There Is No One-Size Fits All Marketing Strategy | Charlie Sells

PROFITABLE TALKS...

In this episode of the Profitable Creative, host Christian Brim speaks with Charlie Sells about the importance of clarity in business and marketing. They discuss Charlie's journey from working at Ramsey Solutions to starting his own business, focusing on helping small businesses find clarity in their branding and marketing strategies. The conversation emphasizes the need for emotional marketing, understanding customer perspectives, and the challenges faced by agencies in delivering effective solutions. Charlie shares insights on transitioning to a value-based model and the significance of collaborative partnerships in achieving business goals.

PROFITABLE TAKEAWAYS...

• Clarity is essential for effective communication in business.
• Understanding client needs goes beyond just providing services.
• Emotional marketing can significantly impact customer engagement.
• Agencies often fail to align with client goals, leading to dissatisfaction.
• Value-based pricing can enhance client relationships and trust.
• Collaboration is key to successful business partnerships.
• Finding a unique value proposition sets a business apart from competitors.
• Staying local can be more effective than competing on a larger scale.
• Creativity should be applied strategically in business solutions.
• Business owners must define their value in terms that resonate with customers.

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Transcript

Christian Brim (00:01.19)
Welcome to another episode of the Profitable Creative, the only place on the interwebs where you will learn how to turn your passion into profit. I am your host, Christian Brim. Special shout out to our one listener in Bethlehem, Connecticut. I think that's, you know, kind of appropriate given the season. I don't know. I so so I don't know if you know this, Charlie. My guess is Charlie sells with clarity over everything, but

I don't know if you know this, Charlie, but Bethlehem in Hebrew is bet lehem, which is house of bread, which I was explaining to some students in the Bible study that I do that I found that fascinating because house of bread. And then Jesus said that he was the bread of life.

Charlie Sells (00:56.408)
Bread of life, yeah.

Christian Brim (00:57.552)
Yes, very very fascinating. Anyway, i'm sorry. I I digress Thank you for listening our our our guest today charlie sells From clarity over everything charlie. Welcome to the show

Charlie Sells (01:02.124)
Yeah.

Charlie Sells (01:09.4)
Thank you so much for having me, Christian. I am really excited to be here and to dive into all things small business and creativity and hopefully how to be profitable.

Christian Brim (01:19.898)
Yes, yes, that is the name of the game. I like the name of your company and it stood out to me because I'm a big proponent of clarity. That's one of the things that I think is my superpower is to help bring clarity to people. And I'm curious why you chose that name.

Charlie Sells (01:43.776)
You know, I kind of adapted it from a couple of leaders in one particular organization that I worked in for about four years. If you're familiar with Dave Ramsey and Ramsey Solutions, there was some internal speak amongst the creative team, specifically the content team. I served on the content team there for four years. And when I first got there, a phrase I heard over and over every time was, drive for clarity, drive for clarity, drive for clarity.

Christian Brim (01:54.94)
Mm-hmm.

Charlie Sells (02:11.01)
And that sort of became the drum that I beat more than anything else to say, if it doesn't make sense to somebody like me, you know, who's on the inside, it definitely won't make sense to our customers, whoever we're trying to speak to. And so eventually I just said, I just kind of adapted it and said, I just want to drive for clarity over everything else. And eventually when I launched out on my own, said, well, clarity over everything. That's what I want to bring to the table, whether that's through copywriting content, strategy, branding, no matter what.

Christian Brim (02:20.018)
Hmm.

Charlie Sells (02:37.25)
I want to make sure that clarity is king and it matters over everything else you could possibly do.

Christian Brim (02:43.378)
I absolutely love that. you worked on Dave Ramsey's internal marketing team. Yes.

Charlie Sells (02:48.662)
I did. worked for two brands while I was there officially and a handful of other projects that I got to be a part of. I helped to launch Ramsey Plus back in 2020, which was the membership model. And then I eventually moved over just to be one of the content leads on the EveryDollar team. So the personal budgeting app. That was a lot of fun because it's not just as simple as you create marketing assets. I was also doing in product copy, release notes and radio scripts and everything that you could possibly imagine.

for this little bitty budgeting app that we got to bring to the masses.

Christian Brim (03:23.372)
I don't know if it's still up because we've done several migrations and iterations, but one of my most popular blog articles was why Dave Ramsey is bad for business. And I wrote that over a decade ago. So I'm like kind of like the anti Dave Ramsey, although I'm very envious of his success. So maybe I should try to be more like him. Why did you go out on your own?

