Meet Wayne Mullins

Wayne is a husband, father of 4, entrepreneur, and the Founder of Ugly Mug Marketing, creator of the Freelance Accelerator, and author of Full Circle Marketing. He's an out-of-the-box, against the grain, thinker and it has more than paid off for his company and clients. He leads from the heart and is passionate and unapologetic about doing so. As Founder & CEO of Ugly Mug Marketing of one of the most unique and successful marketing agencies in the world, Wayne has personally trained more than 20,000 marketers, launched NY Times Bestsellers, and helped a client grow from $20M to more than $600M in less than 5 years.

How do you know if your business's culture is sabotaging your marketing efforts?

Yeah. That's a, that's a great question. And it's a challenging question because to begin, Lori, I think we have to come to the realization that often for us as entrepreneurs or for us as marketers, this thing called our business or the business that we're marketing for, it's our baby. We love this thing.

And sometimes we don't want to admit that our baby is actually ugly. And the truth is that sometimes our baby is a bit ugly and we need to look at it through that objective lens so that we can determine what is actually happening and what is not. So the first place that I love to tell people to start is to get some candid feedback from your actual customers, those interacting with your organization, purchasing your product, purchasing your services. And that can be a little bit daunting and it can be a little bit confusing for people because by default, what we typically do is we go ask the people who we think are going to say great things, right?

We ask our friends, our longtime customers, and those people rarely are willing to say things that are going to hurt our feelings or step on our toes. So, it's important to find those who are willing to tell us the honest truth about what it's like doing business with us.

Why is it so important to engage with prospects and customers on a personal level? 

So we live in a world now that is, you know, there's some great quote or analogy here that I'm going to completely botch and mess up, but basically we live in this hyper connected world, right?

Where everyone is connected to everyone online and yet we live in a world where people don't have that many real connections anymore. And so one of the simplest yet most impactful things that you can do is learn to connect with your prospects and your customers on a personal level. So very simple things that you can do that will immediately calls you to stand out, send handwritten thank you notes, send birthday cards in the mail. Any points of personal interaction like that are going to cause you to immediately stand head and shoulders over your competition. Not because they can't do those things, but because they're so busy looking for the next big hack or the next, you know, cheat code or whatever it may be that they're unwilling and undisciplined to do the fundamental things that we know actually do work.

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Ugly Mug Marketing

Freelance Accelerator

Full Circle Marketing

[00:00:18] Lori Highby: Hey, everybody. Lori Highby here. Welcome to the Social Capital Podcast. Our show notes are found at socialcapitalpodcast. com. To you, the listener, I want you to know that I appreciate you and I'm thrilled to have you here for another amazing episode. If there's ever anything that I can do to support you, please reach out.

That being said, LinkedIn is the channel that you're going to find me most active on. Just search for Lori Highby. You can simply click the follow button as I post information about marketing strategy, tips, all podcasts, episodes, and maybe an upcoming event you might be seeing me at. If you'd like to connect, send a quick note that mentions Social Capital.

Today's guest is Wayne Mullins. Wayne is a husband, father of four, entrepreneur and the founder of Ugly Mug Marketing, creator of the Freelance Accelerator and author of Full Circle Marketing. He's an out of the box, against-the-grain thinker and has more than paid off for his company and clients. He leads from the heart and is passionate and unapologetic about doing so. As founder and CEO of Ugly Mug Marketing and one of the most unique and successful marketing agencies in the world, Wayne has personally trained more than 20, 000 marketers, launched New York Times bestsellers, and helped a client grow from 20 million to more than 600 million in less than five years.

[00:02:00] Wayne Mullins: Thank you so much, Lori. I'm excited for this chat today.

[00:02:18] Wayne Mullins: Absolutely. I've got so many, you know, if I pulled up my pants, like I've got so many scrapes and bruises from falling down, making mistakes. And so if I'm able just by sharing and teaching some of the hard lessons that I've had to learn and it enables other marketers, other entrepreneurs to kind of bypass some of those mistakes, then it's well worth it.

[00:03:00] Wayne Mullins: Yeah. That's a, that's a great question. And it's a challenging question because to begin, Lori, I think we have to come to the realization that often for us as entrepreneurs or for us as marketers, this thing called our business or the business that we're marketing for, it's our baby. We love this thing.

And sometimes we don't want to admit that our baby is actually ugly. And the truth is that sometimes our baby is a bit ugly and we need to look at it through that objective lens so that we can determine what is actually happening and what is not. So the first place that I love to tell people to start is to get some candid feedback from your actual customers, those interacting with your organization, purchasing your product, purchasing your services. And that can be a little bit daunting and it can be a little bit confusing for people because by default, what we typically do is we go ask the people who we think are going to say great things, right?

[00:04:14] Lori Highby: Yeah, I think that's really important.

And we've often times recommended, and I'm sure you've done this with your clients too, is having a third party come in to have the conversations with some of those customers so that it is a more honest feedback that's coming in.

Totally.

[00:04:52] Wayne Mullins: Yeah, I think number one is the understanding that every interaction that someone has with your organization [00:05:00] is a marketing interaction. In other words, if you think about marketing's job, marketing's job is to move people one step closer to making a purchasing decision.

