Episode 047: Mastering Content Marketing Strategies with Diana Mitchell

Monique: 00:00:00

Coming up on Unpolished MBA.

Diana: 00:00:03

So what is going to be the easiest way to provide value to them?

Diana: 00:00:07

That's going to naturally make them want to refer you.

Diana: 00:00:09

When you do those things properly, and then you create all this content, then all

Diana: 00:00:14

of a sudden you're feeding the machine.

Diana: 00:00:16

You're feeding your strategy, the implementation of it, because off of

Diana: 00:00:20

your community, off of your podcast, you're able to create eBooks and videos

Diana: 00:00:26

and audio grams and blog posts and email newsletters and insights so that you're

Diana: 00:00:31

providing value on this multitude of ways.

Diana: 00:00:38

This show is sponsored by TPM Focus, the strategy and execution consulting firm

Diana: 00:00:45

focused on generating revenue and finding product market fit for new innovations.

Diana: 00:00:51

Head over to TPMFocus.com to learn more.

Monique: 00:01:04

Hello everyone and welcome back to our next episode of Unpolished MBA.

Monique: 00:01:09

Today I have with me, Diana Mitchell.

Monique: 00:01:11

Hi Diana.

Diana: 00:01:12

Hello, Monique.

Diana: 00:01:13

It's good to see, well, hear you.

Monique: 00:01:15

Yeah, I know right?

Monique: 00:01:17

Well, thanks for joining me.

Monique: 00:01:18

I'm so excited to have you on you're one of my LinkedIn favorites.

Monique: 00:01:21

I'm going to start by asking you the same two questions.

Monique: 00:01:23

I ask everyone else.

Monique: 00:01:25

Are you an entrepreneur or a corporate employee?

Diana: 00:01:28

Yes, so we were just talking about this off the air.

Diana: 00:01:32

I am an entrepreneur.

Diana: 00:01:34

I have been since 2011 and then I took this weird little detour

Diana: 00:01:37

back into corporate America at the start of COVID and I'm blissfully

Diana: 00:01:42

thankfully back into entrepreneurship.

Diana: 00:01:44

Corporate America is not for me.

Diana: 00:01:46

I love and respect it, and certainly my clients are, but it's just, it's

Diana: 00:01:49

not where I meant to be forever.

Monique: 00:01:50

Yeah, I understand.

Monique: 00:01:51

I just made a post about that on LinkedIn, by the way, we'll come back to that,

Monique: 00:01:55

but our next question is MBA or no MBA?

Diana: 00:01:58

I have a masters in public relations is multidisciplinary

Diana: 00:02:01

PR and management, but no MBA.

Monique: 00:02:04

Wow.

Monique: 00:02:04

But that's incredibly powerful to have that PR background.

Monique: 00:02:08

Let me understand how that ties into the work you do now, because

Monique: 00:02:12

you're really good at whatever it is that you're doing on LinkedIn.

Monique: 00:02:16

You're very great writer.

Monique: 00:02:18

Your copywriting is awesome.

Monique: 00:02:19

You're great at storytelling.

Monique: 00:02:21

Does that come from that masters that PR?

Diana: 00:02:23

Okay, Monique.

Diana: 00:02:25

You're like making me feel like a million bucks here.

Diana: 00:02:27

Thank you.

Monique: 00:02:28

Listen, all of the Unpolished MBA guests are worth a million bucks.

Monique: 00:02:32

In case you guys haven't realized that yet the top of the notch comes on here.

Diana: 00:02:37

Duly noted.

Diana: 00:02:39

Actually, it goes back a little further.

Diana: 00:02:41

My BA's in English.

Diana: 00:02:42

I had this vague notion of wanting to be a writer, but I had no idea

Diana: 00:02:46

what that meant, and I had no courage to actually attempt to be a writer.

Diana: 00:02:51

So I kind of fell into marketing.

Diana: 00:02:52

I worked in market research in college, which was actually really valuable.

Diana: 00:02:56

I called people on the phone and conducted surveys and heard them talk about brands

Diana: 00:03:00

and what they love to didn't love.

Diana: 00:03:02

Then I worked in radio and then somehow, I thought this is not a path

Diana: 00:03:06

for me I need to go back to school.

