Steve Guberman [00:00:29]:Thanks for tuning in. This is Bite Sized Agency Briefs. I'm your host, Steve Guberman, from Agency OutSight, where I coach agency owners to build the agency of their dreams. Today, I am through the moon, like, through the roof excited to be able to talk to Elise Benun. She's a longtime friend. I've seen her as a mentor, early trailblazer in in coaching space, speaker, author of 7 books, and the owner of Marketing Mentor where she helps creative professionals get better clients with bigger budgets by focusing on mindset, marketing, and money. Thank you so much for being here with me today. It means the world.Ilise Benun [00:01:05]:Oh, Steve, it's a pleasure. I've known you for so long, and it's just been lovely to see your evolution. Steve Guberman [00:01:12]:Oh, thank you. That it really means the world. I was trying to think when we met, and I think it's been about 20 years. I think it was at a Kean University or an ad a New Jersey ad club event or something.Ilise Benun [00:01:23]:I think you're right. Steve Guberman [00:01:23]:And I I remember thinking I own an agency. She coaches agencies. Why do agent who are these people that need coaches? I didn't it didn't really connect until I also needed a coach. It was like, shoot, now it makes a lot of sense. But you've always been a source of just great knowledge and wisdom and experience for creative professionals to tap into. And so I guess my my first question is really about, like, why creative professionals? And, like, where does that resonate for you as a coach?Ilise Benun [00:01:58]:Well, I kind of have to credit my mother Okay. Because she is a creative. She's a designer, actually. And I kind of feel like she is the prototype client for me. And learning how to deal with her and her sensibility growing up just set me up to speak in a way I think and communicate in a way and be heard by creatives in a way that you know, because it's not like I say anything all that different from what some other coach says, but there's something about my style that seems to resonate with creatives. And I noticed that very early on as I was trying to figure out what is my positioning, what is my niche. Creative people, actors, singers, artists, dancers in New York, you know, you're just surrounded by them as I was when I moved there. And they were drawn to me, so I was like, alright.Ilise Benun [00:03:05]:Let me see how I can help. And it's just evolved over the years. So thanks, mom. Steve Guberman [00:03:11]:So but you you were never as a, like, quote, unquote creative professional, never had an agency, never worked in an agency.Ilise Benun [00:03:26]:But I had 2 jobs out of college. My degree is in Spanish. And, actually, underneath it all, I do feel like I'm helping translate. So the language skills and the language learning is integrated at a very deep level even if it's not superficially. And often, I feel like I am helping creatives translate their message, their talents, their creativity for a business audience that speaks a business language. And sometimes there's miscommunication because of that. And so I'm kind of a go between, as part of that. Steve Guberman [00:04:10]:Yeah. And that's, like, so vital. You know, I'm thinking about my journey as a creative professional and an agency owner. It was like, I'm I'm a great designer. Just hire me. But you can't go spouting that out in the hopes of winning new clients, so you help translate that into the message that the creative owner, you know, the shop will use for, you know, we help b to b whatevers do this, and, that's part of your overall marketing process that you work with creators on?Ilise Benun [00:04:44]:Yes. I mean, 1st certainly comes identifying their market because as we were saying earlier, focus is the key to success in my opinion. And a lot of people kind of rail against the idea of focus creatives, especially, because they're afraid of being bored by being too kind of honed in on one particular thing or pigeonholed. But I do think that if you choose a market that is deep and that has needs, you don't need all that many clients no matter what size you are, truthfully. And so, really, what they want is to be able to say, oh, yeah. This guy or this gal or this agency knows exactly what I need. And so what I help do is first identify, well, who do you wanna focus on so that we can then say something that speaks to them. But most of the time, people do it backwards.Ilise Benun [00:05:45]:They think, well, what is my message, and how am I different from everyone? But it's all abstract. It has to be contextualized and, like, compared to whom or in what context. So all of that, I think, is part of what needs translating because the business mindset, a lot of creatives just look at it and say, oh, no, that's not me. I will never be able to think like that or do that. And I personally think it's a skill