379: Fostering Authentic Connections in Your Business- with Wayne Mullins

[00:00:00] Announcer: We've all heard it before. It's who you know. Welcome to Social Capital, a weekly podcast that dives into social relationships and why the investment you put into them is so important. Your host, Lori Highby, will connect with industry leading professionals and dive into their networking experiences and expert advice.

[00:00:18] Lori Highby: Hey, everybody. Lori Highby here. Welcome to the Social Capital Podcast. Our show notes are found at socialcapitalpodcast. com. To you, the listener, I want you to know that I appreciate you and I'm thrilled to have you here for another amazing episode. If there's ever anything that I can do to support you, please reach out.

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I can't wait to hear from you. Social Capital Podcast is sponsored by Keystone Click, a strategic digital marketing [00:01:00] agency that believes in order to successfully market to your ideal customer, you have to first understand your ideal customer. Learn more at KeystoneClick. com. The topic of relationships ties in very closely with marketing. That's why I'm bringing on marketing experts with a variety of backgrounds for you to learn and grow from.

Today's guest is Wayne Mullins. Wayne is a husband, father of four, entrepreneur and the founder of Ugly Mug Marketing, creator of the Freelance Accelerator and author of Full Circle Marketing. He's an out of the box, against-the-grain thinker and has more than paid off for his company and clients. He leads from the heart and is passionate and unapologetic about doing so. As founder and CEO of Ugly Mug Marketing and one of the most unique and successful marketing agencies in the world, Wayne has personally trained more than 20, 000 marketers, launched New York Times bestsellers, and helped a client grow from 20 million to more than 600 million in less than five years.

Wayne, welcome to the [00:02:00] show.

[00:02:00] Wayne Mullins: Thank you so much, Lori. I'm excited for this chat today.

[00:02:03] Lori Highby: I am too. And quite the impressive bio. I think it's so cool what you've done with your time and your expertise. And I love that you love helping other marketers. I mean that's what it's all about. Isn't it share what you know, and, and grow from there.

[00:02:18] Wayne Mullins: Absolutely. I've got so many, you know, if I pulled up my pants, like I've got so many scrapes and bruises from falling down, making mistakes. And so if I'm able just by sharing and teaching some of the hard lessons that I've had to learn and it enables other marketers, other entrepreneurs to kind of bypass some of those mistakes, then it's well worth it.

[00:02:38] Lori Highby: Yeah, I love that. I think it's so important to pay it forward in any way you can, and I'm a huge advocate of that same philosophy. But today we're going to talk a little bit about culture and how it can really impact from a positive or negative space on your marketing efforts. So how do you know if your business's culture is sabotaging your marketing efforts?[00:03:00]

[00:03:00] Wayne Mullins: Yeah. That's a, that's a great question. And it's a challenging question because to begin, Lori, I think we have to come to the realization that often for us as entrepreneurs or for us as marketers, this thing called our business or the business that we're marketing for, it's our baby. We love this thing.

And sometimes we don't want to admit that our baby is actually ugly. And the truth is that sometimes our baby is a bit ugly and we need to look at it through that objective lens so that we can determine what is actually happening and what is not. So the first place that I love to tell people to start is to get some candid feedback from your actual customers, those interacting with your organization, purchasing your product, purchasing your services. And that can be a little bit daunting and it can be a little bit confusing for people because by default, what we typically do is we go ask the people who we think are going to say great things, right?

We ask our friends, our [00:04:00] longtime customers, and those people rarely are willing to say things that are going to hurt our feelings or step on our toes. So, it's important to find those who are willing to tell us the honest truth about what it's like doing business with us.

[00:04:14] Lori Highby: Yeah, I think that's really important.

And we've often times recommended, and I'm sure you've done this with your clients too, is having a third party come in to have the conversations with some of those customers so that it is a more honest feedback that's coming in.

[00:04:29] Wayne Mullins: Absolutely. If you can, if you can afford to bring a third party in, it is definitely worth it because they are able to pull things out of customers that again, oftentimes they're going to be a little more bashful when answering those questions and they know they're going to you or to somebody on your team.

Totally.

[00:04:46] Lori Highby: So what are some practical steps that you could take to fix this issue?

[00:04:52] Wayne Mullins: Yeah, I think number one is the understanding that every interaction that someone has with your organization [00:05:00] is a marketing interaction. In other words, if you think about marketing's job, marketing's job is to move people one step closer to making a purchasing decision.

So If we agree on that definition that that is marketing's job, marketing's job is to get people closer to pulling out their wallets and handing us money. We then have to go back and say, if that is true, then every point of interaction that someone has with our organization is a marketing interaction.

So from the way, if you have a physical store, from the way that your sidewalk looks, when people walk up to how clean the door is, or the windows are to. What's your restroom looks like if customers coming in using the restroom to the way that you answer the phone, the way that you respond to email, the way that you respond to on and on, the list goes on and on.

