Ryan Axford

CEO - Nurturelabs

Everyone talks lead gen.

Don't forget demand gen!

On this episode of Close The Deal .com Podcast, you'll learn the difference between "demand gen" vs. "lead gen." 

Problem Ryan Solves – wearing out your customers 

3 Takeaways to Help You Close The Deal:

• Understanding "demand gen" 
• How Ryan uses "lead gen" to sell his "demand gen" business and "demand gen" software + one tactic he strongly believes more entrepreneurs need to use
  
• What Ryan may have done differently starting out as an entrepreneur

Connect with Ryan Axford (aka RAX)

Website: nurturelabs.io/closethedeal

Linked In: 

https://www.linkedin.com/in/raxford/

Products We  ❤️

Athletic Greens (AG1)

Ryan Axford Show Notes

[00:00:00] Ryan: So the moment that you know that something's automated, especially when it's trying to be passed off as real; it's a huge deal breaker for me, for me. It's a huge turnoff. So we are looking, we're always looking for ways to kind of break that initial barrier.

Ewell: That is Ryan Axford. He is the CEO of Nurturelabs and what he is talking about right there is email that you and I are receiving that every day and what annoys him and the problem that he solves as a demand gen expert.

He's gonna share the difference between demand gen and lead gen. He's also going to share how he ,as the demand gen expert uses lead gen to drive sales and drive business to his consulting agency and to his software product.

And finally, he's gonna share with you in the beginning of the show, he's actually gonna share with you how he got into business. At the end of the show, he's gonna share, if you're looking at getting into your own business, what he would've done differently or maybe what he wouldn't have done differently, but he's got some thoughts on that will probably be helpful to anybody listening to the show. Now you're listening to the Close The Deal.com Podcast. I'm your host Ewell Smith, and we're gonna find out in just a second what is the problem that Ryan Axford solves?

[00:01:22] Ewell Smith: Welcome Ryan. I appreciate you joining us today on the CloseThe Deal.com Podcast. Where are you today?

I am in Saunders Town, Rhode Island, a little old village. Wonderful wonderful fun to live in.

Ewell: I wanna jump right into what you do, but by the virtue of asking a question. What is the problem you saw in the marketplace? And then you saw an opportunity from that, and then you've created a solution. What was the problem? And then tell us a little bit about what you do to help fix that.

How getting fired turned into "demand gen" entrepreneurship.

Ryan: Sure. We have, we have sort of two facets of the company. We have a consulting agency and we also have a E email marketing, SMS and sales, CRM platform. And they work not necessarily directly hand in hand though. They certainly can. And it all kind of spun out that the agency came first. And then we were, were kind of moved into the software world very recently, but the agency came out of the opportunity really, really, not that there was a problem in the market, but a problem for me, I think, uh, just as an individual.

[00:02:26] Right? So. Marketing folk, we get laid off an awful lot and, you know, kind of every one to two years or so you kind of seem like you're bouncing from place to place. And I'd bounced from the East coast over to the West coast, lived in California for a little bit, came back to the East coast and bought a house and was working in consulting agency in downtown Boston.

And, eventually, they lost a very large client and I was part of a layoff and I thought, you know, I could just do this on my own. Why am I having somebody else take half the money? So I decided to give that a shot. We've been running for six years now.

[00:03:00] It's been great. And then just this year we've released software as well. And the software is a full blown marketing automation CRM tool. And I think that we set out to solve two primary problems there. 

His service compared to the big brands.

So the first scalability. Both like fiscal scalability, the cost to scale, and the ability to scale. For example, the cost to join a larger brand, say HubSpot or Pardot or Marketo or Eloqua, something like that.

Right. Some of them really high entry fees, other ones, not so much. HubSpot model originally went after things like mom and pop shops. And, but, you know, they now start at maybe $60, $80 bucks a month, but the big jump goes from your entry level introductory platform to kind of where all the meat of the software is.

And it's at about a 10 X and price jump. So it goes about $60 to $80 bucks a month to $800. Then there's other things tacked on top, right? So seats for the CRM, things like that. And so the cost for a company to buy into this ecosystem, and it really is an ecosystem. I mean, email marketing platforms are sticky.

[00:04:00] The moment that you get in, you get all of integrations done. You build your emails, you build your segmentation, you have your list, you have your process, you have trained teams. It is really difficult to make a migration. And it's very expensive. So, companies know that. I think that some companies kind of take advantage of that opportunity to say, cool, you wanna stick with us? You wanna scale with us? It's going to cost you. And it's very difficult for a company to say it's worth moving away to avoid that cost. 

So we were more interested in getting people in early. Again, obviously we have lower lower cost models, but they don't, they don't scale quite that exponentially.

Ultimately you can scale into an enterprise level tool without having exorbitant costs in order to be able to do that. That's one of the big things that we take pride in. Honestly, I just think it's good business.

