Consulting Spotlight

Michael Bernzweig (00:02.627)
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of consulting success? Tired of sifting through endless noise to find actionable insights that actually move the needle?

Welcome to Consulting Spotlight, your weekly deep dive into the transformative world of professional consulting. Your host is Michael Bernzweig, who in 1998 launched Software Oasis as one of the first platforms enabling businesses to download, license, and deploy software instantly across their networks with a single click. Today, Software Oasis has evolved into one of the leading communities where businesses find top consultants across the USA and Canada.

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I'd like to welcome everyone to this week's edition of the Consulting Spotlight. I'm your host, Michael Bernsweig over at Software Oasis. And this week we actually have a guest, Kristi Mitchell, joining us from Marketing Uncomplicated. She's also the host of Unfudge Your Marketing podcast. So a fellow podcaster, entrepreneur, and all of the above. So with that.

Kristy, welcome to the podcast.

Kristi Mitchell (00:34.232)
Thank you so much, Michael. I appreciate you having me.

Michael Bernzweig (00:37.037)
Yeah, no, really fun and glad we were able to set aside a little bit of time to share your journey and everything that's going on over there at Marketing Uncomplicated. So, you know, from our audience, there are a lot of questions that came in before the episode, but to get started with for anybody that may not be familiar with you or with your company or even your podcast, can you share a little bit about your journey?

getting to where you are and a little bit of what you're doing over there at Marketing Uncomplicated.

Kristi Mitchell (01:13.944)
Sure thing. So I just celebrated my six year business anniversary of doing this full time, which is super exciting. Prior to that, I spent time in higher education doing marketing and program management, and then a little time in corporate as well doing marketing. So I supported a sales team with marketing material as they were selling into higher ed institutions. So my journey is...

Michael Bernzweig (01:20.741)
Congrats.

Kristi Mitchell (01:41.518)
probably one that resonates with lot of consultants out there, you know, the whole corporate experience that didn't go well, not good for me from, you know, mental health standpoint. And I just, my son was young at the time, he was in preschool and I really just felt this constant pull of like needing to be there for him. He was sick all the time and trying to show up for, you know, be there for my job and, you know, be supported in that. And I just always kind of felt like,

I couldn't do both things really well. I was in a work situation that just wasn't a good fit for me for a number of reasons, from a culture standpoint, a management standpoint. And so push came to shove and I said, this isn't for me. And so I went out to do my own thing full time.

Michael Bernzweig (02:25.346)
I love it, I love it. so, you know, overall, obviously, over the time that you've had the company up and running, you've had quite a few clients. Can you give me a little bit of a peek behind the scenes as to what the day to day is that you're helping clients with?

Kristi Mitchell (02:45.87)
Sure thing. Yeah, it was kind of funny last year, was pulling together, I'm a big data person, so I was pulling together data for something I was working on. And I wanted to actually get a count of how many clients I had worked with. I've just never done that. And it was over 100, which I was like so shocked by and proud of, to know that I've had an impact on that many business owners in my sort of short time in entrepreneurship was really a fun thing to realize.

So my business has evolved a lot in the six years that I've been doing it, which again, I think most consultants and entrepreneurs can relate to. So my first year of business, I really provided all sorts of marketing services. So I was really like an agency of one. I was creating social content, writing email campaigns, making website edits, blogs, content strategy work, like setting the strategy, but then also executing the strategy. So I got a year of that.

under my belt before the pandemic hit. pandemic, pretty much after the world shut down, like six months later, all my clients were like, yeah, we can't continue. We don't know what's going on. Like things are too uncertain. So I lost the majority of my clients after only a year and a half in business. And so it really gave me the opportunity to kind of take a step back and realize I don't like the execution work. I can do it. I have a great attention to detail, but I really just don't enjoy it. And if I'm busting my butt to build a business for myself, I want to really enjoy my work and I want to

you know, be excited to show up for my clients in the way that I want to and that I feel like I'm using my expertise to its fullest. And so what I really realized was so many business owners, especially consultants, are kind of like thrust into this world of entrepreneurship and building their business for a number of reasons, right? It might be similar to mine and a bad corporate experience was kind of the last straw, whatever it might be.