that can be learned and you can bring your creativity to the business side of your business and make it fun for you. Make it varied for you. Not this fantasy that people have of I'm gonna get bored and I'm not gonna be able to do it and it's not gonna be fun. And, like, no.Ilise Benun [00:06:33]:That's not necessarily true. It's up to you. It's your business. You get to do whatever you want. Steve Guberman [00:06:39]:Is that last part, I guess, the reason why maybe so many creative professionals struggle so much with their own branding, their own messaging? Like, what are your thoughts there? Why why we all just kinda stink with we do agree for our clients, kinda stink for ourselves. Why do you think that is?Ilise Benun [00:06:59]:Because I don't think we have the distance on ourselves to see what the client sees or what the market sees. And some people can develop that distance and be listening. I try to teach people to listen to the market in such a way that you have the distance to say, oh, well, they're, let's say, complimenting me. When you get a testimonial, when you get, a wonderful piece of praise or a recommendation on your LinkedIn profile, It feels good. Yes. Of course. And you wanna do it because you like the praise. But it's all information also.Ilise Benun [00:07:36]:And so you have to take that kind of information as intel, basically, about the market and then use it in your marketing. And most people are kind of stuck at the they love me place Mhmm. And don't get to and how can I then just regurgitate that language, basically, on my website and in my messaging and in my social media and on my LinkedIn profile? It's a mental block, and that's why I talk about focusing on mindset because you gotta get rid of all these mental blocks of what you can and cannot do as a creative in order to see the world the way your market and your clients see you so that you can speak their language, essentially. Steve Guberman [00:08:21]:Okay. Cool. Sorry about that. What about niches? I know I I can remember talking to you decades ago thinking about niches and vertical markets and kind of owning that in messaging. You're and what you're saying through your process and through your philosophy is, like, understanding yourself and the services that you do, that you provide, and who you provide it for. Owning a niche, I mean, how does that play in your process?Ilise Benun [00:08:45]:Yeah. I mean, that's kind of what I mean by focus. So a vertical market or niche is one way to think about focus. From a marketing point of view, I think it's one of the best ways because if you have a horizontal niche, let's say, you do web design, you do strategic marketing for anyone, that doesn't help you in your marketing. It doesn't tell you who to be speaking to. But if you have a vertical niche, if your focus is, you know, STEM education companies, for example, or a certain type of Fintech or financial technology companies, then you can just drill down and find the events they go to, the directories they're on, the all the different places, the things they read, the groups they are members of on LinkedIn. There is your marketing literally, there's your market, the tangible elements of your market, and that makes your marketing really easy. And I think one of the things that gets in the way of creatives doing their own marketing is that they don't take the shortcut.Ilise Benun [00:09:55]:And the shortcut is who do you have access to? Who do you have the easiest access to? And if you can start there and get something going and use what I think of as kind of an experimental, let's try this. Let's try that. Alright. Let's see what works. Does this message work? Does this one resonate a little bit better? Does 3 messages in 1 week overwhelm people versus 1 every week for a month? What is gonna work for you and your market? And that's all the elements that need to be figured out. Steve Guberman [00:10:27]:What are your yeah. And I think that makes perfect sense. You have to try new things just like you would for your clients. Try different things for yourself, different messaging, different cadences, different delivery mechanisms. What about as far as I'm in a niche, and I maybe I wanna expand out of 1 vertical because it's kind of a scary place to be if you're only in 1 vertical. Let's say that industry tanks or, you know, we saw that during COVID a lot. Do you have exercises that you would recommend agencies or owners or creatives can go through to say, what would be a good neighbor niche, or how do I, you know, how do I explore what other niches I play well in?Ilise Benun [00:11:03]:Right. Well, what's adjacent, for example? Mhmm. Right? And a niche adjacent. Yeah. I mean, generally, even if you're within one niche, you should have sub niches within that niche or 2 or 3 areas of focus so that you're not completely invested in 1. We did learn that. And