Ready to jazz up your business growth game? Let’s learn from Lex Roman, a seasoned growth marketer. With her rich background in assisting tech giants like Silicon Valley startups, Lex sheds light on the misconceptions around scaling businesses solely through sales and marketing blitzes.

In this episode, we dive into the heart of building authentic relationships with customers, the evolving dynamics of the market, and the growing need for small businesses to carve their unique niches. Together, we explore the essence of connecting with customers, overcoming the fear of human interaction in business, and the true value of personalized strategies in today's digital age.

Tune in to discover a fresh perspective on business growth that prioritizes authenticity, relationships, and sustainable success.

In this episode you will learn:



• The crucial role of genuine relationships in fostering business growth
• Using customer feedback to improve business strategies
• The innovative "Growth Tracker" tool
• Maintaining client relationships through value-added communication
• Low-energy strategies for business growth
• Tracking leads and building a valuable network
• The use of AI in LinkedIn messaging and it’s limitations
• Leveraging existing connections for business growth
• 
  

Learn more about Lex: https://lexroman.com/

Growthtrackers Program: https://joingrowthtrackers.com/

The Low Energy Leads Show: https://www.lowenergyleads.com/

A little about me: 

I began my career as a teacher, was a corporate trainer for many years, and then found my niche training & supporting business owners, entrepreneurs & sales professionals to network at a world-class level. My passion is working with motivated people, who are coachable and who want to build their businesses through relationship marketing and networking (online & offline). I help my clients create retention strategies, grow through referrals, and create loyal customers by staying connected. 

In appreciation for being here, I have a couple of items for you. 

A LinkedIn Checklist for setting up your fully optimized Profile:  

An opportunity to test drive the Follow Up system I recommend by taking the  

10 Card Challenge – you won’t regret it.   

Connect with me: 

http://JanicePorter.com 

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

https://www.facebook.com/janiceporter1 

Thanks for listening! 

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Mentioned in this episode:

LinkedIn Ad

Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode

of relationships rule. With me this week is Lex Roman. And Lex

is a growth marketer for creative entrepreneurs. She

actually comes to us from Atlanta, Georgia, which we I can

see behind her on the wall. So it's something she's pretty

proud of, I think at this point, she's on a mission to help small

business, get seen and get sales without being beholden to big

tech. And I'd like to start there. But first, I'm going to

welcome her to the show. So welcome Lex. And lovely to have

you here.

Great to be here, Janice.

So tell fill fill my audience in a little bit

more, because I just gave them the tip of the iceberg. So who

are you and what's your what's your passion with what you do?

Yeah,

so I started my career in growth as what's

called a growth designer. And I used to work with tech companies

to help them find customers, convert them into paying

customers and keep them for years on end in subscriptions,

reduce churn, things like that. And a lot of what I did in

Silicon Valley was help people connect with their customers and

actually understand who these people were, and what was

getting in the way of revenue. And a lot of times, you know,

companies think, Oh, we just need to like hammer people with

sales and marketing stuff. And they will come to us with their

wallets open. And so much of, of growing a business is really

about people and relationships. And that's true at any size

business. And after doing that, for about a decade, I turned my

attention to small business owners. And I've seen, you know,

in my time in Silicon Valley, an increasing, you know,

monopolization of companies, and increasing consolidation of

companies more companies getting acquired. And what that means

for small business owners is that it can be harder and harder

to play in the same arenas as Amazon, Google, Facebook,

Netflix. And so we need to lean into things that are unique

advantages of small business owners. And so what I do now is

help small business owners really turn away from big tech,

and think about things that are going to be more effective for

them that play to their strengths, where they can get

sales in a sustainable way.

So when you were work, first of all, when you

were working with the the the big companies, were they

listening to that piece around, once you get the clients, you

know, nurture them keep them coming back, or was that

frustrating?

