Ep 84: Cutting Through the Noise to Build a Powerful Brand with Jaci Russo

This transcript was auto-generated and may contain errors in spelling or inaccuracies in the spoken words.

Shauna Lynn Simon (00:02)

Hello and welcome to the Real Women Real Business podcast. I am your host, Shauna Lynn Simon, and joining me today is Jaci Russo. She's the CEO and co-founder of Brand Russo, which is a strategic branding agency. And she's part of a very elite, less than 1 % of women-owned agencies in the US. She brings over 25 years of marketing experience, has built multiple successful ventures.

And we're going be talking today about some of those ventures, including Brandstate U that she's created. Stay tuned for what this is. But if you don't have the budget for a high-end marketing agency, we got you covered. She also co-hosts two podcasts as well. So she's no stranger to podcasting. And what makes her story even more remarkable is that she's doing all of this while raising four children and working alongside her husband. I'm sure there are plenty of listeners that are giving you whole lot of kudos for both of those feats.

So she started back with in her early days with Media Mogul, Barry Diller, and she was building, she's now building her own empire in Louisiana and has been doing so for many, years. But her background includes like USA Network and ⁓ some pretty major brands. So I can't wait to hear everything that she's gonna be sharing with us today. So Jaci, thank you so much for joining us. Welcome. Thanks for having me. I'm glad to be here. So you actually started at

Creative Artists Agency in LA. So I just mentioned you were talking about brands like USA Network, Ticketmaster, and then you moved to Louisiana back in, I think it was the early 2000s, is that right? Well, other way around. I grew up in Louisiana. I was born here. Got it. OK. Went to college here after college, moved to Los Angeles, and my very first real job that wasn't like bartending and waiting tables was working at CAA on the desk of a talent agent. And it was all A-list, actors and actresses.

Then went to work for a production company that I helped start and then landed with Mr. Diller at HSN. What an incredible journey. so what drove you so what what brought you back to Louisiana then and away from L.A. and into your own entrepreneurship journey? Well, you know, I had been there for a large chunk of the 90s and my grandmother, who had kind of been heavily involved in raising me, got sick and I wanted to come home, spend some time with her.

Got a job at the only thing that was kind of close to what I had been doing in LA, which is at a regional advertising agency in Lafayette and figured I'd be here for a while and then maybe head back to LA. I still owned my house there and met a guy and he tricked me into marrying him and then knocked me up four times. And so here we are. I mean, I'd love to think the tale is old as time, but like it really is. mean, it's so many, you know, life's best laid plans often get changed.

you meet someone who makes a profound impact, whether it's a romantic partner or a mentor or whatever, know, sometimes we get it moved into a different direction, but it sounds like this was the right path for you. So, I mean, I'm sure there's no regrets. mean, no, I definitely am not a live with regrets person. I appreciate every thing, good and bad, because it helps get us where we're going. But no, I was never going to have kids. I was never going to get married. I was resolute in my commitment.

to my career and then, you we go on our first date in January, we get engaged in April, we get married in October and 10 months later we're having our first baby. So I'm like, well that changed quickly. On our fifth anniversary, we had four kids. Really? is, so you're not kidding when you said you basically just started pumping them out basically. well, you know, I married a good Catholic boy.

And we were older and so it was like, we're to do this, it's going to tick tock. And ⁓ I was eight months pregnant with the second kid when I started the agency. ⁓ my goodness. OK, so let's dig into that a little bit. So sure. And you own the agency with your husband. Was that from the beginning? It was the two of you know, ⁓ I was working at one agency. He was working at another. That's how we met. And then I actually was fired three weeks before our wedding.

from the agency where I was working, ⁓ which ended up being the greatest thing ever, but at the time didn't feel that way. And so I went in-house to a regional ⁓ company and became their marketing director, eventually their VP of marketing and a certified media buyer. And then, you know, I have to take off three weeks into a new job. I have to take off a week for a wedding and a honeymoon. And then I'm now 10 months into a job and I'm taking off time to have a baby and ⁓

Our first was two weeks late. had to be induced. And my boss said, well, if you're scheduling this, because I was scheduling the induction, he said, can you schedule it on a Friday so you can be back on Monday? And I waited for him to start laughing and he wasn't laughing. And I was like, ⁓ he said, cause you know, you've already used your vacation time for that trip you took last year. And now you don't have any vacation time left or sick time, anything.

