Learners and Hand Raisers

Tom Nixon (00:01.619)
It is great to be back for another episode of BullHorns of Bullseyes. Curtis, good to see you again in this here environment. We took a unplanned mini hiatus when we relaunched season two. So, but we’re back.

Curtis Hays (00:15.753)
We’re back. We didn’t really take a hiatus per se in our marketing. We’ve been busy with some LinkedIn newsletters. We’ve been putting out some old content. We just haven’t had the opportunity to do some recording. So back in the saddle again, and hopefully we’ve got some good guests lined up here in the near future.

Tom Nixon (00:34.259)
Well, speaking of good guests and speaking of being back in the saddle again, we have a return guest today, which I’m really excited about.

Curtis Hays (00:41.289)
We do. Good friend Amy Schuster, who we had in season one, episode five-ish, I think. And Amy is a fractional CMO and has her own consulting company called Bandwidth Strategies. Amy, it’s just great to have you. I’m always following your thought leadership and everything that you’re putting out in the sphere. I’m a learner.

which we’re going to talk about today. Always checking out what you’ve got to say on LinkedIn. So appreciate all of that. I have been a hand raiser as well. Yep.

Aimee Schuster (01:13.646)
He’s also been a hand raiser, so.

Tom Nixon (01:17.973)
Boy, it’s like you guys have invented some new terminology. So Amy, welcome back. First of all, and I don’t think you invented this, these terms that we’re going to discuss today, but you brought them certainly into our consciousness, both Curtis and I, and they really resonate. And that is the notion of a hand raiser being different than a learner. Can you just describe what that means? Just quickly?

Aimee Schuster (01:23.042)
Thank you.

Aimee Schuster (01:41.998)
Sure. So when we think about digital marketing and how people interact as they get to know you as an organization and your website, and to Curtis’s point, they could be getting to know you on social, on your site, on your content, on other people’s There’s really two types of individuals. People that…

like to learn more about you. And they may do that by interacting with you in different ways, right? They may comment on your social. They could fill out a form asking for access to your newsletter, comment on a blog post, lots of activity that’s indicating that they are learning more about you and interested in what you have to say in your subject matter.

They instantly become what’s known as a hand raiser when they fill out a specific form or contact you in a specific way and say, I would like to speak to you. I would like to hear more from you directly. that is when someone actually becomes a hand raiser. And I think it is, it’s a small differential, but it’s a really, really big and different results. what you’re talking about with hand raisers is people who are further down the funnel.

are closer to actually wanting to make a decision, most likely about a purchase of some kind, and they’re raising their hands and they’re saying, I’m interested in finding out more about this specific issue at this specific time. Up until the point that they fill out that form, that contact us form, or reach out to you directly asking for that information, they are in fact learners, and they can spend a really long time in the learner world before they convert to a hand raiser, if ever.

Tom Nixon (03:28.245)
Yeah, we’re going to explore that more in detail, but I think the probably the biggest takeaway is that too many marketers or brands think of everybody. They want everybody to be a hand raiser because we want business, right? We want to sell our products and services. So we treat everyone as if they’re all raising their hand because that’s what we wish. before we go there, Curtis, I was reminded of a meeting that you and I were in and we were explaining the concepts behind.

this terminology sort of as we’ve always espoused it, right? You can’t market to everyone the same way. Not everybody is ready even in market, let alone considering you against competitors. And it wasn’t until you actually use the terms, hand raiser and learner that I heard this audible, huh? At the other end of the, the other end of the web meeting. And so it clicked just as it clicked with you and it clicked with me. And there was this aha aha moment that, my God. Yeah.

That’s so simple, but yet it’s so important.

Curtis Hays (04:27.071)
For sure. For whatever reason, the first time Amy said it on the last podcast, because you mentioned it think twice on that podcast. And one time you said, it’s really easy to explain, but very difficult to implement or execute. I know for me, having worked with you, I know you were doing these types of things and implementing these type of strategies going back to when we first worked together like 10 years ago, that

The definitions we were using then, at least for me, because I’m more of a technical marketer, was MQL and SQL, I think, right? And that was language that made sense from a technical perspective. was like, MQL’s going to HubSpot, and then they get converted somehow. I don’t know how they get converted, but then they become an SQL, and they go over here into Salesforce, and then salespeople pick them up, and they do something with them. And I never really understood what an MQL actually means.