Ewell Smith: So who's your target market? Who's the ideal candidate for your service, Nurturelabs?

Who is Nurturelabs ideal client?

Ryan Axford: So the, the easiest entry point for us are funded companies. So companies who are just getting funded, maybe getting one, one through their funding rounds and they have money coming in and they're trying to fund technical solutions for their tech stack. Right? That's one of the markets that we target. Another really big market that we're in just in terms of industry is pharmaceutical.

[00:05:12] This kind of ties into that first piece. There's a lot of funding in Pharmatech and biotech, and we're really interested in those groups of people, because what we wanna be able to help them do is take this really complex product that they have regardless of what it is and translate that into something you know, a lobbyist would understand. And that's tough. That can be really tough. 

But as a consulting group, we've been in the med tech space from the beginning, also in ed tech and then just general SAAS as well. 

Big technology companies are kind of what we're really shooting for, but, you know, going into those larger companies who have tools like Eloqua or Marketo it's pretty much impossible to get them to migrate away to, to what you might consider to be a smaller tool, as scalable as it may be. So that's not really a group that we're interested in quite as much.

[00:06:01] Ewell Smith: What about somebody who's a smaller business? Are there other segments you go after as well because you you sound like an entry point that's more affordable whereas the big companies come in and they can afford basically anything. Right. But are there other, segments that you go after? 

Ryan Axford: Yeah. So, you know, we, we welcome small companies to come in and we do have them and we have companies who have a hundred contacts in their in their database. Right. And that's great, but in terms of where we primarily market we're, we're focused more on, you know, while we have no problem, we love having small clients in because we are still small too. We're one of those companies I think there's two pieces to it. Okay. I mean, the first is that, just from a revenue standpoint cost per lead the, the return is with slightly larger companies. Again, this is in terms of marketing to them, not in terms of who we want on the platform.

But there's also an ROI on the other side, and this has been something that's been very important to me in the consulting side we don't tend to work with clients who we don't think will see the ROI from email marketing.

The real ROI on email marketing - still really good.

And there is an enormous amount of return on your investment in email marketing, but you also have to have done some work or you need to be doing the work in order to see that ROI so if you just think that you're gonna go and get a cold list of contacts and you're get the platform you're gonna write five emails and you're gonna send them and you're gonna see a 200% return.

[00:07:23] Ewell: That's not gonna happen... yeah. 

Ryan: Ain't gonna happen, man. The last thing that I wanna do, and this was a big piece of starting the agency in the first place was, you know, working for agencies. I think that, you know, this right is stressful. Right? 

There's a lot of pressure coming from all sorts of different forces. You have client pressure, you have upper management pressure they have pressure from the sea level. Right. And they have pressure from maybe even investors, right?

So there's a lot of pressure coming from everywhere. And that was one thing that I'm not really a big fan of, I like putting pressure on myself to be able to get stuff done. But I don't like people being angry, you know, I don't like people coming in stress. That's just not how I function. 

[00:07:58] I wanna spend my day in the sunshine and and have people be happy and impressed with results. And in order to do that, you have to set yourself up for success. You can't walk into a client who's failing at the basic core things that they need to have been accomplishing in order to be able to be successful if we don't do them.

So for example, if somebody does pay at least paid is not something that we do, the consulting agency focuses strictly on from like the moment somebody lands on your webpage. All the way through the rest of the funnel. So all the way through lead conversion, form conversion, lead, nurture all the way through the funnel, all the way to closed one.

And then, you know, nurturing customers. Upsell, cross sell evangels and things like that. So that's where we focus. I don't mean it's a gigantic piece of the puzzle, but the piece that gets left out is that very top of the funnel, which is lead gen. Right?

So it's something that we don't do. We do demand gen, not lead gen, and that's really intentional because we're very, very good at demand gen. 

Demand Get defined.

[00:08:57] Ewell: How do you define demand gen? That's not a term you hear very often. You hear lead gen all day long. How do you define demand gen - that's an interesting term

Ryan Axford: Right. So what's lead gen.

Ewell Smith: lead gen is in my mind is figuring out how to get the people to your site and then capture that email. And then you start nurturing that email, Nurture Labs, you start nurturing the email. 

Ryan Axford: Right. But you just defined demand gen too, right? 

So lead gen is the first part of the puzzle lead gen is how do we find people get them to the site? How do we get them? Maybe to convert can certainly be part of lead gen. 

Okay. I'll, I'll give them that. But. Demand gen is like, okay, let's think in a perfect world. All right, wouldn't this be nice. You have a perfect world where you have paid ads or organic Facebook posts, or, you know, you post the podcast and somebody listens to the podcast and they go, oh man, this is, this is great stuff. I have this thing. I think that you'd actually be perfect for, could you help me with this?