Because vacation time is how you have a baby. Got it. Yes. Well, yeah, apparently so in 1999. And so back in the 1900s, that's how we did things, Shauna Lynn. And so I was like, oh, wait, you're serious. And so, I mean, it all ended up working out that I scheduled the induction per my doctor's orders on a Wednesday. And I was in fact back at work on Monday.

Yeah. Yeah. Five day old. Uh, so that was a challenge. And then imagine my surprise when I was pregnant six months later, I mean, they're a year and a half apart. And so now it's like, Oh, I got a time of boss. I'm taking off time again. Right. And I was at lunch, um, Sunday lunch with my in-laws and my father-in-law said, nobody gets ahead work at a W two. And I said, I don't know what that means.

You said, well, a W-2 job. was like, I don't know what that means. I'm a reasonably intelligent 29 year old professional woman had a career. What are you saying? And he said, well, W-2 and so, you know, he kind of explains me. like, Oh, so I'm going to give that some pregnancy hormones. Like that wasn't my fault, but he was right. And so I said, well, you know, Michael's this very talented graphic designer is one of the best Photoshop artists in the country. I could see him having this freelance career.

freelance marketing directors, I don't think that's a thing because the fractional wave hadn't really kicked in yet. yeah. is, this is not, mean, 1900s. Remember this is the 1900s. I mean, at this point in the story, it's just turned 2000. And so the internet is not what it is. The social media is, it doesn't exist. don't even know if Mark Zuckerberg is alive yet in the story. So yeah. And so I'm like, Oh, okay. And so then I called on a couple of people that I knew and I trusted business people in the community.

And I said, I'm kind of thinking about doing this thing where I would be a fractional marketing director and a fractional media buyer. They didn't know what that meant. I didn't really either. So I was explaining it to them. I don't think I use the word fractional. said, a freelance part-time offsite because virtual wasn't a thing either. And so, uh, I mean, I was waddling in eight months pregnant, pitching my services. And within six weeks I had four clients. Wow. Surpass the pay. was making.

at this VP job. And so I said, maybe I'm onto something here, but it was really just so I could have more free time. And I was going to play tennis. I was going to do a little media buying, a little market directing and raise a couple of kids. And it was going to be great. And Michael's like, this is great. I'll keep my agency job. You go do this thing, freelance thing. It'll be fine. And I'm maybe, you know, six months into this, four months into this. he says, Michael says, I am doing more work for you at night.

for your non-agency that I am doing during the day for my real agency job. Because every client that I was doing TV and radio and newspaper buys for, they needed creative. And so Michael's creating TV spots and radio spots and print ads and billboards. And so at this point I'm hiring him for that and he's working for free, which is exactly what I could afford. But quickly it was like, we've outgrown me working from the nursery where I'm nursing a kid and typing up a media buy at the same time.

And so in six months, I had hired Michael, hired another employee and ⁓ we were all working out of the house. Wow. And this is pretty impressive though, because I think a lot of people when they venture into entrepreneurship, regardless of background, regardless of sales experience, often find it challenging to sell themselves, to sell a concept that people aren't familiar with. here you're selling something that didn't exist.

I started off in home staging. know what that's like. I would tell people I was a home stager and they'd look at me like I had two heads, like what the heck is that? And being able to sell and like you are the brand. It's different when you're selling USA Network and Ticketmaster and brands that are well known and instead you're selling yourself. And so what would you say contributed to your ability to be able to transition that quickly and be able to sell yourself like that? I'm going to say this with more humility than it's going to sound like I have.

But I am truly being humble when I say it's because I'm good at my job. I don't approach it as I'm selling a service or I'm selling me. was selling a solution to a problem. And what I saw across the board were these small local business owners were overwhelmed with media sellers. Every TV station had a seller. Every radio station had a seller. Every newspaper, every magazine, every billboard company.

And they were just inundated all day long. could say no solicitation on the door, but they would walk in pretending like they wanted to buy a car or furniture or whatever the thing is. so the owner is going to take time and talk to them about the thing they want to buy. And then all of a sudden it's like, well, I have this package. And so the companies were purchasing advertising that had no rhyme or reason. was no strategy. There was no plan.

