30K Followers, 150K Views: Alicia Underwood on Why Reach Beats Following

Jordan:0:00
Welcome back to the [High Ticket AI Systems] podcast. Everyone please welcome the one and only Alicia Underwood. Alicia, how you doing today?

Alicia:0:08
How are you Jordan? Thanks for having me.

Jordan:0:10
Of course, of course, it's our honor and our pleasure. I'm doing a lot better than I was just coming over a sickness. Today's my first full week back at the office and I'm really grateful and happy to be back. So yeah.

Alicia:0:21
Well, so happy to have you back. I'm sick. It's never fun.

Jordan:0:24
Ha!

Never, right, never. Well again, thanks for hopping on. Really quick, for the people that don't know the name or don't know the brand yet, can you please describe kind of what you do and who you serve?

Alicia:0:38
Yeah, no, that is a great question. So just a bit about me. I lead 23 and we are a social media influencer marketing company, primarily focusing on health care, luxury, higher education and high growth brands. So we run social media campaigns targeting social media paid as well as influencer marketing and, you know, how and how all that ties together.

Jordan:1:03
Gotcha. How did you end up getting into this role or in this, in this company?

Alicia:1:07
my goodness, it's been a long time. Let me think how it all started. So this is my third consulting firm. Originally I had two previous agency, you know, when social media first started and obviously has just evolved into what we see today. So when I started 23, I really wanted to hone in and niche down. because as the market was saturated and maturing, I found the need to really niche down into social media. Like what part of social media and what part of the function that is, you know, that we do really well. So finally, focus from, you know, within social media, which is paid organic content. Did you hear that by any chance? Sorry. man, I wonder how I can turn it off. Sorry.

Jordan:1:59
We might be able to cut out background noise. we could cut out some. I you'll okay.

Alicia:2:02
Okay, okay cool cool. mean see I don't know how to cut that out. so my god where should I just restart from scratch so you can edit that part or how does it work?

Jordan:2:15
think you were saying you were niching down as competition was growing, you were really good at these X services, go for it.

Alicia:2:17
Okay.

Alicia:2:20
Yes. Yes. Yes. So really niching down to, you know, just social media and social media, we niche down to organic and paid media and influence marketing. And, know, and we've kind of realized that was a sweet spot.

And obviously social media, you have your, a huge channel now, you know, when you start, what started as a really small, you know, just you post updates. Now it's this, you know, huge funnel and metric system. So kind of realizing that that's our sweet spot and really focusing on that. So it's been great.

Jordan:2:54
I cannot tell you how happy I am to hear another agency owner or consulting firm say they niche down to only a select few services. Like no offense to full service agencies out there, but you're kidding yourself. If you think you are a master level expert on your entire suite, there's probably one to five things, five things of max that you do exceptionally well, but you can charge actual dollars for.

Alicia:3:03
Yes.

Alicia:3:20
Absolutely. That's how our previous, my previous company and I was just, felt we, we were jack of all trades and master of none. And honestly, I got really burnt out. And I took some time off and realized, what do I really want?

What do I really want to focus on? What's important and not just even niching down in terms of offerings, but in terms of the clients as well. So I think really understanding, know, because social media and influencer marketing is very different. You can't duplicate it. It's not, you know, a lead generation. It is a lead generation, but you can't really duplicate it the way you could duplicate text messaging across all verticals. So I think really, you know, for ages to understand to like what. what categories they do want to serve as well.

Jordan:4:11
Absolutely. And to expand on what you're saying right now, I learned this from Alex Hermosa. He's the purple book guy in the corner. Cole Corden also talks about this. He describes it as the optimal selling system where it's one offer, one problem, one solution. with that OSS formula of optimal selling system, just with that one pillar, one might say, or the OOO system, there are still thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of people

Alicia:4:22
Mm-hmm.

Alicia:4:26
Mm-hmm.

Alicia:4:30
and then.

Alicia:4:35
Mm-hmm.

Jordan:4:41
they can still serve with this one system. So you don't need to sell more services or try to broaden your cam or broaden the target audience that you serve. you try to niche down, there's still tons of capital to gain in that one area. Secondly, it just makes everything so much easier from a business standpoint. Now everything is repeatable. You basically get the same person coming through your funnel, just with a different face. They have the exact same problem every single time. So you know how to

Alicia:4:42
Right.

Alicia:4:52
Mm-hmm.

Alicia:5:04
Yeah.

Alicia:5:07
Mm-hmm.

Jordan:5:10
solve that problem and fulfillment. It's not easy, but it's repeatable. It's the exact same thing every single time. This allows you to remove yourself from being the bottleneck within the company because you can hire somebody, train them on this one specific task and actually grow this company that way. I don't think a lot of other business owners, other agency owners actually know that. And I'm trying to explain that on the podcast, but anyways, you got to figure it out. So kudos to you.

