Marketing Isn't About Selling — It's About Access (What a St. Jude's Summit Taught Me)

Welcome back to another episode of Running with Wolves You Guys. This week's episode is a little bit more of like a personal reflection from me, and I love these episodes because I feel like I just get to like, yeah, up in your ear. So if you're looking for more of like a strategic training episode, this is not going to be it, but that's okay. But if you are my people and you want to hear about a like massive situation that happened to me that was really cool and some reflections that I have about being a business owner from it, then keep listening. So I wanted to kind of talk to you guys about because most of you, if you follow me on social media, will have seen that last week, no, two weeks ago now, at this point, I went to a summit with St. Jude's called Legacy of Hope, which was basically a invite only like 48 hours real quick in an out trip to Memphis, Tennessee. They pretty much invited like the top 30 female founders and corporate executives in the nation, which was really cool. And it was essentially a summit that was all about scaling brands, businesses, and our primary focus and like topic of conversation was how to preserve humanity and legacy brands in the age of AI, which was a really cool, really interesting conversation. And then it was also to, you know, get a tour of the campus and to see, you know, just what St. Jude's does as a whole get involved with the organization, which was right up my alley because obviously, we were talking about scaling businesses, but then we were also talking about leaving a massive impact on your communities. And for those of you obviously who know more about me and my, like just mission in general as a business owner, it's to really create a brand that leaves a true lasting impact on this earth. You know, my goal as a business owner is to create something that outlives me, right? And a really big part of that impact is yes, putting more money into the hands of female founders everywhere because my very firm belief is that the more money that you give women, you know, the more resources you enable them to create, the more change actually happens in communities, right? Because unfortunately, in order to create change in communities, oftentimes, you do need money. You need to financial resources, right? And so because of that, marketing and sales plays a small role in that ripple effect, which is really cool. But beyond that, you know, the money I make from my business, I want to use to do the exact same thing to create real lasting change in the communities that surround me. And I think St. Jude's is a really fantastic organization to pair with to do that. So this is not sponsored by St. Jude's, but just a reflection on my experiences. And to give you a little bit of context of like why I even wanted to go to this conference in the first place, but also to be invited as like one of the top female founders to such an exclusive event was really cool and kind of brings me to the reflection that I had sitting in that room. So like just so you guys kind of know how the day played out the two days basically flew in had like a very late opening like drink ceremony dinner situation where everyone was networking and getting to know each other because obviously it's a very intimate group of us women. So I'm meeting everyone chatting with them. Everyone. There were people who I knew. There were people who I knew of. And then there were other people who I was literally meeting for the first time, right? And so after that, go to bed, wake up super early the next morning and we go to the St. Jude's campus. And we were in kind of almost like a dining hall lecture hall area where we had a full day of panelists. And I was sitting in this room. And I'm watching, which by the way it was so funny, because this is like the first year that they're doing this, right? So this is this is like new to them. They're still trying to kind of get their footing figure out how they want to do different things. So when I was told what this summit was going to be, I was told there was going to be round table conversations about marketing scaling your brand creating a legacy brand AI preserving humanity in the age of AI, right? I'm being told all of this. I am not being told who the panelists are, who's coming to have a conversation with us. Obviously, I'm told it's like the top female founders and corporate execs in the nation, which I'm like, cool sounds great. This is going to be a fantastic, you know, summit to attend no matter what. I'm sitting in this room, guess who they call on to stage, like multiple different people. We have a ex Google executive who was at Google for 10 years during the stage of AI being incorporated and literally just left a couple years ago, basically. So she's there chatting with us all about her time at Google, all the things she's seeing as far as AI being implemented. So she's like someone who has first hand information from a massive organization incorporating AI into their scaling strategy, right? Next, we have Sean fucking Johnson, who is an Olympic gold medalist and just like an all all around like kick ass human being, right? Next, we have Sunira Madani, right? Who is an incredible female founder. She has sold multiple different companies is still the founder of multiple different companies is starting different companies, right? She's so many different brands and businesses