in the army for eight and a half years, and I moved pretty much right into a position where I was doing the same thing, but as a federal contractor. It turned out that everything I loved about my job was all army stuff. Interestingly enough, I just was very unhappy in that job. I just started looking forward to those few hours I spent with clients, every week, and so I realized, maybe I could actually earn a living with my freelance writing versus just trying to get a few $100, a month to pay for the chickens, I wanted, that we live on a couple of acres in Maryland. So I realized to change things up and do things better and that led to a lot of business research and just understanding everything about my market.

I had my fourth child, quit my job after that, and used my maternity leave to grow my client base and do things like raising my rates, and all of that important business stuff. Here I am now moved from just freelance writing, as if that wasn't big enough to know, moving into more of a team setup, small agency type setup, where we do all of the written content, but strategy and things like that. I feel like it just set a fire in me in terms of my entrepreneurial side. Just this last year, I narrated an audiobook, somebody else's audiobook, and next year, I'll have a well, I guess, this year, I'll have a book published, and they're just looking at all these different ways I can express myself and grow and it's just, I feel like there's no stopping it now.

Gresham Harkless 3:41

Yeah, absolutely. Well, first of all, thank you for your service. I think that it's like the golden age for content and seems so for a lot of freelance writers. I've done freelance writing as well, too, for pennies. If not less than pennies, if there can be anything less sometimes it felt like. But it kind of was a great turning point where a lot of organizations and businesses are understanding the value of content and how important it is to have that as part of their strategy. So add that into everything that you're doing. Awesome and now I wanted to drill down a little bit deeper, can you take us through exactly how you work with clients and some of the services you provide?

Ruthie Bowles 4:17

Absolutely. So it typically starts out with either it's a referral, or perhaps somebody, I find someone on LinkedIn or they find me on LinkedIn. I also do a lot of in-person networking. Typically a prospect at least will approach me from one of those avenues. My first step is usually checking out their website if we've had a conversation and they show that they're interested in content marketing. I don't spend a lot of time trying to convince people of my value I'm okay if you're not sure what content marketing is, but I'm also but I'm not really okay with having this conversation where I have to convince you that I'm worth whatever it Is that I'm asking you to pay me.

I typically work with consulting firms or service providers, just because I found that I enjoy helping them translate their intangible results, and their value when compared to a product-based business, translating that and helping other business owners understand what they offer and their value through their content. So we'll also talk about, okay, who can be involved in the content creation? Am I allowed to, okay, he, I probably already have direct contact with the CEO, but can I talk with some of your team leads or some of your lead consultants, that way we can use them and sources and quotes for articles and videos and things like that. So identifying those key stakeholders developing the strategy, okay, what are you comfortable with? Are you comfortable being on video, some people aren't comfortable, and that's totally fine.

So the worst thing, I think it's forcing a content strategy or content tactic onto a client, and then having them be uncomfortable, and then having the content not look great. So if they're not comfortable speaking, you're not comfortable on video, that's fine. There are other things that we can do. But it's determining all of those things, and tying everything back to key, business goals, if you're a newer consulting firm or service business, maybe you're a web design agency or something, and you're a newer business, well, then brand awareness is going to be pretty key for you differentiation is going to be pretty key for you. If you're a business that's been in place for 10 years, or 15 years, well, then you probably already have some of that, and we've got somewhere to go from there, but the strategies are going to look a bit different.

It's that understanding the business goals, what's already there, what we need to create, and we go through everything there at the beginning. It's a lot of work on my part, but also on the side of the client. So that's why I have to be sure that the person I'm working with is very invested. versus somebody approaching you and being like, Oh, I just want some stuff on my blog, and you're like, Okay, well, so stuff, like your blog is not going to yield you the results that you're probably seeking. For the fees that we charge, I have to be sure that everybody's on the same page. We're going to take it from strategy and ideation all the way through to distribution and assessment and understanding the analytics and the results behind the entire strategy and the quarter, the week, and then how everything all plays out.

We work really hard to make sure that it's not, it's not just an ebook, or just the white paper. It's a strategy, it's something with a plan, even if we're commissioned just to do the ebook, we're gonna make sure that there's a strategy in place for distribution of the ebook, okay, where are you gonna host it? How's it going to be set up? Do you have the form set up? That's just because they may be happy with the ebook. But if there's no further plan after that, then all they remember is that, oh, I spent that money and it wasn't really worth anything. It didn't help, years from now and that's definitely not what I'm trying to have in my week, if you will,

Gresham Harkless 8:03

Yeah, that makes so much sense I definitely appreciate that holistic approach, as you said. l find that a lot of times to really be successful at most things you really want to do the work in the beginning. That work consists of, you know, making sure it's the right fit, making sure you understand what your goals and aspirations are, what you're trying to accomplish. Then I think the tools themselves fit into to place based on that.

Ruthie Bowles 8:28

Yeah, for sure.

Gresham Harkless 8:29

Absolutely. Now, we're going to ask you for what I call your secret sauce, and it could be for you personally, or your business, what do you feel kind of sets you apart and makes you unique?

Ruthie Bowles 8:41

So I really like to learn a lot. Like that's, that's my thing. I've always really loved to learn almost everything. Except math. I don't like math, like calculus, that was tough. But I really only focus on very forward-thinking and innovative type content, topics, or channels, whatever it is. I think that's really important, because in the business name, Defy The Status Quo, what we're defying is the status quo of content, which is mediocrity. There is a tonne of content out there and people say, oh, there's too much content out there, there's a content flood. But when you look at high-quality content, that is not in excess, particularly in the b2b business service type space. You could go to five different consulting firms' blogs, open up five blogs on relatively the same topic, and they will read very much the same.

