The Therapy Business Podcast
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The Therapy Business Podcast
Get Marketing Clarity with Ross Herosian
Marketing overwhelm is one of the biggest challenges for small business owners, creating a "marketing fog" that leads to analysis paralysis. Ross Herosian, founder of Tricycle Creative, shares his proven methodology for helping entrepreneurs cut through the confusion and develop effective marketing strategies.
• Using the "Flats and Fixes" framework to identify and solve the three most common marketing challenges
• Why marketing to everyone means you effectively reach no one
• The importance of customer clarity in creating targeted messaging that resonates
• Understanding your actual brand beyond just having a logo
• Developing a strategic content plan that aligns with your available time and resources
• Creating a sustainable marketing approach that builds on previous learning
• Finding your authentic brand voice that connects with your ideal clients
• Setting realistic marketing expectations based on your business capacity
• Prioritizing marketing activities that deliver the most impact
Learn more about the Marketing Clarity Program at getmarketingclarity.com
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*Intro/outro song credit:
King Around Here by Alex Grohl
When it comes to small business marketing is one of the most challenging pieces there is. Today, I'm coming out with you a special guest video. I interviewed my good friend, Ross Hiroshin, who is the founder of Tricycle Creative. He helps small business owners get clarity when it comes to their marketing, and I was able to squeeze out a lot of really valuable information out of him. In this video, he walks us through three problems that every business owner seems to face, and not only that he also tells us how to fix them. So this is one you're going to want to stop what you're doing. Stick around, because this is going to be the most value packed half hour you've ever spent.
Speaker 1:My name is Craig and I'm the owner of Dacey Financial Coaching. Our team is on a mission to make your therapy practice permanently profitable. If you own a solo or group practice, we're here to help you build a business that creates more time, makes more money and serves more people. This is the therapy business podcast. What's up everybody? Thanks for being here. Ross, I have Ross here. He is here. I am One of a kind you know, Ross. Why don't you tell us what do you do? Who are you? Why are you even on my YouTube channel?
Speaker 2:Why have I taken over your YouTube channel? So I am a marketing coach. We're two fellow coaches here. I help small business owners, solopreneurs and what I kind of call the small business marketer who are struggling with their digital marketing navigate through what I call the marketing fog. Small business marketer people find themselves kind of at this marketing analysis paralysis. I don't know what to do, I don't know where to go. There's so many options. I'm really overwhelmed. I don't have the time, I don't know what to do, I don't have the money. I hope to clear all that up, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't know what to do is. I can feel that. I kind of imagine you hear this a lot too in what you do working with people on finances, always, always, yeah, it's. It's not only not knowing what to do, but where to invest our time, where to invest our money. Um, and then just that idea of for me, especially before we started talking, was the overwhelm of everything's new and always changing and I don't know what to do.
Speaker 2:Like you said, yeah, and when you're a solopreneur or a small business owner, you're also juggling your, which also, hopefully, you're passionate about.
Speaker 1:So just a means to an end.
Speaker 2:I think it's important when, when you work with, particularly, a marketing coach or a financial coach, that they understand that I appreciate that you know people. They're only 24 hours in the day. There's only so much time that you can dedicate to marketing, to sales, to there's a finite amount of time. So I think a big part of it is about creating strategies and plans that are both efficient and effective, and I and I I know that's true with what you do on the financial side too 100%.
