Marketing Magic and Business Brilliance with Shire Lyon

Never Been Promoted Podcast with Thomas Helfrich

Shire Lyon, founder of Shire Lyon Ads, shares her remarkable journey from working in the high-pressure environments of newsrooms and healthcare to mastering the art of digital advertising. This session not only uncovers Shire's unique career trajectory but also dives deep into the mechanics of successful paid advertising and the resilience required to thrive in the dynamic world of entrepreneurship.


About Shire Lyon:

Shire has carved a niche in digital marketing with her firm, Shire Lyon Ads, specializing in paid advertisements. Her journey through various roles, from assignment editing to healthcare, has equipped her with a diverse skill set, making her strategies in digital advertising uniquely effective. Today, she discusses the transition points in her career, the challenges she faced, and how she leveraged her past experiences to fuel her entrepreneurial ambitions.


In this episode, Thomas and Shire discuss:

• Journey from Conventional Roles to Entrepreneurship: Shire shares how her varied background helped shape her approach to digital marketing and entrepreneurship.
• Secrets to Successful Paid Advertising: Gain insights into Shire’s strategies for creating impactful ad campaigns that resonate with target audiences and maximize ROI.
• Overcoming Entrepreneurial Obstacles: Learn from Shire’s experiences of navigating the early and ongoing challenges of starting and maintaining a business in a competitive digital landscape.

Key Takeaways:

• Leveraging Diverse Experiences 

Understanding how different career backgrounds can enhance entrepreneurial effectiveness and innovation in marketing strategies.

• Mastering Paid Advertising 

Practical tips on managing and optimizing paid advertising to achieve business growth and sustainability.

• Building Resilience in Business

Strategies for developing the resilience needed to overcome setbacks and thrive as an entrepreneur.

"If you can't describe what you are doing as a process, you don't know what you're doing." — Shire Lyon


CONNECT WITH SHIRE LYON:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shirelyon/

Website: https://shirelyon.com/

CONNECT WITH THOMAS:

X (Twitter): https://twitter.com/thelfrich | https://twitter.com/nevbeenpromoted 

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/hovienko | https://www.facebook.com/neverbeenpromoted 

Website: https://www.neverbeenpromoted.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neverbeenpromoted/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@neverbeenpromoted