sometimes it's a question of talking to your clients to see who they, are in touch with and who do they see their market as similar to. Or, for example, I have one client whose focus has been associations.Ilise Benun [00:11:44]:And associations were really hit hard, during COVID as well when no events were happening. And but the membership aspect of associations is very similar to the subscription business, which started to grow during COVID. Right? So they could very easily just transport and translate, again, their message to this other market that needed something similar but didn't know how to approach it in the first place. So they could say, we're new to this market, but we have knowledge that comes from this other market that can be easily applied and tweaked perhaps a little bit, but works just as well. So you have to think creatively. That's one way, of bringing your creativity to the business side of your business is what niches are similar yet different that have similar needs and pain points. Steve Guberman [00:12:42]:Yeah. So other than the love of alliteration, why or what led you to hone in on on marketing, money, and mindset?Ilise Benun [00:12:56]:I do love the alliteration. Steve Guberman [00:12:59]:Big fan.Ilise Benun [00:12:59]:But, really, those are, yes, those are the 3 areas, it turns out, of weakness for most creatives. The mindset piece underlies everything, and it often has to do with a lack of self confidence for some reason, often with what I call experienced newbies that you might be able to relate to that idea, yourself, Steve. Right? Like, you've had 20 years, 25 years of running an agency, and now you're doing this new coaching thing. And you may not feel confident right off the bat because there's something new. And yet Mhmm. You do have all this experience that you should bring that confidence to bear, Ilise, past confidence to bear on the new thing that you're doing because you have life experience and business experience and all these things. But this is one of the places I see creatives getting stuck, especially. So that underlies everything.Ilise Benun [00:14:02]:And then out of that, in terms of actually building a business, there's the creative work itself. And a lot of people say, well, I get word-of-mouth. People just find me. They come to me. I get referrals. As if that's a wonderful thing, truthfully. I don't think it is. Another way of looking at it is taking whatever comes along.Ilise Benun [00:14:24]:It may not be exactly what you want, but it also means you're complacent and you don't put the time and the effort into figuring out, well, who do I want to work with? And how much money do I need to make? And who's gonna be able to get me there? And so marketing and money are the two pieces of that puzzle. So just turned out that they all start with m. Steve Guberman [00:14:45]:Yeah. I like to refer to it as, like, opportunistic growth. Like, yeah. We we got to a great place through referrals and word-of-mouth, but you can't plan strategic growth through referrals and word-of-mouth. So, so you're talking about putting the mindset into yeah. Talk about what is the simplest marketing plan. It sounds like the greatest thing on Earth.Ilise Benun [00:15:07]:Thank you. For the last 5 years, I've basically distilled what I've learned over 35 years of helping creatives market themselves into this right now, it's a 13 page document that's embedded with all sorts of rich media, and it's also a program that I run, a year long program. And, basically, it's the it the pillar has 3 marketing tools. And the idea is that you don't have to do all those things because most people are totally overwhelmed by all the marketing tactics they could be using. Mhmm. And I say no. Three marketing tools, that's all you need, but you have to do them all together. Not necessarily all at the same time, but simultaneously because they feed each other.Ilise Benun [00:15:52]:The 3 of them are, I call strategic networking, which is unlike unstrategic networking, which is kind of like just going to the local chamber of commerce, unless that's strategic for you, if small business, for example Steve Guberman [00:16:05]:Mhmm.Ilise Benun [00:16:06]:Is your market, which is fine if it is. But that's what most people think of. Oh, I'm gonna go to a business card exchange or I hate business card exchanges, so I can't do marketing. No. Strategic networking, which is basically finding your people and meeting them in person, ideally, in real time, ideally, and beginning to develop relationships. Because people work with people they know and like, and it's all about building relationships. So that's your first tool, strategic networking. The second one is high quality, what I call, bat signal content marketing.Ilise Benun [00:16:44]:So that's basically where you create content in whatever format makes sense. Right? I've got a