Fractionals Unplugged with Jay Kingley

“You need to mandate end point protection for all remote users if you are going to protect yourself from being hacked”, recommends Steve Ferman of Etegrity.  In 2018, the odds of suffering a data breach were 1 out of 4 and 80% of companies aren’t prepared.  Using a multilevel approach to security for your core IT infrastructure isn’t enough if a hacker can get access via your remote workers because they don’t have end point protection in place.

Steve also observes that most hackers aren’t targeting your business specifically but they are scanning a long list of IP addresses to see where it is easy to get in. It doesn’t matter whether you have 5 or 5,000 employees, you’re just a random IP address.

Simple, preventative measures can save you hundreds of thousands of dollars and keep your company from ruin. Steps that Steve recommends include MFA or multi factor authentication and MDM or mobile device management.  When it comes to passwords, Steve suggests a 3 step approach: require strong passwords, use applications like LastPass, or Keeper to secure your passwords and help you remember them, and force your users to change their passwords every 30 to 45 days.

Listen to the end to get the details of a gift that Steve is offering our audience.

Show highlights

01:36 End point protection for remote users helps prevent data breaches

02:56 Who's vulnerable to hacking and data breaches

04:06 What you need to do to protect your business from hackers and bad actors

04:55 The cost you'll pay if you don't protect your IT infrastructure

07:15 What steps a small business needs to take to adequately protect themselves from hackers

09:55 Learn about Steve. Email Steve at [email protected] or call him at +1.973.698.3511

Connect with Jay

Email Jay at [email protected]

Sign up for a free one hour workshop called Start Attracting Your Ideal Clients In 5 Easy Steps. The workshop will show you how to tap into the 80% of demand for what you do that is not available to your competitors at up to 20% higher margins where your clients will see you as the only qualified person to turn to for help.  This predictable flow of clients that seek you out for your insight and guidance will increase your confidence, allow you to focus on doing what you do best which is serving your clients, and give you the financial returns your business is capable of generating.

“Local news is not dying, it's evolving” states Michael Shapiro of TAPinto.  There are thousands of towns that have no local newspaper or local news site.  What's replacing them are Facebook groups and forums and the equivalent filled with misinformation, disinformation, and rumors.  Michael believes that this is undermining our democracy and causing a lot of problems throughout the whole country. The solution is to create a sustainable, scalable model for local news to serve every single town in the country.

For Michael, the key is creating a network of individually owned and operated local news sites where they can share content with each other seamlessly. They can sell advertising for each other seamlessly. Advertisers, whether local, regional, or national, have one point of contact that they need to deal with who can help them market across the country.

“You can create a profitable local news site or even a mini network of local news sites and have high return on investment with little overhead”, observes Michael. You want people coming back to your site every single day. You do that by providing original local news content that they can't get anywhere else, and doing it every single day for the residents of your town or your area.

Show highlights

02:15 Local news is a scalable business but it must be objective

02:56 What is local news?

04:34 Church vs. State in today's local news environment

06:15 What does the local news business model of the future look like?

07:54 The economics of the local news business

11:42 Learn about Michael Shapiro on his and TAPinto's story. Email Michael at [email protected] or call him at +1.908.370.1158.

Connect with Jay

Email Jay at [email protected].

Sign up for a free one hour workshop called Start Attracting Your Ideal Clients In 5 Easy Steps. The workshop will show you how to tap into the 80% of demand for what you do that is not available to your competitors at up to 20% higher margins where your clients will see you as the only qualified person to turn to for help.  This predictable flow of clients that seek you out for your insight and guidance will increase your confidence, allow you to focus on doing what you do best which is serving your clients, and give you the financial returns your business is capable of generating.

One topical area that most people ignore to their detriment are Force Majeure clauses in their agreements which specify the rights and obligations of the parties when an "act of God" happens. War, hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, and pandemics can all be covered or not. Whether you have to deliver and pay or have an out in a contract can be determined by how that part of your contract is drafted.

James points out that contracts are legal agreements and how they are drafted and the words that are used matter greatly, particularly when one of the parties decides things are unfair after it is signed. While many think they have insurance to cover unforeseen incidents, many times the insurance won't cover or has an exclusion. James advocates that business owners should consider a yearly attorney review of all of their business agreements as a cheap extension of your business insurance.