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomashelfrich/

Email: t@instantlyre

Transcript

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Welcome to the Never Been Promoted podcast. Hi. I'm Thomas Helfrich, your host, and I smell lovely today. I do. But, listen, this is all about unleashing your entrepreneur. If this is your first time visiting us, I do hope this is one of many. And if you've been here before, then you know we'll have a little silliness for the next 20 seconds before I introduce our guest. But if, if this is your first time, but you this is about helping you on your entrepreneurial journey. And we're doing this through learning from other entrepreneurs. And today I'm joined by Shire Lyon. She's the founder of Shire Shire Lyon Ads. That's ADS, not aim down sight if you're a gamer, but ads like in advertisements. So, Shire, how are you? How are you? And and really, Smelly, I we need smell o vision. Right. It is you can you know, it's like if we had this is you know, we're not in person for anybody listening. She can see that I showered today. That's all I'm saying. Like, it's obvious. So I see Shire. It's s h I r e. I feel like Shiiire, you know, after the, like, kind of AA Ron thing, I think we should do some things with your name. It has an opportunity here.
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Shire. Hey. Hey. Which Shire actually means is funny enough that, you know, I I don't need to make too many jokes. So, like, everybody's like, hey. Are you from the Shire? My kids were like, we're from the Enchanted Shire because, you know, Lord of the Rings. And I'm like, well, you know, it's it's British, and that's how you get the sheriff as they were the Shiree. So, you know, there's, like, a whole conversation that we can have, and then you could go down the rocky route. Hey, Talia Shire. And that's that's how my mom chose my name. Because, you know, after 36 hours of labor, you're thinking about Rocky.
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I don't think she was trying hard enough. I think she's just kinda seeking attention. 36 hours. Come on. Like, just push it out at this point. Like, it's not like you were coming out sideways. You might have been. Actually, I hope she's okay.
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Yes. A little disgruntled about childbirth, but who is
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it? I mean, you brought this up in a podcast. I'm gonna have to guess. This has been something we need to get a leather couch and talk about that your mom has brought up many times. I wear 36 hour, like, a traumatic event she didn't deal with. And peep in entrepreneurs, this is about learning. So there's a humorous moment here, but there's one there. If you have something that's bugging, go talk to someone. Okay? Don't don't take it out on your kids. Even if they were the cause of it, it's just not their fault. All she was told to anyway, here we go. Shire, you're an entrepreneur. You do some cool social media ad stuff. You want to take a second or 2 here to kind of give everyone kind of an introduction of yourself? I could do it, but I'd An introduction of myself or what I do? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well Oh, that's part of it. I mean I mean we identify with our work.
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True. I try to desperately, but, you know, it always comes up. So, basically, I wanted to help people from themselves. You know, small to medium businesses, they really struggle with the idea of how do I advertise myself, especially when it comes to paid stuff. People can grasp SEO. I need a website. But what do I do with these paid ads? And so that's that's really where this all came from. You know? I I do the whole kit and caboodle, but, really, my focus is on paid ads. How do you do it? Why do you do it? What makes sense? And, you know, like, how do I understand what you're telling me?
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And, how'd you get into that? So tell me about your journey a little bit. I had very interesting journey.
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I started out in the news.
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That was not for me. Like an anchor? Like, we're, like, live channel 5, weather report by Shire Lyon. No. That would have been much better
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except for, like, the 3 AM stuff. No. No. I was the person telling those people where to go. It's called an assignment editor, and, it's a really tough job. And, you know, you're, like, awake all the time, and you're chasing people's sadness, and I I don't really like sadness. I'm I'm all about the happy moments.
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Well, hold on a sec. I wanna dive into that. I had no idea this position even existed. Yeah. It sounds thankless and only ones where you get shit on. And because I feel like if you send someone to the wrong location, it's a 100 it is a 100% your fault. If you send them to the right location, you're just doing your job. Yeah. Yeah. Well, even if it is the right location, if they don't wanna be there, like so so you might have to pull someone off a story that they have, like, planned
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out to interview this person and whatever. But news happens when it happens, and you go like, okay. Go there. And you have to make the decision in, like, you know, 5, 10 minutes tops. Is this is this a story that we wanna cover? Is this, like, breaking news? And here I am, 22, telling people, like, double, maybe even triple my age, like, hey. I don't care what you're doing. Go do this right now. And I have to be right because if I'm not, then, like, everybody from the news director down is mad at me.
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Yeah. I'm thinking like that. Like, listen. Kim Kardashian's gonna be stepping out of a limo here in 6 minutes. You gotta be there. I don't care if you're interviewing the president. This is more important. A 44 year old would be like, yeah, no. Yeah. I can I can see that being a challenging job at 22? I I would think, though, too. So, anyway, that we'll get to that. So that's your background. You had to deal with a bunch of crap. How how did you make this transition into this this agency?
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Well, it actually gets more complicated than that. I moved. I worked gosh. Please move me. Like I went in in medicine. I did medical transcription. I was a CNA in the hospital. And and, you know, I I just I I volunteered for thankless jobs. That's, like, what I do.