Speaker 1:And even I mean, you're talking about solopreneurs and when you talk about money and and that's, there's two commodities that we have it's time and money and solopreneurs don't necessarily have the funds to go out and hire people to do these things, and so just utilizing that resource of time and having to dig into it. But then how can we maximize that? Necessarily have the funds to go out and hire people to do these things and so just utilizing that resource of time and having to dig into it, but then how can we maximize that and make it simpler? Is that? Is that right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I think that's also why I called my company Tricycle Creative. So for me it was very important that I can come in and act as the training wheels for these people, for these small business, because they couldn't afford to hire that medium, even like to hire an agency. Because what you need first is a plan and understanding, and that's what I provide. And then, as my clients get smarter, get better, we can take training wheels off in some ways. You know it's like maybe you're now you get SEO, we can take those training wheels off. You know it's like maybe you're now you get SEO, we can take those training wheels off. You can ride yourself and we can work on something else. Or you can take that knowledge and hire a agency. Right, that's not a loss for me, that's a win when a client grows so much that they get to do that.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. I think that's great, and even just in the work that you and I have done together, for full disclosure to everyone, I've hired Ross because he's amazing. It's. I have this toolkit and of just stuff, I more clarity on what I'm doing. You get you, help eliminate that fog, and now I have this toolkit and it's you and I have the conversation of what's next, what do I want to take this and implement it? Do I want to take it to someone to help or take it over? But the choice is mine and the clarity is there. That was a barrier for me for so many years before finally somebody a coach walked me through, believe it or not, as a coach. I think having a coach is just like, so essential to. It saves you so much time and money, and that's what you did with me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I this idea where, if you're a coach, that you don't feel like you need a coach, part of me feels like I don't know, like you're shooting yourself in the foot If you don't believe in, in kind of the I'll say industry if you will, or whatever that you're doing. Um, I mean, you've got to find the right one, and if you are a coach I hope you've, and this is part of even my clarity coaching program you know who your people are. Um, and I think, conversely, when you're a coach, finding the right coach for the right need is really important, Kind of as a tangent, because we're recording this in March, march Madness, I'm a huge basketball fan. Okay, I love basketball. I go out, I shoot hoops a couple of times a week. Still, I still got it. In case you're wondering, I'm a baller. I'm sure you're curious, but I'm a Duke Blue Devils fan.
Speaker 2:People may now leave your channel. Sorry about or unsubscribe. Sorry about that, but I'm a huge fan of Coach K. He's retiring this year. He's a legendary coach. I don't care if you like Duke or not, he's a legendary coach and I was listening to him on the Charles Barkley in the steam room podcast and he was talking about when he went to work kind of for the first time on the dream team, then I mean we're talking nineties dream team, like the dream team that put USA basketball on the map. He was an assistant coach. He's a legendary coach. He was an assistant coach to Chuck Daly, who is also, in his own right, a legendary coach, and he learned so much from him. So I think, no matter where you feel like you are in your coaching business, I'm a huge believer you can always learn from other coaches 100%.
Speaker 1:I agree. There's that analogy that a doctor needs a doctor and if a doctor is thinking I don't need to go to the doctor because I am a doctor, there's a severe problem there.
Speaker 2:That's right. I'm not going to waste my money on a doctor?
Speaker 1:How are you speaking out to other people that what I do is valuable? How am I asking people to invest in what I do if I'm not willing to make that investment the same? It's almost hypocritical to an extent.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But yeah, with all that said so, you help solopreneurs, small business owners, really find that clarity in marketing. What does that look like? How do you do that? Give me some clarity, man, sure.
Speaker 2:So my program it's called the Marketing Clarity Program. It's a nine-week program and people can learn more about it. If they want to go right down here to getmarketingclaritycom learn more about it. If they want to go right down here to getmarketingclaritycom, I have all the details there. But what I do is I help again this solopreneur, small business marketer you may even be a small business owner who is hired like a junior marketer. I work with a ton of people just like that, where I work with their junior marketer, because junior marketer typically needs a skill upgrade and need some help. So what I do is I help essentially to give these people a actionable, customizable marketing and content plan, and that's because I'm yet to meet a prospect that has one. I've been doing this for four years. I've talked to a lot of people and every time I ask about can you send me your marketing plan, Crickets?
Speaker 1:Crickets, except for me. Man, when you talk to me you're like oh, this guy's got it all.
Speaker 2:This is going to be a hard sell because he's on it. You now I actually will say, craig, you had more than the average client that I sign on, but interestingly enough, you were very similar to a lot of my clients in that you had it in pieces. You had a piece here, you had a thing here, you had ideas here, you had this over here. But the problem with that is that it's not in one central place where all the components are connected. So one of the many things we do inside of my clarity program is something I call flats and fixes, so I thought I could actually share that with you and with your audience today in this video.
Speaker 1:Please, please, show us what flats and fixes. First of all, teach us about it. Where does that name come from?
Speaker 2:So, flats and Fixes, it's just a playoff. Sometimes I'm a little too on the nose, even branding wise. But tricycle creative, you can get a flat tire and that messes you up, slows you down, completely, stalls you, takes you out of the game. So, really, this is about identifying, when you're a small business marketer, what the flats that your customers have and what your fixes are for them, because this is very important in your messaging and in the content you create. It really weaves into everything that you do. So, uh, do you want, do you want, me to show you mine? Please show me. You showed me yours, so I guess I'll show you mine, all right.