And so I went in with a solution to a puzzle and the puzzle was you need to get more time back in your day. You need to not be the bad guy with potential customers. And you need to have a real apples to apples. Look at these media opportunities. Is this ⁓ CBS affiliate a better buy for you than this ABC affiliate? Well, if you ask CBS, they'll say yes. And if you ask ABC, they'll say no. So.

You need an unbiased third party who will look at all things being equal and make a real recommendation about where your audience is. You know what I love about, like, let's go back to the very first thing that you said about that, this one, you said that you were good at your job and you were selling a solution to a problem because I think this is what gets lost every single day when it comes to marketing. And part of it is because of, I don't want to call it laziness, but

In the social media era, you can kind of just put things out on the Internet and whether you're selling something or not, sometimes something's going to go viral. And so everyone's trying for the next big viral thing and become an influencer and they forget what their actual mission is. And that is to help other people. And I tend to work with I call them my accidental CEOs. These are passion driven entrepreneurs who started with more passion than plan. And they have this thing that they're really, really good at. And they're really, really excited about and really, really passionate about. But.

when they're trying to sell it, they're just going to list, here's all the features, here's all the things that I do. And I push my clients all the time like, OK, well, why does that matter to your client? Like, well, obviously, like, no, no, not obviously. Why does this actually matter? And so you were you're doing exactly that in your job. It's it's giving you the incredible agency that you have. But I know that before we started recording here, we also talked about you have this brand state you.

And I want to talk about that for a moment because there are so many entrepreneurs that, let's face it, they weren't built to be their own marketers necessarily. we didn't. Not a lot of us took a crash course on marketing 101. And even if you did, do you really have the tools for today's day and age to be able to do that? So let's talk a little bit about your brand state, you, your brainchild. Like where did it come from and what is it? How is it serving your community? I think all good things are born out of a need.

And so I identified a problem as the agency grew, you know, at this point in the timeline now we're renting space. There's I look up, we've been in business three years. I've got 12 employees and we're tight because it's like two offices were way crowded. so we were luckily because of our growth, we were able to buy a building in downtown Lafayette. So we've got this gorgeous 8,000 square foot office now that we work out of. And so we did that in year three, four, year four. And

We've grown as an agency, we're getting bigger, we're working with bigger clients, we've got ⁓ more expenses, we've become more expensive, we're better at what we're doing. So now when those same clients who we worked with on day one, if somebody like them shows up, we've outgrown that. We're not really working with local clients anymore. We found our niche in B2B, so we're dealing with businesses who sell their products and services to other businesses, mostly manufacturing and professional services, that kind of thing.

and a lot of industrial clients. And so now when the little smaller, not quite as sure what they're going on, much smaller budgets come to hire us, that's not our perfect fit anymore. And I don't want to ⁓ leave them without help, but I am going to tell them the agency is not a good fit for them. So I need to provide them with a different resource. So I started teaching marketing classes on the side. And so I would teach them what they needed to know.

to look at the CBS affiliate and the ABC affiliate and decide which one's best for them. I taught them how to get away from features-based messaging and get into an actual emotionally connecting benefits solution-based message. We talked about how to really identify target audience segments and get away from trying to sell to anybody and everybody because you're gonna sell to nobody. And so, know, just some smart branding principles and...

⁓ was great. I booked up all these classes. made a little, little money on the side. It was good. I felt like I was on mission because I was still helping people, but I wasn't taxing those agencies resources. And then 2020 hit and I had to cancel all these in-person classes. And so I didn't want to give anybody their money back was the answer to why we have an online recorded library of classes is because I am cheap. And so I recorded all the classes I was going to teach.

and they all then had access to the website. And we actually, if you're in the state of Louisiana, you get a refund of any training that you receive from us up to $3,000 per employee per year, because our state is heavily investing in believing that the better trained someone is, the better they're going to ascend at a job and spend less time on unemployment. So we put our money into proactive training instead of reactive unemployment insurance.

love that. That's an incredible bonus to be able to, mean, not that you created it or anything, but to be able to educate people and let them know that this is an opportunity for not only them, but for their employees as well. That's incredible. Amazing. And so, so you're serving the market of the people who can afford you. You're serving the market of the people who cannot afford you necessarily. ⁓ And you're, helping them to build better, better and stronger businesses. mean, everybody deserves good marketing.

no matter how big their budget is, no matter how talented they are. I'm not a graphic designer. You could put whatever machine, software, program in front of me. I have no better eye than I did 10 minutes ago. But if we can give some people some classes, we can give them little bit of education. We can help them be a little more discerning. They will make better choices for themselves. And the same goes with strategy, with target audience identification, with messaging, and then ultimately,

with putting together a true marketing plan that includes the tactics they need and excludes the ones they don't. And I mean, I everyone can benefit from that, whether they can afford a large agency or not. It's important that we understand our brand on that level so that when we're having conversations with people, we're not just saying like, hey, I'm a home stager, I stage houses. Like that means nothing.

