No Time? No Strategy? No More Excuses!
Marketing Myths That Get in the Way of You Doing Your Marketing
Basically, the BS excuses you make to justify not prioritizing marketing
As someone who talks to a lot of small business owners, there are patterns I can’t help but pick up on. And one of, actually scratch that—the biggest—pattern I see is in the excuses people make in order to justify not prioritizing marketing or straight up not doing it. So in this episode, there was only one person I wanted to chat with as I call all y’all out. And that was Candice Coppola. Because she has also heard it all. From not having enough time to not knowing what to say, these excuses hold small business owners back (like way back!) from reaching their goals and building the businesses they dream of. So, buckle up—because Candice and I are calling out the top excuses we hear most (the shank) and dish up some tough love to help you overcome these roadblocks and take charge of your marketing efforts (the cuddle).
Marketing Myth #1 "I Don't Have Time to Do My Marketing"
One of the most common excuses small business owners have is “I don’t have time to do my marketing.” And even though it is a fact entrepreneurs juggle multiple roles, it is not a fact that you don’t have time to do it—you simply don’t prioritize it. And that means marketing is the easiest task to push aside. The thing is (and you know this) marketing is a must-have for business growth. So it's not as much about “finding” time as it is about prioritizing it. If you're not protecting the time you set aside for marketing, it's easy to let other tasks (usually way less critical but maybe more fun) to take over. The key is to treat your marketing time as non-negotiable and to be mindful of how you're using your time. Marketing is an ongoing task, but it's also the lifeline that keeps your business visible and thriving.
Marketing Myth #2 "I Need to Have a Marketing Strategy First"
Another excuse that many small business owners make is the belief that they need a fully fleshed-out marketing strategy before they can start. While a strategy is (very) important, overcomplicating it can lead to analysis paralysis. Even if you have a great and well-thought out strategy, marketing is an experiment—you just have to start somewhere because the perfect experiment doesn’t exist. So, instead of striving for the unrealistic perfection your overthinking, people pleasing brain might be trying to find, start with the basics, and let your strategy evolve as you learn from what you try. The most important thing is to get out there and start sharing your message.
Marketing Myth #3 "I Don't Need to Do Marketing Because I Get Referrals"
Relying solely on referrals is dangerous. Periodt. Because even though referrals are great, they shouldn’t be your only source of business. The world in which we are all trying to build our businesses is changing rapidly, and potential customers often research you online before making a decision—even if someone told them about you. So, if you're not actively marketing your business and building a presence, those warm-ass leads don’t have what they need to verify the referral! Diversifying your marketing efforts makes sure you're not putting all your eggs in one basket and that your business can continue to grow even if referrals slow down.
Marketing Myth #4 "I Don't Have Anything to Say in My Marketing"
Candice often hears business owners say they don't know what to say when it comes to marketing. And this excuse usually stems from overthinking (this is the second reference to overthinking…so stop overthinking things 😅). Marketing doesn't have to be about coming up with groundbreaking ideas; it's about communicating who you are, what you do, and how you can help your customers. So (again) focus on the basics: What problem do you solve? Who do you solve it for? And why should they choose you? Your message doesn't need to be perfect—it just needs to be authentic. The more you share, the more people will connect with your brand.
Marketing Myth #5 "I'm Bothering People if I Do Too Much Marketing"
Which brings us to the last dumb excuse we hear from small business owners, and that’s they're worried about bothering people by marketing “too much”. You know—is that too many emails to send? Is that posting too much? Excuse, excuse, excuse. In reality, most people are so focused on their own lives that they’re not paying nearly as much attention to you as you think. Marketing is about repetition—people need to hear your message multiple times before it sticks. Instead of seeing marketing as bothering people, shift your perspective to see it as a service. You're offering solutions to problems, and your potential customers need to hear from you.
The excuses (read: lies) you tell yourself and that keep you from prioritizing marketing are common, but they don't have to be permanent roadblocks. And that’s why we called out these excuses for what they are and shared the steps you can take to overcome them. Because when you start to prioritize marketing, you set your business up for long-term success. And remember, marketing is not just another task on your to-do list—it's the key to keeping your business visible and growing in an increasingly competitive market.
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Episode transcript
Tayler - 00:00:05:
Welcome, welcome everyone to this month's episode of the Pretty Okay Podcast. I am your host, Tayler Hollman. And you guys, today, the soft kid gloves are coming off. And I've got my dear friend, Candice Coppola here, who I know is a fan of the shank and the cuddle. So we are going to do that today because both of us. I mean, you know I love strong women. And so Candice and I are going to come in with our strong opinions because we want you to make some strong, productive decisions for yourself on the marketing side of things. So we're going to talk about the bullshit excuses that you tell yourself, the lies that you feed yourself that keep you from doing a good job with your marketing. So Candice, welcome to the podcast.