podcast I've been doing for, I don't know, 15 years or so. That's one of my content marketing tools. I speak. I write books. I guest on other people's podcasts. I write articles. I am a bit of a content machine.Ilise Benun [00:17:04]:You don't have to be a content machine. But the idea is creating content that speaks to the needs and the pain points of your market. It's not all about you and look at my wonderful work. It has to speak to them so that they see, oh, this person, this agency knows exactly what I need, so they obviously can help me. And it just supports your networking, and it supports the 3rd tool, which is targeted outreach, sometimes known as warm calling or warm prospecting or cold calling. But essentially, you hand picking, cherry picking the companies and organizations that you want to work with, but don't know you exist yet. And so you have to say, hey. We're out here.Ilise Benun [00:17:50]:We love what you're doing. We'd really love to help. We've got lots of ideas. If and when you're in your moment of need, reach out to us, and we'd love to talk. And then because most people are not in their moment of need when you just happen to reach out to them, you have to stay in touch over time to build the relationship that you may not even feel is happening, but it is. And use your content marketing to keep top of mind. So that's how the three tools work together, and that is the core of the simplest marketing plan. And anyone can do it.Ilise Benun [00:18:23]:Right? There's no secret to it. It's not the secret marketing plan. It's the simplest marketing plan. It's just that it takes a lot of, discipline and motivation and consistency and accountability to actually do it every day, maybe 30 minutes a day. That's what I recommend. Steve Guberman [00:18:43]:Yeah. And and so it's a year long program where you're kind of holding them accountable to, did you do outreach today? Did you write a blog post today? Did you do you know, go to the chamber or whatever that event is? 1 on 1, group coaching? How does it work?Ilise Benun [00:18:59]:It's both. I mean, the program is basically, a process of instructing, but also mostly just carving out time for people to do their marketing. Because I noticed that that's I mean, often people know what they should be doing. They just don't do it. And so my program was designed to basically carve out the time and give you buddies for accountability so that you can hold each other accountable over the course of a year. Because you can't just do it for a month and hope something's gonna come out of it. That is what that's how we get feast or famine, and that's what we're trying to avoid. Steve Guberman [00:19:37]:Yeah. I'm a big fan of time blocking. Is that a a part of what you're kind of prescribing to people that take on the simplest marketing plan?Ilise Benun [00:19:48]:Absolutely. Yes. I mean, that every I mean, I recommend first thing, 30 minutes a day, do your marketing, whatever it is. Some things take longer. Sometimes if you don't have 30, take 15, Go on LinkedIn, do some commenting, invite a couple people to connect. Just keep building these habits of consistency and reaching out and interacting with people. Often, I think it's easier to work on your own website and upload something new to your portfolio, but that doesn't bring you into contact with your market. And that's where the clients come from.Ilise Benun [00:20:25]:They're out there, and so you need to make contact with them, essentially. And that's what the marketing needs to be. And that's where I think people really kind of struggle and resist and talk to themselves about why they shouldn't or what's gonna happen if they do it and all of that. You just gotta Steve Guberman [00:20:42]:stop. And I think there's a, an immense amount to be learned from I mean, for years, you've put out nothing but useful and helpful content. I don't know that I've ever seen you put something braggadocious out. Granted, you're not designing logos to say, look how pretty my work is, but the the things that you put out are to help creative professionals. So there's a a really good cue for creative professionals to learn from that is don't just put out how great they are. Put out helpful content. Like, sure, a case study about the brand lift or the number of widgets they sold on Black Friday or whatever and help their clients, but how can they help with what their clients' needs are through helpful content? Is that also what you're recommending?Ilise Benun [00:21:27]:Totally. I mean, I'm all about the pain points. You have to be listening for the pain points. Let them tell you what's the worst thing about the last agency they hired. Right? Or even a piece of content that says what to look for in an agency before you hire them or the 5 top ten mistakes many organizations make when they hire their first agency. Whatever it is, it has to be useful