Unlocking Growth: Lucy Whittington on Simplifying Marketing Strategies for Success

0:01Lucy Whittington:Welcome back to Brave Board Brilliant. I'm Jeannette Linford, entrepreneur, investor, multiple business owner, advisor and your host. Now over the past 30 years, I've built a career across multiple industries. You know, I've been fortunate enough to lead global businesses, scaling companies and investing in ventures that really change lives. You know, and it's through my businesses today at Jeannette Linford Associates and Brave Board Brilliant, I now help ambitious leaders and entrepreneurs unlock growth, embrace bold strategies and create the success that they truly deserve. Now, today I'm joined by Lucy Whittington, head of marketing at Kiel, founder of Inspire Business Marketing and creator of the MOPS framework, which is a powerful tool helping businesses bring clarity and focus to their strategy.

0:50Lucy Whittington:Now, with over 30 years of experience, Lucy has made it her mission to help organisations simplify the complex, sharpen their message and unlock meaningful growth. And her philosophy of clarity before complexity has redefined how leaders communicate, innovate and ultimately lead with purpose. So in this episode, we'll dive into Lucy's journey, the power of clear thinking in business, and why simplicity is often the boldest strategy of all. So let's dive in.

1:28Lucy Whittington:Welcome to Brave Bobbryl. I'm here today with Lucy Whittington. Now, Lucy is an expert in all things marketing, sales, entrepreneurship. Lucy, nice to see you.

1:39Jeannette:Nice to see you too.

1:41Lucy Whittington:well we met actually at the festival of entrepreneurs probably a couple of months ago now and um yeah just kind of hit it off and here we are on having you on the podcast so that is a great way of networking and bumping into like-minded individuals and then just kind of making stuff happen which is what it's all about isn't it exactly i think you know if you're going

2:01Jeannette:something called the festival of entrepreneurs then you're kind of in a good state already and and we were on a panel together and then i came over and spoke to you had a stand there and it's just you know i think people forget just going to something isn't the same as then having conversations and i think that's the difference sometimes it's like don't be shy everyone's there to have conversations so just go and have them 100 and you're actually right because very often

2:25Lucy Whittington:you know people i see it where you make the time in the diary to go to an event and then people don't follow up i mean what a missed opportunity so it's great and of course we have the wonderful Alex Chisnell in common um who is a great friend of yours and has become a friend of mine over the last few years as well so big shout out to Alex for being the connector really to us exactly so Lucy um obviously you you've got you know years and years decades and decades of experience in marketing and I know one of the things that you really double down on is how do you create simplicity out of complexity um from a marketing perspective and I agree I think sometimes in business and in life we overcomplicate things and there's too much noise going on but could you just talk us through around kind of how that concept has been so important for you with the clients that you work with and sort of how you came to that realization that less is more yeah I think

3:24Jeannette:as with most things you do the wrong thing before you do the right thing so you do more and then you realize that more just makes you busy and you know it's not always helpful I think for me as you kindly pointed out my decades and decades of experience in marketing um so obviously I've lived through quite a change in marketing from everything being a lot more you know offline and analog you know I've done direct mail and you know used to do faxes and things like that and you know I've been there since websites and online and you know obviously now we've moved forward into AI and things are on social media and adverts and you know a lot of the landscapes changed but what hasn't changed is you know we talked to them before about conversations and that's all really marketing ever has been it's saying the right thing to the right people at the right time and whether that's telling them about something that you need to then educate them about and take them on a learning journey through to then realizing that they need to solve that problem in that way or it's something that they're literally looking for right now and need to find it you know I have this problem how do I solve it and wherever they are in that process marketing is just about showing up going oh hi do you have this problem but would you like to solve it would you like us to solve it for you and just because there's lots more ways of doing that now doesn't mean you have to be doing all of them because if your customers or your potential customers aren't showing up in all of the places you don't need to be in all of the places so that But one of the things that's always made sense to me is that you don't need to do all the things if they don't make sense for where your customer is going to be.