Charlie Sells (03:37.006)
You

Charlie Sells (03:43.607)
You

Charlie Sells (03:54.19)
It's a great question. I loved my time at Ramsey and I loved all the teams I worked with. What I started to realize, and I'm sure your audience and you know as a creative, there are times where you realize that in a drawer full of kitchen knives, you are a Swiss army knife and you've got other tools in your belt that could be useful. And if you're not able to use them, starts to get a little stir crazy and all of that. So I started to feel a little bit of that tension, if I'm being honest.

of, you know, I knew what my role was, I knew how to be useful and effective and all of that, but there were just other things I wanted to accomplish. So I left Ramsey Solutions and joined a really small startup agency for about nine months. And then when that wrapped up, as some startups do, it's just part of the game.

Christian Brim (04:34.958)
Wrapped up is a nice euphemism for failed, but go ahead.

Charlie Sells (04:38.184)
It is. Yes, that iteration of it certainly did. The company is still around. But yeah, I decided if I'm to go out on my own, now is the time to do it. And so I thought I was just going to be a one man content machine and looked up about six months into it and asked all of my clients, hey, what do I what do I do for you? How would you describe this to me? And they said almost nothing about content and copywriting. They said you help me solve problems. You help me think through things. You help bring clarity. You help me bring momentum and focus and

Christian Brim (05:00.594)
Mmm.

Charlie Sells (05:06.326)
all of these things that I just wouldn't have otherwise. And so I made a pivot about almost a year ago to say, all right, let's shift over and start to do more brand positioning, messaging, marketing strategy. And that's primarily what I do. And I get to help with some of the implementation of that because I work primarily with small business owners and thought leaders who don't have an entire team or can't work with an agency necessarily. And so now that's what I'm leaning into. I do that really in three ways, Christian. The first is as a, a thinking partner. And I stole that.

phrase from somebody who said, sometimes people just need somebody to talk things out with. so sometimes small business owners just need to call and say, give me the 40,000 foot view of this thing and help direct me in an objective and a trusted way. Second way I do it is just by helping give people better data about their brand. Sometimes that is actually looking at SEO and traffic and everything else. A lot of times it's by looking through the lens of, it consistent? Is it concise? Is it competitive?

And at the end of the day, are you being positioned to win? Not necessarily against certain competitors, but just, you know, in a lot of ways, try to be an industry of one. And then the third way is by taking all of those and packaging it into what I call a clarity and an alignment sprint, which means I'll do an audit. We'll get together for a day, half a day or a full day. And then from there, I will help develop a six to 12, six to 12 week prioritized.

list of you got to address these things immediately. Otherwise, you're going to be spending your tires for longer. And then a three to 12 month roadmap about if this is where we want to be in a year, this is what has to be true. And this is a phased approach to get there. That way they can pass it off to an internal team or an agency or somebody else, or I can stay on as a consultant and a helper as well. So that's why I do what I do. And at the end of the day, I looked up and saw

too many small businesses were getting screwed over by agencies because they were just throwing a playbook in front of them and saying, this is what you're gonna do, now pay us tens of thousands of dollars to do it. And it wasn't yielding the kind of results that they wanted or those particular agencies and companies weren't collaborating and actually moving towards the client's goals. And so I decided, let me come in and disrupt this a little bit if I can and say, no matter how long you work with me,

Charlie Sells (07:24.386)
The goal is for you to have the confidence to go do the next thing and reach into the next season for your company with a lot of momentum and clarity.

Christian Brim (07:33.959)
There is so much in what you just said to unpack and I have lots of thoughts. I'll go back to what I think the towards the first of what you said is that when you asked your clients, what do you do for me? And you got an answer that was different than what you thought. And I think that's a reality that I know I experienced and it took me a lot longer to figure it out.

Charlie Sells (07:39.832)
Pull on them, let's go.

