When faced with adversity, we can either shrink away or rise to the occasion.

Today’s guest thrives on the latter and has been consistently pushing himself to evolve with the market and create opportunities.

Andrew Bolis has 15 years of marketing leadership experience. He's currently a Fractional CMO & Business Growth Consultant. He builds marketing programs that help B2B companies acquire new customers and grow their revenue.

Join me as we discuss:

1. How to create synergy between marketing and sales teams

2. The advantages that startups have compared to established companies in their marketing strategy

3. Unique marketing tactics that will elevate your lead generation strategy

4. How to leverage the expertise of a fractional CMO

This interview has me rolling with new ideas that I’m putting into place as we speak and can’t wait to see the results.

Don’t miss this amazing episode!

Learn more at https://www.adamliette.com

Discover how to work with me: https://www.adamliette.com/work-with-me

Transcript

Adam Liette
What's going on smooth operators welcome. It's been a couple of weeks since I've had an interview on the smooth operator show. So I'm really excited for this one. Because you, man, the internet's a great place you meet so many amazing people, you get to connect, you get to hear their stories. And it's weird how a lot of our stories have this commonality amongst them. And this one in particular, this gentleman I'll bring on, he went through a pivot point, a transition point, and a lot of us. You know, if you're in business long enough, if you're doing this long enough, you're going to experience these moments of absolute parallelism, where everything you thought you knew changes on a dime, it's if it has to happen, you it's going to happen to you. And it can be really dramatic, like losing a job, or having to leave a job in my case where things just weren't right anymore. And I had to leave, I had to pivot on a dime. It could even be within your own business where you have someone that that leaves the company or market forces change, pivots are coming, changes inevitable. And the frustration that comes with it is a choice. And I want you to understand that that in that moment. When the pivot happens when you are faced with that decision. You have a choice in how you react? Do you lament on it? Do you go woe is me and create 30,000 tiktoks on how your life is so awful? Or do you begin to action and start living your highest purpose and start creating the life that you want? That's exactly what my guest Andrew has done. He went through a pivot point. And he leaned into it, he took it on and has managed to not only it's not about survival, survival is part of it. But it's about thrival, I just made up word. It's about thriving in that moment and finding a part of yourself that you didn't know was there. And the places that takes you so let's bring on Andrew Andrew Bullis is he has 15 years of marketing leadership experience. He's driven revenue growth from series A to E stages at multiple companies. So most recently, he was a full time CMO at a series B tech company. And currently he's a fractional cmo and Business Growth consultant. So what he does is helps build marketing programs that help build b2b companies, help them acquire new customers and grow their revenue one of my favorite subjects when we get into marketing, so let me bring on Andrew, Andrew, thank you so much for joining Smith. Operator, how are you doing today?

Andrew Bolis
Thank you for having me on the show, Adam. I'm doing great.

Adam Liette
Fantastic. Oh, so good to have have you on I'm really looking forward to it after our pre meeting, just kind of discussing how this was different questions, we're gonna go down and I'll restrain myself to keep us within time. So I understand that you have a rather interesting origin story where you came from abroad, right? You weren't born in America? Did I read that? Right?

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, that's correct. So I'm Egyptian. So I was born in Egypt. My parents are Egyptian. That's where most of my family still lives. And when I was 12, I actually emigrated to the US. There's even like a kind of an entire story around that. But But kind of the short of it is I came through the, I think, I don't know, the official name, the casual name is a green card lottery. Where, you know, so I emigrated, you know, sort of like once I came in, we all got green cards, which was nice, but even to sort of get through the interview process and get approved and stuff. Kind of a lot of work went around that. So yeah, so that was definitely an experience. When I first given the US too, as a small town. It was, it's called Erie, Pennsylvania. And this was pre internet, so people have never even seen someone like me, and there was no ESL classes either. So it was one of those. You just have to quickly figure it out. Luckily, I was only 12 years old. So it was you know, like within a year so I kind of started figuring things out. But that was an interesting experience in a lot of ways.

Adam Liette
I'm sure and I can imagine that the things you were learning at 12 carry through to this day, like being able to go in situations of unfamiliarity and be able to not like I said not just survive, but thrive and to become the person that you're going to become, right.

Andrew Bolis
Exactly. I think it's a great age because a lot of, you know, my personality or people's personality, I think gets formed in those teenage years. And it was right at that point. So. So in some ways, I think the first year was very odd for me, because, like, I didn't understand why you couldn't wear the same outfit two days in a row, for example. Like we just were. And that's, by the way, that is an American thing, like when you go to other countries, some other countries, people wear the same offer for an entire week, like they just don't. So so like bigs like that, like I would ask those questions. And then I would sometimes hear the answer is, well, that's just how it is. And as I got older, I realized, well, a lot of these things are cultural, right? Like there wasn't really a right or wrong. It just a lot of it are norms and culture.