5:02Jeannette:Like if you're not going to have a conversation with them there, you know, if your customers aren't on TikTok, you don't have to be on TikTok because you don't need to be there to have that conversation with them. And if they're only ever in rooms for networking, then you need to be in those rooms and things like that. So that's one of the things that's always been the same. and yet because we're human you know many of us like the new things the shiny things the oh look look look what that person's doing and look what we could do and and and human nature sometimes is to want to try and do everything um which can sometimes mean you spend lots of money or waste lots of time that you don't need to so yeah exactly so there's a couple of things as you

5:42Lucy Whittington:were talking loose i think one is around the messaging you know because certainly when i was I had a great mentor quite recently actually a gentleman called Rob Moore who's really big on social media personal brand kind of you know podcasting in fact if it wasn't for Rob I wouldn't have a podcast in the first place but Rob used to always say the confused mind does not buy and so so I think there's something first of all around the messaging itself and almost the what the why the how etc and then there's where are people where's your tribe hanging out so to go to the first one of those um initially in terms of the messaging lucy what what are some of the things that um you would recommend or you help your clients with in terms of getting super clear on you know why do they exist what what is the message and all of that kind of good stuff because as i say i think the entrepreneur in particular entrepreneurs love the shiny penny right we we kind of lay things on and we get distracted and even in a large organization sometimes we can lose track of our why, you know, become so far removed from that, it becomes very messy and confused.

6:51Lucy Whittington:So how do you recommend or how do you work with your clients to get them clear on the message, first of all, Lucy?

6:59Jeannette:So my own kind of mini methodology is MOPS, which is message, offer, positioning and sales process. And I don't actually start with message, even though it's the first in that. I actually always have to start with offer. So and by offer, I mean, what is it that you do that no one else does the way that you do it so you know what's your thing um like what are you actually selling like are you selling a service or some software or you know a product what is that offer what can people buy from you what's the complete result they will get if they buy from you and you know I sometimes talk about a result and the result so um what I mean by that is that there's if you could give a potential client like everything that you've got you know It might mean if you're offering a service, you want to work with them for like a whole year and take them through a series of things.

7:48Jeannette:That would be the result, you know, the full result you could work towards with them. But you could also sell them a result, which might be the first step on that journey or a little slice of that or solving a smaller problem that's part of the bigger problem. So the first thing I always want people to understand is like, what is it that you're offering? and if you can't quickly tell someone what it is that you can do for them or the problem you solve for them then it's going to be really hard to do your messaging because you'll end up talking around it or about some things and it's not clear so so to answer the question in a roundabout way it's you have to be clear on what you're offering and the problems you solve before you can be clear on how are you going to talk about them because otherwise you just end up talking um and people aren't super clear like you know the difference would be if you imagine a shop window which marketing kind of is in most cases and you just had all the things you could do in the window and there was you know it was very busy and there was lots of stuff going on um it's that confused mind doesn't know what it can buy from you because you've just put all the things in the window Whereas if you just put, you know, one or two or three clear outcomes, people will understand it.

9:05Jeannette:They're like, oh, I can solve this problem here. OK, I can buy this from you. And that doesn't mean you don't do all of the things as part of delivering that or as part of the product. You just don't put them all in the window. So getting really clear on your offer makes it really easy to then sort your messaging out because then it makes having those conversations. you know and by conversation I mean you know what you write on your website and what you put up in social media and what you say when you meet people um it makes that a lot easier so messaging always comes from a simpler offer that's how you make a simpler message you have a simpler offer yeah so

9:42Lucy Whittington:it's like you say it's I guess it's around um partly about niching down so yeah potentially but but then I see I think a lot of businesses struggle with that don't they because they go oh my gosh, but I'm kind of desperate for the sale or I don't mind who buys it as long as it's someone with a pulse, you know. Which can happen, especially for an entrepreneurial business. It's quite, you know, in those early stages.

