A Conversation With Nicole Phillip of MEMarketing

Nicole Phillip of Ministry Event Marketing (MEMarketing) shared her entrepreneurial journey, and the particular challenges of helping faith- and cause-based organizations grapple with branding and marketing, especially online. Among her insights — those conversations have become a bit more natural with the push-to-digital of the COVID pandemic. She also shared some great ideas about the future of hybrid events and conferences. An inspirational conversation with a passionate entrepreneur!

[00:00:00]

[00:00:09] Matthew Dunn: This is Dr. Matthew Dunn host of the future of email marketing. My, my guests today, Nicole, Denise Phillips from Emmy marketing, Nicole. Right. I can go with just Nicole.

[00:00:19] Yes. Okay. Because if I say Nicole, the niece I'll drop one or the other. Well, well, welcome. Tell, uh, tell the audience a little bit about you and your business.

[00:00:28] Nicole Phillip: Sure. Well, I'm so excited to be here first. Let me greet you. Thank you so much. But yes, again, my name is Nicole. Denise spill up. I am the owner of Emmy marketing, which is a marketing agency where we focus on leaders and entrepreneurs that desire to build a business that inspires.

[00:00:52] Matthew Dunn: Nice. Nice, nice. And, and, and we were talking a little bit beforehand. Um, you've got a substantial percentage of customers, um, who have some component of a faith or faith based on drive to what they do as well. Right. Ministry event is another interpretation of, uh, of M E marketing. How long have you been

[00:01:13] Nicole Phillip: doing?

[00:01:14] Yes. So I've been an entrepreneurship for about 12 years now. I started. My business while working corporately. And so I actually managed to do both. If you're in that transition of going from corporate to your own business, it is global. And one of the turning points in my career was actually getting laid off as a manager.

[00:01:44] And so I remember the day was February 17th. I will never forget. And, uh, walked in and they decided to lay all of us off. We were actually merging with another, uh, company. And because of that merger, there was some, uh, layoffs to the organization. And I was a part of that, but it was, uh, it was really the.

[00:02:11] Uh, catapult that allowed me to focus just on entrepreneurship.

[00:02:16] Matthew Dunn: Oh, good for you. That's a, it's a, it's a healthy way to tackle it, especially when it's, uh, you know, when it's a merger and a bunch of people are going out the door, like it's, it's really not personal someone somewhere made a numbers decision.

[00:02:29] Right? Yeah. And, and I take it. You like the difference between the two a little bit? Yeah.

[00:02:36] Nicole Phillip: I love my freedom. I could not see myself going back.

[00:02:41] Matthew Dunn: Interesting. Interesting. I mean, as, as a fellow entrepreneur, I agree about the freedom. Um, there's definitely a different cost in terms of responsibility and, and, uh, details like no one, no one does the stuff for you.

[00:02:58] You got to do.

[00:02:59] Nicole Phillip: Right. Yes.

[00:03:03] Matthew Dunn: Marketing stuff, accounting stuff, you know, technical stuff, whatever the load Jack

[00:03:08] Nicole Phillip: of all trades. And it can really be frustrating. But, um, when you look at the things that you learn in, you know, tapping into all of those, um, areas in your business, it really does make for a more success.

[00:03:26] When you have some knowledge, you don't have to be an expert. I'm one that really teach teaching on the gift of genius, but, uh, it does enrich your business.

[00:03:40] Matthew Dunn: What have you found helpful in learning the things that you've mastered about being an

[00:03:45] James Hipkin: entrepreneur?

[00:03:47] Nicole Phillip: The biggest thing is persistence.

[00:03:52] Matthew Dunn: I was just watching this.

[00:03:53] I was watching the Ted talk on grit, persistence, and.

[00:03:58] Nicole Phillip: Yes, because there are so many external things that change, uh, in, in business and in branding that you have to know how to enjoy the ride. And I really believe the one that stays in the game wins because it allows you to learn. It allows you to be present and in the room because if you quit and you're not in the room, You really aren't in the position to win.

[00:04:31] And so just continuing to push through has been the core value, a personal core value of mine, as well as getting in rooms where there are people who know more than you, because you are able to glean from their wisdom and experience. Mentorship has been the catalyst for the growth of my agency.

[00:04:57] Matthew Dunn: Oh, wow.

[00:04:57] Yeah. Yeah. So some significant matters in your past itself. Yes. Yes. Yeah, that's cool. And, and, and it's usually, it's equally rewarding for the mentor and the mentee. Right? I heard some of the other day say careers are, are, um, learn, then earn, then return that's down. I'm thinking, well, we all kind of have to do all three at the same time.

[00:05:22] Right now,

[00:05:26] jug juggle, juggle all, uh, all three of those balls. Um, you focus on helping your clients with coaching on how they execute as an entrepreneur or the marketing piece of their particular enterprise, or a bit of both.

