Planning Your Sales and Marketing for Resiliency

35:12

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

people, josh, holly, marketing, building, manufacturers, talk, workbook, sales, content, tactics, workshop, hubspot, kurt, clients, buyers, years, protocol, awesome, employees

SPEAKERS

Josh Curcio, Holly McCully, Damon Pistulka, Curt Anderson

Damon Pistulka  00:04

Let’s see here.

Curt Anderson  00:06

So why we’re figuring it out. So Happy Friday guys we’re gonna go through let’s drop your LinkedIn profile in the chat box. Happy Friday, Aaron Dan john, my buddy in Jersey, we’ve got the Wisconsin. Yeah. I gene Chris is Chris Harrington and Kevin with us. Thank you. Yeah, they are any luck Damon?

Damon Pistulka  00:29

I’m not able to do anything so if she can’t, she still can’t see it. Josh

Curt Anderson  00:36

Dickies talking to her. So guys, why they’re figuring that out. We’ll just jump in. So I’ll start the intro. So please, there’s all

Damon Pistulka  00:44

that coming together. There we go.

Curt Anderson  00:45

They do. Look at that. How did you get the Josh it’s also fast. Yeah.

Josh Curcio  00:51

Can you can you hear me?

Damon Pistulka  00:53

Yes. Okay, we

Curt Anderson  00:54

got it. Alright guys, we How are you? There you are. So we got it. Going matter technology that’s late. They’re like miles apart. And also I’m like, she just right there. Take Star Trek, man.

Damon Pistulka  01:05

It’s like magic. This is phenomenal. We’re gonna go live here on LinkedIn and get things started. Thanks everyone for being here. And the video is going

Curt Anderson  01:18

well, flow Friday, low Friday jam. I like that.

Damon Pistulka  01:22

Alright, everyone, Welcome once again to the Friday edition of the manufacturing ecommerce Success Series. I’m Damon Pistulka here with my co host, Kurt Anderson. We are going to be talking today about planning your sales and marketing for resiliency. Kurt, take it away man. Hey,

Curt Anderson  01:39

Damon love let’s see the jersey let’s see what you got going today. Little I love it guys football Friday blue Friday next. You know what next Friday guys where you’re where your team jerseys, so I’m wearing my team jersey. I’m wearing my protocol at little swag for my friends here. Josh and Holly. So guys, Happy Friday. Hope you ever each and every one of you crush it this week. So guys, this is yes. Shriner. Village. I’m like a proud uncle right now. So it’s like uncle Kurt coming at you. So I’ve got my dear buddy, Josh. Holly. These guys are with protocol at Josh Holley. Happy Friday. Welcome to the program.

Holly McCully  02:14

Happy Friday.

Curt Anderson  02:15

I can’t hear you Josh. Awesome. So guys, so let me let me just give a little background here to protocol at So Josh, you and I go back. You’re not it’s been we’re almost on our 10 year anniversary. We connected about nine years ago. And so when jack when I met Josh, he and his partner Danny started protocol 80 years ago. And they had about I think what Josh? Well, I think you had one employee it was you Donnie and one employee, if I’m not mistaken, right? imagine something like that.

Josh Curcio  02:44

All right, when we met.

Curt Anderson  02:47

Okay, I think we’re getting a little delay but so when we met you guys had one employee, you’re now what you’re up around 2020 employees give or take,

Josh Curcio  02:55

I think we have 17 or so

Curt Anderson  02:58

17 employees. So you know, just like that proud uncle. I’ve been I’ve had a front row seat and watch you guys grow your company, you our True, true entrepreneurial success story. We’re going to talk you guys took a little pivot years ago, I want to dig into that. Holly, you and I had the privilege of we met a couple years ago. You know, I Josh and I, we we’ve worked we’ve spoken at each other’s events. We’ve tagged team working with clients together over the years. And you and I had the honor of meeting at manufacturing marketing world, which was a wonderful event that Josh and Donnie put on a couple years ago.