And I can even take it a little bit further. Will I bring things in when people are selling? No, again, that's still not what I actually do. And then I can get super cliche if I want to say I help sell houses faster and for more money and say what every other stage out there is saying. But like you were saying earlier, if you're marketing to everyone, you're marketing to no one and understanding who your actual audience is. And I can't tell you how many times I talked to my clients about this and they say, but it's not like I won't work with someone and I don't want to eliminate them and won't I be missing out on the market and

As soon as we get them nice and dialed in on their message, all of a sudden, look at that. ideal client just dropped into your lap, basically. Correct. And they replicate over and over and over again because you're finally speaking their language. You're talking to the solutions of the problems that they face. They feel seen and they feel heard and they feel like you can help. And that's what we're here for. We're here to solve problems for people. Everybody's got this puzzle and if we can help them figure out how to put the pieces together, we'll paint a picture that gets them where they want to go.

Yeah, and mean, and listen, I said it earlier, but not everyone was made to be a marketer. And especially when it's your own business, you're so close to it. You're so passionate about, know, it inside and out that it all just clicks for you and makes sense. But we need it to click for everybody else. And I mean, I've always been fascinated watching television commercials. And now it's the ads that come up on social media. And I love watching things where I'm like, who do think you're actually marketing to with this? You know, just watching them miss the mark sometimes.

even people with some of the biggest budgets and the biggest ad agencies are still missing the mark. So real good marketing is not something that was ever meant to be super easy, but the reality is with the right tools and the right supports, anyone can do it. So I love that you've made that more accessible for people. Thanks. Yeah. Thank you very And so you've got your hands in a few different things here, you know, between the podcast and the books and the agency and the brand state you and I mean,

I'll admit I'm a bit of a serial entrepreneur myself and so I get it. And the challenge is I would say sometimes it has a tendency to rub off on some of my clients where they would like to start six new businesses in a week. I know what my advice is, but I wanted to ask you for yourself, like how do you strategically decide when to expand on something, when to start something new and when to stay the course on whatever it is that you're currently building?

For me, it's always about problem solving. And so, you know, I felt like the agency has an incredible team of talent and process we call razor branding and a real clear target audience segment. So we've got all that worked out. Brandstate use courses fills a need, ⁓ really helps people get smarter about how to understand marketing and understand the foundations of it and make smarter choices about what they're doing or what someone's doing for them.

But as we continue to grow and evolve, there's a middle. And so we needed a middle solution. And so most recently Brandstet U has launched a line of marketing services that are far less ⁓ intense and deep and complicated and expensive than the agency. ⁓ And they utilize a lot of AI tools because we've got access to those now, which is awesome. And so we've been in the AI space for about two years now. ⁓

regularly impressed as they continue to evolve. think humans still need to lead the effort. I think it should be an AI sandwich, human in AI driven human out. And that's how you really get the perfect blend of ⁓ best material. And so it wasn't intended to be a whole new thing. It was just to make sure we could continue to provide solutions that people want. So if they want a hands off results driven,

All in approach. So it's, ⁓ you know, five figures. It is a lot of heavy research and planning and in all, ⁓ encompassing monthly retainer that covers everything you need, no matter what you need agency. Sure. You want to learn it yourself and go do it yourself, but you don't do it on your own. You want a little bit of guidance classes, but in that middle now, all of a sudden there is an less expensive.

a la carte because I would refer to freelancers and they would drop the ball. I would refer to this ⁓ option or that option and there was no real focus on strategy. And so this way I know that the people are getting the help that they need and it can fit in the smallest of budgets. So you've got a little bit of the quality control there, but also like you said, you're serving another audience.