[00:05:44] Nicole Phillip: Yes, a bit of both. So majority of my work is around branding and marketing, but in our conversations and consulting sessions, I've learned that there are just business and character principles of my clients that they, you know, open up and ask me for advice.

[00:06:05] And so over the last year, really what the pandemic I've structured that conversation a little bit more so that as we are building marketing campaigns and branding campaigns, that leader or business owner can grow, uh, professionally along with, uh, their business as well.

[00:06:28] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, marketing. I think it's one of the books, difficult, more difficult, uh, and fast changing dimensions of a business these days.

[00:06:36] So for you to help, help with help with both of those and, and, uh, help someone figure out how to latch on and execute on both of those certainly makes a ton of sense to me. Hey, dot over to your dot over to your, uh, ministry side clients for a second. I mean, th th this, this intrigues me, um, what, what's the, what's the big adjustment for, let's say a faith based or faith centric business who says we need to pay more attention to our brand and our, our marketing, because there used to be a tension about those words, right?

[00:07:14] We've got to kind of get

[00:07:14] Nicole Phillip: over. I'll tell you this. The conversations that I've had with many faith based leaders prior to the pandemic was a lot more difficult. Um, just because they naturally lead with their heart and their faith, uh, tells them that it will happen, uh, based upon belief. And I do agree with that, but there is some strategic things that just every business has to do in order to make themselves known to their target.

[00:07:52] And so after the pandemic, when it became essential to provide a virtual experiences, how my leaders are coming to me and say, Hey, how do we do this? How do we enrich our virtual experience? Or stand out with so many different things on their newsfeed? And a lot of that has to do with their branding and their marketing.

[00:08:18] Yes. So that has really helped out. But a lot of times this last point, a lot of times I help them understand that what you're doing is you are showing up and allowing other people to know that you exist. If we just have the principle of being, um, in the room or being present or expanding your reach a lot more conversation and agreement happens after understanding that.

[00:08:50] Matthew Dunn: Okay, I'm going to go really historical broad strokes for a second. So bear with me, you look back, uh, you know, 500 odd years, advent of print. Uh, it, it put a significant pressure on the functionings of faith-based institutions, which were predominant social institutions at the time. Right? You had printed Bible, bad printed Bible, good like massive tension.

[00:09:18] People burned at the stake, a little minor details like that, but eventually pretty much everyone had to adjust. Right. Everyone had to sort of exist in the exist in the print world. And then 20th century, you had a, had an, an adjustment or some adjustments to the dominant media radio television, the broadcast media of the day.

[00:09:40] Not alternative. Uh, we're on TV, not all faith-based ministries had television ads, radio ads, et cetera. Um, but this, this abrupt pandemic event, which, which essentially pushed work and life online and gave us a, you know, gave us a real boot and the boot in the backside to, in order to make things work, we had to go digital faster than we were getting there before, but it seems like it's kind of made it absolutely necessary for businesses of all sorts, including faith-based like, you gotta figure this out.

[00:10:19] Why? Because for at least a year there nobody's butt was in a pew.

[00:10:23] Nicole Phillip: Right, right, right. So here's what I'm finding in the industry that a lot of, um, uh, faith-based organizations are kind of starting to do both because that's opened back up. Yeah. They have learned how to do the virtual aspect and they're going to continue to do it.

[00:10:47] But the key of, of serving is having people face to face. And so they need to ramp up their teams again. And they're looking to get people from out of their homes back into the, the four walls so that they could be. Involved in other places of the faith-based organization. And so I had just, just, uh, last week I had an organization call and say, Hey, we want to do flyers in bites.

[00:11:19] You know, the print material, going back to the mailers, to the, these zip codes. How do we do that? How do we get back into that? Because we want to reach people that we have not reached before that's in our local area, back to the basis, what is around our building to make it easier for people to come in and travel.

[00:11:45] Matthew Dunn: Hm. And, and did you, did you advise them to do that and to keep the digital side of what they were up to intact?

[00:11:53] Nicole Phillip: Yes, because you actually need both. And the reason I say that is because a lot of organizations have also gained membership from individuals who are not in their local area. And so we're talking about international members now, you know, individuals all the way across the water have come on board because the faith-based organizations have created new member tracks, virtually, or people to find out information about the organization, get involved, attend classes and watch online.

[00:12:33] And, and I think most importantly, they're able to donate to a mission that they believe in that may not be in their local area.

[00:12:43] Matthew Dunn: Right? Yeah. It's definitely, it's definitely a new, a new world there and, and we're, we're feeling our way through what's this new strategy. Like this, this, uh, simultaneous virtual.

[00:12:59] And, uh, and, and, and we realized what a gap. I think most people realize what a gap there was in their life when there were no live interactions, life, community, like where w we are wired to be in the community and be social where we're not going to be happy. Just, just sitting in front of screens all day.