to them, and it has to say, we've been there. We know what you're struggling with, and we're not like all those other ones. Steve Guberman [00:22:02]:Sorry. Yeah. These blanks you're gonna need to get is it's frustrating. So I wanna ask about mindset. You've been doing this for so long. And, again, I'm gonna toot your horn all day long because I just just absolutely love you and admire you, and I think that you have blazed an amazing trail and worked with so many creative professionals. Do you ever or do you still suffer from that imposter syndrome of I can't do this today or this client is gonna fire me at 2 o'clock, or whatever those mindset things are for you.Ilise Benun [00:22:35]:No. I don't. And I'll tell you why. Steve Guberman [00:22:37]:Okay.Ilise Benun [00:22:37]:I think and this is this is part of the mindset. It doesn't actually take years years to develop, but I really believe that I don't need anyone. Right? I'm not saying I don't need anyone. I'm saying I don't need anyone. I need everyone. And that means I need multiple prospects at any given time, a few of whom are ready to convert at any point, especially when I need them to. And if I keep doing my marketing on a regular basis, I will have that pipeline in place as anyone will, as you will, the listener. Right? Or as you will, Steve.Ilise Benun [00:23:20]:Right? As long as I do my marketing, then I don't get too attached to any one particular client or one particular project because the reality is there's a beginning, a middle, and an end to everything. And Mhmm. Things come and go, and everything's got a season. And, really, I do kind of feel Ilise easy come, easy go. There are just so many opportunities out there once you open your eyes and start to see them. But when people aren't doing their marketing, they're really focused on their work, and they don't want anyone to bother them. And they just can't see the opportunity that's out there. And so that's part of the mindset issue with marketing is that you just have to see from a positive point of view.Ilise Benun [00:24:04]:Like, yeah, there's a lot out there, but I've gotta go find it, and I've gotta make it happen. Steve Guberman [00:24:10]:Yeah. I also love the idea that and I don't know if it I I seem to attribute it to, like, a Seth Godin audio clip in my mind somehow where it's Ilise, there's 6,000,000 clients out there. You don't need 6,000,000 clients. You need 10% of that. And so, you know, if you lose 1, there's more out there for you with that kind of mindset also. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Ilise Benun [00:24:31]:And I feel Ilise, also, don't don't be in a hurry to hold on to absolutely everything, especially at the beginning. People are like, oh, no. I can't lose any client. No. You wanna lose those first few because you probably made some mistakes on them too. Better better to move on. Steve Guberman [00:24:56]:Yeah. It'll open the door to something bigger, something better. You know? Same same kind of sympathy thing we say in a breakup. It's okay. There's a better relationship down the road. You know? Same thing with the client. So I I also love that kind of mindset. You you always have been a big proponent of have the have the money talk up front. Steve Guberman [00:25:15]:Get that out of the way. Be proactive about it. Creatives struggle with the money talk. They struggle to ask about budget. They struggle and by they, I mean me, we struggle to charge the right amount, whether it's mathematically we don't know the right amount or courageously we don't know how to demand the right amount. How does that all fit into kind of the mindset system with you?Ilise Benun [00:25:40]:Okay. So there's a lot there. I'll try to cover, like, the most important elements. First of all, you have to be pursuing the right people who can pay you what you need to earn. So you need to know, right, what your what your average value of a project and how many of them you need per month or per year to make the numbers that you're trying to make. That's just the basic calculation. And then you have to make sure that you're going after a market that can pay that because the thing I hear people whining about basically is why won't they pay what we're worth? Well, it has nothing to do with what you're worth. All that matters is the value to them.Ilise Benun [00:26:21]:And so another element there is even if you're running an agency, people get very attached on a personal level to the clients and the projects and think that a rejection I'm putting in a quotation marks. A rejection is a personal rejection. But, no, you are not the work. They are using you, basically, to get something done to solve certain problems, And sometimes it will be better than others, but they have to be able to pay what you need to charge in order to get there. And that's why the money conversation is so important up