Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories

Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories

By Robert PlankBusinessEntrepreneurshipMarketingManagement
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Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories episodes

  • 133: Social Media Marketing Power, Customer Service and Rebranding with Kyra Reed
    Kyra Reed joins Robert Plank to discuss social media as part of customer service, reputation, and the way a business presents itself. Her five-part system starts with identity and audience before moving into content, sales, growth, and maintenance. The sequence matters because posting more cannot resolve an unclear message or a damaged customer relationship.
    Kyra's work with the Roxy supplies the central example. She describes helping the venue move away from a closed, velvet-rope mentality toward a more open community, including a blog, participation by the owner, and collaboration with neighboring venues. The change was intended to rebuild trust rather than simply add another promotional channel.
    One unhappy review led the owner to explain what had happened, acknowledge past problems, and publish his phone number. Another public criticism prompted a fast, playful response and support from the venue's community. These stories show the difference between treating a complaint as something to hide and treating it as information and a chance to respond.
    Robert contributes the example of a local car-repair business whose useful story made an impression before he needed repairs. Kyra also recalls an airline's prompt reply making her feel heard after a poor experience. The episode connects content with the broader relationship: understand who you are talking to, provide something relevant, respond when it matters, and maintain the community after the initial attention.
    Building a community through service and a clear identity
    Define the brand and audience before choosing the posting routine.
    Use complaints to understand the customer's experience.
    Make a public response timely, useful, and consistent with the business.
    Publish content that can build trust before a person is ready to buy.
    Resources mentioned
    Kyra Reed from Made to Order Agency
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1noYXAJ7d8M
    25 min
  • 132: Influence with a Heart: Find Your Secret Sauce and Purpose with Ben Gioia
    Ben Gioia joins Robert Plank to explore how purpose, empathy, and personal experience can make a business easier to understand and trust. The author of Influence with a Heart and Marketing with a Heart explains why distinctive positioning begins with recognizing what you actually bring to the people you serve, then expressing it in language they can recognize.
    Ben describes using a customized questionnaire to uncover the gap between what clients believe about their work and what their websites or LinkedIn profiles communicate. People often have useful experience and a clear motivation that disappear behind generic marketing language. Looking at those answers alongside the public message helps reveal the expertise, values, and stories that deserve more attention.
    The examples make that process tangible. A technology-company founder discovered that his ability to communicate with both technical and nontechnical people was a meaningful strength. A health coach working across several methods needed a clearer description of the audience she helped. Ben also discusses changing his own business identity from Marketing with a Heart to Influence with a Heart as his work and purpose became clearer.
    Robert and Ben consider how to share a personal story while keeping the customer's concerns central. Stories become useful when they help someone understand a result, a transformation, or the person behind the service. The conversation also touches on preparing a presentation for translation, where short, clear ideas and fewer colloquialisms make the message easier to carry across languages.
    Communicating the value only you can bring
    Find the distinctive experience behind your expertise instead of copying a competitor's positioning.
    Compare the message on your website with the way you explain your work in a real conversation.
    Connect personal stories to the audience's needs, questions, and desired results.
    Use empathy and plain language to make your message easier to understand and act on.
    Resources mentioned
    Influence with a Heart
    Marketing with a Heart
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txzPqI4s49U
    22 min
  • 131: Inner Game, Journaling and Coaching with Kim Ades
    Kim Ades joins Robert Plank to explain how journaling can make recurring thoughts visible and give a coach a clearer picture of what is holding a client back. Her Frame of Mind approach grew from assessment work in which she observed emotional resilience as a recurring distinction among high performers.
    Kim describes clients writing regularly and sharing their entries with a coach. The writing provides material from real life rather than only what someone remembers to discuss on a call. Repeated stories, fears, and assumptions become easier to notice, question, and reconsider. In the program she describes, calls, journaling, reflection, and belief challenges work together over time.
