Local Market Monopoly

Speaker 1: Welcome back to Local Market Monopoly. I'm Clarence Fisher, your host, and I'm so glad that you made it back. This is where people come to dominate their local market. If they want to dominate the local market, basically what we call own the block. If that's what you want to do, you're in the right place. And today we're going to talk about self-promotion, something that a lot of business owners, even though they are the best, you could be the best in your city and everyone knows it, yet you don't feel like, tooting your own horn. I'm going to tell you we got to get over that and we're going to get over that today because by the end of this episode, you'll not only learn the secrets of self-promotion, but also how to apply them effectively. Hold on, we'll be right back.

Speaker 2: You are listening to Local Market Monopoly with Clarence Fisher -uncovering the tools, tactics, and strategies the most successful small businesses use to dominate their local markets and own the block.

Speaker 1: Okay, okay, we're back and we're talking about self-promotion today. I know you don't want to toot your own horn, but I'm telling you this is not the time. My mother used to tell me that all the time, boy, this is not the time. When is the time for me to roll around on the floor? Throw a tantrum? Could you please let me know next time? I'll be waiting. I'll be over here. I'll be waiting. But this is not the time for modesty, not in today's age. Listen, listen, Linda, if you don't do it, someone else is going to do it. And well, actually, I know you hired the marketing people. I could hear you. I could hear you from over here. You're like, dude, that's why I hired you so I don't have to toot my own. I get it, but there's nothing like, you still have to promote yourself.
Dan Kennedy, who is legendary marketer, Dan Kennedy, it's like when you're in business, you have to wake up every single day and campaign like you're running for president. And I totally believe that, and I think you believe that too. I really think you want to be able to self-promote without feeling slimy and sleazy, you know you need to do it. Let's just go over some of the, I'm going to give you seven ways that you can promote yourself without coming across being sleazy. And the very first thing that we're going to talk about is the age old elevator pitch, your tagline for your company or your elevator pitch. And I know you're like, oh my goodness, not the elevator pitch. If you've never heard, if you're new to business and you've never heard of the elevator pitch, the whole premise is imagine you are in an elevator or you're at a networking event, I don't know.
And then you go in the elevator and then in the elevator is the person that can either fund your business, the number one person on your Dream 100 list that if you got this person, this company, oh my goodness, it would just transform your life. But anyway, the most important person that you've been trying to get in contact is on that elevator with you, is just you and that person. Don't panic because you've been practicing your elevator pitch. And so within 60 seconds, now the traditional elevator pitch says 60 seconds. I'm going to tell you that's a long dadgum time. I would challenge you to get this down to 15 seconds, 30 seconds. Of course you can have the 60 seconds for when you're at a traditional networking event or whatever, but I would venture to get it down to 15 or 30 seconds. Now, me, myself, I'm going to tell you I have to practice my elevator pitch because all the time when I very first started business, I was on it.
I'm talking about, I practiced my elevator pitch so much. It was like Daniel's son and Mr. Miyagi, I'm outside, I'm talking to a tree and I keep giving the elevator pitch all day sun up to sundown. Seriously, I had so many, I don't know, it was like 20 times. I had to give the elevator pitch every single day until I'm walking down the street and someone drops out of a tree, kind of like I'm the old kung fu movies, and I turn around and I say, my name's Clarence, Clarence Fisher. I help businesses get more customers, clients and patients, whatever the elevator pitch was at the time. Fast forward to today, I was at a top floor club, downtown Tulsa, prestigious, all this stuff, and I get introduced to the president of this bank. This happens like three weeks ago. I get introduced to the president of this bank by my friend who is there and it's her birthday party, and she goes, Hey, this is Clarence.