Adam Liette
It's so funny. I get accused of it too, because I have this like one t shirt I wear. I don't have one of them. I have like, 20 of the same T shirt. Because I don't like I just like to pull off his shirt out of the drawer. And people are like, do you just wear the same shirt all the time? No, but doesn't matter. We're meeting on Zoom. It doesn't matter what I smell like. But that's a thing. That's so cool. And so like you landed in Pennsylvania and ended up did you move across the US? Or because I know you're in Chicago area now. Like, how much travel have you done across the US then?

Andrew Bolis
Sure. So I ended up in Pennsylvania cuz my uncle's family was already there. So we stayed with them. Initially for a few months, then my parents were able to get a house. We were there for a year or so. And then my dad got a job in the Chicago area. And that's, you know, so my parents, me and my brother then moved to the Chicago area. And right around that time, I was basically starting high school. So that was also interesting, because Erie is at least a part that I was in was very small. So my school there in total was about like 200 students. So you just knew everyone was the same people was a lot like a small town, when I moved to the Chicago area was a pretty big suburb that we moved in, where the school it was, you know, 2000 students. So that was that was also like fix them getting used to. But in some ways, I didn't feel as odd in that setting, because there were a lot more, you know, foreign students, there were ESL classes. So I just, I felt like I could at least get lost in the crowd of it more or whatever, which I appreciated.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. So cool. Well, we're definitely glad you're here, man. And it's such a fascinating backstory. I've, I've traveled the world as well lived in other countries. And I think it adds to your mosaic, it adds to what we can bring to the table, because just a different level of understanding, and an appreciation for the broader world that in marketing really helps us I've found just that bigger understanding.

Andrew Bolis
It really helps you out with it, especially understanding like why people make certain choices or why they behave. Because when you get kind of access to different cultures and see different habits and even ways of thinking you kind of start putting pieces together and start seeing trends. Fantastic. So I know you

Adam Liette
work, primarily b2b, right? And one bugaboo of mine, the last couple of months I've been I've worked a lot of I work both sides of it, b2b and b2c, and the types of marketing I do, which is fun, because you got to do this mind flip. But it's um, I've noticed when I'm working with b2b clients, there's like this misunderstanding of marketing versus sales. And like, they're like, Where does these lines cross? Like, what is marketing in a b2b environment versus sales? And how did those two intersect?

Andrew Bolis
That's a great question. It's not always very clear. So I can tell you, a lot of the companies I work with, it's been a mix, like some companies, you were just responsible for a certain number of leads every month, or whatever it is, and that's how marketing was evaluated. And then it was up to sales, to follow up work those leads, other companies like like my last full time role, I actually wanted to manage the SDR team, because I didn't want to just generate leads. I wanted to actually generate early stage sales opportunities. So all the way where it's the book call, that call takes place. The account executive accepts that call as a, you know, qualified opportunity. And the reason I wanted that is because I just didn't want to get into arguments about like marketing being effective, what value marketing was adding because I've had a lot of those debates before at previous jobs, and I just I'm just not a fan of those debates. So so yeah, but but it can kind of take both sides. And and obviously, you know, this add them to there's a brand side of marketing, where it's a lot more about, you know, impressions, awareness Share of Voice where there is sometimes no leads altogether.

Adam Liette
Yeah, that's the classic marketing versus sales, like finger pointing thing where sales like my leads aren't good enough and marketers like, well, you're not converting the leads. I think that leads us to that. If I'm looking at a company from an organizational perspective, this might be getting to 10,000 foot view. But, like, what is more important in your mind? Is it that better lead up generation or conversion rate optimization? I think it's a great

Andrew Bolis
question. So I think if you're going after SMBs, and you have a huge, you know, target market, you're selling maybe a lower end or a cheaper priced product than it is a lot more about, you know, optimizing for conversions. Because any small thing will make a huge impact. Where as if you're selling something more high end, and it's, let's say, to mid market or enterprise Well, at that point, it really does end up being like how many sales opportunities is marketing help generating? Because, you know, everything else is nice and everything else contributes. But at some point, like if you can't show that, hey, marketing is actually contributing to the deals and the customers that the company has given. You know, you end up having a, you know, make a case for your budget and for resources and things like that as a marketer.

