Marketing Monday Kick Off Meeting

Watch #MarketingMonday Episode #1 and meet Dennis Harabin of Relax Teams.

Hosted by: Paul Taubman of Digital Maestro

Marketing encompasses a lot of different things to different people. For some, it can be the marketing message that's going to affect everything they do with their brand. It can be with direct mail, it could be the message on your website or it could be how you connect with people. The topics and information that's going to be covered will certainly be available for everybody to implement. It may not be exactly what you're doing but the principles can certainly apply to your own business.

Dennis Harabin is the Founder of Relax Teams. He is a CPA obsessed with helping small business owners retain more of what they earn so that they can pursue their passions. Dennis takes a holistic approach to tax planning that makes him more of a Financial Architect than just a Tax Preparer.

 

Relax Teams is launching a new weekly live stream called Marketing Monday. We have the Digital Maestro, the man who has been such a resource to Relax Teams. He is very knowledgeable about websites, marketing, and all different areas, Paul Taubman II. He will host a new product line with Relax Sales and Marketing going forward and he’s going to tell us what he does and what to expect on this episode.

Marketing Monday will be held every other week to talk about marketing and getting things in place for the upcoming week, things that you can implement in your own business. Although the focus of the topics will be mostly online, there's still a lot of other marketing activity you can do that's going to affect your business offline. Paul will be talking to different people, different guests and sometimes it might just be him talking about a lot of different topics that people want to talk about.

The Art of Storytelling

Dennis believes marketing is telling your story and getting your story heard. He had clients that were excellent with what they do but they just couldn't get their story out. But every story matters and how Paul shapes and tells that story so that people can understand it, digest it, and share it, is something that he brings to the table.

Everybody loves a good story. It works and it's something that should carry on through your marketing message, through websites, and on what you do. Donald Miller, the CEO of StoryBrand wrote a book about knowing what your story is and what the hero's journey is and a lot of that is very applicable to your website.

The art of storytelling is a good way to connect with people. Even if we tell people all day long what our products are, what our services are, and how we can help them, it's not until they hear that story you make, that you can connect with them on an emotional level. That's why it's important to know the backstory and that should come through in your message. Even Paul’s company, Digital Maestro, has a story that goes back to their upbringing. His dad was a composer and conductor of musicals and they’re very involved in everything. Now he uses that story to harmonize his online strategy. Digital Maestro takes all those “instruments”, all those pieces of your marketing, your message, your website, your content creation, all that and they put it together like a symphony orchestra.

What is Marketing Monday?

On these Mondays, Paul will talk about different areas and different ideas in Marketing. If people want to ask him or want to reply back, let us know on social media posts where you see any of these different content. What are the things you'd like to know from Paul? What kind of marketing feedback would you want? What would be some sessions that you'd want to have on a Marketing Monday that would resonate with you as an individual? Want to be a guest on Marketing Monday to talk about specifics? Let us know too.

There’ll be a bunch of ideas and topics that Paul is going to talk about, but if somebody has a particular item topic that they want to discuss, he can arrange it right to the top of the list. He wants to talk about what you want to talk about, get you answers, and make your life easier. It could also be a checklist of things you can do and other times it might be a little bit more theoretical and concept-driven. He can guarantee that the topic and conversations will be well worth it.

When Paul talks about relevant topics, he always keeps it in a generic form that people can apply across platforms. He delivers the message in a way that it's not just solving a single problem but addressing it across a wide variety of platforms. And it really works well for everybody because marketing is a pain point for everyone. He also believes that everybody's a salesperson regardless of what we think, when we talk with somebody and the fact that we have a family or a spouse, there's a constant sales conversation going back and forth between what we want and what they want. The more you can hone that, the better things will be.

Relax SaM approach to Sales and Marketing 

SaM is Sales And Marketing and it's how to get your message out to potential clients, customers, and prospects and that's going to involve a variety of things from your website, marketing, message, and also social media. The idea of people saying that it's a fad, no, it's here to stay.

