In this episode, the focus is on the challenges businesses face with ineffective marketing strategies, particularly in the digital realm. Guest Nathan Yeung sheds light on the need for realistic market penetration views, operational efficiency, and leveraging proven sales strategies. The conversation emphasizes the importance of positioning, generating conversations, and the value of creative content in marketing.

Guest Bio:

Nathan Yeung, with a background in finance and operations, is the founder of Find Your Audience. His firm prioritizes marketing activities, particularly for companies hiring their first marketing employee, providing tailored services to optimize marketing strategies and execution.

Key Points:

- Introduction to the "Creative Collaboration Show" (00:00)

- Nathan's approach with fractional C-suite roles for smaller organizations (04:15)

- Cost-effective marketing overhead and target customer profile (09:30)

- Leveraging network effects for company growth (14:45)

- Positioning in marketing and taking actionable steps (19:50)

Main Quote:

"Being in the middle of the market is not a profitable or reasonable positioning for companies."

Links:

Connect with Nathan Yeung: https://www.findyouraudience.online

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Until next time, keep moving forward!

Chuck Anderson,

Affiliate Management Expert + Investor + Mentor

http://AffiliateManagementExpert.com/

Hello, everybody, and, welcome to the Creative Collaboration Show.

Chuck Anderson here, your host. This is the show where

we serve business owners at whatever

stage business they're in to help to, grow their

business and, reach their goals faster and easier and,

better than, they could before. And we like to have guests

here who have something that will help you

to grow your business faster, to scale, to

manage things, better. And today's theme

is definitely all about that. And if you've ever been, on

this journey, so many people call themselves solopreneurs, and then they

graduate out of that. And, you know, you start to grow and,

you you build a team, maybe you have a couple of VAs, and then you

grow beyond that. At what point do you,

look to outside help such as agencies or,

other organizations versus, building everything

yourself. And we're gonna talk about that today because our expert,

guest is Nathan Young, who is an expert in all of this. So, Nathan,

I've wanna, first of all, welcome you to the show. Thanks, Chuck, for having me

on today. You know, so we're gonna do a deep dive into this

today, and, you know, this this is a this is a topic that

comes up a lot in, you know, when we're when we're thinking about scaling.

Even before scaling, I mean, you know, when you when you when you

start your business, you're by yourself, and then you graduate

to, you know, building a team or, you you know, do I do I hire

someone? Do I have an agency? I mean, we're gonna unpack all of this today,

and I know this is what you do. So, just before we dive into all

of that, tell the little, tell the folks a little bit more about you

and, and the business you're in, and we'll we'll kinda

launch from there. Awesome. So, not a traditional

background as a marketer. I went to school for marketing. I was a

VP of finance at the age of 21. I was a a bit of an

operational slash management consultant for some angel investors. And then

I was a CEO for an ad technology company, and then essentially found myself at

Find Your Audience. Been running this firm now for 8 years, and a lot of

people go, why why have you why did you do this business in the first

place? And it was because kinda throughout my entire journey through various

cc positions, one of the things I noted, and I kind of always

knew, was marketing is really complex. And I find a lot of

people take a lot of missteps in marketing, and that leads

to a lot of problems. Obviously, you have limited resources. So when you go

down a channel route or a tactic, you know, that's 3 to 6 months of

invested time. That's time you're not gonna get back. And

sometimes people make, you know, some pretty egregious mistakes.

And when I started the firm, it was really because

I had just been listening to a lot of my friends who are founders or

bootstrap founders or just business owners. And I'd listen to the marketing

advice, and I just go, why?

And and it's because I maybe it's also because because I

I come from a a bit of a different background in the sense that I

have a bit of a finance hat and accounting back hat. I have a bit

of an operations hat. And when I propose marketing

strategies or tactics, I look at it in all those

lenses versus just a marketing lens. I think it's very easy to just look

at things in a marketing lens. It's a lot more difficult when you look at

it in a lens of, like, operations and and finance, and and that's kind

of where I always go. Marketing is less about trying to do everything, and it's

more about me helping you just prioritize what you should be doing.