Show highlights

02:27 Why business interruption insurance won't cover damages from pandemics

04:25 Force Majeure - what is it and why you should care

06:19 How a business owner should think about vendor management

08:00 Benefits to a business from properly managing their vendor agreements

10:37 3 steps to implementing an effective vendor management system

11:35 Learn about James and MPL Law. Email James at [email protected]

Connect with Jay

Email Jay at [email protected]

Sign up for a free one hour workshop called Start Attracting Your Ideal Clients In 5 Easy Steps. The workshop will show you how to tap into the 80% of demand for what you do that is not available to your competitors at up to 20% higher margins where your clients will see you as the only qualified person to turn to for help.  This predictable flow of clients that seek you out for your insight and guidance will increase your confidence, allow you to focus on doing what you do best which is serving your clients, and give you the financial returns your business is capable of generating.

Content isn’t king when it comes to doing SEO for your website says Marc Brookland of SEO Locale. There are a lot of factors like your backlink profile, how many trustworthy websites that you have that are talking about you and linking back to you, your on-page SEO, title tags, meta tags, headings, your internal linking strategy, and many more besides.  SEO is no longer a game that casual amateurs can win at.

Marc points out that even large companies, like Hubspot, sometimes get it wrong.  They had to delete over 3,000 outdated blogs on their website to reverse a traffic decline.  A robust SEO program considering a wide range of factors is often essential to being able to withstand the frequent changes Google makes to its algorithms. 

Comprehensive keyword research and competitor analysis is fundamental to creating an effective SEO strategy. Marc suggests a free tool you can use to do this work yourself.  Listen to the end for how to claim his gift of a free technical audit for your website.

Show highlights

01:55 Content isn't king when it comes to website SEO

02:43 What is important if you want to rank high on Google

07:23 Surviving a Google core algorithm update

08:48 Getting nailed by a Google algorithm change

11:15 Implementing an effective SEO strategy

12:48 The importance of competitor analysis when doing SEO

13:35 Learn about Marc. Email Marc at [email protected]

Connect with Jay

Email Jay at [email protected]

Sign up for a free one hour workshop called Start Attracting Your Ideal Clients In 5 Easy Steps. The workshop will show you how to tap into the 80% of demand for what you do that is not available to your competitors at up to 20% higher margins where your clients will see you as the only qualified person to turn to for help.  This predictable flow of clients that seek you out for your insight and guidance will increase your confidence, allow you to focus on doing what you do best which is serving your clients, and give you the financial returns your business is capable of generating.

Reggie Holmes of Enthuse Creative cuts to the chase saying, “business owners and business leaders tend to think of their brand as something that ultimately serves them as opposed to something that serves their customers.”  Reggie argues that your brand needs to speak to your customers and isn’t about you or your business.

There is a big difference between how a brand is expressed and how it is experienced.  While you’ll come up with the initial definition of your brand, you're inviting other people to help shape and share it. The market is going to have more of a say in what your brand is relative to anything you put down on paper.

Reggie advocates creating a brand that your marketplace can connect with because it leads to faster growth.  He feels that tying your brand to a purpose is a way to do this. Customers desire to connect to something that's bigger than themselves. Of course customers are looking for an answer to a problem, but they also want to connect at a much deeper, more human level. 

Reggie walks through the case of Dove soap to show how a purpose driven brand can have a large impact on the financial performance of a business. He then discusses how even a small business can replicate Dove’s brand strategy.

Show highlights

01:32 Business owners think of their brand as something that serves them as opposed to something that serves their customers.

03:41 Your brand is a dialogue

05:13 Difference between how your brand is expressed versus how it is experienced

06:46 Your brand should be about connection and driven by purpose

09:42 The Dove Soap case study

14:54 What you need to do to create a customer centric brand

17:06 Learn about Reggie. Email Reggie at [email protected]

Connect with Jay

Email Jay at [email protected]

Sign up for a free one hour workshop called Start Attracting Your Ideal Clients In 5 Easy Steps. The workshop will show you how to tap into the 80% of demand for what you do that is not available to your competitors at up to 20% higher margins where your clients will see you as the only qualified person to turn to for help.  This predictable flow of clients that seek you out for your insight and guidance will increase your confidence, allow you to focus on doing what you do best which is serving your clients, and give you the financial returns your business is capable of generating.

“You can’t serve clients without a clear direction or process,” counsels Susan Fennema, the Chief Eradicating Officer of Beyond The Chaos. Too often we think putting processes in place is a burden. The reality is that having the right processes in place sets you free.  It doesn’t weigh you down but allows you to be nimble and agile.