It's interesting, because I think all companies

struggle with this, I have a small business owners, I just

got off a call actually, with my members, I have a membership

program now. And one of them said, I really didn't want to

talk to my customers last last month, but I'm so glad I did. I

think it's something that we struggle with as business owners

like to talk to other people is scary. And so in that way, I

definitely worked with a lot of founders who were like, hesitant

to do that, but generally supportive of it, like they

wanted someone doing it that that's why they liked what I

did, they didn't necessarily want to do it themselves. I did

work with a couple founders that were very aware of their

customer base like Andrew Blackmon who is the co founder

of the black Tux one of the companies I worked for in LA,

very customer centric, the black Tux had brick and mortar

locations, in addition to being an online business, spent a lot

of time in those brick and mortar locations, spent a lot of

time talking with customers. And he actually recently wrote about

one of his recent campaigns where he gave customers his

phone number. And the black Tux actually is an interesting, like

growth case study, because the black Tux does wedding and

formal wear. And so if one person is getting married, it's

likely that other people they know might also get married. And

that's a great growth mechanism for that business. So they

understood that early on, and that was a big thing that we

focus on. You know, once we get one customer, we've acquired an

entire crew of friends and family who will also become

customers, you know.

So, you know, you're talking my language when

I hear all of this about the relational side of things, but

you just said something, also that, you know, we all need to

do it, but a lot of us are afraid to do it. That I don't

understand. But it's true. But why do you think why do you

think people are so afraid to to do it?

It can feel unknown and risky to talk to another

person. And I think, you know, we, we have this sense that

like, if we do something with a computer, that it's going to be

some what predictable for us, like we put something up on

Instagram or we blast out an email, like we're going to, it's

going to be okay, right? It's going to be predictable. And if

we get on the phone with someone, we're going to have

this, you know, scary unpredictable, like, who knows

what's going to happen, right? And I think it's just the nature

of people. It's, they're not predictable. Well,

but okay, I have to argue a little bit to that

point and push. I think it's a generational thing in some

cases. is

I don't think it is I'll tell you I worked with

three Wall Street guys that were pushing 70. And they didn't want

to talk to their customers either.

Well, interesting. Yeah. And I'm sure

it's not completely like, I don't want to blanket that, you

know that it's generational in that sense. However, my first

tendency is to pick up the phone. Now I know most people

aren't going to answer the phone. But that is my first

tendency, it isn't to send that email and just let it sit there

because it drives me crazy that it doesn't get answered. Right,

I can get a more instant response if I'm if they answered

the phone.

But when you're calling people, you're probably

calling people that you know, already, right?

Not necessarily, not necessarily. Yeah,

the cold call is tough, though, I mean, that you

got you must have a hard stomach for that, Janice, like, it's not

easy to cold call people. And you don't know, you know, people

could hang up on you, people could yell at you. Like, there's

all kinds of things that can happen. And I do a lot of phone

banking. So I'm well aware of all the things that can happen

when you're talking to people on the phone. But I think the point

is that, when you actually hear directly from your ideal

customer, for your ideal buyer, or from a current client, that

information helps you move so much faster in your business.

And so inside a larger company, like I worked with Toyota and

Nissan, right, which are pretty substantial, global

corporations, we can run tests at scale in those companies. But

I will learn so much faster, by pulling up to a gas station and

interviewing drivers than throwing things out there and

waiting for the results to come back on it. And that holds true

for small business owners too, you learn so much faster, when

you talk to your buyers, whether they've already purchased or are

about to then just putting stuff out there and hoping that it

lands and not having any sense of whether or not it is and why

not. So

so that makes me think of, you know, we you know

that I do LinkedIn training. And there's a lot of LinkedIn

trainers out there. But you know, one of the things that I

pride myself on or what my lane is, is using LinkedIn to build

relationships to grow your business. And so many people

focus on the content side of things. And to me that's

throwing mud at the wall, especially with the algorithms

the way they are they change every two minutes. And mind you,

I'm not sure that a lot of people even think about that

part of it, because they just want it they think they're doing

something productive by putting content out there. And that

isn't necessarily so can you speak to that from your Yeah.

So with you, I'm so with you on that Janice, like I

think it again, is a really challenging thing to nail

because you have to nail your message. And if you don't know

exactly what those messages are to bring people in and what the

calls to action are, you know, is it reply to this post? Is it

share something is it come to something that can be quite an

experimentation ground. And so what I like to say is cut the

factors down. And if you go face to face with someone, then it's

really just is this person interested in the kind of space

that I'm operating, and you have much more fluidity there. And

you have much more wiggle room to be wrong about your exact

phrasing and things like that when you're DMing someone or on

the phone with them? Versus like blasting out a post and hoping

that it, you know, stops the scroll. So so to speak. Yes.