But they're really passionate about the work that they do and the clients that they serve, but marketing gets in the way. It's confusing, it's overwhelming, they don't have a background in it. And so it feels like marketing holds them back from being able to be successful in their business. And that's what I really realized was I would never want that to be the case. I would never want marketing to be the reason that someone couldn't successfully run their own business and have their career and their family and their priorities on their own terms. And so I really kind of shifted the focus in my business to

Kristi Mitchell (05:03.924)
be that strategic partner for my clients, be that consultant for them. So I don't do the execution work anymore. I strictly stay on the strategic consulting side. And I really give my clients a lot of peace of mind when it comes to knowing what to focus on and what not to worry about in the world of marketing. Because I think as we all know, the options for marketing your business are pretty much endless. And so it can really cause a lot of confusion and overwhelm and frustration.

And that's really why I rebranded my business the way that I did a couple years ago now to marketing uncomplicated, because that's really what I enjoy doing for business owners is taking the complication and the overwhelm out of it and showing them how they can simplify their marketing plan and really get better results for their effort.

Michael Bernzweig (05:49.657)
And you know, it's so interesting, you know, obviously, over the years, we've worked with a lot of different agency owners. And in fact, the software Oasis platform is based on helping agencies connect with with clients and and alike. But one of the things that's always intrigued me is something you just mentioned earlier. You know, it seems like the first place that organizations cut

when they need to make cuts is marketing. And it seems like the last place that organizations should be cutting. And I was wondering if you had a perspective on why that is reality versus the opposite.

Kristi Mitchell (06:23.639)
Mm-hmm.

Kristi Mitchell (06:36.652)
Yes, it's so true, right? That's what I saw firsthand for myself with the pandemic. All these businesses were like, we need to tighten down our budgets, we need to cut marketing. And it's like, okay, but really, especially during that time, that's when you should be leaning into your marketing because a lot of companies didn't invest heavily in their digital presence. And when the world basically shut down, that's how you were able to reach people is through the internet.

through apps, through ads, through email, through social media, your website, SEO, people doing searches and being able to find you. That is the time when you should be doubling down on marketing, not cutting back on it. And that's just really the unfortunate reality of it in the 16 plus years that I've been in the world of marketing. Unfortunately, that's the common.

Michael Bernzweig (07:16.908)
Absolutely.

Kristi Mitchell (07:28.526)
Mindset I think around it is oh, will we need to cut marketing and I think it's really those forward-thinking business owners who really understand and appreciate the need for strategy Those are the ones that I enjoy working with most because we can make the most progress together And I think getting really clear on that strategy first is what ends up saving business owners a ton of wasted time energy and budget dollars Because a lot of times they might go after

you know, a single tactic thinking like, we just need to run some paid ads and that's going to solve all of our problems. But quite frankly, if your website sucks, there's no point in sending more people to it. So.

Michael Bernzweig (08:05.644)
Yeah. mean, obviously converting, you know, traffic into either leads or booked meetings or subscriptions or what or whatever it is that you're trying to achieve, you know, conversion rate optimization is huge. you know, just sending, you know, it's not like, the, the, the late nineties where, know, just getting a form up on a website was good enough today. You know, there's an entire journey and.

Kristi Mitchell (08:20.59)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Bernzweig (08:35.204)
uh, you know, cycle of, of conversion that, uh, that exists and a lot of competition, you know, heck of a lot of competition and you have to get all the details just right. You know, it's, it's absolutely important. So can you give me an idea with the clients that you and your team are working with? it in a specific industry or a niche or is it more the profile or the type of clients that you're helping?

Kristi Mitchell (08:45.651)
yeah.

Kristi Mitchell (09:04.204)
Yeah, for me, it's much more about personality fit and kind of the overall mindset of the business owner. So the clients that I work the best with are in service-based spaces. So sometimes coaching, consulting, leadership development training, recruiting, HR. I've worked with tech companies, B2B SaaS companies. I've worked with wealth management companies, kind of all over the place.