I refer people to him all the time, and he goes, what do you do? And I go Marketing, and he's looking at me as uncomfortable as I'm looking at him. Number one, I'm such an introvert. It's crazy. There were a ton of people there, but I should know better than this, but I am marketing and there was this long silence. I help small businesses, local businesses, get more customers, clients and patients. He was like, oh, okay, all right. And I'm like, you know what? That was the most horrible elevator pitch ever. So I don't want you to go through that. Number one, I am Harley ever. I'm in a really pretty good position where people are typically coming to me, but I should still have the elevator pitch down and let's do this. The next time you see me, when you ask me what do I do, I'm going to give you a very shiny elevator pitch.
Now, how do you do that? First you got to design, define the objective. I mean, who do you want? What's the primary goal of your pitch? Write that down. And I spent two years in BNI networking, and believe me, we got that down. So I'm not lying to you when I said I had my elevator pitch down, you don't do two years in A BNI network in a group without having it. But decide what your objective's going to be and decide what your unique selling position is. What is it that separates you from everyone else? So let's like three different things that separate. You tell you as you start practicing this thing, everything won't hit, and so you'll come back and you'll kind of switch it up. You do want to know your audience. You want to know one of the things that they taught in BNI thought was really great was speak about the person that you want.
The whole purpose of this pitch is I am telling you, you're on the elevator. If you're go the traditional way and you're on the elevator, you want that person to know who you serve, who you help. And that's another thing. It's not necessarily what you do, but it's who you help and what you help them accomplish. Very seasoned people say, I help. And that's why even as I was fumbling with the bank president, I sank to the level of training where initially I said, I do marketing, which was don't do that, but the recover in my brain is like, eh, recover. Recover. I help local businesses get more customers, clients and patients. And then that's like, well, how do you do that? And then I can go into the whole digital marketing and all that stuff, but that's a really cool reminder that you do sync to the level of your preparation no matter what, because I was so even not really interested.
I wasn't trying to get his business or anything. So he is like, Hey, what do you do? And I'm marketing, and then I'm like, dummy elevator pitch. Now I could just see the cartoons when you have the little men in your body, in your brain and they're like, oh, no, this is the elevator pitch time, man. And I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, I help. So know your audience and then make the message concise. Like I was saying, you could do 60 seconds, but I would break it down to 30 at the most 15 minutes. You can include some type of story to come back with for when it's like, oh, so how do you do that? I help local businesses get more customers, clients and patients. Well, how do you do that? Well, and then that's another thing. Look, it's all coming back to me now so you know how, and then something that they can relate to, well, that's what we do.
And the people that work with us and we'll list a couple of benefits and then it's, Hey, if you know someone I'm, I'm never really going for the person that I'm talking to. And you can for sure lots of, it's totally okay to be like, Hey, if you ever need help with this or this, just give me a call. But I'm always like, Hey, if you hear someone say, and then I'll say the keywords, then those are the type of people I'm looking for. Definitely giving them a call. Here's my card. If you hear, and I'll say the keywords, because for me it takes the pressure off of, Hey, I'm pitching you, but if he hears the keyword then and she, whoever, of course, I mean, or she, when they hear the keyword, if they want that what I'm selling, then they will let me know.
Otherwise it's like, yes, I will listen for that. And so it's kind of a non-pressure way to put it out there. Of course, anybody who's ever dealt with me knows dad gun well that I'm the softest closer ever. It's basically like, okay, well what do you want to do? I mean, that's me. So the next thing you want to do is after you've got this, so you've taken the steps, you've defined your objective, you have decided on your USP, you've written three of them down because believe me, the first one probably won't hit your audience. You've crafted a concise message and you've got a story or something for when they come back. How do you do that? You give them some type of story and highlight the benefits that that person or that company benefited from working with you. You've given them a call to action.
Now you got to practice it. You really do. I mean, this is one of the things that even as I'm telling you this story and me stumbling because I haven't used an elevator pitch in years, I still failed to my level of training and it came out and as I'm leaving, I'm thinking I should do more networking. I don't do any networking really anymore just because I'm a super duper. I keep saying it. I keep saying it. Until you meet me, you won't get it. When people hear that Clarence is an introvert, they're like, no. And it's typically because I do speaking and stuff like that, and then of course I have a couple of podcasts and we're doing content and all that stuff, but I'm telling you, practice and refine it and then adapt it. You wrote those three usps, go back and if something's not hitting and people are like, if you say what you do and they start rolling their eyes, you should probably go use the other USP.