Because we all wanna do everything, but we just can't. And so that's

what what my firm does, and and we've we've been focused on that. And our

real sweet spot is we're kinda like the best first hire you'll ever

have. And and I can walk through that, kinda later on in

this in the show. But that was the whole model was I found companies that

were hiring their first marketing employee or FTE, full time

employee, it it was an awkward

space. You're hiring a person who likely only has 1

or 2 technical affinity sets, and everything

else, they're kind of okay at. And so you get someone who's not a

generalist, but is a generalist, isn't performing well because they're not necessarily

efficient, and isn't necessarily matching what the company needs. Because as you're building

a marketing function, you need a lot of different things. And

and so it's this awkward space where you're you're trying to fill that role,

but you're not getting really a lot of great out of it, you know, because

it's it's this awkward baby. It's chicken and egg problem.

Well yeah. And it's a it's a real dilemma for a lot of business

owners. I know I've been there numerous times where you

have a choice. Do I go this way, or or do I go that way?

You mentioned FTEs, full time employees. You know, at a certain

point, you grow beyond what you can do yourself and you start to look at

that. And, you know, I think it's really popular right

now to look at sort of fractional help. You this whole, you

know, fractional this and fractional that, you hear it all the time. And I

think it kinda speaks to look. You might have a generalist as a full time

employee or a specialist. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Because, you know, I think that might weigh in on

a, you know, business owner's decision. At least it does for

me. You can have one person who kinda does things sort of

okay versus, you know, a number of people who

do things really, really, really well. So what are your thoughts on that? Yeah.

And and that's exactly our model. Right? Because I I kinda go

to a lot of businesses, you know, whether they're small,

you know, as early as prerevenue to mature, you know,

10,000,000 in ARR type businesses, and they go at the end of

the day, you don't really need a CMO full

time, honestly. You might need them

slightly part time for all all, for the kind of the entire

year, but you don't need them full time. You might need them full time at

the beginning where all the heavy lifting is required for them to help institutionalize

a process, create prudent processes, make sure that

every one of your marketing activities is valuable to the organization.

Now what I really mean that is is that, I I don't think any

marketing activity is a failure if, unless you don't

garner observations from it. So a lot of people can do tactical things

and have them fail, but then not do them in such a way where you

actually garner insights. Right? That's a complete failure. So you've invested time

and money, and then you get no insights. So so having that

CMO come in at the beginning, set up all that strategy, and then go part

time after being a bit more fractional is is makes sense,

and it's the same thing for a fractional CFO. If you're not big enough and

you're not worried about debt and you're not worried about cash flow and you're not

doing all these things, you don't need a full time CFO. You need a CFO

for maybe a month, clean up the books, structure everything, give you a plan, and

then maybe check-in on a quarterly basis. Frankly speaking, it it it

all comes down to that whole thing again, scale. Are are you big enough to

actually afford that? And most of the time, you're not. And

then can you even utilize that person full time? Probably not

either. So the fractional c suite route makes sense, and

it makes sense for a lot of organizations. The reason why we're a little

bit different is because I built the fractional CMO department, and then I built

a full team to execute. So the whole point is Nathan comes in, I

help you institutionalize process, and my team helps execute on

that versus me handing it off to you, which also doesn't make

sense because a lot of business owners aren't marketing experts to then

actually execute on what I've proposed. Right? So it's kind of silly. You

get a fractional CMO to come in, and then they go, here's your

plan. Go execute. But you yourself as the business

owner, you're not necessarily the best person to hire the

agency that has creative capabilities, hire the

agency that has content writing abilities. So you you kind of handicap

yourself. Right? It's like you hired me to help you, but then to

do the work, you're now hiring those people not having that knowledge. It's kinda silly.

Right? You end up gaining not the best outcome. So that's kinda why we're a

little bit different. So I did that exact model because I see this

problem in growing companies, and this was the the opportunity we were trying to

address. Yeah. This is definitely the struggle. And, again, it's that

dilemma of, you know, who who do I hire and

and and get to do things? And it's not all about cost, like getting

the lowest cost labor. I mean, obviously, we wanna keep our costs low,

but sometimes we're shooting ourselves in the foot by doing that. Yeah. And you

mentioned budget a little bit. I think it it would be great to talk a

little bit about, you know, at what stage of business?