Right. And you're like, yeah, sure. And then you close the deal and then everything's done. Wouldn't that be sweet, but the reality is that they might listen to the podcast. They might go to your, go to your LinkedIn, check out the website, and then they might struggle to, they might say like, this guy sounds so good.

[00:10:06] I think I could use him. I don't totally know how right. Or what do you offer? What are the products? What are the services? And. So realistically, especially with more complex sales cycles. But when I say complex, I don't necessarily mean like some three month long sales cycle, just even basic stuff, even for us.

You need to educate and that's what demand gen does. So lead gen drives interest and demand gen drives education and pushes contacts through the funnel. That's the most basic explanation.

What separates Nurturelabs form others?

Ewell: Gotcha. is there a piece of that entire formula which separates you all from others?

Ryan Axford: So our real interest is that education piece. 

So, again, we work from building landing pages, building forms, progressive profiling, you know, really clever things like that, through to conduct conversion point, thank you, pages micro sites. And you know, then all the emails that come along with it, but our real interest is when you're sending like the logic.

[00:11:10] Why are you sending things when you're sending them? Does it make sense to send it right now? How do you do that? On a one to one level when you're talking about insert number here when you're talking about 10 people? I mean, just think think about like you and I are having a conversation. Right. And I'm like the only person that you have to talk to who has these conversations and you know, we're coming back, scheduling, just scheduling this podcast right back and forth. Right.

So one on one, not such a big deal at all. Right. We do it every day. Okay. 

Ewell: Right.

Ryan: You on two people. Again, probably not a huge deal. What about you on 10? 

Now it's like, okay, well this is like a little tricky, right? Like I have to remember that Ryan said that he could do this and then I, canceled tomorrow on you to do today yesterday.

Right. So you have to remember that and then nine other people. 

Now make it a hundred. Now, make it a thousand. 

[00:11:56] Now make it, you know, so you get the idea. So the scalability side is where marketing automation really shines but that's only if you use it to its fullest potential. And that's where I think that we really shine because what we're interested in, and this is the second part of the problem in the market that we were looking to solve is ease of use versus capability.

So if you look at some platforms, that really pride themselves as being like, you literally, whoever you are, it doesn't matter who you are. You can do this. Well, in order to be able to do that, they have to make it easy. And if you make it easy, sometimes you just can't do quite as many things. A really easy comparison as like iPhones versus Android.

So Android, you can do like pretty much anything. And there's a bit of, there's some open APIs going on there and. Companies can make their own apps and they can get just a little bit deeper into the root of the phone. Apple shuts that stuff down way earlier. Right. Apple, I would argue is pretty easy to use left and right.

You can pick up an iPhone, you kinda work your way through it. Android may be a bit of a slightly larger learning curve. But it's much more powerful at the end of the day. 

[00:13:00] So I kind of think of it the same way. And what we tried to set out to do is have a product that has both ease of use, but also capability.

We definitely have the ease of use factor there. I'll give you a couple of examples and we also have the capability factor there. Give you a couple of examples.

Ryan's SaaS Product serves as lead gen to their demand gen business

Ewell Smith: Does somebody, they sign up with your, your platform? Do they gradually ultimately end up working with you all as well because of your expertise? Is it a funnel almost for your consulting business, helping people with email? Is it, is it a gateway in. 

Ryan Axford: Yeah. So it's the, the software is a lead gen tool for the consulting group. 

And the consulting group is a, is a lead gen tool for the software. Although realistically, it's more heavily software to consulting than consulting the software. 

Cause typically we go in with a client who has a solution already. Right. 

So, so you're dead on. But with that said, what we are interested in on the software side is to be able to scale again, scale is like a term that I use a lot, but really be able to scale. Cause there's so many different places that you can do that how do you scale and the cost to scale?

[00:14:03] How do you scale when you're trying to have like these more micro conversations on a bit with a thousand people the same time scale, right? Can the software grow and can its capabilities scale with your needs, right? So lots of different ways that you could be scaling. but, But, yeah, that's exactly right.

Ewell Smith: Let me break down one example, then we'll give people a way to find you and then we'll come back after the second part of the show. One example I wanna find out let's say I'm signing up,. You brought out, interesting question speaking to a hundred, people's one thing. Speaking to a thousand, let's say we speaking to a thousand people, how does the software help you do that? 

Ryan Axford: So for me we'll break it down to at least two different pieces. All right. The first is going to be content and the second is going to be timing. And we'll add how personal it is as a third one, but, that, you know, how personal you're able to make an email has a lot to do with the content and the timing.

[00:15:02] So I'll give you an example. We could keep it simple and say, yeah, sure. Let's just focus on like biotech. Right. So then you're you, you know what images you're using? You know, what, kind of body copy you're using, you know, it maybe CTAs, you know, the landing pages and that's how lots of people function.