All of those are points of marketing opportunities, or they are marketing costs. In other words, they're costing you and you're having to do more work because you're sending subtle [00:06:00] messages to people that are sabotaging. All of your other marketing efforts. So I would say one of the most practical things that you can do as an entrepreneur, as a marketer is go down a sheet of paper and all the way down the left hand side, make a list of all the points of interaction that someone's going to have with you from the time they first find out about your organization.

All the way through receiving your product or receiving your service. What are all those things? So telephone call, visit the website, visit social media, you know, pick up the phone, come by your location, whatever all those things are. And then ask yourself, what does a reasonable customer have the right to expect during this particular point of interaction.

So just to choose one of those, let's say it's phone calls. So your business is dependent on people calling you. So you ask yourself when someone calls us for the first time, what does a reasonable person have the right to expect when they call us? Do we answer [00:07:00] the phone live? Do we send them to one of those automated things where it's like, press one, press two, press three.

Do we have You know, and a voicemail system set up that just allows them to leave a message. We real human beings, how many rings does it take before we answer the phone? And so we go through this whole litmus test of answering or asking ourselves those questions. And then we put down what that person has the right to expect.

So if they call, let's say that they expect it to be a real human being and they expect us to answer the phone within three rings. So then what we can do is we can then go back and we can analyze every single time the phone rings. Did we answer it within three rings or did it take more? Did it take less?

And that becomes that sheet of paper with all those points of interactions becomes a litmus test for you. And it's a very important marketing tool, even though it does not sound like it is a marketing tool.

[00:07:54] Lori Highby: Yeah, no, I love that. I think one of the best pieces of advice that I like to tell our [00:08:00] clients too, is to put yourself in your customer's shoes, like you said, call, call the office, fill out the contact forms and see, is that the experience that you were hoping and we're expecting to get, you know, start following on some of the social channels. I think all of these things are just as important to put yourself in the customer's shoes and anticipate. Is this the experience or is this the experiences anticipating getting and and really how can you clean that up? But I love how you laid out. I call it the customer journey, but I'm sure you do too.

It's just every every little action is pushing towards an end goal. And you want to make sure it's a really positive, exciting experience at each of those segments.

[00:08:40] Wayne Mullins: Yeah, absolutely. And you know, unfortunately, Lori, what I discovered in my journey of doing this and working with a lot of different clients and a lot of different industries is oftentimes entrepreneurs want the magic bullet, right?

They want the thing that's just going to magically transform their business with, you know, some marketing secret or some marketing hack. And the [00:09:00] reality is the most important marketing things that you can do are those things that you probably don't want to do. Which is what we just talked about is outlining that customer journey in taking the time to pick up the phone and call, taking the time to go visit the website or fill out the form, et cetera.

So a hundred percent agree with you.

[00:09:19] Lori Highby: Why is it so important to engage with prospects and customers on a personal level?

[00:09:24] Wayne Mullins: So we live in a world now that is, you know, there's some great quote or analogy here that I'm going to completely botch and mess up, but basically we live in this hyper connected world, right?

Where everyone is connected to everyone online and yet we live in a world where people don't have that many real connections anymore. And so one of the simplest yet most impactful things that you can do is learn to connect with your prospects and your customers on a personal level. So very simple things that you can do that will immediately calls you to [00:10:00] stand out, send handwritten thank you notes, send birthday cards in the mail. Any points of personal interaction like that are going to cause you to immediately stand head and shoulders over your competition. Not because they can't do those things, but because they're so busy looking for the next big hack or the next, you know, cheat code or whatever it may be that they're unwilling and undisciplined to do the fundamental things that we know actually do work.

[00:10:26] Lori Highby: Oh, I love that. I'm a huge fan of the, the handwritten notes. I think it's so important and extremely underutilized today. And I'm really leaning into what Paul Roetzer from the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute is preaching right now is let's leverage AI to create efficiencies and remove some of the redundancies in what we're using from a technology standpoint to enhance and get back to that human to human contact and relationship. And, and it's so important, I think, and that's business and everything we do is all built on relationships. So I love what you're [00:11:00] saying here.

[00:11:00] Wayne Mullins: Absolutely. And you know, one of the things that we often talk about as a team is that people don't like to fire their friends, right? So you think about what we do in the marketing world in our business is people come to us when they need to grow revenue. So whether or not they're on a growth spurt, whether or not they're struggling to grow, they're here typically, you know, using us, using our services to reach certain goals, monetary goals.

And as you know, in the marketing world, sometimes, things don't always trend up, right? Sometimes there's failure. Sometimes there's mistakes that are made and sometimes the numbers don't always go the direction we want them to go. That's just the reality of this world that we live in. And so building those relationships with the client and genuine relationships so that they know you are genuinely concerned about their best interest.

That is the type of friendship that is a type of relationships that we want with our clients, because again, friends don't like to fire their friends, right? [00:12:00] And you don't fire your friends because you know they genuinely care about you. You know that they're interested in your best interest.

[00:12:07] Lori Highby: 100%. I totally agree with you on all of that.