10:05Jeannette:You and I know that's usually recipe for a disaster. Exactly.

10:09Lucy Whittington:But somewhere deep down, people still try to do that because they just want any sale. They want to get any business in the door, but it's the worst thing you could do. So talk about niching down, the power of niching down and when to scale when to broaden because I think it's a complex area for a lot of people so so

10:26Jeannette:niching as well I think makes some people panic because not every niche has to be defined in terms of you know a demographic or a type so I always talk about niches as two types you can have you know a kind of focused niche or you can have what I would call a trigger niche so you know the traditional way of thinking about niches is right I'm only going to sell to you know women from 40 to 60 who have two cats and live in this part of the country you know let's hope you're selling cat food or something but you know it's it's it can be that specific and you list out a bunch of demographics and you describe your ideal client and that's your niche or you really narrow down to one type of industry or profession and you go I know I could sell this to everyone but I'm just going to sell it to these people and that can be right for you if you feel comfortable about that and you feel you can own expertise in the area and you've got good references and case studies and that could be great but for some people they they do go yeah but I just want to work with anyone who's got this problem and so that's what I would call a trigger niche which is about working out where you come in like what is what is the thing that people are worried about right now what is it they're looking to buy and what is it that you can do that the day that they wake up and go right that's it I don't want to look like this anymore or feel like this anymore or work like this anymore or you know whatever it is you can then show up and be like okay now we can solve this problem so you don't worry about whether they're you know what age they are or where they live or anything like that but you are only marketing to them at that trigger point that they then will know and understand and need and recognize that this is a really good thing for them to buy next whether it's a product or a service or whatever so that helps some people cope with the niching thing better is they go all right I'm just going to work with people who when they start when they get here you know and in a business context it could be okay when I'm scaling past 10 employees okay things are going to start to look different or when I'm hiring my first this or when we're going into another territory so you know that's how it can work in a business context that you may have something relevant for people at that stage or if it's you know business or consumer it could be something they're experiencing for the first time or it's the day they've had enough of something they've been experiencing so that that can really help people to still have a niche without it feeling um restrictive if you're enjoying this insightful

12:59Lucy Whittington:conversation with lucy whittington make sure that you're following brave ball brilliant on your favorite social media platforms you know if you're watching this on youtube please subscribe And of course, if you're listening to this on iTunes, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast, again, hit that subscribe button because every week we bring you conversations with exceptional leaders and entrepreneurs who are redefining what success and impact truly mean. So hit follow, stay inspired and keep fueling your own journey of brave, bold, brilliant.

13:36Lucy Whittington:so it's kind of linked to life cycle i guess or life stage or like you know because like you were saying the example of a business there you know if it gets to you know startup scale up exit what you know that whole life cycle of the seven stages of a life cycle of a business you know you could come in at a certain point couldn't you as you say or or it might be a life life stage you know the menopause or the woman or whatever it might be i don't know what you're talking about jenette oh my god don't talk to me about hrs i love hrt i love it as well the hrt club unite exactly exactly um okay so that's so don't be afraid of niching is the message that i'm hearing but i think yeah i think you can think about niching in a different way

14:22Jeannette:which is what i'm saying which is you you can hit a different stage of decision making or journey or however you want to describe it rather than a pure demographic which can be more helpful

14:32Lucy Whittington:yeah yeah yeah I guess especially if you're trying to find your feet a little bit as well

14:37Jeannette:and and sometimes you know I think also people forget so one of the things to go back to one of your earlier questions about you know like messaging and really focusing and and why that's helpful is it's so much easier to focus in one area it doesn't mean you're not going to sell to people around that no some people might be like oh no I want to buy that thing because I'm aiming to be there or I want to do that next it doesn't stop you selling to those people but it it gives you a clear focus it allows you to have the same conversation over and over again and that's really important as well I think one thing people forget is when you talk about your messaging and what you want to say that only starts to work in a marketing sense when you keep saying it when you're repeating it like you will think you're a stuck record and you will say oh man I've been saying this over and over again but you have to remember that when you broadcast or when you run campaigns or however you want to think about your marketing you don't hit every person every time that you want to talk to they might only see you once or twice they're not going to see you the 25 times you've sent that message out on different media that week I mean they might if they're a super stalker but you know So you're always going to feel like you're talking about the same thing more than your audience thinks they're always talking about the same thing.