Okay? So the first thing, point of self-promotion here that we covered today is your elevator pitch. If you have a tagline for your company, you definitely want to can throw that in there too, but beyond the elevator pitch, now that you've got that down, let's jump on social media and social media as far as self-promotion goes is where it's at. Now, I know super busy people are like, I don't have time for social media, but I'm telling you, social media is where it's at. This is how you handle social media. I like to handle social media very proactively. It's not willy-nilly posting. I've taken, I'm super analytical, you don't have to go this route, but at one point I had a spreadsheet, but I've got five different categories of content that I want to share, and I'm going to try to make this super easy because I know most people are not as analytical as I am.
I'm not going to take the time to do all this, but if you just took a sheet of paper and maybe it's a note, it's a note memo pad on your phone and you make five bullet points, it could just be three bullet points, but for each one of those bullet points, put down the topic or category that you would share. And let's see. One could be family, one could be business or entrepreneurship, meaning your business. I would suggest that that's the case. One could be a one category. How did we do this? One category would be a organization or charity that you're passionate about or a cause, we'll say that a cause. So you've got family business, you've got a cause, and then one point could be a hobby that you are passionate about. And so let's just say four. I mean I think I had five, but you say you've got those four and you rotate between those. So it's just pulling up the prompt and saying, Hey, I'm about to share something about family business. I'm going to share something about business. We call it the backstage pass, something that's happening in my company, and then I'll just rotate through those, and that's how I take out.
For me, it was important to take out the spontaneity in it. And the reason being is because when I'm being purposeful about my brand, and we'll talk about that here in a minute, about your personal brand, when you're being purposeful about that, you put out what you want people to know to how you want people to associate with you. And most people do this on social media, just don't think about it, right? They're posting the picture of their car, they're posting a picture of their vacation, they're making the duck lips, you know what I mean? And they're doing that to influence how people think about them. Well, if you're a business owner, instead of saying, oh, social media is stupid, then you do the same thing, but be very proactive about it. Be very intentional about it. This is what I want you to see, and if you follow me on social media, I promise you even the funny things that I post or the things that seem like I'm posting that's personal is on purpose because that's the self-promotion.
I teach this stuff and we do this stuff so you can do it. I see you right now. You're like, oh, wow, Clarence, I never thought of it that way. I think I can do this. Yes, you can do this. Just don't take social media personal. I don't get into the arguments and all that stuff. I mean, some of the stuff ticks me off, but you won't see me arguing on social media. That does nothing for my personal brand at all. But if it does, I mean if you're a Limbaugh or that being polarizing attracts people to you. So if you want to go that route, go that route if you want. Speaking of, let's talk about your Trump card, not your physical Trump card. Networking, networking, networking. Old school networking never goes out of style. And I'm going to tell you how I did networking and how I'm getting back.
I'm actually getting back into networking, but not how you think. Okay, so as far as when I used to be in BNI, and we go to all these networking events, what I've always done is make a list of what we call COIs, centers of influence. So in my mind, I always want to connect with the centers of influence, the people that when you go to an event, there are people all around them. There's five or 10 people around those people. I want to connect with that person. And so I make a list of those people, get an introduction to those people, and then I reach out to those people, go on my calendar to reach out to every 90 days, and then I end up having a lunch with that person or some type of meeting with that person. And typically it's a lunch that we'll end up having a lunch, and if we connect on any level, then I leave and then I send a thank you card, always send a thank you card.
Nobody does this, but I always send a handwritten thank you card and then that person's name, I will pull up my calendar or my CRM typically, and 90 days later I will put contact, so-and-so for lunch or give them some type of anything that I'll basically say reach out to them and if we can get lunch, get lunch. But every 90 days I am staying in contact with the people that I really want to network with. And so you end up with 30, 40, 50 people that you are rotating, and if they're super influential and super busy, that 90 days comes up and maybe you don't get to have lunch with them at that point, but you have gotten on their radar again and say, Hey, no problem. Hey, I'll check with you later, or whatever. So that's the way that I do my networking. And then I'm also introduced to people because these centers of influence get to know who I am.