Candice - 00:00:53:
Thank you. I feel like this has been a long time coming and I'm super duper honored to be here today and to also give a little shank and cuddle to our friends out there who need it. If you're listening to this episode today, it's obvious that you needed a shank and a cuddle and we're here to deliver that to you.
Tayler - 00:01:11:
Yes. So buckle up. But know that we're doing this with all of the good intentions. It's coming from a place of love because both Candice and I talk to a lot of business owners and we hear and see all of the things, like the things that you only tell people in private. Candice and I are on the receiving end of that. And so she and I are both in this unique position where we see the common threads and the common behaviors that are weirdly systemic for whatever reason. I don't know who put what in the Kool-Aid in a lot of spaces, but y'all say a lot of the same thing all the time to both me and Candice. So we are going to just run through those bullshit excuses. Call you out on them to make you go, Ooh. Then also the cuddle part is we're going to, we really do want to help you get out of these really terrible habits that you have. So let's jump right in. You guys, this is going to be an explicit episode, tough love, all the things. But the first bullshit excuse, I will kick this one off because I hear this all the time. Is that... I don't have any time or I'm too busy to do my marketing. And, you know. As someone who is also in the camp of you have many marketing channels that you are on, there are multiple facets to your business. You're not someone who's like rolling in extra time, but you still get it done.
Candice - 00:02:54:
I do. Yeah. This is something I hear all the time, all the time is I don't have enough time. And listen, I get... Get why it's hard in all the things that you do as an entrepreneur and the many hats you wear. I get why it's so hard to put time aside to market because there are a lot of things that you are responsible for. I do find, though, that we tend to prioritize the things we like to do, and we tend to deprioritize the things we don't like to do. And if we're fortunate enough in business to be making sales and making money, which P.S. In order to make money, you have to market your business. So that's like a little caveat, a little asterisk here that we have to point out. But if we're in a position to be making money in our business, we can often hire people to support us in the things we don't love doing. But most entrepreneurs are not in a position to hand off their marketing to a team of marketers. And Tayler, you've shared a statistic in the past. I think it was something like almost 50% or maybe more of small businesses are their marketing department, are in charge of marketing, which means the majority of us don't have a budget to have somebody come in and really support us here, which means you have to make the time to market your business.
Tayler - 00:04:15:
100%. You know, the other piece to this is that, I mean, I see it over and over and over again, and I'm sure you see this too, Candice, is that because marketing is not something that people necessarily like to do, I won't get into all the reasons why that's also a bullshit excuse.
Candice - 00:04:33:
It is.
Tayler - 00:04:34:
But, you know, marketing is always the can that gets kicked down the road. Like, you're like a butterfly could fly past your window and you decide that that's the reason that you're not going to write the blog post today, right? Just like the dumbest thing can come up and you're like, nope, I'm not going to do that. But the other thing that feeds into this whole, I don't have time to do my marketing is the fact that people are not protecting the time that they set aside to do their marketing. Again, because it's going to get kicked down the road. And so let's just say you have two hours blocked on your calendar for the day to do something productive for your business on the marketing side. And oh, you answer that phone call from that client or you decide to clean out your email inbox. Like you're stepping over yourself and... And not giving yourself the time to do it. Therefore, ergo, shocker, you don't have time to do it because you just like those two hours of your life are gone.
Candice - 00:05:38:
Yeah. I see it all the time. That's such a good point, actually, that we don't protect the time that we do put aside. And we actually allow things to take over our calendars and our schedules and move us away from the things that, I mean, I think deep down, subconsciously, we know we need to do. But for whatever reason, we allow not having enough time to do it to get in the way. And we allow other noble tasks. This is something that I learned from Jon Acuff, which is one of my favorite writers. I love Jon. He's really funny. He's a fellow millennial. I feel like he's almost Gen X. So he's got a bit of Gen X millennial vibe to him. He's so funny and very relatable. And he wrote this great book. It's called Finish. Highly recommend for anybody who feels like you never finish what you start, marketing being one of those things. And he talks about how we'll constantly move around to more noble tasks on our calendar or on our schedule, that things that we feel like are more important or that give us that feeling of a win. We checked it off the list. And maybe this is also part of why we don't make time for marketing or we say we don't have time. Because marketing, it never ends. It's always the thing that you have to do. And so if we don't get that gratification of checking it off the list and boom, it's done. Let's say you're in the wedding industry, you plan a wedding and that wedding's over, it's gone, it's checked off. We don't have that same... That same end point with marketing. It's always, it's like the song that never ends. It's like the never ending story. And that would burn anybody out. Like that would make anybody not want to set the time aside because it feels like you can never catch yourself. Like you can never get caught up with it.