Christian Brim (08:03.172)
than it should have, but it's really, I think, a lack of clarity on business owners' part in understanding the problem that they solve. But even if you do understand it, do you understand it the way the customer or client would explain it? Because the feedback you got probably was not that

revelatory to you in the sense of like, yeah, that totally makes sense. It's just not the way I would describe it, right? Because we tend as professionals, whether you're an accountant or a marketer or, whatever you, we tend to describe it in, in terms of, what we do, the, the, the services or the features and benefits. like we're, we're describing it from our point of view, as opposed to from there.

point of view and their point of view. loved what, oh, good God, I can't believe I can't remember his name. Donald Miller in Storybrand, know, he made the statement in describing Storybrand is like, as the expert, we understand things at a nine or 10 level and we need to dumb it down. And when we do,

We usually dumb it down to like a six or a seven, but we really need to get down to a three. And that's really difficult for us from the inside looking out because it's not simple from our understanding, right? So I'll let you respond to that before I go on to my next thought.

Charlie Sells (09:50.612)
it's a great point. I think Christian, so many leaders get caught in that place. I know it so well. Therefore, if I just talk about it in my terms, my team will understand it and eventually my customers will understand it. Well, if it's, if it's fuzzy to your team, it's going to be blurry to your customers. And that is the progression that nobody wants to find themselves on because that leads to brand erosion and nobody, nobody wants to lose money because somebody didn't understand something. Right.

And this is, you the question that I love to ask business owners is instead of saying, instead of thinking, what do our customers say about us? You should instead ask, what is it like to be on the receiving end of our business? What does it like to be on the receiving end of our brand? Well, now you've untapped a whole, you've tapped in a whole lot of things because it's not just, liked this, I liked that. It's, it provided me with this kind of life change. I didn't know I needed this until you showed me the value.

Christian Brim (10:40.711)
Mm-hmm.

Charlie Sells (10:43.928)
There's a whole lot of layers to that because it's no longer just about what's the survey feedback tell us about how we're doing. It gets down to the heart and it causes founders and leaders and directors to think a little bit more strategically about how they're saying what they're saying and what they're doing. I did an audit of a website even today where I could tell just by looking at the first page of the website, this person knows their stuff so well, but it's not translating to their target audience.

And if they can unlock that, it will unlock a ton of new business and hopefully repeat business for them.

Christian Brim (11:13.191)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (11:21.166)
Yeah. And what I would add to that is people make purchases. They buy what you sell based upon emotion, not logic. the, you know, if you, if you think it's hard trying to explain it to other businesses, try and explain it internally to a bunch of accountants. Like they don't really care that the bookkeeping is right or the tax turn is right like, or it's on

Charlie Sells (11:44.27)
You

Christian Brim (11:50.579)
time, like none of those things matter. It matters how they feel about their money. The transformation from confusion, fear, anxiety, to clarity, peace of mind, control. That's what you're selling. And they look at me like, what are you talking about? Like that.

I mean, because that, you know, one of their frustrations was like, we did everything right. And then they still weren't happy. And I'm like, yeah, that yes, that absolutely happens. Right.

Charlie Sells (12:31.16)
Yeah, I can think of a specific example of that during my time at Ramsey. I mean, in my humble opinion, I think it's the most successful campaign that they ever ran, partially because I helped to write it, right? We wrote one of the most visceral and emotional statements that moved the needle in a tremendous way. And it was just a test. We weren't launching it nationally or anything like that. It was just a simple A-B test. some of the higher ups came back and said, hey, that was great.

Christian Brim (12:42.661)
Absolutely.

Charlie Sells (13:00.45)
but we can't do it again because it doesn't quite fall within our brand standards. I was so defeated in that moment, like just going, we just, we struck a nerve with people and we should be leaning into that. There's a tension that also comes with that too, Christian of saying like, you can make a shock value, you know, ripples in the pond type of statement and campaign, but if it feels way too off brand and off base, now you're going to lose customers for a very different reason.

because then they expect to see this very extreme version, right? The liquid deaths of the world where you always expect the outrageous and whatnot versus saying, well, there's probably a time and a place to say that or there's a different way to say it that's more consistent and still keeps the kind of customers that we're looking for.

Christian Brim (13:27.206)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (13:45.587)
Okay, now I'm going to back to your opening statement and I'm going to pick something else. See if I can keep all these things in my head straight. The statement you made about like agencies giving them a plan and like here go do this. What I, I have hired and engaged multiple agencies over my tenure. I've had lots of them as clients and

One of the things that I find in the agency universe is there's, think one of the common problems is you can get an agency that's uber successful because they're very creative, right? But it's real hard to put that creativity into a process. And I'm not talking about processes of doing the work. I'm talking the actual process of the creativity because

I think that's kind of an oxymoron. I don't think you can really process ties. don't know. Systematize. Let's try that. Systematize creativity, right? Or the agency understands the analytical side of it, the procedure side of it, but they don't, they fall short in understanding that at the end of the day,

Charlie Sells (14:50.754)
Yeah. Yeah. Right.