And this young speaker got up and just blew the room away and it was none other than Holly. So Holly, let’s talk a little bit we’re gonna shine a light on you for a minute enough about Josh right. You are originally from Syracuse, New York. You’re here at the firm at protocol at let’s just talk about you know, we talk a lot about millennials getting into manufacturing protocol at just crushes it. You’re a digital marketing inbound marketing firm for manufacturers. When you were graduating from St. Bonaventure University, why manufacturing How did this How did protocol at why was that attractive to you to start your career this direction?

Holly McCully  04:07

Yeah, so I started mostly inbound is all about content, right, lots of writing and producing of content. And so I started in a writing internship position where I was doing a lot of social media blog writing for clients. And what I ended up loving through the years and working my way up from intern to writer and now a strategist was just kind of that feeling and the purposefulness of bringing leads to manufacturing companies of knowing you’re writing something educational that people can sink their teeth into and then find their way to our clients is just really, really rewarding.

Especially so many of our clients. We have clients everywhere, but so many of them are in Jamestown, St. Mary’s. So just feeling like we’re bringing business to close manufacturers was huge. And that’s still like the best hi in the world when we get one of those small manufacturing companies a really good lead. So that’s kind of How that journey went for me.

Curt Anderson  05:02

That’s awesome. And I see Val just popped in room. Happy Friday, Val. And so in what’s awesome, I’ve had the honor and privilege of working with multiple clients with you guys over the years. And again, when you say small, you know, I’ve we’ve had 20 employee shops, I’ve been Joshua, and I’ve been in folks with hundreds of employees. So again, you guys do an amazing job again, I’ve watched it firsthand. Now, Holly, you’re just such an inspiration to me. Now, I have to digress. I looked on your LinkedIn profile. You have a little you did something for Syracuse University about shipwrecks. Like,

Holly McCully  05:32

oh my gosh, I never get to talk about this. I was like, that’s a really deep dive. So when I was a junior in college, I had the privilege of getting a marketing PR and writing internship with Dr. Kathryn Newton. She’s the dean emeritus at Syracuse University. And she worked on the shipwrecks project, which essentially was when she was 16 years old. She was a scientist at Duke University.

And she was on the crew that found the USS monitor the famous missing Civil War battleship. So I worked with her for a summer going through lots of different missing shipwreck cards, and helping her kind of write her book and her memoir, and get that off the ground. So she is one of the best people I’ve ever known. She’s an incredibly successful woman, a role model of mine. And yeah, that was one of the ways I got a marketing and PR start early on.

Curt Anderson  06:23

Awesome. Well, thanks for sharing that. I’m glad you brought that up. So guys, if you want to learn more about civil war, shipwrecks, you want to contact Holly. So again, I dropped Holly and Josh has their LinkedIn profiles in the chat. Their website is there is in there, Josh? Dude, you’re like, You’re like my, my, my BFF. My nephew. I’m not sure what we are. But you know, you’re a dear close friend. You’re an amazing dad, two wonderful, young, young kids. Last year, during COVID, we wanted to meet up and we’re like, Hey, we can’t meet which we do.

We went for like a 10 mile hike. Man, you killed the old guy. So we had an awesome time. But you guys are just relentless building your company helping manufacturers, you made a huge pivot years ago, I just want to share with everybody what you did.

So first off, you and Josh, I’m sorry, you and your partner, Donnie, you start this inbound marketing firm. And you you evolve into manufacturers, then as you’re doing websites, and just kind of like, you know, anybody starting out their business, anything coming your way. Now, you took a huge pivot, I think it was like 2015 ish. And you and I, we were very tight. And we were talking a lot about it. Talk a little bit about that pivot and how you went all in on inbound marketing for manufacturers, which was a big risk at that time.

Josh Curcio  07:32

Yeah, for sure. So historically, we had been website development, SEO and PPC for, for manufacturing companies in the industrial space. And one of the challenges was always we would ask for content to support SEO, whether it’s a website page or back then, you know, maybe a little bit of blogging, but wasn’t as popular as today. And it was always a challenge, you know, manufacturers even if they have the right intentions to get something done.