And lots of companies function is that they might have a vertical focused campaign that runs okay. 

And we can totally do that. The other thing that you can do is have one campaign. So you might wanna keep track of them separately, or you might not care quite as much. And so the other thing that you can do is you can have your emails that are going out be dynamic.

So let's say if we know that maybe we load a list cause we went to a conference, or we have various landing pages that we'll promote. So we'll have a landing page that focuses on biotech or focuses on med tech in general, or focuses on SAS or education technology or something along those lines.

Right. So if somebody converts on one of those pages from a paid ad or organic or whatever, well we know at least we think we know who they are. 

[00:16:02] Could be wrong, but odds are pretty good. So you have that aspect of it. The second part of it is that the timing of those email sends. Let me give you an example.

Ryan's strategy with demand gen...

You can use this tool, not only for email marketing automation, let's like let's call, email marketing automation. The big fluffy branded stuff that you get in your inbox. Okay. 

Big header on the top with logo and a, a nice image of parents with their kids and then a big round CTA, somewhere in the body copy.

Very focused and driven. That's what we'll call email marketing automation. You can also do sales automation and the sales automation aspect is typically. Raw text, email, maybe it's an HD, HTML email that looks like text.

Not necessarily any logo, a simple signature or phone number directed to you from your assigned rep, things like that.

So from the content side of things, we can make content very specific simply by knowing more about who is receiving the email and that's on a one to one level on the timing side, we can make that very specific too. So let's say that we know, and the software can do this for us.

[00:17:08] Let's say that we know that Ewell tends to open his emails, at 6:00 AM his local time. Okay. It's just, when you tend to open the emails up, well, the software tracks that and knows it. 

Ewell : So if each, individual

Ryan: each individual person.

Ewell : Okay.

Ryan Axford: Then, what you can do is you can turn on time sending where it will ascend the email at the most likely time that that individual person is going to open that email.

So you can set a period of days, right? So you can say, ah, wait, you know, wait seven days between ascend, but then you actually send that email on that seventh day, within the 24 hour time span of when you're most likely to open it or another way that you could do is, you could be sending that email, I guess we're jumping over to time, but you could be sending that email based and content based on what they looked at.

So you could have a handful of different options and those could be tied to or a mix, right? They could be tied to the vertical. So like we already discussed, they could also be tied to like a stage. So how low in the funnel is the content that they're looking at? 

[00:18:11] And depending on that matrix, you could then send specific content that is geared based on both vertical and area of the funnel to that person.

And that could be in the exact same email as what somebody else would get, but they're getting two different things and we can do that all based on dynamic content.

Yeah. So it's pretty fascinating. And then the other really cool thing from the sales side is that you could also hold an email where the wait step isn't, you know, wait until, or, you know, the wait step, isn't wait seven days.

It might be wait seven days. And then there's another layer of logic that says, and then wait until, 9:30 AM on Monday.

Ewell: Wow. 

Ryan: We had a minimum of seven days, but if that happened to be a Tuesday that you landed on, then you would wait another week until you got to Monday at 9:30 AM. And then at 9:30 AM a sales [00:19:00] email goes out and says, Hey Ewell, how was 

Ewell: Oh, wow. 

[00:19:04] Ryan Axford: So this is another example where you can really break down. And this is kinda what we try to do with automation. Cause people are getting smart, right? People are getting smart and they're recognizing how many LinkedIn messages, everybody listening to this probably gets these LinkedIn messages.

And they're like, hey, I honestly, I've done this.

How to mess up lead gen.

I'm guilty of this too. And it went really badly, right? Like we got nothing out of it, but like, hey, I'd love to connect. And then you connect and three seconds later.

Ewell Smith: Yes.

Ryan Axford: At 1:15 in the morning. Hey, thanks for the connection. You're not there. Like no, everybody knows you're not there. Right. So, and that kills it.

Right? So the moment that you know, that something's automated, especially when it's trying to be passed off as real. It's a huge deal breaker for me, for me. Right. It's a huge turnoff. So we are looking, we're always looking for ways to kind of break that initial barrier and a really clever way to do that is to hold people until their local time at a time of the day or a time of the week, when you can make a reference

[00:20:01] To something that is real in their life at that time. Even if it's as simple as it was Sunday, yesterday.

Ewell Smith: Yeah. Well, that's a, that's a nice touch because people do get worn out w ith the automations, I think, and they see through it, and, but in, in email is still so powerful, still the best return for dollar dollar.

What's the best way for you people to find you or your product?

Ryan Axford: Yeah, we we've got a landing page just for you so they can go to NurtureLabs.io/closethedeal. 

Ewell Smith: We'll include the link on our page for sure. 

Now, what I wanna do, hang on for a second. We're gonna come back to you. We're gonna go a little deeper. 