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Now I'm Wait. Wait. Wait. You're in marketing. Yeah. You're still in a thankless job. I just need to know you've not actually come out of that at all. No. No. It's just my here, me. This is what I do. Thankless.
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But we we lived in Oklahoma. So so I I moved. I live in Connecticut. We we went to Oklahoma. No marketing jobs. Had to do something else. We decided to come back, and I'm like, medical I just I can't keep doing this. Like, it it wears you down in every respect. So I tried to get back into marketing, and I taught myself Google Ads because at the time, there was a wealth of stuff on the Internet to teach yourself Google Ads, and I convinced somebody to hire me. Apparently, I'm really convincing because, like, I no experience. I haven't really ever worked in marketing, but I can do this thing for you.
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So how how did you know so how did you pick that? Because I think, you know, I always try to reflect back to the entrepreneur of what a lot of people are like, what can I do? Like, where and and how did you make that decision? So maybe dive into that of why Google Ads, why you picked it, and why you thought you could be confident with it even though you've had no experience with it.
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A little bit was just, you know, self confidence. I I gotta protect self confidence here, and then I'll I'll figure it out after that. But, no. Google Ads because I decided it's not that I'm not a designer. It's, like, I'm obsessive about things. So if I spend all day designing stuff, I would drive myself insane. I'd move that little thing, like, 2 inches. Right. I'd be like, that's not the right 2 inches. Move it here. That's a lot. By the way, 2 inches is quite a bit. 2 millimeters Well, let's do millimeters. Pretty obvious. Yeah.
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I'm messing with you. I know what you mean, though.
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I'm not I'm not really, like, a designer. Way back when I I learned how to code, I'm more of an analytical person. What can I do that involves analytics and and, like, copy because I'd like to write? So I I kinda I just sat down. What are the things I'd like to do? I really, really like to write. People tell me I'm okay at that. Alright. Check. I I'd like to look at data. Check. We got it. I I only have, like, 30 characters at most. It wasn't even 90 characters at that point. I can't screw it up. So it was just mostly, like, let's let's explore something new. I didn't think, like, that was definitely the place I wanted to
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be. But you took an I mean, you took an analytical approach to something. You said, you know, what do I like? What I don't like? Can't get away from the thought the thankless job. You just accepted that without knowing it, I think. But the idea is what else we can be remote, right? So you but there was also another piece, I think. There was training. And so you said, hey, listen, there's actually like, everyone's using this, so there's a marketplace and it wasn't like you pick just Facebook ads. Google Ads, I think, is a bigger play and but it's very saturated. So as you've kind of developed, you know, and you you know, you your company, you know, you talk about that first customer. Maybe start with how you got that first customer and then let me dive into kind of what the differentiator is you have or at least, you know, maybe maybe you don't have one, but, like, you know, how do you how did you do that and how do you do get there? It was probably totally by accident. So so, like, I was working for an agency
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at this point. You know, my career had evolved. We we don't we don't we don't wanna talk about how long it took. Actually, no. It didn't take that long realistically. I haven't been in marketing that that long. When when I talk to people, they're like, I've been in marketing since Google Ads started. I'm like, I wish I made that decision. That's why I'm I don't I don't believe people people when they say that. I don't believe them. I think they're just full of it. I'm like, how did you even find out about it? Like, nobody knew. But but, I really probably by accident, I started freelancing. So I've had a a little bit before I left, but then, like, I I had no choice. The pandemic hit. I didn't have a job. Find clients. So, you know, I really, like, leveraged relationships I already had. You know, they they knew that I I could do Google Ads. They they already knew that, you know, like, I kinda caught my feet over the fire with the pandemic. So they're like, hey. We'll just try you. And and I kinda took whatever to start with because it's like, alright. It's pandemic. I need to live and kinda went from there.
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What, I don't think there's an accident, though. I don't think, like, you know, you you how did you find that customer, though? Like, did they come to you? Did you,
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like, like, did you use ads? Did you walk the walk? Like, how'd you do it? Oh, there is no money for ads. There was no money for anything. I lost my job.
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So I mean, that's where a lot of people get in this position right there. I need to make money. Everyone knows it takes a little money to make money.
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Yeah. Yeah. But but nobody yourself. Nobody's thinking Yeah. How'd how'd about, like, levering the relationships they already have. So I had done some work with, SEO company to kind of try and get leads for the company I had worked for because I worked for somebody that only did, like, paid ads, and we worked with the SEO company to see if they'd funnel us leads. We'd give them leads, whatever. So I I just sent them an email, you know, like, holding my breath. Hey. You know, if you have anybody who who needs some paid ads, I'm I'm, like, really flexible, and and they sent me somebody. So that was, like, the first official client. So then I'm like, alright. I've got a little confidence here. Who else who else can I talk to? And I talked to a few other people that I'd worked with before, and then some of my colleagues were were kind enough to refer people to me when they're like, hey. We have a need, or I I was super lucky. I have a colleague who worked with someone at Google, and she started her own business. So she refer she to this day, she refers leads to me that don't don't fit, like, in the box of what she needs.
