She is a Smart Girl: A Marketing Strategy Conversation with Katie Holt

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Transcript

Erin: 0:35

Welcome back to another episode of aspire for more with Aaron, where I have the smart girl, digital owner, founder. What other title do you like to go by? CEO?

Katie: 0:47

Typically, Lead Smart Girl is

Erin: 0:50

Oh, Lead Smart Girl. Katie Holt, thank you for being here, Katie. Thank you

Katie: 0:57

for having me, Erin. I'm excited to chat with you

Erin: 1:00

today. Yes, so we met at Think Tank. We actually didn't get a lot of time at Think Tank. And Our theme today on our episode is intentionality, and I just want to say to you that your intentionality to go to another state, or you were visiting another state during the holidays and seeing and fellow think tanker there and taking a picture. I think I told you this before, but that picture meant so much to me, because a of the connections. That I made inside of think tank, but then to see you know that you said, I think tank that you would actually do it and then you did it and I saw that and I thought, Oh, my God, that is something. And then you also said, I think tank that you would. Have one on one calls and then you call me you asked to have a one on one call with me, which was really cool And I thought she's my kind of chick right here. She is a smart girl. So Thank you for doing that and in being that Real which I think is really important So

Katie: 2:15

it is and it you know when I went into think tank and I thought about what I really was looking for and why I was Inspired by being part of think tank. Part of that was being really intentional about the connections I made. And even though you and I didn't get to talk a whole lot. I really didn't get to talk a whole lot with Chris during that. I think we had 1 session together, but I'm really big on, if I say I'm going to do it, I 9 times out of 10, try to follow through with it and in a very intentional way. And so being able to maintain the connections with individuals from that group has been. Fun and exciting. I've had a lot of great conversations and, there was a lot of like minded and like hearted folks around that room that, are really inspiring for the industry that we all serve.

3:03

Yeah.

Erin: 3:04

And I think that's why, I know that's why we really have this theme of intentionality on our episode today, because we both really. Value that word and that tactic and have been successful because we've been intentional. a lot of people struggle with intentionality because it takes a lot of commitment and a lot of consistency with the mundane. But you evidently have mastered, I'm sure not perfectly, but the concepts of intentionality and I see that and that's why I think everything that we talk about today will be around that. And specifically with smart girl, digital and marketing strategies, that is where we're going to go, how that can facilitate success throughout any community. But

3:55

I

Erin: 3:55

like to talk about it 1st is the mindset, We talked about mindset and, the different things are why and the reasons why we have this. Why? And all that ties into our mindset. And 1 of the 1st conversations that we had was. Now that you're an entrepreneur, did you know about all this mindset stuff while you were inside the senior living world, it's

Katie: 4:20

Yes, there's not much talk about mindset in any corporate role. And I've worked in multiple industries, with my last corporate role being in the senior living industry. And there's some talk of it, but not to the level that you see in the entrepreneurial world until you step out and say, okay, how am I going to keep myself motivated to show up for myself or for my family? Or, for my business, there's a lot of talk about mindset. And I. It has helped keep me on track and continuing to cultivate clarity around, what smart girl is what smart girl is today as a digital marketing agency is not how it originally started. I just. Started is wanting to be a digital consultant to any business out there that needed help with their digital marketing and over the course of the last 5 years have continuously been called back to serving senior living and the need in this space and. I'm grateful for it because I do. I love serving the space. I love the clients we work with. I love what the industry means for serving families across the country. but the mindset piece of it, is what has helped me. Show up when I left that traditional role of working in a corporate office and keep going, to where we are today, and we'll have to be an active part of where we go for the future for sure.