Bureaucracy when it’s done right is not our enemy of getting things done. Susan points out that it’s a tool to get rid of things that are repeated.  Importantly, it allows you to focus on serving your clients and not getting caught up in things that others can do better than you.

Susan advises business owners to write down the tasks they do and put a pay rate on each task to determine if it should be outsourced to a cheaper resource. Often times you can bring in a person for 5 - 10 hours a week to handle the getting organized tasks rather than need a full time resource.

Susan makes the compelling point that putting more effort into something that lacks structure and process could end up making things worse not better.  Without proper organization, structure, and process, you’re not running your business, it’s running you.

Show highlights

02:22 The right process doesn't weigh you down, it allows you to be nimble

03:20 Bureaucracy when it’s done right is not our enemy of getting things done

04:38 What's the pay grade on the tasks that you, the business owner, are doing?

07:14 Putting effort into something that lacks structure and process could end up making things worse

10:47 2 things you need to do to get organized

12:14 Learn about Susan. Email her at [email protected]

Connect with Jay

Email Jay at [email protected]

Sign up for a free one hour workshop called Start Attracting Your Ideal Clients In 5 Easy Steps. The workshop will show you how to tap into the 80% of demand for what you do that is not available to your competitors at up to 20% higher margins where your clients will see you as the only qualified person to turn to for help.  This predictable flow of clients that seek you out for your insight and guidance will increase your confidence, allow you to focus on doing what you do best which is serving your clients, and give you the financial returns your business is capable of generating.

“Know what you want it to deliver up front and then build the program to get you to where you want to be.” advises Shelia Steinmark a marketing experience expert at MOGXP.  Operations and logistics are key to executing an experiential marketing program.  Shelia’s emphatic that you have to stop looking at pretty pictures and start paying attention to consumer engagement.

Marketing that works for awareness often doesn’t change consumer buying behavior. It’s no surprise that being authentic in your marketing is critical but she points out that you have to align your cause marketing efforts to what your company stands for and what your customers care about.

Shelia advises doing a day in the life of a customer and figuring out what and when they want to hear from you. She recommends creating a throughput model and using that to determine your tactics. The model should address how many people you’re going to touch, how you’re going to touch them, what type of engagement you’re going to offer, and the value of your program. 

Listen to the end to hear her 6 steps to implement an effective experiential marketing program. She’s got a gift to offer those who reach out.

Show highlights

02:12 Buying habits change by bringing a consumer and brand together not because of pretty pictures

03:02 You need to build a throughput model to determine the tactics of your experiential marketing program

05:29 Stop looking at pretty pictures and start paying attention to consumer engagement

06:16 Know what you want your program to deliver and then build your program to get you to where you want to be

11:35 6 steps to implement a proper experiential marketing program

14:04 Shelia's story. Email Shelia at [email protected].

Connect with Jay

Email Jay ([email protected])

Sign up for a free one hour workshop called Start Attracting Your Ideal Clients In 5 Easy Steps. The workshop will show you how to tap into the 80% of demand for what you do that is not available to your competitors at up to 20% higher margins where your clients will see you as the only qualified person to turn to for help.  This predictable flow of clients that seek you out for your insight and guidance will increase your confidence, allow you to focus on doing what you do best which is serving your clients, and give you the financial returns your business is capable of generating.

Clicky AND Sticky not Clicky OR Sticky. Brad Schlachter, a fractional CMO now with Simpler Media Group, advises not to get caught up in vanity metrics that drive clicks at the expense of getting your traffic to engage and convert.  Startups and other rapidly growing companies often fall into the trap of scaling traffic rather than customers. Growing your vanity metrics isn’t the same as growing your revenues.

To obtain long term success you must focus on scaling the right customers, not just any customers. You have to consider not just the initial revenues, but margin, retention, engagement, satisfaction, among other metrics.  Brad emphasizes the need for every CEO and CMO to keep their eye on the prize, growth in profitable revenues for your business.

There is no magic formula or playbook to get there so the key is to fail quickly and learn rapidly. Experimentation is critical as is the need to be nimble and agile. Brad shares that based on how well you have alignment with the management team, and outside investors if you’ve gone down that path, it should take you weeks to months to figure out what works and then you should put money behind the effort to build the scale you need.

