Why Great Marketing Starts With Sales Psychology with Alisha Conlin-Hurd

Most agencies don’t fail because of bad marketing.

They fail because their systems, positioning, and sales processes are broken.

In this episode of The Takeover, we sit down with Alisha Conlin-Hurd to talk about what’s actually working in today’s agency landscape, from paid ads and funnel strategy to sales psychology, niche selection, and scaling without burning out.

Alisha shares how she went from cold calling and telco sales to launching hundreds of funnels across 120+ niches, building a 7-figure agency, and coaching agency owners around the world.

Keynotes & Chapter Markers

• 00:18 – Alisha’s journey from cold calling to entrepreneurship
• 05:22 – Using sales feedback loops to improve marketing performance
• 08:41 – How to increase show-up rates before the sales call
• 17:56 – Building winning ad angles and creative systems
• 29:34 – The scaling mistakes keeping agencies stuck
• 38:55 – Redefining success, impact, and the next chapter of growth

Connect with Alisha:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alishaconlinhurd/
Website: https://www.persuasionexperience.com

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About The Hosts:

• Tim & Cindy Dodd are the Co-founders of PEMA.io, based out of Miami, FL. Connect with Tim and Cindy on LinkedIn and Instagram:
  • Tim’s LinkedIn, Tim’s Instagram
  • Cindy’s LinkedIn, Cindy’s Instagram

About PEMA.io:

• Need B2B Appointments or want to grow your authority on LinkedIn? Learn more about our services here: https://www.pema.io/discover

Transcript

00:06

Welcome to The Takeover with Tim and Cindy, where we show you how to dominate your market.  Let's get winning.

00:18

excited to have you. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited. Let's kind of take it back to the beginning.  Walk us through how you got to where you are. You run a highly successful, highly scaled agency, but take us back to the beginning. Walk us through how you got there. Yes, amazing. So the origin story, what's relevant, I won't start with like  when a mom and a dad love each other very much. I'll fast forward a little bit.  But effectively when I finished  high school,

00:47

I thought I would be a dentist. I subscribed to that. was going to go to university for that. And I thought that because where I grew up was in a tiny little country town in Australia, under 800 people, no traffic lights. There's like a pub and a cemetery. You kind of go in, you come out. I didn't even understand that this world that I live in now was an option, know, business, et cetera. But luckily for me, I ended up going and working in a call center. I moved into like

01:15

the closest city and worked in a cold center doing cold calling.  And I was like, oh damn, what is this  business?  And so I started to learn about this business world. Anyway, fast forward,  I finished uni and I work in one of the biggest marketing agencies in Australia and I build out their sales funnel and CRO team,  launching like 400 websites, landing pages, funnels, marketing campaigns, everything from weird shit, man, like Brazilian butt lift doctors.

01:45

porn addiction counselors,  quit smoking hypnotists, everything.  And then I go to another company and help them launch seven and eight figure courses.  But during this time, it's lockdowns and me and my partner, we started this thing called Operation Freedom.  And we were like, okay, let's  figure out how to do our own thing. We started our side hustles.  They eventually overtook our main income.  And then we started this agency. And even when we started this agency,

02:14

We were like, wow, this sucks. We were working 14 hour days. I was very fat and pasty and hadn't seen the sunlight in about a year. So we sold everything and  packed everything into a suitcase and got a one-way ticket to Bali and just started traveling the world. And so now we run the agency um and it's awesome. And I love it. We work with high ticket service based brands. We're niching at the moment in the agency, which can be lessons learned. I'm happy to talk about.

02:41

And then I also run a coaching program for female agency owners on how they can do the same thing, hit 100K months and beyond  without hating life in a nutshell. So that's the  overview of the origin story.  So much. want to unpack. What a powerful story.  Let's start kind of at the beginning. You said you jumped into doing cold calling.  And I think an area that you and I align, Alicia, is you kind of talk about the best marketers  are ex-salespeople.

03:09

So walk me through how you think about marketing and sales, how they're so closely linked. And even with your background being in cold calling, which is extremely brutal,  but there's, sure so many lessons learned that you now pull into your agency.  How do you find that the two gel, marketing and sales? Yes.  And effectively,

03:29

It's funny, right? Because when I came from that small country town, I didn't even know what sales was. It was just literally like, hey, you're going to call people, you're going to see if they have a problem. And if they do, then it's your responsibility. If you can help them, it's your responsibility to close that sale. That was it. And I was like, okay, that sounds easy enough. And I was in the top 10 reps in a huge call center at like 19 straight away. I think because I didn't have any preconceptions of what sales was, like no idea.  And then I've done telco sales and agency sales.

03:57

And so when I do think about marketing and sales, and when I'm working with clients,  I try to tell them and teach them that it's one system. But often what happens in companies, it's two competing tribes that blame each other, don't understand what is success.  what we, it's just like  marketing and sales is one acquisition system and they have to be working very closely together. So I can rant on about this for days, but a couple of the key things  that I think is really important is from a marketer's point of view,  your job is not to deliver leads.