It’s just as challenging because there’s pull in that was constantly the number one struggle was waiting for content waiting for content. And at the time, we had already been convinced about inbound and that inbound is the right way to go. So we said alright, well, if our, if our clients can’t get the content done, let’s bring people in that can do it for them.

So we essentially built our, our company or our company growth around people like Holly that could do all of that, that could write and strategize, and we could take that off the plate of the manufacturers that just struggle with it. So at that time, we started to instead of being a project shop, grow into having partnerships with our, with our clients and working with them and under really understanding their business and essentially being their marketing arm and it’s been it’s been awesome.

Curt Anderson  08:57

Yeah, it, man, I love that. And, you know, and, you know, like, you talk about two young guys with a dream and a vision to build a company and you know, and it’s not like you’re hiring you know, you’re hiring people. You’re creating careers. Look, you have somebody like you know, amazing talent, somebody like Holly, I know Molly the rest of your team, and you’re creating career opportunities for young people.

So again, extremely admirable. Our hats off to you. A couple more shout outs guys if you get to know get to know Josh, you see that bike over his shoulder? Yes. Guys, like just a cycle maniac. He’s super fit basketball player loves his tacos, by the way. So let’s dig into what we want to talk about today. Guys, you got it. You were both at fabtech. We’re all dying to hear what went on at fabtech this week.

Josh Curcio  09:45

fabtech was awesome. Do you want to start because I feel like I’ll just keep talking. Once you start. This was Holly’s first. fabtech

Holly McCully  09:53

Yeah. So what brought us to fabtech was actually we both had speaking engagements there on Monday morning, bright and early. We lead a session about sales marketing tactics. And on Wednesday morning, bright and early, I had an in depth workshop about marketing, which left us Tuesday to just walk the floor and exploring. It’s so amazing and overwhelming. How many booths there are, it was like mind blowing. And nobody really knew what to expect from an attendance standpoint. Of course, this being a lot of people’s first show back since COVID.

But there was a lot of people there. Everywhere you looked people were having conversations and networking and talking shop, which was just really great to see after kind of a year of no 18 months really of no in person events. So that’s like, I think high level what any details I missed.

Josh Curcio  10:40

Yes. So this is my, I think fifth or sixth year speaking at that tech, the FinTech crews, awesome. They’re so great to work with Iowa and her team, there’s awesome, but it was different in that there were some open spots, which I think was expected, you know, some open floor spots. And in both in all the halls that they had, which is you know, that’s okay.

One different thing that I noticed was every booth that we stopped that everyone wanted to have a full on conversation about their entire life. So instead of a three minute, you can tell this person doesn’t want to talk to me conversation. We got to know everyone, there were like weird stories about someone’s brother that was taking money from the company, and it was just people were ready to talk to other humans in Yeah.

Curt Anderson  11:33

So that just that they were just bursting for social interaction. Is that what your is that your observation?

Josh Curcio  11:40

Yeah. And then, you know, one of the cool things, I think we asked everyone how the show was going. And the consistent message that we got was traffic might be down, right? Less attendees, but everyone is serious about buying. Yep, the people that are coming, have something in mind, they’re coming to our booth, and they are ready to buy. So that was very, very promising. for them. Yeah. For the exhibitors, that was great.

Curt Anderson  12:10

So and that’s in how you’re showing that a little bit earlier. And I think that, you know, let’s hit on that for a minute. You know, think about like, what went on, you know, the psychology of like, what we’ve all gone through this past year, you know, lack of social interaction, what’s going on with supply chain issues, and everything else.

And I love what you’re saying is people wanted to engage, they maybe felt a little bit more empathetic, or took time to share something about themselves, or, you know, maybe got, you know, sounds like a little bit more personal. But they were also on a mission to do business. And that’s super exciting to hear as well. So Josh, you know, again, you’ve been there five or six times any other, like, if you were popping into other speakers, or you know, zero Roman floors, anything else that stood out to you from the show,

Josh Curcio  12:51

as being different or as just

Curt Anderson  12:54

like, you know, pre COVID compared to now, other than what you just mentioned,

Josh Curcio  12:58

yeah, there wasn’t as much just social to be social. You know, typically, there’s going to be VIP events and networking events. And there were a couple we went to an event held by the American Welding Society right down by the river outdoors. Cool. We had to have some we got to have some great conversations with welders, which brought up like my passion to have a second hobby or another hobby of learning how to weld

Holly McCully  13:25

to weld. Now that was the main takeaway.