Like, where are they either in their revenue journey or

maybe their, I don't know what other measuring

stick that we can actually use. But when you know,

I would say at what point would someone be looking at this, and who

is your typical customer in terms of stage of business and

size and all of that? It's a great question. So the first thing

is is there's no hard and fast rule. I would say if you

are a company that's looking for aggressive growth, your

percentage of marketing spend to your revenue is gonna be higher. You know?

You'll see standard rates at 2 to

3%. But if you're a growing company, you might be at 10 or 12%

because you're growing. That's the whole point of growing. You're gonna be overstaffing on your

sales. You're gonna be overstaffing your marketing because you're trying to you're trying to grow

your top line. You know, if I were to just put numbers around

it, if you can afford 70 to $80,000

a year in in marketing overhead cost, not

ad spend cost, just overhead. So meaning, that's the money you're actually spending to

get things done like your content, like your SEO, like your trade

shows, your sales enablement tools, your product marketing. If you could afford that,

that's kind of our sweet spot. So we're typically working with

companies anywhere between 1 to $20,000,000 in ARR.

And, typically, you know, I'm gonna call it 50 employees or

70% of our portfolio is b to b SaaS, which is, you know, business to

business, software as a service type companies. But, truthfully,

you know, our our organization, we've worked across a very broad set

of categories and industries. We have a ton of success

also in in, sorry, the fast casual

franchise space, which is something people get really weirded out about. Because I'm like, yeah.

I work with Constellation Software, and it's like, oh, yeah. I also do food

and, like, restaurants. And, and

and there's a whole theory behind that. That's our whole foundation of, how we

approach marketing. And I can explain that actually right now is our

foundation of marketing is if I can generate conversation,

then you win. So you can take that

very simple framework, and so and you look at your your marketing

is, if this marketing campaign can generate a conversation,

ask yourself why are you doing it.

It's a good point. Right? Well,

and ultimately and you can't and it's so funny because I I I come

across people all the time who especially with

AI, you hear it all the time. Like, they wanna automate as much as possible.

Right? Like, you know, how can I spend the the least amount of time

marketing myself, but have those automatically become customers?

And, you know, I always say, well, if you're selling coffee

mugs, sure. But, you know, like you say, it really has to lead to a

conversation, especially for high selling higher ticket services

or, you know, consultation or whatever it is. It really

it really is. It's and and then our metric one of the metrics we look

at is cost per conversation or, you know, what does it take to for

us to generate that, and are they the right conversations? So is that kinda

like what you're what you're looking at and and and what you're

working with your companies on? Yeah. A a little bit. And and

also, I think when I when I talk about conversations, it's also you

know, whatever you're spending time and energy into, you know, can you

imagine that individual taking that to a dinner table or their friend group

and saying, hey. From this thing, I learned x.

Or, hey. This is so interesting. I wanna talk about it. And if it

doesn't, then, you know, to me, I'm playing

off something called the network effect where I I genuinely believe the network

effects are kind of one of the main reasons for companies to grow. So

generating conversation is the tactic to generate more network effects.

So if you can generate conversation, your network effects compound. And so,

therefore, if they compound, you typically will see growth from that. I I

can network effects a little bit like SEO. The more you do of it, the

more it returns. And, and and so that's kind of

the direction I'm going. Not necessarily conversations in terms of just sales conversations.

Sales. Right. But but but are you are you generating content that's

going to want or make someone have a conversation with someone else about

it? And is it interesting enough for them to do that? And if it's not,

then you should question the value of your content. Yeah. You hear people all the

time, you know, say, I'm gonna create some viral content, and and

and and, you know, it's it's really hard to sort of, like,

manufacture that. But when you really nail it and,

like you say, you get other people talking about it and and spreading

it, marketing that's basically growing on your

behalf without you having to do anything. That's that's amazing when that happens.

How hard are you finding it for people to do that?

Because, again, we hear it all the time.