Aimee Schuster (05:01.07)
you

Aimee Schuster (05:13.869)
Yeah.

Curtis Hays (05:25.021)
and who they are as a human being and what they’re interested in and what content they’re consuming. And all of a sudden when you use natural language like learner and hand raiser, and I can connect that to like actual behavior that I would even do and start thinking about, yeah, there was actually that attribution company that I followed for seven years before they actually reached out to me in a cold call. And I was like, yeah, I’ll talk to somebody. But I…

I learned from them for a really long time before anything actually happened. And so I think that is sort of that aha moment. when we start to take the, and I know this is something you do, Amy, with your clients is figure out the terminology, but maybe get the terminology into language that everybody understands across the organization, not just in sales and marketing, right?

Aimee Schuster (06:17.91)
Yeah. I think there are so many terms, MQL, SQL, form fill, lead. It demonstrates for people not in marketing and sales, groups of individuals who want to talk to us, right? Or want to learn about us. And I think those big overarching buckets, whether you call those top of funnel buckets, they’re complicated. Not everyone is behaving in the same way.

So often, you know talking to PE or CEOs. Well, how many leads do we have? It’s like what’s the lead number and have you or excuse me? What’s the lead definition and Do your salespeople think of leads the same way as the marketing people think of leads or are you truly asking? How many forms on our site are filled out?

And each one of those forms does something different. So these big numbers that, that people want and claim that they need, there’s really so much more nuance behind how people are behaving digitally with your content and understanding that and really nurturing that when you’re able to is how it sounds like Curtis, that one organization that you followed for seven years did a really good job of bringing you along in a journey. Now, where does that

flip that flips when we don’t, we company don’t have enough sales and we need to move faster. can’t wait on seven year sales cycles. Right. So, so there is a flip side to how you can move learners to handraisers. but understanding the differentiation and understanding, the different methodologies behind it is super important.

Tom Nixon (07:58.197)
I would go so far as to say sometimes when you think of everything as a lead, for example, you can conduct marketing activities that sort of shoo away learners, right? Thinking of the classic example of the form fill that you brought up, right? It’s like, I have this great content. You want to learn all about it, but give me your email address first. And a learner’s like, I’m not ready to get on your mailing list or have somebody call me. It’s like, I just wanted to see what you know in

Aimee Schuster (08:17.985)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (08:26.269)
Are you even relevant to what I do? And can you help me someday? Not now. that sometimes I think that comes from like the higher ups who want to know the lead number. So what is marketing and sales? Do they like try to bolster the lead number and they do all these things and there that can work to the detriment of the overall marketing. Can I mean, we don’t want to wait seven years for Curtis to figure out that he’s got a problem. But in the first seven minutes, if you’re asking for something, then it’s Curtis probably would have never

Become a learner.

Aimee Schuster (08:59.096)
Yeah, I think that’s a great point.

It’s, it is that balance. And it’s, know, I liked your example of the air filter and, and talking through, you know, there are quick decisions and there are longer decisions. And especially as you move through a B2B environment, there, the dollars that an individual is going or an entity is going to spend on what you have to offer. It’s probably larger than, you know, a transaction, which is B2C marketing and is very

different.

Tom Nixon (09:34.227)
Yeah. So if you want to read that story, you could go back to last week’s news. I think it was last week’s newsletter where I told the story of it was a rapturing tale, right about me wanting a needed an air filter for my furnace. So I went on to Amazon and I found the replacement number and I bought it. It was very exciting. The whole point was that it wasn’t exciting, of course, because it there the stakes were so low to your point, right in the B2B world, Curtis, like

Aimee Schuster (09:42.414)
haha

Tom Nixon (09:59.573)
The numbers are big often, right? There’s buying committees. So there’s influencers up and down the purchase chain, right? And there’s a lot of trust that needs to be earned and you can’t do that. I don’t think with a single link in a single call to action.