04:27

Your job is to deliver qualified buyers, especially I'm talking about Legion, right, as well. Like that's what I work in, high ticket Legion.  And so our job as marketers is to really understand the target market.  But what happens most of the time is a marketer has never actually spoken to a customer. And now what I see getting even worse  is they're using ChatGPT to do their research.  And so that link between the empathy and the intuition that a salesperson naturally has.

04:56

from talking to their market  is getting further and further and further removed from the marketing.  Right. So when we're working like in luckily in my company, I'm across sales and marketing so I can keep that link strong, but a lot of founders aren't. So you have to build these feedback loops within the system, within this acquisition system.  So a couple of the best feedback loops is just one  getting all of the sales team calls,  listening to them, or at least having them now we have AI. So

05:22

We automatically pull clients call transcripts, put them into a GPT,  closed and didn't close two separate GPTs that we can work with  to give us new  angle ideas, new split test ideas,  all of these different things. Because without that, you just can't succeed, right? Marketing's inputs and outputs, garbage in, garbage out, and a really true understanding of your market, how they think, how they talk, what is their problem, what's the transformation and what is the identity.  And so I think that a lot of marketers have a  disconnect.

05:52

from the fact that they're talking to a person  and a disdain of the market, of the sales team, who are the ones with the answers to their questions if they knew what questions to ask. So good. So good. Yeah, I think the best companies, the companies that are really thriving and scaling, they are seeing it as one system, right? The marketing and sales is linked. It's not marketing on one side and the sales team doing their own thing. And the more that we can kind of bridge that gap.

06:20

and close the loop, I love that you mentioned transcripts, right? And actually having visibility both on like what the sales team is doing on calls, but even in marketing,  right? And as much as we can close those feedback loops, I think that just creates such powerful  systems as well. You gave some really, really great tips there.  And listeners, I hope that you are taking notes because Alicia is a  wealth of knowledge. So when we talk about kind of  linking between marketing and sales,

06:50

What are you doing on kind of the sales side to make sure you kind of mentioned the feedback loops and things like that? Are there any other strategies that you're employing on sales specifically that you're seeing do really well in terms of scalability? So I'll talk two parts. One is sales team buy-in.  And so marketers, to get your sales team bought in,  you just have to think what's in it for me. Because that's all they're thinking. Like if you want somebody to take up a behavior or a habit or do something,  just think what's in it for me. And you just say, hey, dude,

07:19

Um, my job here is to help you to get better qualified leads. How we're going to be able to do that is if you give me this feedback and I need this every  month, week, whatever. So that's one thing, just getting that sales team buy in for, for the connection  in terms of sales and what's working. I can go into show up rates and like talking about like how to get higher show up rates for leads.  I can talk more specifically around  touch points, pre-call, which is a big.

07:46

part of the funnel that people don't understand or don't focus on to that point of booking a call or submitting a lead form before they speak to the sales team. There's actually a whole system that you need just in between that or the actual sales call. I'll let you choose your own adventure. one would you like to do? Show of grades before the call, during the call. Yes, all the things. Let's go before the call because we talk a lot about that on this show. Like what is happening prior to somebody getting on the call with you and how much?

08:12

opportunity there is. And then we can even dive into, because I know you talk a lot about this, like the post click or post experience. Let's do both. Awesome. So pre-call, we have to always remember this.  A funnel is not optional. It's just every touch point somebody's going to have with us. Okay. And then each of these touch points are a potential revenue leak. So we've got somebody to see our ad or whatever. They've clicked the ad, they've landed on our landing page. They've gone, yeah, that's interesting.  You've persuaded them and educated them and enough.

08:41

that they've now filled in a form and booked a call. Okay.  Now we have this like what people usually leave as dead time  before the call actually happens.  So the first thing here is we don't want to let them book too far in advance  because that like delay is the death of the sale that kills the momentum. So typically you only want them booking three to five days in advance. This can vary market to market, of course, but that's what we want.  What I don't want to see is your calendar open every single time slot  for months and months and months in advance.

09:10

Because that's a show right too, right? Yeah, that will affect your show. They're not going to show up. Also, like if they see an ad and then they book  that just like every minute that you don't talk to them, that starts to disintegrate like that, that momentum of them caring about what you do. So that's one.  And then we have to think, okay, what's the purpose of this part of the system? And the purpose of this part of the system is now confirmation.  And a lot of people forget this part. It's confirmation, it's education.  And it's also an opportunity for us to start.

09:38

breaking down false beliefs and objections. Because what we want to do in this stage is yes, get them to show up,  one,  but also we want to like soften for the sale. Like when somebody comes to the sale, they shouldn't be like, so what do you guys do? Oh, I forgot what I booked in. I don't know why I'm here.  If that's happening, that means that your marketing system pre-call isn't strong enough  and the sales starts in the marketing. So there's a few touch points that we can add in here. One is of course emails,  but what a lot of people do

10:05

is they just like use the default calenderly emails. Boring. Like no one's going to come, right? So what you're going to do instead is you're going to ask your sales team, okay,  what are the biggest um objections that you get to buy? And you're going to start to break them down before somebody comes to the call.  Now you're not going to be sending like crazy, like long emails. Maybe you are, you got to test it and you'll still have your reminder sequence, 24 hours, one hour, 15 minutes, whatever. But you have these touch points where you can start to break down these objections.