Tayler - 00:07:19:
Yep. I love your low-key lamb chop reference right there. I now have this song that never ends in my head. Only the millennials are going to get that, but throwback to the childhood. Oh my gosh. So, okay. Everyone needs to just stop telling themselves that they don't have time or they're too busy to do their marketing. That is just an excuse that you are using to justify the fact that you're not protecting that time and that block on your calendar to do it. Okay. So this next one. Candice, I love you brought this up as we were thinking about, you know, we're not just doing all of this off the cuff folks. We were like, let's really dig into the BS excuses that we hear. So this one is great. And you know that I will get on my soapbox about having a strategy, but Candice Clark, you told me that you hear people say that I need a marketing strategy first before I can do marketing.
Candice - 00:08:17:
All the time. All the time.
Tayler - 00:08:19:
Tell us why that's bullshit.
Candice - 00:08:20:
And this is right up Tayler's alley, but I hear this all the time. And I actually understand this bullshit excuse on the face of it, because like, you don't want to do anything half-assed. You want to do it to its fullest breath. And somewhere down the line, somebody got in your head and told you that you couldn't do anything unless you had a strategy, unless you had some like gargantuan, mapped out on a whiteboard, perfectly created in a Word doc, like using every software known to man, to make e it come to life. Like you needed to overcomplicate your marketing and a strategy to the point where it feels too hard to even make the strategy and you don't know where to start. And you don't know what a marketing strategy even really looks like. It's like this, this intangible... Paranormal ghost thing that you just can't touch, but you know it's there. So you've overcomplicated this thing and created quite a mess for yourself by believing that you need to have some huge strategy, and it needs to be perfect, by the way, before you can post on Instagram or before you can sit down and just write a blog post. And Taylor, you and I both know that having a marketing strategy is really important. I mean, it's what Taylor preaches about. It's also, P.S., what she built an entire tool to do for you. And this is not even a plug for her software. It's not even for an energy plug, I swear. But she literally understands this so well that she created the resource for this to happen for you. I feel like we understand this excuse, but you have overcomplicated this to death to the point now where you're not even doing anything. We know that marketing is just one big experiment. And in order for you to have a strategy, you just have to get started somewhere. You have to try something. And through whatever it is you're doing for whatever type of business you have, and wherever you're marketing your business, whether it's social media, blogging, SEO, email marketing, YouTube, whatever, you just have to get out there and try something. And from the act of doing, you will then learn how to get better and you will learn what to do next. But you're robbing yourself of that opportunity by thinking you need to have some Doctor Evil master plan in front of you before you show up on Instagram, which is honestly ridiculous when you put it in that perspective, right?
Tayler - 00:10:38:
Totally. It is super ridiculous. And people, you hit the nail on the head with people just have overcomplicated this. And I think it's because they don't understand what a marketing strategy is at its core, right? And so you've let the internet take over like way too much real estate in your brain and make it super confusing. But related to this is I hear a slightly different version where people say, you know, I just I want to make sure that it's that it's right, that I'm doing the right thing. And that ties back to your marketing is an experiment. And the other thing is there's never gonna be the right time to get started. Like you just gotta fucking start.
Candice - 00:11:19:
Yes. You bring it up such a great point. Yeah. Of timing.
Tayler - 00:11:23:
Yeah, the longer you wait. The further you are from reaping any sort of reward. And I've started explaining marketing, like marketing in general as being like farming, not like hunting, right? Like you can go out, you can hunt for something, you can get a quick win, right? Like it's just like, I'm here and I want that and I'll go get it. But marketing is like farming where you have to plant the seed and you have to take care of the seed. Like you have to pay attention to it and you can't just decide that you're not going to water it and fertilize it and cultivate it for weeks on end and then think that you're going to have anything to harvest when it comes time to like actually have. Like, how do I want to say this? Cause I'm fumbling, but like have something that is a moneymaker for you. Cause that's the whole reason we're doing all this shit, you guys. So all of these things are very much tied together. Like don't get stuck in the, I must have a perfect strategy because it doesn't exist. The only marketing strategy you need is an actionable one. And then don't get stuck into thinking that there's going to be the right time for it because the right time was yesterday. Like you literally needed to start marketing yesterday.