And, now now with AI, content creation

is, you know, different and faster than it ever has

been before. Some of it is really good, and

some of it is really terrible. I get bombarded with terrible YouTube

ads all the time that are just, terrible kinda what

what what are your thoughts there on on that kind of

content creation? I think in that

sense of content creation in in, like, just, like, word

content, let's call it, I think that's becoming more and more difficult.

But I think when you wanna look at generating conversation, it needs to

be beyond just the content in itself. It's how you package it. It's how

you deliver it. It's how you promote it. And I think that's that's where

you know, truthfully, I think generative AI will find its way there

somehow, and it will likely find its way, especially if you give it

inputs to generate interesting packaging forms or distribution formats.

But, you know, right now, I think generating just pure word content,

yeah, it's hard to differentiate these days. Primary research, I think, is gonna

become more and more important going forward. So so actual surveys being

done versus ones that are generative or a meta analysis across a bunch of

research. I think where people

need to look at is is the creative side, which is, like, how do you

deliver this and how do you promote this in a creative way?

And I think that's gonna be where people will see a lot more value. So

you can still have relatively, call it, mediocre content,

like, written form content. But if you can find an interesting way

to make that creative and and and, and packaged well,

then I think that's where you're gonna see that value. And I see that's the

fault in a lot of companies because a lot of companies don't like to be

aggressive on their creative. And that's because most companies,

one, CEOs are overconfident, so, therefore, they have spotlight syndrome, which means they

think they're more important than they are. But I always go, if you're listening, and

I'm sorry to say this, you barely have enough money

to regionally push your ads. So why do you think if

you do a crazy creative that for some reason

you're gonna, yeah, a 100% penetration rate and reach to your entire

market? You're you're probably only getting, like, 2%. So the reality is is

that you you're not gonna do well anyways. You're you're barely

penetrating your market. You're barely getting any reach, and you have a

mediocre creative. So it's a lose lose lose situation.

So I I think that's where people fall short. A lot of business

owners are overconfident on how big they are. They have have spotlight syndrome, and then

they do piss poor creatives. And then they they just get kind of mediocre

results. You gotta go far because you don't have enough money to really spend to

to not afford to to do that well. Well, I think that

also speaks to, if you're gonna do anything like that, then,

you know, have someone in the room who's smarter than you when it comes to

to that. Like, if you're the smartest person in the room, like, you're probably putting

yourself at a huge disadvantage. And, you

know, being a former ads agency owner where we did a lot of Facebook

ads, and that wasn't that long ago when I exited that.

It's such a moving target. I mean, you know, just the way the

algorithms and the way the content is is, is

done and even how the distribution and the

audience targeting is done today at compared to what it was just

a few years ago. Completely different. You know, you

need to have someone who knows what the heck they're doing. And like

you say, like, you know, the the the spray and pray or

just like, you know, going going too broad, too fast, or even

creative, that is, terrible. And I think a lot of people are

doing this because either they don't have time, they don't have the budget. They're just

like, well, I'll just try something. Right? And, you

know, Facebook and YouTube and a lot of the other media sites,

they're just so, AI driven, and

and and so you have to you have to do things in the right way.

And, so what like, when what

I wanted to ask you too is is when people

are, or companies are approaching you or you're having

conversations with the companies that ultimately engage you,

what what are you hearing from them? What are they saying? Hey. You know,

I've tried this or I'm I'm doing this. Nathan,

I just can you guys help me with this? Like, what are you hearing?

Most of the time, I'm hearing companies are

flailing around half implementing

tactics, not really looking at their ICP

properly, their ideal customer profile, not understanding,

how different channels have different levels of impact and influence,

and are honestly always trying to chase something a little bit shiny.

So I think there's an oversimplification that digital marketing is the

savior to all businesses. It's it's a

certainly a very scalable channel. It's not necessarily the

best channel to start, though. And and I think that's

what companies end up believing because they have an overconfident CEO

or they have an overconfident C Suite. So, therefore, they think they know marketing. So,

therefore, they think digital marketing is their savior. So, therefore, they spend money in

in, in in digital marketing. Now that's not necessarily wrong,

but is it wrong in the sense of priority for the business in

terms of a tactic? Potentially, because more often than not,

I always go, well, where have you been getting your sales from? And they go,

well, outbound. Okay. What have we done to

help your outbound team? What do you mean by that? Well,

when was the last time we talked to your sales team and asked them about

new materials that they need? Oh, I haven't thought about that.