[00:13:18] I think, I think, yeah. Wow. That's a that you put you, you, you spent 12 years getting there, but you put yourself in a very interesting, uh, juncture point. Did, did, did it not, did the pandemic surprise you, but did what happened with your business during this past year and a half? Surprise?

[00:13:40] Nicole Phillip: Um, yes. So for many about three months, it was, how do we, um, because a lot of the marketing, um, business and faith base are event driven.

[00:13:53] If I can say that, so, you know, Hey, we're having this concert, we're having this event. And so a lot of those things were canceled. And so now is how do we create or pivot as an agency to open up more opportunities to say to our clients, this is the time where you need to market. Everyone else is slowing down.

[00:14:18] Everyone else's pulling back, but now we change our focus to create those backend right behind the brand systems like email marketing, like, you know, sales funnels and all of those other things so that you can continue to engage with individuals. And so the biggest thing that was surprising is getting individuals to know that you can do both virtual and in-person, you can manage both.

[00:14:52] And a lot of times they are overwhelmed. Like, okay, I just want to go all virtual or this is, you know, in-person.

[00:14:59] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. And, or I'm sure for a while there was a, uh, we can't wait to go back as if we were going to go back. Like we're not going back. It's a new normal, it's a new normal, what's funny that the, uh, the guests that I had on, on, on this, uh, this show last week, last, last, last guest, I talked with Andrew and Nelly Bonner.

[00:15:21] They they're based in Spain, but they run, um, they run an email industry conference multiple times a year in box expo and Andrew and Nellie had had inbox expo, the live version scheduled tickets, bought plane tickets, et cetera for March, 2020. And they closed it down and went virtual on one week's notice and pulled it off.

[00:15:49] Yeah. And I, I attended the virtual event and I was like, wow, these guys did a heck of a job. They really did. And now, uh, early December, they've got their first sort of re-emergent hybrid, virtual and live again, conference teed up. And they were talking about exactly that it's like, this is the new normal.

[00:16:07] We do have to figure out how to accommodate this. And we don't really know what's going to work best. You don't want the hybrid attendees. Right? You don't want the folks from overseas who are attending services to be spectator only second class, you know, second class citizens, you know, read only so to speak.

[00:16:25] Um, but you can't take the flow of a conversation and easily. Include the virtual. What reactions to that? How, how do, how do people, how do you, how are you advising your clients to adapt to this?

[00:16:37] Nicole Phillip: Well, just that example, um, I had an organization that is in the medical field of their academy, and so they planned a in-person event and beautiful, um, Marco island.

[00:16:53] And we started the ticket sales and of course COVID began to rise in July and June or June and July. And so just within two weeks, we made the decision to one. The, um, keep the in-person as well as add the virtual. And so one of the things we did to accommodate is we had a small, small group of all of the speakers, all of the participants, key workers to come to the island live and recording.

[00:17:33] Okay. And so we did some live streaming as well as prerecorded videos. And those who purchased the tickets who wanted to be on the island could still attend watching their room virtually, and then just pick up any, um, of the swag bags and things like that. Yeah. So I think the best thing is to listen to your audience.

[00:17:59] So these were medical professionals. So just imagine having a live event, your medical professional, the PR of that would not be good, but during the time of a pandemic. And so, um, that client really had to pivot and, and still make things work and come out profitable. So that was super important right now.

[00:18:21] Um, if there's other organizations who could make that adjustment. Or if they don't have the infrastructure or the budget to create that virtual experience, because it is an investment really rescheduling and knowing your audience, are they in person, you know, is the product, can we create a great experience virtually with the service or the, um, topic that you're discussing?

[00:18:50] Matthew Dunn: Right. Wow. And where did we happy? And you and your client happy with the success of that?

[00:18:56] Nicole Phillip: Yes. Yeah. Um, there were a lot of learning lessons right down to, you know, can, you know, can the iPad actually view, you know, so it was a lot of learning lessons that we both learned from just a compatibility standpoint, um, that you would only learn while hitting the go button, but we were able to.

[00:19:21] I'm learning lessons and apply that to the next year's conference where it was hybrid. So having individuals there with COVID, uh, restrictions, as well as upgrading the virtual experience and really making it hands-on because a lot of times. Just equate virtual experience. So, Hey, let's get on zoom, but no of virtual experiences.

[00:19:45] How does that person feel? Did they receive anything in the mail that makes them feel a part of the conference? Right. You know, do they have someone chatting with them as live events are going on? Do they have the ability to network with one another or respond and X questions to the speaker and that speaker come out afterwards and have that virtual experience.

[00:20:11] So really thinking out of the box, um, beyond just the face, the face of what we're used to every day in a virtual

[00:20:18] Matthew Dunn: world. Right, right. Yeah. And, and, and we're not done with that, with that restructure and that, that, that fine tuning of what works and what doesn't, and, and, and pinpointing the differences that matter.