Adam Liette
That's really interesting. I never thought of the price point being a differentiator, there were like the lower ticket. But you're right now that I think about it, I mean, conversion rate optimization on a $250 product is far different than trying to sell a high end $10,000 product, for example.

Andrew Bolis
For those Exactly,

Adam Liette
yeah, those sales professionals they need they need at bats, because it's a, it's a different process that they go through when selling those higher ticket items, right?

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, it's very different. So if you're selling something that's $200, it often ends up being like an e commerce Store experience, like, it's not different than going on Amazon and just ordering that thing. So if you set up the store correctly, you have reviews, you have credibility, and you have some awareness. A lot of the times you don't even need a sales team, it's just pure, we're gonna run ads bringing traffic, the traffic is going to convert, and we're gonna keep optimizing everything, you know. And that experience, when you're selling a mid market or enterprise where you're talking 2030 50k, or even 100k, or bigger contracts. Well, now you have a full buying committee on the other side, multiple people are involved in the decision, longer sales cycle, and that's when not only do you need a sales team, but the relationship between marketing and sales becomes, you know, sort of critical in the company's ability

Adam Liette
to grow. Wow, that's really interesting. And hum. If we look at that, from a systems perspective, and like an organizational perspective, what tactics have you seen? Or what strategies have you seen, I should say, to help make marketing and sales tighter, to make them work better together as anything particular that is effective? So yeah, I'll give you

Andrew Bolis
two ways to do it. One is more high level. So I think just from a goals perspective, it helps if marketing is held responsible for I call it a pipeline goal, that could be a certain number of sales opportunities that marketing generates, or a certain value, like when you estimate how much those opportunities are worth. That makes it so that you know, both marketing and sales are still fully aligned, like maybe each owns half of the pipeline number. So that's a very high level, the more tactical way to do it. Like I like to have like, whoever is going to be doing the outreach, like the BDR is or the SDR is like the cold outreach, sit in marketing. Because then what I'm delivering to the sales team is fully qualified early stage opportunities, not just leads and hoping that the sales team follows up with those leads. Very cool, man,

Adam Liette
you you're speaking my language there because I love talking about having KPIs for everything and how if you're a leader, and you don't give your team members a number to reach for you don't give them a goal. You might think that instinctively you're making their job easier, you're actually making their job harder, harder, because they don't know what success looks like. So if you're hiring a players, people that want to achieve and you don't tell them what that is, think about what you're doing to those people, you're you're leaving them in a state of perpetual angst where they don't know if they're doing a good job. So I love having that. And to make them shared KPIs, that's even next level, because each everyone owns their own risk part of that responsibility. So you're almost forcing, it's like accountability creates force relationship. Yeah, like it

Speaker 2
forces them to get along. It's no longer like a nice to have, it's like they have to get along, or both of their jobs are at rest, like both the marketing leader and the sales leaders job, are at risk if they don't get along. So yeah, so it just avoids a lot of, it's just a lot more efficient.

Adam Liette
Yes. Efficiency is great. I love that. So now you're you're in this growth, marketing? consultancy is what you're doing. Now, how did this come about where you were like, what jumped you off into this point?

Andrew Bolis
Sure. So my last job, I was a CMO at a serious b tech company. That ended in December, because of layoffs, the company was expecting additional funding that didn't come through, they laid off about 15% of the workforce. And even after I left, so my job was eliminated. At that time, even after I left, I heard that there was even a second round of layoffs. So at this point, half of the people I work with at that company are no longer working there. And that company was about 110 120. So yeah, so because of I mean, obviously, that was unfortunate for me. But you know, but but at that time, you know, I kind of had a lot of choices to Well, first, the job market was difficult, because everybody else was getting laid off. So I had to kind of get creative and think, hey, obviously, I am going to try to find another job. But what can I do in the meantime? Or what's my plan B, just in case, it takes me a long time to find another job?

Adam Liette
Absolutely. Yeah. And that led you here. So fantastic. But now you're working with you, I think you have any unique insight now, because working for one company at a time gives you a great depth into that company in that particular, you know, product line or part of the service industry. But now you were with multiple different clients as a CMO and helping them grow. So I think everyone's concerned about this right now. I think with all the stuff going on in the economy, like what growth strategies are you seeing right now that are either still working or started working? Like what what types of strategies are crushing it at the moment?