What I have really found, Michael, is that what's more important is the mindset of the business owner in terms of understanding and appreciating the need for strategy. So these business owners have typically built their business on referrals and word of mouth. They're established. They've been in business for, you know, sometimes a few years, sometimes 10, 20 years. But eventually they kind of get to this point where they realize, you know what, we really haven't looked at our marketing holistically. Like we really haven't ever

not in a plan. We might have invested in a new website or we might have done a logo refresh or kind of these disjointed tactics all over the place, but they've never really sat down and said, okay, does our online presence accurately reflect the experience and the expertise that we bring to our clients? And let's make sure that it does. And so,

They get to that point for a variety of reasons. Sometimes they're hiring a salesperson or they want to hire a salesperson because the founder's like, I don't want to have to go out and find all of our new business. Sometimes they're just sick of that kind of up and down spikes in like, we have a ton of clients. we have no clients. And they really want to even it out. They get to a point where they're like, gosh, if we get another spam fill on our website form, like, I'm going to bang my head on the desk. Like, why aren't we getting legitimate leads through our website?

Michael Bernzweig (10:52.43)
Right.

Kristi Mitchell (10:52.702)
So it kind of comes in a variety of those flavors in terms of what gets them to really realize they want to invest in their marketing strategically. But the work that I do with them, my signature package is really like all in. It takes two months to get through. I'm really diving into everything that they're currently doing digitally, because I think that's the best way to get a sense of where do we go from here is where are we now?

So looking at Google Analytics for their website, running SEO reports, looking at some competitor SEO reports, get a sense of what's happening, like what are they being found for in keywords, really looking at their website from a usability standpoint. Are there opportunities for people to fill out a form and get on an email list so that then you can nurture them over time and build that trust that is so important, especially in B2B service-based businesses?

and looking at email marketing and social media, right? Like what's the data telling us? What does the content look like? So I really enjoy doing a deep dive into all of those pieces to see what's working well, what's not, where are there gaps? How can we tie everything together more cohesively to make sure that we're bringing people on this journey to build that know, like, and trust factor that is so important in marketing.

Michael Bernzweig (12:06.988)
And you know, it's interesting. One of the things that I noticed about what you're doing out there in preparing for this interview, definitely got me excited because I'll be honest with you, over all of the businesses that I've run over the years, which is too, I've been very, you know, from a operations standpoint, you know, very interested in process and procedure because I think

If you want to scale a business, if you don't have the right process and procedure in place, the only thing you can do is add more people to a broken process. yeah, and I noticed that you've put together what you're calling your marketing funnel framework, where you have a four phase marketing funnel that you're helping business owners get in place. So I was hoping maybe, you know, a little.

Kristi Mitchell (12:44.43)
Yes.

Kristi Mitchell (12:51.15)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Bernzweig (13:00.908)
little bit of a unlock or a bulleted list for some of the listeners who are spending their time listening to this podcast. If you could give a little peek behind the scenes of what your framework is all about and how it works.

Kristi Mitchell (13:04.46)
Yes!

Kristi Mitchell (13:08.856)
Yeah?

For sure. Yes, I am a huge process and framework person. So actually going back to my time in higher ed, that was really rooted in me because I did a lot of, like I said, program management and marketing. So I actually, earned my MBA while I worked there and the concentration I chose funny enough was quality and organizational improvement because I just kind of really felt like, gosh, there's so much to establishing processes and getting efficient with things. So that's just a little aside.

Michael Bernzweig (13:31.532)
I love it.

Kristi Mitchell (13:41.09)
But I love using the marketing funnel framework for business owners to bring that simplicity and clarity to marketing for them. I kind of started out earlier in our conversation talking about how business owners are typically overwhelmed and frustrated by marketing because it's huge. There's so much that goes into marketing. And so I find that the marketing funnel framework just really helps give business owners that tangible, like, OK, what are we focused on for our marketing? Why are we focused on it?

And what is the noise that we can kind of tune out and not worry about and avoid that shiny object syndrome that I think is so common in business ownership and in marketing, especially. So the marketing funnel framework, if you think of an inverted triangle, the widest part is on the top. That's the top of the funnel. So the first stage is attract. And that is how are new people learning about us and what we have to offer. So that can be done through a number of things, an SEO strategy search, and an optimization, making sure that you're

where your website's optimized so people can find you when they're doing Google searches. Social media is a way that new people can learn about you. Being on podcasts, right, in front of other audiences, like I'm doing right now, that's a way for new people to learn about me. So there's a number of tactics that can kind of go into that attract phase. But that's really the first thing, right? People have to know that you exist. And then from there, that's not enough, right? We don't just want them to know we exist. We need to stay in their world. We need to stay top of mind.