[00:20:33] Right? Like you just, you just said something about. Uh, you know, the sort of side conversation stuff, and you made me realize, yeah, one of the things that happens in a live event is the chit chat with the person in the next seat. And that rarely happens in current, at least current virtual platforms, just sorta you're spectating, passively.

[00:20:58] Um, and, and sorry, the chat on the side is not quite the same thing it's useful, but it's still not quite the same thing. Yeah. Um, I have said multiple times and I'll stand by it. We did look out in terms of the timing when COVID hit five years earlier, the infrastructure bandwidth, the sorta readiness was not there.

[00:21:20] No, no, no. I've been trying to get people video conference for years and they only were starting to do it habitually right around 1919 or so. Right. And then, yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, it really, it really was. It used to be. Used to be called Lee. I'm going to sound old for a second here. People would expect you to get on a plane, to go somewhere for a one hour meeting, which frankly, I'm really glad that that's not the case anymore.

[00:21:48] Giddy up. Yay. That was always kind of stupid. And now doing this, right, this kind of intentional virtual conversation. It has become a bit of a business norm. And frankly, I think it opens up a bunch of. Logistically kind of shop before.

[00:22:05] Nicole Phillip: Yes. Yeah. And it really does free up our schedule, you know, flying to across the state or across the country.

[00:22:17] That's going to take up four hours. Now we could have, you know, four conversations in those same four hours of traveling. And so it does allow us to make more connections. Um, just being really intentional about how do I connect after this, after this moment. So the small thing of, you know, turning on your camera or, you know, having small talk before the meeting, those things matter.

[00:22:44] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They really do. Um, let's just because it's in the title, let's, uh, let's circle around to email a little bit.

[00:22:54] Nicole Phillip: Sure. So in your world, um, one of the things that. Email really does for us, I think is it gives us ownership. As a business. And so we think about social media, we get on, um, Facebook, Instagram, all of those, uh, great or, um, great companies, social media companies.

[00:23:19] We don't own it. Right. And so if, I don't know if you experienced it, but when Facebook shut down a couple of weeks ago, I kept restarting my phone. I

[00:23:31] Matthew Dunn: thought,

[00:23:33] Nicole Phillip: wow, it's wrong? Well, your email still works. Your phone still is receiving calls, but life was almost done when Facebook, the

[00:23:46] Matthew Dunn: ground shut down.

[00:23:49] Nicole Phillip: But one of the things that it should have taught every business owner is that you don't

[00:23:54] Matthew Dunn: own that you don't own that real estate.

[00:23:57] No. Well, it's funny. I mean, ironically, I, I banned. Facebook Instagram, et cetera. I've never actually, I've never run a Facebook app consciously on my mobile device. I've got a Facebook account. I faithfully check in at least every other month. Um, and it's just like, that's just personal. It's not a professional thing.

[00:24:17] It's just like, I felt like my attention was kind of getting sucked down, uh, in a 15, 20 minute rabbit hole with no would not, not enough return on it. So I decided to, but it, it, it's given me a little bit of perspective, personal perspective on your fundamental point about, about owning the, you know, owning the yes.

[00:24:39] Owning the permission to, and channel, to communicate, which email is one of the few, uh, sort of free range. Um, you're in control of your email address. You can share it with me. I can communicate with you. We're not paying anybody or asking you to. That's in your control and my control. Yes. Yeah. Yay.

[00:25:00] Nicole Phillip: And then it, it does allow you to engage.

[00:25:05] Um, so, you know, making sure we're providing value to an individual, you know, I'm in branding and I do some business consulting, but one of my partners, she shares with me the grants that are opening up for businesses. And so one of the things I just did for my personal agency is say, Hey, here's a list of business grants that you can have access to.

[00:25:30] There was no sales pitch. There was no extra pay, go check it out. Right. And so it allows us to connect on a, on a, um, a regular basis if, if need be, or, and then it allows us to do more business, of course, integrate them into other products and services. So super important. I think what we have to master is and be okay with.

[00:25:57] And I have this as well, just personally, is that you want quality over quantity. And so in the world of social media and, um, I hope to get to that point where I just get on off and, you know, not be sucked into those rabbit holes and Tik TOK has me. Oh my, I need to go to, he says,

[00:26:17] Matthew Dunn: everybody says, it's just deadly good at that.

[00:26:20] It's not just,

[00:26:21] Nicole Phillip: it is an addiction, but, um, being able to really connect with the right people. And so making sure that we're having meaningful engagement, it's not just, Hey, let me send you something to sell you something, but really making sure our audience. Is interested in what we have to offer as well as the audience is now, um, you know, coming on and taking our services and products in this really a shared

[00:26:55] Matthew Dunn: right, right.

[00:26:56] Yeah. Which is, it's a tough, it's a tough balancing act to keep that going. So like, you know, should I share this grant information with this set of people? Right. Well, let me guess they're in boxes. Overloaded. Yes. Check. We know. Right. Um, so send that along. Why? Well, because they might not find it, it might really affect their business.