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Yep. I I think it's not luck too. So I think you've probably been very, and I've known you a little off camera too. I think you have high integrity, it seems, from how you are and how you've interacted. And and I and I think the the lesson there is it matters even a job you might not like how you behave, how you act, and how you treat others because when you do go on your own, specifically if you go on your own or even trying to find another job, you're going to need that network to support you because they may say, yeah, she's great, but I didn't really like even if they didn't do your job well, but like, I liked her. She's good. I understand why she's doing her own thing. So I think that plays a part of it for sure. And and when you look as an entrepreneur's differentiator, sometimes that differentiator is you. Sometimes the the the way you behave, the way people want to interact with you, and and specifically when someone says, hey. I worked with her at this. She was terrible at that job. She really didn't fit. But, man, she was such a nice person. She she really worked hard. I understand why, you know, like, that is, like, the best referral possible. It's like, that's the person you should work with because they're gonna figure it out.
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So it sounds like that. Did you have to sell on price at all initially as well? Did you say, hey. Listen. Because I'm new. I'm gonna, you know, on the job training. I'll I'll cut you a deal, or how did you how did you establish your value? So so I kind of priced low to begin with. You know, we were all kind of in a crunch, and, like, I I'd throw a price out there. I knew I was totally underpricing myself, but I also knew they were kind of in the position where they they really needed help too. So we just kinda negotiated until we got to a place where, like, okay. That works for everybody. You know? Once things get better in life, we'll we'll talk about it. And that first customer stuck around for years. The only reason why they ever decided to leave was because they couldn't get their Google Analytics together.
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The most frustrating thing. Let's dive into that. I I I think, as somebody who doesn't run ads we don't run ads right now. We do a little for YouTube, but that's pretty straightforward. You can't just make a video, kind of go next, next, next, and pick your that one's not difficult to do. But Google Ads is tough. You know, my company, like, Instantly Roll them. Right? We're a LinkedIn agency that uses you know, we're we can't use the word LinkedIn in an ad. Let's say it that way because we're not it's our trademark. So what do you do, in I don't wanna see that specific example because that'd be a little self serving, but what what are some of the kind of, like, what you think are absolute do's and don'ts of of the kind of Google Ads game?
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Well, the biggest ones, The these should be no brainers, but they're actually not. Get your website together. You know? Either who you're you're hiring or hire somebody else, but, like, your website needs to be together before you're paying. And then the second one is make sure things are trackable. I mean, for somebody who does lead gen, that's that's not as hard. But, like, if you have software as a service, if you're doing ecom and you're using tools that aren't trackable and you have a void, like, you you defeated your purpose. How do you know what your ROI is? And and, like, in this case, these guys worked with developers who created an app that it lost all the tracking, so we can never tell who who bought from this ad campaign after a certain point. And, like, this was a change. This wasn't the way it was originally, but they they decided to create this desktop app and stuff instead. And so it ruined everything for them. It actually it it hurt their revenue because they couldn't effectively advertise. So, I mean, those are the 2 biggest ones.
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Yeah. So get the analytics in place when you say get your website. You know what I mean? Like, get the mechanics. Spend the time or resources. It's not even that expensive. It's just more get your analytics set up, get your tracking code set up. So that way when you run ads, you you can truly optimize. Yeah. You could you could, like, you could see what what the different variants are so you can get rid of the ones that aren't working. And and from from it just I know we do a little YouTube stuff, but I know in YouTube in the first maybe $50 spent, if the subscribers don't go above the 50, I kill it. You know? So if it's if it's like, you know, you only got 6 subscribers off of $50, I just killed the ad. I have another one that runs for that maybe we spent a1000 a month on, and it does make 1500 subscribers. So I just keep running that one because I know it's a it's a pretty good cost per dollar play. And and it's funny how you do that. And I think, when you look at ads for a site, I know personally we don't run them because of that exact reason that we didn't have landing pages. We didn't have a really good I don't was never really happy with our websites. We're a LinkedIn business. So I I think what your advice is is spot on is if you're gonna go down the ads game, which is great because it's a capital machine. Right? If you put a dollar in, you're trying to get dollar 20 out. But if you can't measure the ROI, don't even start it.
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Yeah. Well Do you agree with that? Like, that's your like like or is it just a test? Is it worth starting, or is it you're like, don't no. Get this other stuff in place first. Yeah. Don't don't spend money on something that's not not gonna work. But then, you know, people have to understand what you do. If your website doesn't understand what you doesn't let them understand what you do, you fail. If they can't figure out how to contact you easily and, like, at most, 2 clicks, you fail. And, like, these are the things in marketing that that should be no brainers, but a lot of people push back. They don't understand how little patience someone really has. They just wanna be able to get to you when they need you and get what they need, and that's it.