And here's the deal too is I'm networking. I am not going to lunch trying to pitch my stuff. I'm genuinely trying to connect with this person and if I can help them a lot of times or if I can introduce them to someone else, which is generally what happens is what are they working on, and then I can introduce them to someone that can help them with that problem. That's really what I'm looking to do. Well, the tactic that I wanted to share with you was to put them on the calendar, and then in episode 94, we also shared marketing automation. When we talk about starting marketing automation in 94, I shared with you a way that we set up our system, our email system to where I can scan a business card. Let's see, I meet someone new, I'm introduced to someone at an event.
I can scan that business card and then go about my business, and our system will send them a nice to meet you either that if the event is at night, it won't go out until in the morning. If it's during the daytime, it'll wait like an hour and then it will send them the nice to meet you email and then, Hey, here's all of my information and it'll offer them if they want to get on our newsletter or maybe or here's a free resource for you, which is one of our PDFs and all that stuff. So it's a nice automation to have, especially when you're networking. So go check that out in episode 94. If you missed it, are you tired of being invisible online? Do you want to be the number one authority in your market but don't know where to start? Imagine having a marketing strategy that helps you dominate your local market and get more customers, clients, or patients than ever before.
It works for any business in any market and doesn't cost much money. In fact, it's free. The local market Monopoly newsletter delivers one actionable hyperlocal digital marketing tip straight to your inbox each week designed specifically for small businesses like yours who want to go from surviving with minimal market share and online presence to thriving and becoming omni depressant in your local market. Each week you'll get one powerful tip on how to grow your online reputation, increase your company's reach, repeat sales and referrals without wasting thousands of dollars on tactics that don't work, no gimmicks, just real strategies that work every time. Go to local market monopoly.com, sign up now and start receiving our best of the best marketing strategies immediately. Then you'll receive one proven marketing strategy each week to dominate your local market and own the block.
Okay, so now let's move on to your personal branding, which is what I was talking about with Facebook. But your personal branding wants you to be really intentional about that. What do you want people to think when they think of you? What should come to mind? The things that you believe, the enemies that I say, enemies or the things that you are against. What are you for? What are you against? People should know those things when they see you. You control that. You can control how people perceive you. Of course you know this, and then the Facebook comes, helps you do that or the social media, whether you're on Facebook or X or LinkedIn or wherever you are, but take the time to be proactive about that. As I was putting this together, I thought we need to do an episode on personal branding, personal branding versus your business branding.
So you have your business branding, but then you also have you as either the VP or the owner. You have your own personal brand, your professional demeanor. Are you trustworthy? What's your reputation? Your brand is a reflection of your fundamental beliefs, your purpose, and it strikes a chord with people. So that's the personal brand, and we're going to get into that. Just be intentional about it. I would sit down and say, Hey, what do I want people to think when they see me? Am I going to always be in a suit and tie, which we talked about this for local market monopoly. My personal brand will be changing going into the next year because when you see me in person, I very rarely have on a tie. Very rarely. We used it in the very beginning because I needed to, well, I wanted to get in rooms.
There were rooms that I needed to get into, so we use that, but off, I take that tie off as soon as possible and now it just doesn't make sense to have a tie. No one wears a tie anymore. So we're going to change. And plus I'm at a point now where like I say, people are coming to me more. I'm super blessed, hard work, work my butt off, and God's blessed my hands. So people come to me to the point to where the kind of quirkiness off that I am, I can let that show through and that's my brand. So just look for that, and that's going to be changing in the local market, monopoly branding as well. Part of your arsenal is going to be public speaking too. This, I'll tell you, way, way, way, way back in the day, let's say 10 years ago I was starting this business and I got the idea to generate business again.