[00:27:22] It might be really beneficial for them. You know, they can't ignore it, which 90% of them will cause it's what to do. Um, yeah, it's, it's a tough call. Cause I get up. Do you know anybody whose inbox is not over.

[00:27:35] Nicole Phillip: No, I don't. Right.

[00:27:38] Matthew Dunn: I did. I did. I did throw that question out with a, there was a group conversation a couple months ago and I said, is anyone at inbox?

[00:27:45] Zero and one guy's like, yeah, me. She's like, first thing you're doing in the morning is clear everything out.

[00:27:50] Nicole Phillip: Oh no,

[00:27:55] I do know, come to think about it. I do know one person who has it on like auto delete, you know, at 60 days, um, it, it deletes everything and I'm like, oh, don't you need some of that important information. But yeah, I hope to get there one day. You know, I,

[00:28:13] Matthew Dunn: I, I, I don't know where that's all, I don't know where that ends up going.

[00:28:17] I mean, I would argue that, that, uh, um, the rise of cloud based email, Gmail's easy one to single out, but, uh, office 365 as well, that re removed the gating factor of local storage. Made it even harder. I mean, if you delete a message in Gmail, it's not actually deleted it's in another folder that, you know, that says it's trash, but it's still there.

[00:28:42] It still shows up in searches. Right. It's like, didn't actually delete it. And it doesn't nominally. It doesn't cost you anything to leave that up there. So we did like that the 60 day rolling delete sneakily. Brilliant. But like you said that, oh my gosh, I might need this later is that's a big breaking factor on that.

[00:29:04] Like, and how many of us are guilty of making our inbox, our defacto to do in filing system? Yes. Almost everybody. Almost everybody. Yeah. It's a, and an email as I've often said, because I've been around email for, uh, a lot over the decades. Um, I mean, it wasn't designed for the purpose purposes. We're putting it.

[00:29:26] But it was designed loosely enough where we're able to put it to those purposes. If someone said, I want to do all my communication via text, I'd laugh because it won't work. Right. It's not, it's too interruptive it. The storage is actually kind of crap. It's kind of know meant for little tiny devices, not for this kind of device and, you know, filing things and keeping things like none of that really works particularly well.

[00:29:55] An email for better or worse has kind of evolved into this, you know, loose it's in our control, your fundamental point, a condo that we can use for those things. I I've done some work in the past with attorneys. And you, you take, they'd be super on top of confidentiality and security, but they send everything via email, which is like the least secure channel you could use guys, but anyway, and they expect to coordinate stuff on these awful email threads that go back weeks and email.

[00:30:30] You have to read backwards, like the most recent stuff. It's idiotic from a communication design system. It's idiotic. And yet we stick, we stick with

[00:30:40] it.

[00:30:40] Nicole Phillip: It doesn't show the same on a, on a mobile device as the computer there's times where individuals will say, Hey, I sent you an email and I go search on my phone and it's nothing there, but I search on the computer all of a sudden there's our email unread.

[00:31:01] Yeah,

[00:31:02] Matthew Dunn: yeah, yeah. And that whole, and the conversational threading that I think Gmail. I was like, that's a big adjustment. If you came from a message by message habit, you're like, wait a minute. My back and forth with Nicole is all going to be under the same message. My head's going to

[00:31:21] Nicole Phillip: explode. Let's talk about the different, uh, categories now that g-mail has right.

[00:31:27] Promotional, um, regular inbox.

[00:31:32] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah, yeah. The email marketers that I speak with, uh, like there's, there's a bit of a, about the promotions tab. Like a lot of work to not

[00:31:41] Nicole Phillip: be there. Yes. Yes. Hmm.

[00:31:45] Matthew Dunn: Interesting. And, and Google would say it makes the experience better for their users maybe, but. It's also a kind of a default.

[00:31:57] And what happens with defaults is we accept them. You know, when you, when you, you know, when you turn on, uh, when you turn on a, an Android phone, the default browser is Chrome percentage of people who change it very low. Right. You know, when you flare up a Mac to fall browsers, safari presented to people who change it relatively low, although Chrome has made some in ways there.

[00:32:19] And so now the promotions tab, I don't know how you, I don't even know how to say, I don't want to promotions tab, so.

[00:32:29] Nicole Phillip: Um, they do have some options in and settings, but some of those emails that fall in there, I actually do want to know about them, but not in a promotion

[00:32:41] Matthew Dunn: staff. And apparently if you drag out of it now we're getting really email geeky. If you drag something out of the promotions, tab enough times a g-mail says, oh, that risk, you know, that sender.

[00:32:53] Yes. This person wants to be an inbox. Okay. Got it. But you just may be, do work to change the structure that you guys in post. Yeah, I dunno. Um, and it, same time, everything in the inbox wasn't necessarily great. Either we all put up with it or we developed our own sort of filtering and, and automation to route things around.