And I mean, I talk about pricing strategies all the time about having your Goldilocks tiers, three tiers, the good, better and best essentially. And that middle one is actually where you end up serving the largest number of people and can be one of your most profitable ones. But it's nice to have something a little bit lower that's budget friendly, a little bit higher, that's a bit more premium because you're going to fit different markets that way. And that way you're also not stuck in a position where they can't afford your top tier.

And so you're trying to bend over backwards to discount your services for some reason, because I don't know why the ownership would be on you to make their budget work. this allows you to be able to do that. And you also talked about your razor branding process, and I want to dig into that. So we're going to do exactly that right after this quick message.

All right, welcome back to the Real Women Real Business podcast. And we are talking with Jaci Russo and we're talking about branding strategies and being able to ensure that you've got the marketing supports that you need, whatever level you're at in business. And at the end of the day, it's the same strategy essentially for every level that you're at. We're still taking a problem and providing a solution for it. And that is what we are ultimately selling. Now, you've got a dialed in process, you call it Razor.

branding and clearly it's definitely working. So can you maybe break down what makes it a little bit different? How is delivering results for your clients? Sure. Back in 2005, the agency's four years old. We've bought the building, we're growing and expanding and we've really ⁓ started to do for ourselves what we do for our clients, which is figure out where's our sweet spot. What's our thing? And we kept coming back to, we didn't want to ever be reactive and tactical. Client comes in and says,

I need TV. So we say, Here's TV. I need social media. Sure. Here's social media. Well, they wouldn't have said that in 05, but you know, they do now. And so we said, okay, this is not the right way. We should be the leaders, not the order takers. We're the experts in this space. We've done this way more times than our clients have. And so we really started to put to words what we'd just been doing intuitively. And it's based on best practices. It's based on a very obvious

very ⁓ matter of fact textbook, the way it should be done. We have not reinvented the wheel. What we did do though was explain it in a way that people can understand it. so razor branding cuts through the clutter. That's the goal. And it has four core elements. The first is focus. When you know who to focus on their demographics, their psychographics, their personality profiles, and their, ⁓ their largest, biggest challenges.

Now you can start to put them in the buckets where they belong. The next is promise why they should choose you. They can keep doing what they're doing. They can go to one of your competitors. They could be apathetic and do nothing, but you think you're the right choice for them. Why? What do you give them that none of the other options do? So we need to know what mental real estate is yours to own and how you accurately finish this fill in the blank sentence. We are the only blank that does blank. And if you're not the only one doing that, then

You are not going to be able to separate yourself from the pack. Humans are herd animals. We're species of pack animals and we blend in for safety. That's what we need as part of our community. But when we can stand out, then we can be chosen. And that's good in business, bad in the jungle. And then the third thing is messaging. As we talked about earlier, people tend to focus on a very features based message.

They want to talk about themselves when they were founded, how big they are, how many employees they have, how many locations they have their hours of operation. No one cares. And so we turn that into real benefits message that is a positioning at the ⁓ target audience as the hero of the story, really highlighting the pain point that they are frustrated by and showing where our clients products or services are the solution to get themselves out of that pain.

And then last but not least is the 365 day plan. Now it's tactically, what are we going to do? When are we going to do it to really have a return on investment? How are we going to track what's working? What are we going to measure? What do monitor? What do we modify to make sure we're making improvements?

OK, so one thing I love that you're talking about here, though, is the fact that you didn't reinvent the wheel. you know, this is this has been marketing 101 for years. It just takes on a bit of a different shape and face as we have all these different marketing mediums that people bring up. But, you know, that get invented, that get created all these different ways that we can get our messaging out. It changes very frequently on a daily basis. And I like what you said at very beginning about cutting through the clutter, because it can be really noisy out there.

And I get my clients coming to me all the time. for example, they're going to listen to this episode. And let's say you were talking about a particular strategy that you did on, let's say, television marketing and the new streaming services or whatever. I would have clients call me saying, I think I need to do that now. I think I need to get onto that platform because I was listening to Jaci and she said I should. I I did an episode on Pinterest with Sandra Kokodovic ⁓ many months ago. And I still when people listen that episode. So I need to be on Pinterest. And don't get me wrong. ⁓

lot of businesses should be on Pinterest. But first of all, none of that matters unless you know who you're selling to, what you're selling them that no one else is selling them and why it matters to them. so the actual execution, the putting things out on social media, putting things out on television or traditional print media or whatever it looks like, none of that matters if you don't get those first few things figured out.