Andrew Bolis
Sure. And let me I guess, let me start by talking about the ones that I try to steer my clients away from. And it's not because they don't work, it's because so if you have a lot of funding, or you're already at, let's say 2030 40 million, 100 million per year in revenue, you can do a lot of irregular marketing, like you can do a lot of paid media, you know, you could do a lot of basically paid activities, spend a lot on trade shows all that kind of stuff, and still be ROI positive just because you have the budget to do it. A lot of the clients I work with tend to be smaller, like some are bootstrapped others, or maybe five 10 million in revenue. But they just don't have that much budget for you know, for marketing. So what I do with them at this point, as I like to do, strategies are more kind of organic, that yes, they take time to work, but over time, they build brand awareness and create demand in a sustainable way. So I'm happy to walk through like, like the three that I like, you know, one of them is using cold email, but using it in a way to actually add value instead of you know, pitch the company to is taken advantage of LinkedIn. And that could be for the founder, like helping them build a personal brand. And then using that to get them on podcasts and get them speaking at shows, and things like that, or it could be an employee program. And three is partner marketing, where you find a company that targets the same customer. They're just not a competitor of yours and you find someone on their marketing team, you reach out and you plan a webinar together, you plan a report together, and then you promote it to both of your databases. So those three work pretty well. They pretty much work for every industry and as you've probably started to see they're more organic and they're more sustainable, because you'll have to spend more to get more out of them.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. And you know, what I found that's crazy about partnering is I would have people on my email list for for like, three, four or five years, they've opened every email, their engagement is through the roof and they buy a squat. And the moment I put a partner promotion in front of them, they would bought. And they always pissed me off, because I'm like, I've been marketing to you, like I earned you, you should have bought from me. But here's the thing, like, they were happy to get my emails, they're happy the value I was providing there. But they weren't ready to make the conversion until I put the right offer in front of them that did appeal to them, and then they purchase right away. So in that type of a construct, I think, a lot of companies when I talked to them about doing partner promotions, they have this fear of I'm giving up my list for this, like, Oh, those are mine. Yeah, they are yours, and you're going to make some money off of it. But you're putting a unique offer in front of them that they're ready for. I love that then and the fact that you're using it to this extent, even in the sizes of industries you're working in. It's fantastic. Now I want to double down on partnering. I always want to anyway, and I want to do it even more. That's so cool.

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, no, I love that example. And I think what companies forget to as when you partner with someone else to in some ways, it gives you a bit more credibility. I mean, kind of an extreme example of that is like, which I did previous jobs where I had, you know, we had more resources as we would find these summits, it would be like a supply chain Summit. And it's a bunch of vendors in supply chain, who, again, not competitors is two different things. But when we then would go to promote it, like each of the vendors would promote it. Well, now you're hearing from like five speakers from five companies across everything in supply chain, like it's a big event, it's a lot more attractive. And every company gets more credibility from appearing on it versus if you're just doing your own event. So that's kind of the thing with partnering too, it just gives you more credibility.

Adam Liette
Yeah, Cialdini called that borrowed authority. It's one of my favorite child, dini. isms is like, you can increase your own authority just by being next to someone that has equal or more authority than you. Like there's an exponential effect where the authority increases for both properties, by the fact that you're in the same room together. It's crazy how that works in the eyes of, but I'd say in the eyes of the consumer, but it's actually real, because those relationships, then even company to company, like you're sharing information, you're working together. And it's never just like the one webinar, it always turns into more and more. And like zoom calls and becoming friends. And I have a whole mastermind group of people that came from that exact thing where we started working with partner promotions. And now we meet twice a month just to share what's working and be there for each other, though, it's awesome.

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, but no, that's, that's great to hear.

Adam Liette
And what do you say? So working with these companies, I, the biggest roadblock I encounter is the CEO that doesn't want to have a personal brand. How do you? Well, first off, if you get pushback, do you push back harder and say, No, you have to do this? And here's why. Or like, what are some of the things that you've found that get people out of that nervous state of starting a personal brand, because it can be quite? There's a lot of like, personal blockages that I think prevent people from doing that.

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, and Adam, you're right, like, and even that word personal brand is a bit of a loaded term, I think the way to think of it is like more of an online presence, more of a industry present, more of like thought leadership is another way to say it. But so I like to do it in two ways. If they have competitors that charge more than them. I then will, you know, do some digging on these competitors. And I'll often find that sometimes just as simple as well, the CEO of their competitor company has a published book, or the CEO of a competitor company has been running a podcast for two, three years. It's one of the biggest in the industry, or the CEO speaks at, you know, these industry events or whatever. So that's a very kind of clear cut example. The other way I like to do it as to as I like to, like show them like how it works in a different industry. So one of the industries I've been working in more recently because of client is like virtual assistants, ones that are overseas, right? And when you look at those companies, most of them charge the same but there's a few companies that charge double or triple. The monthly fee for virtual assistants is everybody else. And it's very obvious why one of them, one of the co founders has one of the biggest Twitter followings. He has 150k You know, he's had multiple successful exits, he has like a bunch of co sponsors, following him. So he can sell the same service for two, three times as much. The other person is a published author. Her book was about using virtual assistants and leading and managing a company. And she's had a podcast for four years. And she covers a lot of those topics as well. So you know, so like, when they see that, it's like, you can't argue with that. That's why these people are able to charge more. Because otherwise you become a commodity. And it's kind of like a losing battle, you're going to compete on price.