and such an incredible just like resume of being an entrepreneur. I have these people who are sitting on stage in front of me having open conversations about how they are running their companies, how they're scaling the companies that they're in executive for their values, how they're leading, you know, what they see the future of us leveraging AI within these different legacy brands, how they see that going and how successful brands and businesses are going to be doing that. I'm sitting here and I'm privy to all of these conversations and I'm like holy shit. Number one, how did I even get into this room in the beginning, right? This is something that I have dreamt of since I was like a kid is to be a part of these massive rooms with incredibly successful people and be a part of these conversations. Number one, number two, I was probably one out of two or three other female founders who were the youngest ones there. I think I probably was the youngest person in that room, right? And I'm sitting there, I'm like how the fuck did I get here, right? Like how did this happen? Because I still have moments like that, right? And I think that that will continue to happen as I scale my business, but I'm in these massive rooms and I'm sitting there and I'm like holy shit, my marketing is the thing that has opened up every single door for me to get here. Forget the sales for a second. Forget that I scaled this company to a multi-million dollar branded three years. That's incredible in and of itself. And my marketing was the thing that did that for me, but if we're thinking long term as far as the goals that I have, how I want to scale this brand or any brand as a matter of fact, right? I want to start multiple, multiple different brands and businesses. If we're thinking long term, my marketing is what opened the door every single time for me to eventually get to this place, right? Yes, that's the same skill that took me from like sitting at my desk where my hours got cut at this massive agency when COVID first happened and I was like oh my gosh, okay, well, I need to be able to make fucking rent. So how am I going to do this, right? I got clients that made me money to be able to cover my rent and then ultimately like go full time in my business. My marketing did that, right? It like I said, created a multi-million dollar brand in three years by the time I was 25 years old. And what's so crazy to me is that most people still think that like marketing quote unquote is just posting on Instagram. So I want to talk about like the deeper realizations that this trip really gave me because it wasn't just about business, but it was about like I said, like influence and impact and AI and humanity and the thing I think most founders completely misunderstand about marketing is that it's not just about money. It's about opening the door to any dream that you truly have in your business. One of the things that really struck me when I was, you know, sitting in this dining hall in this summit was how many incredibly accomplished people were in that room. I've rattled off just a couple of people who were sitting in that room, but I want you to envision 30 women who were literally on that level. Okay. I met and I was surrounded by founders and executives and leaders who are running organizations that literally shape industries. And the thought I kept coming back to was like I built my seat at this table through marketing you guys. When I started my business, there really was no grand like master plan. It was and I always actually say like I think that a lot of brands and businesses are are built out of necessity. They're not built out of a dream. They're built out of like the fear of the nightmare actually, which is exactly what happened with me, right? There was no five year strategy. My hours had gotten cut at the marketing agency I was working for and I was trying to figure out how the fuck I was going to pay rent, feed myself more than one meal a day and feed my dog. That's all I was trying to figure out, right? But somewhere along the way, I think I learned something that really changed my entire life, which is that if you understand how to communicate value, you can truly build almost anything. And what I would translate that to is that like marketing is actually just leverage. Like I think about marketing almost as like the cover fee that gets you in the door to the club of like whatever the fuck you want to accomplish in life, that's it. Because once you know how to position ideas, create demand, move people emotionally and turn that attention into action, you really stop waiting for opportunities and you create them. Every single thing I wanted to accomplish in my business. I have created that opportunity with my marketing. I don't just wait and sit there and manifest and hope that the universe drops something into my lap. I'm like, here's my goal for the year. Here are the action steps that I'm taking to make that happen and here's what I'm doing in my marketing to make that happen. I put it out at the beginning of this year. I was like, this is the year that I level up in my business. I've been stuck at the same place in my business for the last three years. Fuck that, I'm done with that. I want to work with bigger clients. I want to meet incredible people. I want to create a real lasting impact in this world. I want to scale my brand to X level this year. And within 30 days, I was on a red carpet in LA at a premiere for a potential