Educating your clients makes them feel that you want to improve their experience and encourage them to make better, more informed decisions.

We are excited to bring you marketing guru – Jenni White. She is the CEO & Founder of Polaris Marketing & Consulting; they help businesses enhance their marketing strategies, widen their reach, and increase their revenue. Jenni has an excellent tip on how to save time while educating your clients. She explains why it’s important to educate clients on the fundamentals while balancing your precious time. Not everyone wants to be engaged, but if they know more about the products and ROI, it will mean less work for you in the long term. When you take the time and effort to educate your clients, they feel taken care of.

Jenni has been a much sought-after marketing guru from tech start-ups to long-term established businesses. She specializes in building strategic partnerships, business development, marketing strategy implementation, and product development and ideation. In addition to managing the digital services offered by Polaris Marketing & Consulting, Jenni also consults with companies across the United States. She donates her time to multiple charities as well. She is a Dale Carnegie Black Belt, studied undergrad at The Claremont Colleges in Claremont, CA, and is originally from Portland, Oregon.

Join the conversation in the Conquer Local Community and keep the learning going in the Conquer Local Academy.

George: One of my favorite things to do on the show is talk to channel partners and find out how they’re utilizing the amazing software and platform that we’ve developed for them. And we’re going to learn today from Jenni White, the CEO and Founder of Polaris Marketing has become a channel partner at Vendasta. And we’re gonna find out how she is finding success with the platform and the various tools that she’s able to give to her customer base. Jenni White from Polaris Marketing & Consulting coming up next on the Conquer Local Podcast.

Introduction

Jenni White, joining us from beautiful Pasadena, California. Jenni, thanks for making some time to be our special guest this episode on the Conquer Local Podcast.

Jenni: Hi George, thank you. And thanks to the whole team. Thanks for inviting me and having me.

George: Well, we are excited for the next few minutes to learn about you and your organization. So if you wouldn’t mind, give us the overview of Polaris Marketing & Consulting.

Jenni: Sure, so it’s a really long word name of the company, but basically, I chose Polaris because it’s the North Star and it’s just always been a source of navigation, over the centuries and eons. And we, I initially started the company as a consulting agency and then morphed into a digital marketing agency initially with another agency out here in Southern California. And then through sort of the evolution of me looking for resources, I stumbled upon Vendasta or I’m not exactly sure how I found it initially, but it took me a couple years to actually pull the trigger. And kudos to one of your amazing sales guys, Josh Schultz, because he just stayed on me and he was like, “No, Jenni, I know that you need this.” He’s like, “Check it out. Like I’m gonna run through everything with you.” And so after that happened last year, I signed on with Vendasta and so really began to morph my strategy into a digital marketing agency and then with a team that does that in-house down here and then me on top of that doing my consulting with the businesses. So it’s really a really cool hybrid model where we have all the suite of services and everything’s offered through Vendasta as well as I do my consulting on top of it with businesses that wanna grow and with startups and franchises and nonprofits. And it’s just been like this really awesome, harmonious blend.

George: Well, I appreciate all those kind words. What I wanna understand is the consulting portion, that is the foundation of your business when, and it can mean a lot of things. So if we were to button up consulting, what do you see it as?

What is Consulting?

Jenni: For my role with different businesses is really focused on building strategic partnerships. That’s really one of my biggest strengths and anything biz dev related. So most of the time I’ll come into a company that wants to bring me on as a consultant because they sort of want me to take a holistic look at everything that they’re doing. That’s sort of what it’s, I mean, it depends on what type of consultants you are, but when you’re like a “business consultant” you’re kind of just supposed to take a look under the hood and figure out the problems that they’re like, “Yeah, these are problems, but what are the solutions?” And so that’s sort of what I do with businesses. And eventually, they ended up using some of our Vendasta products and services as well. Sometimes right off the bat, sometimes it takes a little time, but that’s basically what I do is I just start to talk to people, work with the C-suite and figure out where their pain points and what do they need and how can I help them grow.

George: It’s interesting. So you arrive as a channel partner after the fact, and I’m wondering you’re building these strategies, you’re analyzing your customers, you’re trying to understand what they need. And then you’re like, “Okay, now I’ve got to solve the problem.” And you didn’t have those solutions in the early days, and now you’re offering those solutions.