Curtis Hays (10:14.107)
Right. And so that’s where I’m finding, even just thinking about the natural language and the calls to actions of like, you bring somebody into the website and what’s the first thing that we want to do. It’s like, here’s a request to demo button. It’s up here in the top right or down here. And it’s like, do you realize that 98%, 97 % of the people who just landed on this page aren’t ready for that yet? Right. So this, this path or journey that we need to take them on.

probably needs to be a little bit softer and the language needs to resonate maybe a little bit more with them, right? So maybe there’s some consulting behind your software and it’s like, talk to one of our experts, right? So at least you identify that if that person is a hand raiser, that they know they’re not getting sucked into being sold to, but they could get maybe a consultative conversation started, that there might be some…

I guess what I’m saying is softer ways of identifying those handraisers without putting them directly into the sales process per se or making it feel like they are, even though on the back end they certainly might be. But what do you think about that, Amy? Just like, again, I think it’s understanding your customer profile, understanding what problems and pains they have, and then finding that language that’s going to connect with them. And I feel like that’s a lot of the testing that

Tom and I have been doing lately. It’s really trying to hone in not so much on how well designed or put together a pages, but are we really meeting them where they’re at in their journey?

Aimee Schuster (11:45.656)
Meaning where they’re at and helping them to solve a problem.

And that really, Curtis, when we started working together, like you said, 10 plus years ago, I take that all the way back to the SEO, right? How do we look for opportunities to help people solve their problems in the moments that they have them? And those problems are dictated by what they are searching for. And are you using that as your roadmap to help answer questions along that particular learner’s journey? You we talk a lot about the buyer’s journey.

it’s probably on us as marketers to create the learner journey. And how many different pieces of content do they need to read about their particular problem in order to convert them from that learner to that hand raiser? At what point are they like, you know what, I have a problem, these.

individuals at this company seems to have solved this problem before, I am ready to actually talk to them about how they can solve my problem. That’s the learner journey, and it starts with SEO, and it starts with smart content, and to your point, it starts with not shoving demo now buttons in front of them all the time, but really getting them down a path of learning that is self-directed and then opportunistic in the moments in which you get the chance

talk to them.

Tom Nixon (13:09.861)
My other allegory to the the demo button is the pop-up, right? That happens in the first 10 seconds of a website. You feel like you’re getting hit in face with a snowball. It’s like I’m here looking at something. Pow! It’s like, jeez. It’s like, well, I’m not ready to sign up for your newsletter. Like, I just got here, right? But anyway, another thing where I think it starts and I want to get both of your opinions on this, maybe starting with you, Curtis, is identifying metrics.

Aimee Schuster (13:19.768)
Yeah.

Tom Nixon (13:36.531)
Because even Google’s done this, right? Where everything used to be measured as a conversion. And when there’s only one pass or fail, then you don’t have much data, right? You’ve got, well, I failed 98 % of the time because we only have a 2 % conversion rate. then so Google itself has changed to key events, right? How could companies rethink their metrics so that everything is not? How many conversions did we get or how many leads did we get?

Aimee Schuster (14:03.234)
Yeah, I think that, no, no, no, no, no. Guess first, okay, guess first.

Curtis Hays (14:03.603)
Yeah, I think… go ahead, Amy.

Tom Nixon (14:05.109)
Yeah, guess first. Guess first, Amy. Go for it.

Aimee Schuster (14:11.02)
So for conversion, think we can still rely on conversion. I think the difference is what are we converting, right? If we are converting a large percentage of people into individuals who, to your point, get themselves to a stage where they would like a white paper, where they want to be in the newsletter, where they’re interested in a blog, where they want to attend a webinar, those are great conversions that we’re not going to discount because…

They didn’t raise their hands, right? Those are still good conversion metrics that we can monitor. We’re just monitoring them on a different plane.

so if we go down the funnel and we look first at obviously the amount of traffic that we’re getting, the amount of conversions that we’re getting of people who are learning, we have two numbers there, right? Known and unknown learners. We have a whole lot of unknown learners and then we’ve got a bunch of known learners and those guys are further down the funnel. And then we get that second level of conversion, which is individuals who have raised their hand. And then a third level of conversion, which is eventually those that have decided to buy from us. So I’m not anti-conversion. I.

anti one number of conversion.