Candice - 00:12:31:
Totally. Yeah. Well, that's the thing. We get hung up a lot on time. I want to circle back to marketing strategy in a second, but I want to talk about timing because, you know, listen, I am a business strategist, so I love to play the game of business. And just like in the game of life or in Monopoly or in a pick your video game, The SIMs, there is a strategy to kind of get where you want to go. Right. And I love strategy. And when we think about marketing, sure, there is timing. Like how can I time this so that it hits the right, at the right time and turn the volume up. And there's like all these variables you can play with, but you can't get to that stage of the game until you at least like get through the first level, which is putting yourself out there and embracing whatever season or time you have right now and using that to your advantage and putting your marketing out there. I think we also waste a lot of time on hoping, waiting for the perfect time to spread our message. And so it's like, should I talk about this more in the winter? Is this a time in a certain month that I should be talking about this? Should I wait? The last thing you want to do, honestly, is wait. So when we think about timing and strategy, yes, that does play a role, but I feel like that's when you've been consistent in your marketing and you can afford to play around with when you might shift your message or when you might change an experiment.
Tayler - 00:13:54:
Totally. Totally. So be biased for action, guys. That's the headline on this. Just don't think, just do. Or make the plan, do the plan. Just keep it simple.
Candice - 00:14:05:
Yeah.
Tayler - 00:14:05:
Right?
Candice - 00:14:06:
Absolutely.
Tayler - 00:14:07:
Yeah. Okay. So this next one, I'm curious if you have heard this because there was one time I was at a business mixer and someone, like a real human that was standing right next to me, said this to my face and I was like, don't make a face. Don't make it abundantly clear that I think that what they just said was so dumb. So this person told me. That they don't need to do marketing because all of their business comes from referrals. And I was like, a little bit of me just died inside when this person said this to me. I can't even, this person shall remain anonymous because I honestly don't even remember his name. But it is something that I have heard, especially from service-based businesses that. I don't need to do marketing. Like all of my work or all of the projects that I have on my calendar are from past clients or professional referrals. And the reason that that to me. Is terrifying is because you put yourself in a position where you're relying on other people to do your marketing for you. And can I ask how reliable we think other people are going to be at marketing our shit for us all the time?
Candice - 00:15:28:
Listen, if you're not going to talk about you, who is going to talk about you? And that's something I say a lot. But yeah, I mean, listen, referrals are great. And in fact, if you're getting a lot of your clients from referrals, then you must be spending time marketing to people who have the power to refer to you, which is great. What we want you to do is diversify some of that energy and bring some of that good juju, some of that good relationships that you are building, what you're doing in those relationships. And we want you to bring it over to other areas where people may encounter your brand or your business. I will also say that not only is it scary to put all your eggs in that basket, but you also have to kind of think about the way business is changing and how people vet and verify you. So that might have worked for you for the last 10 years. And I find that normally people who make that statement or who have that kind of business model where they just go on referral have been in business for a while. So they haven't had to rely on any form of marketing. But business is changing and is changing rapidly. And your customers, how they find you, how they get information, and the ways in which where they look to figure out if they can trust you are changing. And if you are not out there marketing your business. In the right places where your customers are and they go to those places and they don't see you. That's a red flag. And I don't care if the president said you have to hire this person. They're amazing. If you don't have a good Instagram account or you don't have anything to show your expertise, people are automatically going to think in this day and age, something has to be wrong. Like that's not a pink flag. It's not a beige flag. It is like a hot red flag.
Tayler - 00:17:12:
Yeah. You have to be able to back up someone's referral with your own shit, right? Like someone did you a super solid and said, hey, you should go hire Candice. But if Candice doesn't have other things in place to reinforce that referral and recommendation, then it's like a colander and all the water is just going to like drip out of it. So the lesson here is don't put all your eggs in one basket, but then really Candice, you hit the nail on the head with the marketing is changing so quickly and... I think a lot of people have talked about this article and I know I've shared it in a few places, but ironically, Vogue Business department, wrote this great article called Gen Z broke the marketing funnel. And if anyone needs to be like, oh yes, I cannot just leverage one marketing channel anymore, then I highly recommend you give that a read because it's going to scare you straight a little bit or a lot. So. Okay. The next one, Candice, you brought this up and I love this. And it's a little bit or kind of a lot like tied to just the age of artificial intelligence where basically, I don't think any of us have an excuse to like not be able to put words down onto a page, but you said that you hear a lot of people say, but I don't know what to say when it comes to my marketing. So how do we want to call people out for this one?