Christian Brim (15:10.828)
marketing is about human behavior and humans are predictably unpredictable. And even if you do have a processor system that does work, it doesn't always sustain or translate. So like it could work in one business, but you take it over to the other businesses in the same industry and it's like it falls flat or it works until it doesn't work. Right. Because people evolve, they change. Technology evolves, change.

Charlie Sells (15:40.27)
Sure. Yeah, you and I are probably have very similar ad algorithms where I get fed something every single day that's like, this one system will make you $10,000 a month, or you can be a one person agency if you will do X, Y, and Z or whatever. And you're exactly right. There is no bolt on strategy that is just tried and true for every business, every industry, every marketing initiative for that matter.

Christian Brim (15:40.444)
thoughts on that.

Charlie Sells (16:09.306)
I mean, I think that's the frustration that most small business owners that I work with experience at some level. And I can't tell you how many have come to me with a problem thinking this is a silver bullet. And the more we uncover and the further that we dig, the more they start to realize that's not going to do anything. It might move the needle a little bit, but the user experience after this point isn't quite where we want it to be. Or we're still not super clear on what the process is to onboard or

You know follow up with sales or have processes that take some of the burden off of us and so I think you're exactly right that It's it's I think almost a false positive to say because it worked for this client It's gonna work for this client or to guarantee every time we're gonna get you a 6x ROAS because that's our average For our for our agency. Well, you got to think about the law of averages there, right? Somebody didn't get a ROAS on anything and somebody got a 20x ROAS because they hit the they hit the right thing and we landed somewhere in the middle, right?

Christian Brim (17:00.486)
Mm-hmm.

Charlie Sells (17:06.894)
that's what, and I love working with agencies. have as a one man, one man show, I'd farm out a lot of things to, creative agencies and ad agencies and other marketing and analytics, just because that's, that's a need for a lot of my clients. But at the end of the day, I, I always encourage them, don't start with that until you've got a good grip on your entire brand and your entire ecosystem so that you can take something to them and say, we have everything in place. We just need people to come and see. And that's it.

Christian Brim (17:21.404)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (17:36.913)
Yeah. Listeners, my, my, my, my repeat listeners will know not the one in Bethlehem, the one that listened to more than one episode will know that this is the point where I'm going to talk about the crack head energy and, the crack head energy I describe in the small business marketing space is, is really a reflection on the crack head, which is the business owner. the, marketers are the crack dealers. in that.

To your point, there's this like, the business owners don't understand marketing. They don't understand the basics or the strategy or the tactics. They get very confused. And so they latch onto something that may be, well, my competitor is doing video on LinkedIn, so I need to do video on LinkedIn, right? Or it's, we're not getting site

website visits like you know they they fixate on something that they think they need which they don't really know if they need and so they say well give me this and the crackhead dealer says sure I'll give you that without ever asking the question is that really what you need and I feel like that's what you're you're addressing as a problem

Charlie Sells (18:53.921)
Exactly.

Yeah, you know, I toured with this very early on when I first started to launch out. And I love the sentiment. I don't know that it quite translates to small business owners, but there's an idea that I think too many marketers and too many creatives don't act as brand guardians for the businesses that they work with. Because it does become shiny object syndrome in a lot of ways. You know, chasing, we could do this and we could do this.

Christian Brim (19:14.673)
Mmm.

Charlie Sells (19:23.29)
you know, one of the most prescriptive things I think, marketing agencies get into it's I kind of liken it to, know, when a new head coach comes into a football team, it's very hard to retain the old staff because the new coach wants everything that they, they want. They want their system. They want their people. They want their players. They want to run their plays and, and, you know, the rest should follow suit. Right. I think the same is true with a lot of agencies where they look at a website and go, that's not the way how I, that I would have done it. We're going to sell you a new website.

or your social is doing something very different than we would do it. So let's do it our way. And I think that's the trap. If you don't have somebody who is looking out for you and going, why don't we just pour gas on everything that is working? I did a test for a client not too long ago. They really wanted to get into the webinar space. And so we built lots of funnels. We did all of the emails and the follow ups, and some were paid, and some were free, and everything.