15:59Jeannette:I see them every five minutes. That's not a bad thing. That's how marketing works. It's, you know, you can vary the message or have different examples or different testimonials or case studies, but it works a lot better if you show up talking about the same thing all of the time or, you know, three key points about that thing or whatever. He doesn't have to literally be the same thing, but because that's how marketing works. People need to see you several times before they're like, oh, there's that person popping up again, reminding me that I could do that. I could solve that problem. I could do.

16:31Jeannette:Oh, there's the fifth example I've seen of them solving that problem for someone like me. And I think a lot of us forget that that's the point. they're supposed to hear the same thing over and over again because sometimes it takes that long to sink in so I think another thing I will say about messaging is when you've picked a niche or you know who you want to talk to and what you want to say to them and you might have two or three key messages or you know things that you solve for them just keep repeating those like keep yeah unless unless you're getting absolutely zero response and you probably won't be if you've understood your market and you know who you're talking to and you've solved this problem before just keep saying them because people don't see something once and then occasionally they do that but in the majority of cases they need to keep hearing from you and I think that's something that I always have to over emphasize for clients is that they'll be like oh we tried that and it didn't work you're like did you though or did you just do it once and yeah you know for whatever reason it didn't get a huge response that one time that you did it so um yeah that's one thing

17:46Lucy Whittington:i'll definitely say about messaging no that's really that is really good advice because you know and you know i'm not a marketer i've always had amazing marketing teams that have worked with me and i've been very fortunate in that both in my corporate life and kind of on my you know my own sort of business portfolio journey but I think um you're right because you don't you you think it's boring or oh my god you know we need to keep it fresh but you're right repetition repetition repetition leads to mastery right and not only repetition of messaging but also you know delivering delivering again and again and again is when you're going to get refine it and get it better exactly improve the customer journey and it's only if you're doing that same thing time and time and time and time again, that you are going to become an absolute master.

18:33Jeannette:And it doesn't mean you can't tailor the experience or it's not slightly different for each client, but, but actually, that's what people want to buy from you. They want to buy that certainty. They want to buy the confidence that you know what you're doing and you've done this before or something very similar to this before. You know, that's why case studies are always amazing or referrals. You know, the example I always give is that, you know, if you're going to go and see your favorite band um you know you don't really want to hear their new music do you you want to hear the greatest hits that you know all the words do so you can sing along and you know that's where you've gone see them you might have heard that song literally 100 times and you still want to hear it again live you know that's why people go to see the bands they like you know they don't mind one or two new songs but you know not for the not for the majority of the concert um and that's who they are and what they stand for and that should be the same with your own marketing it's like you should be telling people over and over again how great you are at doing this thing so so some brilliant advice there I'm going to talk a little bit around um what shifted in marketing in particular at the

19:46Lucy Whittington:moment because obviously everyone's talking about ai and you know this isn't a new thing and it's here right this is not the future this is now and any business that is not embracing ai now will get left behind i am 100 convinced regardless of sector you know and i was with a client um the other day and you know he was sort of saying it's almost like you know that the ship is is sailing you're on the you're on that you're on the shore side and that distance is just getting bigger and bigger and to the point if you don't get you know you're not going to catch up so ai is just one thing but it's not just ai is it it's consumer preferences it's yes you know