client that I had met who had an Emmy award winning show. I'm in the same room as Olympic gold medalist. I'm going to all of these like just different incredible things. I just got a free ticket and invited to like the Forbes 30 under 30 summit in April. Because that was something I put out into my marketing was like, this is the year I'm going to be on that list. So someone's like, hey, I saw your post. I have free tickets. Do you want it, right? Every single thing I've wanted in my business, I have created that opportunity. And my marketing was the number one thing that enabled me to do that. That was the vehicle that got me there, okay? So I want to make this practical because yes, this is like a reflection episode, obviously. But I know that there's a lot of you who are going to be listening to this being like, cool Savannah, that sounds fantastic. I'm so happy for you. But like, how do I do that, right? So how do you use your marketing to open up doors? Let's make it practical like I said, because when I say marketing has opened every single door in my life, yes, that sounds inspirational, but there was a very specific strategy behind it. So the first step is to decide like, what is the door that you want opened and then you work backwards from that shit, okay? So most founders skip this step. There are people who are process focused and there are people who are outcome focused as a business owner, you have to be outcome focused because guess what? The process isn't A, always going to be easy. B, it's never going to be something that you actually enjoy for the most part. And it's probably not going to be something that you get to pick. I always tell people you get to pick the process or you get to pick the outcome. You do not get to pick both. So if I say I want to be on Forbes 30 and a 30 this year, guess what? There has been a lot of times in the last couple of months where I have been working 14, 15, 16 hour days. I am exhausted beyond the point of return basically, right? Like I'm sitting here chugging my third energy drink and it's like 10, 30 AM right now because I'm running on fumes, but guess what? I have a goal and I have a short period of time to be able to do things that will actually enable me to accomplish that goal and I know I'm going to look back and be like, you know what, it was worth it. I'm exhausted, but it was worth it. And then you keep going from there, right? So you get to pick the outcome. You don't always get to pick the process and you have to be okay with that. So number one, pick your outcome. Pick the door that you want opened. It could be more sales, more money, speaking opportunities, industry influence, partnerships, impact doesn't matter. Once you know the goal, you can work backwards in your marketing, okay? So for example, if your goal was to become like insanely well-known in your industry, the focus of your marketing should be content that gets you in front of your target audience and establishes your authority and your expertise. You need content that spreads widely. It positions you as a thought leader. If your goal is sales, your marketing strategy is going to be two very different things, right? So it's not going to be, hey, I'm just going to position myself as an authority and an expert in my industry. You need to go one step further than that and actually convert your audience into a client or a customer, okay? So for a service-based business, this might look like attraction content would be like talking about for myself, for example, expensive marketing mistakes that founders make when they're scaling, then to actually build my authority and expertise, I might talk about a framework that solves that problem and then to convert people into an actual client, I might talk about social proof results I create for my clients, clear offers and how they can work with me. If you're a product-based brand and let's say you want to, like I said, create sales, right? You're going to create content around the lifestyle that your audience wants and your customer wants. If you want to engage them and warm them up, you're going to create education around product quality and benefits, right? If you want to actually turn those people into customers, you're going to post product reviews, social proof, buying opportunities, so on and so forth. But once you understand the stages of a marketing funnel and a buying process and journey, your marketing really stops feeling random and it starts becoming like individual levers that you can intentionally pull based on what your goal is, okay? So like I said, the biggest realization that I had during that summit really wasn't about business at all. I had many, many, many realizations, but the biggest one that I had was actually about impact and something I've realized like more and more over the past year is eventually the work that I do in my opinion to feel good about my brand or my business has to contribute to something bigger than just making people like make money, right? And don't get me wrong, I genuinely love helping women build businesses that give them financial freedom because financial independence changes people's lives, right? But I've always had this deeper feeling that eventually I want the work that I'm doing to contribute to something bigger than that that genuinely changes the world, right? And sitting in a room with the team at St. Jude's made that feel very real because what they're doing is truly extraordinary, so