Okay. What has been the biggest sticking points or pain

points or object or, you know, objection points in calls,

and do we have sales enablement tools to support them on that? Oh, that's a

good question. Right? And and and I go, why don't we

focus on doubling down on what we know that

works versus trying to build a brand new funnel that

we have no metrics around and spending all this time. So a lot of the

time I go, let's go back to basics. And a lot of those times are

trade shows. I'll go, what's the metrics on trade shows? It's like, well, we've been

going through these 3 trade shows, and it's been really good for us. It's like

that. It's a meaningless comment to me. How many leads are you getting compared

to how much you're spending? And is that is that a cost that you're is

inclusive of their time or exclusive of their time? If it's

exclusive, I need it to be inclusive. I need to know the actual cost of

these trade shows so we could figure out what your SQLs and,

and MQLs actually cost you. And, like, oh, that's a good point. And

they go, okay. What's our before, during, and after activations?

What do you mean? Well, how are we priming the conference? How

are we attending the conference, and how are we following up on the conference? Oh,

we don't do that. We just attend. It's like, okay. So what do you think

we could get if we did that? Another 30%? Do you think we

can increase the amount of SQLs from MQLs from these conferences?

Oh, okay. That's a good point. So a lot of times, we chase what is

shiny, and that's human nature. Right? We want to think

there are easy solutions, but more often than not, there's a

lot more lemon juice to squeeze from these lemons that they think are

already just dead lemons, but that they're not. There's a lot of opportunity. And

that's that's typically what I hear. I hear companies chasing the shiny

object and just completely forgetting some of the basics.

You know, it it reminds me of a comment that comes up a lot in

conversations that we have, and that is the money is in the follow-up.

And, you know, I I've I've experienced this where someone goes to

a trade show, they get all these leads, and and, like, I like

I I love your, reaction to the comment. Well, it works

for us. Well, the fine works for us. Right? Like, let's break

that down. How do we measure, it works for us? And

then and then, like you said, like, really, are we utilizing,

like, all these you know, it's expensive to go to a trade show. So these

are, pretty costly leads, and, in in

some we call them leads. Sometimes they're just name and email address and phone number,

which is you know, they're not necessarily qualified. But,

you know, as you go through and and and nurture those

and follow-up with those is finding, you know, finding

more opportunity. And it just reminds me that, you know, the money is

in the follow-up. And we do a lot of events with what we work with,

you know, webinars and, sometimes multiday events. Same thing

happens where, you know, they look at the registrations. They go, oh, we

had 200 people registered, and, a 100

people showed up. Great. And so then they they're only measuring

their sales from that actual webinar. And how

about the next 2 or 3 weeks? We actually try to call all the ones

that were there and and didn't buy. Right? And so,

so that sounds like a is is that a common mistake that you're finding

that, business owners are making? Is that, like you said,

chasing the shiny thing, like, what new marketing initiative can we

do? But how many times are we just, where the biggest

gains we can get are from something we already have. We're just

not working with it well. More more often than not. Right? And and that's just

because no one's focusing on it. Right? There's there's no one in the team that's,

you know, maybe the chief revenue officer. There's just no one looking

into that detail, and so, therefore, they overlook it. And so they're they're

constantly trying to chase for some new revenue stream, which is fine. I I

I can understand why you want new revenue streams. But I think you can

do that in an operationally efficient manner in the sense that, like

again, this is what I mean. I look at this like operations. You

have an operations up fronting. You have an upper operation. Whether or no you

know the economics and by the way, a lot of companies don't do this. Right?

No one calculates the SQL cost with the actual cost of

their overhead of the sales team. Like, very rarely do they actually ever bother

doing this number. But for some reason, as soon as an MQL comes

down, every c suite is breathing down your throat about how it costs

$50, and yet an SQL is costing you $2,000

because you have never run the numbers before. So

so it's like, no one's focusing on it, so, therefore, they wanna

chase for something new. But, operationally, we should double

down, take the take the the the the value of that, and

then use that to, in tandem, build a new funnel. Right?