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It's it's funny you said that. So, as an agency owner, right, we we do more than just LinkedIn, but our whole website, like, especially the new this it's 2024 February. We have a new one coming out next week or so. It is a 100% focused around LinkedIn. Like, it's they're like, the reason is because if that's your tip of spear unless you're a big company, you can afford 50 different tips of spear. You got a niche to what your channel is. And so if if you're running ads and people are seeing you on on your social media, whatever it is, I'm I'm and you can say, no. That's wrong. But I'm finding that's one of the reasons I've never gotten comfortable with ads because I go there and I'm like, I'm not even sure what we do on the site. Like like and I own it. But but at the same time, I'm like, but it produces no revenue because it's but the point is I I I I 100% agree with you in this. And this is where, like, you know deep down it's not quite clear, but you're just trying to rush through it. You're just going to waste money and be disappointed. Exactly. Yeah. Now let's let's let's say I want to use this example. I'm going to be selfish here. People you can check out for next 7 minutes, if you like. I'm going to ask a question around, when you don't own the trademark. And so, you know, you don't own Instagram. You don't own LinkedIn. We want to advertise that we're a LinkedIn marketing agency. We're not a LinkedIn marketing partner because you have to do tens of 1,000,000 of dollars of advertising, and we don't even do that with with our our approaches to LinkedIn right now. What do we do? How do I get the keywords right around? Because people, are they searching for that? Like, what do you do when you can't use the keywords of what you do?
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Well, you can use the keywords of what you do, but you can't put in app. Like, a lot of times, you can put It could be on your website, but but it yeah. Okay. Yeah. It can be on your website. It could be in your search terms. So if we're talking about Facebook, sometimes they're a little bit more liberal. Like,
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I mean, you have to know what you do too. Literally. Like, just you mean that politically and, like, just, like, they're more casual with it. So that that was well done. I like how you put that fun in there.
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But but, you know, you you talk about, like, the benefits that you give. You even in a a Facebook ad, Instagram, tech interests, you you have, like, such a short amount of time to catch someone. You talk about benefits. You don't really talk so much about the into the weeds of what you do. And then they get to your website, and that's where where you talk more about your. Hey. LinkedIn agency. You know? LinkedIn is all about b to b, so your ad should be more about what you can do for b to b, and then your website breaks down what it is that you do and how you do it. Like your your your take on it. So that that's a good point. So you're and and I'm glad you went there so I didn't have to figure it out. I wouldn't have gotten there. The the idea being
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our benefit is we're going to help you grow your business. The technique we leverage is whatever it is, Facebook, LinkedIn, you know, whatever, Meta, and and x, y, and z with it. So you need these pieces. If you're looking at social media, like and then the idea is that's how you grow a business, and here's our take on it. So you've hooked them in based on the goal, the problem. I like that too because, I mean, if you could be super specific where someone's like, I need Facebook ad help and you can use that, by all means, I would you agree? Do it. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, do it. Like like,
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You You know? And and you can also you can also do an AB test. Will will they let me use it, or will they get hella angry with me? That's the other great thing about doing a paid ad is it it's easier to do that AB test. You have control of the trauma effect.
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Well, the other pieces too doesn't mean you can't put your keyword as someone, let's say, in our in our example there. You can't it's not like you can't say people searching for Google Ads. People you can do that. You just got to make sure that your headline is ready to address their problem, what they're actually trying to solve. They've determined whatever that that LinkedIn is the place or whatever it is. Because sometimes the answer is it's not. Like, some people are, oh, I'm trying to get Facebook ads for my business, but, like, your business is really more of a LinkedIn business. I have LinkedIn people. Like, oh, I'm trying to do this, this, and this. I'm like, well, you're really more of a meta kind of company because you need this community and group and and that's and so so sometimes it's it they've the the the person clicking or stuff has presumed something, but there's an overarching problem. And I think that's the takeaway there is really understand your if you don't know the overarching problem, it's gonna be hard for you to differentiate in your solutions anyway, I believe. So, I think, you know, there's that's always that groundwork as a business owner. What, what's a really good I like I love use cases. What's one of your, like, success stories? If you have any. Maybe you've never helped anyone actually ever. And I'm just kidding.
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What's a really good use what's a good example for Sometimes you can't help people that don't wanna be helped. That's like that's like your first thing. You you gotta know when somebody doesn't wanna be helped. I probably have a a lot of them, ecomm wise. You know, I worked with with a business. They were they were doing under $1,000,000. They were really lucky because pandemic, everybody decided, hey. We're stuck at home. Let's redo our house. And and they're, you know, they they do stuff related to, like, kitchen and and bath. So so that worked in their favor. But now, you know, like, in the the past month or so, you know, over the course of 2 years, they've gone from, like, probably $800,000 a month in revenue to I think they hit 1.3, maybe $1,400,000.
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I hope you set up your, your phase structure as that increase in revenue at 1% gross
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or something like that. I should. But no. Not not always.