much so that I literally have a meeting this week with the VP of West Coast markets to talk about getting on the board in LA, in their market, right? Because I believe in their mission and because it aligns so much with the mission of my brand, right? You know, their research hospital is saving like children's lives all over the world, the families never receive a bill, research is shared globally, so it impacts other people, other organizations, doctors everywhere are able to treat childhood cancer more effectively because of the work happening there. And sitting in that room, like I said, not sponsored by St. Jude's, but they're an incredible organization that I just have to share about. Sitting in that room, I had this moment where I thought like I want my success to contribute to something like this. Like I said, which is why I immediately left that time to be like, okay, how do I get more involved? How do I help fundraise? How do I get on the board blah, blah, blah. And that conversation alone made something click for me. None of what I'm going to be doing to help further their mission would have been possible if my marketing hadn't built the platform and business that it has for me. And the ability to make a bigger difference in the world in my opinion comes from influence. And influence is built from marketing. Again, it doesn't matter what your goal is. All that matters is that you know what your goal is and how to work backwards in it from marketing. So if you want your business to contribute to something bigger than itself, marketing, like I said, becomes that vehicle. Impact comes from influence, influence comes from visibility. And visibility comes from marketing. So instead of asking yourself like, how do I get more clients? I want you guys to think bigger than that, right? There are short-term goals and long-term goals, marketing can serve both of those. Your marketing can get you more clients. Our sales have massively increased just in the last couple of months from strategy changes that we've made, which is fantastic, yes, but they're serving a bigger, it's serving a bigger purpose, right? It's creating that influence because I asked like, how do I build influence in the spaces that matter to me, which might look like creating content about the causes you care about positioning your brand around meaningful missions or aligning your marketing with communities that matter to you, right? Marketing gives you the microphone, what you choose to say into that microphone determines the impact you have. And what was really interesting was the biggest conversation that I had in that room and that we had really as a group was all about AI, specifically the question of how do we preserve humanity in a world where AI can almost do anything and there's almost a lack of trust around AI right now because we're unsure like what the future is going to look like as we incorporate this more into strategies, society as a whole, et cetera. Because when technology gets powerful enough to really automate like huge parts of our lives, the goal of becoming more intentional about protecting the things that make us human becomes so much bigger. So creativity, connection, storytelling, meaning, and one concept that really kept coming up in conversation over and over again was something I've talked about before, which is the concept of like leaving room for magic is what they called it. What I call it is strategy versus execution. So execution is something you can automate. Before AI, if you hired a social media manager or a copyrighter or you used a posting platform, that was you automating the parts of marketing and sales that don't truly move the needle to actually create more money for you or more impact or more influence or whatever your goal is, right? What ultimately creates that needle movement is going to be like I talked about, creativity, connection, storytelling, meaning. Because when everything really becomes optimized and automated, you risk kind of squeezing the humanity out of that experience. And some of the most meaningful things in life come from the moments you can't plan. Those like spontaneous conversations, human insights, messy stories that resonate because of you. their real, right? AI makes content faster, but connection still comes from people. So the brands that stand out, in my opinion, as we're talking about how to leverage AI are the ones that will intentionally leave room for humanity. That means including your perspective, your experiences, your stories. For example, you know, for myself as a service-based founder, I might share, you know, a real client moment, or I filmed a couple of weeks ago, I had a client who pressed like an SOS button that I have that's basically there for like true emergencies and she's kind of getting canceled online. So I filmed a video of me doing a call with her, which was almost like a crisis marketing plan call, right? Those are moments you can't plan for. Those are moments that AI could not sit there and be like, hey, let's come up with this piece of content, right? Because AI and what it gives you is typically generated from what you give AI, right? The execution, the anything that it tells you to do, all of that is going to be created based off of what you feed it, right? A product-based founder might tell the story of why the product is this in the first place. And these moments always create, I would say, emotional resonance. And emotional resonance is really