Jenni: Yeah, one of the cool things has been being able to train people within those businesses on how to use the platform on the business app. So when I’m able to, so again, when it comes to strategic partnerships, I can’t really rely on Vendasta to help me do that, right. That’s kind of coming down to my network, my creativity, what tools and resources I have outside of Vendasta. When it comes to being able to train their staff on how to use the platform, that’s where I’m seeing like really cool results with like the social posting platform, some of the SEO stuff where I can actually show them how they can engage with the platform and make movement and move the needle, I should say for their own business. Which is really my goal is to build up enough resources within Vendasta that I feel like, “Okay, I’m 100% sure that this is gonna be effective for my clients.” So, ’cause I wanna remain a consultant. I don’t wanna just force everybody into the box that I have. So I wanna make sure that things are gonna have a high impact and be worth everyone’s while. But I love seeing when they have in-house teams of people, I think I’m working with three of my clients right now, where I’m fully training and mentoring their staff on how to use it. So that’ll be exciting to see the results that that’s gonna.

George: You said something off the top that I wanted to make sure we punctuate. And that is you go find your clients, you go find your leads from your ecosystem, and then you install them on the platform. There was no expectation when you signed up that leads we’re gonna rain from the heavens.

Jenni: No, no, no, no, I, no. That’s, no. I don’t even do advertising. I do social posting for myself and I’m quite active on LinkedIn. I have several thousand followers or connections if you will. So I really stayed focused on my own messaging and talking about things that were relevant to me and to the business and to my clients. And I’m just like a big fan of rewarding and just promoting good stories and people that are doing the right thing and businesses that are having good wins or innovations. So I focus my outbound messaging on stuff like that, where it’s really authentic and it’s seriously something I’m interested in. And so that’s how I think people find me because they’re like, “I,” ’cause my tone ring is true. As opposed to me saying, “I’m gonna sign up with this platform.” And it’s just gonna, it’s not gonna run itself, you know. People aren’t just gonna come and walk in by themselves. So yeah, and it’s still just gonna grow from there. There’s organic and then there’s paid and you can grow as fast as you want.

George: Have you found that eventually, you get to a point where it’s referral, you help my client, I got a buddy, I’m gonna introduce you.

Jenni: Yeah, yeah, definitely. I started a call yesterday like that with somebody.

George: So getting to a point where you’re so proficient that the brand carries itself is really one of those north stars?

Jenni: Yes, yes, thank you. Full circle.

The Backstory

George: So when you become a consultant, I’ve found that people usually have some sort of a backstory. So I’d love to know what Jenni’s backstory is before you founded Polaris.

Jenni: As a whole, we need a whole other podcast for that. But so I started, gosh, how far back do you wanna go? Really, in my professional career, I started in marketing. I was working with healthcare and then I went into tech and then I had a tech startup and then was a part of another tech startup. I was really focused on innovation. We had a telemedicine company back before, I mean, now everybody is ubiquitous. Everybody knows what telemedicine is, but six, seven years ago, it was pretty much at the forefront. We were really at the helm of the, just trying to get it passed through regulatory compliance and get it adopted by and paid for by carriers. And the US health system was and still, is super lethargic when it comes to technology and innovation. However, thanks to COVID, this was one blessing is that the technology advancements and regulatory red tape has been somewhat eased. And so people were able to utilize this technology, which I knew, we all knew it was going to be life-changing, life-saving. So after that, that didn’t really pan out too well due to some poor choice in partners on my behalf. So I then started Polaris. This was like six years ago, five, six years ago. And like I said, initially, it became just, it was started as a consulting company because I had enough professional network that I can lean on where people were like, “Hey, come help on this project.” Or everybody pretty much knew me already. So it was just me. But then I was like, “Well, I’m just me, how much is my time? My time is finite.” So I have to come up with something that’s still within the realm of marketing because I’m passionate about it. I love watching things grow and marketing is one of those things that it’s quantifiable. You can see what’s working, you can see what isn’t for the most part, especially digitally. And so, hence that’s how the evolution of this whole thing came about.

George: Well, I agree. It’s easier to go to sleep at night in marketing in 2021 because we can sit down and we can look at a dashboard and we can see results and we can see the needle is moving. So that’s amazing.