Erin: 5:41

Yeah, I think what you just said about being able to change wanting to leave an industry and then being pulled back into it. It's certainly something that I have experienced throughout my career, but 1 of the things that I wasn't very good at was change and that was really just a mindset play. And, you said, as an entrepreneur, you have to be willing to change. Because businesses change, you never well, never is a strong word, but you can certainly start somewhere and then completely change directions because you see where the need is and you can solve that need. But without that clarity and that awareness that those mindset practices, or even being aware of the stories that we tell ourselves, or the traps that we can fall into, You wouldn't be able to make it and I think that's why there's so much mindset awareness in entrepreneurial landscape. But that's where we're missing the mark and senior living. That's where we're missing it. people who are afraid to change need to understand why they're afraid to change.

Katie: 6:49

And making an intentional focus on what that change needs to be, because there's a lot of great work happening at communities across the country. And there's a lot of great intentions for corporate leadership and leadership throughout any organization to do great for the families, which is 1 of the things I love about senior living. The heart is here for the people who are in it that continue to get called back to it. The heart is there. The intention is there and it's really. Turning intention into action to make the change you want to see regardless what your role is. I, my experiences on the marketing side of the, corporate marketing team and now working, as an agency partner for our clients. I see a different. Perspective, but it doesn't matter what role you're in, whether you're on the ground and a caregiver, or, in a sales role, or even in an executive director role, being really intentional about the change you want to see happen and how you can incrementally show up every day and make those tiny changes because. It all happens incrementally. Smart Girl didn't get to where we are today overnight. This has been, a five year path that has been intentional based on where I'm at in my personal life and where I want to be in my professional life and continuously just showing up to, to do good work for our clients is my main goal, but every day is an intentional decision to, to show up and do what I can for clients and now even for my team.

Erin: 8:20

Yeah, it's true. And even me, who's new, right? And as into the entrepreneurial world, I can't compare where I am to you because you're 5 years down the journey. But what I could say, and do say is look at her, she's 5 years in and she has, she's where I would want to be, 5 years in and support each other and realize you do have to change. you do have to support each other. You do have to be aware of all the things that stand in our way and be open to what life presents itself to help you. Would you say, when you step out and you do something new and you're scared, That the universe will give you people to help you along your path if you just step out and start

Katie: 9:13

100%. 100 percent take the leap in your wings will appear. That is like 1 at the paraphrase of 1 of my favorite quote means that are out there. And, I. Took the leap in 2019. I didn't have a great plan. It was like, I know I have a skill and I know people need it. And I replaced my income in 4 weeks and continue to grow. continue to grow my individual work and then again, just the universe always has a way of aligning the stars in putting you on the path that you need to be on. And that's why I say I keep getting called back into senior living, through various connections through various projects and it, 2022 for me was like, I finally said, okay. Okay, I hear you. I'm let's go. We're going to go all in. And that's where we made the pivot to really just say, the industry needs more partners who understand what's happening, from the operator side, what's happening from the community side. And, we specialize in an automation, and there's not many agencies that specialize in 1 specific tactic, but that is 1 of our areas of specialization that the industry needs. you once you stop fighting that. That resistance to the call that you're being called to and you just say, okay. All right. I don't know what it looks like. I'm going to take the leap. your wings will appear, it may be hard, but take that bold step and, it's scary, but, sometimes things worth doing in life are scary. And, You just have to have that intention of okay, I'm going to figure it out. I'm going to, learn something new. I'm going to, try something different because that's where I'm at. Yes. And

Erin: 10:54

that's not meaning, step out of your community and go start a business. Although if that's what you want to do, Hey, but it is if you want to change a culture, if you want to change your mindset, if you want to change your life, Whatever that change looks like for you, just start and it doesn't have to be big steps. And I think that was 1 of the easiest, most simple things that I've learned throughout this journey is what was actually holding me back was a fear of shadow. It was nothing more than a shadow. So I just have been seeing where changes. Something that we struggle with in our industry, and I know that I did and talking to women who actually did that and knowing that really, the main focus is just being intentional with your actions. And that is for every woman and every man in their current role. Just be intentional, which is important, but we've talked about smart girl digital, but let's talk more about this because. It's fun. It's fun to talk about it. You got a fun logo right there. It's a boutique marketing agency for senior living communities.