10:34

Additionally, if you can, want to segment the people coming through  and you want to send the best case studies to them in the emails. Right? So if you can imagine El World, where before someone speaks to you, they've looked at your three best case studies, they've watched the video, they've read the thing,  and they've either watched a video or read a thing with the three top sales objections they're to have.  They understand what you sell and they understand it's for them. And now you just having a call to see if they're a good fit. Like that's what we want to get done. So that's the email touch point.

11:03

The next touch point is a call, commitment and consistency. It's one of Cialdini's persuasion principles. So what you can do is you can get your setter or your closer, or if it's you as a founder, my EA does mine, call the person, ideally very quickly and say, hey, Cindy, I saw that you just booked in with Alicia. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions. So you get a couple more questions for the closer and just like, cool, confirming this appointment is still good for you. Alicia runs the company. She takes these calls seriously. She's going to be preparing.

11:31

I want to make sure that you are going to be attending this call." And Cindy says, ah, yes, like, of course I am. This sounds awesome. I'm going to be there.  And awesome. Hangs up call, passes on the information, done. So there's emails and then the calls.  The closer can also send a text message. And then you can also be, if it is Facebook ads, doing retargeting. So you can be sending ads to people,  like triggered by the event that they book in  and then flooding  their feed. So every time they go on Instagram, they see your face.

12:00

or a testimonial of your company. And that's kind of nearly everything you can do in that phase to make sure that they are going to show up, that they are going to be educated, and they have a higher chance of closing so that the sales team have a higher chance of success. So good. So good. I'm curious what your philosophy is around  having sales reps or closers doing  admin or doing anything other than closing, right? Like sending texts, sending reminders.

12:29

touching base of calls, what is your philosophy around, like, what should closers and salespeople be doing versus, the rest of the team? Yeah, I think a lot of closers are lazy.  And it depends. And if they're really good at closing, sometimes just keep your  stallion in its lane, you know?  But I  do find it comes down to  size of company and just roles and responsibilities. So there's like those tasks I just outlined should get done.  Additionally,

12:56

good closers will have a higher show up rate when they do their own outreach as well. So when, uh, when closers send their own loom video personalized, Hey Cindy, I just looked at your website. Like, I'm just going through this now. I've got a couple of things. I'm really excited to chat with you tomorrow. Like I'm going to be asking you these questions. Let's go.  Or sending like a quick selfie video. Hey Cindy, I was just looking at your website. I've got like three things to talk to you about. I'm really excited. Let's go. Or just sending a message, right?

13:23

So really that's like, I would say that that's on the closer.  And every instance where the closer does these sorts of things, I see a higher show up rate and I see a higher close rate because you've already built the rapport. Now let's think about the psychology behind that. It's because you've built familiarity and authority. So your sale now becomes a lot easier. So if you can do that as a closer, they've seen your face. That's why I encourage closers to send something with their face in it prior familiarity. Then on the call, it's not the first time that they're seeing their face. That can be jarring. It's like, oh.

13:53

I've seen this space before.  why Coca-Cola spends millions, billions on brand familiarity, right? Because familiarity makes people more comfortable  and you also have an opportunity to build authority. Like, why wouldn't you do those things? Because then you make more commissions. Right, right. So good. I want to shift gears a little bit. Let's talk about your experience with kind of paid ads and that world.

14:15

How have you seen it shift from when you started out, right, kind of in the industry  up until now? What are some of the major changes you've seen  in the paid ads world?  Yes.  So obviously  it's  not like it used to be 10 years ago when you could launch a fidget spinner, make millions of dollars and they,  but what I don't like is people saying that.

14:38

It's like, it's way harder now, like it's impossible. The algorithm is against me. It's like, well, that's just the wrong mindset to be going into this.  Is it  not as glory days as it used to be? Uh, yeah, of course that happens on any platform. Like it matures and now there's more people on it.  And so what I find is, is that so many people had built their strategies, and I use that term very loosely, around like tactics.  Like random acts of tactics instead of truly understanding  psychology.

15:07

target market and what makes a good ad.  So what used to happen on the platform is like really good media buying with some pretty average ads  could do really well.  Now, of course, with the Andromeda update, it's all about creative and creative diversity and being able to pump out a lot of ads and testing a lot of different angles.  Now, because a lot of marketers and businesses have not built that muscle  to be able to come up with ads  and to produce ads.

15:35

scale quickly  and they don't understand how to test them and find win rates and iterate on winners and all of these things because they didn't build a proper strategic system. They're really struggling in this.  So to refine and give you like more of a pointed answer then the biggest changes I would say is that media buying is still important. And I'm not a media buyer. So sometimes I can be very dismissive, but like if I fired all my media buyers, I would be in strife. So we need the media buyers, but it's less important. And the most important part.

16:01

now or where we really capitalize is how do you come up with good ad ideas? So again, everything's a system. Your business is just a series of systems  and you will rise or fall to the standard of those systems  and your ad creation is a system, right? And the start of that system, inputs and outputs, garbage in, garbage out, the start of that system is ideation.  So most people's ideas suck, which means that their strategy and their execution of their ads suck, which means they don't win.