Alicia:5:12
and

Alicia:5:16
Thank

Alicia:5:19
Mm-hmm.

Alicia:5:28
Yeah.

Alicia:5:37
Yeah. thank you. You know, it's funny because I've been in it for over, you know, 10 years right now and it's hard. It's, you know, the problem is with social media and digital marketing, it's one of the fastest changing and fastest growing industry, right? Compared to other industry where, you know, every industry is constantly evolving, but not as rapidly as, you know. digital marketing per se, right? And so I think, you know, there's frameworks to make it repeatable, but at the end of the day, what problems are we solving for our clients? How do we get there? And also how do we tailor it to get there? You know, we can use the repeatable, know, like I have certain operating system that's repeatable in influencer marketing, but at the same time, but the strategy may be different for a higher education versus a healthcare campaign. So understanding that, that's important.

Jordan:6:33
Definitely, 2.100%. I feel like there are a few nuances with different avatars or different customers solving problems for. And I think you have it more challenging than I, because I'm really not up to date with all the new social media, like the Metas and the Linkdings and the TikToks updates. That's what I'm saying. I get probably changes every week. I tend to follow AI a lot and trying to keep up with that. But...

Alicia:6:37
and

Alicia:6:49
lot. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jordan:6:59
Nonetheless, keeping up with anything is a challenge in today's age.

Alicia:7:02
Yeah, yeah, yeah. and AI also innovates a lot with social, I mean, I think AI is pervasive in every industry right now, everything from healthcare to marketing. I don't think any industry is immune to AI, but yeah, it's a lot to keep up, but I like it. It's fun, it's exciting. mean, it's one of the few industries, like you can... marketing has become democratized for a lot of people to put it out there. If you really think traditionally, really only big brands could really market, right? Because it was only through magazines, print.

Broadcast and radio and billboards. Those were the main four channels and that requires a huge You know huge capital to to be able to do that and I think social media has really democratized that for someone You know who's just starting out to be able to connect with volume with volume with the right people if they have the right content the right strategies right branding and the right people behind it, so So that's the fun part of a social media

Jordan:8:10
No, for sure. Can you describe to us or give us an example of what you did with a recent client when it came to digital marketing?

Alicia:8:18
Yeah, yeah. which one should I? Would you like from a social perspective or an influencer perspective or both? Okay, cool. Yeah. Well, actually, this is a really good one. So I had a really long term client for over 10 years and it's a restaurant client. As you can tell, know, restaurant, it's a really difficult moment now, right? mean, the margins have really raised or thin. Restaurants are closing and they've been doing fine. But

Jordan:8:24
You can give us both, yeah.

Alicia:8:45
The VP called me up, know, Q3 wasn't doing really good and you know, was like, we really need to ramp up Q4. So we came up with, you know, some small strategies and obviously as a restaurant, you don't really have a huge budget. But we put together, we were like, okay, why don't we get a couple of influencer, you know, let's put on a holistic plan. Let's, know, we have your social going. Let's get a couple of influencers and let's activate influencer marketing and let's activate. what paid media targeting around, create lookalike audience targeting around the area. And let's go with that. and, and that, and so we ran that and they made $30,000 more that. that quarter. that was quite a win. And again, it wasn't we were doing anything major or we weren't doing anything that's like new, but just managing. always say marketing is like a pie. And the problem is people always want to, we tend to focus on one part of the pie, then making the entire pie fit together. So That's really all we did was I just took the pie and just kind of figure out, okay, with this budget, how can we make the best pie? And we did, yeah. So that was great. That felt really good and that the end of the year pretty strong.

Jordan:10:06
No, for sure. mean, 30 grand for a restaurant in one quarter is pretty significant. So kudos to you.

Alicia:10:11
I think it's pretty significant. mean, for a local restaurant, I think that's pretty, pretty significant. You know, they're not a chain. So that was fun.

Jordan:10:18
No, definitely, definitely. And you said lookalike audiences. So I assume you're using meta ads for this specific relation.

Alicia:10:23
Yes, yeah, because that was the quickest way. That's where their presence, the brand presence that we've created was on there. You know, we didn't go to, you know, it's not the most, you know, it's not the most like sexiest restaurant or anything like that, but it's a very, it's a staple in the community. And, you know, we didn't want to test TikTok yet because, know, why don't we just test what we are right now? So, and that's great. Yeah, it worked out.

Jordan:10:45
Thank Did you get any influencers for that specific campaign or anything?

Alicia:10:50
Yes, did. So yeah, we got a really, we got like two popular local influencers and their video did incredibly well. And they were great to collaborate with. And I think also that speaks, you know, it's so important to have these relationships with these influencers. And with my influencers, I don't really treat them as a media buy, but more as a partner and collaborative partner. And because when we do that, I work with them on other projects. as well. it's just you just kind of create your own ecosystem and it's great you know and so they come through and just seeing the community play you know just everyone playing their part I think that's that's pretty awesome.