Michael Bernzweig (14:49.656)
Sure.

Kristi Mitchell (15:06.562)
That's the second stage of the funnel. And when we work our way down is convert and that is converting somebody to become a lead, not yet a client. And that means really at the end of the day, getting them to fill out a form, right? So maybe they're signing up for a webinar or an online presentation, or maybe they are filling out a form to take a quiz and get a fun result that's going to tell them something about how they're doing on their own marketing. in my world, maybe it's a free downloadable PDF or guide or

calculator of some sort or some sort of tool that's really beneficial enough that someone's going to say, yes, I'll give you my name and email address in exchange for this resource. So that's really the heart of the convert stage. And then from there, we go to nurture. And nurture is usually the longest section of the funnel, especially in a service-based space, right? Because we have to build that trust. And so we need to nurture them, stay in touch with them over time. We're usually doing that through things like email marketing and social media by showing up consistently, providing value ad content,

you know, creating content that shows that we're helpful, we're relevant, we're solving problems for our audience. That's the kind of content I really focus on helping my clients create. And that, you know, using that for all stages of the funnel, but especially that nurture, because that's what's going to help build the trust. And then the last stage of the funnel at the very bottom is close. That's closing the deal when the timing is right, right? And that's how I approach marketing with clients, because again, I think it just helps take the overwhelm and the

all the complications that they have in their mind about marketing and just make it very simple and clear.

Michael Bernzweig (16:42.092)
And you know, the thing that kills me is, know, so many organizations think that you just need to throw me at all of us. And sometimes the reality of it is that couldn't be further from the truth. There are so many organic ways that you can generate, you know, all aspects of your, marketing funnel. doesn't need to be just paid ads. And I think, you know,

Kristi Mitchell (17:07.373)
Yes.

Michael Bernzweig (17:09.604)
while a lot of different methods, you know, to create viral loops and things that will generate, you know, inbound, you know, opportunities for any organization take time. You know, I think at the end of the day, time or money, and if you can set something up that is repeatable and just works and brings in the same end result that you're looking for.

Kristi Mitchell (17:23.63)
Mm-hmm.

Michael Bernzweig (17:36.398)
Take the time, you know, and I think it's not truly exclusive. You can do a little bit of everything.

Kristi Mitchell (17:38.68)
Yeah.

Kristi Mitchell (17:42.85)
Yes, for sure. And that's something you and I touched on a little bit before we hopped on this call is, you know, I believe very strongly in building what I call the organic marketing foundation for your business. And that is really at end of the day, not paid ads. It's your website, it's your social media, it's your email marketing. It's those things that you can do without spending a whole lot of money besides maybe paying someone to write the content for you or set up the systems for those things.

But those are the things that I firmly believe, and this is what I've seen with all the clients I work with, that stuff needs to be solid first. Because if you just jump straight to paid advertising and you don't have that solid organic foundation, you're just wasting money. You're just, you know, you might be getting your company name in front of more people, but if you don't have those, again, back to systems and processes, if you don't have that stuff in place, those people are going to be falling out of your funnel faster than you can fill it.

And so that's where I always come back to that marketing funnel framework as we need to make sure that this is solid and this is all in place before we go amplify our efforts with something like paid advertising.

Michael Bernzweig (18:48.536)
Yeah, and that that makes a ton of sense and I think it's important. So at the end of the day, can you share with our audience maybe an example of and you don't have to name any clients by name, but an example of a client that came to you, what their life looked like before and what things looked like after getting up and running.