Yeah, exactly. So you have a program, your

membership program is called growth tracker, become a being

growth tracker. And that comes from your background, right? So

you track what works and what doesn't work. Right? To do that.

Is

that correct? That's right, the growth trackers

embody a method called Test Track tune. It's a loop that we

run. And what we do is we test what will bring leads and sales

into your business, we track whether or not that worked, what

worked and what didn't, and we fine tune and run it again. And

that may involve running different tests, it may involve

taking a message that works somewhere and moving it to a

different channel, it may involve ditching a strategy

that's not working for you.

And so you've you've brought it down to the

solopreneur, the small entrepreneur level, the creative

entrepreneur, so that it doesn't seem so huge, because that's

what the big boys do. But you've made it work for small

businesses as well, correct? That's

right. Yeah, I've translated a lot of the growth

methods that I use with larger companies and that I used with,

you know, scalable software brands, to small businesses to

service based businesses. When I started shifting towards this, I

wasn't sure that some of these things with land but I

increasingly find that they're in some ways even more relevant,

because of the things that we just spoke about how important

it is to be close to your customers. Service providers

have a unique advantage. and being close to their customers,

because we're often face to face with our clients every day. So

we're much more in tune with what they're saying what their

needs are, and things like that, that can be challenging if

you're earlier stage in your business or if you're pivoting

your audience, but over time, service providers are way more

in tune with their customers than a large startup or large,

you know, enterprise company is

so that I was going one direction, but now go

to ask this this question. So if you have clients who are close

to their customers, you know, because they're smaller, and

they're service based, do you find that they nurture their

customers enough still, or do we still forgetting about them?

The challenge for service providers is often that

they're delivering the thing that they are selling. And so if

you're delivering a lot of work, it can be hard to also be

nurturing and selling and, and making sure that you're keeping

up with everyone. So that's the hard part, right? Because you

are executing the brand package that you sold, or you're

executing the copywriting strategy, or whatever it is that

you sell. And then you're wondering, you know what the

next project is, but you don't necessarily have time to go back

through your Rolodex to figure out who you should reconnect

with that can be really challenging, and it can feel

really manual for service providers. So So one of the

things we try to do is figure out what exactly those recipes

or levers are that you can rerun. Some of them you're going

to do year round, they're going to be sustainable enough that

you can do them while you're executing project work. And some

of them are going to feel like they need to be more seasonal.

And you might do those in down periods where you need to drum

up work, for example, we're about to, you know, as you and I

record this and to the holiday period, for many of us, that's a

down period in the service provider space, not so much in

the consumer goods space. And so people are thinking about, well,

how do I drum up leads for q1 of 2024. And so looking at those

levers and those recipes that you've already tested, that have

already worked for you, and having those in your back

pocket, rather than starting from scratch with your marketing

strategy every time you need new

clients. Well, I think sometimes we forget, that

we, we shouldn't always be looking to as part of the

nurturing process, we shouldn't always be looking to market the

next thing to them, we need to separate that sometimes and say,

Hey, I value you as a customer. Thanks for being there. That you

know, Thanksgiving in the United States is coming up as as this

as we are talking now. And that's a perfect time to say I

appreciate you not trying to sell you something else at the

same time. Right? I can't tell you know, okay, one of the tools

that that you know, I use is Send Out Cards, and I love using

that to stay connected with my clients. Well, I, I remember,

and this still happens that I have a longtime friend who's a

big time realtor here. And she sends out a very religious

Christmas card because she's religious, and it's got a family

and it's got one of those family letters in it, as well. And then

she puts her business card in it. To me that just defeats the

entire thing. Okay, because then it takes away from the fact that

I'm sharing with you that I appreciate you and you know,

Merry Christmas. I wish you all the best. Here's what my family

did, although it's anyway, that's another story. I love the

family letter. Oh, yeah. We're all perfect. And we all did

everything amazing all year long. Anyway, but that I

digress. But you know what I mean? Like, we have to separate

those things sometimes. And I always say give, give, give ask.