Jordan:11:30
for sure. Are most of your clients kind of locally where you like reside?

Alicia:11:33
No, I have a few locals, I don't really, because our agency is pretty small. So I try to tailor, find the best clients that, you know, that I always say, does this client bring joy? Is this fun? And obviously, you know, are we doing good work? So those are the three main pillars. So I have a couple local, but most of it I do focus on. like national and international. any campaigns or that doesn't go through, like it's not just focused locally.

Jordan:12:05
I know you like the challenge of everything, but if you have to pick like your favorite marketing play to do or your favorite, I guess, thing to do in marketing for a client, what would you say it is?

Alicia:12:08
Yes.

Alicia:12:18
man, that is, I've done a lot. I've done everything from activations. I guess it depending, I'm in my thirties right now. In my twenties, I would say activations. So I used to put a lot of influencer activations where we would pair a live event with a brand. You know, so that was fun. But you know what? I think I will go back to that. That that's fun because there's something about community. and bringing that to life. The only caveat with that, you know, it's really hard to go national with that. So because, know, it's so locally based where you are. So in terms of community, I like that. But in terms of my favorite marketplace, it's influencer marketing. So right now I'm doing an advocacy campaign for health care and just seeing the outcome and reaching our metrics and reaching our, you know, video views that we're trying to get. think that's that's that's really fun and surpassing those metrics. has been really fun. And especially it's healthcare. It's the most sexiest thing to sell, but being able to package it, convince the creators to come on board, having them create the messaging and keep them on par with the messaging and seeing that go out and scaling that, that's been fun.

Jordan:13:34
To piggyback off that, I think that's probably my favorite thing to do with owning an agency, a marketing agency to be specific, is to create an aspect. Like how can I help my said client get in front of their ideal prospect through X channel? Because there's slight nuances, as you describe it, between each client that you work with. And I think that novelty with each client is really fun. mean, obviously,

Alicia:13:40
Yeah.

Alicia:13:47
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jordan:13:59
You know, there's some, like you said, standard operating procedures that you do with every client, but there's some nuances. You came back to what you said about the community aspect and why you found some joy in that. Not to get like philosophical, but if you look back like thousands and thousands, like a long freaking time ago, like communities essentially is what kept us alive. We're very tribal human beings or tribal instincts, if that makes sense. And whenever you are putting this community together, it's almost like you're the community leader.

Alicia:14:04
Yeah. Yeah.

Alicia:14:14
Mm-hmm.

Alicia:14:19
Yep.

Mm-hmm.

Jordan:14:29
You know, like I kind of did this. This is super cool. Maybe, you know, actively or consciously think about that, but I think party was like, this is so cool. Like I made this happen. Maybe I'm wrong. I think I would.

Alicia:14:31
Yeah!

Alicia:14:37
Yeah, no, no, you're not. mean, and so it's funny because I used to be the president for a like Lafayette Business Association. It's a I used to live around there. It's in the city. It's a really cute French neighborhood, leading a lot of community events. And you know, if you look at it like community, whether it's locally, regionally, nationally, community is the heartbeat of country or you know, if a state, know, if there's no community, there is no business, right? If there is no business, then there is just no economy. And, you know, I think community, and I call it community marketing sometimes, you know, it's like, you know, how do we, how does your brand show up in your local community in a positive light and in in a genuine way. Because I think sometimes, a lot of times, we are a part of a community and it's more of a transaction. And I try to get my brand super like, hey, how can we show up in a genuine way? Because at the end of the day, the dollars, it's a cyclical effect, right? The economy, right? Your taxes go to the community, the community spends back in business, and that's it works. So, yeah.

Jordan:15:51
Absolutely. And I think if you focus on, like you said, results or like providing value upfront, what you value in return will be returned to you at that kind of expense. You know what mean?

Alicia:16:02
Absolutely, absolutely. You know, it's always easier to get returning customers than trying to get constantly get new customers, right? So I always try to explain that to my, think with a lot of brands or businesses, you know, I think sometimes we get too hung up about getting new customers all the time. And yes, we love that. But at the same time, let's not forget you're returning customers, you know, and these are the people who are. are loyal and value you and are giving you consistent business.

Jordan:16:36
On that topic, I think this is really important for me to say to everyone. And on the topic of acquiring new customers, lot of businesses, including myself, do our absolute best to decrease our cost of acquisition. We want to make that for free if we can. Obviously it's hard to, but you can only reduce your average cost of acquisition so low. You can...

Alicia:16:51
Yep. Yep. Yeah. Yep.

Jordan:17:04
exponentially increase your lifetime value, like infinitely, like keeping customers by adding maybe a backend offer or another upsell to your core services. Right? So I think what you're saying is really important.

Alicia:17:08
Yes, yep.