Katie: 12:04

yeah, we're a boutique agency. We're a small, but mighty team serving, communities nationwide. We, we work with operators, management companies, or even individual communities who are just looking for how to do digital the smart way in the right way. And our goal is to help empower. organizations to understand what their digital marketing efforts take own the assets and their strategy and their data and build campaigns that deliver results. our, I mentioned, our biggest focus of. specialization is in marketing automation. So building those nurture workflows that support and accelerate the sales process. So we come in, we work with clients on, sales and marketing alignment, really understanding what their sales process is and how the marketing messages can align with that sales process to help families move through that process in a way that's, you know, Right for them at that moment in their journey. So the right message at the right time. And we build the email workflows. We have content writers. We do Google PPC and SEO. You're, a lot of your traditional digital agency type of services, but over half of our team has been on the operator side, working in a marketing team. And understanding what it means to be a small team serving a lot of communities. and, that's a dynamic. You don't get in a lot of industries. if you're working on an internal marketing team, you're working for 1 location 1 business, with senior living 1. 1 client can have multiple locations and being able to leverage smart strategies. And, That are effective across all markets is really important. yeah, so that's a little bit about what we do and where we specialize.

Erin: 13:49

Yeah, that's exciting. The more I learned about, the tech and the science side of marketing, it is. Fun, and I never as an executive director, I never really paid much attention to it because I was really focused on tours and meeting them and all that. But there's a whole other side of sales, which is that marketing side. And it's not always a quick turnaround. some people want that instant gratification, like I need this to happen now, but it's a process. Sometimes would you agree?

Katie: 14:23

No, there's definitely a process to doing marketing with an intentionality to it. Sure. You can go out and you can buy ads and buy traffic to the website and short a percentage of it will convert to an inquiry at a community. But really, it's about having the right type of inquiry so that your sales teams focused on the right type of. Prospect. and so there's a ton of digital marketing data out there, and I'm a data nerd. So I love that part of digital is being able to look at the data to inform our creative decisions. And then marketing is the other side of your sales coin. So they're distinctly different functions, but they do work hand in hand. So being able to align with a client sales strategy. Is really important for marketing and especially the nurture campaigns to be effective at what they're doing. it all comes with understanding kind of the larger picture of what's happening within the digital foundation. How the technical foundation from where's the traffic coming from to the website to how are they converting and pushing to the CRM all of that becomes your digital foundation and. Successful marketers in this space, understand how it all works together and how the data flowing between those foundational systems can inform. The creative elements of the next communication point, whether it is an email, a text message, or even just that, Sales outreach phone call. All of that goes together to understanding the entire customer journey, in a really intentional way. And we like to take that step back, look at the holistic viewpoint of the digital strategy and be able to provide insights based on the data that we're seeing and make those incremental changes so that there's long term success

Erin: 16:12

incremental, which means small. and 1 at a time, potentially, right?

Katie: 16:17

Yes. incremental can be small. it's an intentional point. It's if we see, your traffic volume is high, but your conversion volume is low, you're getting low inquiries. Okay. We need to look at what changes can be made. Maybe we need better traffic. Going to your website. Maybe we need to look at what where we're sending traffic on your website and the messaging. Somebody's getting when they get to that page on your website. Is it helping them make that decision to take that step forward, make the phone call to the community or fill out that web form or type in that chat bot that's on the website? are we helping families move through that? And you have to be able to look at that from a holistic perspective. No matter what the individual tactic is. So even though we specialize in automation, the entire ecosystem of the digital strategy can impact how successful we can be with clients and their automation strategies.