So If we agree on that definition that that is marketing's job, marketing's job is to get people closer to pulling out their wallets and handing us money. We then have to go back and say, if that is true, then every point of interaction that someone has with our organization is a marketing interaction.

So from the way, if you have a physical store, from the way that your sidewalk looks, when people walk up to how clean the door is, or the windows are to. What's your restroom looks like if customers coming in using the restroom to the way that you answer the phone, the way that you respond to email, the way that you respond to on and on, the list goes on and on.

All the way through receiving your product or receiving your service. What are all those things? So telephone call, visit the website, visit social media, you know, pick up the phone, come by your location, whatever all those things are. And then ask yourself, what does a reasonable customer have the right to expect during this particular point of interaction.

Do we have You know, and a voicemail system set up that just allows them to leave a message. We real human beings, how many rings does it take before we answer the phone? And so we go through this whole litmus test of answering or asking ourselves those questions. And then we put down what that person has the right to expect.

So if they call, let's say that they expect it to be a real human being and they expect us to answer the phone within three rings. So then what we can do is we can then go back and we can analyze every single time the phone rings. Did we answer it within three rings or did it take more? Did it take less?

And that becomes that sheet of paper with all those points of interactions becomes a litmus test for you. And it's a very important marketing tool, even though it does not sound like it is a marketing tool.

It's just every every little action is pushing towards an end goal. And you want to make sure it's a really positive, exciting experience at each of those segments.

They want the thing that's just going to magically transform their business with, you know, some marketing secret or some marketing hack. And the [00:09:00] reality is the most important marketing things that you can do are those things that you probably don't want to do. Which is what we just talked about is outlining that customer journey in taking the time to pick up the phone and call, taking the time to go visit the website or fill out the form, et cetera.

So a hundred percent agree with you.

[00:09:24] Wayne Mullins: So we live in a world now that is, you know, there's some great quote or analogy here that I'm going to completely botch and mess up, but basically we live in this hyper connected world, right?

[00:10:26] Lori Highby: Oh, I love that. I'm a huge fan of the, the handwritten notes. I think it's so important and extremely underutilized today. And I'm really leaning into what Paul Roetzer from the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute is preaching right now is let's leverage AI to create efficiencies and remove some of the redundancies in what we're using from a technology standpoint to enhance and get back to that human to human contact and relationship. And, and it's so important, I think, and that's business and everything we do is all built on relationships. So I love what you're [00:11:00] saying here.

And as you know, in the marketing world, sometimes, things don't always trend up, right? Sometimes there's failure. Sometimes there's mistakes that are made and sometimes the numbers don't always go the direction we want them to go. That's just the reality of this world that we live in. And so building those relationships with the client and genuine relationships so that they know you are genuinely concerned about their best interest.

[00:12:07] Lori Highby: 100%. I totally agree with you on all of that.

I'm going to ask you a fun question here. If you could go back to your 20 year old self, what would you tell yourself to do more of less of or differently with regards to your professional career?

I, for me personally, I find that my ego and my need to be right, my need to be the expert sometimes gets in my own way. Let me not say sometimes, often it gets in my own way. Right? And so giving myself advice around that I think for me, the thing that I would tell myself early on was find those people surround yourself with the few people who are willing to tell you the things that you don't want to hear, but you probably need to hear. So that's what I would say.

[00:13:00] Wayne Mullins: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:13:08] Wayne Mullins: I would say, Lori, based on what you know about the marketing world and all the, the changes that are constant, what should an entrepreneur be focused on right now?

In other words, how do we make some, how do we bring some peace to this seemingly chaotic world of marketing that we're in?

It's just kind of scattered chaos right now. But and to dive in and connect with what you're saying to the more that you focus on that ideal customer and building those relationships. I think the greater success you're going to have at the end of the day. And it's not always about the shiny objects and the latest and the greatest tools and platforms that are out there.

[00:14:34] Wayne Mullins: I love that. And, you know, I'm reminded of a quote by Earl Nightingale. Earl Nightingale had a quote that was basically, if you want the ultimate business strategy, it is spend an hour a day thinking about how you can better serve your customers.

Right? So I love what you said.

Great question. I appreciated it. Wayne, do you have any final words of wisdom that you'd like to share with our listeners?

I love the next big idea, right? I'm, I'm already done with the idea I had yesterday. I moved on to the new cool idea I've got today or the new social media platform that just came out or whatever that may be. But what I've learned over the years and I've had to constantly and continually remind myself of this is that consistency creates miracles.

[00:16:28] Lori Highby: I've never heard a position that way and I may borrow that phrasing from you, but I agree a hundred percent consistency.

I always like to use it to the, the working out, you know, you can't do a hundred sit ups in a day and expect rock solid abs. You have to be consistently working on that to maintain, you know, the physique that you're looking for. And it's the same thing when it comes to any of your marketing efforts. That's great.

[00:17:02] Wayne Mullins: Sure. The simplest place is our website. That is just uglymugmarketing.com. All of our social media channels, email addresses, phone numbers, all of that's in one place.

[00:17:18] Wayne Mullins: Thank you, Lori. I've enjoyed our chat.

I'd be happy to answer it on the show. And as mentioned before, let's connect on LinkedIn. I'm looking forward to hearing from you and I hope you enjoyed today's show. Go out there and get noticed.