Damon Pistulka  13:27

Sure. We’ll get that started. Well, it’s good, it’s good. You’ll like it. Yeah,

Josh Curcio  13:33

that’s what I hear. That’s from all the welders, they told me,

Holly McCully  13:35

I’m really solid.

Curt Anderson  13:37

And we know a lot of companies that could use welding skills right now. So we’d be you’d be hired in a minute. So let’s guys for the our program. Today, we’re talking about resiliency, and how to for sales and marketing. So once you share a little bit about talking about your program on Monday, let’s start with the Monday programmer, the two of you tag team to talk a little bit, what were what was the content there? What was the message? And what are some takeaways for folks?

Holly McCully  14:03

I think, briefly, something I want to touch on too, before we dive into the presentation is in terms of resiliency, and a lot of the tactics that we talked about on Monday kind of drawback to this as well, but also what we saw at the show buyers who are coming to the show ready to buy and have those conversations have already done research and they know what they’re looking for. Right. So I think that’s a huge testament to the resiliency of digital marketing of producing content. Even though people are still in person. It’s speeding up that sales process.

They’re doing research before they’re having those sales conversations. It’s not like they’re any more knowledgeable or more ready just because COVID happened. It’s because they’re doing that research online. We know that from data that HubSpot released, you know, traffic is up, especially across blogs and educational resources. So I think a lot of resiliency comes down to having that strong content base that helps nurture people build brand awareness and shorten that sales cycle in the manufacturing space. And I think not only did we see those Shall but a lot of our tactics hinge on that as well.

Curt Anderson  15:04

And save. Let’s save for that. Yeah,

Damon Pistulka  15:06

no, I’m just like, just like,

Curt Anderson  15:09

you know what a a pivot change or COVID change or however you want to describe it. We’re now manufacturers are coming to a trade show prepared, equipped. They’ve checked you out on your website, they’ve checked you out on LinkedIn, their videos, they want to know who you are.

So when they come in, they know how much further is that sales process. And by doing that, maybe even like the tire kickers, or the people that aren’t a great fit, you did yourself a favor by putting yourself out there with video Vale, I know you’re doing a great job, or Chris and Kevin, you guys do your trade shows and you’re working relentlessly with manufacturers on e commerce. You know what a great piece of advice right here. So Holly, I’m just glad you, let’s we’ll save that it’s not it’s lunchtime here in the East Coast. We’ll save that for tomorrow.

Damon Pistulka  15:53

And the other thing, the other thing, Curt real quick, you guys had mentioned how people wanted to talk about stuff about their life about other things, not just business. And maybe if there’s anything that we learned from this, and all this video calling and everything else, and people are finally starting to share and shed this, I’m a business person here, and I’m a person off business here and we’re melting it a little bit more.

So we can actually get, you know, some sort of balance in what we try to do, or at least not to have to live these dual personalities almost which because it is about doing business, like we like to say human to human and really getting that thing going. You’re not encouraging for me to hear that.

Curt Anderson  16:36

Aaron Absolutely. You can always say Amen. And thank God anything you want to on this program, you’re more than so that was what a great comment. You know, like Dan, bigger my buddy Dan, I love following his kids sporting events. Yeah. And again, it’s about building that relationship, because we would do that otherwise, you know. So again, thank you for sharing that, Holly. So let’s dig into the Monday program. What did folks learn and we you know, our little private crowd here, we get a little taste of what you did at fabtech. So thank you for sharing this with us. What do we talk about on Monday?