16:29

So coming up with a really good ad idea, which you don't have to be like all creative and like a certain type of person, we can go into it more if you want, but that's the key. And I've seen many accounts, I've worked with over a thousand clients over the last 10 years  and coached hundreds more  is that you can find one ad and it's your million dollar ad.  If you can find one ad, it will be your million dollar ad.  All you're doing is you're trying to find that thing, that thing that's going to hit in the market. So good.

16:56

I would love to talk about that. Let's talk about ideation. What does that look like when you're coaching say agency,  owners, founders? What does ideation look like? What are some tips there? Yep. So with ideation at a high level for when we're doing our strategy,  what we want to be able to come up with is angles to test. So those angles might be just to name a few, like you might have a positive angle or contrarian angle, or you might have  a negative angle, whatever, right? But those are like just words.

17:23

Cause really in your market, what you're trying to figure out is yes, the angle. So for me, if I'm marketing to home builders,  I might have an angle around  like other agencies and like a negativity towards other agencies. might have an angle around inconsistent pipeline. might have an angle around  like feeling like you're still a glorified contractor  instead of an actual business owner or something like that. So these are like the angles that I might be testing.

17:49

Now, the other layer to the ad creation when we think about it is sub niches. So my audience is home builders.  Those are some potential angles. But within that now, I have sub niches.  And that sub niche might be  the 30 year old guy who's just started his own home building and he wants to do it right the first time. He loves homose. That's a sub niche within my home builder.  Now there might be the 40 year old guy who's taking over from his father and it's about succession planning and like you finally doing it on your own terms.

18:16

And you love homosey because all of these guys love homosey for some, for an obvious reason, but just trust me, they all love homosey. And then there might be the, guy that's been burnt by an agency. It's like, you know, marketing is important, but your job is not the marketing. Your job is to close the deals. And so I might make an ad where it's like me with a hammer banging on something like just on purpose, dumb, like on purpose, really bad. And it would get their attention because I'd be like, what is this chick doing? And I'd be like, look.

18:42

To be honest, I don't know how to custom homes and remodel, but you do. And what I do know is this marketing, blah, blah, blah.  And then I would go into the ad, right? Cause that's like a way, a hook that I can use within the angle.  So that's like a framework that we use. And then we test different hooks  with a body and a call to action within each of those angles.  In my head, I can see my framework. Hopefully my words have painted a picture for everybody else. um

19:06

And so that's that. Then it's like, okay, cool. But how do I come up with those ideas? Right. Because you need fuel to create that creativity.  So like the easiest thing to do is steal.  Great artists steal.  Now by that, I'm not saying go and take your competitor's ad and like literally steal it.  You can get in trouble on IP for that.  And your ad can get taken down. They can flag it to Meta.  But what I am saying is  you can go to tools like  4play or Atria.

19:34

They've got inspiration boards, which is all of the ads. You can even just go to the Facebook ads library  and like type in your niche, type in something  and go and find ads that are winning.  Most of the time you can see when an ad started and generally speaking, the longer an ad has been running, the better it is. Caveat, a lot of people are bad at marketing, so they might be flogging an ad  that is shit, like you don't know. Yeah, yeah. Just like a disclaimer, some people are not good at their jobs.

20:01

um But like, if you look at more reputable brands, it will be fine. So the goal is you want to find these ads that are already working and model them. That's where you can go to. can find them. Tools like Atria even allow you to pull the script. You can pull the script, put it into ChatGPT,  if you've got all of your target market stuff, and it can give you a V1 of that script. That's it. So like, that's one place to get them. Another place that we get our best ideas is through Leadform, Phil's.

20:27

And then also the sales calls, the sales calls and talking to the client, interviewing the client. Because  even yesterday I was talking to one of these home builders and I was explaining, okay, this is the importance of this sales marketing feedback. And they're like, oh, like we can't get our guys, we can't get the information from our guys. So I start asking them questions and they start talking about stuff. And then I was like, cool guys, I'm to pause you there. I've got three ad angles already that I know to run. And I ran them through, like I explained it to them because that's our job as agencies. Okay, so you just told me, you know,  this is for attic installation.

20:57

It's not usually um a new home owner that wants to work with you. It's actually someone who's in their 40s, 50s, 60s. It's their first or second home  and they're wiser and they know blah, blah. And I was like, great, I'm now going to make an ad angle about like wisdom. Hey, you're not some first home buyer that thinks that adding a nice fancy  painting into their house is going to be the way. Like, you know that the secret to success in your home is going to be a high performance house.  And so like I took that concept and showed them how we can build these angles around it. So that's another way as well.

21:27

say your team insights,  lead forms, obviously like Reddit, YouTube comments, et cetera, em and actually just talking to people. That's where the best ideas come from. So good. So good. It's actually getting in the weeds. I think that's so powerful though, right? There's so many opportunities to find ideas, speaking to people, speaking to customers,  even too, just like, I think people will tend to lean towards  ideation on tools like Chai GPT, Claude, et cetera. But I always think that

21:56

Now that's what your competitors are doing too, right? So you speaking to clients and getting real life data, I mean, how much more powerful is that ideation process when you're getting it from places where not, you know, the typical person is looking. So  love those ideas that you shared, Alicia, super powerful. So you are, you have a co-founder. ah What is that process like? How do you two work together?  Synergies, differences, how is it having kind of a co-founder partner relationship?