what makes marketing powerful, okay? So another conversation that I had during the summit really stuck with me. And I spoke with someone who was running a seven-figure company, okay? So like a million dollar, a million dollar founder, a million dollar brand. And it was so funny because she's in the recruiting space. So she's a service-based business. And she was telling me about her brand and how it came to life. And she goes, yeah, I'm operating essentially based off of entirely referrals, like all word of mouth. It grew through momentum and connection, but when referrals slow down, there's really no demand engine behind the business. And if this founder understood organic marketing, which hurt, I had this conversation. So like she's very aware of it, they could like double their growth and their clients overnight. Because marketing turns like chance of, oh, yeah, someone will eventually mention my name and they'll become a client into predictability of, I posted this, boom, now this person has become a client of mine. The other thing that was crazy to me is she said that her sales cycle. So from the moment she is introduced to a potential new client to the moment they sign a contract, that entire timeline is six to nine months, 69 months to get someone to become a client. And they operate just off of word of mouth. Think about how long it would take for you to talk to someone else about recruiting of all things, right? Like a super niche industry. There's not a lot of people who need help with that, except for like higher up brands and businesses, right? So your ability to even be introduced to someone like that through referrals is limited. But then to turn them into a client, it takes so long because you have no marketing to build that trust or build that, you know, urgency or momentum to get them to be like, holy shit, I need to do this now, right? So if you want to stop relying on referrals and actually leverage your marketing strategy to do that, you know, and actually have people discover you instead of just like waiting for introductions, the shift becomes attract new attention, warm people with trust, convert people when they're ready to buy, which is exactly how like I said, you you move from like a referral business to, oh, boom, this demand is created by my marketing. And I think that most people think that organic marketing is like content creation and just like putting something up. It's not okay. It is the ability to control your narrative around your work. It's the ability to move thousands of people towards a decision without ever paying for attention every single time. And when you understand it deeply, it really opens doors that you didn't know existed. I didn't even fucking know that those people knew who I was had any idea about my brand or my business or the work that I do. And through my marketing, which sets a precedent for me, personal connections, things like that, I was able to get an invite into that room. But had I had someone say, oh yeah, you should invite Savannah and I had no marketing to show my authority or my expertise or have like any sort of credibility. I don't think I would have been invited into that room. It opens doors. You did not know existed. Like I said, media partnership, speaking opportunities rooms. You never imagined yourself in. So I want you to think about marketing through the lens of outcomes. Like we kind of talked about in the beginning, right? If you want speaking engagements, attract with strong industry opinions. So people can see what it would be like for you to speak to their audiences, warm with your frameworks, right? Convert through visibility and invitations. If you want massive sales, attract attention, warm with education, convert with urgency and social proof, visibility alone is not the goal for your marketing, converting people to actually move to purchase or invest is the goal. And the reality is that AI is going to change marketing pretty dramatically, right? Content will become faster. Automation will become easier. But what you have to know is that AI cannot replicate perspective. And it cannot replicate emotional insight, which means that great marketers are about to become even more valuable because they'll use AI as leverage, not as a substitute. I actually just created a piece of content I have to post after we've filmed these podcasts today all about like how I've been talking to my clients about leveraging AI and your marketing. It is not about coming up with a strategy or the ideas or any of those things for you. It's about confirming what you've found automating processes that are super, super simple for you. I basically am saying like use AI essentially like a copywriter or a social media manager. You wouldn't hire a social media manager or a copywriter and be like, by good luck. Actually, I know some people who do that. And obviously it's not a good plan for your business. If you hired a copywriter or a social media manager, you would bring them on, you would teach them your frameworks, your processes, you would train them, you would watch them implement. They would shadow you, you would still give them feedback and edits and things like that. That's exactly how you should be using AI. You would teach at your frameworks. I've taught chat GPT2 right exactly like me for the last year. And our sales have dramatically increased, even though AI is writing all of my marketing because I've taught it how to speak like me, think like