Diana: 00:03:09

What's a career where I can write?

Diana: 00:03:10

PR and marketing were attractive to me, so I found a program, I got in and yeah,

Diana: 00:03:16

multidisciplinary PR and management.

Diana: 00:03:19

The whole thing really was just a lot of writing and understanding what people

Diana: 00:03:23

want to hear or how they need to hear it.

Diana: 00:03:25

To be honest, other than racking up student loan debt and meeting some

Diana: 00:03:30

great people, I believe that most marketing leaders and especially

Diana: 00:03:35

marketing creatives can be successful without going for a masters.

Diana: 00:03:39

So it helped me define my career path a bit, or at least point

Diana: 00:03:44

me in the right direction.

Diana: 00:03:45

I wouldn't say that it was a game changer in helping me be who I am today.

Monique: 00:03:49

Wow.

Monique: 00:03:50

Well, the way I see you write and the way I see you present

Monique: 00:03:54

different information online, it just seems very natural for you.

Monique: 00:03:58

I could totally see that.

Monique: 00:04:00

I'm thinking maybe you had some stellar training, but it sounds like

Monique: 00:04:03

no, that's just who you are and that's great, but let's talk a little bit

Monique: 00:04:07

about your content strategy here.

Monique: 00:04:10

Please describe, first of all, what content strategy is.

Monique: 00:04:13

A lot of people don't even know what that is, but it's hugely important,

Monique: 00:04:16

especially in this day, as we're talking about, personal brand building, company

Monique: 00:04:20

brand building, and it's not just today, it's going to forevermore be that way.

Monique: 00:04:24

I believe.

Monique: 00:04:25

Do you mind describing a little bit about what content strategy

Monique: 00:04:29

is and the importance of it.

Diana: 00:04:31

Yeah.

Diana: 00:04:31

You know, brand building it's all so important right?

Diana: 00:04:34

But what happens is this myopic view of, okay, we have to build our brand or

Diana: 00:04:39

we have to build our employees brands because that will help our brand.

Diana: 00:04:43

And yes.

Diana: 00:04:44

And yes.

Diana: 00:04:45

Because when you focus on the tactical implementation, like I'll have clients

Diana: 00:04:51

or prospective clients call me up all the time and say, we need to do X, we need

Diana: 00:04:54

to do LinkedIn, we need to do TikTok.

Diana: 00:04:57

Well, maybe, and probably, but that's not the right question you should be asking.

Diana: 00:05:02

So, a content strategy is literally that roadmap, that guide map, that's

Diana: 00:05:06

going to ensure that the actions you take from a content perspective

Diana: 00:05:09

align with your overarching marketing goals, but especially your business

Diana: 00:05:14

goals, because there's a lot of people, you and I see these every day,

Diana: 00:05:18

they tell stories, actually, I think I just post about this yesterday.

Diana: 00:05:22

This story about the busted tire and the sick kid, every calamity

Diana: 00:05:27

that could befall someone and they couldn't get hired by anyone.

Diana: 00:05:30

Or my VP told me to ignore them and I said, no, but they're

Diana: 00:05:34

conspicuously not tagged in this post.

Diana: 00:05:36

We'd have no idea these made up things.

Diana: 00:05:38

So these are attention whores on LinkedIn, and they get attention.

Diana: 00:05:44

So their goal is attention and, I think that's what many businesses

Diana: 00:05:48

and individuals strive for.

Diana: 00:05:49

They believe that attention equals success.

Diana: 00:05:52

But it doesn't, and you can get a thousand likes on a post if it's some

Diana: 00:05:56

vacuous thing that doesn't align with who you are and what you offer and what you're

Diana: 00:06:00

solving for your customers, then you're going to wonder why it isn't working.

Diana: 00:06:04

Or you're going to say, "Well, this didn't work.

Diana: 00:06:06

I tried this."

Diana: 00:06:07

And so you've got to work backwards.

Diana: 00:06:09

What are your business goals?

Diana: 00:06:11

Where are your customers?

Diana: 00:06:12

What do they need to hear?

Diana: 00:06:13

Where are their problems?

Diana: 00:06:15

What are the challenges that your.