22:26

Yeah, it's funny, it's probably one of the most common questions I get. It's like, oh my gosh, how do you work with your boyfriend? I could never work with my partner. I'm like, I could never do it. People say that to me all the time too. You work with your partner as well? Yes. Yes. My husband. I think it's the most blessed, amazing experience ever. imagine building something out of nothing, having an idea and getting to build it with your best friend and

22:52

I don't even know how people without a co-founder in general  do it. I think it would be also really hard to have  a partner still in a nine to five  and maybe not understanding it with you.  And so the positives of it is that I think we move really fast because sometimes the negative is it's like you're about to go to sleep and one of us will be like, so I was just thinking and it's like, uh ah, no. That's right.  And it's like, no, don't talk to me right now. So we've gotten better at that where it's like,

23:22

Hey FYI, I'm switched off for the day now.  Don't talk to me. I'm in girlfriend mode. Thank you. Like I'm now accepting not work stuff.  So that's, that's one thing, but I love it. think it's like a really beautiful experience and I'm super proud of like what we've built together and I can't imagine doing it with anybody else. And then  I'll be interested to get your opinion. The other thing is also obviously like you've got a business relationship, but you've also got a romantic relationship.  so for me in the company,

23:50

I run the business, Matt's more like in our head of marketing role.  And so there's times, of course, where I'm like, Hey, I'm not happy with this. This is not good. And so  like, how do you communicate that respectfully? Or if you disagree on something in the business  and then business time closes 10 minutes later, and then you're now in boyfriend, girlfriend mode. And it's like,  Hey, how was work? Was your boss a bitch or like, was it all good? Like, how did you personally say?  And so I think like the biggest thing that we've gotten better at  is, our communication and how to communicate really.

24:19

respectfully.  And one thing that we're working on, which I think  comes and goes for us is like making sure that we're making time for our relationship and scheduling in those date nights, weekends away. We live in Bali, so we have a lot of people visiting us.  And then it can be like, oh, we haven't hung out alone in four weeks. Like, let's make sure we're making time for our relationship. One of the best ways we love to do that, we're really big into life design. So we'll do like wealth weekends, we'll go to like a really bougie resort, maybe read a book together or whatever, and just like talk about.

24:48

like our life and what we want to do and making money and  yeah, what impact we want to have, all those things.  How do you guys go?  Good. So good. I think it's very similar for sure. We are very complimentary in that I am kind of operations, Tim is very marketing sales. So we work well because  we have complimentary skills.  And I always say like for us, it's marriage first and then the business. We're both  business obsessed.

25:16

ah And so we could talk about business all day,  but us having like marriage as the priority, like I know that he has my back and I have his  and that intentional time as you're mentioning to really pour into marriage  beyond the business, right? Because this agency that we have now  may not be a forever, we might exit, we might sell it, whatever that looks like and then we're on to the next thing,  but our marriage is always going to be there. And so us prioritizing that and what it looks like.

25:43

But I do agree there is nothing more powerful than building with somebody that you guys have the same vision, you're like working towards this common goal.  It really is super powerful. um And then I always lean on even if there is conflict in the business or like I'm calling him out about something, it's like coming from a place of good intention, right? I think Tim knows like vice versa. If I'm calling him out or he's doing the same, it's never from a place of like, hey, like I want to see you do bad or like I'm calling you out for any other reason than...

26:13

Like I want us to like do good together. Yeah, love it. But it does take time, right? Communication is really at the heart of it for sure. Yeah. So good. So let's talk about, you say you coach agencies. What are some of like the biggest mistakes that you see agency owners making that you coach?  Or even today, right, the agency landscape is like shifting so, so fast. How are you coaching your agencies to kind of adjust and adapt in today's market?

26:40

So some of the biggest mistakes, would say, honestly, it's like the way that we structure the program is to overcome those biggest mistakes. And I only know those big mistakes because I made them all numerous times. I am the best at the mistakes. And even when I was writing the target market avatar for the program, I was like, I don't know, I've never seen Euphoria, but there's that internet meme and it's like, wait, is this play about us? And I was literally like,

27:04

Oh my gosh, this is about me.  Okay.  That's good. That's good. That's when you know, got something,  something hot.  And so the biggest mistakes that I see,  especially like in this program with the women and, and men do it too. It's just a human thing, but  it's a lack of clarity on the goal. And so the goal's really fuzzy, which means that the plan to hit the goal.

27:24

is really fuzzy, which also means that you stay inconsistent, which also means that you can easily get shiny object syndrome. So the biggest thing that we have to do to start with, and a lot of it like, yes, I give you like the systems and the game plan and you can talk to me and whatever, but  it's like, girl, we know all of the information exists on the internet on what to do.