Erin: 17:14

It's. Now that I know what I know, when I was in a community, I didn't understand, how important how literally every detail connects to every little thing, like the call to action if that's not. Strong enough, or, just exactly what you said, does every thing lead to the next step? And I just want if you are not aware you are inside of a community, the details that matter in marketing strategy is. Crazy. It is crazy. what if you had something on there, but you didn't tell everybody what the next step was like, what is the call to action? Fill out the form. That's the call to action. if you don't have that on there, do you think that you're going to get the form filled out? No, right?

Katie: 18:08

and being in a community capacity and not knowing that or not. you've got so many other things to worry about at the community level. That's why having a partner who can help really look at that and help optimize that. is important, but it's also important as marketers to understand what's happening at the community in terms of the operation and making sure that the messaging is aligning with what somebody is going to experience at the community. Because every little thing you're doing at the community can be a talking point or a value add to certain family members and everybody's value bubble around the type of care they're looking for, the level of care. You know what they need in a community. That's one of the, variables in this industry that doesn't make the customer journey just a linear path of click purchase. Nurture and on. I always say we're not buying socks. you don't go online and look for senior living, click and buy and move in. that's not the sales journey. Every family sales journey, through the process is very different from what they know before they start looking to what they need as they're looking. And As a marketer, it's important for us to know what's happening at the community. What's making you, unique and different in your marketplace. And a lot of times it's the people who show up to serve in the community. It's, from leadership all the way to your frontline caregivers and housekeeping and all of that, because those people are making the connections that ultimately. tell the story that make that makes marketing jobs easy at that point, right? Like you've got these great connections. People want to live there. so I, from that standpoint in my role, it's exciting to see that, but I also, I don't know the ins and outs of. all the caregiving details that goes into running the operations and that's okay. Like we all have our specialization. That's right. We do. It is good for us to cross share those ideas. And that's something we always encourage, like what's happening. Happening at those communities can really help inform how we position and message marketing.

Erin: 20:15

Yeah, something you said earlier about, it's, it reminded me of like the quantity versus quality. if you have all these leads and yet none of them are viable, if you were to go out in mass mail or all these, you're just bringing in all this work and none of it is. Significant to you. It's just work. And so the goal from an inside the community person should really be the very intentional specific person coming to your community to your website. those are the people that you want. I'm from Alabama, and so if you compare Alabama to places in California, they have massive amounts of leads and yet I have small amounts of leads, but the quality of those leads are really what matter. It's not the number of leads. It's the quality of the leads.

21:12

It's

Katie: 21:13

the quality of those leads. Absolutely. I would rather have quality leads at a lower rate than just focusing on purely lead volume. Now, you can get high volume and high quality. That's obviously a great scenario. But a lot of times when we're helping clients transition their traffic strategies, so traffic, how we're getting people to the website, Through Google search and, the organic listings or the paid listings and Google ads, there's so many things you can do to, really make sure you're showing up for those right people and paid search strategies. You can target based on, the types of keywords and the geography of the region. there are even audience targeting mechanisms on. Platforms like Facebook that, really dial into the age and interest of the audience. really being able to know who's coming to your website, what message is going to resonate with them. So they know what action to take and then making sure that. The quality is there and those people who are raising their hand saying, yes, I'm interested. we hand them to sales and we trust sales to take them through the rest of that process. And it is it's about that's why I say sales and marketing is hand in hand, right? Because we can get great quality leads. But if we don't have a solid sales process in place. They may families may make a different decision. and equally so we don't want to drive a huge volume of unqualified leaves and burn out our salespeople. it's a balance. It's a give and take. It's, really intentionally understanding a client's. Process from start to finish and from client to client that we work with sales processes vary the way they put their data into the system. The demographic they're serving varies based on the region they're in. So there's lots of little variables from the marketing side and little levers that we can tweak, but it's really being able to have that holistic understanding. With clients of what their whole digital foundation looks like, how the data is flowing, and once it flows through the marketing side, what's happening on the sales side.