There's this impression that b2b has to be boring. That's another thing that I'm pretty intent on defying in my work. so we don't create content that just checks the box. Right. I'm incredibly knowledgeable on SEO and the the coming SEO developments and things that have happened before and what happens now and people forget that the search engines are Just trying to serve the best possible content to their users. That's it. So you follow the guidelines, because that's all they are guidelines, you follow the guidelines to show the search engines that you are the best. But we leverage those tools, SEO tools, competitive research, to develop content, that's the best that there is and it's not always the longest that there is either, because you can have 4000 words, blog posts, that it's just full of nonsense. That's just not what we do here.

So it's not about life, but I've had one client, receive a piece of content that we've created and be like, Wow, I mean, your other stuff is good, but this is like, the best that I've ever read on the internet for this topic and that's what I'm always going for and sometimes that means a few iterations figuring things out, but I'm going for this is the best I've ever read. That might mean citing marketing research studies, or supply chain research studies, and things like that, I like to dig into places where people are uncomfortable reading, maybe because it's a little technical or something, but I can take advantage of that, and translate it.

That's actually what I used to do in the army I used to translate. I could take technical speak and translate it really well into content that serves marketing goals. I think that that is the differentiating factor there. We create content that instills confidence versus just checking the box.

Gresham Harkless 11:21

Awesome. So I wanted to switch gears a little bit and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app or book or a habit that you have. But what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

Ruthie Bowles 11:31

I would say that this year, or at least 2019, something that really changed my business. I read the book Profit First. Have you heard of it?

Gresham Harkless 11:40

I have not.

Ruthie Bowles 11:41

Okay, it's amazing. You definitely should go, and grab your own copy. I feel like everybody I've talked to it's it's been my top book recommendation of the year. It's because it helps me go from okay, I'm making more money each month and more revenue revenues increasing. Why does it sound like I still don't have anybody? So I went from that to be like, Okay, so I've allocated this much for Texans and now okay, this is my operational expenses. Here is my owner compensation, like, it looks like it helps my bank account better communicate to me exactly how much money I have, and what I'm allowed to spend. I'm not an accountant by trade.

The idea of having just a gazillion spreadsheets with all these different formulas and everything, I'm just I'm like, no, because I'm gonna break it. Profit First provided a simple way for me to have my business still work for me in a financial way, versus it turning into a cash-eating monster, which is what it was starting to do. It started like I was making more, but somehow I'm still spending and the profit margin just is not there versus what's going in and what's coming out.

Gresham Harkless 12:50

Yeah, makes so much sense. So now, I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be like a word of wisdom or piece of advice could be around b2b content but what do you feel you would tell kind of your younger business self?

Ruthie Bowles 13:02

I would tell myself, that my audience and my understanding of my audience is always evolving. That's due to internal factors, and external factors, and what I mean is you ask people who they work with, and they give you that like to two or three sentence speech where they're like, I work with business owners who XYZ, and you see it on all the Facebook groups and everything like that. So you ask them and like, oh, so is that your ideal audience? They're like, Yeah, I know, my audience, you're like, your audience is that two to three buttons, feel right. They're like, that's it. They feel like that's all they need.

Then they start to wonder, like, as their content evolves, why and their marketing, other marketing strategies evolve, why it's not working. That could be because you haven't continued to dig into your audience. But then also, like, in my case, especially in the content space, everybody's like, Oh, you have to niche down, you got to niche down. They're like, Okay, well, I'm not sure where I'm comfortable yet. That's the internal factor in terms of its evolution. So if you're a service provider of any kind, whether it's consulting or anything else, you may evolve as you mature as a business owner, because you're a business owner, but you're also a service provider, right? So you have two hats, but you may evolve and as you evolve, who you choose to work with, will also change.

In my case, consulting firms were not my first audience, that wasn't the ideal client I had marked out for myself. It was the b2b service firms, but it took me a while even to get down to b2b. But understand that that is a process that we have to go through and I feel like we should at least quarterly reassess exactly who our audience is and understand the external factors that may influence your audience as well, but we should always be looking for more information on our audience.

Gresham Harkless 14:49

Awesome. So 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 quote-unquote CEOs on this show. So Ruthie, what does being a CEO mean to you?

Ruthie Bowles 15:01

Being a CEO to me, freedom is tempered with responsibility.

Gresham Harkless 15:08

Truly appreciate that definition. I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is pass you the mic so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional, you want to let our readers and listeners know and then of course, how best they can get ahold of you and find out about all the awesome things you guys are working on.

Ruthie Bowles 15:24

I just hate to say the word, but I would really like to see more people, I guess I wouldn't say that word, I'll say genuinely shows up in their marketing. I've got a LinkedIn post that's about to go live and it's called An Open Letter to the LinkedIn Spammer. So keep an eye out for that. But that is an example of not genuine marketing. But I'd really like to see more people genuinely show up in their marketing, and really just take control and take responsibility for their marketing. In terms of reaching me, I am most easily reached on LinkedIn for sure. More than happy to connect.

But of course, please use that connection request message, right, just let me know that this is where you heard me or read what Gresh and I talked about that just let me know. I'll be more than happy to add you if you've got any quick questions that I can answer for you. I'd be happy to do that too. But LinkedIn, just Ruthie Bowles on LinkedIn, and I'm sure you'll find me because there are not that many of them.

Gresham Harkless 16:29

There you go. Just to make it even easier we will have the links and information in the show notes so that somebody can click through, check out that blog post, and connect with you for sure. But thank you so much for that reminder as well to be authentic and not be that LinkedIn spammer or spam or anywhere to be frank. Appreciate that I appreciate your time and I hope you have a phenomenal rest of the day.

Outro 16:50

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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