[00:33:17] But I don't know. I don't know. It's not going to go away. It's not going to get easier. I, uh, I, I use, uh, I was, I was telling somebody the other day, I actually pay for an email client, which I know is a shocking thing to say out loud, but there's an email plat email client called superhuman works. It only works.

[00:33:37] Yeah. Have you heard of it? No superhuman. Um, I, and I, I, I, I signed up thinking, ah, this is a 30 buck experiment. I'll write a blog post. There's no way I'm going to pay for an email client. They did such an adroit job of making. Ridiculously fast. Wow. And ridiculously keyboard and keystrokes centric that it gamified email successfully for me at least.

[00:34:06] Wow. So if I'm reading through messages and there's a message from some list that I signed up for, you know, X number of years ago that I never read. If I hit the U key on the keyboard, I it's, it unsubscribes me. Wow. Right. Would I ever go to the trouble of reading down, finding the link, clicking it, go to the webpage, do the unsubscribe.

[00:34:26] No. Right. I just hit, I just deleted her. Ignore it, which costs them ascend and all that other stuff. And the superhuman guys are like, no, no, no, no, no. It's all going to be keyboard centric. If I wanted, if you send me an email and I said, oh, I got call her back next week. One keystroke to schedule, to have it surface again next week.

[00:34:45] And it just disappears.

[00:34:48] Nicole Phillip: Oh, I need that class

[00:34:49] Matthew Dunn: in here going superhuman commercial. But for me, at least the reason I've stuck with it is that speed and gamification have helped with the volume. It's 30 bucks worth of time easily. That'll give back. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:35:05] Nicole Phillip: Interesting. Huh. Yeah. And that's where, um, you know, that those entrepreneurs that have to do so many roles.

[00:35:12] Yeah. I am looking to automate a lot of pieces in my life for the personally or business. And that sounds like it does save you a lot of time where you can focus on things that actually bring you money and income.

[00:35:28] Matthew Dunn: Yeah, yeah. Or, or that, you know, or bring you something of value, interest, attention, focus, learning something of value.

[00:35:39] I do think now we're really wondering if. It intrigues me that, that, um, I'll say this is carefully as I can learning the keyboard. Shortcuts plays a big role in, in attention and focus, like, you know, email client that I can go digging and it, and it sort of dealt with or text shortcuts, which I use, I use ridiculous amount.

[00:36:07] Um, why? Because I don't want to type Matthew done again, like for the ninth time. Right. If I could do it in one key or two keys, that seems like a little thing, but it's really a big thing. Yeah. Yeah. I was looking at the text expander I use the other day and it said that it had saved me 60 hours in the last.

[00:36:31] Wow.

[00:36:32] Nicole Phillip: That's a lot of time to get back. Yeah. Yeah. Something I've found, um, that that's been very useful in is just the AI copywriters, you know? Hey, interesting. Yes. Um, because it's just like, Hey, I need to save this. I'm going to say it in my own terms and it can help expand the thought, give you, um, you know, much more time and freedom back from sitting there, writing emails, writing texts, writing social media posts.

[00:37:03] So that's been something that I have incorporated into my business as well.

[00:37:08] Matthew Dunn: So what's your emotional relationship with.

[00:37:11] Nicole Phillip: Um, I have Grammarly the premium version. And so I do appreciate it. There are times where I, uh, I would say, Hey, man, I want to say it like this. So, um, I don't have full trust, but I do lean on it and have found that it has been helpful in larger, you know, um, Pro projects.

[00:37:39] I am getting a little used to it. I know we're talking about email, but Gmail has the finish your sentence, um, uh, you know, feature, which is very interesting. I really want to understand how they've gathered all of that data and know what I'm trying to say. And that means you definitely had to read the email that came in before to find what is more fitting.

[00:38:08] And so that is kind of scary and interesting as we evolve in our AI

[00:38:13] Matthew Dunn: world. Well, they've got, you know, that's one of the benefits of, uh, having 1.2 billion email inbox. Is that there's a lot of inbound email to do, you know, pattern, pattern learning on pattern detection on to train AI doesn't mean they are reading your email, but it does mean that we've all donated access to a lot of patterns to help perfect that, um, you know, ungodly amount of compute power to try and make sense of it.

[00:38:43] I use that feature as well. I like it more on mobile because I find typing on mobile, a pain and on a keyboard sometimes in occasionally. But I, you know, as a, as a fast typist, uh, I don't, it's not as consciously a need and I'm the guy who just said, I like keyboard shortcuts. So it sense of that whenever.

[00:39:11] Yeah. Brave, brave, brave, brave, and strange new, a strange new world that we're inhabiting, um, that, that finished the sentence thing. It has a funny challenge too. Cause I'm, I'm guessing it's better at relatively stock phrasiology you know, like, so, so look forward to seeing you tomorrow. Okay. That's a lot of times, if you're doing something a lot more distinct, you know, my advice for your brand is please do not fill in that blank for me.