    Her own experience after divorce and leaving a business helped make journaling central to the work. She also shares client examples, including someone whose fear of becoming poor shaped overly cautious decisions and another person who identified strongly with anger. These stories illustrate her interest in the interpretation a person brings to events, and how that interpretation can influence the next response.
    Robert and Kim discuss directing attention toward what someone wants, what would change if they achieved it, and what appears to be stopping them. Her writing exercise begins with getting troubling thoughts onto the page, then deliberately shifting attention rather than repeatedly rehearsing the same frustration. The episode is an introduction to her coaching method and the role of written reflection in understanding the thinking behind action.
    Using written reflection to examine recurring assumptions
    Look for patterns across daily situations rather than one isolated problem.
    Separate what happened from the story you repeatedly tell about it.
    Clarify the outcome you want and the beliefs affecting your choices.
    Combine reflection with feedback and practical follow-through.
    Resources mentioned
    Frame of Mind Coaching
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9FKyhFLl7w
    25 min
  • 130: Fix Your Process and Goals to Undo the Past and Create the Future with Personal Growth Innovator Matt Powell
    Matt Powell joins Robert Plank to discuss the process behind recurring setbacks and the goals people choose after them. His Undo approach asks why an effort failed, what assumptions shaped it, and which habits would need to change before another plan is likely to produce a different result.
    Matt's background in martial arts supplies an example of questioning a familiar method. After building a teaching organization from a small garage group, he found that the way he had learned did not always transfer effectively to other students. Work with learning and psychology specialists helped him develop a different teaching system. The issue was not simply asking students to try harder at an unchanged process.
    He brings that same perspective to personal goals. The discussion covers reviewing previous ambitions, identifying repeated failure themes, free-writing what someone wants, and examining the filters through which they judge a situation. A workbook supports that reflection and the work of turning goal pursuit into a habit. Matt also discusses the cost of needing to be right when a different response could produce a better future interaction.
    A conversation with a childhood friend facing terminal illness later influenced Matt's decision to move into personal-growth writing. The episode also includes his reading-aloud exercise as an example of deliberate practice. Across these subjects, Robert and Matt return to the relationship between a desired outcome and the daily process that is supposed to create it. Changing the goal alone may leave the same underlying pattern in place.
    Examining the process before choosing the next goal
    Look for recurring causes across earlier attempts.
    Question whether a familiar method fits the person using it.
    Consider how present reactions affect future possibilities.
    Connect a chosen goal with habits that can support repeated action.
    Resources mentioned
    Pramek
    UNDO: Get Past The Past and Manage Your Future
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YW0NYLVdjs
    26 min
  • 129: Book Launch Strategies and Self-Publishing with Angela Ford
    Author and digital marketer Angela J. Ford joins Robert Plank to explain how she brought her fantasy novels to readers through social media, early reviews, launch events, and relationships with book bloggers. Her Four Worlds series grew from imaginative games with her sisters and manuscripts she began as a teenager. Publishing the books meant learning how to make those stories visible to people who had never heard of her.
    Angela describes a social media approach built around conversation. She favors a mix weighted toward helpful, personal, and engaging posts, with a smaller share devoted to direct promotion. An Instagram photo of her professionally designed cover generated interest and led bloggers to request review copies. Conversations with people already looking for fiction also created opportunities to introduce the book naturally.
    The launch extended across physical and virtual events, giveaways, book-discovery mailing lists, and a month-long blog tour. Angela explains how she used the Amazon free-book promotions available at the time of recording to reach additional readers. She also sent advance copies and followed up when the book became available, asking those readers for honest reviews. She credits those early reviews as an especially useful part of helping unfamiliar readers make a decision.
    The conversation includes a reader-character quiz Angela created and published within a few hours, and why she chose Angela J. Ford as her author identity after finding other writers with a similar name. Her experience gives independent authors a concrete example of preparing several ways for readers to discover, discuss, and remember a book.
    Building interest before and after a book launch
    Create conversations before repeatedly asking followers to buy.
    Use cover images and advance copies to connect with interested readers and bloggers.
    Coordinate launch activities across several relevant channels.