Candice - 00:18:48:
I wonder if folks who feel like they don't know what to say, maybe don't really know what marketing is. And so let's sort of lay the foundation, at least for what I think marketing is. And this is something that I teach and I tell the women I mentor, and I've talked about this ad nauseum, but I believe that marketing is simply sharing your message so that it attracts and reaches the right people. And as a business owner, you're in the business of solving a problem for your customer. And your message is to speak to the problem you solve and to connect the dots for that customer, letting them know that you exist, that you are here, that you can alleviate that pressure, that pain point, that you can help them feel less pain faster if they just hired you or purchased your product. And yeah, that's really what you're here to do. And your job as a business owner and as a marketer is to spread your message that attracts and reaches the right people. So when you say you have nothing to say, I think what you get hung up on is playing the marketing game that you see other people playing, especially on social media, or feeling like you need to write some long-winded blog post, or you need to come up with some super profound, thought-provoking idea. And it needs to just break the internet every time you put up an Instagram post, or you create a reel, or you write a blog post. The truth is, is you don't need to do that. And nobody is literally expecting you to do that. And nobody has the patience to read that. Or we don't have the time. We want to talk about having time. You don't have time to market your business. I don't have time to read your novel about your business. So with all that said, I want to simplify what it means to spread your message. And I want you to think, the next time you think, I don't have something to say, I want you to just fall back on what it is that you do and your message and find a creative or even a non-creative. Because if I tell you to go be creative, then you're going to spiral into the abyss of like, what does that mean? And then get really stressed out. So do the most uncreative thing in the world, which is just tell people who you are and what you do. And that's literally all you have to say. I also think too, that sometimes we just need to simplify things. Marketing can just be showing up as yourself and sharing something that you like, sharing a little window into your world. It doesn't always have to feel like it's selling or it's focused on very professional business stuff. I find that the most engagement I get in my email and social and anywhere I market my business is when I'm speaking about myself personally or sharing my own personal experience, business related or not. And so literally that meme, everything is content, like everything that you do in a day can be marketing content if you choose it to be. Like this podcast, I was recording this right here. This is, this is marketing. I can do it Instagram story and be like, just met with my BFF Tayler, and had the funniest conversation. Stay tuned. That's marketing.
Tayler - 00:21:49:
Yep, totally. You know, and I think that a lot of this is tied to a lot of people's pursuit of perfection.
Candice - 00:21:56:
Mm-hmm.
Tayler - 00:21:57:
And-
Candice - 00:21:58:
Girl, perfect does not exist. Like, come on guys. We know that by now. You tell that to your clients. You don't want clients who think that everything needs to be perfect. Cause you know, you are far from perfect. And whatever you produce for them is not going to be perfect. You need to take the pressure off yourself.
Tayler - 00:22:13:
Yes, exactly. Take the pressure off yourself. And I love that you said, you know, just if you're getting, if you're feeling stuck, just go back and lean on what do you do, who do you do it for, and why, right? Like you hear a lot of folks talking about, talk about your why, because it's super powerful. It's one of the things that helps differentiate you. And something that I've started. Saying because you know I'm in like a constant how do I whittle this this big concept down into something tiny One of the things that I like to encourage people to do is when you're trying to come up with a topic or something to say, just think about what does my client or customer need to see, hear, and feel from me before they're ready to buy? And I like that approach because it becomes kind of this more robust, full circle way of sharing your message just so that people understand that you're the right person to buy from. Um, because another mistake that I see is people just like going for the jugular with the hard sales all the time. And that's also scary. The other end of the spectrum. But so when you don't know what to say, Candice says, talk about what you do, who you do it for. And I say, get into the emotions of it a little bit and share your why. So. Okay, this next one is for... I think this is a little bit for like the introverts who might be listening. And you said you hear people say that they feel like they're bothering people when they do their marketing. And hi, guys. If you don't do your marketing, if you don't like bother people to at least a certain extent, they're never going to give you their money. That's the whole point of all these things. So what's the lesson in this one? How do we need to get people unstuck
Candice - 00:24:10:
