The Bacon Podcast with Brian Basilico | CURE Your Sales & Marketing with Ideas That Make It SIZZLE!

At the beginning of 2023, businesses were facing the possibility of rising inflation, a recession, and workforce shortages. Then, the tech business community added some spicy Artificial Intelligence into the chaos soup.

While the Bitcoin Bros were trying to pass themselves off as ChatGPT prompt writing gurus (making $100K or more), sales teams were tasked with using AI tools to identify prospects.

2023 was an unhealthy serving of fear mixed with technology, creating a cold-call gazpacho that pushed prospects away from the table. All of us were being inundated with offers to connect, followed by a relentless flow of sales pitches.

I can tell you one thing that changed. People are tired of talking on and with computers. While companies scrambled to integrate AI into everything, people craved personal, face-to-face, human interaction.

Although we all want and need new business, that is only a portion of what effective marketing needs to focus on. I call them the Four Pillars of Profits or the Four Horsemen of the A-profit-lypse (a play on words with Apocalypse).

Each of these deserves a different strategy and different context.

.In this episode… We will discuss two groups of four parts of B2b marketing… that could help lead to future success.

Dennis Yu’s mission is to create a million jobs.

CEO of BlitzMetrics, a digital marketing company that partners with schools to train young adults. We offer courses, implementation, and consulting.

My personal mission centers around mentorship from my experience with helping people from all walks of life grow their expertise in digital marketing, sharing his insights from managing campaigns for enterprise clients like The Golden State Warriors, Nike, and Rosetta Stone.

I help digital agencies grow, serving doctors and real estate agents as fractional CTO.

I’m an internationally recognized lecturer in digital marketing and have spoken over 730 times in 17 countries, spanning 5 continents.

Featured in: The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, LA Times, National Public Radio, TechCrunch, Fox News, CNN, CBS Evening News and co-authored “Facebook Nation” – a textbook taught in over 700 colleges and universities.

To some of you, 2023 was a cakewalk compared to 2021 and 2022. To others, this was the most challenging year ever. Either way, I agree with you!

Whether it was good or bad, you probably grew personally, fiscally, and/or physically. Every day, running a business is a challenge. Yet, throughout the year, situations, circumstances, and outcomes tend to blur.

Chances are you need a video recorder for your memories and emotions to replay what you learned or felt accurately. Time tends to blur or color our feelings and perceptions.

I have the added bonus of doing a weekly blog post and newsletter to capture and share what I learned and felt each week.

What follows are the most popular of those based on your feedback. I was able to determine those based on the most read and the most time spent reading them.

I hope you enjoy revisiting them as much as I did writing this year in review.

.In this episode… We will discuss revisiting some past podcasts… that could help lead to future success.

Dr. Heidi Thorne, MBA/DBA, is a business speaker and author with over 25 years of combined experience in sales and advertising, including over 15 years as editor and advertising director of a trade newspaper covering the plumbing and mechanical contracting trades. In addition to two advanced business degrees (MBA/DBA), Heidi also has five years of experience teaching at the college level. Her business, Thorne Communications LLC, was also a promotional products distributor for 17 years.

Heidi has been an active blogger since 2010, and is the author of several business print books, eBooks, and audio books on small business and self publishing. Her goal is to help authors avoid embarrassing and expensive mistakes when self publishing.

As a professional business speaker, Heidi has done presentations on sales, social media, and self publishing with many business associations and chambers of commerce. She now hosts a regular audio and video podcast, The Heidi Thorne Show, where she discusses self publishing news and views. Heidi has also been a guest on many podcasts and educational webinars over the years. As well, she shares her knowledge and experience through her online courses on Udemy.

When I wrote my book, It’s Not About You, It’s About Bacon, I thought I would finally find fantastic success. I had dreams of speaking worldwide, pontificating about the virtues of Relationship Marketing. In short, I thought I was going to be rich and famous.

Then it hit me, that’s what Relationship Marketing is all about—helping others achieve success without caring about fame and fortune. Just quietly but actively making a difference.

Although my brand as a Relationship Marketer never reached the heights I dreamed of, it is still alive and kicking. Its audience is smaller yet more potent than I imagined.

My business brand still lingers as an expert, trainer, and influencer, but it has dwindled to a whisper. So, I have been re-positioning my business brand as a company, different from a typical agency that offers on-demand, high-quality services and continues learning techniques that make the most of current data and trends. All of that is based on helping companies do the same through Relationship Marketing.

.In this episode… We will discuss how failing is learning and how to turn the pieces into future success.

I’m originally from Ohio, and lived there for 12 years. Grew up Catholic (I’m a recovering Catholic now) and played every sport known to man when I was a little kid. Became a Steelers fan back then. Steel Curtain and all that. Got in a lot of trouble in school too. (No surprise to those of you that know me). At 12, we moved to a little ‘burb outside Philadelphia where I was one of three gentiles in the entire town. I had an entire drawer of Yamikas. That was great…they were warm on my head and velour.