    Keep building the audience after publication day.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S2E9J9HgQK0
    30 min
  • 128: Differentiate, Entertain and Educate with Authority Marketer Jeff Beale
    Jeff Beale joins Robert Plank to discuss becoming more recognizable and credible through a better understanding of the customer. He connects authority marketing with four recurring elements: content, contacts, communication, and consistency. Before choosing a message or a channel, he asks what matters to the people the business wants to reach.
    Jeff distinguishes a demographic description from understanding why someone buys. Questions, complaints, interests, and the places people look for trusted information can reveal more useful details than age or location alone. Existing customers provide evidence a business may overlook while spending heavily to find new ones.
    His jewelry-client example shows why an offline message cannot always be transferred directly online. Research revealed different buyers and patterns of interaction, leading to a more interactive approach. A media-company example similarly required attention to the way audiences were moving toward mobile and on-demand viewing. In each case, the marketing changed because the audience's behavior became clearer.
    Robert and Jeff also examine entertaining advertisements, product features, and the outcomes people imagine when buying. Dollar Shave Club's humor becomes an example of gaining attention while still communicating an offer. A discussion about camera phones reveals how an impressive specification can distract from other factors, such as lighting, that shape the result a customer wants. The episode brings differentiation back to a concrete question: what does this audience value, and how does the business help them obtain it?
    Authority begins with understanding the audience
    Study the questions and reactions of people already interacting with your business.
    Learn where customers go for information they trust.
    Connect product details to an outcome the audience cares about.
    Create content that earns attention while making the value understandable.
    Resources mentioned
    Mr. Marketology Jeff Beale
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAyMGI9E4kY
    35 min
  • 127: Go From Idea to Finished Physical Product with Filip Valica
    Filip Valica joins Robert Plank to discuss moving a physical-product idea toward something people can buy. His roadmap covers prototypes, design, manufacturing, funding, marketing, sales, and shipping, with repeated checks on the market and customer before the investment becomes difficult to reverse.
    Filip warns against treating a patent, a prototype, or a production order as the first proof that an idea is a business. Customer needs, demand, required certifications, and manufacturing constraints all deserve attention. The process should make it possible to stop or adjust a weak concept before committing more money.
    His private-label furniture project provides an example of learning unfamiliar parts of the process. After adapting a design, he ordered a container and sent the products into Amazon fulfillment. The experience taught him about overseas production and delivery beyond his existing engineering work. It also shows that adapting an existing product can be a learning route distinct from inventing everything from scratch.
    Robert and Filip discuss several possible paths, including operating a small product business, outsourcing manufacturing, crowdfunding, and licensing an idea to an established company. Filip also recalls deciding to stop postponing his own educational project when his daughter was born. The episode gives an aspiring product creator a broader set of choices and a common discipline across them: validate the important assumptions, learn the next part of the process, and add commitment gradually.
    Reducing uncertainty before making the next investment
    Investigate customer demand before expensive development.
    Understand manufacturing and certification requirements early.
    Choose among building, outsourcing, crowdfunding, and licensing deliberately.
    Use each stage to decide whether the idea deserves further commitment.
    Resources mentioned
    Filip Valica from The Product Startup
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqIAf5qS9e0
    26 min
  • 126: Courses, Webinars and Funnels: Attract Customers and Clients with Brian Lofrumento
    Brian Lofrumento joins Robert Plank to explain a simple sequence for turning an audience's problems into a course or coaching offer. The conversation moves from deciding whom to serve through the registration page, webinar content, and invitation to become a customer, keeping the focus on the offer rather than a complicated technical setup.
    Brian begins with the people and the obstacles between them and a desired result. A soccer-coach example turns everyday needs such as practice planning, parent communication, and player fitness into a focused program. Another student built training for new graduates learning the unwritten practical requirements of a first corporate job. Both examples start with a recognizable audience rather than a product format in search of buyers.