Josh Curcio  17:09

So, so the premise was, you know, we are we work with a lot of different manufacturers, and we have for a long time, and there’s a lot of different tactics and approaches that we can make. Some of them work really well for that time. Some of them, you know, take advantage of, of like that timeliness. But then there’s also some activities that are like meant to be green, right? They’re evergreen, like, anytime you do it, it’s probably going to work if you do it, right.

So what we did was we broke that down into both marketing and sales and said, from a marketing perspective, these are the activities that you need to do from a sales perspective, these are the activities that you need to do. And I think one of the overarching themes was don’t wait and be proactive or be reactive until you have to do it be a little bit proactive. So think about the manufacturing world, how much of it was a struggle?

Or how big of a struggle? Was it for manufacturing sales reps to start virtually selling? was like, the end of the world? Well, how am I supposed to do this if I can’t go to the facility? But, you know, stats show that they were able to do it. And there were some recent polls done and research done that said, in fact, most of the people that made that shift to virtual selling did better. Yeah. It’s less windshield time, it’s more time being able to do the activities that you need to do. And then at some point, you can you can be in person. So that’s, that’s the high level stuff. Did you want to talk on a couple of the kind of more specifics?

Holly McCully  18:55

Yeah, absolutely. And I think, um, as we just mentioned, so much of these tactics hinge on content as well. And to Josh’s point of being proactive. 80 to 90% of my clients leaves in 2020, in early 2021, came from a blog. That’s so clients who were already blogging, already doing some of these evergreen tactics that we’re about to mention, far succeeded ahead of people who were just trying to start to do those things. Now, better late than never, of course.

So you’re not having the same conversation in two years. But genuinely, the majority of leads we saw come from things like blogging in producing content was huge. And another really big one that we talked about in a couple of different ways for both sales and marketing is sort of not putting all your eggs in one basket. So I think that was a lesson that people learned sort of the hard way in 2020 was if they were only relying on one channel, while What do you do when a major you know social crisis in the US happens and it’s not appropriate to be selling on social media for a couple months. That happened it right around the Time of the pandemic even.

So making sure that you’ve built up these multiple channels, you’re selling via video, email, LinkedIn, you’re promoting your assets via, you know, video, email, LinkedIn, you know, you’re not just relying on one avenue to get to that goal. And Josh has a really great thing that he talks about in terms of multiple ways to close your pipeline goes as well. Yeah,

Josh Curcio  20:22

you know, as a also multiple ways in connecting First, let’s talk that since it ties to your sales, people tend to have a channel that they like, like I’m an email, or I’m a sales person, I like to email people, that’s what I do. What if your emails are getting ignored, pick up the phone and call. It’s not that hard. The person on the other end may prefer a phone call, or vice versa. There’s some sales people, even people that I buy from that every time I might email them, instead of emailing, emailing me back, they pick up the phone and call.

And I’m like, just email me or text me or something. Right, I get 2021. That’s what I that’s what I prefer. So salespeople need to understand that buyers are different, they need to adapt and have those multiple modes of communication, even if they aren’t comfortable with it, right.

And then, you know, to your point, multiple ways to making sure that we’re hitting our quotas, if you’re a salesperson, and you’re in a sales meeting, and your quota is a million dollars, and that million dollars, right relies on those three, three deals that add up to a million dollars closing, you’re not doing it right, right, you need $3 million, to make sure that you have that million dollars closing, or $5 million deals, whatever it may be, but you have to have multiple paths to your quota, because things are gonna fall through the cracks. And if they don’t know of them close, then you’re just you’re beating your quota. Yeah.

Holly McCully  21:47

That’s the opposite of a problem.

Curt Anderson  21:49

Sets about how, you know, let’s just repack unpack that a little bit. I love what you guys said is, you know, it’s so important. Like, who is the buyer, as a buyer, you know, Damon and myself is that this generation is that your generation you know, like what generation are you targeting? How do they speak? You know, someone people I email, that’s what I do. You know what? Send out your you know, Damon, you do, we talked about this in our training sessions, send out your calendar link, make it as easy as possible to communicate with you, instead of like, hey, Josh, you available Tuesday night?