Diana: 00:06:16

BDRs are hitting or if you don't have BDRs and it's just you,

Diana: 00:06:20

where are you hitting roadblocks?

Diana: 00:06:22

So it's just like working through all of those little pieces and questions and

Diana: 00:06:26

then creating a plan that either it gets in front of them, answers questions,

Diana: 00:06:32

make sure to meet people where they are.

Diana: 00:06:34

Just filling in and plugging in those pieces or connecting the dots so that

Diana: 00:06:38

your actions every day are tied directly to potential revenue and lead generation.

Diana: 00:06:44

That doesn't mean you can't post fun stuff once in awhile, but most

Diana: 00:06:47

of what you post should be aligned with some sort of strategic plan.

Diana: 00:06:50

Otherwise you're just shooting in the dark and hoping that it sticks.

Monique: 00:06:53

That's what it seems like a lot of people are doing.

Monique: 00:06:56

Let me tell you, I come from the startup world and they're just like, listen, I

Monique: 00:06:59

don't have time to wait for that to work.

Monique: 00:07:01

They just say, how long is this going to take for me to

Monique: 00:07:03

turn this into some revenue?

Monique: 00:07:06

So what do you think about with that statement?

Monique: 00:07:09

It comes up a lot.

Monique: 00:07:10

What do you think about that?

Diana: 00:07:11

Yeah, that's tough, right?

Diana: 00:07:12

Because I'm most recently in corporate America, I'm coming

Diana: 00:07:16

from that environment as well.

Diana: 00:07:17

They still believe very heavily in gated content, and a lot of frankly,

Diana: 00:07:22

the less sexy forms of content marketing right now, but they're easily

Diana: 00:07:27

attributable, you can say this many, and you could just rattle all that off.

Diana: 00:07:32

It's like the cover your ass marketing so that sales can't complain

Diana: 00:07:36

and that will facilitate growth.

Diana: 00:07:38

I mean, certainly.

Diana: 00:07:39

If you have the right leader who really understands these components, you can do

Diana: 00:07:43

those things and you can still grow, but are you going to get where you need to be?

Diana: 00:07:47

Are you understanding where your customers are going to?

Diana: 00:07:50

You're going to get that fatigue after a while.

Diana: 00:07:52

When someone signs up for a webinar that's garbage and offers no value,

Diana: 00:07:55

or when someone gets 18 emails after downloading a friggin ebook

Diana: 00:07:59

that they didn't actually read.

Diana: 00:08:00

But you know, you can only tap into that so much before they're like, you

Diana: 00:08:05

know, it's just not worth it anymore.

Diana: 00:08:08

Right?

Diana: 00:08:09

So you've got these really amazing evangelists of the new state of

Diana: 00:08:13

marketing, demand gen in particular.

Diana: 00:08:15

For me, in my opinion, nearly everything is demand gen

Diana: 00:08:18

nowadays, it all touches, right?

Diana: 00:08:20

It's all overlapping like Chris Walker, everybody talks about him.

Monique: 00:08:24

He's a friend to the show he's been on, he's a rockstar.

Diana: 00:08:26

Awesome.

Diana: 00:08:27

He really is, and everyone at Refined Labs frankly, I have no tie to them whatsoever

Diana: 00:08:31

other than the fact that they're all really smart people and they get it.

Diana: 00:08:35

So this is where unfortunately I say, unfortunately because I'm sure you've

Diana: 00:08:40

seen it too, we see a lot of content lately where people are like "find

Diana: 00:08:43

yourself a CEO who understands" you know what, we don't have that luxury.

Diana: 00:08:48

We have to teach, we have to justify.

Diana: 00:08:51

It's towing the line, so I think that the way to overcome that

Diana: 00:08:56

challenge or that edict from senior leadership in the C-suite, especially

Diana: 00:09:00

if it comes directly from your CEO.

Diana: 00:09:02

Is to ensure that you're still giving away at least 50 to 60%

Diana: 00:09:07

of your stuff without an ask.

Diana: 00:09:10

That it better be good, like it's your A stuff.