Speaker 2:So Best segue ever Not pictured here, all right, so here's what we're going to do. This is literally pulled straight out from my coaching program. It's one of the many, many, many exercises we do over the course of the nine weeks. And again, if you want to learn more, you can head on over to getmarketingclaritycom. Book your 15-minute call with me. It's all. It takes 15 minutes. See if we're a good fit. I'm not going to twist your arm. I don't do good arm twisting, all right, so we're going to break this. I love threes. Threes, just historically, are a really consumable number. Also, it plays really nicely into tricycle, so just worked out that way.
Speaker 2:So when we're doing this, we start with the three flats, okay. And again, the flats are the challenges, the issues that your customers have. So then, conversely, we want to look at the fixes. So if they're having this problem, what's your solution to that problem? Okay, so let's start here. These are the three most common things in the years that I've been working with small business marketers and solopreneurs that as longer I did it, I just kept hearing the same answers or variations of the same three answers. The first one that they're marketing to everyone or no one. Those are the same problem. If you're marketing to everyone, it doesn't matter. If you're marketing to no one, it doesn't matter. Right? And Craig, if you want to chime in here, I'd be curious if any of these really hit, hit you hard when we get through the three flats.
Speaker 1:I'm laughing over here, because marketing to everyone is exactly what I tried to do when I first started. If somebody asked me like hey, you're a finance coach?
Speaker 1:who do you work with or what do you do? I was like anybody Anyone with money or without money. If you're a five-year-old who just made his first dollar selling lemonade, come on over, I'll help you. Not particularly, but truthfully, I didn't know, um, and I had this fear and maybe I don't know if this is normal or what you see but this fear that I was going to exclude. If I excluded people, I wasn't going to make any money.
Speaker 2:I wasn't going to make enough money.
Speaker 1:I was like nope, I only work with 20 year olds who have mohawks, uh, or whatever that would have been me.
Speaker 2:We would have worked together. When I was 20, I had that would have been me. We would have worked together. When I was 20, I had a mohawk, so we could have worked together, see we were it was meant to be it was this coaching relationship was meant to be.
Speaker 2:But yeah well, you know there's a saying there's riches in the niches, right, and you know, I think when you first get started, it is very scary. I don't want to say no to anyone, but I can tell you what happens, and I think this is very true. Also, probably in aspects of being a financial coach, is there's some things you do that you do out of fear, and then what it does is it fosters resentment.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And when I started, I was doing the same thing, greg, like I was offering three times as many services as I offer today. I offer marketing, coaching and SEO. That's what I do today. That's it, and candidly, oh. Why Ross? Because those are the things I love doing and those are the things I'm best at 100%. Right. So I think that's really important that I resented the clients kind of secretly when I took them on doing things I didn't love doing.
Speaker 1:That's what's that, hey I hope they're tuning in right now because ross resents you hey you, I hated doing your facebook ads.
Speaker 2:Sorry, that's okay, I didn't guys. Hey, if you're out there watching this, I didn't. I love them. I've been very blessed. I've only had one issue with one client over four years. What?
Speaker 1:was their name. So if you could, yeah, let's call them out right now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no it already almost went to litigation and, by the way, I won anyways. Okay, let's talk about the second, the second flat brand blind spot. So what's that? That talks about how people are not clear on their own brand. When I say brand, I don't mean logo. Logo is a part of brand. People think if they have a logo, I have a brand. No, brand is much more than that. Right Is that? They're not clear on who they are. So if you're not clear on who you are, you're going to have a problem convincing or bringing people over to you.
Speaker 2:And the third one was and I know this was a big one. Again I'll say this craig, coming in, you were a little above average. Okay, you had a youtube channel, you had blog posts. You you're you're kind of like me. You lean into content creation. Not everyone is like that, and that's okay. But a big problem, whether you are a creator or not, is you don't even know what to create, right? Yeah, you get overwhelmed and, once again, too many options or too few options and there's no purpose behind it. I know that was my problem, too, was I.
Speaker 1:If you were to ask me why did I start doing youtube, it would be like I was posting videos on facebook and thought why not post them to youtube? Uh, and that's literally why I started doing it. Why was I blogging? I don't know, because I thought that's what you're supposed to do, sure. So there's knowing what to create or why. There's just nothing, no purpose behind, and it probably ties into that knowing who I'm marketing to as well.