No, how about Thursday at two? No, I’ll have my people get back to your people. And we’ll connect that at you know, like, let’s make it as easy as humanly possible. So if they tax texts, if they email, what generation are they from? Let’s pay attention to what makes it? Let’s make it easy for them, not for us. And sometimes for us older guys, it’s hard to do, right? So, go ahead, Holly,

Holly McCully  22:40

oh, I was just gonna say you didn’t even know but you segwayed right into one of our other tactics, which is just making sure that you’re updating your personas, and that your buyers are qualified and that you’re speaking in a way that continues to qualify your buyers. So the best way to know instead of just kind of guessing how your customers want to be talked to is by asking them, conduct buyer interviews. And certainly update your persona.

There’s more women in STEM now than ever, if you haven’t updated your buyer persona demographics since 2017, that might be dated, you might be targeting the wrong pool of people. So just making sure that that’s the best place to start. Not that you shouldn’t still try things and see what works and offer different mediums where people can interact. But it’s also great to just interview and ask people how they want to be talked to as well.

Josh Curcio  23:26

Yeah, for sure. Exactly. No,

Curt Anderson  23:28

I absolutely love it. So okay, so that was Monday before. So before we jump into the Wednesday workshop, and we are dying. We’re just so excited to hear about this Wednesday workshop, Holly, any other takeaways on the Monday program that you guys want to share? Anything you want to unpack there?

Josh Curcio  23:43

I thought it was encouraging to hear some of the questions in the comments of people that maybe some of these tactics weren’t new for them, but it reinforced their Thawne. And they said, You know what, I am going down the right path, I’m going to continue I’m going to build upon. So I don’t know, I’m sure we were earth shattering right to all of the attendees. But I think that people are on the right path, they were forced there. But hopefully the next major global issue that comes up, people are more prepared. And if we can help them be more prepared, you guys can help them be more prepared. I love it.

Curt Anderson  24:27

Yes. And just in more efficient and just in people are finding out even folks that were resistant to these changes or you know, like we deal with a lot of folks, you know, again, our generation where you know, they’re, they call it the belly to belly salesperson. And you know, David they’ve had to jet adapt and change whether they wanted to or not.

So, you know, and they’re finding out boy, this is super efficient that I can do a zoom call. I’m building stronger relationships by, you know, instead of being on the phone or emailing by physically seeing the person and like sharing some of these personal stories or you know, seeing Dan Biggers kids crush it in sports. So, let’s jump into how you had a wonderful, amazing workshop. I’m dying for everybody. Everybody’s dying to hear about it. Sure what went on Wednesday at this 90 minute workshop that you did. And before

Josh Curcio  25:10

she starts, I just want to say that she killed it in the workshop, she did an awesome, awesome job, create attendance diary, great, quick questions.

Curt Anderson  25:20

And I’ve seen her in action, as you guys can tell what a poise wise, well beyond her years, she, you’re just such a true professional, your breath of fresh air I just met, you’re just a delight. So again, thank you both for taking time to join us today. But let’s dig in. What did people learn on Wednesday?

Holly McCully  25:36

Yeah, well, there’s First of all, thank you both for the kind words, I’m overwhelmed. But um, so what I tried to focus on was I was given a 90 minute slot, right? So how do we make that interactive and impactful? So what I spoke on was building an inbound marketing plan for manufacturers. So that’s kind of the short version is taking all of these tactics that we just talked about, and laddering them up into an actual plan that can be executed by these manufacturing companies. And so that they can actually start to see success.

So what I did was I had the presentation, of course. And then I also had workbooks, where everyone could kind of follow along and work along with me, because I know what it’s like to get back from a trade show and back into office. And in that moment, when you’re in that session, you’re like, yes, absolutely, I’m going to do it, and then you get back to the office and you don’t. So I thought maybe if we worked there got them like 50% of the way there with those follow along workbooks, that would be more of an impetus to kind of keep the ball rolling.