Diana: 00:09:12

Then gait that stuff get in your easily attributable, all that sexy stuff

Diana: 00:09:18

that they want to see, save that for smaller percentage and make sure it's

Diana: 00:09:22

really, really fricking good because if it's not, then it doesn't matter.

Diana: 00:09:26

There's no way that you're going to be able to keep up with that

Diana: 00:09:29

over time and get the same return.

Diana: 00:09:32

Then they're just going to chuck you and bring in someone else.

Diana: 00:09:34

So it's part education, part acquiescing a little bit like you got to give a

Diana: 00:09:39

little, but then show that what you're doing is working to, and, and it's hard.

Diana: 00:09:44

It's not easy.

Diana: 00:09:45

It's part of the reason why it's easier to be a consultant right now, right?

Diana: 00:09:48

Because you get to wait for the clients who get it, like

Diana: 00:09:51

I've never been that person.

Diana: 00:09:53

So I know you have a lot of entrepreneurs who are listening right now, and you know,

Diana: 00:09:58

I know this isn't content specific, but I will tell you, I, in the early days

Diana: 00:10:02

found that people who would call me in, so I did a lot of writing and social.

Diana: 00:10:06

I was very known for social, whatever that even means.

Diana: 00:10:09

This is 2011 and people would want me to convince them that they should

Diana: 00:10:14

invest in social media strategy.

Diana: 00:10:16

And I originally used to go for that.

Diana: 00:10:18

And then.

Diana: 00:10:19

Why the hell am I wasting my time trying to convince people of what I do.

Diana: 00:10:22

There are plenty of people who need help know it, and then

Diana: 00:10:25

they just need to meet me.

Diana: 00:10:26

Then I'm really just selling myself and my expertise and that energy,

Diana: 00:10:30

don't waste your energy on people who don't believe in what you do.

Diana: 00:10:33

If you're in a corporate gig, that's, a different beast.

Diana: 00:10:36

But if you're an entrepreneur and your service or product is something that

Diana: 00:10:40

you believe in and that there are people out there, you know need it, don't waste

Diana: 00:10:45

your time on trying to convince people who don't know that they need it yet.

Diana: 00:10:49

Get out of that, get out of that area right there, because that's exhausting

Diana: 00:10:52

and it's going to take your energy away from meeting those meaningful prospects.

Monique: 00:10:55

Oh, thank you for saying that, because that will

Monique: 00:10:58

certainly zap your energy.

Monique: 00:11:00

In my world with a lot of innovators and tech startup founders, and folks that are

Monique: 00:11:05

putting new things out into the world.

Monique: 00:11:07

That kind of rejection over and over again, by going to the same

Monique: 00:11:12

people who don't quite get it yet, at least the burnout with them.

Monique: 00:11:17

I'm like, "Hey, you have a tribe out there.

Monique: 00:11:20

Your goal as the startup is to find them."

Diana: 00:11:23

That comes back to the demand and the strategy.

Diana: 00:11:26

Right?

Monique: 00:11:27

That's absolutely right.

Monique: 00:11:31

We're going to take a quick timeout and pick back up in just a moment.

Monique: 00:11:37

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Monique: 00:11:42

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Monique: 00:11:46

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Monique: 00:11:48

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Monique: 00:11:51

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Monique: 00:11:53

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Monique: 00:12:00

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Monique: 00:12:04

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Monique: 00:12:07

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Monique: 00:12:13

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Monique: 00:12:18

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Monique: 00:12:24

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Monique: 00:12:28

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Monique: 00:12:31

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Monique: 00:12:41

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Monique: 00:13:01

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Monique: 00:13:06

A lot of people don't realize marketing is a broad category.

Monique: 00:13:10

Some people just see it as posting things on social media, there's

Monique: 00:13:13

even a strategy behind that.

Monique: 00:13:15

There's a strategy behind every platform and what platforms to

Monique: 00:13:19

be on and things of that nature.

Monique: 00:13:21

So in the work that you've done well, since you've been a consultant, where

Monique: 00:13:26

does your expertise predominantly lie?

Diana: 00:13:29

I would say that I'm known for and appreciated most for my writing,

Diana: 00:13:33

which is ironic because you mentioned that, but it touches upon everything.