But then the next part of it, is just understanding where you're once you know who your clients are, you know where they actually are and you can follow the same strategy. It's a lather, rinse, repeat kind of cycle essentially that you can use for every new service, every new opportunity, everything that you're doing. You're using the same strategies. You're not necessarily reinventing the wheel.

But so many people are thinking, well, I need to be on this platform or I watch this reel. And this guy said he used these two lines to get $10,000 next week. So I posted that on my own social media story. And I'm expecting I'm waiting to make my $10,000. And I'll admit, like, don't get me wrong. I've been pulled in by some of these things before too. I mean, this looks kind of good. I can see why that would work. Let's give it a shot. But that's not a strategy. That's a hack. It's a tip. It's a clip. It's a

It's a moment in the sun and it's going to change tomorrow. And especially if you're trying to hack the internet, if you're not Taylor Swift, good luck with this because the reality is it's going to change on a daily basis and you have zero control over it. Right. And, you know, I personally think the shortcuts are going to cost you in the long run. And so if you do the right things, the right way, you get to the right place. And so the biggest challenge is I see business people all the time acting as if

They can call a contractor and say, I'm ready to build a house, bring wood. What contractor is going to show up with a truck full of wood and start hammering? They're going to say, one you want to work with. No, they're going to say, where's the blueprint? What are we building? What's it going to look like? How do we know when we're done? How many rooms does he need to have? What is the function of each room? And so this, you know, ready to build, bring wood. But that's how we, we approach. That's how a lot of people approach marketing.

Right. I'm ready to grow. Bring wood. No, start with a plan because when you plan it, then you know what's working and not working because you're tracking it. And then it's all going to work the right way together. I hear people sometimes say, we can't afford the time or the money that it takes to build a plan. And I'm like, okay, well, let me know how expensive it is when you're not growing. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean,

This is something, especially when it comes to like any sort of paid advertising, whether it's a paid social media ad, paid print media, whatever that looks like, as soon as you start paying for something, if you're not getting the messaging right, your ads going to be absolutely worthless to you at the end of the day. Well, it's not going to be worth it. going to be it's going to be very expensive. Very expensive. It's going to be worth a whole lot of negative numbers for you. Very expensive. And it's so true that you need to take that time to build it and

I see so many people, especially creative entrepreneurs, things get busy. And so we pull back on, stop all marketing, turn it off because I'm too busy to take anything on. And so then the pipeline dries up. again, I'd love to say that I haven't been guilty of this. I've done it. This is one of the reasons why I'm so familiar with it. Because it's easy to get caught up in like...

my gosh, I have more business that I know what to do with. need to hit pause on all the things that I'm doing. No, that's actually not the solution. Instead of hitting pause, maybe we need to change our messaging to attract a higher level client. So we're charging more. Maybe the solution is that we need to create a wait list and create more of that desire for services. There are a lot of other ways that we can navigate having the too many clients problem.

But as women, especially, think we're so inclined to just, I would just want to say yes to everyone and then I'm overwhelmed and then I can't do it all. So I need to turn off the marketing, but then my pipeline dries up and now I need to turn it back on and I hope it'll start working again by tomorrow. Right. And it won't. And so I'll throw another option in there because I think that list you ran through was great. The third option is find a way to sell our talent and our time in a way that takes the least amount of time possible. Hence the courses through Brandstay U. Because once I recorded the classes,

they now can, you know, they're just there and available. It doesn't take any time from me. And so I want to say yes to everyone too, but not everyone gets the most expensive chunk of my time and talent. Sometimes they only get a yes to something small. That's what they need right now. They don't need everything. Well, we need to protect that. mean, and going back to, we talked about the fact that you've got four kids, you've got a husband, you've got all these businesses.

So, I mean, if anyone knows anything about boundaries, I'm sure it's probably you. How do you navigate all of this? How do you, like what systems and boundaries do you have in place to make all of this sustainable so you're not burning yourself out? Well, I think that, um, I early on realized I need to hire and otherwise I can't scale. And so it was a very quick, uh, letting go. doesn't have to be my way. It has to be a way that's going to work. And so the team.

is very autonomous. They do not come to me for every, what about this? What about this? mean, I'm here to support. My job as the CEO is to provide resources and support to help them be successful so that our clients can be successful and get out of their way. don't have- That last part is the most important, get out of their way. I don't have ego around it. I don't have ownership around it. This is the destination. You and I have a different idea about how to get there.