[00:39:38] Right. My value is saying what I said after the first part of the phrase there. Right?

[00:39:45] Nicole Phillip: Yeah. And you know, you know, please let me know if you have any questions, you know, hi Matthew, you know, they'll fill in the name and things. Yeah.

[00:39:55] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. The social closers I find now we'll really go down an email rabbit hole.

[00:40:01] I find the selling science of cold email a little bit fascinating, a little bit scary how careful. The companies who do a lot of that study, every word and phrase and how carefully email marketing companies work on subject lines in the, you know, the tweak in the difference in results. And I get that it matters, but it also feels manipulative

[00:40:29] Nicole Phillip: and it is, and that's, that's a process of, um, uh, of marketing, really those buzz words, uh, having within the body that causes the mind and preps the mind to, to buy or continue in the process.

[00:40:47] Um, but it it's, it's everywhere. It's in commercials, it's in social media as an email and, um,

[00:40:55] Matthew Dunn: yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, we're all, we're all, we're all a bit lab rats now because networks run both ways, right? Your, your, your, the webpage, you hit tells the guy who hosts, whose web. That you hit it, where you were from what kind of browsers you used, all that other stuff.

[00:41:13] And we've got the controversy going right now in email of, of apple clamping down on what they called spy pixels. I don't know if you've been tracking that one. Um, apple is reporting. Apple is sending the flag that we've used for 20 years to indicate email open for everything that hits an iPhone. So all of a sudden open rates are going right.

[00:41:36] And they're going to become useless potentially because of that decision by apple. Yeah. Yeah. Which big deal for marketing

[00:41:45] Nicole Phillip: premium?

[00:41:49] Matthew Dunn: MPP which stands for male privacy protection. If you search MPP and email, you'll, you'll find some of the, um, some of the details on that. And it's definitely stirred up the email marketing world more than a fair bit, because cause they've used the same mechanism for two decades and now all of a sudden it's getting changed.

[00:42:10] Well go, well, we didn't want it all to stay static and stayed the same. It does seem like the big, the really big players, the, you know, the apples, the Amazons, the Googles, uh, can make moves like that. And the rest of us just have to adapt. You just have to follow it's like Google changing search algorithms.

[00:42:27] Like not like you get a protest, you just have to

[00:42:30] Nicole Phillip: adapt.

[00:42:33] Matthew Dunn: Is that website SEO. Is that domain, you end up helping your clients with that world as

[00:42:39] Nicole Phillip: well? Yes. Uh, so we have a team within our agency. We really focus on, um, SEO and making sure that we are doing it. It really does take a lot, you know, you can't just do one, you know, we're just going to do blogs and that's the only thing.

[00:42:59] Um, we definitely have to do a lot on multiple search engines. Right. And so that, uh, affects your score and how you're viewed and your authority score on Google. And so we have. Checklist in place to make sure we are hitting, um, all aspects, even just setting up a website and saying, okay, we want to do Google analytics, where are there?

[00:43:27] There's about four more apps of Google blank that you have to put in and install it in your website just to get a full dashboard of analytics so that you know how to, um, actually, you know, move forward and make wiser decisions.

[00:43:48] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. And Google analytics mastering that thing. So substantial investment of time and I mean, gets indispensable.

[00:44:03] God exhausting as well.

[00:44:07] Nicole Phillip: Just adding a user, do Google analytics profile.

[00:44:15] You have to go down like three tabs and then finally find users

[00:44:20] Matthew Dunn: because it's that complex I've got, uh, you can't see it because of the camera, but I've got, uh, I've got two monitors in front of me. I've got another monitor here. And then, and then a older iMac with a big monitor here and on the two outboard ones.

[00:44:36] So what does that four screens total for the two outboard ones I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, I've got six Google analytics tabs showing the real time view of various websites and apps so that I can keep it. It's like ridiculous. Kill us. I mean, it's kind of cool. Like, oh look, someone from Tampa, Florida is visiting the website, but it's ridiculous that it's all sitting there like that all the time.

[00:45:06] Nicole Phillip: And then really, you know, from an agency standpoint, you now have to have a dedicated person that is knowledgeable just around there. The dedicated person knowledgeable around Facebook and Instagram. It's just like, now it's more complex. And because of the changes in one platform to the next, literally have to have a team that is diverse on an experts in one platform.

[00:45:33] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Well, I mean, that is the new that, you know, we we've made the shift from the media landscape of newspaper, radio, television. Uh, you know, we've got, I think over half of the ad space. In in the country has shifted to digital. Pretty sure that's right. So, you know, of course it got more complex and of course it became more specialization required and kind of natural.

[00:45:59] No one, no one ever just said, you know, here's a piece of paper. I think I'll do a television ad. There were layers in expertise and advice in between, you know, you and the final result then, and we're, we're doing the same kind of, uh, stacking up complexities, if maybe worse in the digital domain, it is daunting for a smaller business.