I'm trying to network, and I knew nothing about networking. I remember sitting in our apartment with my wife, we had let our house go before that. It was like, this is 2010. And so it's right after 2008, the whole world is falling apart, and we downsized to this apartment, and this is when ironically, I was in the mortgage business at that time of 2008 trying to figure out how to become a loan officer. Oh my goodness, it was a crazy time. You want to talk about, you learn something, you'd get a deal finally, and then every Friday a new law would change as the country was knee jerk reacting to all of these defaults. And so you'd be like, yeah, I remember the owner of the mortgage company that I was working with. He'd come into a Friday meeting and say, Hey, credit scores are changing.
It's no longer five 80. You got to have a six 20 or 600 or whatever. There were some stair steps, but you got to get your deals through by the end of today basically, or no, good. I mean, it was just nuts. But anyway, fast forward to a couple of years and we're in this apartment, and one of the things that I helped the mortgage company with was marketing, and back then it was Craigslist and a couple of other things that we would do, and it was fairly new as far as marketing online. Well, I thought, well, maybe I can do that for a living for other businesses. And I remember looking at my wife and I'm saying, I've got to get out of this little corner office that I have here. I'm going to have to get out there and network. And she's like, oh, wow.
Well, number one, yes you do. You have to do something. But also the respect of she knows me and how really, really to myself I am. But I took networking to, of course, I told you I'm analytical and a process person. If you listen to this, then any amount of time you know that I'm a process person. So I just made a process about it. But the point of telling you all this is my very first networking group that I thought I was going to go get business from was Toastmasters. I joined a Toastmasters group to get business. If you're laughing right now, I would be laughing with you. I ended up joining Toastmasters, but I'm like, this is the same 10 people every single day and no one's talking about business. We're going through trying to teach me how to speak, and I get that.
So anyway, I dropped out actually after a while. I was like, I'm not going to ever get any business from this. And I'm so grateful that this is why I love Toastmasters. I am so grateful that the president of that club called me and was like, Clarence, you have a gift. It is pretty raw, but why are you leaving? And so I told her that I need to get business. I don't have time to basically play during lunchtime. And she talked me into coming back. Basically, if you can't speak efficiently, then I mean good luck getting business. This is going to help you. And she appealed to that, and I got into Toastmasters and would you know, I ended up becoming the president of that club, and then I ended up becoming an area governor where basically I ran four different clubs at four different companies, speech contests, all this stuff.
And then Toastmasters holds a very, very big, became a distinguished Toastmaster finally, which is the highest level you can get in Toastmasters. And it's just crazy how things work out. And I've used it to land public speaking, I don't want to say gigs, but appointments in front of masses of business owners. And I'm telling you, that is the quickest way, which is so crazy now that I think about it. It came full circle. Of course, it took a long time, but it came full circle to where I started speaking on stages in front of 30, 40, 50, a hundred business owners at a time. And then that's when you get 2, 3, 4 clients at a time from a speaking on stage because you're the authority. And then right afterwards, the people want to want you to work with them. They want to work with you. So that's how the public speaking ended up helping how Toastmasters ended up helping me.
So I definitely recommend that to you. Okay. And when you do a speaking event, go ahead and put out your own press release. When you do things around town, put out your own press release. Even if the organization that you're working with, even if they're doing a press release, put out your own press release, you want to put out your own content. That's another thing. Another point is content marketing. You influencing what people see and what they say about you online, which influences what they say about you and your company offline. You be the master of this. You're not trying to wait on media. I learned this when I had just been appointed program director at a radio station here locally, and at that point I was still all hip hop. I was all hip hop. I wore the jerseys, I had the jewelry, I had everything.