Kristi Mitchell (19:09.518)
For sure. My favorite client to date always comes to mind when I'm asked this question. So they came to me, they found me through searching online and they were in a position where the founder of the company had, know, she's getting ready to retire. She's like, I don't want to be, you know, the one bringing in all the new business. And so they had, you know, they took care of their business side of things. She had, you know, found two people to kind of take over the company for her and

She was just going to stay on an advisory role. they're like, OK, well, we need to figure out this marketing thing. We've really just relied on our relationships and referrals to build this business. But we know that we really need a marketing engine to deliver high quality leads so that our salesperson has someone to follow up on. so prior to coming to me, they had hired an agency. And it didn't go well. I won't go into all the details. But basically, they just felt like it was very generic.

corporate speak content that was being created. It didn't feel authentic to their brand. It really wasn't producing results either. And so they spent a lot of money. I don't know how much. I know it was a lot. And they just didn't get any results for it. And they didn't get anything that really set them up for future success. And so they said, OK, we need to rethink this. And I don't think we need an agency. I think we need a consultant. And that's how they found me.

and I came in and I looked at everything they had, they had some really good stuff happening. They also had a lot of areas of opportunity to clean things up, right? Like their website kind of looked nice, but it didn't really speak clearly to who they are and who they served and what they offered. There were not opportunities for people to fill out forms to learn more information just besides the generic contact form, which usually nobody fills out except for those spam bots.

And so we really, I dove into all those areas that I mentioned before, their website, their social media, their email marketing. And we really came up with very specific plans for how we were going to improve all of those things. And then what I did, because they didn't have any, they didn't have any execution experts on their team. They had someone to project manage them, but I connected them with people from my network who I know and trust for the different things that they needed. So they kind of joked that it was their marketing dream team.

Kristi Mitchell (21:27.662)
that I helped compile for them, but I connected them with someone to produce their podcast, someone to write their email marketing, someone to manage their LinkedIn presence, and someone to do all the website edits that I had recommended. And within the first couple of months, they finally started getting legitimate inbound leads on their website. So it was really great just to see how much they appreciated the strategy first approach, and we're all in on like, okay, let's get all this up and running.

Michael Bernzweig (21:57.687)
And I think everyone is always, you know, excited about that new shiny object and something they just heard, you know, whatever it is, you have to do this, you have to do that. I mean, I remember, you know, my, my first year working in corporate America, everyone was sitting in the office and there was always someone that had this great tip on the hottest stock and the best strategy and all that kind of stuff. And I think it's the same thing in marketing. So from that end of it, do you, as you're

Guiding clients along, do you have to untangle some of what they come to you with in terms of preconceptions?

Kristi Mitchell (22:36.876)
Yes, for sure. There is often, and you almost kind of, you started to allude to this in something you said earlier, it made me think about it. A lot of times I think business owners jump to, need to do more. We need to do more things in marketing. We need to be on more social channels, right? There's always a new social platform popping up and okay, well now we need to go be on that platform. We'll just use this as one example.

Michael Bernzweig (22:40.484)
Ahem.

Kristi Mitchell (23:02.818)
But it translates into a bunch of different areas of marketing, but let's just say social media. It's like, okay, well, we need to be on more channels. We need to post more often. A lot of times when clients come to me and I look at their social media, it's like, okay, this is very common. They're on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn. They're posting the same content to all the platforms. Instagram and Facebook are pretty much getting zero engagement. They're not growing their audience at all.

They are also platforms that really require a different content strategy in terms of having to post stories and just needing more content in general to really build the presence there. And when we really sit down and have an honest conversation about it, nine times out of 10, we walk away saying, okay, we're just going to focus on LinkedIn and we're not going to worry about, we're not going to do Facebook and Instagram anymore. You're a B2B service based business. It makes more sense for you to be on LinkedIn. You can get found organically on LinkedIn much easier.

much more effectively than you can on other social platforms. So we're just going to go all in on LinkedIn. And so I use that as an example, because again, a lot of times I think business owners think, well, we need to do more. It's like, you don't always need to do more. Sometimes you need to tear down and just do better at the things that you're focused on. So making sure that you're actively engaging on LinkedIn, not just posting and not engaging there, because that's not going to get you results. Making sure you're doing proactive outreach to build your network and your following on LinkedIn.

There's a whole lot you can do when you just kind of hone in on one platform instead of spreading yourself thin and trying to be in all the places.

Michael Bernzweig (24:35.884)
makes great sense and I think that that's important. Although the one new channel that I'm seeing a tremendous amount of interest in is Blue Sky. I don't know if you've seen the same type of thing, but I think from a new upstart social media channel, I've never seen anything take off so quickly.