Right. So I love that. Yeah, right.

I mean, I think people, I see people on both

ends of the spectrum, right? I see people that are like

shelling way too much. And then I see people who are not really

asked spending much time yeah, they're not spending much time

and that most of the folks that I work with, are on that side of

the spectrum where they haven't been keeping up with their

clients, they've been sort of waiting to be asked, you know,

to continue the relationship, rather than looking for

opportunities to continue. I really like reframing it in

terms of like, your network or your community, whatever word

makes sense for you, the people that are supporting your

business's growth, because it doesn't just include your

clients. It also includes amplifiers, partners, and people

who are not necessarily going to transact with you, but are

contributing to the success of your business. And I think your

mindset is fantastic and important to embody of like,

what, in what ways can I offer value to these people? What does

that look like? And that sort of gets into maintaining

relationships at scale, because I've seen that done in some

pretty cool ways. And it doesn't always have to be, you know,

sending a card to every person or making a phone call to every

single person on your list.

Right. So you have a podcast and it's called

the low energy leads show And I was listening to one of the

episodes, I think it was a solo episode that you did. And you

were talking about 22 ways to get leads without social media.

And I thought that was pretty brave in this society. And and

because you're a social media person in lots of ways, because

I mean, you're that you're of the generation that right that

it's everywhere. And

generation invented social media. Yes.

So. So in that podcast episode, you talked

about relational strategies and broadcast strategies. And I love

that because I loved that you were talking about things that

weren't necessarily high tech. And so I wondered if you could

share some of those with my audience, because we're always

looking for ways to and and at the same time, I'd love you to

share the title, the meaning behind the title of your show,

because I think it fits into exactly what we're talking about

here. Yeah.

So this show titled, the Showtime Yeah, we'll start

with the show title. The show title comes from two things,

it's a nod to the fact that I have an auto immune disorder

called Hashimotos. It's a thyroid condition. And I'm tired

a lot, I'm tired, a lot. And I can't, you know, aspire to this

really high intensity marketing plan that I see being sold

everywhere else. And even, you know, running with the tech bros

in Silicon Valley was also sold, even though that wasn't

necessarily what's actually being practiced by a lot of the

successful companies.

Oh, that's great. Oh, that is so true. We have to

come back to that. Go ahead. Yeah,

yeah. So there's always you know, a little bit of

smoke and mirrors around around growth. And it's always been

like, growth has always been like, get it get after it,

hustle culture, right. And so I really, I want people to know

that they can grow their business, and it doesn't need to

take over their life. And if they have someone that they're

caring for at home, if they have a health condition, if they have

a disability, they can still be growing a business. And so, you

know, you don't need to be beholden to anyone else's, like

hustle culture nonsense. So that's one thing. The other

thing is that I find a lot of people put too much energy into

things that are not yielding value. And I saw this inside

corporations, I see it with my clients. Now, they'll put a lot

of energy into things, believing that more energy means more

payoff, and I have not found that to be true. And so instead,

I really want to encourage people to put low energy into

higher value things, see those results, pay off, and then

invest more and build incrementally. Rather than sort

of go full throttle into all these things we're being told

will work for your business, right? Make all this money, if

you just blah, blah, blah, that's not gonna ever work,

you're never gonna be able to just like rip someone else's

playbook. You're always gonna have to try it on for size, see

how it works in your business, you're gonna want to do that in

a low energy, high value way. Until you also mean,

when you say low energy in this context, do you

mean necessarily? Low price point.