They're both probably equally good. So why would you have to go my way? Go your way. Now, sometimes they have a bad sense of direction and I give them a little course correction, but for the most part, we do ongoing training. do ongoing professional development. I make sure that everybody here gets the most of it. I think that part of it has been recruiting and retaining an incredibly talented team. I've got employees that have been here for 10, 12, 15 years. And so it's important.

It's not necessarily about giving them every single minute detail. It's not about overseeing all of their work, but there's still some oversight in terms of the support that they have and the training that they have and the quality and the culture and all of those things still take effort and are top down for sure. ⁓ But at the same time, they have that ownership where they can start. They can be making decisions for their own clients. They can own each each aspect of it. I know that I've got.

I've got lots of friends who are entrepreneurs, not surprisingly, but I also have a lot of friends who just, you know, they work for somebody else. But the ones who are happiest are the ones who are able to just take something and run with it. I can't tell you how often my friends like, so my boss gave me this project to do and I get to do this, this and this. And it's like they get to own it. They get to say like, this is mine. They get to see their own creation at the end of it. That is a powerful reward. And it can actually be more powerful than

the benefits, the money, the little perks, the coffee shop you put in your office, whatever. If they feel that they've got ownership and responsibility and they're making a difference, that is going to be so much more powerful than anything else you can throw at them. Yeah, there's a great book, The Five Ways of Appreciation in the Workplace. It's kind of the work version of the five love languages. OK. And it highlights the fact that not everybody feels appreciated.

the same way at work. And so the more you know about how your people want to feel appreciated, the better you can speak that language to them. that's a good one. Okay. Well, definitely we'll look up that book and we'll throw it in the show notes. ⁓ Before we wrap things up, I do want to come back to one of the points that we made at the very start of this episode. And that is the fact that you are there. Was it less than 1 % of women are. So, cause I did an episode recently on

Just women and our the way that we tend to settle for that just enough culture and the I don't need to make any more than just what I need to pay my bills, feed my family, have a decently comfortable life. want any one vacation a year. That's all. And we tend to settle for things. And here you are just breaking barriers and you are in the top one percent of women owned and founded agencies in the US. What would you say to someone who's building their own business and also still feeling like

I mean, I don't need to build something as big as what Jaci's built there. Like I just, I just need my own little slice of the pie over here. What would you say to someone who's maybe thinking a little bit smaller? I think they're absolutely right. I think you've got to set your own goals. And part of it is not worrying about what other people think, not putting an expectation on because of what other people have done. I didn't know that less than 1 % of the agencies in the country were founded, owned and operated by women. I had no idea. In my town,

going to college here and interning at an agency, half of them were run by women. I thought it was a female dominated industry. Oh, wow. I had no clue. None. And so I mean, that was in the 1980s. Probably 91, actually, I think when I did my internship, 90, 91. So I didn't know. And it wasn't until much later that someone was actually interviewing me and brought that statistic up. And I thought, surely they're joking. Surely.

And lo and behold, they were not. So then a couple of years ago, I read an article that Forbes put out that said of all businesses, not just ad agencies, but of all businesses that are ⁓ run by women that get to at least a hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue. an actual real business, ⁓ employees, you know, have revenue, not just a solo endeavor intentionally, or like a real estate agent, like an actual employee based business.

of the ones that gets a hundred thousand dollars a year in revenue, only 1.9 % get to a million dollars a year in revenue. Wow. That's staggering. So how are 98 % of the women stuck between a hundred thousand and a million. And so that's when my best friend, Melissa and I started a podcast called she's so bossy and we interview the 1.9 % to say, what have you figured out that you can

collectively, because we've all done it, what can we teach these others who are coming up behind us? Because that number needs to change. I couldn't agree more. actually, one of the statistics that I found recently was that we are at the ultimate high for the number of women run businesses in the Forbes top 500. And that record high is still only 11%. And that's like, we're breaking the ceiling. We're breaking through, you know? And so, it's, and I wish I had a

a definitive answer for why this is happening. mean, obviously there's a lot of things that we can all look to of women have a lot more demands on us, of course. ⁓ We can evolve as a society as much as we want to. At the end of the day, there are still certain things that women are just naturally going to take on how we feel about things. But one of the big things I think is that we're often saying yes to the things that are not actually driving our business, that are not driving our success.

because we feel bad saying no. So I like the tips that you're bringing up here about being able to serve multiple communities, multiple people in a way that's not going to be super taxing on yourself by leaning on your team, by having some on-demand offerings, by having the do-it-yourself versions and being able to find different ways to able to serve them without necessarily always having to say, here's all of my time, here's all of my energy, and here's all of my resources for minimal pay at the end of the day.