From this? Yeah. I think we all go through this a time or two in our business. And so no one is exempt from this feeling. I can remember when I wrote a book and it was published and I had to go promote it. First of all, I didn't realize how much promotion relied on the author to promote the book versus the publisher. Basically, it's on the shoulders of the author to promote their book. The publisher does little, by the way. I didn't realize this. And so I got to a point where it felt so indulgent to keep talking about myself and this book. And I'm like. I don't want to bother people. Or people are probably so sick of hearing me talk about this. And. I don't think that was true because I don't think I talked about it enough. And my book sales were evident of that. Write a book. They said, it'll make you money. They said, not unless you're like some big fancy pants, a author. But anyway, I definitely didn't talk about it enough. And it taught me a lesson because people weren't, they weren't as paying as much attention as I thought they were. And so I think one thing we have to recognize is, is like, nobody's paying more attention to you than you. So of course you feel like you're bothering people. Of course, you're sick and tired of hearing your own voice. And you're like, oh my God, I'm so annoying. Like, shut up me. Like, just shut up. All I hear is you all day. Of course, you're going to be annoyed with yourself and you're going to feel like you were overdoing it. But everyone else on the internet, they're doing the same thing with them, their own selves. They're, you're just, you're like whizzing past them. It's like a highway, not even, it's like two planes whizzing past each other in the sky. You guys are just for a moment connected. And then you're, far apart. And so when Taylor and I are telling you that you need to share your message, you need to share it over and over again, trust us when we tell you you're not bothering people. And if you are like, there's nothing wrong with having a couple of haters because they keep your views up and they're going to be locked into what you're doing. And there's something wrong with having a few haters, but outside of the haters, most people need to hear your message over and over again before it finally sticks and it resonates. I also think that we have to start viewing marketing and almost like a noble job that we have as a business owner, because we are tasked to help people with their problems. And so we owe it to them to let us know that, hey, like let them know like, hey, we're the solution. Like, hello. Hi, I want to help you. Let's exchange some funds here and get this going. And so you are being of service by sharing your message and letting people know that you exist. And if you look at sales and marketing through that lens, I think it helps to take away any stressful feelings we have that we're bothering people or that we're talking too much and people are annoyed by us. And if they, and honestly, maybe somebody is, but like, really, who cares? Like, honestly, are they paying your bills? Obviously not. So who cares?
Tayler - 00:27:17:
Exactly. So they shouldn't be impacting or influencing the decisions that you make if they're not an active customer. And one of the things that I think people really underestimate that you touched on. Is people need to interact with or be exposed to your brand and your business and your offering. So many times before they decide that it's the right time to buy. And that is only going to be more complicated. Thank you, Gen Z. This is why you should go read that article. Because there used to be this, beautiful rule in marketing where someone needed to see you seven times before they were ready to buy. And that seven times has just been thrown out the window. And it's probably double, if not triple, that number at this point. And that's something that I personally have been experiencing as well. It's not just, okay, I'm going to call. Brett doesn't listen to this podcast, so I'm going to call him out. I'm going to give you a real life example of this.
Candice - 00:28:26:
Let's hear it. Spill the tea.
Tayler - 00:28:27:
Spill it. So for those of you who don't know, Brett is my husband, whom I love dearly, and is one of my co-founders with Enji. And he, from the start, has been like, we need to... We need to be doing advertising. We need to be running social media ads. We need to be running Google ads. That's the only way we're going to scale this business. I was like I'm not going to be in charge of that. You can be in charge of it because I don't think that that's the right approach. It'll be helpful, but it's not going to be like a direct line to a money spigot that we just get to turn on.
Candice - 00:28:58:
Nope.
Tayler - 00:28:58:
And what he is starting to understand is the fact that when someone sees an ad, they're not like, oh yeah, I'm totally going to buy that thing. Maybe they'll do that if it's a physical product that's a known entity to them. You understand what a hammer is and whether or not you need a hammer. But if your product or service is more complicated than someone needing to know whether or not they need a hammer, they're going to need a lot of nurturing in order to get to that spot where they're like, yes, I need to buy this. And so you have to say the same thing over and over and over again. And you are not bothering people. You are nurturing them down your funnel and getting them closer to a sale.
Candice - 00:29:45:
Thank you. Amen. Amen. And so, right. And you can't really run ads until you know what it's going to take to nurture somebody from a lead or a prospect into a customer. And you have figured out that messaging and figured out those components. And then you can run awareness ads. But it's not like a money spout. And I speak from experience. Having just did my first Facebook ads course and really trying to get into this and understanding the mechanics behind it, which I am learning now. I mean, I'm a novice. I've built an entire business on pure marketing, all organic, no ads. But there is a place for advertising. But I feel like you can't. That's not in place of organic marketing. You have to be really good at it. You have to get better at your organic marketing and get consistent and understand what works in organic marketing. Because you can't run an ad that doesn't work organically and that doesn't speak to your audience. So yeah, those are things that I'm learning in my own business now. And yeah, it's just, it's a fast, when you add in the ads component, it's fascinating. I definitely think you want to have a business that doesn't rely on any one stream of anything like we had talked about with relationships. Advertising is also one of those things. If you build a business that's built off of ads and you did very little organic marketing, what happens when your ad accounts get shut down and you got nothing? And then also because Gen Z is getting so, they're so smart that they're going to look at your ad, but then they're going to go look at your business and they're going to want to see, and they're going to want that know, like, and trust to tell them that you are who you say you are and they can trust a purchase from you.