27:42

Like the boys have put it out there. It's all out there. Like there's not an information problem. There's an implementation problem. Do you know what I mean? And so it's like, what we have to do is like, well, why weren't you taking implementation? Like, why aren't you getting to where you want to go? Why have you been stuck at 20 K a month for three years? Like  we have to like address that root cause.  And so usually that is because you haven't set a clear enough goal and reverse engineered the economics.  So, so like, that's the first thing that we do. I'll be like, okay, how much do you charge? Where are you now? What is the gap?

28:12

Are you happy with who you serve? Do we have to revisit your niche? What is your pricing? Have you got a productized service and offer?  And I'm a big believer in choosing a niche. I, if I could turn back time, I would go back and I would  choose a niche and I didn't. And this is why people don't because of two things. One is ego. That was my problem.  I was like, no, I'm going to build this crazy boutique agency  and it's going to like  have all of the biggest clients. And it's like, okay, I've tried that. No, I didn't like it.

28:40

So, and there's a lot of amazing agency owners who have done it and love it. But that's the thing, it's like,  Matt and I built this for freedom. I'm not getting stuck in something I don't enjoy. Like that like drains my energy. Obviously there's times where I'm doing stuff I don't enjoy, but if I'm not enjoying the business overall, no. Like we will put on the brakes and like  revisit it and fix it. Um, and we've learned that over time. So  it's that niching, it's that productization, it's the pricing and the offer.

29:08

So once we understand where are you now, where do you want to be?  Then I can run through my calculator with them and be like, cool, based on a churn rate of this, you're going to need to acquire this many new clients this year. Okay. And you're to need to apply in this many a month. Cool. They never knew that before, but now we know that that's the first thing is getting clarity on this goal.  Then it's just like, okay, well, where, what's going to be your channel strategy? When it comes to channel strategies,  you can, there's the predictable consistent.

29:34

that's ads and that's cold email. Yes, you can have referral, organic, all of these things, but it's very hard to predict the numbers. So you can have cold outreach, which is your DMs, which is your email, or you can do ads. That's it.  And depending on their scaling goals and the volume of clients, then that's another thing. And then literally, it's just me giving out digital bitch slaps when people don't stick to the plan. But that's it. And that's what I need as well.  I'm not above it. I just have my own coaches and my own systems.  And then having someone to ask questions.

30:03

Right? Because you get in your own head.  I know for me, again, I don't know about the male experience, but I know for me as a chick,  like I can get a lot of self-doubt and a lot of perfectionism.  I can over-service clients, um like gold plate clients do too much.  And I've hired and failed at that before, which means I can have a lot of control issues within the agency.  And I just do the work instead of creating the systems for leverage to get out of the work. I've made the wrong hires, all of these things.

30:30

But when you're just really going back to your question, like, what are people getting wrong? It's just, what do you focus on? What is the clarity? Where are we going? And then remembering those levels to the game. Because zero to 10K, there's certain things that you need to build and install. And there's like certain gates to get out of the zero to 10K. Then like the 10 to 30K, same thing. There's certain things you need to install and do. The 32, 100K and the 100K plus. And so some mistakes that people make is that they're at zero to 10K.

30:59

And they're focusing on activities that someone in the 30 to 100 K should be doing. And it's like, no levels to the game. You can move through those levels really fast. Um, and you don't want to move through those levels until you clear the room on things. So I've done that issue. I've gone to over a hundred K, but I didn't do something in the 10 to 30 K and your problem scale with you. Do you know what I mean? Like, and then it's like, ah, should have fricking done this like back then. There's like, back I go, I've to go fix this. So yeah.

31:29

um I'll pause there because the second part of your question was around like AI and technology changing. But those are like the main things that agency owners get wrong and like how to combat them and overcome them.  good. You spoke about niching and like kind of niching down. How niche are you recommending your clients go? Because I'm curious about this too.  If there's a market for underwater basket weavers, I'm there. That's going to be me.  Honestly, because it's like depends like what do you want to build there? And so we got to do like a lot of vision setting. Well, are you going to be a boutique agency?

31:58

or like a large agency, what sort of lifestyle do you have? What sort of impact do you want to have? How involved do you want to be in the work? What do you enjoy? For me, I don't want to be involved in the day to day. I love training my team. I love hiring. I love sales. I love talking to clients, but I don't want to do the work. And so what I was doing is I was building, like I was like, oh yeah, I've niched like high ticket service based industries.

32:22

Alisha, that is not me she knew.  Oh yeah, my niche is everybody. uh Yeah, everybody. And so now it's like, it's hard because for me it's easy. Like it is I've worked with so many clients, like I can jump into a coaching business and then a home builder and then a high ticket medical and then a this and a this and a this. It's really hard for my team and it's really hard to train my team. Like we're solving all of these different problems.

32:47

So when it comes to niching, just gives you leverage as a business owner. It gives you leverage. You have a system, it works.  And then also it makes sales freaking easier. Cause if you're like, Hey,  I have an agency that's for underwater basket weavers that underwater basket weavers like, well, damn, yeah, you do. I'm going to work with you over the other random agency who works with everybody else. So ego is one reason people don't niche. The other is usually scarcity. is it going to be a large enough total addressable market?