BREAK with Ryan Axford

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[00:20:57] I go to the gym early in the mornings. I take it [00:21:00] before I go every day. It's called Athletic Greens. It helpsboost my gut health, my immunity, my energy, my recovery, It sets my day off on the right foot. I love this product and they've got a special promotion they put together for you.

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Close The Deal .com Podcast Part 2

BREAK - BACK WITH RYAN AXFORD

Ewell: Ryan, we are back and I wanna thank you for the first part. E email is such a powerful tool. I do know this for a fact is for dollar, for dollar, it is still the best bang for your buck for any of the marketing and it's the best way to keep in touch and do the follow ups with any, any new customer or then nurture those customers. And then your product continues that process in a more thoughtful way that doesn't come across as automations. Right. So that's, that's fantastic. Let me ask you a question.

What are you grateful for today?

[00:22:17] Ryan Axford: You know, such a, such a huge reason that the company exists today is my wife who has just given me the opportunity to be able to do this. And so we took a risk, a huge risk. Where, you know, I, had been laid off and I decided not to get not to get another job.

I've worked a hell of a lot harder in the last six years than I probably ever did before that, but you know, there's a lot to be gained out of it. A lot has been gained out. She continues to give me this opportunity where she's put her career on hold to be home with our kids. I think that in some, in some degrees, the grass always feels a little greener.

You know she looks at me and she thinks, man, you have so much freedom and I do. I mean, I do, right. I mean, I work for myself. I can theoretically come in one on one, although we still have clients

[00:23:06] Ewell : right

Ryan: to apease. I look at her and say, man, I wish I was at the zoo with the kids today. 

But at the same time it can't go without saying that she really is one of the biggest reasons that we are here today and we can do this and help others.

Ewell: Well, you're very, very fortunate. I have a wife very similar to you. It that that's very supportive and that is so key, especially when you starting your own business. What's probably the biggest challenge you've had. 

'

You know, a lot of times people see a product on TV and, but then they start wanna know who's actually behind all this. That's kind of what this part of the show's about. I'm sure it hasn't been a bed of roses the entire time starting this up. What were some of the challenges you had to overcome getting going. 

Ryan's biggest challenge

Ryan Axford: I think our, our challenge still today remains, it's always been a challenge remains lead gen actually. 

Ewell: For, for the guy in the lead gen business and the demand gen business?

[Ryan Axford: Well, again, demand gen business. It's like, you know, looking back on it sometimes I think to myself, man, I really wish that I'd done the first part, not the second part. I mean that continues to be a struggle. Lead gen is very expensive. It's gotten more and more expensive. 

[00:24:09] And I mean, frankly, demand gen is also very expensive. 

Building emails, hiring consulting companies. It costs, it costs money and that's, you know, A really big reason why I care so much about who we work with. So if we're not a good fit, I'm not gonna go charge somebody $10 grand because I get 10 grand out of it.

I want charge 'em $10 grand because they get $50 grand out of it. 

That's what I care about because we could go in and pull anybody. I mean, not anybody. Obviously we could easily convince someone to get it because the numbers are there. Right. 

But I wanna know that it's gonna work. I wanna know that we have a long term relationship and most of our clients have been around for, um, we've been around for six years.

We have several, I think four or five clients who've been with us for five of those six years.

Ewell: Okay. Is it new software, something that you applied to them or is this something that they they're already part of the system? I guess

[00:25:01] Ryan Axford: Yeah. So generally speaking all but one of our clients is using another platform, which is absolutely fine. Our team is certified in Eloqua Marketo, Pardot and the HubSpot. 

We work in all those platforms every day. 

Ultimately if they start talking about costs and then we were having this conversation with a couple right now, if they start talking about a migration, because fees are getting outrageous or their database is growing and they're seeing the cost growing that goes back to that scalability. Then we can kind of show them the light.

How Ryan the email marketer gets the word out on his own business.

Ewell: You mentioned, you gotta get the word out. How does the email marketer expert, how do you get the word out for people to find you? What, what type of lead gen do you do? What type of marketing do you do to, to build this business? I mean, obviously. I imagine word of mouth is a huge thing for you because people got to know you as a consultant, really developing those people.

But now as you enter this new space with your own software, what tactics do you use to get the word out? And, and of course podcast is one of them we know

[00:26:00] Ryan Axford: Podcast is one of 'em, right? Yep. Yep. So obviously podcasts, I mean, but I love this. We've had a couple conversations now. Right. And they're just fun. Like, it's just, so I can't, I think the first time that we were chatting and I was like stuck outside of this coffee house and I didn't have my headphones. I had like, had my laptop up to my face so that you couldn't hear all the parking lot. No. You know?

But we got on this like whole winded conversation and it was, it was amazing right. Way off topic from where we had started and I love this. On a personal level before we get to the real lead gen and the professional level on a personal level, it's this stuff is just so much fun to meet people.