Alicia:17:15
Mm-hmm. Yeah, and it's so funny. It's such a little it's I love that you brought that up because that's one really small part of a strategy I always explain to when we put together strategy document I'm like what efforts are we doing to target your existing customers and a lot of times people a lot of brands would be Honestly, I don't know like, you know a lot of our efforts and and and money and resources all just invested constantly in new customers. of course, all, new customers means more reach, you we're reaching more people. And I think as human beings, you know, we want more and like, want, you know, a little bit more, more visibility, but at the same time, it's like.

Let's, yeah, we can tackle this, but in terms where the money's flowing, it's this set of people that is going to keep coming back. And when we have that, let's keep nurturing that because that's cheaper than constantly trying to nurture a larger funnel here. You know, and getting, like you say, the cost of acquisition is so much more higher here than the lifetime average value of this customer here.

Jordan:18:22
Absolutely. And from a customer standpoint, it's so much easier for me to say yes to this business because I already said yes in the past.

Alicia:18:29
Exactly. I'm just like, why are we so hard to constantly give new discounts or new offers to new customers, but yet when it comes to our existing clients, why are we not appreciating them? And that even follows through influencer marketing and creator marketing, I call it now. It's like, you have a loyal base of customers, let them be your creators. Let them be your advocates. They are they're really buying from you. So let's reward them instead. And I really love that some brands are doing this right now. They would do brand trips. traditionally, in the early years of influencer marketing, brands would really invest in influencers that has, I guess we say, aesthetic and the followers. But I think where it's shifting right now, brands are investing with the customers, customers who have purchased. And I think it just makes it all the sweeter. They may not have the highest following count, but maybe they have 20,000 or 10,000 even. But I think it makes it sweeter for them to be able to showcase that on their social, that this brand appreciate me and took me on this trip.

Jordan:19:43
Absolutely. Two things I want to say. One is your best salespeople are your customers. Like, you know what I mean? Like they actually purchase your product, they utilize your services, et cetera. And they're telling you straight up, I love, you know, this company, like here, here's the result that I had. You should go do that. I posted with sales person saying, yeah, you should purchase my product. You know I mean? Like night and day difference and influence behind.

Alicia:19:49
Yes, yeah.

Alicia:19:55
Yes!

Alicia:20:07
Yeah, yeah, totally.

Jordan:20:09
Second thing I want to say is I know very little about influencer marketing. But what I do know is that micro influencers, those are where like the real, I don't know, revenue.

Alicia:20:19
engagement and the data shows it. It's funny, I love that you brought that up because I actually just posted about this. in terms of the influencer marketing, creator marketing, two facets that's really coming up is niche influencers. So these are influencers with a skill. know, they're very niche. Think of attorney. Maybe they're attorneys, they're teachers. They're really niche in their skill, sewing, whatever that skill may be. So that is coming up. The second part is nano and micro influences. And I have the data to back those up. their engagement in video views are way higher. really, again, I'm not saying that to just use micro nano or just to use mid-size influencers or just to use the top of the line influencers, macro influencers, I think you can still, again, it drives down to budget, but I think from the most part, Nano and micro influencers are far performing way better than macro influencers. And a big part too, it was when Adam Mostery of Instagram announced, they really shifted the algorithm to really favorite content and not necessarily just. people with big following and you definitely do see that. So I always tell my clients, know, don't worry too much about the following kind of like look in terms of their content, right? Because good content will be pushed into the for you pages and that's ultimately what we want. Yeah.

Jordan:21:49
100%. Yeah, I think you could definitely speak on this more than I, but whenever we make a post on Facebook, Instagram, let's just take a look. We only reached like 10 or 15 % of our actual following count.

Alicia:21:55
Mm-hmm.

Alicia:22:00
I think that's even that's great. mean, honestly, 10-15 % is great. I, you know, I think it's even lesser now, you know, and yeah, it's, know, and I know it can be so defeating, like, you know, cause they're like, why are we posting on social? again, we're not, I think people still have the old framework of social, right? The number of followers correlates the number of people will be seeing your posts. And it's not like that anymore. It's, it's what goes into for you pages. So, a lot of times, so even when I approach my influencer marketing, I'm not too concerned about the followers.

I'm concerned the distribution when I look at the data, where is the video going? Who is seeing this? Like who are the non followers that are seeing this? Is 60 % of non followers just seeing this? I think that's more of a win versus having 80 % of the followers following it. So let's see.

Jordan:22:47
No, 100%. I definitely agree with you there. I'd rather reach new people. Well, kind of getting back to new customers.

Alicia:22:52
yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's both, you know what I mean? It's both, so yeah.

Jordan:22:57
From an Instagram and social media perspective, I would rather reach new than a current. Because people who follow me already know I exist.

Alicia:23:00
Yes.

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And you can nurture those existing customers, existing followers in a different way, right? Like through email marketing, through, you you can kind of through a private group or et cetera, those, can nurture that in a really different way with your own, you know, different offerings and stuff like that. So.