Christian Brim (19:58.876)
Mm-hmm.

Charlie Sells (20:21.529)
The traffic rate was good, the take rate wasn't very high, and the show rate was very, very low. And I was like, don't get discouraged because we're trying to train this audience to get used to you putting content out, right? So after a couple of weeks, I put one of the replays in an email in one of their newsletters and said, hey, just in case you missed it, this is the thing. Well, wouldn't you know, everybody wanted that content.

Christian Brim (20:26.674)
Mm-hmm.

Charlie Sells (20:47.106)
They couldn't make it on the day that the live webinar was going on or they didn't want to pay for it. And so I said, this is something here. People want to hear from you. How can we make sure we do that? And so now we're rolling out a podcast to their audience. You know, it's, it's not a small list by any means. I got 20,000 people on their email list. So they're going to see some, you know, some pretty good results as soon as they watch this thing. But had we not gone through that, had I been prescriptive,

Christian Brim (20:54.62)
Yes.

Charlie Sells (21:13.632)
as a lot of agencies are and had I said, this is exactly what you should do. Or had I said from the, from the get-go and, I think this is the other side of that coin Christian, had I said, I've never seen this work for anybody else. Therefore we shouldn't do it. That's the other side that I think is really dangerous when your personal experience gets grafted onto your clients and you go, yeah, I don't want to try that again. Well, that's me not wanting to try it again. You have no idea if it's actually going to work for this client or this audience or this product or

Christian Brim (21:27.559)
Mm.

Christian Brim (21:34.68)
Mm. Yeah.

Charlie Sells (21:43.468)
whatever the fill in the blank needs to be.

Christian Brim (21:47.311)
Yes, I yes, I yes, I'm just going to say yes. Okay. And I say that that way because I actually forgot what I was going to say. So let's pivot. You started clarity over everything. How long ago?

Charlie Sells (21:58.126)
It's okay.

Charlie Sells (22:06.016)
Unofficially like 10 years ago, just in my very brief freelance life helping pay some bills, officially two years ago.

Christian Brim (22:15.172)
Okay, so what were some of the challenges starting out two years ago that you didn't know until you hit the ground? Let's rewind the tape two years ago. This was my challenge that I didn't know that was hardest to overcome.

Charlie Sells (22:38.658)
I tried really hard not to think that because I was born on second, I hit a double. Cause I did launch out with a lot of really good clients. I did not have to start from scratch. In fact, there was a client who was a part of this other organization that approached me and said, Hey, we know that our contract is about to wrap up. Would you stay on and help? That was a big chunk of business. had two or three really great referrals. So I really started up, started out at ground level or maybe even a little bit above, but you know,

Christian Brim (22:44.347)
Mm.

Charlie Sells (23:08.3)
I didn't have a process in place. didn't have any knowledge of bookkeeping and write-offs and any of that kind of stuff, all the typical freelancer stuff, right? I think at the end of the day, I realized that I just wasn't solid on my offer. I knew what I could do and I knew people needed it, but I wasn't really solid on being able to confidently say on a call or in a conversation or at a networking event.

Christian Brim (23:18.342)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (23:24.624)
Mm-hmm.

Charlie Sells (23:35.99)
I would love to help your brand do X, Y, and Z. I wish I would have spent some more time initially really dialing that in. I had some really great friends in a really great network who said, yeah, just go work with Charlie. And then I would have to spend an hour explaining all of these things that I could do. And then they would have to kind of pick and whittle down and say, well, we only need these like two things. Now I can say confidently, this is what it looks like to work with me. If you want that, if it's beneficial, great. If not, that's okay. Maybe there'll be an opportunity beforehand.

Christian Brim (24:06.61)
How did you, or has your offer pricing changed since you started?

Charlie Sells (24:15.534)
Absolutely. It changed within six months and I had a client group at the time, one of them I still work with, that were so gracious. What I realized was, like a lot of freelancers and contract consulting employees, I was trying to do the hours-based thing with good intention. I know, I know. It was a mistake. I know it now. I was trying to do the hours-based thing and when I went back to my clients and I said, hey, listen,

Christian Brim (24:35.196)
Boo. Boo.