Tom Nixon (15:19.537)
Exactly. And that’s to your point, Curtis. We’ve always said all too many people are asking for the last action to happen first, which is the sale, right? So, yeah, I’ll have Curtis explain. He coined that one. I just stole it.

Aimee Schuster (15:27.522)
Ooh, that’s good. I like that.

Curtis Hays (15:31.582)
Yeah, I mean, we were also saying like they want to skip the funnel, right? So they want to skip all the rest of the steps and in their mind is lead gen. And so they just go right to lead gen without thinking again about that journey. the metrics have gotten more complicated. I like what you said there, Amy, that there are going to be your known learners and your unknown learners, right? And there’s the people who

are following your brand or following people on social media. You may or may not identify them inside of those apps, but certainly you can count how many are following and then how many are engaging and what type of content they are engaging with. And then you would have your newsletter signups, how big are your lists, events are back again. A lot of people have been talking about event marketing lately. So, you know, who’s at events?

What types of contacts are you getting at events who might be opting in and those types of things? And then what are you doing after an event to continue to what’s marketing doing particularly to continue to educate those people who showed some level of interest? think again, both maybe leadership as well as sales maybe make this mistake is they try to push learners to be

handraisers when they’re not ready.

Aimee Schuster (16:55.598)
Well, because we’ve got these large SDR functions that they’ve got to fill. We got to get leads for the SDRs. It’s like, ugh.

If you have an enterprise level sale and you’re banking on a whole, and I think this is somewhat going away. This was like a 10 year period of time that I don’t think is going to continue where we just fed name after name to SDR and just hope that the numbers would support. There would be enough people to pass along to the next, to the AE. And you’re right. You can’t push a bunch of learners to a very young salesperson with the hope that that is going to yield a large number of qualified

opportunities, it’s just not going to do that. Not in B2B, high dollar, long-term sales contracts.

Tom Nixon (17:42.773)
Yeah, there’s another mistake I see too. I invented another word to go along. I didn’t invent the word, but I coined the the vernacular of lurkers, right? So to me, a lurker is an unknown learner. Curtis, you were probably more of a lurker. This enterprise or the company that finally reached out to you for the first seven years probably had no idea what you were doing. You could get more sophisticated in tracking nowadays, but lurkers are okay, too. Like how many times do we get

I’ll use my own example. I’ll get a call from somebody in my network and the it might start out, know, Tom, I’ve been following you on LinkedIn for a while and I’ve never even heard of this person. I have no idea who they are. And I think I want to talk to you about hiring you to do this and this. So that lurker has himself gone through the sales funnel, right? Gotten all the way to the point of conversion. And by the time they’re ready to buy, there’s not a list of 10 competitors. There’s not a Google search to get a bid list together. It’s

The mistake that I say.

Aimee Schuster (18:44.794)
But the point there too is they have a problem and you over time have figured out how to speak to solving that problem. There’s so much in this space that is tell them what we do, tell them how we can give them ROI, tell them how we can support them. You want to talk about what that problem is over and over and over and over again because that ultimately is going to make them perk up when they have the problem.

Tom Nixon (18:47.956)
Yes.

Tom Nixon (19:09.705)
That’s the old show me don’t tell me Curtis, but in this last point on that before I turn it over to you, Curtis is that the danger I think could be because there’s so much trackability and attribution available. I actually heard a client say we don’t want to track anything that’s not visible in HubSpot. And I thought what this is crazy. It was a B2G. So business to government, right? So think about long sales cycle, all the

obstacles and impediments to making that sale, bid lists and, you know, government contracts and all that stuff. So much of that is happening in closed door meetings, phone calls, golf courses. That’s where the decisions are going to get made. And because that’s not visible and trackable and HubSpot Curtis is like, we don’t want to know about it. We don’t want to even engage in that activity. I’m thinking what that’s crazy.

Curtis Hays (19:59.282)
Right. Yeah. So I mean, two examples I could share. So the one we were just talking about where that I was following the company for seven years, they were actually serving me ads on YouTube. And then I checked out some of their YouTube, but I never opted in. So I was a lurker and it was a total casual lurker. at some point along that seven years ended up on a list and got a cold call. now I never ended up purchasing from this company, but I did eventually become a qualified lead and I wanted the demo and I went through the process.

the call came in at the right time. So I do think that outreach works from the SDRs. It’s the like, you can’t force that though. How many calls do I probably get or cold emails in a week and a month that I don’t respond to? I just happened to respond to that one.