And then I also included a digital component, with links to different SEO resources and competitor research tools that they could use to now get it 80% there. So hopefully before 2022, they have an inbound marketing plan that they’re able to execute. So that was a ton of fun. And everyone was great. There was lots of great sharing, and we were able to build off of people’s examples. So I really appreciate it. Truly, it wouldn’t have been the workshop, it was without the awesome audience that we had in attendance. So that was really fun. But maybe go ahead.

Damon Pistulka  27:01

Well, and that’s what that’s what we see in our training too, or when we’re doing webinars is that the audience talking about their challenges and other people learning about it is in learning from that and contributing to it is such an inspiring, it’s such an inspiring part of doing it. That’s cool that you guys saw that. Yeah, very, very powerful.

Curt Anderson  27:23

And how he, you know, so without, I’d love to take out a couple of steps further. So without, you know, divulging maybe any who was there specific. But are there any examples from that workshop that you that really inspired you? Or that you know, really fired you up that that you walked away with? Like, wow, that was really cool.

Holly McCully  27:39

Yeah, I think something that was that I was kind of it felt like one of those like big marketing, like serendipity, wind moments, what we were working with a gentleman who works in abrasives, and like blasting equipment. And I started with the content process by being like, Okay, what are your areas of expertise? Now, what are some topics you can write about? And then we started to talk about content pillars in terms of, well, let’s start by writing five to 10 articles about the same thing, build that into pillar content, it’s great for users, it’s great for SEO.

And what was great is at phase two, just when we were brainstorming topics, he was already starting to polarize them. And what was really magical about that is I was able to be like, okay, write those, do that, put it into a website page, make a PDF of it, and you are going to have this like lead generation machine, like you’re going to be so stoked. So it was really cool to see. He was already thinking in that direction before we kind of tied the bow for him. So that was like, I was like, hallelujah, that was great.

Josh Curcio  28:35

One of the things that I thought was interesting, I think you’re talking about his name is Kurt as well, if I’m not mistaken, yes, it was different Kurt. He was facing a lot of challenges that a lot of other manufacturers face where he wasn’t allocated the time resources or the budget resources to actually do what he wanted to do. His greatest his ideas were which I thought they were good. He needs to be empowered to be able to do them, and make them happen.

Holly McCully  29:07

Yeah. And one of the things that we kind of helped him with because obviously, it’s all well and good to attend this session. And like I’m telling him stuff he already knows, right? But something that he found really helpful was the idea of doing a content template and building out okay, your yearly goals are this, what do you need to do quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily to ladder up to those goals. That’s what we do for our clients.

That’s kind of the best way in my opinion, to work with multiple content mediums. And that for him was like, awesome, I’m going to make these content maps and I’m going to take them to my boss and be like, you need to give me time to do this. So I think something that’s great about these sessions is they can sometimes be empowering for those people to be like validating and be like, Yes, I know what I’m doing. And I went to this session and this lady said, I can use this template and carve out time. So I think that was something really helpful as well and you know, hopefully helped him have tools and language he needed to advocate for marketing. Man,

Curt Anderson  30:03

I absolutely love that. And I’m going to give us I see AJ is with us today. AJ, how are you, my friend? And Gail, I think you absolutely probably just you were like giving a little clap to Holly on that. I know Gail does a great job. She works with folks in Canada, and trying to keep those people accountable. And, you know, as marketers, we were just talking about that this morning, Damon, you know, it’s for marketers at manufacturers, you know, like our friend Dan bigger, you know, they get it, they understand it.

But sometimes it is challenging to convince that to the owner, you know, the owner is thrown on multiple different hats all day, you know, supply chain issues, labor shortages? Am I keep my employees safe? My customers happy? Oh, by the way, I need to do marketing, it’s hard for them to like, you know, stop and say and listen and say yes, I do need that. So it isn’t, it’s a little bit of a sales pitch for that marketer, that internal marketer to convince that business owner that, hey, this is what you need to do. And I look, I love how you’re laying out this, this workbook. So it’s an actual tangible workbook that they can take and apply to their business immediately.