Charlie Sells (24:45.652)
you're worried about hours, I'm worried about hours, I don't want anybody to be worried about hours, I want you to be focused on the value that you're actually getting out of this. my price is going to go up a little bit in the short run, but in the long run, you're not gonna get overcharged, you're not gonna have to worry about if you go over any hours or see additions on your invoices or anything like that. And I was terrified to send that communication, by the way, to say like, hey, one of the reasons I'm doing this is to keep my client base small so that I can give you better attention. But the other reason is,

you don't need uncertainty and I don't need uncertainty. And not a single one of them balked at it. All of them were like, great, it makes sense. You're not gonna quit doing what you're doing. That's all I care about. So now that I've gotten even more specific about what I do, it's much easier for me to say, hey, this is the value you're gonna get out of just working one day with me. And that's really kind of been the focus of my positioning the last six months, I would say.

Christian Brim (25:17.241)
Mm-hmm.

Charlie Sells (25:42.03)
Is is to go like hey, sometimes you just need a kickstart To to your brand and what you're doing so you can have me come in you're not gonna pay these you know outrageous six-figure consulting prices because again those people will drop a Playbook in your lap and leave and probably cause more damage than they actually, you know intended to But it's also a really quick way for me to go, you know, I can do this really fast I've got you know the expertise behind it to be able to make really fast decisions

and do that in concert with you. And I think that's a key that I unlocked really early on in my freelancing career was to say, I don't want to do things for you. I always want to do things with you. It's always going to be, is this a direction you feel most comfortable with? Or here's what the data is saying and based on my recommendation, this is where I think we should go next. And so having that collaborative partnership, I think has also given me a lot of confidence to say like, listen,

My goal would be for me for us to work together for six to 12 months. But if 30 days of value is all that you need, I'm okay with that too, because I know what I can deliver.

Christian Brim (26:51.906)
I want to make two statements, so I will, because it's my show. The first is the hourly model and why I boot it. I read a book a long time ago written by lawyers called Firm the Future, and they were Australian lawyers. They didn't even speak English. the book really was foundational for me in my business.

Charlie Sells (26:58.19)
Cheer prerogative.

Charlie Sells (27:12.311)
You

Christian Brim (27:21.97)
I think seeing it from an outsider's perspective, because they were talking about attorneys and legal, I could see it in a different way. And the story was, think about your client. Your best day is their worst day. So they get served a lawsuit and they're like terrified and unsure and know it's going to cost a lot of money.

And you on the other side are like trying to be sympathetic, but you're going like, kaching, because now I'm making money, right? And the concept was, how can you come, that puts you on opposite sides of the desk. So how can you structure the service that you offer and the relationship as, okay, you get on the other side and now you're sitting next to them. Yeah.

Charlie Sells (28:18.798)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (28:19.506)
And that's exactly what you just described, right? Because it's now not like, I don't want to call Charlie because I don't want to bill. I'm collaborating with him to solve the problem. And that was revolutionary for me and our business. The second thing that I wanted to say was I was having a conversation to you. You said the statement, I knew what

I knew what I could do, I knew what value I could bring, right? I was having this conversation with my head of marketing today, internal, and it's, part of the problem is defining the solution in the wrong terms. And this is kind of what we talked about earlier.

You have to define it in their terms. And as a professional, usually they can only identify the symptoms, right? They can't identify the problem because they don't know the problem. It's like going to the doctor. You don't know that you have XYZ disease. You just know that you have these symptoms. And so I think that the key is any good marketer, any good business owner is understanding

Charlie Sells (29:28.632)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (29:46.546)
Yeah, this is where I bring the value, but can you define it in a way that they present the symptoms?

Charlie Sells (29:54.552)
Correct. I did a project for somebody recently along those exact same lines where an established brand and established business, lot of growth, a crowded space, especially at the top. They're trying to be at the top. And when I did a competitor analysis for them, I said, you are not going to be these people because out of out of five out of the top five in this industry, you're number five. I said, what you can do, though,

is because you can't turn back time, right? Like you can't do social media for the last six years today. You got to start today. I said, what you can do though, is you can tell a better story. And I think that unlocks something for them where they kind of, it kind of feels like a relief in a way to say, we don't have to be that. We don't have to compete. We just have to be, again, Hiramozi says it like an industry of one. How can we be an industry of one? And I said, well, you've got this, this and this.

Christian Brim (30:28.882)
Right.

Christian Brim (30:41.179)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (30:48.177)
Yeah.