Adam Liette
Yeah, I think Dan, Dan Kennedy would talk about that, where, if you're competing on price, you better be the cheapest or you lose. But you can be the most expensive, that's a better bigger advantage than being the cheapest in his in his view, that's what I've always taken away from that conversation is the race to the bottom is a race to the bottom. And you'll you'll never out Walmart, Walmart, in many ways, right?

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, no, and, and you're a lot more susceptible when things go like when things happen that you just didn't plan for, you're a lot more likely to to go out of business, because your margins are so thin, that anything like your ad prices going up, whatever it is, like anything can just take you out of business. Whereas if you're a premium offer and you are bringing in more cash, you just have a lot more of a kind of a safety blanket or whatever you are, whatever you want to call it.

Adam Liette
Absolutely. So I love those three strategies, I might steal one or two of them that if I'm not doing it enough, right now, that being said, I think like you talked about what bigger brands are able to do, because like cashflows, not as big of an issue. They have bigger budgets, they have a lot more margins to work with. Working with the types of companies that you're working with and the breadth of companies, do you see an advantage that a startup has or that a smaller organization has versus a larger organization? And what are those advantages? And how can we take advantage of that?

Andrew Bolis
Sure. So there are a few advantages. One is, it's a lot faster to get things done, when you're small like you don't, there's no layers, you can just do something and apologize if you get in trouble for it. Like if the co founder finds out, you just apologize. And that's, by the way, a big advantage because the bigger companies, there's like three layers. So sometimes the best ideas, by the time they get approved, it's too late, you know, the trend has passed, whatever it is. Another advantage is small companies soon as you can take more risk, because you're small, you know, if anything, you have a lot more to gain than you have to lose. So you don't have a big reputation to try and protect, right. So it doesn't mean that you will try to do anything, you know, quote unquote, illegal, but you can do things that are more, you can say questionable or whatever, because you just have like, you just take more risks. So I think even just both of those, is why you can still kind of compete and thrive being small. But it is like I think it's actually even more fun. I feel like it feels more than like an action movie, or whatever, all the time where things are blowing up, you know, and you're winning some battles and losing others.

Adam Liette
I love you say like things are blowing up. Because that's every day in marketing, I feel like, but the way to look at it from my perspective is unless I'm blowing something up, like I'm not really pushing it hard enough, right? And that's, that's that scrappy bootstrapped entrepreneur and me have pushed it till I blow it up. You know, what, what do I have to lose? I think you said it perfectly. Like we have nothing to lose. Because if we need to pivot tomorrow, we'll pivot tomorrow.

Andrew Bolis
Exactly, yeah. And I think whereas like a bigger brand, you know, like if they say the wrong thing, and, you know, becomes a public relations issues issue, they can actually lose their current customers. And if you have a customer base, that's a lot of revenue. They generally have a board, they have big investors that they're going to be hearing from as well. So they just have a lot more to lose and a lot more, you know, ties people that they have to keep happy and things like that.

Adam Liette
Yeah. And in this current state of affairs, it's like the but you just say the butterfly effect. That's all you got to say, right? Everyone does that by now. So awesome. Well, one of my favorite topics with marketing is everyone brings it up, and I'm going to as well, because it's what we all want more of and I'm always geeking out about different strategies, but it's lead gen raishin. So what are some of the best practices or some of the strategies that you've seen really work for lead generation, apart from paid media? Most of us can't really get to that yet, because we don't have a proven process, or the upright, outright funding for it. But what are some of the ways that you've seen really worked for your lead generation? So I'm a