Jenni: Right.

Be Engaged

George: I do wanna, you said something earlier that I think is really interesting for all of our channel partners and aspiring channel partners that may be listening to this podcast. And that is I train my client on how to use the tools and I take them in it and I walk them through it. It’s really important, isn’t it?

Jenni: Yeah, super important. You know, not everybody wants to be that engaged with the platform. Although I will tell you that the more I can get them engaged, the less reliant on me they are, or my team. And another thing that I’ve used is a little hack that I’ll share with you is coordinating meetings constantly is exhausting. And so what I’m doing now is I’m just turning on my Zoom, starting a video, starting a recording, and I’ll just do it in one take, and I’ll be like, “Hey, so-and-so, I just wanted to show you really quickly to answer your question. This is how you can see.” And I’ll just literally, boom, boom, boom, click, click, click. I’ll walk them through. I’ll do it in under a minute. And I’ll answer all their questions from six emails in less than 60 seconds, as opposed to, “When do you have time to hop on a Zoom? Okay, can I share my screen? Okay, can you see my screen now? Great and now can you, okay. I’m clicking through here. Okay, can you go to yours?” Okay, I don’t have to do all of that. So I’m doing these little things. And then, like I was asking my client last night, he actually just, he’s actually last night had my last call at like 5:00 PM Pacific time, and he said okay, “I wanna do more, I wanna do more. So we’re gonna do more.” And I said, “Hey, by the way, was that video helpful?” And he said, “Yeah, it was super helpful.” So I’m using things like that so that I can get them to feel comfortable doing it on their own.

George: We appreciate the work that you’ve been doing on cracking the code of how to deliver the platform in a way that the customers find value. And I was hoping we could get maybe two tips from you as to things that you’ve learned over the last couple of years around how to make that, it is a complex story. And I love that iceberg analogy, although I hope nobody, the boat doesn’t sink or something by hitting the iceberg.

Jenni: No, no, no, no.

George: There’s a lot of nice penguins on here and we’re gonna have a great time.

Jenni: Like the motivational poster.

George: Okay, so there’s a lot more underneath the hood. But I would love just two tips that I’m sure they’re probably hard-earned lessons that you had around, how do you make all of this confusing stuff make sense for the local hardware store owner?

Jenni: Okay, so I think, the easiest way to explain it is that like let’s take somebody from the hardware store that, why can’t I just do things on the yellow pages anymore? Right, okay. So basically now the yellow page has turned into every page is part of your advertisement. So we have to integrate as many pieces as possible into one place and consolidate. And that’s what I would really refer to it as a consolidation of time, energy, and resources in one hub. And if they can just forget everything else that they’ve ever logged into and just log into this one place, we can walk them through and teach them systematically how to manage their reviews, their reputation, their score, their ranking, their social media, if they have any, impressions, et cetera. And so instead of it’s seriously a tool, it’s no pun intended ’cause the hardware. Yeah, thank you, I laughed at my own joke. It’s seriously just, it’s a tool to save time, energy, and resources, and it’s consolidate everything in one place.

George: I love that analogy, what I’m digging for and I think that you’ve said it, but I wanted to just punctuate it. There’s a level of repetition that is needed with the customers so that they can see that information.

Jenni: Yeah.

George: And I think what I heard from you, and if you could validate this, eventually they start consuming it on their own.

Jenni: Yeah, yeah, they do. Yeah, like, again, it depends on who on the team is the one accessing the platform. But like I’m seeing a higher utilization with maybe somebody that’s in the office posting the social or that already has, they’ve already been using some platform. They’ve been using Hootsuite or they’ve been using something to do some postings or to do some review requests or something of that matter. Maybe not the business owner themselves, but eventually the business owner is gonna want that bird’s eye view. They’re gonna want that, A to Z, soup to nuts overview of like, what is the lay of the land? What their business landscape is looking like digitally. So I keep in touch with both, in terms of my high utilizer, in terms of the user something account. I also make sure that obviously, we stay sticky with the owner, obviously, they’re the ones that are paying for the service. So you wanna keep showing value and keep showing them that, “Hey, we’re here. These are our wins. This is what I think you should do differently. Now is the time for this.” And that stays important because digital marketing is an evolutionary process for two reasons. One, because you don’t have to start with everything. You just have to start with something that’s gonna make an impact. Then as you grow, depending on the needs of the client, you add on additional services and products that are gonna again, move the needle for them and help them with growth, maintaining their spot in the ecosystem, opening a new location, whatever that is. So not to mention all of the new products that Vendasta is coming out, what do you guys do, like one a week or something? Or one new product a month?