Aimee Schuster (20:49.496)
Just out of curiosity, what was the price point on that product?

Curtis Hays (20:53.279)
it’s probably in the range of three to 5,000 a month for a software. it was, was for my level of business. was fairly significant. It wasn’t like a $30 a month subscription service. Yeah. But a very powerful tool one, quite a few of my customers could use and, you know, very sophisticated, but they were doing things that I was interested in and they were educating people about that. which is why it was

Aimee Schuster (20:59.235)
Decent size.

Aimee Schuster (21:05.035)
Yeah. Yes.

Curtis Hays (21:21.865)
kind of intrigued and followed. And then I have a personal example, Tom, that I just shared with you here this last week, a colleague who’s an account executive that I worked with more than 20 years ago, who now, you I’ve had a few different careers, she’s had a few different careers, but apparently has been lurking since we’re connected on LinkedIn. And she’s with a B2B company, the CEO of

company got a little frustrated with their marketing person internally, didn’t know how to do some things. She went and started running some Google ads herself, the CEO. And, you know, this person is like, hey, I actually know somebody who can probably help us with this. But like, I haven’t been talking really about PPC or Google advertising at all on my LinkedIn. What she’s been following is this problem solving stuff that we’ve been talking about, Tom.

you know, of just solving marketing problems that B2B marketers have. And we had a call here this week and most of that call wasn’t about PPC. was like, no, where is your company today? What problems do you currently have? Who is your target customer? And then how do we help solve that problem? Not, which I think historically, I just would have dove right into their PPC problem and not thinking about the bigger picture.

Tom Nixon (22:39.453)
Yeah. Yeah. So I’m sitting here so far just saying all the things you shouldn’t do, but let’s talk about some of the things we should do. So Amy, what would be your recommendation? You get hired as a fractional CMO and somebody says we need to rethink our lead gen, you know, where would you start in terms of getting them to get into a mindset that learners and lurkers even are okay? And how do you convert them to handraisers over time?

Aimee Schuster (23:04.622)
Yeah. mean, I start by, and I do this in almost every engagement that I do is really creating two funnels. We need to look at two different funnels, a learner funnel and a hand raiser funnel. And one leads to the other, but they are, they are on different planes and that’s okay. Again, I think so much of what happened over the last 10 years was a forcing into technologies bound.

degrees of Salesforce for sales, know, whatever, marketing automation and, and, tool that was there. And it was like, they have to go together and there’s only one funnel and there isn’t one file. so, so first thing is really taking it down to two funnels and, using that to help educate sales and the rest of the organization that.

Marketing is the long game and sales is the short game and sales has their number that they have to hit with the activities that they do and marketing has the number they need to hit with the activities that they do. Eventually marketing flows into sales, but if you are going to put dollars against marketing and then have an expectation of dollars being delivered from marketing, let’s look at the marketing metrics to do that. Sales, ultimately the closed one is everyone

one’s metric, right? But it’s also customer services metric and it’s the finance department’s metric. And it’s not just for the sales organization. It’s not just a reflection of marketing. So figure out what those marketing metrics are and then figure out how what percentage of those are going to go down sales and then how how you make sure that everybody’s feedback loops are strong enough that we are getting the right people in every part of each

of the funnels.

Tom Nixon (24:56.565)
Yeah, and I guess part of the convincing sometimes is to convince Curtis, the whoever the person is at the top of the conversation chain that marketing generating zero sales. week one is okay is okay. I once had a consultant tell me that marketing has a horrible ROI at the beginning, and that’s true. But what’s proven over time?

We just looked at the data for a client that was initially they came in and they wanted nothing but lead gen. We need lead gen. So we did some lead gen thing and finally convinced them that this will be more effective if we do some brand awareness at the top of the funnel and maybe some thought leadership stuff in the middle of the funnel. And let’s see what that does to the conversion numbers. And we’re going to take some budget. We’re going to allocate it just towards marketing. Wow. Novel thought. The conversion metrics in six months went up 424%.