    For webinar content, Brian describes identifying three beliefs the audience already holds, acknowledging them, challenging them, and offering a more useful perspective. The webinar should provide value while making the invitation understandable. Benefits in the advertising and a straightforward registration page support that same message rather than introduce an unrelated promise.
    Robert and Brian also discuss getting an offer in front of customers without waiting for every part of a program to be finished. Brian describes moving from client services to an eight-week group program with live support. The episode helps clarify what needs to be decided first: the audience, the problem, the promised result, and how someone can become a customer. Logos and elaborate funnels do not answer those questions by themselves.
    Building the offer before adding complexity
    Choose a specific audience and a problem it recognizes.
    Build the program around practical obstacles to a desired result.
    Use the webinar to teach and address beliefs that prevent action.
    Keep the registration and purchase path straightforward.
    Resources mentioned
    Brian Lofrumento
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqO_K0Qq958
    20 min
  • 125: Get Free TV and Radio Publicity For Your Business Today with Sharon Bolt
    Sharon Bolt joins Robert Plank to explain how expertise can become a useful story for radio, television, and other media. Her own experience in dog training shows how a timely idea, a carefully chosen outlet, and persistent but relevant outreach can create an opening without a large advertising budget.
    Sharon recounts sending three tailored approaches to a national radio host before a recent consultation supplied the angle that earned a response. She had no previous media exposure when the opportunity arrived. The story centers on finding something the program could use, rather than treating a pitch as a general announcement that she wanted publicity.
    Another opportunity began through a networking introduction to a freelance BBC host. One appearance developed into an ongoing expert slot answering listeners' questions. A press release about helping dogs during fireworks similarly matched her knowledge with a predictable seasonal concern and led to television appearances. Each example connects expertise to something the audience already had a reason to care about.
    Robert and Sharon discuss studying a program or publication, understanding the expected press-release format, and becoming familiar to journalists through appropriate interaction before making an approach. The practical emphasis is on making the reporter's work easier: provide a clear angle, explain why it matters now, and show why you can contribute. The episode offers a specific model of earned publicity grounded in preparation and relevance rather than a promise that every pitch will be accepted.
    Making your expertise useful to a journalist
    Study the outlet and the interests of its audience.
    Connect your knowledge to a timely question or seasonal concern.
    Make the story angle clear and easy to assess.
    Treat relationships and well-chosen follow-up as part of the work.
    Resources mentioned
    Get Free Publicity Today
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmgdHEY-9l4
    25 min
  • 124: Discover Your Own Passion, Knowledge and Advantage with Agency Consultant Jason Swenk
    Jason Swenk joins Robert Plank to discuss building an agency that can grow beyond the founder. His experience includes starting with web design, expanding an agency, selling it, and later discovering a consulting direction by helping former competitors solve familiar problems.
    Jason's early paid work emerged from an unexpectedly popular parody website. As the agency grew, he hired around the work he disliked or could not do well. The story leads into specialization and systems: a generic agency trying to serve everyone has a harder time explaining its advantage, while consistent processes make delivery less dependent on one talented person.
    Selling the agency brought money but also a loss of purpose connected with clients and employees. Other ventures helped him recognize that an attractive opportunity could still be a poor personal fit. When other agency owners asked how he had won clients and built the company, he found work he enjoyed and could support with experience.
    The marketing examples include useful educational content, a simple video addressing an agency-sales problem, and short questions after an opt-in that improved his understanding of subscribers. Jason also describes packaging repeated consulting material into products. The episode brings those pieces together around a focused audience, genuine help, and repeatable methods, offering an agency owner a way to examine both growth and the role they want to play in it.
    Building an agency around a clear advantage
    Specialize enough to explain whom the agency serves.
    Hire and create processes around the founder's limitations.
    Let useful content demonstrate how you solve a real problem.
    Learn about new subscribers through short, relevant questions.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvhsMYGDtBM
    30 min

About Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank: Business Growth & Entrepreneur Stories

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Marketer of the Day with Robert Plank is a daily business podcast for entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, consultants, agency owners, coaches, authors, speakers, and expert-led service businesses that want…