Jordan:23:19
Absolutely. I do have a question. How do you manage to find these nano micro influencers?

Alicia:23:25
it's funny. Well.

It's a combination. We have access to other discovery tools. But honestly, the old school way, because a lot of the discovery tools, I feel, are influencers that are not necessarily, it's just more like, they're salesmen. So I honestly, we call them castings in influencer marketing. So I'm part of some groups with, and obviously I have existing relationships with a lot of talent managers. So I will go out to that.

And then I honestly just go depending on the platform, TikTok, LinkedIn. really, I'm like, think of me, think of me as like, you know, back in the day in the nineties, you know, you would have, people would find cast models in the mall, right? They will do the hard work and go to the mall and try to find someone. So now just do that digitally. That's literally what I do. I would, you know, create my people's profile. I'll see the content and like how does this fit? And honestly, that's the best. best results because when you're doing healthcare, you can't just simply get Joe Schmo to get on and you really have to look through the content and see if this person fits the persona that we're trying to target.

Jordan:24:40
I think matching the brand with the audience or like the influencer marketer with the brand is vitally important. I said this on another podcast recently, but you can kind of take the same principle with advertising in general. So go to TikTok. There's a certain way that the TikTok video is optimized, maybe different captions, just different placements for the captions, et cetera, et cetera, different edits, right? Or if you go to YouTube shorts,

Alicia:24:54
Yes.

Alicia:25:00
Mm.

Alicia:25:06
Thank you.

Jordan:25:09
also going to be a little bit different compared to TikTok, even with Instagram, right? So you want to match your advertising video or static, whatever, you match the platform and it's going to be posted on, you know? And I think that's very applicable with influencer marketing. You don't want Joe Smoe, who has zero alignment with the healthcare company, you know?

Alicia:25:11
Yep.

Alicia:25:26
Exactly, yeah. And I think sometimes people, know, when brands are not aware of, you know, maybe it's just a first dabble into influencer marketing, you know, they just like, Jo Shmoe's interested, you know, but okay, sure, Jo Shmoe has 30,000 followers, but who are their followers? Who did they listen to? Who did they follow? Are they aligned with your audience and your goals? And typically when we don't have alignment is when we don't have outcome.

So I always say we need to align and when we do have alignment then you have the outcome that you want. So for example, know a lot of times on Instagram, know videos tend to be what half of the typical reach. So if you have say a hundred thousand followers maybe you know the videos would get probably what at most 50 % of your followers maybe 50,000 views right and that's still considered good good but and i think this goes back to really good content and really authentic content and always tell my influencers as i can tell when they're using ai i'm like forget ai like ai is great but speak from your heart speak speak how you how you would speak to your mom to your dad to your sisters because we're human beings right and when we perceive things they're not And that is something about the perfection of AI just feels off.

It's awesome because the videos are performing incredibly well three times in their follow. So I had someone with 30,000 followers, but the videos were getting 150,000 views three times more, you know, and that to me is a win, right? Like to me, that is a win because now we have great content that's out there and the client's happy, creator's happy, and obviously they're getting more likes and more followers. So it's a win-win for everyone and I'm happy.

Jordan:27:09
Right. for, no, for sure. To speak on the topic of being authentic in your content, I think it's really understating. So we had the head of content for ClickUp. His name was Luke Koska. think his name is, he achieved like billions of views for ClickUp. And that was the number one, like indicator for his success was authentic content. Because like you said, AI is really perfect.

Jordan:27:38
B2B companies are, they try to be perfect, but at the end of the day, we're humans. We laugh at jokes. We make fun of other people. We're authentic humans.

Alicia:27:46
I mean, one of my favorite, exactly, and I say don't shy away, like one of my favorite social persona, and they've done such a great job, is Wendy's. Wendy's persona is supposed to be a five year old And if you follow them on threads, on social.

It's hilarious. it's so funny. It's not perfect. Like, it's not like, I mean, the response would be, literally, because I have two boys, they're nine and seven. It's exactly how my voice would respond. It was like, you know, like, who hurt you? Like, you know, et cetera. Obviously, there's a time and place for that. Wendy's, because Wendy's was, it's literally created by the founder of a was named after his five-year-old granddaughter. So that's the persona that they were going for. And I think just lean into that, right? And to me, you know, I just feel like when it's so polished and it's so AI, you're just not building trust. And I think when you can be...

Jordan:28:37
Mmm.

Alicia:28:41
who you are, maybe a little, you know, you didn't put a full stop or you didn't, you know, if you speak like, I mean, obviously you want your grammar to be, to be, you know, readable, like, you know, people can, you know, to be legible on, on, on social, but I think people can tell when there's a human element versus, you know, this is just a canned response.