I mean, low cost, low time investment. Yeah. So like,

for example, if you're thinking I should run some Facebook ads,

I would not recommend you go out with like a 10k, Facebook ad

budget, I would recommend you start with something smaller,

maybe like 100 to $500, right. So you don't want to just sort

of like, run headfirst into a six month long strategy that

you've not tested or run headfirst into a high budget

item, without any evidence that thing is going to pay off in

your business. Like, I spoke with a business owner the other

day was sponsoring a golf tournament. And I was kind of

like, you know, if you've sponsored events in the past, it

was like, No, he just went out and sponsored this golf

tournament. And I was like, wow, time, and I think that's really

hard to measure the ROI on like, that's just not the first test I

would have been in that space, maybe, you know, so. So

a whole first maybe and see, yeah,

or sponsor another kind of event right go smaller,

you know, thinking about what is the thing I'm trying to get out

of this activity? And what is a slice that I can take at that to

make sure that there's something here that it's going to be

executed in the way that I believe it's going to be

executed? Right? A lot of times we just we go full force in

these projects. We don't think about is this even going to

work? And how do I do this that I see people just overbuilding

all the time, these complex funnels and timers and email

sequences and widgets everywhere. And it's like, well,

is this even the right offer for your people? You know, could we

test that maybe in a high touch way? Then we can start to build

out some automation, right, then we can start to systematize

those things.

So can you give me three or four, low energy

relational strategies that you think are pretty good to start

with? Yeah. So low energy is it extremely personal,

I think that's a really important thing to take away

from it. Some people will find, talking with others high energy,

as we've already spoken about, especially the introverts among

us. And other people will find things like content creation,

high energy. So low energy is very dependent on you, your

business and your skill set. But I would say that one of the

first things that I recommend people do, and this falls into

the relational bucket is to figure out how you're going to

reengage past clients. And that's something that I think we

leave on the table a lot in our business, as we just spoke about

and think about, okay, I know I can reach out to them one on

one, or I know that I can call them. But maybe I want to think

about a way to add value, what is a way that I could add

continuous value, not necessarily with a new offer,

but just continue to add value into their lives continue to add

value into the work that we did together, continue to invite

them back into my business, and whatever way makes sense for

your business? And so, you know, first experiment that we often

run in growth trackers is bringing people in to an email

segment, you know, would you like to be on my email list

would be an example of something that you could do that's

generally kind of low energy kind of depends. And trying to

just reengage those conversations, hey, I'm thinking

about this, or here's something that I read that's relevant to

the work that we did together. What do you think about that,

right, starting a conversation with those past clients, that

can often lead to more work, new conversations, additional

projects, things like that?

That's a good one. I always say to my, to my

clients, you know how many Look, let me see you've got 2000,

LinkedIn connections, when was the last time you ever talked to

any of them? Yeah. Right, because we're so busy looking

for the new ones. And if we shake that tree a little bit,

and just reach out and say, hey, it's been a while I'm making an

effort to reconnect, you never know the timing could be more

right for some more, right? It's either right, or it isn't. But

it could be right now for something that they were going

to think about doing with you before. But the timing wasn't

right. So absolutely, I agree, that's a great strategy.

Anything else comes to mind.