Speaker 2:But anyway, yes, 100%, and it does get into that. And it gets back into the finite amount of time. Let's say you only have so many hours a week realistically to dedicate to marketing. If you're creating content, that's not strategically moving the needle for you. I don't want to say it's a waste of time, but it's not optimized and I think that's what's really important here. So these were the three biggest issues. So my fixes here. Issues. So my fixes here.
Speaker 2:The first one when you're talking about marketing to everyone or no one, the solution there is customer clarity, and we're going to talk about these just in some quick detail here in a sec. But this is about understanding who your customers are, who your customers are. Then, with your brand hopefully not bland bland brand, brand, blind spot, company clarity this speaks to actually understanding who you are as a business, what you stand for, and a lot of people maybe say that's not as important, but it again weaves itself into your marketing. It may be subtle, maybe not so subtle if you're a solopreneur. Oftentimes it is not so subtle. I am very clear about things, whether my podcasts or in this video. I don't like facebook, which is weird for a digital marketer, but again another day. And lastly, content clarity, company clarity, uh, knowing you're.
Speaker 1:It's from. What I discovered in working together was my customer and company clarity were so hand-in-hand that once I figured out who my customer was, it was realizing my own brand wasn't aligned with that target customer. Yeah, and naturally, who I am. The reason I identified this customer was because of my personality, who I like working with, who I connect with most, and so it almost gave me the ability to then explore well, how do I bring who I am into my company, into my brand? And so it was a relief, a weight off my shoulders, to let some of those non-fits go, get honed in and then be able to say those people are going to love my personality and who I am, because why wouldn't they? And I can now project that out. I don't have to come across as some financial guru. Yeah, I should have kept my glasses on for that I'll say this too, which okay?
Speaker 1:you gotta do it both smarter.
Speaker 2:I like to point out these are only blue light glasses that I have good eyes still, even though I'm about to turn 40. I can still see. I'm wearing contacts and so these are just blue light glasses you look smarter with them.
Speaker 1:That's why I wear them.
Speaker 2:Okay, I want to just talk real quick about. You talked about having that breakthrough. I do feel like throughout this nine week I'm I come into these very Socratic Um, I love doing this coaching because I end up learning a lot about the business and I think the person who's in with me also ends up seeing everything a little bit differently they get. I'll challenge you on some things. I'll ask these questions and these are questions that a lot of times you never slow down and ask yourself and I'm sure, again, you have these on the financial side. When you do financial cause it's like, oh my God, the breakthrough. I'm a profit first guy, so I know.
Speaker 2:But like oh my God, like the, the whoa, the epiphany that comes, or when you start to see like oh again in your case, is probably a financial fog. In my case it's a marketing fog where some of that starts to like go away and you're like, oh, this starts to make sense. So now I just want to go through real quick each category how you get, how I get you to the fixes. So with the customer clarity, we get to know your customers. We do customer avatar stuff. I know a lot of the worksheets are out there and things like that. I'm not going to say mine's the most breakthrough, but when you partner it with conversation and questions, yeah, I think it's more impactful.
Speaker 1:When I told you I've done that before too. Um, I've done my customer avatar a handful of times, heard podcasts on it, um, but never guided. And there was a lot more. It was just, it was a lot more pinpointed, um, and I I can't even put the words to describe why it was different, but it was different. And I can't even put the words to describe why it was different, but it was different.
Speaker 2:Cool, I like to hear that. Thank you Also, knowing your value right. Like, what value do you present to your customer? This is something you hear throughout this program, and it's like why should they care If you can't make someone care about what you do? They're not going to give you money, like you got to make them care.
Speaker 2:And I think tied to that is also mastering your messaging. And so this is if you understand your customers, you can create more effective strategic messaging. And when I say messaging, that also gets into the content piece right, whether you're writing a blog, whether you're recording a video, whether you're doing a podcast, whether you're on TikTok, whatever it is, you're mastering your message and it's going into the people's ears in a really impactful way. And so that's also these things, as you learned, craig, going through this program I like to stack things, so the learnings I'm not going to say trickle down, because I'm not a big believer in trickle down, I'm a bigger believer in compounding interest that if you do the, when we do one exercise, it informs the next, and then the learning from those two informs the next. Now, having gone through it, did you find that to be true?