I'm going to ask you a fun question here. If you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more of less of or differently with regards to your professional career?

[00:12:21] Wayne Mullins: I would say number one, I would say I don't know how, how exactly to word this, but watch out for your ego.

I, for me personally, I find that my ego and my need to be right, my need to be the expert sometimes gets in my own way. Let me not say sometimes, often it gets in my own way. Right? And so giving myself advice around that I think for me, the thing that I would tell myself early on was find those people surround yourself with the few people who are willing to tell you the things that you don't want to hear, but you probably need to hear. So that's what I would say.

[00:12:58] Lori Highby: Tough love. [00:13:00]

[00:13:00] Wayne Mullins: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:13:01] Lori Highby: Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. All right, Wayne, I'm going to give you the opportunity to interview me with something that you'd like to ask me.

[00:13:08] Wayne Mullins: I would say, Lori, based on what you know about the marketing world and all the, the changes that are constant, what should an entrepreneur be focused on right now?

In other words, how do we make some, how do we bring some peace to this seemingly chaotic world of marketing that we're in?

[00:13:26] Lori Highby: It's a great question. There's, and my mind's going all over the place because that is kind of the world of marketing, especially in the digital ecosystem.

It's just kind of scattered chaos right now. But and to dive in and connect with what you're saying to the more that you focus on that ideal customer and building those relationships. I think the greater success you're going to have at the end of the day. And it's not always about the shiny objects and the latest and the greatest tools and platforms that are out there.

You have to look at those as tools in your toolbox to help you [00:14:00] foster relationships. And that should be that the primary goal is to focus on building solid supporting relationships and adding value to that customer base. And I believe that adding value is going to continue to evolve. I don't necessarily know how yet, but the more that you can be supportive and be a trusted advisor and, you know, partner to your customer base, I think the longer you're gonna continue to thrive and survive in this constant evolving space.

[00:14:34] Wayne Mullins: I love that. And, you know, I'm reminded of a quote by Earl Nightingale. Earl Nightingale had a quote that was basically, if you want the ultimate business strategy, it is spend an hour a day thinking about how you can better serve your customers.

That is the ultimate business growth strategy. And I think you're so right. I think so often we get so distracted by all the various things taking place, not just in marketing, but [00:15:00] business in general, right? All the different plates that we have to keep spinning, so to speak, that we lose sight of why we exist. And we exist to solve problems for other people or help them reach their goals.

Right? So I love what you said.

[00:15:13] Lori Highby: Thank you.

Great question. I appreciated it. Wayne, do you have any final words of wisdom that you'd like to share with our listeners?

[00:15:19] Wayne Mullins: Sure. I would say Lori that, you know, one of the lessons that I've had to learn over the years is that consistency creates miracles. You know, I am a quote unquote traditional entrepreneur.

I love the next big idea, right? I'm, I'm already done with the idea I had yesterday. I moved on to the new cool idea I've got today or the new social media platform that just came out or whatever that may be. But what I've learned over the years and I've had to constantly and continually remind myself of this is that consistency creates miracles.

I think sometimes we do ourselves such a disservice by not being consistent in our marketing efforts. In other words, we'll get on, I'm just going to [00:16:00] use Facebook. We'll get on this Facebook bandwagon, right? We believe that Facebook is where our audience is at. So we're going to be dedicated to posting there and we get busy posting there for about a week and then we get distracted we post instead of every single day, now we're posting every other day and then we jump back in and so we lose all of this momentum and all this possibility because of our inconsistency. And so I'm a firm believer that consistency does create miracles.

[00:16:28] Lori Highby: I've never heard a position that way and I may borrow that phrasing from you, but I agree a hundred percent consistency.

I always like to use it to the, the working out, you know, you can't do a hundred sit ups in a day and expect rock solid abs. You have to be consistently working on that to maintain, you know, the physique that you're looking for. And it's the same thing when it comes to any of your marketing efforts. That's great.

If anyone's interested in getting in contact with you, [00:17:00] what's the best way that they can reach you?

[00:17:02] Wayne Mullins: Sure. The simplest place is our website. That is just uglymugmarketing.com. All of our social media channels, email addresses, phone numbers, all of that's in one place.

[00:17:11] Lori Highby: All right. We will include that information in our show notes. Thank you so much, Wayne, for being on the show today.

[00:17:18] Wayne Mullins: Thank you, Lori. I've enjoyed our chat.

[00:17:20] Lori Highby: Absolutely. All right. This wraps up our episode of Social Capital. Huge thank you to Wayne Mullins for taking the time to connect with us. If you have a burning marketing or relationship question, just reach out.

I'd be happy to answer it on the show. And as mentioned before, let's connect on LinkedIn. I'm looking forward to hearing from you and I hope you enjoyed today's show. Go out there and get noticed.

[00:17:39] Announcer: It's all for this episode of the Social Capital podcast, visit socialcapitalpodcast.com for show notes, more episodes, and to see who will be on the show next. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next episode.