Jordan:29:01
No, absolutely, absolutely. In regards to, I guess, marketing internally, do you have any processes, any channels that you utilize to enroll clients into your services?

Alicia:29:09
Mm-hmm.

Alicia:29:15
As in I are, so my clients, it's interesting. A lot of my clients come through word of mouth and then it kind of goes through, know, and there are times I decline clients because they may not be a good fit, you know. So I don't really have, I mean, I have an internal like questionnaire that I look for when we go through a discovery channel, a discovery process, but it's not like I could repeat because I, it's.

I'm in for the long run. It's almost like dating, right? Like I have to make sure that we... jive together because we'll be working a lot together, right? So again, like my agency is not a transactional agency. I'm not a lead generation agency. I'm not where is this repeatable, like, you know, I don't care if you come in today or you leave tomorrow. It doesn't matter. I have more coming in. I worked with those agencies before and they have a part, you know, that's their own function, but my function's more high touch strategy. So like, you know, and being able to help you execute that. that's, so, so yeah. So it really depends on the needs of the clients.

Jordan:30:18
For sure. think every agency owner can speak on that. They'd rather work with 10 best perfect fit clients where you work for a couple years, if not a decade, like one of your clients, and there's zero headaches 99 % of the time.

Alicia:30:35
Well, let me tell you this. So my previous agency, was, I mean, it's not massive, but you know, we scale it quite a bit and I was miserable. I was so miserable. I was not happy on paper. We look great. But I was unhappy. just felt the clients that we were getting were not my favorite. you know, because we had costs, right? We had payroll. We have rent. We have all these costs that we have to pay out taxes, et cetera, payroll tax, et cetera.

And it felt like we were just getting customers without really vetting them. it was almost this weird cycle that we were in. And it just took the joy out. And I think COVID came and really just reparties of like, okay, what is important? And to me, I'm extremely joyful. I'm happy. Like I love life. And to me, where success was, I rather have 10 good paying customers that are. happy and just have a great relationship with them than a hundred that I don't know. And they're going, it's a revolving door. And again, no shade on those businesses. are agencies that do that, but that's not, it just doesn't align with my values.

Jordan:31:47
No, for sure. And I think that's important. I think if you're making all this money, but you're miserable, what's the point of all that money?

Alicia:31:54
Exactly. And to me, is no, you can't put a price on peace and joy. Like you just can't. You can give me 20 million and I'll be like, it's going to cost you your peace. you know, I'm like, I'm good. Like I'd rather just make this, you know, I think peace is such an under, like people don't, I don't know. life is short.

And I want to die with peace. don't want to die knowing I was my cortisol level was next level, you know, and.

Jordan:32:25
Absolutely, no, I get so excited as you speak about this because at the end of the day, like when I'm having my internal talk, I talk to myself in the mirror, that is the one thing I genuinely long for, is internal peace. Am I there? I mean, I try, but like, you know?

Alicia:32:38
Oh, it's great. Yeah. It's lifelong pursuit, right? And as human beings, we go through up and down. But what we can do is through our work, through our clients, is how are we contributing to that internal peace? So for me, there are certain values. I just don't, there's some clients I was like, you know, I don't really like. of values, you know, and I have my own set of values and you can just take those steps to be, you know, be a part of, you know, to like make sure, hey, are these aligning with my values? And, you know, so for example, I'll just give you, you know, equality. Equality is a huge value of mine. I believe humans are inherently all

Jordan:33:16
I was going to ask, yeah, please get an exam.

Alicia:33:22
equal value. I don't believe there are humans that are worth more than another human being because, you know, we come up the same way, we die the same way, right? And like, you know, I don't think people, if you're a billionaire, I don't think you have more value than someone who's a janitor. I just don't like, you know, so I think everyone has, think if you are brown versus white, you have same value as everyone, no one, know, so, and then, you know, so for example, like I would not be comfortable marketing something that say, hey, we don't want to market to brown people, whatever. That's going to go against my values, right? And like, that's, yeah, and unfortunately, I've had clients in the past like that. And that just kind of just like, you know, it just doesn't feel good. Even though I didn't do anything, but it just doesn't feel good. So making sure that I'm aligning myself with people who, I guess,

Jordan:34:11
for sure.

Alicia:34:20
long story short, who also want to make the world better. Because to me, that's not making the world better.

Jordan:34:27
Such an important philosophy, no. Yes, we're in business. They were human freaking beans. I'm actually guilty of this. I'm not gonna lie. Where I kind of forget about everything else but my business. like neglect, talking to my siblings. I'm a single guy, I don't have any kids or anything. It went the exact same way. We grew up, you know, kind of in an awesome rough environment. So we're really close as adults. And sometimes I don't get back to him as frequently.

Alicia:34:31
Mm-hmm.

Yep. Yeah.

Alicia:34:45
Mm-hmm.

Alicia:34:52
Yeah.