I know I’m an English major, but that’s more than five times the number of leads that they were getting conversions, whatever you want. can’t say the name of the client and how they reference it, but more than five times with the same budget and taking some of the money out of the sales bucket to your point, Amy, and putting it in the marketing funnel. And so this is something that Curtis, you and I are almost always insisting nowadays, even if a client says we just want lead you.

Curtis Hays (26:14.759)
Right. correct me if I’m wrong on this, but I know we’ve had some clients who still struggle with that because they can’t track those leads. Because when you do the branding, then leads are increasing, but they’re looking at the source of that lead, and it’s a direct visitor, it’s through something completely different or organic, and then they can’t tie it to…

Tom Nixon (26:33.364)
On the website,

Curtis Hays (26:40.121)
campaign you were running, know, the brand awareness or whatever you were doing and there’s like, well, that’s not working. It’s like, wait, but but but you wanted more leads and we got more leads over time because marketing if it’s a marathon, we’ve got to look at it over time. And you’ve got this 500 % increase. So it would have to be due to and there are I think supporting metrics.

that certainly at the engagement level, you know, followers and, you know, other things that you can look at that would lead you. And I think in many cases in, in Legion, and we do this in e-commerce for sure, is, is to basically ask the question, you know, what, what led you to your purchase today or what led you to contacting us today, right? And they might share a moment that was either their final moment, their first moment, or just whatever convinced them to finally raise their hand.

There was a moment, likely, and I think knowing that, as you and I know, Tom, and you’ve been teaching me, ask your customers, because that’s where you’re going to get the best feedback, is what to do with your marketing. And I think if you ask those questions, you’ll figure out what’s working and what’s not, not just from a medium, campaign medium sort of perspective, but also what messaging is resonating.

Tom Nixon (28:00.329)
Yeah. And it goes back to what I said. I mean, give you a chance to weigh in on this is it’s okay. Invisible learners and lurkers are okay to the point you just made, right? It’s just just because we can’t track them the whole way through. Is that not an important like customer? Is that not money? It’s the same amount of money, right? It’s even more money because it’s four out 24 % more. But measuring or being okay.

Like I always talk about, you know, sometimes I have to explain to my kids. We have to be okay with silence every once in a while. You don’t have to fill every, you know, spare moment with a word or a thought or a song or whatever. We have to be okay, don’t we? To trust that the marketing is working, even if we can’t always see that direct correlation.

Aimee Schuster (28:47.256)
Yeah, I think that’s incredibly profound and true. The frustration, and I see this just so daily in terms of the expectations so often of the PE company that get put on the CEO, that get put on the head of marketing of numbers, numbers, numbers. They’re not interested in the nuance. They’re not interested in the story and the brand.

that’s being created. It is just a numbers game. And really good P.E. companies know that it takes more than just numbers. And you have to give that marketing time and space to breathe. And you can put a lot of metrics around it. You can put a lot of tools around it. And those things are important. But…

Ultimately, if the closed one number is the only thing that is going to be used to judge marketing, it has to be used to judge every other department too, because it’s not just a marketing number, right? It’s not just a sales number. It’s not just a finance number. So I agree wholeheartedly with the idea that you have to give it space to breathe. Silence is positive at times. And that you can have the metrics, but I circle back all the time to marketing is the long game.

It is incredibly difficult because there aren’t a lot of long games right now. Everybody is looking for instantaneous responses. And by instantaneous in the world of PE backed companies, they’re not as interested in the…

you know, 10, seven, and even some cases five year trajectory. They’re 48 months in and out. And I get it. It’s hard for them to say, you know, I’m willing to invest in the long term if they’re not going to hold that company for the long term.

Tom Nixon (30:34.953)
Yeah, right. Yep. Great point. Curtis, you have another story to tell the one about chicken feed.

Curtis Hays (30:42.717)
Yeah. It is a real world example, an e-commerce example. Yeah, my daughter, she was researching online when we decided to move, get some land, and we had decided we wanted chickens. Fun little project. We were putting together pros and cons lists of moving out of town and going to the country, and if we were going to make this decision as a family. And chickens came up and she started researching chicken names.