20:21Jeannette:it's the attention spans being about this big tiny tiny tiny millimeter of attention span you know half a second we're impatient yeah yeah look we we have got more impatient it's very easy for us to do research now so i was talking about this the other day with someone and you know back in the olden days when um you know i used to work i've worked a lot in software throughout my career and um selling into professional services there would be big exhibitions you know a couple of times a year you'd probably go out once every two or three years to kind of see what was on you know the market what developments have been made did you need to switch you know that so the buying process was fairly steady and controlled and you know yeah they have websites and you can have a little look but you'd sort of go and suss out the markets like what's changed is the amount of information you can get before sales get involved so to me what's really shifted is marketing can do a lot more work I would say this but you know I love sales teams but you know if if marketing's doing a good job a sales conversation should almost just be like checking the bill at the end of the meal you know it's like there's no surprises on there they know what to expect um that's yeah that's what we ordered that's what we want um there's such an amazing opportunity now for marketing to answer all the questions people have show them around the product the software the factory it's made in whatever um listen to loads of other people talk about how they're using it what they think of it you know very transparent in terms of reviews and what other people think and case studies and videos and behind the scenes content and it should be really difficult now to buy something without having all your questions answered before you buy something and so that to me is what's changed in terms of the job of marketing is sales used to do a lot more of that marketing was just a case of like hey we're over here do you want to chat to us about buying something and then sales would kind of take over I think the breadth of what marketing can offer now in the sales process is much broader you know that for right from the beginning of like you've never heard about solving this problem you know you'd often just go to your friends how did you solve this problem do you know someone who does this well now you can just you know what it used to be just google it but now you chat gpt it you know it's like how do i do this who's good for this how can i solve this problem so there's more to do in a marketing remit now but that breadth of opportunity of helping with the sales process should be taken advantage of you know you should be found for all these things you should have all these assets that can help answer questions and give examples and evidence and you know you should be able to take someone through the sales process and in many cases without even talking to anyone um where before a person would have been involved i know in lots of cases it's still important to have people involved and ultimately i'll also add which comes back to your ai thing depending what you're buying people still want to know who they're buying for from it's still a people buying from another person scenario however you can help that by having videos of you by having you know interviews or having been on podcasts people can meet you so they don't have to meet you in person to have met you now you know that's why people with big social media followings often sell really well because they're having sales conversations with people every day it's just not on a one-to-one basis so ai is really helpful i certainly use it um i never take it's writing I always have to do the last edit because it doesn't write as good as me.

24:24Jeannette:But that's my opinion. But also, the nuances aren't quite there yet. It does a really good job, but just not always quite spot on for me. But I think what it can help you to do is remind you that you should be showing up more as well. It can't replace people. it can certainly help you produce more content and you know be in more places and be showing up but if you're in an industry where people are still buying from people and they do that even when they're buying something that you might not think is people buying people you know you might be buying some jewelry or something and you might think well actually I want to know who's the person who designs this and what are their values and what do they think about this and oh are they do they source things ethically and is that important to them or whatever or what's their design background or I really love or they're just great people and I just feel that they get me because whatever the more you can do that and show up the more you're likely to sell so AI can help you immensely but it can't replace you

25:31Lucy Whittington:I think that's right because you know as you just described there from a marketing point of view you can either look at this and go well this is a massive threat because it's you know it's actually taken away a lot of the marketing work that was ever done before yeah the flip side is to say actually no it allows us to all of that great content can be done much more seamlessly and therefore we can focus the human effort on you know more meaningful areas over here where the combination of tech plus human to human is actually where the magic is um and i think that's the right approach you know i see it a lot in hospitality as well lucy a lot of our big clients you know in sort of the hotel industry, et cetera, there are certain parts of the customer journey, which ringing up and checking what time the gym opens or what the menu is for breakfast or whatever it may be, all of that stuff can be dealt with by AI.

26:25Jeannette:Of course.

26:26Lucy Whittington:However, if I want to go and have a chat with someone who's actually from the local area, it's going to be able to tell me what's the little local pub where I can find X, Y, Z. I'm going to value that interaction or the magic moment of the chef coming out from the kitchen, you know, to chat about the menu choice or whatever it might be. So it's around diversion of resources, I think, into those.