And really it was my skill that got me the position, but I did not look the part. Thankfully I was at a hip hop radio station though, so it was okay. But I got interviewed by a reporter and when the interview came out, he put in the article like things that I said off way off topic, but that I thought were on the side of the questions that he asked how someone asked a question in a conversation. And I mean, it's just like what? I'm talking to you right now. And then I go off into this, Hey, by the way, story. Well, I'm not expecting that story to be part of the, I mean, I'll tell you how it was. I went off into a side story about how I drove an ice cream truck before getting that job. I drove an ice cream, and it was really just trying to make ends meet while being in between jobs and basically just saying, Hey, because radio is just acting or anything else like that, you are doing whatever you can do before you get the next job.
Well, he positioned it. Basically the company just went and found a guy on an ice cream truck that had jewelry and all this other, I mean, he really positioned it badly. So to the point to where when I walked in after he came out, the general manager at my station came and just tossed it hard on my desk and looked at me glared at me and walked out. And I was like, what? I mean, we're getting some good coverage. And I read the article and I'm just like, oh, that was my very first taste of media and I've never forgotten it. And that was, oh my goodness, that was probably 20 years ago. I've never forgotten it. And so you control the spin as much as possible on what goes out about you and your company, and you can control that. You should really be putting out a press release every single month at least.
There's always something going on in your company that you can write a press release about, have the press release written, put it out there. You can use press wire or any of the press release companies and put it on your calendar to put a press release out. That way when people are searching for your company, they're searching for your name. Then the positive things that you want people to see start popping up. Also, your regular blog posts and stuff like that, you want to put those out as well. You also, if you can, and I think you should start contacting podcasts. You can start right here with local market monopoly. Go to local market monopoly.com. Ask Clarence. There's a link there that says, ask Clarence and you can reach out to me there. Let's get you on the podcast and get you promoted. I know you listen, so I can pay back that way, but become a guest on podcasts or guest to post on other businesses blogs.
Now think about this. All of us have a banker. The bank has their own blog. You could ask to be a guest post on the bank's blog. If you do business with other people and they have a blog. See if you can be a guest writer on that, at least for one post, right? And if it's good and it resonates, maybe you can do a post a quarter, but be a guest, especially in your local market, it does not take very much in order for you to kind of have this omnipresence. And I think the last thing that I'm going to share with you today is about putting on your own webinars or live events. I've done both where we did a live event every quarter when I used to volunteer for score. The how is that? What is score? The Society? The society, something of retired executives where they're around to help people who are starting a business?
Of course, I wasn't retired. I was one of the couple of volunteers in the group that was not retired. I mean working a full-time business, but the cause resonated with me. And so we did events, I did events for them. It also did a weekly webinar for a long time. Every Thursday at two, we did a weekly webinar. And if you're listening and you're like Thursday at two, where have I heard that? Yes, that's also the time now. I used to do it for free and now it's part of the Main Street Marketing Coach program. Go to MainStreetMarketingCoach.com, find out about that, where every single week we are teaching people how to own their block. Basically, I'm taking what I'm teaching now and going in depth specifically for our members' specific business. And so the webinars, the live sessions, stuff like that will definitely increase the promotion of yourself and your personal brand.
Again, we did it for free for years. Like every Thursday you could show up, and then once we got where we wanted to get, we put a paywall in front of it. So you can do what you want to do, but I'm just telling you. So that is, I hope this helps you as far as your own personal branding, your business branding, your self-promotion. Yes, it is some work, but I'm going to tell you, you can't really just sit back. Well, you can, but I would not advise just sitting back and letting your marketing company do all of the promotion. I mean, they're doing it for the business of course, but I promise you people are Googling you as well. People are searching for you as well. If you are the face or a high level executive, or I say executive, even if you're a local business and you're one of the three people that work there best believe people are looking you up online.
So be on purpose, and especially if it's your company. If it's your business, you for sure need to be on purpose about your self-promotion. Don't leave it to chance. Okay? If you have any questions, just reach out and if you haven't done so yet, go to local market monopoly.com and sign up for the newsletter. I would advise you to check out mainstream marketing coach as well. If you would like to work together every week specifically on your business. It's super, super affordable. I just want to help. Alright, so until next week, take what you got here, put it to work and go own your block.

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