Holly McCully  31:03

Yeah, so Josh dropped a link actually right into for kind of the landing page where anyone can access it. So in there, there’s my slides, that will hopefully offer context, the workbook, the workbook itself. And then of course, all of the digital tools and resources, I’d be happy to walk anyone through it, we could do a mini version of the workshop at fabtech.

But I also think the resources in and of themselves, most of the savvy marketers in attendance here might find something useful, just by kind of flipping through the slides, maybe making some amendments to the workbook based on kind of where they’re at in their marketing. So that’s definitely there for anyone to use. I know kind of we’re closing out the end of the year here. So now is definitely the time to start building your plan. And I encourage everyone please take those resources use them. I hope you find something in there helpful.

Curt Anderson  31:48

Right? Awesome. Well, guys, I I know we could do this all day. Right? So and we you know, I was actually going to come down next time we do this and Josh is your second time on the program how your second time we brought you guys together. Next time, I’m going to come down to the office and we’re going to do it together. I wasn’t able to do that today. But I want to close out with this.

Are there any you guys are, you know, Google, certified HubSpot, you are on the latest greatest cutting edge any tips or any latest tactics beyond the workbook and you know, everything you’re doing inbound? Any the latest, greatest that you guys have just recently discovered that maybe you’re applying the protocol at yourselves for marketing, or any new exciting things that you’re implementing for your clients right away?

Josh Curcio  32:30

Tough. That’s a tough one. I will say let me just do the shameless plug. Yeah, please. I’m speaking at inbound at the inbound conference next month. And I’m talking about helping your sales people change their habits or not fall into bad habits back into bad habits as we return to the new normal. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  32:48

yeah. Okay. That’s,

Josh Curcio  32:50

yeah. tober whatever. Thursday, October 14, or 15th? At 7am? Yeah.

Curt Anderson  32:57

I think the 14th. So Thursday. So speaking for HubSpot and how many years in row how many are not in a row? Probably with COVID. But how many years? Have you spoke for HubSpot? Now?

Josh Curcio  33:06

I’ve I did partner day twice. And then this is my first like, inbound presentation. Awesome. Awesome.

Holly McCully  33:14

But he shows a website page with Oprah. So that’s kind of

Curt Anderson  33:19

nice. Dude, that’s some that’s some.

Josh Curcio  33:22

That’s very far down the page from Oprah though.

Holly McCully  33:26

being humble,

Curt Anderson  33:27

nice date. Who knew? You know, just when I think I couldn’t respect her love you anymore, you just you kind of new whole new level Josh so. So guys, what we’ll do, so we’re gonna wrap up on this. And so first off, thank you, thank you both. Thank you for your friendship. Thank you for what you do for manufacturers. Josh is a again, as an entrepreneur, you know, the employees that you’ve created these opportunities that you’ve created for our friends like Holly, Holly, you’re just such a gift. You’re such a blessing, I just say, Oh my gosh, look at you, too. You’re just

Holly McCully  34:00

I know. into his office, it’s a wonder we somehow managed to work coordinating close.

Curt Anderson  34:07

Yeah. Love. You guys are just shining stars to me. And so again, thank you for everything. So guys, what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna head back to the tables. So please stick around, get out have an opportunity to chat with Josh and Holly. We can learn more about the workshop. We can talk about tacos or shipwrecks or anything else that we want to talk about. But hey, we want to guys go out there. Have an awesome, awesome killer weekend. Keep crushing it. Keep it man. Keep that manufacturing ecommerce success. Josh, Holly. Thank you. God bless everybody. Damon, take it away, brother.

Damon Pistulka  34:40

All right. Thanks, Kurt. Yeah, it was awesome. As usual, have you guys on and talking about fab tech. Thanks so much there. Thanks, everyone on LinkedIn, love the comments. having a great time there as well. We’re going to drop back like Kurt says, For Ingor, Steve and everyone else that was commenting there on LinkedIn. Thanks for watching. Join us there. We’re gonna stop the broadcast over there and we’re gonna go back to the tables and talk a little bit more. Thanks. Thanks, guys. All right.