Tom Nixon (30:44.517)
This is a real world example.

Curtis Hays (31:11.743)
And in that research, she came across a website that had a list of chicken names. It just so happened, you know, in this blog post, this company was saying that they make and sell organic chicken feed and we’re crunchy organic family. And so she sort of bookmarked that to say, if we ever get chickens, you know, this is the company. Well, not only did they have a blog post about chicken names, but

They have a whole resource library on how to care for your chickens and, you know, set up your coop and do all of these different types of things. So this became a little resource library for her over the next two and a half years of us finding property, building our home, and then finally getting the chickens that she was learning from them. And then once we bought the chicks, Brooke was like, Hey dad, here’s where you’re going to buy our chicken feed. now they’re, you know, I’m spending 120.

dollars roughly a month, you know, from them loyal customer for the last year and probably continue to will be all started from a blog post that they have about chicken names.

Tom Nixon (32:18.493)
It’s a fun little anecdote, but it’s easy to relate to. If you can think of your business or product or service as chicken feed that not everyone’s ready to buy today, but to that point, going back to the original concept, Amy, these learners. So after you now you’ve created two funnels, marketing and sales, you have to have different, I’m assuming different activities, different content strategies for both funnels. And so on the learner funnel, where do you start in creating sort of this roadmap?

and how you’re going to educate people like Curtis, Curtis’s daughter who just wanted to figure out how to name a chicken.

Aimee Schuster (32:54.2)
think it’s a combination of both the path they’re going, expecting and understanding the learner path, right? But also getting really specific about that individual. I’m thinking about some of the work that Curtis and I do together. He’s making sure, number one, that you’re speaking to their problem. Number two, that you’re speaking to their problem in a way in which they can capture it.

So it start, problem was, what do I name a chicken? Right? Like that’s where it started. it could be, how do I diversify my

marketing strategy, portfolio, blah, blah, whatever that larger question is. But then knowing your client, your potential client well enough to know what are some of the other problems they’re going to encounter, what type of feed they want, what type of chicken coop they might need and yada, yada. I think understanding how to speak to them in a voice and a tone that they understand in a specific

problem solution set that takes them through an experience that the entire way feels authentic is probably the most important point and probably what made your daughter go from a chicken feed lurker to a chicken feed buyer was that authenticity and that trust.

Tom Nixon (34:21.439)
Yeah. And again, trusting that the marketing may be working even if you can’t see it. My final thought is the comment I got from a high school buddy of mine. We weren’t even that close in high school. High school. I had forgotten we were connected on LinkedIn, but he wins the comment of the day on my furnace filter post. He said, Tom, but did you install the filter? That’s where the magic happens. And then he said, always love your posts. Keep them coming.

Aimee Schuster (34:44.142)
ooo

Tom Nixon (34:50.901)
No idea. This guy was even out there and he’s been reading all of my posts apparently, or at least multiple no idea if he’ll ever be in a position to hire somebody who does what I do. But if he is, do you guys think I would be on the short list? Just based on that little anecdote. So that was my final thought. I every day I do what I do in the service of trying to educate people on what I think I know, and I don’t measure any of it. I honestly don’t care about whether it’s quote unquote working because I

Aimee Schuster (35:04.225)
Absolutely.

Tom Nixon (35:20.361)
been in this game long enough to know that it does work and that eventually people who are in a position of pain will reach out to you if they understand what you do why you do it. So Curtis final thoughts.

Curtis Hays (35:30.375)
Yeah, it’s so funny. I, when we first started this podcast, I was measuring everything. How many subscribers do we have on YouTube? How many views did we get? I could care less now. Now it’s just my whole mindset is moved to what you just said. You know, let’s just keep educating people. Let’s just keep putting out content. And, you know, if it resonates with people, we know they can, they can reach out. We’re definitely here and, you know, keep servicing the customers that we have.

Tom Nixon (35:56.233)
Yeah, exactly. All right. Well, a lot of B2B companies can only handle two or three a month, right? And we I could probably handle three or four a year. So anyways, back to you, Amy, for your final thought. Are you going to work the word lurker into your vernacular now to go with learners and.