Andrew Bolis
big fan of doing cold outreach, but doing it in an intelligent way. And let me like, explain what I mean. So one of the companies I worked at, they sold, market research insights to CPG brands, and basically consumer goods type of companies. And so when the marketing team, we had this really cool thing, where it was a report that showed consumer preferences, what they're buying less of what they're buying more of, and that was during the cost of living crisis, which was like late 2022. So So because the cost of living was already in the news, all the brands were thinking about it, they were seeing that consumers are spending less like we had a great asset, we had a very timely, timely insights. So I built a cold email sequence, that would just share like micro content, and each email like, hey, you know, consumers aren't eating out as much. Instead, they're actually buying more groceries in and making the food themselves. So that's great for, you know, companies that whatever sell their products in grocery stores, it's not so good. If you're a restaurant, they're not consuming as much alcohol. So because of that, you know, imagine if you're getting a cold email, and you work at one of these brands, and you're getting these insights and three bullet points. And the call to action is, hey, let me know if you'd like the full report. Like there's no even link or anything. So, so yeah, so that's usually very effective. And a lot of companies can do this kind of stuff. It's just that they're, they're usually just not being, you know, creative or resourceful enough.

Adam Liette
It's man, it's taking like every part of a old you know, old school about old school that like a good lead Martin, lead generation strategy with ads, where you have those like, curiosity bullets to bring people in. But you're it's an outbound lead generate, oh, dude. You flipped it upside down?

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, no, you're right. Like a lot of the old school ads, would do stuff like that, where there isn't like a direct call to action. And they're like, capitalizing on like news on transit is trying to bring in the traffic and stuff.

Adam Liette
Oh, man. Okay, I am trying this. That's my project for the week. Now. I can I am going to try this because it's brilliant. From a tactical perspective, obviously, we're talking about a lot of emails, we're talking about a lot of messaging. And like, You got to give people like a system to keep it straight. Otherwise, they're gonna eventually lose their mind a little bit. Like, how do you organize this? You use a CRM, like what, what types of tools do we need to put in place to execute the tactical end of this strategy?

Andrew Bolis
Sure. So you definitely need an email outreach outreach tool, there's a couple, I mean, there's a lot of them, there's a couple I like there's one called limbless, which is pretty popular, another called mailshake. And what those tools will do is like, they allow you to import in contacts, they do this thing where they call it like warming up a domain name. So you don't want to use your main domain name to do cold email. Because if people, you know, block, you mark you as spam, then when you have an employee in your company, sending a manual email out to someone else at another company, that email, you know, might end up in that person's spam. So you generally get a new domain name, these tools sort of warm up that domain for you. They allow you to import your list to your sequences, and then they just kind of, you know, execute the entire thing. And then obviously, you look at the performance stats and use those to make tweaks and improvement.

Adam Liette
Awesome. I haven't heard of that particular piece of software, but I'll be checking it out after our call today. Because probably sign up this brilliant man. I love it. Because it it strikes the right amount of curiosity and a little bit of fear. But it's not like fear for the sake of it. You're just sharing real life data on what is actually happening right now. That's already at the top of everyone's mind. So it's getting that that lead magnet framed for the current here and now. I think that that's a big part of the success is that it's what's on everyone's mind already. And I've heard this before, but like you need to get into the conversation that everyone's already having in their, in their head. Like that's how you'd be really successful as a marketer.

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, yeah, and in fact, if I may to like, so what I like to do to like after the sequence is done, let's say it's five, six emails, you can, at that point, try to set up a call with sales, you know, some people might be interested. But if you even want to sort of hedge your bets even more, you invite them to like a webinar, or some kind of event like online virtual event that you're going to do, it could be even like a zoom call, whatever it is. And ideally, it's on that same topic that you've been touching on in the sequence. So it's Hey, you know, in my case, it was, hey, that, so we're doing a webinar on the cost of living crisis. And we actually have, you know, our CEO talking to these two other experts on this topic. Again, this, this would be a webinar that we would have planned anyways, you know, with with the marketing team is, you know, because we did one every month or two, but now, you know, they don't have to even commit to talking about anybody on your team, they just have to register for a free webinar. As a next step. And after the webinar, obviously, you can always follow up and they're a lot more likely at that point to apply and be interested in talking to someone on your sales team.

Adam Liette
Does that phrase still work for you webinar? I find in some industries, it doesn't. We're where people come into webinar jaded already and expecting the pitch, or do you still use that phrase? Yeah, no, you're

Andrew Bolis
right. Like, there are better. So like, if you say it's like a panel discussion, if you say it's a workshop. But But I understand what you mean. Yeah, it's so overused, that it's kind of the old phrase, it's kind of burned out. At this point. Yeah. One of the things I've been experimenting with lately actually is like LinkedIn audio events, where it's similar to Twitter spaces, but it's on LinkedIn. So when you go live, all your connections, see that they get an alert, they see that you're live, and whoever you have on as a speaker to, like, all their connections, see that this person is speaking at this event? And because it's audio, too, it's like, yeah, like anybody can open in the background. So those will actually work pretty well. So that's kind of one one creative way to do it as well.