Jordan:34:56
I don't call my parents or like, just forget to be a good human being, like be a good brother, be a good son, you know, or be a good friend. And I'm actively working on that because like you said, we're human beings, like sure, business is part of life, but fundamentally, know I like since like five times, like we're humans, you know? And maybe I'm just saying that I allow it to like really hunt it for myself because it's something I really fricking struggle with. But yeah.

Alicia:35:22
Mm-hmm.

Jordan:35:25
I do agree with that value. we are, if you want to market this over here and I do not agree with what you're doing, no, no, no client, no questions.

Alicia:35:32
And I have recommended, I like, hey, maybe this agency would be a better fit for you. Like, for example, if you are all about muscle gains and we want the metaspher in it and all that, I'm not like, I'm an agent. I don't know.

Jordan:35:50
Would you call that?

Alicia:35:54
Like the Madison area, you know, like I'm just, have maybe another agency may be good for you. Like I like Pilates. I like matcha. I have two little boys. Like, you know, I'm, I like princesses. Like I'm just not, you know, I wouldn't know how to do that, right? I wouldn't know how to tap into that market or whatever that may be, you know? So I always say, you know, when I tell other agency friends or whatever, you don't have to be everything for everyone. You're not pizza.

And I had to come with that because I wanted to be as a people pleaser myself. I always say business is the ultimate mirror of your wounds. Abandonment, whatever you have, it's the ultimate mirror of your wounds. And I had to work about...

So one of my is like people pleasing. And that's why in my early career, like I wanted to do, I do everything. I do everything. I can please you. I can make you happy. And obviously I'm always going to give great customer service, but I've come to realize that I'm not pizza. can't make everyone happy. And hey, you know what? Not everyone likes pizza either. And I tell people, like, know, I think this is as you get older, you feel that way. You know, I think most people do. It's just like,

Jordan:36:58
Mmm.

Alicia:37:07
I can serve the best, you know, who I want to serve. you know, and I think the world's big enough for everyone. I think. Yeah, there's competition.

Jordan:37:14
Absolutely. No. What? Yes, yes. 100%. And Greg, I think if you do view that like, there is competition. I'm not going to make it. You're really just shooting yourself in the foot. Like there's billions of people here. There's like almost infinite number of dollars. Like there's plenty of market share for you, You know?

Alicia:37:27
Exactly.

Alicia:37:32
And you sometimes, yeah, I totally, I gotta say, again, that goes back to the abundance versus scarcity mindset. And I tell that to my clients as well, because clients will come on board, and when I'm trying to bring them on, I'm like, we need sales, we need, we need, know, X. I'm like, of course, we all want sales. All of us do. We want that money in our bank account, ka-ching. We want that.

But at the end of the day, it's like, you know, let's talk about serving. How are we serving your customers? How is your brand showing up in this world? know, all those question is so important because when you have, when you get that right, money just flows.

Jordan:38:10
Yes, exactly. You give value upfront, it always finds you back. Change in direction slightly. We kind of touched on it earlier, but it refers to like making, not clients happy, but like retaining clients and maybe facing a difficult situation with a client and maybe how you would handle that to kind of ease the situation and then make them happy at the end of the day.

Alicia:38:15
It always does.

Alicia:38:19
Yeah.

Alicia:38:33
That is, well, that is 10 years of learning. Over 10 years of learning. You I my fair share of very difficult plans. At the end of the day, you have to understand, know, early in my career, I really took it personally. I just felt like I would melt and I would feel awful even though I, you know.

I know that you've known me for 45 minutes, but I always have the best intention at heart. I never go out to, you know, actively harm anyone. Yeah. And it's like, you know, like my sister called me, she calls me a goldfish. I'm a goldfish. Like I just, you know, I just swim like Nemo, you know, doing the best I can, you know. And, but I think there are some people out there, you know, you have to understand that business is not the only life. A lot of people are so intertwined with their personal life and sometimes it bleeds and it's not.

Jordan:39:04
I can tell you that's

Alicia:39:26
about you. They may had a really bad day because and they're taking out on you. They're just taking it out on you because you are an easy target because you're just a marketing person and you know and And I think just not taking it personally, think just setting, but that doesn't mean you can't set boundaries. You can still set boundaries and be like, hey, I'll give you an example. had, she was extremely difficult, really rude to any given time. And she never responded in two weeks and they were paying the retainers. So I was just like, I wanna make sure that they feel like.

You know, so I just checked in, like, hey, it's been seven days. I mean, two weeks. I wanted to follow up on this email. And she responded and said, I will email you when I email you. OK? yeah, I was like, I am so like, you know. And I was just like, oh. I said, yeah, I responded. At that moment, I wanted to be like, you. But I was like, hey, I just responded and said,

Jordan:40:23
I'm sure.

Jordan:40:28
I know for sure, for sure.