George: Could be one an hour, at some point.

Jenni: One an hour? So as-

George: It’s interesting that you bring that up because the iceberg analogy or I like to call it a beast, but a good beast. We want that innovation. If we’re really going to help our customers, but at the same time, you don’t need to give it all. In fact, that might be a bit of a detriment. The thing I’d love to understand, when you are working with these clients, how much duplication are you finding in the budget? Like when you really dig under the hood, you have a level of trust. And you’re like, “Okay, where are you spending money today? Let’s see the results from that.” And they pull out the ubiquitous Excel spreadsheet where they’re monitoring everything. Are you finding a lot of duplication or the ability to move budget to get a better ROI? Or they don’t even know what the hell they’re buying?

Jenni: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, if it’s a full-on consulting client like that, almost always. That first client that I gave you the example of where I really, he let me just have the keys to everything. And he was like, “I don’t know, you can figure it out. I give up.” I went in and I was like, “You are spending so much money, TV ads. I’m like, where’s the results from this?” Anyway, we reallocate, I think I, I don’t even remember anymore. I probably saved him over 25,000, I don’t know so much money. Plus through the systems, I was able to put in place, made him hundreds of thousands of dollars. I mean, there’s no, like, that’s how I wanna prove my value to people is just save them money, make them money and keep them, keep our loyalty just help me and I’ll help you. If you survive, I survive. If you grow, I grow.

George: It makes the monthly business review and quarterly business review meetings a lot easier when you’re laser-focused on growing that business the same way the business owner is.

Jenni: Yes.

George: I’ve heard that so many times. I also wanted to test something with you. I was talking to a business owner the other day, they own 19 businesses, so not small businesses. And our conversation was around efficiency. And this business owner said, “I know we’re wasting money. If you can show me a way to prove that and to show me a better way to do it, I’ll move everything to you.” Are you finding that where, because you have this very robust platform now, you can start to solve a lot more problems?

Jenni: Yeah, I was again with that client, my five o’clock meeting last night, we were having the same kind of conversation. Now, this is a newer client. We’re like two weeks in. We haven’t even turned on very much yet. It’s really been just sort of a discovery phase, but he’s not afraid to spend money. He knows what he can do. He knows his place in the marketplace. And he wanted to do, it went from us being super focused like you said, for starters into this really, really big thing. And I said, “I’m not ready to do that right now. I think we need to isolate out the deliverables and the pain points that you have right now and then add on more as we go.” But I finally got to the bottom yesterday when I was talking to him about I’m like, “What platforms are you using for all your social posting?” And he said, “Well, you keep asking me that, I forgot to tell you.” And he said, “We’re not using anything.” And I said, But you are creating one video a day on YouTube. You are a content machine, but there’s no coordinated effort to,” I said, “Okay, so I’m gonna go back to the drawing board. I’m gonna prepare a new proposal, so everything we’re doing already stands. We’re gonna prepare a new proposal. And this is gonna be the next component of what I’m gonna put in there.” Now to answer your question about spend and leakage and spending money on marketing that is going nowhere. That’s another component of let’s say some of it could be marketing. Some of it could also be time, because if you are spending all your time creating for one platform, and you’re not seeing results on that, maybe your audience is on another platform. Maybe you need to start looking into not just YouTube, but LinkedIn. Maybe you need to look into creating a Facebook group. Maybe you need to look, you know what I’m saying? So I can go into a business and find out, Okay, here’s where you’re spending and it’s not reproducing an ROI or not enough ROI, but you’re doing it on maybe the wrong platform, or we need to cross-post or cross-pollinate with other platforms to find your audience and other places, so, yeah.”

George: Well, I hear that. So I hear that so many times. Thank you for giving us that nugget, because what you’re dealing with there, correct me if I’m wrong is a client who recognizes they need to be on social. They’re organically producing this content. And you walk in with something that, for you probably is just table stakes. And they, it’s like, the heavens are smiling on them and they’ve discovered something brand new, and lo and behold, it builds Jenni’s trust with that customer that you’ve only been working with for two weeks.