Diana: 00:13:37

So I hate to say, I don't want to ever try to come across as like the purple

Diana: 00:13:42

squirrel or the unicorn or anything like that, but I've had the honor of

Diana: 00:13:47

being a consultant of working in account management and strategic elements

Diana: 00:13:52

within an agency, of being a VP of Marketing, a Head of Content Marketing.

Diana: 00:13:57

So the perspective I'm honored in that I've been able to build a career where

Diana: 00:14:02

I can understand many perspectives and the strategic, as well as the creative

Diana: 00:14:07

and the deliverable component of it.

Diana: 00:14:09

Where I have focused my energy now is in helping others craft that strategy.

Diana: 00:14:14

What I've found is that with a lot of clients and just a lot of Marketing

Diana: 00:14:19

Directors and above they're so specific in one area that, this is very common

Diana: 00:14:24

and it's not a negative, they just lack the experience in content specifically.

Diana: 00:14:29

So that's where my heart lies, and where I've been really focusing my energies

Diana: 00:14:33

and helping to create those strategies, and then define an editorial calendar

Diana: 00:14:39

to help them implement and get going.

Diana: 00:14:42

I do some of the implementation and I do some writing, but it's not for all

Diana: 00:14:50

clients, frankly, because there are a lot of cheap writers out there and I'm

Diana: 00:14:53

not cheap, but that's because I bring all the experience, but my sweet spot,

Diana: 00:14:56

is in helping craft those strategies and helping to guide so that your internal

Diana: 00:15:01

marketing resources can run with it.

Monique: 00:15:03

Right.

Monique: 00:15:04

Wow.

Monique: 00:15:04

So I know it's great to have those done for you services.

Monique: 00:15:08

How hard is it to speak in the voice of someone else though?

Diana: 00:15:12

You know, I have this weird, so I very much, I say this often,

Diana: 00:15:16

but I'm very much a Pollyanna and I think sometimes, I don't know how to

Diana: 00:15:19

say this without sounding conceited, because people will tell me all the

Diana: 00:15:21

time I've had great feedback and you pointed out that it seems so natural

Diana: 00:15:24

for me, and a lot of ways it is.

Diana: 00:15:26

So it makes me so unscientific in that regard, if I'm sitting here in a

Diana: 00:15:32

conversation with you, let's say, you and I Monique, we had several conversations.

Diana: 00:15:36

I got to know you and I really understood what made you

Diana: 00:15:38

tick and your customers tick.

Diana: 00:15:41

I would feel confident being able to jump in and start writing for you.

Diana: 00:15:43

I've done that many times.

Diana: 00:15:44

I've done it in multiple industries, different verticals,

Diana: 00:15:48

it's just my comfort zone.

Diana: 00:15:49

I get to know someone, I understand people.

Diana: 00:15:52

I think it has something to do with my empath and neurodivergence

Diana: 00:15:55

for whatever, I guess that's my neurodivergent superpower.

Diana: 00:15:58

There's not really a way, I don't think, because when I was on the client side

Diana: 00:16:02

of it and an interviewing other writers, I quickly realized that other people

Diana: 00:16:06

weren't able to do it the way that I did.

Diana: 00:16:11

If I could put my finger on that and help create something to help

Diana: 00:16:15

others do it, I feel like I would be a millionaire many times over.

Diana: 00:16:19

I'm sorry, that sounds very conceited and I don't mean to say it that

Diana: 00:16:23

way, but , It's natural for me.

Diana: 00:16:26

It really is, and as I've gotten older, I'm 41 years old, I have no problem

Diana: 00:16:30

saying that, but as I've gotten older, I've become more and more confident in

Diana: 00:16:33

recognizing my strengths and what I bring to the table, and that's one of them.

Diana: 00:16:36

I guess I just have this ability to get to know people and then bring their voice

Diana: 00:16:40

to life, and it's an honor to do so.

Monique: 00:16:42

Well, you also have the great skill of audience building.

Monique: 00:16:46

So for people don't know what that means.

Monique: 00:16:48

Can you go ahead and describe it to our audience?