I'm not trying to sell you genuinely on anything, right. It's just like talking about stuff. And if you get to walk away from this conversation with one little gem, then I feel really good. 

Ewell Smith: yes.

Ryan: it makes me feel good and vice versa, right? Like I've, I've already walked away from our conversation before we started the podcast. 

Ewell: And so people know how you found me. You found me through LinkedIn, right? That's how you, you reached out to me, but that conversation, that's what I love about podcasts. It's that network. And it is, it's a conversation.

And where that goes from there. I've, met friends through the internet that have become professional acquaintances and friends, all through this type of, format. So, 

Ryan Axford: We added somebody onto our advisory board from a random person that I reached out to and met for coffee. 

And I was like, oh my God, you're amazing.

Ewell: Yeah. So you 

[00:27:25] Ryan: know? 

Ewell: you just never you just never know where it goes. 

Rya: For sure. But in addition to that, we do some paid organic, we are really heavy into video. So if you, if you look at our LinkedIn page, we're posting videos all the time.

Ewell : Is your paid on LinkedIn or do you use paid on other platforms as well? 

Ryan Axford: You know, funny enough, we had really little success with paid on LinkedIn. Yeah. So some people raved that like that's, you know, and again, you just kind of have to try, which, you know, nobody really wants to hear. One of the reasons I'm not in lead gen is to say, well, you spent five grand here and you spend five grand here and then you spend five grand here.

[00:28:02] Like what? You know? So, um, but you know, paid is expensive but we are seeing uh, some good success on Instagram.

So we're doing a lot of reels on Instagram. At least I'm doing them, like I'm actually doing them for my personal page and that's another angle, right? Is that there's some personality behind the company rather than just this company this entity. Right. Nobody likes anything corporate ever. 

Ewell Smith: That's true. 

Ryan reveals one way of getting the word out many businesses fail to leverage.

Ryan: And then the other thing, you know, one place that we've had a lot of success. And so I wanna bring this up if anybody's listening, they're having the same problem.

This is where we've had the most success is actually working with organizations. 

So, you know, the big thing for new companies and we're new, doesn't matter how you spin it, right? You don't have the brand big brand name behind us or anything like that. And I know that. So one of the biggest hurdles for you to get over is that factor like, and the trust factor that comes along. So, good, good or bad, right? Every time I go to pick a company, I say like, for example, Google, I'm like, oh wait, that's not a great example necessarily because lots of people don't trust Google, but you get the idea right.

Still a brand name and lots of people do trust Google. Right. I trust that Google will deliver the search result that I'm looking for.

[00:29:08] I've I've accepted all the other stuff that goes along with it. Right. So anyway, so one way to get around without having to invest millions of dollars into a brand name, at least upfront is to work with organizations. So that way it's a one to many, rather than one to onerelationship. So all that I have to do is gain the trust and show the organization that we are capable, that we can deliver.

And then they take that message and they provide that to all of their members. and when they do that, the message isn't coming from me, it's coming from a trusted organization. 

That's been very successful. 

If you're targeting banks right, then go after either, you know, you can do like conferences obviously, but then lots of, um, or maybe we can use like small business. So if you go to like a commerce, a chamber of commerce and you get on the list for the chamber of commerce as like a Solution a tech solution, then that gets promoted and you can say that they trust us, you know, and you kind of get over that initial hurdle. So that's been pretty successful,

[00:30:10] Ewell: I wanna reinforce that. That's an excellent strategy. and I'll share that because I was in the trade association business for 20 years and we would have companies, big companies that have hundreds of millions of dollars in marketing resources, but they would come to us because we were the non partial voice and they would align themselves with us.

And next thing you know, we're singing their praises and they're getting the attention that they could never afford to buy despite the fact, they might have hundreds of millions of dollars. So that strategy is really, really smart. And, you know, your LinkedIn strategy. I think LinkedIn is so organic right now.

It's just great for that, that raw content. I really have turned a lot of attention to LinkedIn. Still use Facebook a lot for a couple folks. But what I think your strategy is spot on for what you do that, that's how we even talking Right. now. 

[00:31:07] Ryan Axford: Right. Yeah, exactly. And you know, another strategy to use on, honestly, all of these platforms.

This pops up in like I'm in this entrepreneur group on Facebook and there's lots of great people in there. Just so smart and, you know, there are also some. rudimentary questions are so important because sometimes they have complex answers, right?

And sometimes they have really simple answers and you hear them. You're like, well, why didn't I, why didn't I think of that? You know? Maybe it's because we don't apply much time to think about it. That could be a simple answer too. But anyway, so somebody asked a question, they said, how, how are you generating organic following. How are you doing it? Right? Because one, there's really not an easy solution, unless you get lucky. 

But how are you doing it? And the simple answer was, simple takeaway was just look at the ones that are going viral, you know, whatever that content is, look at what that is and do that.