Jenni: Yeah, yeah, for sure.

George: What I find is some channel partners say, “Well, they’ve got that covered.” Yeah, but their lives might suck because they’re spending all their time doing that in a non-efficient way, they don’t really know if it’s working, but they know they need to be there. I need to be doing this thing, but I don’t know. So again, you uncover that there’s a way to maybe accelerate that or make it a lot more efficient. I love asking this question. If we were to go back about a year ago, a year and a half ago, what’s one thing that you would do differently from when you started this adventure? One thing where you’re like, “Jenni, I wish I wouldn’t have done X.”

Jenni: I actually wished I would’ve, not something I wouldn’t have done. I wish something that I would have done. I wish I would have been more vocal about launching this part of the business. I really wasn’t promoting what I was doing. I really wasn’t speaking to my friends, family, and audiences. I really, I wasn’t people were like, “What are you doing these days? What are you doing?” And I was like, “I’m trying to figure something out.” I was like, “I’ll tell you when I get there.” But I was working and we were getting clients. I had good recurring monthly revenue. I mean, it was decent. I was surviving, I wasn’t thriving, but it was, it’s just, I wish I had been more courageous to put it out there and say, “Hey, what’s up everybody? This is what I’m doing.” ‘Cause, this is the thing that I’ve noticed when you put yourself out there and you say, “This is what I’m doing, or I need some help with this. Or has anybody worked with this before? Any reviews of this software.” Like just put it out there. People wanna help you. People want to see you succeed. I think genuinely, most human beings are pretty kind and decent and really want the best for other people. And I don’t do it in a, I’m not like obsessed with Instagram or some no offense to anybody that is, but I’m just, I’m pretty much just me across the board 24/7, no matter if it’s digital or in-person. So when I put something out there it’s authentic and people do wanna help. And I wish that I had been more vocal and more, and I wish I had shared more.

George: I appreciate you sharing that with us because I think that that’s one thing when people are, well, I’m gonna start a business. I’m going to be a digital marketing consultant for lack of, let’s use that terminology and then they, well, I’m gonna have to buy a list. I’m like, “Oh really? So you’re gonna go buy a list of leads of people you have no idea who they are. Don’t you know some people that get their income from owning a business?” “Yeah, well, my uncle has this business over here and my aunt has that business, my cousin and my,” Well, why don’t we go deal with those folks that we have a relationship with and help those people. And maybe it comes from my days in the media business. When if I wanted to start another radio station that didn’t work out too well for my colleague Tbone and me, ’cause it’s expensive and you got to get licensing. And, but now in order to start a digital marketing business, there are no boundaries around that. You can go within your peer group. You can, your kid’s little league team. There’s gotta be a business owner on there that you could be talking to. Where are you finding those next customers for Polaris?

Jenni: I’m really glad you said that, George, because I feel like, again, this is like a very, this business model, I really believe that I don’t wanna say it’s for every single person, it’s not. You have to be a self-starter. You have to be self-reliant. You have to have ambition. You have to be patient. You don’t have to be tech-minded, but you do have to be diligent and you do have to do it. You have to put in the work. You have to watch the videos, read through the articles, click through them, do your training. You have to do all that. And the reason why I’m saying that is because I do believe that this can be a game-changer for people that wanna be their own business. That wanna be an entrepreneur. But you, this is like a business in a box solution. Okay, it’s not gonna do your taxes for you. You still have to have somebody who’s gonna help you do your taxes. And someone’s gonna be probably a business advisor. We all need mentors, but I am finding my clients through, again, my network, staying active on LinkedIn. Crossposting I’m using the platform. I’ll give you a little tidbit. I didn’t post. I was like the doctor that smoked was like telling all their patients, “Don’t smoke, it’s bad for you.” And I’m like, ” smoke.” I don’t smoke, but I’m just saying. I wasn’t taking my own medicine. So I wasn’t doing any social posting. When I finally started doing the social posting. And I just did it for one week because like, I was just like, “Let me just create some content and blah, blah, blah, blah, post it out.” I got a 288% increase in web traffic just for that week from social posting and I could tell it was coming. You can tell where it’s coming from on Google analytics. So then I brought on somebody on my team, Kara, and I said, “Okay, we need to do this consistently for me.” So she’s now doing all my social posting. Now I’m getting more, sort of organic traffic from that. And I will tell you that you don’t have to be an influencer to get people to pay attention to your business. You don’t, you just have to be relevant. You just have to be consistent and relevant and you can start posting things on your social platforms and get business like that. You can do your own lead gen. You can find your key products and services that are working for you and you can advertise those. You can do specials on those. You can figure out your profit margin and say, “Hey, it’s worth it for me. What’s my client retention?” Right, do I keep people for six months, a year, two years, forever? Okay, then my lifetime average value for that client is X for this product, I’m gonna offer it at Y. So you just have to have some diligence in what you’re doing and make sure that you understand the platform so that you can be the authority. And I know that it can be intimidating at first because it was for me, I took, I had a longer learning curve. I don’t even think I touched it for like two or three months, for real. Like, I was like, I can’t deal with this, it’s the holidays, et cetera. And then I finally, in January, I started digging in and it’s been, I know that in I’m sort of doubling up pretty much every two months. So I know that if I hit the right pace here, I can clock in. I know I can make a seven-figure agency out of this. I know I can. I know I can and I feel.