Diana: 00:16:50

Yeah, let's talk about that actually, because I think too, that

Diana: 00:16:52

there's two pieces and that was one of the things I decided when I came

Diana: 00:16:56

on, I want to leave someone with an idea of if I'm going to build a

Diana: 00:16:59

strategy, what are the go tos right now?

Diana: 00:17:01

What are the things that can really help me and be the hub

Diana: 00:17:05

or a hub of my content strategy.

Diana: 00:17:07

One of them revolves around audience and there's two components to that.

Diana: 00:17:11

So I would say building your audience and building your tribe takes a lot of work.

Diana: 00:17:15

It takes consistency.

Diana: 00:17:16

Certainly it's a natural by-product of a sound strategy, but there are

Diana: 00:17:21

two things that I recommend to help you build that tribe in that audience.

Diana: 00:17:25

One of them is a podcast, appropriately.

Diana: 00:17:27

It's very, buzzworthy you see a lot of people talking about it, but it really

Diana: 00:17:31

is such a natural way to do that.

Diana: 00:17:33

You're putting yourself front and center.

Diana: 00:17:34

You're putting your expertise front and center and you're

Diana: 00:17:36

making people's lives easier.

Diana: 00:17:37

Your prospective customers or maybe others in your space.

Diana: 00:17:41

I could tick off all the benefits to it, but you're naturally going

Diana: 00:17:45

to build an audience that way.

Diana: 00:17:48

Another is through community building, a professional community.

Diana: 00:17:51

I know, like you said, you work with a lot of SaaS, a lot of times I think

Diana: 00:17:55

that there are few ways to grow a following and offer value and showcase

Diana: 00:18:01

your expertise that are more powerful right now than building a community.

Diana: 00:18:04

I actually just worked on a project like that for a B2B company.

Diana: 00:18:08

Revamping and relaunching their community and talking to other marketing leaders.

Diana: 00:18:13

So, I spoke their language because I am a marketing leader, but people

Diana: 00:18:18

are naturally drawn to that right now.

Diana: 00:18:20

Now more than ever, because of COVID we want to connect with other

Diana: 00:18:22

like-minded people or other people who challenge our perceptions.

Diana: 00:18:26

A community is a phenomenal way to do that, but you can't half-ass it.

Diana: 00:18:31

When you do that, bringing it back to strategy, when you have a podcast, spend

Diana: 00:18:35

the time or work with someone, to help identify what your theme should be and

Diana: 00:18:39

the types of guests you should have on, or whether you do solo episodes, all that.

Diana: 00:18:43

I know it's easy for me to say but , bring in someone to make sure that there's a

Diana: 00:18:47

strategy behind the implementation too.

Diana: 00:18:49

Not just the overarching strategy, but behind everything you do.

Diana: 00:18:52

The same for community, you can't sell in a community, you have to provide value.

Diana: 00:18:56

It comes back to the notion of demand, but who are the people you want to bring in?

Diana: 00:19:00

What's going to resonate with them?

Diana: 00:19:01

Do they have a lot of time?

Diana: 00:19:02

Are you going to ask them to join some third party platform that you

Diana: 00:19:06

know, let's say if your ICP as a marketing director, no, we don't

Diana: 00:19:09

want to log onto some stupid thing.

Diana: 00:19:11

So what is going to be the easiest way to provide value to them, that's going

Diana: 00:19:15

to naturally make them want to refer you.

Diana: 00:19:18

When you do those things properly, and then you create all this content,

Diana: 00:19:21

then all of a sudden you're feeding the machine, you're feeding your

Diana: 00:19:25

strategy, the implementation of it, because off of your community, off of

Diana: 00:19:29

your podcast, you're able to create.

Diana: 00:19:31

EBooks and videos and audio grams and blog posts and email newsletters and insights,

Diana: 00:19:38

so that you're providing value in this multitude of ways and reaching more

Diana: 00:19:43

people and building a bigger audience.

Diana: 00:19:44

So, it's also self-feeding, it's very much like that snowball effect,

Diana: 00:19:49

but when you come at it from a strategic perspective, when you put

Diana: 00:19:54

that thought into doing the right thing and the right way, everything

Diana: 00:19:58

just kindof feeds into itself.

Diana: 00:20:00

It sounds a little simplistic, but to be honest, it actually is.