26:49Jeannette:And it's, again, understanding your customers and understanding who they are. So, for example, if you've got a lot of older customers, they still like to talk to someone on the phone. You know, I know being an older person, sometimes I'm like, I haven't got time to look around this website for 20 minutes. I'm just going to call them, ask my one question, done. it's like so ultimately that should be something that they should then feed back to their marketing team and go we've just been asked this question that needs to be added to the faqs and then i would have found it in one minute and i wouldn't have phoned them but yes it's understanding your customer as well it's like what ai is allowing people to do is actually put a premium on personalized service because it has leveled the playing field and you can get a chatbot to just answer a bunch of questions or you can do that but maybe you can charge a higher fee because you have humans doing that maybe you can offer you know a different service where they do get an account manager rather than a ai account manager uh you know a human it just it allows you to have more opportunities but it is again like anything it's recognizing who is your market how do they like to behave what do they want what their expectations how can you exceed their expectations um what you know if they just want information really quickly brilliant use ai but if they value a relationship or a human interaction and and it's just knowing that you know marketing always comes down to knowing your customer knowing what they want um knowing how you can best solve their problem um and everyone appreciates you having put that thought in and that's another thing marketing can do is to tell us what you've done they go so here's what we've done you know we know that if it's the middle of the night and you've got a question we've trained our amazing ai chatbot you know whatever that you want to call it to answer all your questions it's got you know everyone on the team has downloaded all their knowledge into this and you can ask it whatever you want but we're also open every day from this time to this time if you want to give us a call you know and then even telling the story of how and when you're using ai to show that you've thought about your customer is actually good marketing yeah and i think it's doing it yeah

28:58Lucy Whittington:yeah and especially if you operate globally with different time zones you know because you might be based in the uk you might be based in the middle east australia etc your clients you know might be 11 11 hours ahead of you and you still need to serve them so actually you know the years of having call centers doing night shifts in order to be able to serve those customers that you know it kind of shifted quite a lot so there's a real load of opportunity um and lucy i just want to ask you um really from a probably more from a sort of a small business an sme perspective but could also apply to a bigger business that maybe is under pressure trading wise you know very often marketing budgets are the first to get cut right so when it went as we know which which is arguably the worst thing that you can actually do so so that's a that's a perennial challenge it's not new it's been here for eternity and that so i would say marketing and often um investment in people training and development often gets cut as well and arguably they're the two things that you should cut last actually in any business but we are all realists as well right and we know that sometimes you know marketing budgets do get cut or you might be a small startup that's on a very have no budget yeah exactly exactly so either of those scenarios if you're if you're in that situation you've not got a lot of money but you know you need to do something what would you advise people should be doing to get the maximum reach they can on a very very skinny budget

30:26Jeannette:so two things one make sure all your own marketing assets make sense so have a one-page website rather than no website you know LinkedIn doesn't cost anything to use if you're selling to businesses or have an Instagram account if you're selling to consumers or whatever there are platforms that cost little or no money that you can have a presence on that if you have you know time but not money you can have a good presence on there so first of all you know work out where your customers are and have something that's available just that you do need to be found online it It doesn't have to be fancy, but have something.