Charlie Sells (30:53.666)
that are your unique value props and your competitive advantage. Lean into those because if you try to do anything else, you will be more noise. If you do something different though, now you're elevating yourself and saying, we're not trying to be in the top five, we're trying to be over here and make everybody else compete with us. Exactly, exactly.

Christian Brim (31:10.066)
We're gonna be number one over here, right? Yeah. Yes, and I talk about that in Profit First for Creatives and talked about this a lot on the show is that your target niche for us, we had a huge problem. For 20 plus years, we had the wrong target market.

And it's not like we didn't know that we should have a target market, but it was not clearly defined enough. It was too large. And it wasn't until we narrowed it down that we actually saw traction. And so I use this example in the book of water.

Charlie Sells (31:50.956)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (32:01.836)
somebody was doing a presentation at an event I was at and they had they used as a prop a bottle of water and he said what's more what's more commodity in the world than water right and so like if you want to be the I don't even know who the number one Dasani like I don't know if you want to be the number one you you're gonna have a hard time

But if you can take that, whatever your product or service is, because that's the pushback you get. Well, like, there's no way to differentiate this. Well, absolutely there is, because everything is a commodity if you look at it broadly enough. Can you get down narrow enough that you are distinct? You are that number one. And that's every business.

Charlie Sells (32:53.932)
That's exactly right. Every single business. think we've also, man, I have so many thoughts on that too, because as soon as you say water, I think about liquid death and what they have done in the water business, right? They, they.

Christian Brim (33:05.168)
Yeah. I didn't even know it was water for years. Like I saw that I didn't even know what it was.

Charlie Sells (33:10.848)
I know. I'll tell you what, the very first time that I ever had a conversation about it, I was on vacation with my family and we were going to dinner one night and I just had, this is when they had the tall boys and only the tall boys. I, going from the beach house to our restaurant, you know, I was, I was trying to hydrate because I'd been out in the sun all day. And my sister pulled me aside and she was like, Hey, could you please not drink and drive? That'd be great. I was like, I'm sorry, what?

Christian Brim (33:22.641)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (33:40.018)
You

Charlie Sells (33:40.398)
She was like, yeah, could you like that? That was really dangerous. I was like, it's it's water. Like that's all it is. It's water with really great marketing and fancy branding. And, the origin story, of course, is they wanted it to look like that because they were tired of going to parties carrying around, you know, clear plastic bottles. So, you know, that was part of the ethos behind it. But I mean, what they could have done is they could have released another spring water brand and said, like, this is Austrian spring water, right?

Instead, they took a very different angle and said, nah, we're going to murder your thirst and you're going to see Bert Kreischer and severed heads and all this kind of stuff. And, and it works like they've, mean, 10 X, you know, from where they, where they started and their valuation and everything else. love, love that aspect of it. but it's, it's so hard to do that these days, right? Like in a lot of ways, it's just a viral sensation, but they've also found a way to sustain it. And I think a lot of businesses get in that mode of thinking like we have to.

Christian Brim (34:17.372)
Right.

Charlie Sells (34:38.882)
We have to continually do the bigger, the better, whatever it is. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Part B to that, think, Christian, is I taught a class at a university recently. A friend of mine's a digital marketing professor, and he brings people from different disciplines in. And just because we've been friends for 25 years, he calls in that favor. And so we get to have lunch. And of course, I get to go back to school, so to speak. And I had somebody come up to me afterwards as a sophomore, I think, and say, hey, I'm working for a bowling alley.

here in town, how do I do marketing for them? And I was like, just stay local. That's all you have to do. You're not competing with the bowling alley in Memphis, right? You're not competing with something up north. You're not trying to get people from 600 miles to, you know, come to your bowling alley, although that would be a great ambition. You're looking for that six mile radius. And so how do you stay hyper local? I think that is the key for a lot of businesses where they think I have to go do meta ads everywhere all the time.

No, you don't.

Christian Brim (35:39.588)
Yeah, they're focusing on tactics without ever understanding the strategy.

Charlie Sells (35:43.274)
Exactly, exactly. And I mean, that's part of my strategy too, is, you I could say, and you know, to your point, I could have that commodity mindset to say, I'm for everyone, right? Every small business could work with me. No, I mean, I've turned businesses away before because I'm like, you're doing what you should be doing. And you know, you don't necessarily need my help. Or if you were to do this, it would waste your time and waste your money and probably only flatline.

you know, something and it's not that they didn't need marketing help necessarily. It's that they were already doing so many things well. They didn't really need to do anything else unless they wanted to expand locations or, you know, grow to six X their number of employees or anything like that. So I, sometimes I think it is just staying local, and, staying true to, you know, where you are planted rather than thinking I've got to be in the next forest over to.