Erin: 23:17

yeah, all of that is true. I compare now, social media marketing, everything that I learned, on the marketing side with social media, if you were. From an entrepreneur standpoint, and I compare it to where I was inside of the community, and I understand things so much differently. And although this doesn't, this is not a blanket approach, but organic is better than bot. Period. but from a business standpoint, from versus a person standpoint, but that's where you get that specific target audience actually.

Katie: 23:53

Potentially, it really depends if you're talking about social media organically posting to your audience of followers probably does net you a better quality inquiry in the senior living space. What I have seen. I'll just I don't want to. Make a blanket, but what I have seen a lot of times, Facebook pages, a lot of families and residents are there. So posting organically, your sales special or move in special, or all these great kind of calls to action to come tour that audience following your page may not be families who don't live there. They may be families who already live there. so in the social realm, you really want to look at who's following you if you're focused on the organic. Posting efforts, because all of that takes time designing, taking the photos, writing the caption, right? posting all those great things that all takes time on a search engine side. Organic may feel better because maybe you're ranking for keywords. People are searching for that. are, they're close to that buying decision. So they're looking for senior living near me. And if you're showing up organically, that click is free, but I'll tell you that organic strategy to get to that top that page. 1 of results to get the click. That's a long term play that can take 6, 9, 12 months. And even then, depending on there's. There's a lot of work that goes into actually getting on page 1 organically. when it comes to the search engine, we use a methodology that combines. Our PPC and our SEO strategy because a lot of times clients don't have 12 months to wait for organic traffic. So leveraging our organic efforts with our PPC efforts and PPC being those paid Google ad efforts, Google ads going to show up, at the top of that first result, you may have to pay for that click. But if it's the right click. And they come through now, that's a better quality lead. So it will vary platform by platform. And you always start with who's the audience and where are they at in their journey? Typically search engines, those folks are going out actively looking so they have an active and need and are aware of their need. If you're on social, sometimes it's not an active, Awareness of a need we might have, right? So if you're doing Facebook ads, as an example, I'm scrolling Facebook. I may not know that I should be thinking about senior living. Until I see the ad and then only if I'm in the demographic, may I stop and go, huh, that's interesting. Let me look at it. So a lot of audience targeting audience psychology that goes into that component of it. it's absolutely fascinating, but there's, it's all very intentional, right? every platform has the audience targeting. You need to be intentional about who you're targeting, why, and what message resonates with them.

Erin: 26:47

That's the science behind the tech. There's just so much marketing is not easy. I would say that marketing is about as hard as math, but with a lot of psychology, Just there's just a lot of moving parts in marketing that, I see that I've never seen before, which is fascinating, which is why I think it's important for community level leaders to really understand. it is not a simple play. It's probably about as rigorous. If you're not used to it as state regs are for state. You need to remember this. You need to remember that. You need to remember this. You need to remember that. That call to action's too weak. You gotta change that.

Katie: 27:27

I don't know if I would say it's as rigorous as state regs, because that will, that intimidates me. That's where I'm like out of my area of expertise. But it really, for me, comes down, I'll tell people all the time, I could give you a creative opinion, what looks nice, but I'm going to be much more Effective for you. If I know what your data is behind it, let me make it. Let me give you a recommendation based on what your data is telling me because your data is going to be where we need to start where you're at. Make those incremental changes to get you where you want to go. and that things like website design. We, we work with client website design projects all the time. that's a lot of creative, What colors do I like? What layout do I like? And I'm like, wait a second. How are our users currently navigating the website? This is what I love about digital. I can go, we can go get the data. We can do the research to understand that before we invest all the time, energy, and budget into those fun, creative aspects, which are the color palettes I like and the picture selection and all those fun things. So yeah, data always informs our creative decisions. So

Erin: 28:31

yeah, it's that prepping piece. what you just described, we want to just jump in and do the fun stuff, but the fun stuff is not. As, successful without the prepping and the data is the prepping. If we don't prep, we're not getting the best product that we need.