One of the other things that I would recommend

people do is track their own leads. So going back to the low

energy thing is really personal. I have folks who get a lot of

their work from relationships that they have, I have other

folks who get a lot of their work from specific communities

that they're in, or from specific channels, like, I do

have some growth records, who really get a lot of work from

Instagram, for example, or from LinkedIn, I have some who get

more of their work from like a specific community that they're

a part of. So the lowest energy strategy is going to be

replaying something that's already worked for you. And

often we forget those things. So I would track those, create a

lead tracker, if you don't already have one, and look back

at the channels that have brought people into your

business and the channels that have helped you close leads into

sales. And see if there's something there that could be

rerun in a slightly bigger way. That's what we call evidence

building. Because if you already have evidence that it has

worked, then you can go a little bit bigger with that thing. Do

it in another channel, right, bring in a message to another

channel, bring it to a new audience, try the same message

that you tried in the successful community with a new community,

for example, try and add in a new space. So that would be

another low energy strategy where you're using evidence from

your own business and parlaying that into the next. The next

great thing. Yeah,

you make me think too, about, you know, the lead

tracker. I do remember where usually where people have come

from, but it would be smarter to have it on a sheet, you know, so

I can really see the statistics around it. Because I'm, you'd

be surprised, Janice, like, we think we know where

these people come from. But then we look at it. And it's like

you, we end up having recency bias around it where it's like,

and it'll shift over time. And so it's really helpful to have

it on there, especially especially if you stay booked

pretty continuously, because then you hit a down period, like

something like a global pandemic happens. And your your whole

business is turned upside down. And you're like, wow, I really

need to go back to the drawing board here. So you're gonna want

to have that data. And there'll be stuff in there that you

forgot about that worked one time that maybe you you didn't

need it, so you just stopped doing it, but it's there for you

when you do on it again. And so it's it can be really

instructive. The other thing is that we often don't break down

word of mouth like I've started saying that, you know, I can't

stand when people tell me their leads come from word of mouth,

because it's like me asking you, what did you have for lunch and

you saying food? Like, yeah, word of mouth is a huge part of

marketing. You know, the internet, also not a lead

source, right? So you want to break that down and when you

break down word of mouth in your lead tracker and you don't just

say referral, but you say the name and even better you

categorize it. You say the kind of referral it is it was a

client. It was an industry partner. It was strong

conference, you can start to get a sense of the leading

indicators that are creating that valuable network. Because

you know, your mechanic probably isn't sending you copywriting

leads, right? So it's not just word of mouth from anyone it's

word of mouth from very specific relationships and you want to be

tracking who those people are. That's really valuable,

valuable for, for us all to think about. Because

we'll also be surprised when we, when we get that list, for sure.

I loved also what you said about an opportunity, you know, when

you're reaching out to people to reconnect, asking them to be on

your newsletter list, for example, because I don't want

you to just expect that I'm going to put you on there

because a lot of people do that. Right. They meet you once on

LinkedIn, and then you're on their newsletter. Hang on, you

know, I don't. In fact, I sent out a message I think I was I'm

doing an event, as I always am on LinkedIn on I saw put the

event on LinkedIn and send out some invitations, this for my

LinkedIn Advantage program that you're aware of. And I got a

reply back from the invitation, which was a canned reply. Thanks

for coming into my mailbox. I have some space on my calendar,

blah, blah, blah, that I don't know this person, right. So I

ignored that. And I sent the next message that said, don't

forget to actually register for the event. Here's the link, and

I got another canned response. And I thought, wow, not just the

first one. But the second one, too. Yeah. So

it's probably a little bit of AI gone wrong,

like AI is all over LinkedIn. Now with the messaging. Yeah,

it's interesting. I mean, you know, cold pitching is another

thing that people are always asking me about, because cold

pitching can work. And depending on your industry, it works

better in some than others, like writers do a lot of cold

pitching pretty successfully. Writers writers. Yeah, like

copywriters, you know, because like, writing the writing space

has always been very pitch heavy, right. And so if you're,

if you're writing articles, or if you want to be doing

copywriting work, cold pitching is pretty common. And it is like

so much a volume game. And even though people will say I hate

receiving cold pitches, how could this possibly work? Like?

It does work? It's a volume game. Because if you hit enough

people, some of those people will be in buy mode, right? And

that that canned response is the same thing. They don't

necessarily care that they're degrading relationships, because

that one person is out there who will find that to be useful.

It's, it's interesting with AI especially, it's been

interesting to see.

Do you I do believe that? I don't know,

what's your thought on going forward in terms of AI?

Well, there's so many different ways that you can be

using AI. So I think it depends a bit about how you're using it.

I haven't I have used actually LinkedIn AI, I use something

called copilot AI, which is a LinkedIn chat bot that uses AI,

what it does, it sends

requests, if you use this chance, I haven't used

that one. No, it

sends requests to people in my second degree

network to connect. And then if they respond, it'll respond with

a script. And then at some point, it will tell me to take

over the conversation. And it has worked for me. It the

problem with it for me is that I'm not actually in a volume

game. So I actually have a very small capacity for clients. And

I'm very specific about them more specific than like industry

headcount, the kind of things that are in Sales Navigator. So

it wasn't vetting enough stuff. And so I was having too many

conversations with people that like we're in a great fit for

the business, and it couldn't get more specific than that. So

if you, you know, do have a volume business, and or if you

have a VA, who can do a lot of that, you know, vetting for you,

then it could be worth it. Like, you know, the trick is really

that it's a volume game. So if you want to pay to play the

volume game in time or money, like it can be played, you

just have to be careful with the bots as opposed

to even having a human do the outreach for you. Because

LinkedIn is is really clamping down on those automated things.