Right? No, I mean, I looked up 2008, 2009, and I was serving on the board of downtown Lafayette and I was serving on the board at school that my kids were at. And I was involved in all these things and I thought, well, this is not sustainable. I can't continue to be present for my kids and my husband and my business and myself. Something's got to give. And so I started the year of no. And so for a year, I said no to everything. Every ask.

Every volunteer, every this, every that, I just said no. And then as I get kids, the kids got older and got more involved in competitive sports. Well now all of a sudden I have a varsity, ⁓ football cheer, basketball, boy and girl, ⁓ volleyball times two theater times three. mean, four kids becomes a lot of activities and, ⁓ our oldest went on to play baseball in college. So we continue to follow him around the country.

for an additional five years because he got his MBA. And so it really did become about, you know, how can I do these things and still be home for dinner at five? How can I do these things and still be a present parent? You know, where are the priorities? And so we would be a ton bigger if those four kids hadn't been sucking the life out of me all the time, for sure. But I am very pleasantly content.

with the size that we are at. mean, we'll continue to fluctuate, grow a little, you know, whatever, but we will never be a hundred million dollar agency. I don't have that aspiration. So circling back to what you asked earlier, you know, I don't think anybody needs to be bigger or smaller than anything, than their own goals. And so as long as you have a plan to meet your goals, that's all you need. And as long as you're not burning yourself out to do it as well, like that's also the other.

The other key to it again, when we're taking on so many things, I love the whole year of know that you mentioned Warren Buffett. I wish a woman said this, but I'm going to quote Warren Buffett because he really did say it best that the difference between successful people and very successful people is that very successful people say no to almost everything. And that is something that, especially as women, we struggle often to say no. So I love how you've shared some insights today on how to say yes to things while still being able to maintain your own boundaries and not lose yourself along the

Yeah, that's powerful. It's not a yes to what they want. It's a yes to what I can do for them within my choices. And so it still feels like a yes, but it's mostly a no. But as long as they feel like they've won at the end of the day, there's an option. Here is an option that gives you what you actually need. It just may not be what you asked for, but I can't give you what you asked for. I can give you this. And I think that that's kind of a perfect sound clip too. And I was going both to ask you,

And I'm still going to ask the question, but I almost feel like that kind of summed it up. If people listening to this episode take one thing with them today, know, one little nugget out of this and put it into action in their own lives, what's the one thing you hope that they take from this episode? The more you can target, segment your audiences, the better you will be in the long run. Perfect. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. ⁓ I think people so often are skipping that step and ⁓

You know, this is what happens, for example, when you hire a 16 year old to do your social media for you, for example, they're just going to put random things out there if you're not putting that strategy behind it. And it's not to say that I get it. It's a means to an end. The 16 year old can take things over and do things you can't do. But let's always make sure we're going back to basics and start with who are we serving? Yep. Wonderful.

Jaci, I can't tell you how much I've enjoyed this episode. This has been so much fun. You have built such an incredibly powerful business and you're such a great role model for women everywhere, whether they're aspiring to get to the size your business is or not. Everything that you shared here today is so attainable for any size business. So thank you so much for joining me. I really appreciate it. My pleasure, Shauna Lynn And thanks for having me.

Amazing. And so, listen, if you're listening to this episode, what we're saying here today is resonating with you. hope that you will allow us to continue to be a part of your journey. Be sure to tune in every single week. We drop new episodes every Tuesday at 7 a.m. Eastern time. And of course, don't forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcast platform. Leave us a review wherever you get your podcast. And the best way, as always, that you can really show your support not only for this podcast, but for your fellow women entrepreneurs is to share this episode with someone that you know can really benefit from it. Until next time, everyone.

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