Katie: 28:54

Absolutely. and I always think about, event marketing and I've been on all sides of event marketing and I know it live events for communities are very successful at bringing, perspective families and to experience, I think how much work goes into preparing that right? The theme of the event, the date of the event, right? Yeah. All the accoutrements that go with it, the food, all of that has to happen for that one, two hour event. Yes. And if you want it to be a prospecting event, then you have to prepare all the marketing schedule to come into that. And it's all very intentional in a lot of what we do in marketing has to be just as intentional, even if it's not the one off event. You're that foundational piece of how you're constantly driving traffic to the website. to your forms to those call tracking scripts, all of that has to be intentionally set up because at the end of the day, you want to measure that. And in order to measure it, you have to make sure you're. You've got all the little data ducks in a row and then you can, we do a lot of analytic reporting and auditing for clients. And if you don't have all that in order, it's really hard for me to tell you if the data. Is working for you.

30:05

yeah,

Erin: 30:06

it is a lot of prep work, but really that's everything. I'm not the best prepper. I want to come in and I want to paint the house. I want to start right now. But my husband is a prepper and there is just, he spends hours prepping. But he makes the job go by fast and it's successful, whereas I would be scrambling around trying to get all the stuff that I needed, but everything's in order. So the value is in the prep. The outcome is in the prep and I have also learned recently that. It's a sign of maturity when you can put off. a project or releasing a project until, it's the right way. you want it out and you're excited and you get it out. But if it's not going to work, then not enough of that prep work went into it. I think there's a balance to

Katie: 30:59

that. I do think there's a balance. Like we can be really intentional and do all the planning and preparing, but there is an element in marketing that if you don't get it out there, we don't know. Like we don't want to psychoanalyze it to death and then go, was it going to work? I don't know. It was, so you got to like. You've got to be willing to push that and be like, okay, let's get it 80 percent done and get it out to market. Yes. otherwise we over perfect, anything we do in life or, you spend too much time dwelling on it and what's the phrase, analysis paralysis. Yes. Yes. So you can't get caught in that. And it's really easy to get caught in that. I too sometimes get into that when there's. Bigger projects, but sometimes it's just like we got a good enough You know, is better than not at all. And progress over perfection is one of my reminders to myself. It's okay, we're going to do this and I just have to focus that this isn't a step forward for progress and it may not be perfect and that's okay. And sometimes you just have to embrace that. I don't know.

Erin: 32:05

Yeah, it's true. It's true. I've learned that to be minus C minus work. I'll do that the 1st time and then learn from it. the balance of that versus is this product ready to go? are we ready to roll out this initiative without getting all those facts and stuff and so finding that balance more than anything right? is where the prep work and the, the leadership and all that stuff comes from as a vendor to communities. Do you find that turnover hurts the marketing science and the tech side that you do so well at Smart Girl Digital? does the turnover affect you offering those services to your communities that you serve?

Katie: 32:51

depends. It depends on where the turnover is happening. with our direct points of contact at a client, if there's You know, turnover, then we do certainly want to step in and be a good partner and helping bring them up to speed in terms of what we're doing. We do a lot of, work that we do. We make sure we're documenting it so that, typically the corporate marketing teams that we're working with. We want to document. What we're implementing so they can take it to the teams and educate the teams on what's happening with the marketing automations or campaigns and things like that. So it really just depends on where the turnover is. it can give us a little bit of a pause if we need to re educate somebody on what we're doing. when it comes to the communication with sales teams, because so much of what we do is impacts their sales process. we really try to make sure we're having the constant conversations with sales leaders, at the corporate office and, even have even gone and hosted sales team trainings, virtual trainings to help. The community sales teams understand what's going on. And when there's turnover on the sales side, it does change the way, the time it takes for follow up and, it depends a lot on the sales processes too. It can impact it. but we try to be a little bit proactive in making sure clients are armed with documented strategies that can easily help new team members. Kind of understand what's going on while they're also learning. The sales process and, other items that come with being a new team member at the community level. But yeah, I think in any team, whether it's even on our side, when we have, additions to our team or changes in our team, it can impact. The pace or the momentum, but it's really important to just make sure we're keeping it moving and, educating and learning along the way is how we all continue to grow

Erin: 34:46

again. It goes back to that intentionality, right?