Adam Liette
Oh, dude, that's awesome. Because you don't have like, all the pain in the butts of I don't have the right link. I can't find this law mat, my computer desk, I can't do that, like, go and go to webinar won't install, like you take so much of the tech that drives us crazy anyway. And you just take it out of the equation and go to for the platforms that are already on anyway.

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, yeah, no, exactly. And because it's on top of a social media network, there's this like network effect. So sometimes, so people, like people will find out about it, because others they're connected to are attending the event. So you get like, so it's a lot like you don't even have to necessarily have a lot of connections, a lot of times, that's how people see it, they see that so and so as attending this event and their notifications, and they end up finding out about it that way.

Adam Liette
One last question on this? Is that list that you're starting with, that you're putting into this tool? Is this one that you're curating? Are you buying it? Or like, how are you coming up with that seed list?

Andrew Bolis
Sure. So I like to use tools like like apollo.io is is a good one, like once they just let you build lead lists, but can also be very smart about segmentation. So you can say, you know, I want CEOs at these types of companies with this kind of revenue in this region, who, like there's so many parameters that you can use that then you so you're able to align the list with your sequence to ensure that it's gonna resonate, basically, if that makes sense. So yeah, so I mean, you could use you know, a tool like that. I got I, I know called the email like, like, it has a bad rap, because most companies use it wrong, like most companies, spam people, and they used to annoy people. But imagine, again, if you're like, you know, the example I shared, you're the head of insights at a consumer brands company, and you're just getting the short email, sharing data driven insights with you for completely free and there is no ask like, you don't, you don't have to opt in nothing. I mean, you know, you're either gonna like it, or you might dismiss it, but you're at least not going to be annoyed with it. So that's kind of the big thing. Like, I feel like the bar is very low. Let's pull the email. You know, as long as you're not just pitching right away, I think

Adam Liette
you'll be fine. Don't pitch right. Don't pitch right away. Oh, yeah, that's right. I get like, I'm sure you do. I get like 10 or 12 of those a day. And it's like, okay, yeah, we have another like examples of how to do it wrong. So just do the opposite.

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, and funny enough, those are the ones that you actually see like, like most of those end up in your spam or junk folder, where you never even see them. So that like like even the ones that you see that pitch are like a small percentage of all the pitches.

Adam Liette
Oh, Yeah, that's for sure. So cool. Well, at some point, like in the company's growth, I know a lot of people listen to the show, they're, they're working through the ranks and getting up working up to seven figures, you know, we're trying to get there. And a lot of times as you're on that journey, like, marketing is often divvied up amongst many people. I know, when I was in a company of that size, like I own part of marketing, it was owned by another part by this guy, like there was no head of marketing. So like, getting to that point, I think, is often it's like a goal that people are trying to reach. Now, you and your role as a fractional CMO. Like I think that might be an advantage where you can come in at it not full time, but in that part time capacity, but then have those that knowledge and the depth of experience to really help people get to that next level, is that what you've experienced?

Andrew Bolis
Yeah, so So a fractional CMO is a part time marketing leader. So it's someone that you could have worked for hours a week, one day, a week, two days a week, it's kind of up to you. But it gives you as a company gives you access to a very experienced marketing leader at a fraction of the cost, because they're only doing you know, for eight hours, whatever it is a week. And because to like your early on, you often don't need a head of marketing, because there just isn't that much to do full time. So again, this person could come in, they can create a strategy, they can create a plan. And they can even help maybe execute some of it themselves or work with someone on your team who will execute or even you know, connect you with an agency or a contractor at a good price, who's vetted because a person has used them before and recommend that you use them. So again, it just saves you a lot of time. It's not that expensive, and it helps you get results,

Adam Liette
as well. Awesome. And when you're doing that, like you're delivering this strategy, do you also like I'm a big systems guy, like give me a project management system? I'm a happy camper, because I just love to organize it. I don't know, Dorcy perfect about Adam, do you give them those types of systems to follow as well? Or is it just kind of depend on the client? Yeah, I

Andrew Bolis
think that's another advantage too. So I typically have playbooks, like if you know, if I'm going to create a report, you know, here's the steps to do it. Well, if I'm going to do a webinar, if we're going to attend a trade show, even if we're going to do cold outbound, you know, here, because I've done this before, here are the best practices, here's the steps. And then I'm often to like, you know, in their project management tool, like Asana, Trello, whatever it is. So I like to do to also just create those great templates in there so that they have those templates, they can always copy them. You know, every time they want to do an event, every time they want to send out an email, they just know now you have the almost like a checklist that they can use to kind of execute that