Alicia:40:33
No, Vicky at all. I was just checking in. It's been two weeks. I didn't want to drop the ball. If there was anything on my court that I needed to attend to, let me know when you're ready. I'm here whenever you are ready. And sure enough, five days later, she messaged. But you know what's funny? When that contract ended, I think they were with me for three years, the VP messaged me and said, thank you so much for always being professional.

Jordan:41:00
because he.

Alicia:41:02
She knew, like I think she knew, you know, and, you can take that away, right? Like it sucks in that moment. I'm not going to be a punching bag, but you know, at the same time, I think there's always just great ways to be just, Hey, you know, you can set your boundaries, just be like, you know, of course, if it did escalate and then be like, I'll be like, Hey, this is not the good clients that I was just like, Hey, I don't think we're a good fit. And I you all the best. Yeah.

Jordan:41:30
Absolutely. think I learned from Colgorn as well, but he said there are no such things as business problems. It's personal problems that bleed into your business.

Alicia:41:40
And my God, sometimes I'm like a therapist. Like, you know, and it's, it's just that you just realize like, you know, sometimes the kindest thing you can do is give a listening ear, you know, and

Jordan:41:52
For sure. What you're saying, sorry to interrupt, but you are, I think you are very philosophical and I want to appreciate that or least recognize that with you. Because I feel like I'm philosophical and I can't really go on tangents because some people are like, shut up Jordan, I don't care about that.

Alicia:42:06
It's funny because I used to think I'm so weird. I used to think, and actually my husband, it was the first man I was like, you don't think I'm weird. He was like, he would go into these tangents with me and we would have these conversations. And I used to these conversations and I feel like people will look at me like, why are you so weird? What does it matter? And I'm like, it matters so much.

Jordan:42:28
Exactly, Like philosophy is like infinite truth. You know, was true a million years ago. It's gonna be true a million years from today. You know, I think that's fantastic. One thing that you're describing, never take anything personal or personally. I think I learned that from the four agreements by talking.

Alicia:42:32
Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Alicia:42:46
Yes, I that was my first book ever. Like I think it was like 21. My friend gave it to me. And I read it was whatever his name is Ruiz. You know what's funny? I had a client that was a cohort with what's his name? Louis McGee. I can remember way back before he even wrote that book. They were on this book. Yeah, they were on this book trip together.

And I was like, you he's in his 70s now. So obviously, you know, it was before even he wrote it. And he was like, yeah, I know that I know him like before he even wrote that book. was like, that is wild.

Jordan:43:17
For sure, for sure. Let's see, what is something that you would love to leave the people with?

Alicia:43:23
I'm sorry, could you repeat that and you were cutting out.

Jordan:43:25
No worries. Well, first and foremost, it's been such a freaking blast having having this conversation with you. What is like one thing that we want to leave the people with?

Alicia:43:30
Yeah!

Alicia:43:34
really? I would just say, you know, be yourself. I've gone through quite a significant, you know... both personal and business development in the last like three, four years, I've been able to take my critical moments. And in those moments, I've realized both personal and business that being truly who you are as a person is so important because that is going to set the path in terms of attraction of what comes to your life.

And I found I went from constantly trying to pursue and fight for things to just like, Hey, I am just being me. I am me. That's it. You know, and showing up in the best way possible for everyone and being, I think the kindest you can be. also put set. I've learned how to set a lot of boundaries and that has, Oh my God, immensely changed my life and being okay with no.

That's the biggest thing, especially as agency owners.

Jordan:44:37
No, sure. Right, right. I want to say conscious congruency is what you're describing. That's the way that I like to call it.

Alicia:44:45
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, conscious. Yeah, I like that. Yeah, conscious can be and just being really, you know, conscious about I would say it's funny. The other day someone told me I think it's a client. I can't remember and said that what you do is very intentional. And that's how I approach everything with my life, my children, my husband, my marriage. I've been married. We celebrated 17 years together last year and I said last week and If you treat it with care and love, things will last. And then you get to innovate and you get to innovate. I'm actually right now just started a tech startup called the Social Box. So it's the first influencer marketing platform for first project management platform for influencer marketing, because there's none there yet. So we're working on that. yeah. And then when you can be creative and innovate, that's even better.

Jordan:45:38
That's super awesome. I'm kind of mad that you left that to the very last minute.

Alicia:45:41
I didn't yell. my God, that has been my thing. I've been on it for four months right now. We're so close. We're getting beta test this right now. I was just with my developer yesterday. It's really awesome. So I'm really excited. Again, I saw a problem because I was working with all these influencers and then finding a problem and solving it. It's always my favorite thing to do.

Jordan:46:03
Absolutely, for sure. Well, I wish you the best of luck with the new Endeavor. And again, thank you so much for hopping on. I had such a blast.

Alicia:46:07
Thanks Jordan, it's been fun. I love talking to you.

Jordan:46:12
Absolutely. All right, audience, till next time.