33:16

I know a guy that  has an agency that's like wedding venues  and he has like 400 clients. Do you know what I mean? Like,  so for me, I'm like, well, how many clients do I really need? What's my pricing? What's my profit margins going to be? And I'm just going to go and like, I'm now like in the process of like testing these niche, looking back at our best case studies, running ads, bringing in like two or three niches where like, I know we can deliver seeing what feels right for us. And then I'll scale out, scale back out the agency based on that niche.

33:43

You said that you guys run an agency. it  a  niche agency or are you psychopaths like me? Great question. So we do LinkedIn marketing. So we are niched on a platform. put all our eggs in LinkedIn.  But in terms of like who we serve as, it's pretty broad to be honest. But we have found that there's certain niches that

34:04

we work great with, for example, like we're the agency's agency. So marketing agency hire us to do LinkedIn for them because they usually focus on other platforms and they haven't been able to nail down LinkedIn. That's where we come in.  So we have been able to, like you mentioned, like identify  certain verticals, marketing agencies, consultants, IT professionals, for example, that we do really well with, but we also wouldn't turn, like, you know, turn somebody away if they come to us, but where our marketing is going,  it's on those niches that we know produce the best.

34:34

But it has gotten like, it's taken us a while to get to this point, right? Where we know  verticals produce.  I think sometimes people are too early on and they want to niche and they haven't tested. So it's like,  what are you, what are you niching about? Do you know what I mean? And two, when you're so niched, your ad costs or advertising costs, outreach costs, marketing costs goes super high too, right? Because you're turning away so many people.  So I'm like for and against niching.

35:02

both ways um because I've seen like really smaller companies, smaller agencies try to niche  and then their ad costs or marketing costs just go through the roof. So I think there's ways to do it really well once you've been able to actually test and vet that that is truly your best ICP with a client acquisition cost that makes sense for you. Right.  Yeah. And I guess kind of like what you were saying at the start of this conversation, it depends on like the definition of niching, right? Because if you're like

35:31

I want coaches that teach dog training in Arizona who are over 50.  There's going to be niche. Those ads are going to fatigue and it's going to be harder to find them. But if you're like, want wedding venues, I want home builders, I want med spas. I think you can like very easily acquire those clients. And exactly what you said, when, when somebody's in that, this is like that levels to the game thing, right? When you're in that zero to 10 K, that is your focus. You are like finding your vibe, your niche, what you're going to be doing because.

36:00

Yeah, just trust me, there's no leverage in doing like super broad. But in saying that there's amazing agency owners who have built agencies like that, it all comes back to, I, and this was the hardest question I've ever asked myself.  And I still struggle with what do you want? Like, what do I want me as Alicia? This business has to serve me, not enslave me. So what do I want out of this business? Like, what is my vision for this business? What am I building here? And then if your vision is a boutique.

36:27

company that does these things and works with these people, awesome. Like now just create the action plan to bring it to life. So it's like that awareness of what you want, the clarity, like really dialing it in and then the action plan. But a lot of people are like fuzzy across all of those three things. Do you know what I mean? Like they're fuzzy, which just means that you start like  having that addiction to busy work. You're doing the productive procrastination. You start things, but you're not consistent.  And so you keep spinning your wheels and you stay stuck.

36:56

Exactly. 100%. Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that 100%. And I think too, it's because we see what other people are doing, right? So we're on Instagram and we're seeing what a thousand other agencies are doing and we're comparing ourselves and you're like, maybe that should be my goal. But I love that you mentioned that. Figure out what your goal is, what it is that you truly want, right? Irrespective, regardless of what everybody else is doing, and then figure out how to get your goal from that place of full confidence in like, this is what.

37:26

I want. That is very powerful. So good. Yes. And the goal is allowed to change. Like you're under no obligation to be who you were five minutes ago. The goal's allowed to change as long as it's your goal. And what you want to do is like, you want to make sure that when you get to the top of the mountain and you're looking around, you climbed the right mountain. Do you know what I mean? Like you want to make sure that you go to the top of the right mountain and it was your mountain to climb, not somebody else's. So yeah.

37:55

and knowing your numbers, especially girls numbers, knowing your economics.  What are your profit margins? What's your team's capacity? How much like  make sure that you're paying yourself. What are you taking home? What's going to be your profit?  At what point, when you start to bring in a management layer as an agency, does it eat into your profits and you're going to eat shit for a while until you scale past that? Like you have to understand  these different things in these different phases.  good. You have kind of lived this out. You set the goal. You scaled your agency, still scaling.

38:25

What does it look like in this next phase for Alicia? What are you excited about?  I should know, right? Like what do I want now? And  that is something that I'm like  actively living in.  And so I had this realization um maybe like a month ago now.  for me, like, so what, when we first started on this four years ago, what we wanted was seven figure agency, travel the world, live in Bali, have a cool life. And so that was my goal. And my identity got

38:55

called,  and now my identity matches my life and my business.  Now, maybe like for one, one and a half years,  I think  I've been doing the same thing. That's why I can say this very confidently where I'm like testing stuff. I tried PPL, I tried these things, I did this, but I didn't stick to anything. Now, why didn't I stick to anything?  It's because I didn't reset my identity. Okay, well, like what's next, right? Like, am I happy here? Do I want to keep going here? I'm not personally. I think that  I know that I'm capable of really amazing things.