George: I have zero doubt after speaking to you for the last half an hour, that you’re gonna do it as well. And it’s because of that you care, you care about your clients, you work hard for them. You also care about other things too, because I know that giving back is a big part of your philosophy.

Jenni: Yeah.

George: And I want our entrepreneurs that are listening to understand why this is an important component to being in business and I’d love to hear it from you.

Jenni: Okay, so I read The Evolved. I didn’t actually read the whole thing I shouldn’t say that. There’s a great article on “Evolved Enterprise” and the Evolved Enterprise models. And this is by Yanik Silver. He says that “Businesses that are going to really make an impact in the future are going to be businesses that have a social enterprise component to what they do.” And I really believed in that because if I was left to my own devices, I would be running nonprofits 24/7, I wouldn’t do it. If money did not exist and I didn’t have to put a roof over my head and take care of my family and plan for retirement, I would be just helping people 24/7. So that’s me, but not everybody’s like that. Back to Yanik Silver, He says, “If you create a business model that has some social enterprise as a component of your capitalistic endeavor, then you are going to be far and above your competition. You’re going to have more sustainability. You’re going to have more support. You’re going to have more people that wanna work with you because of that, because of your alignment, mission, vision, and values.” So what I do is I try to figure out, like, I like people. I like working with people. I have some of my favorite people that I get to work with. I try to figure out how can I work with, A, the people that I like. B, how can we all make money? C, how can we give back? And one of my clients called Dev Pipeline is an apprenticeship model. And so we actually have a department of labor apprenticeship approved for front-end web developer. And so this was actually founded by a brilliant CEO entrepreneur software developer named Jason Fletcher. He actually was one of the first founders, co-founders of AtTask, which then became Workfront, which was recently acquired by Adobe for $1.5 billion in December. So full disclosure he also happens to be my brother. So he came to me in September and he said, “I have this great idea. I wanna help all these people. It’s my legacy give back. I just wanna teach people how to become great software developers, because there’s really no mentorship. And the way that the corporate culture goes with tech talent is there’s a lot of poaching. There’s a lot of basically we’re at a year, a million jobs a year go unsealed in the technology sector because we don’t have enough people trained. So these big tech giants are out there poaching from one another taking talent, but they’re not spending the time to cultivate. I shouldn’t say they’re not, but there isn’t enough cultivation of talent within these organizations or mentorship to get people to be ready and able to take on that junior development role to become relevant in those corporations. So Jason’s concept is to create apprenticeship model. So we got together with the department of labor, the department of workforce services, the department of economic development, any department you can possibly think of, educational institutions, corporate, employer partners. And we developed a concept where basically we’re at, I don’t know what our total is right now, but we’re less than a year in, and we’re hitting our stride. We’re changing the lives of lots and lots of people, and it’s just gonna be an epic ride. So my contribution to that is the strategic partnership element, but also the nonprofit element that we’re now creating through that company, there’s gonna be a whole scholarship. So this is basically earn while you learn. We believe that internships are great, but it also, an unpaid internship is very hard on some people in families. So we wanna make sure that we provide a living wage to people while they’re being apprenticed and mentored. And so the next component is we’re probably gonna do up to five apprenticeships and of course, marketing, my favorite is gonna be one of them. And so what I get to do through that is I get to mentor some of the apprentices in marketing. And of course, we’re using the Vendasta platform to do that. So we may be in talks later George, about the next evolution of some really cool apprenticeships to do that with. And that’s gonna be a component of what Polaris Marketing & Consulting is going to do as well.