front. Because if you waste your time talking to people who can't afford you and then whine when they tell you they can't afford you, you're gonna be very unhappy as a business owner. And so it's better to, I say, learn to love the money conversation. And I actually lately have been advising people not to ask for the budget instead to put actual numbers on the table as the very first question.Ilise Benun [00:27:26]:And so the numbers are and you can use your own variation. But I personally Ilise, okay. I have all the information I need now about what you're trying to accomplish, and I have some ideas about how I could probably help you. And I'm gonna go back and think about what I could put into a proposal for you. But first, let's talk about money. And then you say, for this project, are you thinking 500, 5000, or 50,000? Or are you thinking 5000, 50,000, 500,000? Right? I like fives. I like a an absurd spectrum like that because clearly, those are not your prices. And if they think those are your prices, that's a red flag.Ilise Benun [00:28:11]:So the minute you put numbers on the table, they can say, oh, no. We're definitely not thinking half a $1,000,000. But 5,000, that seems a little low. So we're probably somewhere around 20, 25. And then you've got a gauge, not on the pricing, but on the value that they ascribe to the thing you're going to be doing. And that's what you need before you can say yes to doing a proposal is you need to know what the value is in their mind, and that you can only get in the money conversation. Steve Guberman [00:28:41]:Yeah. Because if they're at 5 k and you're thinking 50 k, then we're just not on same page and we're just not a good match. I'm gonna refer you to somebody else who might be a better fit for you. So have it up front. I love that. I always have gotten a ton of that from you and your messaging over the years and, was able to integrate a lot of that into, you know, how we spoke as an agency when when I had my shop. I wanna shift gears real quick. I think we can talk tactical, creative business ownership, and simple marketing plans all day long. Steve Guberman [00:29:13]:Random rapid questions for you. What's something that you're reading or watching or listening to these days you just can't get enough of?Ilise Benun [00:29:25]:I happen to have, a step my stack of books here on my desk, so I'm just gonna pull the top one, which is one of the most recent. It's a book called Bring Yourself by Maury Taheripour. The subtitle is how to harness the power of connection to negotiate fearlessly. So it's money and mindset and marketing, actually, because it's all about connecting with people as part of a negotiation, and I just love the ideas in that book. Steve Guberman [00:29:53]:That sounds great. I love that. I'm gonna have to add that to the list. Thank you. What is a tool, digital, physical, professional, personal, anywhere on the spectrum that you kinda recently integrated into your life, and now you're like, how did I live without this for all these years?Ilise Benun [00:30:14]:I don't know that there's a tool like that, but I'm a big fan of paper. I think out of sight, out of mind. And so if something is on my desktop but not on my desk, I may not remember it. So I'll just have a running list of the things I don't wanna forget, and I just keep writing it over and over because writing it helps me remember it. Steve Guberman [00:30:42]:Yeah. Me too. I'm a pen and paper guy and always just for me, if I do a thing that's not on my list, I write it down and then cross it off. There's an endorphin rush for me I'm missing out on. So and then finally, what is just an absolutely vital piece of business information that you can share with the listeners?Ilise Benun [00:31:06]:You know, this is kind of underneath a lot of what we've said so far, but I would be more explicit about it and say most of the things that happen in your business have nothing to do with you. In other words, your marketing is not about you. It's about your client. Right? The money is not really about you. It's about the value that they get, and you're gonna deposit it in your bank. But I just think we are so self absorbed sometimes and focused on ourselves that we neglect to see that we're here to serve people. We're here to help people. And if we can see everything from their point of view, it will serve us better. Steve Guberman [00:31:58]:That's heavy, and I think that that goes so deep both professionally and personally. So, wow, that that's huge. So thank you. I appreciate that. Elise, I am eternally grateful for you as a person, you as a marketing mentor, you as a personal mentor and a friend and for your time today. Thank you so much.Ilise Benun [00:32:18]:Thank you, Steve. I really appreciate that. Where is that blushing emoji, I like to say. And, Yeah. No. It's been a pleasure to have a chat with you. So thank you.