Curtis Hays (35:57.874)
even if it’s a handful, two or three, you know.

Aimee Schuster (36:00.366)
you

Aimee Schuster (36:14.188)
I don’t know. It seems so nefarious, the lurker. No, but I am, I think this is for my aha moment, instead of throwing down the fire journey, figuring out the learner journey and really trying to, maybe that might be my next blog post or…

Tom Nixon (36:17.205)
Ha

Aimee Schuster (36:33.418)
in post is really trying to get people to understand there is a learner journey and how you can measure that or observe that and the value there long term for your organization. That was my aha for the day. So thanks.

Tom Nixon (36:49.141)
Cool. Cool. I’ll give you one more. You thought that was creepy. You know how there’s Facebookers and then there’s face lookers, people who don’t do anything but just kind of scroll the feed and don’t even comment that type of person like the commenter I just mentioned. He’s lurked in on LinkedIn. So there you go. You want to be creeped out for the rest of the day. Take that with you. Curtis, I’m like you have one more thing to add before we thank Amy.

Aimee Schuster (36:59.554)
Sure.

Curtis Hays (37:14.131)
Well, would like, Amy, if she’d like to, of course, it’s up to you, but some of the content you’ve been putting on LinkedIn, I know you’ve been very prominent leader, especially in women leadership in the Chicago area. You’ve been talking a lot about angel investment in the area. so I’d love for you to plug if you’d like, what you’ve been doing there and share.

Aimee Schuster (37:29.868)
Aimee Schuster (37:36.014)
Sure. Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so I was probably not even a lurker and a very short-term learner in terms of getting involved in angel investing. Not too long after I started doing it, I sat on a panel and the gentleman sitting to my left said he made his first investment when he was 25. And I asked the group how old they thought I was when I made my first investment. And the answer was 43. And it’s not because I was learning and it’s not because I was lurking, it was because

nobody asked because it just really isn’t a asset class that’s offered for the most part to a lot of women because we don’t and historically have not been in the same circles as men. Golf trips and know boardrooms where

Men for the most part will say, I’ve got an in on this deal. Can you write a $10,000 check? Can you write a $25,000 check? I think it could really go somewhere. Those are the types of conversations we just haven’t been a part of. And traditionally we’re taught, contribute to your 401k and just sit back and make sure that that’s what you’re doing. And there’s this whole other asset class out there of angel investing, which over the last couple of years, I’ve been lucky enough to be a part of both on my own and through an organization in Chicago called the Joseph

collective. So really educating women, giving them very palatable entry points as to how to get involved and how to start doing it so that we can create more wealth for ourselves as investors, for the people who are starting these businesses, and ultimately, hopefully, the larger community as we’re able to exit those. So yeah, I’m super passionate about it. If anyone has any questions, please reach out to me on LinkedIn. Always happy to get

get more women into this asset class because I think it’s really exciting and fun.

Curtis Hays (39:26.879)
All right, Tom, we’ll leave a link to that in the show notes.

Tom Nixon (39:27.28)
Excellent.

Yep. As well as to Amy’s LinkedIn. So you definitely need to follow Amy on LinkedIn. She’s brilliant. She’s got great content. She’s willing to educate the learners among us. So give you do yourself a favor. Give her a follow.

Curtis Hays (39:40.465)
And she comments quite frequently on other people’s posts, which is what I appreciate too. Always thoughtful stuff on other things, which is how I see a lot of your stuff, Amy. It’s not just what you post, but just keep it up. Yeah.

Aimee Schuster (39:46.606)
Oh, thank you. You guys are so good for my ego. This is so nice. Thank you.

Tom Nixon (39:51.093)
Ha

Yeah, well, that’s just keep it up. Yeah, cool. Well, we’re ready for round three next time you’re up for it. So maybe even before the end of season two, we’ll have you back on.

Aimee Schuster (39:56.547)
Thanks.

Aimee Schuster (40:03.59)
I’ll have to bring my learner journey. How’s that? I’ll work on a learner journey. All right.

Tom Nixon (40:06.537)
Perfect. Alright, it’s a deal. Until next time, we’ll see you both and see you all on Bullhorns and Bullseyes.