Conclusion

George: Well, Jenni, congratulations. And I love seeing that, of course, because we need more developers and it’s great to be building out ecosystems to find that talent. And you’re right. There’s way more opportunity than there are people trained to be able to do the work. So I’m training my grandson, Walter, to write code at a year and a half.

Jenni: Yeah, are you serious?

George: Well, I don’t know how to write codes, so I don’t know how well the training is going, but, he can always be a salesperson.

Jenni: He’s gonna write Shakespeare. It’s going to be like a –

George: He can always be a salesperson.

Jenni: Right.

George: Jenni, I appreciate your time today. And thank you for all of those learnings.

Jenni: Thank you George. Yeah, thank you.

George: You bring something that we talk a lot about on the show and Colleen’s gonna be mad at me because she didn’t wanna put an E on this. So I’m gonna call it the give-a-stuff metric. You care and I can’t say that enough when we’re talking to other folks that are dealing with clients, if you come to that customer and you truly care about them and you learn about their business, you’ve got a way better chance of gaining a new client and a better chance of building a great relationship with that customer that will last long into the future. So thank you for sharing and congratulations on your business.

Jenni: Thank you.

George: It’s an exciting model and I’m sure that things are going to go well for you. You definitely have the right stuff.

Jenni: Thanks George, and thanks to everybody on the team, it was awesome to talk with you all. And I really enjoyed it.

George: Well, Jenni is amazing. And I’m sure her customers feel that way too because she definitely cares. And she’s looking to help solve the challenges that they have. And the one takeaway, and you probably wrote this down as well, is let’s record a video, walking the customer through the things that they need to know about, and then they can consume it at their own pace. But definitely let’s show them the software. Let’s show them the reporting. Let’s show them the data and then articulate it in a way that we can make it make sense. That’s brilliant. And I love the way that she has scaled that motion. We have to have that strategy call. It is so important where we talk about what’s working, what’s not, and how we’re gonna improve the things that are not working. That’s what we’re getting paid for. I think the customers are smart enough to know that there is no silver bullet. We just, we’re gonna turn this thing on. And money is gonna rain from the heavens. It’s more of a process and it’s more of a journey. And your job is to take that customer, hold their hand and take them on the tour. And that right there, that one component allows you to scale it. You can record those videos in the middle of the night when you’ve got a big day tomorrow, where you’re meeting other customers and just send them out. And then if they, “Hey, I got that video, but I have some further questions.” Mission accomplished. You’re sending the video to show value. You’re sending the video to help them save time. You’re sending the video to teach them the things that they need to know about. And by doing it in a way that they could consume it whenever they want. And if it leads to a further conversation, it’s exactly what you’re looking for. It isn’t this one and done set it, forget it, just not gonna work anymore. And there isn’t one size that fits all. So we need to get in there. We need to work with the customer, but Jenni just gave you a nugget on how to do it in a scalable manner. So some great learnings from Jenni, as she talks about how she got onto the platform. She talked about the fact that she is a consultant and she has that level of trust. And now the other thing is where her leads are coming from. She’s not getting leads because she signed up to software. She’s getting leads because of the network that she’s built because of the brand that she’s built. And even Jenni is learning that if she spends more time on LinkedIn and she continues to cultivate that brand and practices, what she preaches a little bit, she’s able to find more referrals and more new customers within her ecosystem. I really appreciate having those channel partners come on board and share with us the learnings, the good, the bad, the not-so-good, and how they were able to take the platform and find success with it. And we appreciate the few minutes that Jenni was able to share on some of the customers that she’s been dealing with as well because it’s great to hear about those clients that are finding success through our partners. We appreciate you joining us on this edition of the Conquer Local Podcast. My name is George Leith. I’ll see you when I see you.