And and I think this is the thing that people forget. Your sales

team was a funnel. Your trade show was a

funnel. It takes time to build that funnel. So if you

wanna be prudent about what you're doing, let's go double

down on what we know is working so we generate value. And

at the same time, let's take a little bit of our resources,

risk it, and build a new funnel, which is maybe digital marketing.

But why spend all of that time taking all of your resources,

not doubling down, and doubling down on something that you don't know even

works yet? It makes no sense. So my prudent approach is take

your low hanging fruits, squeeze them dry, and at the same time,

take some of that value and go reinvest that into a new funnel because it's

gonna take time. Mhmm. But test that on the side. Don't go all

in on something that is so speculative. Like, you

have no idea whatsoever if this is gonna work. So

Exactly. Yeah. Totally makes sense.

Listen. I'm sure a lot of our our listeners

are are leaning in on this going, okay.

Yeah. I haven't been doing that. I have been making some of these mistakes. I

think there is an opportunity to do better. Talk

a little bit about, you know, what it looks like to

engage with you, like, you know and and we're gonna make sure that we

put the links to you beneath this video. If you're watching this on

video or podcast, it's in it's in the player. So all the links to

connect with Nathan are there. What what are some of the next steps

someone should take to, even think about this and and even,

to have a conversation with you about their

situation? It's a great question. Thank you for asking. So

we've been in business now for long enough that I've recognized that my full

marketing service is not for everyone. So we have 4 different services.

We have our advisory service. We have fixed projects. We have fixed

retainer, and then we have my full marketing as a service kinda type

business, which really is meant for those kind of more you know, I'm gonna say

more established type businesses. I think a lot of companies fall in the first

three where they're hesitant. You don't know Nathan. That's fine. I get

it. Let's do a teaser. So the advisory piece is really,

hey. I can't really afford anything right now, but

I really need help. Then you you get me 4 hours

a month. And, you know, for a lack of better words, I'm your marketing accountability

coach. I set the goals. I challenge you. I yell at you. I make

sure you execute on them, but I make sure that you don't do stupid things,

which means you're not wasting time on activities that I really don't believe are gonna

be valuable for you. The fixed project and fixed scope retainers are very

simple in the sense that we're just scoped to do a very specific type item,

which means maybe someone give you advice for SEO. Maybe I

agree with that advice and you hire us just to do SEO. So we go

ahead and do that. And our last one, which is for larger companies is, hey,

Nathan. I want someone who's gonna be accountable for my company and

grow, which means, Nathan, here's my goals. Here's your

budget. You're hired. If you don't meet it, you're fired. That's exactly

like any other employee. That's their our largest service. So kinda different

services for different sized companies. I feel like a lot of people probably fall on

the advisory side. So that's something where you can just sign up. I have a

quick discovery call and make sure that we have a good understanding and expectations.

And and and I also have some experience, you know, while I have worked in

50 plus clients, and various different, you know, categories, I wanna make

sure that I actually have some industry knowledge. Right? So making sure

that I'm a good fit for you guys in the sense of providing some value,

making sure that every hour you spend with me is actually gonna be double or

triple the value back to the business, and I think that's really important. So that's

how you can engage with us. We all do a small discovery no matter which

one it is. And, and then away we go, we start actioning and helping you

grow your marketing function. Amazing. Well, if you would like to

connect with Nathan, his links are right beneath this video. If you're watching it on

video, if you're listening to us on a podcast, just check into that player that

you are playing this on right now. And, all in the show notes,

all the all the links to Nathan are there as well.

Look. I we've covered a lot of ground, but we've only we've also only scratched

surface. I mean, we could talk about marketing and metrics and all of this,

all day long and, and and deep dive on a lot of it.

But I think this gives

everyone a a lot to think about. And, I mean,

that big decision is when when when do you start looking,

and then and then also, I think finding that

hidden fruit in what you're already doing. And, look, if you

just did that, it would probably pay for Nathan's services. So

so, you know, it the ROI on this is is

not that it's not that far. So now before I

let you go, Nathan, I wanna ask you just because, you know, there's a bit

of a, you know, obviously, we're we we look to grow our

businesses. As entrepreneurs, a lot of

times when we grow our businesses, we have to grow ourselves as well.