[00:31:58] Maybe apply some something that's you on top of it, but don't shift that base line success at all, because the moment that you do it's different and if it's different and it's not, what's catching people's eye, it's not going to catch their eye. 

And so right now it's video. And I know like again, somebody listeners I think will listen to this and be like, oh yeah, no kidding. It's videos that are vertical on your phone. That is somebody talking, dropping some sort of snippet with crap audio and they are doing it in 90 seconds or less. Cause that's what an Instagram reel is. And they put the closed caption. On the video to lay over it on top of it with some color behind it.

That is what is successful. It's not complicated. And Instagram literally does it for you. so you just have to go and talk. 

So the biggest hurdle is coming up with what to talk about. So that's a big thing, but the more right now, and even look at ads. I mean, man, I just this morning, my son got off like crazy early this morning and we're lying in bed.

[00:33:04] And so I bring him to he's two. So we bring him in bed with us. My wife's conked out, obviously. I'm like, all right, I'll go get him. So I go and get him. And I bring him in bed and, you know, he's kind of like rumaging around and being a pain and, and, uh, and so we thought let's just, we'll put on a, a show on, on YouTube or something like that.

So we put on YouTube and we're playing Blippy, which is his current favorite. And this commercial comes up for realtor.com and so, you know, gigantic, right? Huge brand. Everybody knows it, sell houses, you can buy houses, you can find houses, you can whatever. And what they did, it was an ad, a paid ad.

And it was like 15 seconds. And the whole ad was some woman sitting in her kitchen or something like that, holding the phone up to her face. And she said, realtor.com now has, um, like it's like fi like fire and water safety zones noted on the listings so that I know if I can keep my family safe at the house that I'm looking at, that was the ad. That was the whole thing.

[00:34:06] Ewell : Wow. 

Ryan: Now, the funny thing is, is that I probably watched a dozen ads just yesterday. right. And I don't remember any of them. 

I remember this one and I'm not even buying a house like

Ewell: It's...

Ryan: relevant to me.

Ewell: it speaks to you. So let me, let me finish up with a couple things with you. Mindset. You know, you went through some challenges. This podcast originally started as the Absolutely Mindset podcast and I kept gravitating to sales and marketing conversations, but I still like talking about mindset The terminology I use as absolutely mindset.

Ryan shares a challenge many other entrepreneurs have.

What does the mindset part to you mean? Or even an absolutely mindset mean to you as far as being an entrepreneur and doing what you do?

Ryan Axford: So, you know, I think the hardest thing for me in general is staying focused, right? And a big part of focus for me comes from not like a lack of drive, I'v got plenty of drive, but I think, you know, Just this morning, I was multitasking on three different things. Before we, before we got on the phone, we started at nine, twenty nine thirty.

Right. So, and I'm thinking like, okay, like I, I have to do this for the podcast. And I wanna make sure that I finish prepping here and I have to deliver this to a client. And I had to deliver the, I mean, I it's, it was kind of unbelievable to me. And so it gets really easily. I, I just get dragged into different directions so quickly.

The mindset aspect of that comes back to not being driven to complete these things, but being able to step back and have a holistic macro view of what you need to accomplish. 

And that could literally just be a checklist of, well, I have to do this today, right? That's macro, right?

What am I doing today? Nobody gets to define for you what it means, 

What macro versus micro means. But it's so important to think of like what you're looking to accomplish, but then acknowledging the steps in order to accomplish it. So you have that holistic view and then you kind of have that more micro view and not necessarily like, well, the first step is, you know, to open up my computer.

[00:36:05] I don't mean that micro, right. But I had a conversation with my brother-in-law on this recently where he owns a construction company and he needs to hire up and he wants to get W2 workers in and I said, so what are your goals? And he is like, well, I have a goal of, you know, I don't know, hiring five W2 workers and generating 10 million in revenue in the next two years or three years.

Like whatever. I don't know. And I said, okay, cool. And he's like, so that's what I'm gonna do.

I said, okay. But how, like, how are you gonna hire five workers? What are you gonna do? Oh, I don't know. I thought I'd post on Facebook or you know, so, okay. We'll give it a shot, I guess. Right. So, and it just kind of comes back to say like, and there's nothing wrong with personally posting on Facebook, which he did, but then nothing's come out of it.

Right. So having a, a holistic view of, I wanna accomplish X and then more of a micro view of here's, how I go to accomplish that. And if it fails, what do I do then is really important in my mindset to 

[00:37:00] Ryan Axford: to stay focused on a day to day so 

I kinda do on a really high level, multiple levels down that. 

Ewell Smith: I think you're speaking to a lot of people right now.

Ryan Axford: Yeah. I don't think I'm alone.

Ewell: No, you're not including myself. right. Last question. And then we'll remind everybody where they can find you.