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It it depends on If you can do that for our company, I will give you the 1 or 2% or we'll negotiate your your Yeah. That's an amazing story. So that's like I can't do the math on that, but that's, like, 60% increase. And that's year over year, that's even
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2 years. So so it's a it's like 30 and 30. I mean, you know Yeah. But still, I mean, that's crazy because it's
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even if, they spent that equivalent of increase to get the additional revenue,
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they just cleared out their other revenue from just it's just they just destabilized their company quite a bit. It's game changing for them because, you know, they they have other product lines that they wanted to maybe get into, and now they can. And then on the lead gen side, I work with someone. She she totally understands, like, the niche down. She does, health insurance, and she's like, okay. Well, I can't do health insurance for everybody. I'll be chasing everybody under this sun. So she developed this whole persona. It there was, like, a a beginning to it where it wasn't that developed, but we really worked together on this this persona. She has this ninja persona. She's she's so funny. She she really has personality. Wait. She helps ninjas with health care? Ninjas. So she's your health care ninja.
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Oh, I thought she actually helped ninjas with I'm kidding. Because think about this. If you had a health ninjas do need health care. They they're they're high risk. Swords, throwing stars, I mean, nunchucks, even yourself, you're practicing. You might whack yourself in the in the in the cajones there and next thing you know, you you go to the hospital with do do you see what I do? This is this is why I shouldn't be a host of an Internet anything. So so she actually helps a different kind of ninja. She helps
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full nurses. You know, nurses are kinda ninjas in their own right. There's definitely a lot of risk there. So, you know, when when she came to me, of course, also during the pandemic, so there are a lot of travel nurses that slowed down a little bit. But she's like, I'm buying these leads, and it's costing me, you know, like, a 1000, $2,000 less. This is not, like, maintainable. What can we do? And so we we developed this persona, and she was able to get leads for, like, 25, $30, and not leads that have been called, like, 10 times. They're like, please just stop calling me. You know, you you you work for yourself. You probably look for health insurance once or twice, and then you get, like, 9,000 calls.
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Sheesh. You were Oh, I know that one form I got, I think, yeah, 60 calls. And at some point, I just I mean, it's one of the reasons I just don't answer my phone now because I just I still get called from this company. 2 years later, I'm like Yeah. Yeah. So do I. So, you know, we were able to get affordable leads. They were interested. The other thing is,
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you know, they self sold versus somehow they ended up on this list. You're on a list 2 years later. I hope you have health insurance by now. You know? Like so so you don't know when you buy a list.
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Right. And then I, you know, I live dangerously, so maybe I don't. I wouldn't even cover my kids. I just want them to figure it out. They're they're old enough. They're 8, 9.
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I'll just wait. It gets better. I have a 19 year old and a 16 year old, and it's like, call that doctor yourself. What am I here for?
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You can drive there. I'm not paying your deductible. Your health insurance is related to the fact that you have to drive a car now. Do you see we take we take conversation? Alright. Let's tie something back here. For the entrepreneur, listening, if you've made it this far in our fun conversation, you you have to niche. And and I think I think the 2 biggest things is is are there's a persona and then if you're if you're very specific, so I wouldn't be. I've learned something there that, like, you really need to focus on the problem in addition to, another level down. What I mean by that is so we're an agency. Let's say we help coaches on LinkedIn and or but it's not even just on LinkedIn. It's just where I see them. So it's you're helping not even coaches. You're helping maybe it's executive coaches that work with middle aged people. And so you have to get so specific to this persona of 1, then your ads, it's not just the ad then. The landing page, at least in the first hero area, the top area, at least need to sing that, hey. I help coaches, you know, executive coaches or something like that. Like, it's gotta be very specific because everything after that can kind of be whatever. Right? I mean, it it just but those two things three things come together. Right? Your site, your ad, and then that niche down persona. And in your services,
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did you start off offering that, or did you have to discover that you needed to kind of take someone through that whole journey? So I worked in a white label marketing agency. What that really means is you get everybody's stuff, and you have to figure it out with little to no contact with with the client. So I started out as like, hey. I'm a jack of all trades. I can do whatever you need, but, you know, at the end of the day, can can I? Yeah. But, you know, I I can do some stuff better than others. So so I really had to learn, like, okay. What what do I do? Like, a lot of people who come to me come to me because I already have experienced the medical industry. So, you know, they can speak to me. They can go like, hey. I do this. And then then I I put an ad, you know, does your knee hurt instead of do you have, like, patella for Memorial Syndrome? You know? Because nobody's gonna know what that is.
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No one's searching that and spelling it correctly. That's for sure. My knee hurts. Yeah. Is it cancer? Like, that's that's that weird
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is. So so, you know, I I really had to learn, like, sure. You could do everything. And if somebody came to you, like okay. But when you're looking for people, go for the best customer, the the ideal, best top, what what you can do well, and and keep repeating it.