And so I ask all my guests while they're here, for,

recommendations on that. So, so much of my learning

has come from books, and so I wanted to ask you while you're here.

Is there a must read book or a a recent book or something

that that has stood out to you or has been helpful to you that,

you recommend others read? There's 2 books, actually. 1 is

scaling up, which I think is just a great business book.

And the reason I like it is because it's a book of books, references

a ton of other books, which I really appreciate, which means I think there's a

lot of thought put towards the structure and the framework of everything. And I

would say more on a personal note, I I read just recently Adam

Grant's think again, and I think

has fundamentally changed my my view on personal

opinion. I think it's a great book in the sense of

really challenges, challenges you in

the sense of, do you know what you really know, and and are you

willing to change that? And I think that's, it was just like it

was a it was a really eye opening book for me because I think I'm

I'm a little stubborn. And so, it opened my eyes to

being a bit more welcoming to new ideas and welcoming

to myself. You know? I think, you know, I there's always that saying

being kind to yourself being kind to yourself in the sense that you can change

your mind, and it's okay to change your mind, but be be prudent in that

approach. So I I really recommend that book. I think that's a great

message. Be kind to yourself. And I you know, I've actually never read that book.

So that's going on the the the the must read list as

well, and I always get my book recommendations from my podcast guests.

So, this is amazing. You know, when I first started asking the question, I

thought I was gonna get all the same answers all the time, either, like, the

most recent popular books or, like, the or, you know,

the other one, like, Think and Grow Rich and, you know, books like that. But

it's just there's such a wide recommendations.

So thank you for your recommendation as well. And for those listening

in, the links to those books are here as well.

So, Nathan, thank you. This is this is, been amazing. It's been

great spending some time with you. We live in the same city. We've never we've

never actually met in person, but it's, great to get to know you a little

bit. And for our listeners, you

know, connect with Nathan. All his links are there as well.

So before we sign off, Nathan, any final

piece of advice or words of wisdom you wanna leave our audience with?

Oh, good one. I have a saying that's a

little rough. So but I I but I believe in

marketing, it's it's very true. The middle

is where you go to die, And it's

a saying where if you think there's an opportunity

where you can go to the middle of profit, there's a reason why people are

not there. And I find a lot of companies when it comes to

positioning, they wanna be the best, but they wanna be in the middle of the

road in terms of price. Or they wanna be

the cheapest, but they also wanna provide all the features.

There is usually always a reason why people are not in the middle of the

market, and there's always a reason why there's actually an opportunity in the middle of

the market. It's because, typically, it's not a profitable or

or or reasonable positioning for your for

companies to be in. So anyone that thinks they're doing well in the

middle, I challenge you to think if whether or not you'd actually be better at

either being the cheapest or the best, because at least in my

experience, every company that has ever done that, you face far more challenges than

it's worth. Really recommend people looking to when they make

a positioning choice, you're either the best or you're the cheapest. It's one of the

other. That is powerful advice. I've never heard it

said exactly like that, but that is so true. And we've experienced

it so many times even with our own ideas and and with ideas

of our clients. So, great words to end this

episode by. So, Nathan, thank you so much. This has been amazing,

To our audience, I want today to mean something for you. I

want today to, help you leverage

something we talked about or an idea or, you know, at least

move your business forward. So I want you to think about one thing that

either, you heard Nathan say or maybe you were

reminded that, hey. I I haven't followed up this thing or I

haven't done this thing. You know, identify one action step and go do

it today. Right? And if you can't think of anything else, then just

go reach out to Nathan and and find out, Have a conversation with him.

He'll help you figure out, what that is. And, in

the meantime, keep moving forward. The only way to fail is to quit,

and, never ever give up on your big dream. You could just be that

one partner or that one collaboration or that one action

step away from the breakthrough that you need in your business.

Until next time, this is the creative collaboration show with Chuck Anderson, and we'll

see you on the next one, everybody. Thank you.