[00:46:20] Like you must run into this with your clients where they're like,

[00:46:24] Nicole Phillip: uh, yes, yep. To the point where some of them just like, okay, I'm going to hand this to you guys and see you later. And so it's just like drawing them in to know, you know, ultimately the, the basis of marketing. Relationship. And so, even though you, we have come on, as partners is so important to keep the foundational principles of relationship marketing, and you have to be a part of the voice and develop of that as a client.

[00:46:58] And so that's some of the conversations I have with my clients as well. Yes. We're going to take the heavy lifting off for you, but we still want you to be a part of the process. Yeah.

[00:47:10] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. You're just helping facilitate that relationship marketing and not cat. You can't actually be the relationship.

[00:47:18] Nicole Phillip: Right.

[00:47:19] Matthew Dunn: Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So for closure, where, where do you, where do you see Emmy marketing heading? Where do you want to take this, uh, enterprise of yours?

[00:47:28] Nicole Phillip: Yeah, so, um, we have really been focused on, uh, behind the brand, which is a new program that is based on four areas. Um, Billy, uh, being. Business and bank.

[00:47:45] And so we want to help our clients to not just go to the next level in their business and in their banking aspect. But we want to look and see, Hey, what is the relationships you're having with your clients? What do you believe? What, you know, let's have some foresight on where you see your company going, as well as, um, how are you doing as a CEO, as an entrepreneur and how that affects the growth of your business.

[00:48:16] So over the next, um, and I think the pandemic has really helped us to come up with this because, um, as you know, mental health has really gone up during the pandemic. And so if a person is, is struggling and all of those areas and they come and they can't get out of that, It's going to effect their business, it's gonna affect their bait.

[00:48:39] So, uh, we have built on another team and have some strategic partners that are experts in their field to come on board, to help facilitate a course on, you know, online videos that they can access at any time that focuses on there. That is a supplement to our marketing campaigns that we built for them.

[00:49:03] Wow. Wow.

[00:49:04] Matthew Dunn: That's a, it's a very healthy and balanced thing. Yeah. Are you able to practice, are you able to practice what you quite literally preach in this

[00:49:13] Nicole Phillip: case? Yes. So I will tell you that, um, because I know from experience it's, it's difficult, it's difficult to do because when business calls, um, it requires specially if you are a smaller business and in growing, we have grown to six employees now.

[00:49:31] Um, but I know when it is, uh, by myself, when I was by myself, just having to do everything my days were, you know, 12, 14 hours. Now I'm probably down to maybe nine, uh, you know, 10 to nine hours. But, um, the aspect of making sure my mental health is super important, um, to the growth of my agents. It's so important to have the things that, um, I've done to put it in practice.

[00:50:03] Here's some simple things it's not business related, but I have, uh, brought on board in my personal home, a laundry service and a claiming service. And so what, what that allows me to do is get back, you know, to the four hours of laundry time, I've built a relationship where the cleaning service comes in every two weeks and gives me back, you know, two hours of my time and allows me to spend that with my son.

[00:50:36] Yeah.

[00:50:37] Matthew Dunn: Nice. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. And you had to give yourself permission to go ahead and do that,

[00:50:43] Nicole Phillip: right? Yes. Because you know, as a woman, that is our pride, you know, we take care of our home and nobody else can do it like us, but I had to realize I where's my. Yeah. And, and it'll become easier when you understand, I call it your gift of genius if I'm making a greater impact over here, but I'm more focused on the lower level of duties that is actually someone else's genius, where they make the most impact.

[00:51:14] Then, um, not only will my income suffer, but also my mental state, cause I'm not happy and fulfilled. And that's the most important is as we are building a brand, as we are doing business, are we happy? And are we fulfilled? If not, we need to make a shift in order to do that. We have to be, um, we have to take a step back from business.

[00:51:39] Like you said, you know, I got off of Facebook and there was probably some things that you wanted to focus on and really hone in. And so we have to take a step back and realize that's the most important thing.

[00:51:51] Matthew Dunn: Yeah. Yeah. Well said nice. Closer. Well, what a delight to speak with you,

[00:51:56] Nicole Phillip: Nicole? Yes, it was definitely a delight as well.

[00:52:00] Thank you so

[00:52:01] Matthew Dunn: much. Where does someone find if they're listening to this and they say, wow, I could use your help. Where does someone go? Let's be old fashioned on the web to

[00:52:09] Nicole Phillip: find you. And I'm going to say this the old fashioned way, www

[00:52:19] that ministry event, marketing.com. And we look forward to connecting with you. You can find us on all social media platforms at ministry, a bit marketing, and yes, thank you so much. You can schedule a free consultation with one of our agents and we'll be happy to help you create a brand that inspires.

[00:52:41] Matthew Dunn: Wonderful. Thank you, Denise. I'm going to hit end,

[00:52:44] Nicole Phillip: right? Thanks.

[00:52:46]