Kristi Mitchell (24:57.408)
Interesting. I always tell people I am never an early adopter when it comes to most things, technology and marketing. And that might be like totally shooting myself in the foot to say that and admit that. I'm always that like, let's take a backseat, like, let me pay attention to it and see what's happening. But I'm not going to go invest my precious time and energy into something new until I know that it's kind of proven and it's here for the long haul.

Michael Bernzweig (24:58.776)
Yeah, so it's interesting.

Michael Bernzweig (25:22.02)
I'm right there with you. And I think the holistic approach to marketing in general and the strategy and all of that is, know, the most important part of everything. So you mentioned the whole range of different industries and all of that is the journey. Most of the clients go through, uh, something where they're coming to you from wherever they are at, you know, and it sounds like a lot of the clients are.

you know, more established and just need to get some structure in place as they're growing. are most of the clients with you for a limited period of time, or is your team providing input for them, you know, over many months, years, you know, for as long as they want, how does, how does the journey look like with, with what you're doing?

Kristi Mitchell (26:09.59)
Yeah. Yep.

Yeah, that's a great question. So I think I mentioned earlier, my signature package takes about two months to get through just in terms of my time, their time coordinating all these meetings that we have. So it's two months for that. Typically clients stay on with me after that because now they have this plan and they have the resources to execute it through their own connections, my connections, maybe a combination of both, but they're still gonna have questions and they still wanna keep tabs on how things are performing.

Michael Bernzweig (26:39.394)
Right?

Kristi Mitchell (26:44.046)
So there's a couple of different ways that I work with clients after that initial two month project period. Sometimes I stay on in more of a backseat role. We just meet quarterly and I'm available by email if they have questions. But every quarter I'm going back and looking at that data again to say, okay, now that you've been executing, what's happening to the data? What results are we getting? Where can we kind of fine tune and make even further enhancements to get even better results? So that's one option. There's also another option where I'm more of a like,

I'm in your back pocket whenever you need me. I use WhatsApp or Voxer. They can send me audio message, text messages, just for any questions that come up. They can submit content for me to review. So if they have copywriters or internal people creating content, they can send that to me for feedback and guidance. But that's much more of that hands-on, like, OK, I'm here for whatever you need. And then in very select cases, because I don't have a huge bandwidth for this, sometimes I manage the implementation for them.

But I just don't have a huge bandwidth for that type of work.

Michael Bernzweig (27:44.302)
Okay.

Michael Bernzweig (27:48.185)
Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. So interesting. And one of the details he mentioned there and I think earlier is, you know, metrics. there specific metrics that are really important in identifying how a campaign is going, how a strategy is unfolding?

Kristi Mitchell (27:56.909)
Yeah.

Kristi Mitchell (28:08.876)
Yeah, there's all sorts of data points I really like to look at. So from a website standpoint, some of the most interesting things to me are to look at how traffic is coming to the website. Where is the traffic being driven from? Are there ways that we can capitalize on that? Are there certain websites that are referring traffic that maybe we can do more with to get even more traffic coming from those if it's good quality traffic and it's converting? I also like to look at how

how engaged certain pages are on the website. So as I'm looking at the website from a usability standpoint, I like to think in terms of, OK, I don't think that this needs to be a main navigation item. This could probably be nested somewhere else. But I always double check that against the data. If there's a ton of people going to that page as a first step from the home page, we don't want to bury it. We don't want to make it difficult for them to find. So really using data in that way from a website standpoint. Then just quickly like.

Email marketing, know, open rates and click rates are really important, but taking a look at the content too, like what are the subject lines? How are you optimizing for open rates? Where are you having options for people to click? Are your CTAs calls to action really clear? Are you using buttons? Are you hyperlinking text? What's working the best? And then on the social media side, you know, it's engagement and growing your audience. I always say, you know, quality over quantity. Again, you know, not all marketers might agree with that.

But I think that having higher quality engagement in terms of social media and email marketing is much more important than having tens of thousands of subscribers or people following you and not having any engagement on it.