Diana: 00:20:04

Just don't go half ass.

Diana: 00:20:05

Don't rush.

Diana: 00:20:06

Don't go in cheap, and make sure you're putting the time, effort and energy

Diana: 00:20:11

into building things the right way.

Diana: 00:20:13

When you do that, it becomes a very self-sufficient machine.

Diana: 00:20:17

Marketing departments, in particular marketing departments of one, two,

Diana: 00:20:20

and three, bringing in consultants to help augment and ask questions and

Diana: 00:20:24

poke holes and help to develop those things, I think is very, very powerful.

Diana: 00:20:28

Having been on the receiving end of that, as well as the consulting end, I

Diana: 00:20:32

could speak to that really personally.

Monique: 00:20:34

Your experience and market research, though.

Monique: 00:20:37

It just shows me as well that you've been trained to ask the right questions.

Monique: 00:20:42

That's a skill.

Diana: 00:20:44

You know, I never thought about it at the time.

Diana: 00:20:47

I hated the fact that I was calling people up all the time, but I was

Diana: 00:20:51

calling on behalf of really huge brands.

Diana: 00:20:53

At one point I was doing, it was called Arbitron, now they're owned

Diana: 00:20:56

by Nielsen, the radio ratings.

Diana: 00:20:58

I did projects for like Ortega and Ford and General Motors.

Diana: 00:21:03

And I was 19 and 20 years old hearing people talk about brands it was great.

Diana: 00:21:08

A lot of them were very specific scripts.

Diana: 00:21:12

Then as I progressed in my career too, and even when I was in telemarketing

Diana: 00:21:16

for a very short time, I would write my own scripts and then I led teams

Diana: 00:21:21

and then I gave them those scripts.

Diana: 00:21:22

So our teams outperformed everyone because once you learn how to ask

Diana: 00:21:26

the right questions, and then you bring in that, writing and intuitive

Diana: 00:21:29

and naturally curious component, then all of a sudden you begin to

Diana: 00:21:33

refine and do better and better.

Diana: 00:21:35

It's funny, I had no clue I'd ended up right here right now,

Diana: 00:21:40

but it really was valuable that eight 50 an hour, man, it paid off.

Monique: 00:21:45

That was the big bucks back in the day.

Diana: 00:21:47

It really was, minimum wage was six bucks, was rolling in it.

Monique: 00:21:51

Right.

Monique: 00:21:51

So our audience, I just want to say I'm in the tech world, and

Monique: 00:21:55

most of the people in my network struggle with marketing of all kinds.

Monique: 00:22:00

So if someone wanted to work with you or learn more about what

Monique: 00:22:04

you do, how can they do this?

Diana: 00:22:06

My website is super simple.

Diana: 00:22:08

It's dianamitchell.me D I A N A M I T C H E L L.me.

Diana: 00:22:14

You can find me on LinkedIn @DianaMitchell 716.

Diana: 00:22:17

I'm certainly always available.

Diana: 00:22:18

I'm on Twitter, I've just, I scaled back all my social and

Diana: 00:22:22

now think I need to get back on.

Diana: 00:22:24

I also, co-host a podcast called The Biz Owner 360 podcast

Diana: 00:22:30

with my friend Brett Trainor.

Diana: 00:22:32

So I just warn you that you probably will get sick of me as you've learned

Diana: 00:22:36

Monique it gets hard to shut me up.

Diana: 00:22:37

I love to talk.

Diana: 00:22:38

I love people and I really do love what I do.

Diana: 00:22:40

So I'm very lucky to be in this field.

Monique: 00:22:43

We're lucky to have you, Diana, I just wanted to tell you

Monique: 00:22:46

just how much I appreciate you.

Monique: 00:22:48

I'm so glad I found you on LinkedIn and anyone who is lucky to work with.

Monique: 00:22:52

You definitely has a gem on their hands.

Monique: 00:22:55

So Diana, I want to thank you so much for joining me today

Monique: 00:22:58

and sharing your knowledge with the Unpolished MBA audience.

Monique: 00:23:04

Thank you for listening to the Unpolished MBA podcast.

Monique: 00:23:07

To hear more episodes or to request to become a guest,