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Yep. Agreed. Then you have opportunities to to do more. And and being a doctor or being, you know, a marketer or a coach, just start in one spot, find the niche of that because likely, you know I always said people with problems have problems. Like, when I was younger, I had a company that helped people with credit issues and some other things to help them find funding, and what I found is those people have problems. They have not just credit issues. They have fill in the blank. And and so the you know, and and not that it's always negative, but the truth is if you have a challenge, it's usually not the it's just the one you're currently focusing on. Typically, there's an ads might be the solution, but you might have not defined your persona. You might find your persona really, really well. It might just might be the wrong one or they don't buy or they're not they're not on Google for some reason. I don't know.
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Yeah. But that's kinda where we Pointing. Problem solved. That that's where the data part comes in. You know? You have to have a little little bit of, patience for the data. Let's look at it. What what does it actually say to us? Well, did anyone click your ad?
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Yeah. If they're not clicking. So what when you do ads so it's not just one time fire and forget. Is is there a way to, like, capture the people you're interacting with somehow and be able to retarget them? So so talk to me about, like, maybe the downstream effects of you ran an ad. Is there a way to kind of get back to them? And you may not be doing this, but I I just always thought, like, that's one of the things, like, kind of if I'm hitting an ad and I miss them,
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how how do I get them without having to readd it? Well, for at most of the remainder of this year, you can retarget them because whether it be LinkedIn or or Google or Facebook, you know, there's there's a tracking code, and it's tracking them. And if you've ever noticed, you might see ads for things that that you were looking at everywhere on the Internet on Facebook, but you've never searched anything on Facebook for it. It's because that pixel. So so, really, you can. But there's a lot of talk about 3rd party cookies, and that's what all those little tracking things are and about how they're going away. But, like, a year or 2 ago, there was that alarm about, oh, it's all going smoothly. And then they said, well, hold on. Let's not do it yet. So we'll we'll see what happens with that.
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Well, I I think the reason is because people are like, well, I'm not gonna ad advertise if I because what I I hear when I heard that and is so the cookie allows people to do very targeted ads, which is the business model of all these huge companies. As an owner of some if I have to go redo basically clean slate ads every time, that really benefits the Googles of the world, less so me because that means I'm just I'm getting I'm getting no mileage out of the ad at all. Like, I'm I'm cold clean every time. And that that seems like people would be like, no. Like, that's or it's gonna have to change the pricing model because it would be way too expensive if I have to do a clean slate at every Well, imagine a world where the only way that you could reach someone
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is based on the search terms they used, or else it's like a billboard, a newspaper because you can't gather that that data about something.
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Right. Well, exactly. You know? Actually, even the even the billboard example has more data than what they're describing because at least you can say people live here likely work downtown or at least a percentage. I can charge in that group. A thousand people drive that. Right. You have data there. That's even better than than sometimes. That's what we're going back to his newspaper. You said at Shirelion ads, she's she's recommending ads, paper advertisements. That's what she's not really saying. I'm just doing this because if you're still listening, I got to keep some humor in this thing. This is what we do. Sure. Listen, I'd love to give you the opportunity now. Now everyone don't hang up. Come on. Listen to this. Write this down. She's gonna give you her shameless plug of how to get ahold of her. How do you get how do they get ahold of you?
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Well, they find a carrier pigeon, and, you know, they put a little message on there. So the best way probably to get ahold of me is by email. I answer the phone, but I'm kinda shy with new people. I know it doesn't look like it here, but, you know, we sat and warmed up a little first. Also, you know, this way, I get all your information, and I can get back to you at shire@shirelion.com because, you know, I'm shameless. It's all about my name, mostly because I figure if you learn how to spell my name once, then you can find me.
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And it's so it's Shire, s h I r e at s h I r e ly0n.shirelion.com.
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Also, you're on LinkedIn. I am. Which is I'm on LinkedIn. That's a good place to My my website is my name, shyerlion.com. Made it real easy. Shirelion.com.
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I see the on your end, your, in your logo, it's there's a lion, and it has bright blue eyes. I don't think you have blue eyes. I don't think I actually have green eyes.
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But it's just my favorite color is blue, so I made everything blue. So I I hope every everybody else likes blue. So, yeah, the tie is perfect. It's blue.
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I just noticed I have a coffee stain on my tie for those listening. That's okay. I cut it off anyway, so I'll just cut it a little shorter. You get a tie, by the way. I'm going to send one to you. So you're going to get the Cut the Tie movement. It's going to be great. And if you're wondering what that is, that's entrepreneurs helping other entrepreneurs. It's a movement. I say movement because that's what they said in Hamilton and, you know, and I I really like that play. So that's how we do it. Shire, thank you so much for coming on today. I appreciate it. Had fun. I want you to, leave somebody with a little wisdom. Little wisdom. Is there one book someone should read