Michael Bernzweig (29:47.929)
Makes a lot of sense. I think, you know, at the end of the day, you know, looking at, you know, it's not just looking at your Google analytics or whatever package you have in place to figure out how things are going, but obviously, keeping, you know, obviously continuing to measure, but in addition to measuring, you know, figuring out what the data means, I think that's, that's as important as, as anything. So, and

How do you help clients from getting overwhelmed? Because obviously, sometimes they want to jump in with both feet, but it's a little much.

Kristi Mitchell (30:23.948)
Yes, yeah, I love that you asked this question. So I my undergrad was actually in psychology. So little known fact, I almost went into the field of psychology, school counseling or social work or something along those lines. I ended up realizing I get too emotionally attached. And so it wasn't going to be a good fit for me career wise. But I like to think that I bring that I do bring that level of empathy and connection to my clients. And so

I've had a lot of client calls this week. I am always asking them after I'm going through something like, okay, does that make sense? And how does it feel? Because if they tell me they're feeling overwhelmed, I wanna know, and I wanna be able to help mitigate that. So we'll say, okay, I know we talked about a lot on this call. Let's just focus on this one piece between now and our next meeting. So let's not worry about all the things that are on the list to do. Let's just focus on this one piece. And these are the specific things that I want you to do before we get on that next call.

Michael Bernzweig (31:03.588)
Bye.

Kristi Mitchell (31:21.432)
So I'm very strategic, but I'm also very actionable and detail-oriented. And I think that that really helps mitigate any of those feelings of overwhelm when it comes to all of the recommendations I'm making to my client.

Michael Bernzweig (31:35.257)
Yeah, and it's so important because, you know, business is not easy, you know, and especially if you're running your own business, you know, or not even running your own business, but if you're managing an organization at a higher level and you have a lot of, you know, let's face it, you have competitors, you have innovation, you have a lot of things going on. So just figuring it all out. know, marketing is one component to the whole, the whole mix of everything going on in a business. So.

Kristi Mitchell (31:39.372)
It's not.

Kristi Mitchell (31:57.325)
Yeah.

Michael Bernzweig (32:04.116)
I really appreciate the deep dive. I just wanted to wrap up with a couple of things and obviously we'll leave a link in the show notes for anybody that would like to reach out to you or your team. But one theory we didn't talk about, unfudge your marketing, your podcast. I'd love to give you a little shameless plug and help listeners that might be interested in kind of branching out, finding another podcast. So can you explain to everybody what it's all about and what happens there?

Kristi Mitchell (32:20.194)
Yes!

Thank

Kristi Mitchell (32:33.377)
Yeah, so the idea for this pod, I always kind of like, backing up, I always kind of thought maybe someday I'll have a podcast, but I just never had that kind of like moment of like, I need to do this until last year. So I just, felt like I was having a series of conversations with business owners, similar to the example client that I talked about earlier, where they just had really bad experiences, whether it was hiring an agency or.

you know, investing in advertising when really they needed to fix something else first. There's no shortage of these stories. And it got me really fired up to say, okay, I want to have a platform for business owners to be able to share these experiences and really most importantly, the lessons that they learned from those experiences so that other business owners can hopefully not make the same mistakes or go into, you know, arrangements with more

understanding and a better view of questions they should be asking and things to be paying attention to. And so I started the live show and podcast last year. So it streams live on Tuesdays to LinkedIn, YouTube and Facebook. And then it also gets turned into a podcast as well. So I have business owners, business leaders. I also have other marketing experts come on and talk about common mistakes or mishaps that they have seen.

with their clients or in their own business in terms of marketing. And so it's a really great way to just start thinking about your marketing differently and position yourself to make better decisions that will hopefully help save you time, energy, headaches and lost budget.

Michael Bernzweig (34:12.974)
Fantastic. Well, anyways, we'll leave a link to both in the show notes for anybody that would like to reach out and jump in with both feet. really appreciate your time on the podcast today. And for anyone that is wanting to keep in the loop on everything going on here at Software Oasis, we have a bi-weekly newsletter you can sign up for at softwareoasis.com backslash subscribe. And once again, thank you so much for joining us on the podcast today.

From Marketing Uncomplicated, we've had Christy Mitchell, the founder of the business. Thank you for joining us.

Kristi Mitchell (34:50.062)
Thanks so much, Michael. Thank you.