Christian Brim (36:37.97)
Yeah, and I think creative business owners, you know, come to the table wanting to, you know, be uber creative, which is great. You know, that's why they are good at what they do. The best ones though, the most successful ones I've seen are where they take that creativity and they apply it at that creative energy in a different way. Rather than coming up with

custom scope of work or custom problem solving for every new lead that comes in is can you find a commonality in these things that is a problem that more than one person has that you can create a solution that you can sell more than once as opposed to custom. lot of people don't, they just resist that. They want to be uber creative and I get that.

Charlie Sells (37:29.101)
Mm-hmm.

Christian Brim (37:37.02)
But if you're gonna have business success, it's real hard to do if you're reinventing the wheel.

Charlie Sells (37:42.392)
Correct. I get really frustrated with that sometimes. I'll just be honest, Christian, because there have been some industry specific or proprietary platforms that I have run into and just been flabbergasted that they have a hold in the market. And what I mean by that is like the plug and play websites of the world, right? Like if you were to go online right now, well, not even just Webflow. mean, like one neighborhood that I used to live in wanted a website for their HOA.

Christian Brim (37:58.067)
Webflow or

Charlie Sells (38:11.5)
And there is literally a website builder that does that. It's, it's bad. And, I mean, it's, it's not good, but who's running HOAs people who need a really simple solution. They don't need all the fancy bells and whistles and probably don't have any money to spend on it. Right. So if you buy the URL, they'll, they'll do it for a hundred bucks a year or whatever it is. Right. but I've run into others that have claimed to be this very robust system and they do some things so well, but their customer service is bad. It's not customizable.

Christian Brim (38:15.835)
Okay.

Christian Brim (38:22.746)
Right. And don't have any money to spend on it, right?

Charlie Sells (38:40.972)
You have to play by their rules or their team just isn't equipped to handle some of the integrations and things that you want. And so I don't have a problem if anybody wants to niche down or use something that they say is just for this industry, right? I mean, I work with clients all the time who are like, this is the gold standard in our industry. And I'm like, great, then don't move to HubSpot. Don't move to high level. Don't change anything. Keep doing what you're doing. And let's add a couple of pieces on there that are going to help you optimize versus blow the whole thing up and try to rebuild.

Christian Brim (39:11.602)
Charlie, I have very much enjoyed your experience here. Before we started the show in the green room, you admitted that you didn't think you were qualified to be on the show. You were imminently qualified. Thank you for coming on. How do people find clarity about everything in Charlie Sells if they want to know more?

Charlie Sells (39:25.688)
Thank you.

Charlie Sells (39:31.744)
Yeah, I do need to say this. Sales is my real last name. It's not a moniker. It has been my entire year. It's nice to trade on and have a, you know, a conversation opener like that. So, and I spent most of my life avoiding sales, believe it or not. And now that's, you know, half of what I do as a business owner. So, but yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn. It's Charlie sells. It's pretty easy to find, or you can go to clarity over everything.com. And I should have said this at the beginning to

Christian Brim (39:47.751)
Yes.

Charlie Sells (39:58.508)
My goal for 2026 is to help 26 businesses, I know that's a little on the nose, but I'm gonna help 26 businesses get really clear and aligned and have some momentum behind their brands so that whatever the next season looks like for them, they are tightened up and ready to go and really excited about what it can do for their business.

Christian Brim (40:19.856)
I love that because that's one every other week. It just works out nicely. Yes.

Charlie Sells (40:22.35)
Yeah, I know we're getting one of those half calendar, you know, just perfect timings, right?

Christian Brim (40:26.994)
Yeah, you can get one of the bi-weekly payroll calendars. That works out well, Listeners will have those links in the show notes. If you like what you've heard, please rate the podcast, share the podcast, subscribe to the podcast. If you don't like what you've heard, please shoot us a message, tell us what you'd like to hear, and we'll replace Charlie. Until then, ta ta for now.

Charlie Sells (40:30.626)
Correct. Correct. That's right.

Charlie Sells (40:46.432)
You