Tayler - 00:31:29:
Yep. I think Gen Z is the sleuthing generation.
Candice - 00:31:33:
Oh yeah. They're like FBI agents agents. They know what's going on and they know when you're full of shit. Like they know. They know. And I love that. I'm like, this is it. They're a smart generation. They're some of the smartest consumers. And they're not afraid to spend money, but they're not just going to spend money with anybody. And they do their research.
Tayler - 00:31:56:
Yep. Yep. Okay, so this, what we've been talking about is definitely related to our last bullshit excuse that you've been telling yourself to keep from being consistent with your marketing. And that's, this one I think is really prevalent in the wedding industry because of the seasonality and the turnover in the client base. But this one is, I am saying, I keep saying the same thing over and over and over again. And so when people... Think that, feel that. They use it as an excuse to just say nothing at all because they're like, I've already said that.
Candice - 00:32:37:
Yeah. What else is there to say? You feel like it's redundant at this point, right? And that you're just saying the same thing over and over again. Or in the opposite, you feel like every time you market, you have to say something brand new and profound and you kind of run out of ideas. And so you're sort of like, well, I don't know what to say. It goes back to that, I don't know what to say. I don't know what to put out there. Here's a cool thing though. Saying the same thing over and over is kind of the whole fucking point. Like why are you going to mix up your message and say, Oh, like you, have you ever followed somebody where like every day it's a new shtick? You're like, what are you like?
Tayler - 00:33:18:
What the fuck do you do?
Candice - 00:33:20:
Yeah. Like, who are you? What do you do? What's this about? Like you're, they're, they're just like a tornado just every day. It's something new. So the good news is, is if you feel like you're saying the same thing over and over again. That's good. You need, your message needs to be consistent. And yeah, I mean, that's a good thing. It's not a bad thing.
Tayler - 00:33:43:
Yeah, that's how you carve out a niche for yourself. That's how you establish yourself as a thought leader or an expert in a space. It's how you build trust because you're just a broken record about this thing. Like I am a broken record about needing to have a marketing strategy. Candice.
Candice - 00:34:01:
What am I a broken record on?
Tayler - 00:34:05:
I mean, I feel like I see a lot of... Business plan stuff. Like you're a broken record about, hey, you need to be a goddamn grownup if you're going to run a business. Right. And so that's from the outside what I think your broken record is about. But, you know, every single business owner and every single marketer out there feels like they've said this thing so many times and you have to do it. And the other thing is, is you can actually use it to your advantage. Like one of the things that I really have started leveraging and like in my, my, you know, continual effort to get smarter about how I spend my time on marketing is I'm going back. At, we'll just take Instagram content as an example. I'll go back six months or more into my, you know, my previously posted content and I will find the posts that performed the best. And then guess what? I'm just going to take that and I'm going to repurpose it. I'm going to say the same thing, but just with like a little twist to it, or I'm going to straight up copy and paste a caption and just put a different graphic to it. Or sometimes I don't even bother to change the graphic. It's the same fucking post you guys, because it's the same thing that needs to be communicated that I need to be a broken record about.
Candice - 00:35:29:
Yep.
Tayler - 00:35:29:
So. If I do that. Not that I'm like the end-all be-all of like marketing folks, but.
Candice - 00:35:35:
You kind of are though. You kind of are though.
Tayler - 00:35:37:
I'm trying. I'm trying. I'm trying. But if I'm comfortable doing that, then everyone listening should also be comfortable doing that as well.
Candice - 00:35:45:
That goes back to like our belief that everything has to be brand new and really profound. And we have to start fresh every day with our marketing. And I know it feels that way because again, marketing is the task that never ends. And so we are every day. It's a new day, got to market your business. And it's like, uh, like, why can't this be as fun as it is to like eat or like every night go to sleep? Why does this feel like working out? It is so hard. Like, why can't I just have my summer body? Like, why can't I just always have it no matter my age or anything? Why can't I just always have money in my business, whether I market it or not? I mean, if Tayler and I had magic wands. We would solve both of those problems.