me, my frameworks, the, I tell it, I want to write a piece of content or an email or a podcast around these things. Here's the points that I want to make. Here's the person that you're writing this for. Here's their experiences, right? I tell it what to do, how to do it, everything. And then it spits out the execution. And I still give it feedback and edits. That's that quote unquote leaving room for magic. I'm still creating the ideas, the strategy, all of those things. It's just executing for me. And then I'm editing it. So it's making me far more efficient. It's making me faster. However, the magic, the strategy, the actual marketing is still me. It's just being executed by a bot, right? Use AI for speed, but keep your thinking human. Everything I just said, AI should help with execution, research, expansion, but the positioning perspective storytelling, all of that has to come from you. Okay? Over the past few months, I've really had a lot of moments where I've had to step back and think like my life looks completely different than it did even a couple years ago, not even when I first started my business. It looks massively different from like two years ago, right? The rooms, the conversations, the opportunities. When I trace it all back to like, how did this happen? What is the root of all of this? It was my marketing. Marketing built my business, my platform. It introduced me to people I never would have met. Marketing created opportunities, honestly, that changed my life. And I say with full confidence, it will continue to do that. No matter what direction my business brands, anything, my career, no matter what direction it takes me, marketing will still be the thing that opens those doors. And now it's creating opportunities to contribute to something bigger than myself. And there's something I've been thinking about lately, which is most people think marketing is about selling, but marketing is actually about access access to rooms and people and opportunities and influence the life you end up living. I want you guys to know is going to be shaped by the conversations that you are invited into. Okay? And marketing determines how many of those conversations you get invited into the quality of the conversations that you get invited into the level of conversations that you get invited into. If you want to stay in your little bubble and keep talking to the same people you're talking to and be in an echo chamber, then great. You don't need to worry about this, but for those of you who want to grow, who have big dreams and goals, whether that's more money or impact or opportunities or any of those things, you have to know how to leverage marketing to create that for you. Because marketing is how people discover you. It's how they understand your thinking, it's how they decide whether you belong in the room. The rooms I'm sitting in now, the people I get to learn from, the opportunities that I am able to pursue. None of that would exist without my marketing. And what's crazy is that most founders still treat it like an afterthought. Something that [BLANK_AUDIO] they'll squeeze in between meetings, they'll throw up something they delegate completely without understanding. That's the crazy part. Something they do reactively, but marketing is not like a side quest, you guys. It's not a side activity in general. It's the thing that determines how far your ideas travel. And the further your ideas travel, the bigger the doors are that start opening for you and your brand. So number one, the only, the main thing I want to leave you with when it comes to this episode and the reflections that I had is if you are someone who has big dreams and goals for yourself and your brand and your career, your number one focus should be your marketing. Doesn't matter what the goal is. If you have big dreams and goals, your number one focus should be your marketing. Doesn't matter how successful your brand or business already is. The reality is it could be so much more impactful and successful. If you had a marketing strategy that you could leverage to take you further. Okay. So please remember that number two, please remember that when it comes down to AI, if you are looking to preserve the magic within your brand, within your thinking, how unique your brand or business is, please do not allow AI to take over that side of your marketing. Please, please, please just use it as an executor. And if you don't know what your strategy should be with your marketing and your sales, don't fucking ask chat GBT. Okay. Ask me. Then we can talk about how to integrate chat GBT into your marketing and your sales. So it becomes easier and you become more efficient with executing on marketing and sales. But the magic, the strategy, the results, all of that has to come from you. Okay. So if you have questions about any of this, feel free to message me over on Instagram. If you have questions about how to work together in any of these capacities, please message me over on Instagram or as always, I put all of that information in the show notes. And if you guys want me to talk about AI within your marketing, not much more, that's a large conversation we could very easily have on some of these podcast episodes. So let a bitch know. But anyways, I hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I hope you're enjoying more of these like personal reflections. If you want to hear more from me, let me know. And I'll see you in the next episode. Bye guys.