Last question is somebody like you took a leap of faith doing what you doing six years ago. As a lot of people have made transitions to the past two years.

And there's still a lot of people probably thinking I need to make a transition, you know, and I'm really looking at doing my own thing. What piece of, what piece of guidance would you give to that person?

Ryan's guidance to start up entrepreneurs.



Ryan Axford: That's it's such a loaded question because it just depends so much on who the person is and what they wanna do. 

So if I stuck to, if I stuck to what we do right and what I did,

I mean, man, I say. Do it, you know, I mean, like if you wanna be, if you wanna be really smart about, that's like not helpful.

[00:38:05] Right. So, okay. I think that if, if I were to do it again, I started this out of a need. Like it was a, it was because I got laid off so it was like,I gotta, gotta, do something you know, so, that's where I started out of. So you know, like your, one of your first questions, what problem did you see in the market to solve what the market didn't have a problem?

I had a problem Ineeded to solve and I went and solved. So if, if I were to do it again, or if I were in the position where I wasn't laid off and I had a job and I was considering doing this, do it on the side. So if you're thinking about leaving whatever you're doing to be a consultant, do it on the side.

Realistically, and if you're not sure about the rates, that's the other thing that I think really get people held up when they get into the consulting game early on is they either don't believe in themselves enough, they don't know what to charge and, and that can be hard to figure out. And we honestly only figured it out by continuing to raise prices until. We felt like we were hitting ceiling, we started getting pushback.

[00:39:00] And it also depends on who you're targeting and you know, what stage of their business they're in. Right. So, you know, can't charge a mom and pop shop $160 an hour to an email consulting for them. But you can, you can charge a biotech firm that brings in a billion dollars a year.

Right. So you know, you kind of have to think about that and who you want to target. If the needs there, but if you build it up on the side one, you don't have to think quite as much about the pricing because you can just build the experience, you can get the names and then once you're there, you can then leave everything behind and it's a smoother transition. 

Just to note, my brother-in-law, he's honestly amazing. I'm so amazed by him and he left his job to go, he was a paramedic and he did some consulting on the side, uh, a business construction on the side and he just quit his job.

And, his wife owns a company too, and he just said, I'm just, I, I can't do this anymore.

I'm gonna stop. And I'm just going to go a hundred percent to the business. And that's exactly what he did. And he's been really successful. I'm so impressed by it because, he took that he didn't, he had a need to make a change because he just wasn't happy where he was and it wasn't sustainable, but rather than, rather than like really building the business up on the side, it was just kind of part-time.

[00:40:00] He really just went cold Turkey, right. and for him, that's what he needed to do. 

For me, I had no choice, but also for me, if I had a choice, I probably would've ramped up and that would be my recommendation, like, get your feet wet. then when you're ready to make the jump, make the jump. 

Ewell: Yeah. And that, and that, that mitigates some risk. I mean, sometimes your backs gets the wall. You have no choice, like what happened with you, but I think that's a great strategy.

Where do people find you again? 

Ryan Axford: Yeah, they can find us at nurturelabs.io/closethedeal. So on, on the landing page, I'll, I'll have our conversation on the landing page and we also do a video for every podcast that we're on. Just kinda like recapping. So that'll We also have all of our pricing. It's all right there. Straightforward choose number of contacts and you can get a demo right away. So, go to nurturelabs.io/close the deal. We'd love to see you. 

Ewell: And, And, then you can track it all. 

[00:41:00] Ryan Axford: And we track. Yeah. You better believe we track it all.

Ewell: Well, thank you, Ryan. I appreciate it. 

Ryan: well, thank you for your support

Ewell: You have just listened to episode number two of the Close The Deal.com Podcast. Clearly we're just getting started. I want to thank you for giving us a few minutes of your time. Please share this with others as you're part of this community now. And we wanna grow and grow this community. And that's gonna take a little bit of help from every including Ryan and his team, they'll help push it out. 

 And of course, the listeners that listen to it, we hope you can share it if you found value with it and give us your feedback. Close the deal.com. There's a contact us button at the top of the page. And what do you think of Ryan? I like his approach a lot.

I like the fact that his approach is so thoughtful as a marketer I think we need to be more thoughtful in our approaches sometimes, and as a consumer, I'm sure people that are on the receiving side of what he does and what he does so well, hence his experience of a small business that's been growing and growing and growing for the past six years, that's not by accident. That's intentional. 

And speaking of intentional, let's wrap it up with this. I want you to do you a favor, and that is to make this a great day. Making it a great day doesn't happen by accident. It's intentional, and it starts with our gratitude in the morning because we have so much to be grateful for every single day, even the smallest of things. 

So I wish you a fantastic day. Make it a fantastic day.

Make it a great day, and we'll talk to you soon. Looking forward to the next show with you. Thank you.

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