Tayler - 00:36:28:
Yes.
Candice - 00:36:29:
Wouldn't you agree?
Tayler - 00:36:30:
Like, I feel like we 100%, 100%.
Candice - 00:36:31:
Those problems. Did we solve?
Tayler - 00:36:34:
Yes, I would love to do that. I even have a line of copy on the Enji website. Is it a magic wand or is it Enji? I'm trying to build something that's as close to a magic wand as possible.
Candice - 00:36:46:
As possible.
Tayler - 00:36:47:
Yeah. It doesn't currently exist, but we're trying. But Candice and I, that is what our work is centered on, is building, giving you, providing the resources that you need to do all these complicated, emotional, big, heavy parts of your business and do it without or at least fewer of those messy emotions attached to them. So I hope that everyone... Got that, got, you know, we didn't twist the shank. We just shanked you.
Candice - 00:37:21:
We just like popped you a little bit, like just a couple of side pops, you know, like, and our shank wasn't that sharp. I mean, it was sharp, but it wasn't so sharp that you're like leading out or anything.
Tayler - 00:37:31:
Correct. I hope no one's crying, but also I hope that you feel like, oh, Candice and Taylor definitely care. And that's why they're, you know, bringing violence to the table today.
Candice - 00:37:41:
Do you know why we understand this so deeply outside of hearing this in intimate conversations with the people that we support and mentor and coach? It's because Tayler and I have also lived this experience. We understand and we, we're not perfect. We still have days where we don't want to market our business or where we're so tired of our own message that we just don't know what to say. We are in the same boat as you, but I think that perhaps maybe the difference is we're wise enough at this stage. We understand enough that regardless of that, we still have to show up for our business and collect our coins. And we still need to make sure that we're out there marketing our message because Tayler and I, not only are we focused on growing a profitable business, we want to grow on with purpose. We want to serve people. And the only way that Tayler's going to help people with their marketing and help them grow their dream business and me on the same side is if we get out there and we put ourselves out there and we say, hey, we're over here. We're shanking. We're cuddling today. Free shanking cuddles. Like come join us. That's the only, so we are wise enough to know that in spite of all of our own hangups that we still have to get out there and share because we love our customers that much. And we want to make a difference in our work and we believe in our work. And I want you to have the same feeling of purpose when you go out there and market your business, not every day is going to be easy and that's okay. You can take a break here and there. Every day is going to be easy. You're never going to get it perfect. You just got to get it going.
Tayler - 00:39:09:
Yep, 100%. That is the best way to just give people a little. Little hug hug. That's our hug. Tap, tap on the back.
Candice - 00:39:17:
Yeah.
Tayler - 00:39:17:
See, we are kind people at our core.
Candice - 00:39:20:
We're huggers. We're huggers.
Tayler - 00:39:23:
Huggers. I mean, I have been told by many people that I give a damn good hug because I will get in there for it. But so, okay, folks, you need to, if you don't already have Candice in your life, you need Candice in your life because she is seriously one of the wisest, smartest, most driven people that I know that is out there doing the work. Like you don't just say the things. I know that you back it up because you're actually doing the things too. So these are not empty pieces of advice from like some white ivory tower from folks that I won't call out as like maybe some of the big brands that make it seem so easy to have a six figure business. But so Candice, if people want to follow you, which they should, it's highly recommended. Where can they find you on the internet and in real life?
Candice - 00:40:10:
Oh my gosh, guys, I'm literally everywhere on the internet. I made it my mission to be in your face. So it depends on where you like to hang out. I'm on Instagram. I guess that's my platform of choice. I don't always love it, but I do love to hate it. I'm on YouTube. I love threads. I love having conversations over there and connections. You can also jump on my email list. I'm sending out a weekly sort of... Newsletter would be the wrong word, but it's just kind of like weekly lessons and stories about business, my own business, things I'm seeing, and then some of my favorite things. So you can always jump over there and you can find all of this on my website, candicecoppola.com.
Tayler - 00:40:50:
Wonderful. You guys. I hope that you feel. Inspired, motivated. In the right way is a little bit called out, but in the end, all in the name of productivity. So thank you so much for listening to today's podcast, Candice, thank you so much for joining me. Show notes will be up on the website. I will be for sure. There are so many one-liners and clips on this. I'm going to spam the internet. I'm going to say the same thing over and over and over again, you guys, from this episode of the content that we created. But we will be back with another episode next month. And until then, I will see you around on the internet, my friends.