Speaker 1:Yeah, very much. So I was constantly referring back to exercises we did to reinforce what the next exercise was, or yeah, looking back to some of these clarifying things or knowing my customer made it easier for me to say here's, here's what I believe in, um, as a company, because, again, a lot of them go hand in hand.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we get into core values. We talk about again understanding who your business or what your business is all about. If you're, again, you're a solopreneur, a lot of times that's very close to who you are. It doesn't necessarily have to be, but oftentimes it is. We also do your voice and your look.
Speaker 2:I know this was something that was really helpful for you, and by voice I don't mean your actual voice, because I have a weird high-pitched voice that people have likened to Charlie Day from it's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I don't concern myself so much with that, and nor should you. This is more about kind of your persona, your own business persona, right. How are you sounding and putting yourself out there when it comes to your content? Right, very important. And then we spend a little time on competition and industry. I'm going to tell you right now I don't spend a lot of time here because I believe if you get comfortable and know who you are, your competition becomes a little bit less of an issue. That means it's not important, it's just less important. I have a client. She used the phrase step into your power. I really like that. If you can step into your own power and know who you are, competition will kind of take care of itself, particularly when you're first getting started.
Speaker 1:Yeah, your methods are a little unconventional in that you had me send out a lot of glitter bombs to my competitors.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I find that they, yeah that if it doesn't blind them, that it will really infuriate them, which is really the best way to go with the competition, which now makes me a little bit suspect of any packages that maybe you will send me, now that you.
Speaker 1:I probably shouldn't say the word bomb and mail, though so glitter surprise.
Speaker 2:Well, this video is going to get flagged YouTube. We're good, it's playful.
Speaker 1:How does that work, ross Marketing? No, I'm just kidding.
Speaker 2:I'm not not gonna get into the, the youtube algorithm. That's again subject for a different video. All right, and now let's talk about the content clarity. How do we accomplish that? Create your core content. Core content is content about your actual services. I work with mostly service providers, but I certainly have clients who sell tangible goods too, but I think majority, probably 90% of my clients are service-based businesses. So just how you present and share and create content around what, again, I call your core content, which is your services, it's what you do Generating new content. So we do a ton of work around getting you just tons of new content, ideas that are strategic that's important, right, that are strategic.
Speaker 2:And then, finally, a content plan. I'm excited to tell you that this content plan, out of all these pieces, has really evolved a lot in the last couple months recording this. I've come up with a way that this can all be digitized, um, the way that it can be really clear. If that's not your jam, I like to have flexibility. You can print out worksheets, too and use them on a monthly basis. I like to give people options, but this is really just a monthly content plan. Here's what. Here are the things. Check these boxes go through this and a lot of this can be right-sized for the business, right? This is not a one size always fits all, or that setting proper expectations. Listen, here are all the things you can do, but let's figure out, like, given your time, given your abilities, that kind of thing here's, let's at least put a plan in place that you can execute. That's really important.
Speaker 2:So this is again my flats and fixes. This is how I present and talk about my marketing clarity coaching program. Um, and this has been something honestly, has gone through, this is, I think, the sixth kind of like update, and what I mean by that is like I'm a constant improver, right, like if there's something in this that doesn't work or can be improved, I'm always updating it Right. So will this look a little different? Maybe a year from now? Maybe, but the flats, those haven't changed in the years I've been doing this. I keep hearing the same problems. Keep hearing the same problems. So, craig, is there anything?
Speaker 1:I'll say, no matter what the program looks like in general and even just anybody who's watching this and who's just learning in here, it's truthfully, it's the flats are going to be there, the fixes are going to be there. How to find customer clarity we need to know who our customers are. We need to be able to master how to speak to them, how to find company clarity. We got to master all these pieces. So, no matter what program you have, how it evolves, these things are, for the most part, going to stand true, if I'm understanding that right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely the um. How right. Which are these bottom three, this bottom part, the how we get there? Because digital marketing is always changing. Okay, some of these things may go through some changes, but, at the end of the day, the what we're trying to accomplish. Like I said, that stayed the same for years.
Speaker 1:Thanks for joining us on the Therapy Business Podcast. Be sure to subscribe, leave a review and share it with a practice owner that you may know. If your practice needs help getting organized with its finances or just growing your practice, head to therapybusinesspodcom to learn how we can help.
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