Platforms may come and go but social media is going to be there, and one of the key points of that is knowing which platform is the best platform for you. Even if you sign up for a YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn account, all these different social media platforms, if your audience isn't there you don't wanna waste your time. Social media is definitely a big piece of it.

The other part of Sales and Marketing is your messaging and knowing what the story is behind. Good marketing attracts the right people. Good marketing also repels the wrong people. When you have that clearly stated and you understand what you're doing, you can then optimize your time by not speaking or spending time with the wrong people. 

The Future of Relax SaM

Putting together a strong team of people who can support, help, and grow with Paul and Relax SaM is very important. It is an exciting time for how SaM is going to evolve in helping its clients.

Its target audience are small business owners who have 40 or fewer employees, under 5 million or less in revenue, but Relax SaM will also love to help solo entrepreneurs that make less than a hundred thousand dollars a year. 

Relax Teams Approach to Sales and Marketing

A lot of businesses that Relax Teams services and the related products that are coming out to help Teams are to help the right people and small business owners by making a network available anytime for them so that when they turn their head and say “who does this?”, someone will answer “Oh, I do.” And you have to do it. 

What helped lead to this evolution was when Dennis had so many clients that were coming to him with taxes, tax support, tax help, and accounting help. But on his observation that wasn't their problem, their problem was that they just didn't have enough hours in the day to do everything. They had to pick and choose what areas they could just focus on what they do best, then their life would be a thousand times easier. 

Weekly Mastermind

Most people start their own business because they love what they do and they're good at what they do and that's the core competency of their business. But when it comes to all these aspects 85% of the business that people might not think about are bookkeeping, taxes, marketing, accounting, and all the other things that go along with it. That's when it's good to reach out, get help, and find out from people who do that really well.

It's not as simple as checking off from a checklist, it's the implementation of things or finding the right people that can help you. That's why Teams are such a great way to reach out and find that expertise and meet other individuals who are looking for that same target market. Though they're going after the same customers that you're going after, they have complementary services, not conflicting services who really work together. This way Teams members can refer people to one another and have that comfort level because you know that they were referred by someone who you know and trust.

Paul mentioned Napoleon Hill who talks about the mastermind. That's what Teams do every week getting together, discussing, and talking about helping each other out with those types of things to initiate and start the conversation. When people get together either virtually or meet up in person they really flush some of the conversations out to come up with real concrete things to do action plans.

It's been exciting to watch Teams grow and see the potential of what it can do like making it possible for Digital Maestro to be out here every other Monday to talk about marketing ideas, marketing strategies and different approaches for the team with such incredible value and with the purpose of helping each other grow. 

 Key Takeaways

Paul: “What I would have people think about is their sales and marketing plan. Do you have one? Is it working for you? What's not working for you? Think about if you had assistance to do that. Let's have you as a guest. We'll talk about what your challenges are and see where we can help you with that. The first step of any problem is always knowing that there's a problem. So let's identify that and then I'll be on as a guest.”

Dennis: “The big thing that I always talk about as accountant is everyone always focuses on the actual costs but what's really hard to measure and often not seen is opportunity cost and i think that's the biggest thing - the lack of doing marketing and the lack of addressing it, that’s what is it really costing you. That's something that I'd love for people to get a better flavor for and a better feel for and I think Paul does a great job of helping people identify some of that opportunity cost that they're leaving on the table.”

With that, we'll look forward to who Paul will have as future guests for this Relax Teams’ live stream series with another teammate, one of the original who was here from the very beginning of launching teams. From the start as a guest, then host to the next episodes, Paul Taubman II from Digital Maestro.

 

SEE YOU NEXT #MarketingMonday

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Relax SaM makes Sales and Marketing simple as a one stop shop for your sales and marketing needs. RelaxSaM takes care of all your interactive marketing requirements such as website design, maintenance and search engine optimization (SEO) and social media management. Our team of sales & marketing professionals can help you rejuvenate your brand, resuscitate your sales and optimize the returns on your marketing investments.