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as an entrepreneur? It's a real toss-up for me. You know, as just a plain old entrepreneur, I I think the Dale Carnegie book, oh, what is it? Making Friends, I'm actually yeah. How to Win Friends and Influence People is the perfect book because it it talks about not not talking about yourself. And, you know, when we get nervous, we have a tendency to, like, just ramble on about ourselves, but, you know, actually listening and relationships. But from, like, just a marketing perspective, I really like 80 20 sales and marketing by Perry Marshall, and he takes that that 80 20 Pareto thing and and breaks it down to, like, the marketing. Well, you'd probably use it anywhere in marketing or in entrepreneurship. You know? Do the $1,000 jobs. Take someone else to do, you know, the 20, 30, $100 and out jobs because you can't do it all, and you probably suck at some of it.
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You you make a really good point. So, first of all, the fact not talk about yourself and the fact your company is named after you, there's irony there when you said that. And I and and it doesn't escape me, but I have to do it. I have to I'm messing with you. It's easier because no one's taking that name. That's the definitely That's really what it came down to. It's like Shireline.com.
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I can't think of anything, and no one's taking it except for Shire Pharmaceuticals. I I better not get too famous because they might be upset about my first name.
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No. They could. They they're big. And I was just trying to find a way to plug your name again, shirelion.com. Shirelion.com. The other piece is, you know, when you talk about listening more, that's very true. I find even in sales conversations, you know, I'm one who always kind of looks at stuff and how we can improve. Even I find sometimes, like, people even ask me to explain stuff. I still feel like I'm not doing enough questions, And so I'm I I know that's such an important and entrepreneurs do this. You have to ask questions even when you're given the opportunity to explain what you do. Ask a few more questions without it being too annoying because I think that listening will help you tailor in what you do for people so you can learn a little bit more. So cause they're also sometimes not comfortable talking, so they just want you to go. But then if you don't hit the right points and you're guessing when you're interacting with somebody in a kind of a sales call, the extra questions loosen that up a bit. So I know I struggle with it. I would recommend it as well for people kind of doing it. The last thing I'd say is this. Like, I always like to know who do you like to follow for content? I like to selfishly go to LinkedIn since we're a LinkedIn agency, but you can pick any.
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You know, I I follow a lot of people everywhere. And if we were sticking to LinkedIn, Elena Verna and Alida Solis have some really great content on LinkedIn, shamelessly plugging women. I intentionally chose specifically women because I feel like there's there's never enough really strong woman voices in marketing. Because, honestly, if I was gonna talk about other content, they'd be guys. There's a guy called, Ben Heath on YouTube who's really, really great for Facebook, but he's a guy. And I really I really wanna see more women. Nothing against you, but I I feel like, you know, we all have something to bring to the table. And and being so gender specific all the time in marketing means that we kinda get these disjointed ads. Sometimes we need to have a full voice.
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Yeah. That's great. And those are I mean, I I follow both of them, actually, so I love their content. It's very, inspiring and thoughtful, and and it and it it's it's, it's definitely worth listening into. Thank you, by the way, for coming on today. I appreciate this. It was fun. You're, I I we're gonna follow-up after this a little bit because, we've talked about the ads piece, but, if you guys want to get a hold of shire@shirelion.com, any special offers, things like that if people kind of they've made it to this point, they get rewarded for, knowing where to go? Yeah. So,
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you know, for anyone who'd come from this podcast, I think, you know, a free 1 hour consultation where we sit down, talk about what you're doing right now, and then, you know, where does it make sense to go? Does it make sense to to go to ads? Do you have a strategy? Talk about, like, the strategy piece of it there. Wow. 1 hour with you. That's a lot. That's a that's a very generous piece because most times, it's like, hey. I'll give you 20 minutes. Let me make sure you're not crazy. Well And you go from there. But you're you're to people and get to know them too. So, like, the the first part of the call isn't like, okay. What do you do? It's like, hey. Who are you? What are your goals? You know? Like, those kinds of things.
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Right. Oh, yeah. That's good. Thank you, by the way. For anybody who's made it this far into the show, you rock. I appreciate you. And this is, this is what we do on the Never Been Promoted channel. I I interview, you know, fun, entrepreneurs. They're just like you. They're somewhere in their journey. They've needed help along the way. They've figured it out, and and they have a lot to offer. So, and, Shire, thanks again for for coming.
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I loved it.
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Until next time, I want you to go out there and go unleash your entrepreneur and do this by helping, you know, another entrepreneur if you're if you're in that state. If you need help, you know, reach out to somebody here who had never been promoted. And if you do need some help with ads, I would definitely go talk to Shire because she's a very kind person and she's one that's gonna she's gonna set you straight if you need to or not because, just getting to know her a little off camera, I know that she's not going to take a customer that that really isn't going to benefit from the services. And I think as you build your own entrepreneurial journey out there, take that in mind. Do do the right thing for people and do really do what you do really well. But until next time, thanks for listening, and go unleash your entrepreneur. Thanks.