Adam Liette
tactic. speaking my language, brother, I love it. So cool. I've really enjoyed going down this rabbit hole with you, Andrew, it's been super fun. I have more ideas than I can possibly do tonight, but I'm gonna try. It's only like seven o'clock, we're finishing this I can I got plenty of time. In the meantime, for the for our listeners, if they, if they're ready for that job, if they're ready to bring in someone with your expertise, where can they find you? And how can they get started down this pathway?

Andrew Bolis
Sure. So the best way to find me is LinkedIn, just look up my name and send me a connection request on there. And, again, just even having a call with me, the first call is free. Like at a minimum, I'll share some ideas that if you can execute on your own, or your team can, you know, you'll walk away with tactics, strategies for free. But at the end of the call to if you feel Hey, like you need my help, you know, at that point, you know, I'll kind of share how I work with companies. But either way, just through connecting with me, you'll get some benefit. I also post a lot on LinkedIn. So you'll be seeing, you know, strategies, tactics that I just share through my posts as well. So it's just a great way to kind of stay in touch and on the latest that I'm working on.

Adam Liette
So cool. And I think the last little thing I'm reflecting on is you've built this, you're comfortable in, you know, making a living with this and your lead source is LinkedIn. Like we've done this without going through three months of build of your own website and 17 funnels. Right. It's been about that connection. And I think that goes right back to what you're talking about with that the power of organic and like reaching people in that level. Right. Yeah, and it's,

Andrew Bolis
I mean, you know, people will say this all the time now, but it's like people buy from people and you know, LinkedIn It allows you to have that personal connection, your face your name, you know, even just when they start following you, or connecting with you and seeing your posts, they at least know what you do. So, you know, in a couple of months, when they need someone who does that, you're going to be the first person that comes to mind. And at that point, they're gonna be reaching out. So yeah, so LinkedIn is not this like magical thing. But you know, it's a great way to nurture connections. And it's a great way to stay top of mind for, you know, people you're targeting, that could become potential customers when they are.

Adam Liette
So cool, that I've had such a good time talking with you. Like I said, I got ideas for days. So this is dangerous. My wife will be mad at you. I'm kidding. This might not be making it out of the office for a little bit. All good things, man. Before we jump from here on any, I did have the question I do like to always ask. I'm a big reader. I love books got this whole bookshelf next to me, if you could pick one book on marketing, for all of us to pick up? What is that book that you would recommend to everyone? Or maybe not even on marketing to Sun worth?

Andrew Bolis
So the latest one that I've been reading, because everybody's recommending it, it's I think it's $100 million offers by Alex or Mozi. Yeah. And that one, there are marketing things in there. But but it's even like his approach to business, like how to pick a market, how to pick, you know, an audience how to create what he calls the Grand Slam offer. I mean, just like, like he does it, like it's pretty simple, straight to the point. And the way he lays it out to lays it out to is very structured. Again, he didn't come up with a lot of it himself. But just the way he explained it, that explains it. I think it's very simple. So it's I think it's a great book.

Adam Liette
It has a new one coming out in six weeks. It's 100 100 million dollar leads. He's been talking about it on threads for the last four days, which I there's another advantage to the small business is he jumped right on threads, and the big business is still going how are we going to do this threads thing? Yeah, yeah,

Andrew Bolis
they're still wondering, like is, uh, is it worth it? Is it not? You know, how does it work? And he

Adam Liette
jumped on, he's been posting every hour on the hour for like, the last four days.

Andrew Bolis
Wow. Okay. Well, he does have, he does have a team because I know someone who works on his social media team, but but it's very smart of him to also be like, like, on their first, probably ahead of a lot of other bigger companies with a lot more resources.

Adam Liette
I love it, man. Awesome. Well, I'll link to your LinkedIn in the shownotes. Be sure to connect with Andrew, if for nothing less, just his organic content and he posts is amazing. And I've already learned quite a bit and then get to go execute. So thank you so much, Andrew, it's been an absolute pleasure and have a great night.

Andrew Bolis
Thank you for having me on the show, Adam.

Adam Liette
Before we bounce out here, I have a free strategy session available exclusively for my podcast audience. In this 30 minute phone call will unveil the immediate steps you can take to operationalize your business and put you back in the driver's seat. Just go to www dot Adam liette.com and click Start Here.