In between 10th and 11th grade my parents decided it would be a great idea to move down to a little redneck town in Florida called Spring Hill, which I hated for every second I was down there. (Well, except for you Renee…you rocked.) In fact, I think my bags were packed on stage as I accepted my high school diploma.

I bolted back to Philly and had stops in Newark DE, Long Beach Island NJ, and Palm Beach FL, where I graduated from music school. I then finished up undergrad at Temple University in Philly and studied communication, and this new thing called the “Internet”. (It was 1994).

I became a web designer, and worked that field for 15 years. I still do design and development, but only if you hold a gun to my head. In 1997 I moved to Boulder Colorado, and have lived there and in Denver for almost 13 years, until 2012 when I moved to San Diego. After a few brief stints working for other people, I found myself to be truly unemployable around 2005, and have been on the entrepreneurial track ever since.

From 2004-2008, my parents would fall ill, and basically “level” me in all aspects of my life. Emotionally, financially, etc…They both passed away in 2007, just 7 months apart.

I tried to “muddle” through 2008, and didn’t have much success. But I decided to take actual time to mourn, so in 2009, thanks to my wonderful friend Melanie, I went to Europe to spread their ashes everywhere I could. You see, I had a “dream” as an adult to surprise my parents with a trip to Europe, so this was my best substitution. So, I got a little Italian Parmesan Cheese shaker, and I ventured off into the wild blue yonder. And they are *everywhere*. In the Sistene Chapel, the Beaches of Normandy, Notre Dame…you name it, they’re there.

I arrived back in the States, healed, broke, and happier than I’d been in years. But I knew that I no longer wanted to trade a dollar for an hour, so I went looking for something else. That’s when network marketing and internet marketing found me. It’s been 4 years since I found that world, and the transformation it’s made in my life has been nothing but profound. I’ve met amazing people in the network marketing, internet marketing, life coaching, and entrepreneurship world. Every single day I learn from them and they impact me.

In August 2013, I started a Podcast called The Solopreneur Hour – Job Security for the Unemployable. It’s aim is to show the other unemployable people of the world the correct path to business success on their own terms. It’s been an amazing ride. I’d love if you’d have a listen: http://solohour.com

It’s that time of the year when business starts to wind down, and people are looking forward to the holidays.

Not in the marketing business. This is the busiest part of the year, prepping our clients for new business in 2024. We’re tweaking our brands and checking it twice, revamping websites, and optimizing systems with the latest tech.

Since people are more aware of those transactional tactics, there has been increased interest in open, non-transactional, authentic, cooperative conversations. The key to making that happen is trust. Building trust is a process, and that is what our clients continue to learn and implement actively.

It gives me hope that our clients will succeed by focusing on 50 to 150 quality business relationships while their competition focuses on the masses.

What follows are three key things that I am truly thankful for this holiday season and why I am filled with hope for a successful new year.

.In this episode… We will discuss how human empathy and interaction will make a resurgence in the coming year when marketing to people.

Bill Guertin (pronounced like “13”) is a positive voice for change and is the leader of the “7 Voices” Movement, whose purpose is to hear, recognize, and minimize the effects of the negative Voices inside people’s heads and to implement simple strategies to make positivity a life-choice every day. As a sales trainer, he’s worked with the ticket sales departments of over 100 professional sports teams throughout the US, Canada, and Mexico, and he serves as Chief Learning Officer of ISBI 360, a virtual training network specifically for executives in sports and entertainment.

Bill has over 30 years’ experience in sales and leadership, including 20 years in broadcast media as a sales rep, sales manager, and General Manager of radio properties in the Midwest.

When he is not working, Bill spends quality time with his wife, Sherri, their three grown boys, and their families who enjoy Sundays together watching the Chicago Bears. He serves as a Board member of the Baylor University Center for Sports Strategy and Sales and volunteers for the Kankakee County Humane Foundation.

I’ve heard it said that to succeed in business, you must master business tools. Some businesses make do with what they can afford, while others highly invest in cutting-edge technologies.

With the advent of AI, companies hope that data can be gathered, processed, analyzed, and implemented faster and at a lower expense by a computer instead of people.

At some point (unless you sell via a computer and e-commerce), people need to communicate with people to generate and close sales.

So then, does it make sense to try to master people and then tools?

Relationship Marketing may mean something different to you, but it’s about creating conversations for me. The content you create and distribute should generate conversations between current, past, and prospective customers.

.In this episode… We will discuss what relationship marketing is and how to master tools and people.

Chip’s first experience with the tech sector started in 1994 after downloading the first Netscape browser (now Firefox) and led him to join his first startup a year later. He’s worked for and advised high-growth ventures and Fortune 500 companies in online media, internet infrastructure, PCs (Dell & Lenovo), and most recently, Fintech & Gov Tech SaaS companies, in addition to serving as CEO for a US commercial 3D printing manufacturer.

In 2014, Chip started Flywheel Advisors, helping early and mid-stage companies (Consumer and B2B) to identify and drive sustainable growth and scale by leveraging customer feedback and insights.

Lastly, a fun fact: Chip was the first to place a keyword ad buy in 1997 (Yahoo!)