Katie: 34:48

it's going to happen, right? turnover is going to happen in 1 way, shape or form, whether it's, on a, in a vendor's team point of contact, or whether it's at the community level, that's just the nature of. Being in business, you deal with that and knowing that turnover can be okay, but let's be intentional about, doing what we need to do to make that transition smooth. But also on the flip side, doing what we need to do intentionally to keep team members happy and keep them on board. So we don't have to deal with it as much. that's just something as a business leader. You have to. Be mindful of and always thinking about what the culture is of the organization that whether you're building the organization or leading the organization. Organization and I know for me, a smart girl, like our team culture is really important to me. So making sure my team, has a say and how they want to work. We're a remote team. and very intentionally. So a remote team, because that is something that I. value in my professional life is being remote and having flexibility and being able to be there for my family when they need me, but also being able to be there for my clients. and that's another intentional decision, right? I'm very intentional for the hours that I work. And when I show up for work, I show up fully. And when I'm not working, I'm fully there for my family.

Erin: 36:06

I think 1 of the things vendors can do is really support the community at the community level. in new ways when it comes to training or support and any other type of thing, when you have a new position come board, we should be asking our vendors to help us. And I think that's an excellent service, way for you to support your customers. I like that. I feel like as we wind down, there's a couple of themes here, We can see how intentional you are with your marketing and with creating connections and making people feel important, which is. To me, probably the number 1 reason why Smart Girl Digital is the success that it is today. But also, I believe that marketing is a process. And sometimes it works super fast, and sometimes it's slow. It just depends on what the goal is and you just literally have to commit to the plan. How many times do you have to say that to people? We have to stay committed to the plan. Do you have to say that

Katie: 37:12

a lot? A lot. We build 90 day action plans. and there's a lot of times we have to say, okay, you want to go off this plan. This is the plan we agreed to. If you go off, this is what could happen. I am a type a planner. Okay. This, I probably like your husband, like I'm going to get all the things, sort it out as best I can. but it does help us have that path forward to help clients and will we adopt and adjust and, make the changes when they're needed. Absolutely. You have to be, you have to be flexible in that plan that you're putting together, but having a plan and a roadmap forward. Helps everybody be on the same page. So we're all going the same direction and, we do a lot of action plan, development. And, as part of our strategy development, that action plan is actually 1 of the deliverables. We give is we know your strategy. We know what your data is telling us. Now. Here's your 90 day action plan for you to go do it. Here's what you need to do. Here's what we're going to do. And then everybody's on the same page, and it's it makes for a great working relationship.

Erin: 38:16

be create a plan, stay committed to the plan, and be intentional with staying committed to the plan. I feel like we solved all of the problems that we can just with that. All of them just with the

Katie: 38:28

industry marketing problems right there.

Erin: 38:30

oh, gosh, I I hope that we educated people who think that marketing is easy and it's not if you do it right. It is full of numbers. It is not just pretty colors and pretty pictures. It is really full of numbers and very intentional words. Crafted intentionally and put on pages intentionally, like there is thought behind everything. when you are working with a marketing agency for sure. So thank you for shedding light on that and being vulnerable with the mindset traps and giving us a lot of. Strategy moving forward, and if you don't have that marketing support, give smart girl digital call. She knows what she's talking about

Katie: 39:20

I appreciate the plug air and I always love talking with you and, it's been a great conversation for sure.

Erin: 39:26

Yeah. Yep. Thank you and as always. For my listeners, aspire for more for you.