39:23

And that's what frustrates me when I get stuck. Like I know I can do really amazing things. And so I'm just doing the same things that I teach the women or the other agency owners. It's like, cool.  Now I'm like, okay, well, what's my next identity? Really for this next level to be able to pull, get pulled there, I'm going to need something bigger outside of myself. A new why, what's my new why? Where am I going? What am I focusing on? Why am I doing this? Otherwise it's so hard to stay motivated. And I'm saying that with inverted commas for people just listening,  motivated.

39:52

Um, and to do the hard things because otherwise you just give up because you don't have a strong enough. Why?  So like, what's next? What am I focusing on?  Um, impact. That's it. Like, how can I help the most amount of people? How can I have fun and how can I make money  for me?  Um, it's like, well, why do I want to make money? Cause like we're fine now. It's like, how much more money can you make? Right. But you've got to think about what are your mindsets around money? So I've had to like rewrite a lot of mine growing up poor, like single mom, four kids, cetera.

40:21

And so why do I want to make money?  Well, I think money gives you votes in society to make the change that you want. So  with like with my money and how I can now serve people, I flew my family over to Bali like two weeks ago, my mum and my three siblings.  And we had our first ever family holiday and we went snorkeling and saw manta rays and we went on water slides and  we went out and played pool and all of this stuff. Like, I'm so proud and I could bankroll the whole thing. But more importantly, I could take time off to be with them and be present.

40:51

with them and I'm super proud of that.  And so then I've been able to build this home for a family here in Bali and it's like gone from this like shack to this beautiful home that with these two girls that live in it and a mum and a dad and all of this stuff, right? So this is my why. And then this coaching program with the women, like, like I love helping people. And I think that if all of my trauma and dumb shit can't go to a good place to help people avoid that, like what kind of like, what is all of the point?  So you asked me a simple question. What's next? I've given you a complex answer.

41:20

But I also like to teach the way that I like to show people how I think about things because I think a lot of people when they go on podcasts, they're very sure it's like, this is it, this is the answer.  And all I know is that I don't know.  And all I know is that action creates information.  And so  what I need to do is I need to decide what I want. I have to like really think on it, prey on it. Like, what do I want? Why am I here? Like, what am I being called to do? um And is it truly what I want? Is it truly meant for me? Because if it's not meant for me, I don't want it.

41:50

Right? Like is it truly meant for me before I put my energy and my life force into it? And then know what I want. Be very blunt with my reality now. A lot of people lie to themselves about what is their reality. So be very blunt about where, like, where am I really now? Like what dumb stuff am I doing? Like what won't I tolerate anymore? Where am I going to raise the floor on things? What are my standards in my life that I need to raise? And then I just look at the gap. Cool. And then I just think, all right.

42:18

I just literally make myself a little video game. like, I'm here, I want to go here.  What do I think the levels are going to be? What do I think the gates are going to be to achieve that level?  And then my goal is just to collapse the realities as quickly as possible. And so my vision right now is that I'd like to have my partner and I'd like to have kids in maybe three years. I want to get to a certain financial level and investments where like I'll just have the security that I never had growing up. Like I really want that. So I have the choice to not work.

42:44

right? And like be present and or I can work because I do love working but I want the choice. um I want to be able to help more people and impact more people  and then through things like I didn't talk about the scholarship I'm making,  building these homes,  looking after my family like that's the service and through my church and stuff  that I want to be able to give back to the community as well. That was my long answer to your maybe simple question. That's beautiful. I love that you walked us through how you think about it too and there is so much value in that.

43:13

um We went super high level with goals and vision. We went down in the weeds with funnels.  This was an amazing conversation, Alicia.  Who are your ideal clients? Who do you work with and how can people get in touch? Yes. So  I'm testing my niche at the moment. So depending when this podcast comes out, you could be that person.  But where we're really focusing is home builders. Because I love like boring industries or industries where everyone's bad at marketing. And I'm like,

43:40

You know, like the rock, I feel like the rock going into a kindergarten and like choke slamming some kids. like, haha.  Like I like to put myself in a position  where it's impossible to lose. Like, okay, home builders, high ticket medical, that's where we're testing at the moment. But this is the thing, I don't want everyone to be like, oh yeah, she's got it all figured out. No, no.  I am constantly figuring things out, but I'm just happy to fail.  Failure is just part of it and I just learned from it. I don't believe in failure, I just believe in lessons learned.

44:08

And hopefully I'm not dumb enough to keep having the same lessons, right? So that's one thing.  If you are an agency owner, specifically female agency owners, we have a program. If you are a man, you can still reach out. do some private coaching as well, but the program is for women.  And I just give a lot of it for free or pretty much everything for free on my YouTube. Like I really want to help people. I really want to make an impact. um

44:30

So can find me there as well, all under my name, Alicia Conlon-Hird, which is hard to spell. So hopefully it'll be in the show notes.  It will absolutely be in the show notes. We'll link all of those links for you all. And Alicia, thanks so much for joining the Takeover. Thank you for having me.