As a gift, Brad shares what OTT means and offers a white paper he wrote on that industry.

Show highlights

01:13 Sticky and clicky is what so many companies are missing out on. Don't be vain!

03:39 Focus on the right kind of conversions

06:30 A process of failing quickly and learning rapidly

08:24 Setting expectations and achieving alignment with management and outside investors

12:04 How long until you see results?

15:08 Brad's story. Email Brad at [email protected]

16:59. What's a fractional executive and how are they different from consultants?

Connect with Jay

Email Jay at [email protected]

Sign up for a free one hour workshop called Start Attracting Your Ideal Clients In 5 Easy Steps. The workshop will show you how to tap into the 80% of demand for what you do that is not available to your competitors at up to 20% higher margins where your clients will see you as the only qualified person to turn to for help.  This predictable flow of clients that seek you out for your insight and guidance will increase your confidence, allow you to focus on doing what you do best which is serving your clients, and give you the financial returns your business is capable of generating.

There's probably only one thing that contributes the most to making a business remarkable, either remarkably good or remarkably bad. It's an obvious one, but it can be tricky to get right.

The customer experience.

Admit it, as a customer; there’s nothing that will get you talking more about a business than the experience they delivered to you.

Keith Scandone of O3 World uses his own experience with JetBlue airline as a case study as a company that gets so much of the hard part right to deliver one of the best travel experiences out there but then totally blows it the minute a customer needs to engage with them.

If it’s so important, why is it so difficult? 

Listen as Keith talks to Jay Kingley on Centricity's latest Best Kept Secret podcast, on how you to have to deliver on 4 critical dimensions to pull it off and shares the 3 steps that every business needs to do to deliver a world-class experience that customers will find remarkably positive.

How do you provide a great customer experience and leading to client loyalty? Send me an email at [email protected] to tell me how you get it done.

Show highlights

01:37 What companies are getting wrong about the customer experience journey

04:07 How to fix your customer experience - start by looking first in the mirror and then listening

05:39 Jet Blue - the good, the bad, and the ugly

10:29 How you win by getting your customer experience right

12:54 Don't forget about the employee experience

13:56. 3 things you should be doing if you want to deliver a great customer experience

18:39 Keith's story. Email Keith at [email protected]

Connect with Jay

Email Jay at [email protected]

Sign up for a free one hour workshop called Start Attracting Your Ideal Clients In 5 Easy Steps. The workshop will show you how to tap into the 80% of demand for what you do that is not available to your competitors at up to 20% higher margins where your clients will see you as the only qualified person to turn to for help.  This predictable flow of clients that seek you out for your insight and guidance will increase your confidence, allow you to focus on doing what you do best which is serving your clients, and give you the financial returns your business is capable of generating.

It's not personal. It's just business. How often have we heard that? But, it's the mantra small business owners need to keep in mind when you're thinking about not taking your cybersecurity strategy seriously because you think "It won't happen to me."

60% of small businesses that are hacked or suffer a ransomware attack will be out of business in 6 months. Your source of income, your legacy, the reason you get up in the morning is gone.

Cybersecurity is the thing that everybody’s talking about but nobody really knows what you need to do. On this week’s Centricity's Best Kept Secret show, Victor Calabrese of deskside talks with CEO, Jay Kingley and explains why more small businesses are targeted for ransomware than large, well-known businesses that get all the headlines. 

Learn how hacker schools are pumping out the black hats by the thousands and why it makes sense for them to target small businesses first.

Victor shares 6 practical things that any sized business should do to get you cyber secure. It reminds me of the advice they give you on how to keep warm on bitterly cold days. Hint - it has something to do with layering.

Show highlights

02:25 Who's the target for hackers and ransomware

04:34 Hacker school

05:24 What you need to do to protect your business

08:43 60% of businesses who get hacked close down within 6 months

11:09 Cybersecurity insurance

16:21 Learn about Victor. Email Victor at [email protected]

Connect with Jay

Email Jay at [email protected]

Sign up for a free one hour workshop called Start Attracting Your Ideal Clients In 5 Easy Steps. The workshop will show you how to tap into the 80% of demand for what you do that is not available to your competitors at up to 20% higher margins where your clients will see you as the only qualified person to turn to for help.  This predictable flow of clients that seek you out for your insight and guidance will increase your confidence, allow you to focus on doing what you do best which is serving your clients, and give you the financial returns your business is capable of generating.