31:04Jeannette:Write clearly, have a clear message. So have destinations that people can go to because there's no point doing marketing activity if they've got nowhere to go and they can't take an action like call you, message you, DM you, send you an email, whatever. So make sure you've got some things that look nice. I'd rather have small and beautiful than large. And, you know, so just get something done. if it means spending a little bit of money getting someone to do a little bit of design stuff for you that's always money well spent or using canva or something that's again low cost or or not very expensive um then the other thing i would do is work with other people and by that i mean partners channel channel if you're using the the marketing term for it but other people are already talking to your customers this is the the first place you should always go like if you you know assuming you've worked your own network and can't get any further than that um and you've gone to everyone in your network and gone do you know anyone who you know has this problem wants this or problem solved obviously that's stage one use your network and don't be afraid to say do you know anyone who and then describe um what it is that you can help with so that's stage one but when you're past that go and think about other people who are also interacting either selling to or supporting or whatever with your clients to your your prospects and see if you can work out a way of working with them that benefits both of you so for example um you know there might be an agency that's supporting them with some ads or something like that you're like right i know i solve this I don't know like admin problem for them um but they're a business that's busy selling and they're working with uh you know an agency to do their you know google ads or their facebook ads so they're working with this agency to run their own business but maybe uh you know the service we offer is kind of administrative and they're not great at doing that side of things but they're working with this agency so you could go to the agency and say okay of all your clients that you're supporting with ads do any of them have this problem you know you're doing this great campaign they're getting loads of leads in and then it's a blimmin disaster they're not following up and this isn't happening and you know and they're like yes we've got at least three clients like that you're like great could you introduce me to them this is what we do you know we work with people to I don't know organize their sales process and follow up and and do whatever brilliant um that's a very simplistic example but it shows you that someone else is already working your clients and that becomes a win-win because that agency is then going to have clients who are getting better results for the campaigns that they're doing because they're following up better and then the client's going these campaigns are brilliant look we've got all these sales for them whereas at the moment they might be like well we've had all these leads but we haven't been able to follow them up and we don't know what to do um but if you can sort that bit out the people who are introducing you in the first place are in a better place and and there's that sort of scenario happy all the time it might be you know accountants or lawyers work with them and as they grow they'll buy more of their services it might be you know business consultants or advisors or freelance hr people that have got a number of clients that are rapidly hiring but things you know whatever it is that you do think about who else would be supporting your ideal clients before or after you would work with them that would be of benefit to them and then just go with a proposition and and my other thing I always say with any partnerships or or you know channel opportunities is do all the work do every bit of the work because the people you're going to go to this wasn't on their radar this wasn't in their plan they're probably busy but if you turn up and say hey look if you could just send this one email out and by the way I've written it to these clients and you know send them this Or if you could, you know, in your next newsletter, could we have a little section in it?

35:03Jeannette:I've already written it for you. And here's the photo. Or, oh, I see that you host a monthly networking for your clients. Could we come along, you know, and offer this or do something? You might not be able to afford to sponsor it. but maybe you could offer everyone who turns up a half an hour free consultation in xyz or something look at how they're already communicating with their clients and see if you can't slot into that or say oh i noticed you haven't run a breakfast meeting for your clients for a while would you like us to organize one we'll find the venue we'll send the invites we'll pay for the croissants whatever like just try and tap in and solve their solve them a problem while solving your own problem that's that's always my if you're not doing that because that way you're going to get hopefully more clients for one piece of effort than you would trying to run around trying to find

36:00Lucy Whittington:those people yeah I think that's great advice and again it comes back to human to human where where where do relationships matter where do relationships actually relationships actually add value on both sides and i mean we we've just doing this recently lusa i mean you and i've been having a conversation we've just you know recently launched our rise academy which is for sort of junior to middle leaders within corporate or for entrepreneurs smes have got you know looking to scale up yeah and actually some of the really powerful conversations that i'm having with fellow business owners is around exactly that hey listen we provide this service it is perfect for this type of client it's complementary to what you offer if you're you know for a referral and i would add actually onto that we are very happy to give you you know a nice kickback on the fee so that because i'm respectful that you know people's networks are precious and you've nurtured them for many many years we don't expect a free introduction but actually this could be a nice additional revenue stream for you it gives you another you know sort of thing to offer under the umbrella of a trusted kind of relationship so that's exactly what we're doing with rise academy and we've got some fantastic rise ambassadors that are doing exactly that working with us that allows us to have an authentic voice within a broader broader way that isn't just by putting marketing campaigns out in a traditional way so i love that yeah great it just it exactly what you

37:32Jeannette:relationships and you can yeah you can definitely offer a reward or a referral or but some people