I think

also like for service providers, especially, and for

and for solopreneurs. Like of any kind, you just don't need to

be playing in those arenas necessarily. And you have, like,

ways that you can be running your business where you're not

constantly having to, you know, throw logs on the fire, where

the engine can be burning itself. And that's the kind of

business we want to work towards. And that's true even at

scale. When you look at a company like Facebook or tick

tock or Google, these are companies that leverage growth

mechanisms to keep people in the orbit to bring people into the

orbit, right. They leverage us as their users to bring people

in LinkedIn does the same thing. Right. So who can you bring in

to us? LinkedIn isn't out there getting every single one of our

colleagues on their work. Doing that, right? So that's an

example of like, you know, you want to step off that marketing

treadmill, you don't want to be, you know, building your business

around something like cold pitching, it can be an okay

starting place. Yeah.

So I said earlier, we got to come back to

this. And this was something and I can't remember that episode

now that I interviewed this, this guy who he wrote this book,

and I can't remember the name of it right now. But I'm gonna send

it send you the, the episode, because it was really good. And

it was talking about, we were talking about relationship

building and relationships in business. And he and he was

saying that something you said, which is even the maybe you said

it in the podcasts that I was listening to, but you said, even

the big companies out there, use real people use relationship

building skills to get their business like Google and Amazon

or whatever, they've got a Salesforce of real people out on

the streets. And so right, and it's not everything is not done

through social media. It's done through people meeting people.

And you know, we forget that, but it's so true. Right? So

yeah, so relationship marketing, meaning speaking to each other,

I think is really is really still valuable. Yeah,

I think also, you know, that is from that is

mentioned in that episode on 22 ways to get leads without social

media, because I talk about not only sales teams, but

partnerships, teams, events, teams, like all the different

sort of what I would put in the bucket of relational marketing

as big components of these large tech companies that are like

seemingly running off software, right. We think that Facebook is

just like building apps and like, hoping it works for the

best, right? But But actually, they have a big partnerships

team, they have a big events team, and they're doing all

kinds of stuff with

customer, what do they call them? Like?

Like Exactly. account managers? Yeah, you can get an

Ad Account Manager to help you with your ad, even even at a

very low budget. And so that's a very relational approach that

they are taking to make sure that people are successful with

ads, so that they keep spending money with Facebook ads, right?

Yeah. When I worked with the black Tux we had, you know, big

partnerships, focus, we we focused on partnerships with

wedding publications, like the not with, you know, retailers

like Nordstrom, when I worked with the team at gussto, they

had a big partnerships team that focused on accountants and

financial professionals, because they realized that if they built

relationships with those people, that that would lead to multiple

leads, right, and multiple success stories, not just one on

one. And you know, even within software, when you look at

something like, you know, LinkedIn or any social media

platform, they're always trying to get you to bring friends and

bring colleagues in to our network. Right. So that's what

the sharing mechanism is. And that's a growth mechanism.

That's not a marketing lever. That's a growth mechanism,

because they're getting you as a user to drive the growth of

their business. They're saying, Okay, we've invested in Janice,

she's here, who else could Janice bring to the party? And

small businesses could do the same thing? Yeah,

exactly. This is brilliant. I love your, your

approach. And and you explain yourself really well. And I love

that too. So I really do encourage my my audience to go

and see your website. I think it's lex roman.com. Right. And

your low end, the low energy leads show is your podcast, and

you've got some pretty valuable stuff for small business owners

and entrepreneurs. And that's my audience. So I love that. One

last question. One last sort of business tip for my audience

that that you would like to share? Yeah, I

would really think about who already is close in

your business close to buying something close to adding value

in your business who you are neglecting. So rather than

people often go way out to strangers, who else can I meet?

Where can I be networking? What else can I be? You know,

blasting out there, who's already here? Who you could

bring closer into the fold? And in what ways can you do that?

Fantastic.

I think that's a great idea. And this is a

perfect time of year to do that. If this will end this will if

this airs before Christmas. That is I'm not sure. But if it

doesn't, even the New Year is a great time to start. So it's

always a good time to go back to the people that you have worked

with the warm market, so to speak. So Lex, thank you so much

for being here. Thank you for all your wisdom and ideas. And

to my audience. Thank you again for listening. If you like what

you heard, please let us know and remember to stay connected

and be remembered