The Power of Being Audacious
In this episode, we’re dishing out all the secrets on how to be a boss in the marketing game by embracing your inner audacity. It’s time to ditch the play-it-safe attitude and bring some sass to your strategy. So, grab your favorite drink and get ready to learn how taking bold risks can lead to major success.
We broke down the key elements to being audacious and how to implement them in your marketing approach. If you’re ready to stand out in a crowded market and take your strategy to the next level, then listen up! Here’s what we covered:
- Knock on Doors – Just Ask
- Don’t Fear Failure, Embrace It – with a plan, of course
- Follow up and Finish the Job
By following these three simple steps, you’ll bring fresh, innovative ideas to the table that’ll have your competition shook.
First up, let’s talk about the power of asking. Asking can be one of the most difficult things to do, but also one of the most crucial when it comes to taking bold risks. We all have a fear of rejection, but it shouldn’t stop us from going for what we want. In this episode, we explore the importance of asking, offer tips on overcoming rejection fears, and give examples of companies who have taken the leap and seen major growth as a result. Whether you’re asking for funding or a collaboration, the sky’s the limit when you have the courage to just ask.
Next, let’s tackle the elephant in the room – failure. No one likes it, but it’s just a fact of life in the marketing and business world. The trick is to view failure as a learning opportunity and use it to your advantage. So, go ahead and take risks, step out of your comfort zone, and embrace the possibility of falling flat on your face. Trust us, the rewards of taking bold chances far outweigh the risks. And if you do happen to stumble, pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and keep on moving forward.
Last but certainly not least, let’s talk about the importance of following up. In a world where inboxes are overflowing and attention is scarce, following up sets you apart and shows that you’re committed to your goals. Whether it’s checking in with a potential partner or following up on a project you’ve started, making a habit of following up will help you stand out and achieve success. So don’t be shy, pick up the phone or send that follow-up email – it could be the difference maker in your journey to audacity.
Episode Transcript
Speaker 1 00:00:07 Welcome to Audacity Marketing with Hazel Kempo and Michelle Fette. On this podcast, we’ll challenge you to think differently and break free of the same old strategies. We’ll push you out of your comfort zone and encourage you to think outside the box. So take notes, make bold decisions, and be audacious.
Speaker 2 00:00:33 Hey, Hazel.
Speaker 3 00:00:34 Hello Michelle.
Speaker 2 00:00:36 Ready to be audacious.
Speaker 3 00:00:38 Let’s be audacious. I’m excited for our first true episode.
Speaker 2 00:00:42 Yeah, me too. Um, I love the idea of, you know, the audacity of things, right? So there’s two ways that you can be auDA audacious. One is, can be like, a lot of times it’s considered rude, right? Like, oh, the audacity, right? But when you think about marketing, you think about business, you know, you always hear about bhag, the big, hairy, audacious goals. And to me that really means things you’re just gonna go for, like, throw caution to the wind, take that leap of faith and just go for it. And I think that’s what the, what we are talking about more than like, we’re not trying to be rude, we’re just trying to take advantage of those things that are out there.
Speaker 3 00:01:17 Absolutely. I love it. It’s two women running this one because this, um, I don’t know, somehow comes to men in the world without any training and, uh, sometimes we need a little bit of reminders that you can be audacious, go out there and ask for things. Um, and no, is not that scary, I think is what we have to deal with. Right? Yeah. Because the worst thing about asking is someone will say no. And, uh, once you get used to that, you can kind of deal with almost anything. So you can be audacious mm-hmm. and ask for things.
Speaker 2 00:01:49 Absolutely. Somebody once told me I should read a book called Go For Now, which is just, it’s a marketing book that’s just kind of like, it, it’s, it’s nothing unusual, but I hadn’t thought about it in the, like, the respect of ask, ask, ask, ask, ask, get as many nos as possible because someday somebody’s gonna say yes, or one of those people’s gonna say yes. So if you go with the, uh, you know, hoping for Yes, expecting no go, for no, eventually somebody’s gonna go. Yeah, that sounds like a really great idea.
Speaker 3 00:02:22 Absolutely. Absolutely. I think, uh, one of the things that’s most successful for me in marketing is the more doors you have open, the more successful you’ll be. So even just by knocking on those doors, you open new connections. Mm-hmm. , a great example I did a couple years back is we threw a music festival here in Long Beach for kids. Mm-hmm. , it was a Coachella for kids. We called it a little pza. And I sort of decided to do it out of nowhere. We had a little bit of a community and I was like, you know what sounds fun to do this year before Covid, let’s throw a music festival for 3000 kids and started putting it together. And I ended up reaching out to, um, a couple of newspapers, seeing if they don’t wanna cover it. I mm-hmm. wasn’t in PR at the time, had no connections, but I thought, you know what, let’s just see. And lo and behold, they wrote a nice little article and the day the article came out, we got a $10,000 sponsor for the Con for the festival, which I wasn’t even expecting. So I definitely paid off.
Speaker 2 00:03:25 Absolutely. I had participated in a hackathon once in Buffalo. Like I, somebody said, Hey, we’d love for you to come and talk to the people who, who will own these websites at the end of this hackathon. And just kind of explain to them, how does it work? How do you like, do some marketing things like that. I’m like, sure, I’d love to come participate. And I like, this is super cool. I wonder if I could host a hackathon. Like, why couldn’t I host a hackathon? Right? So like, I was just like, I’m running a hackathon. And so I built a website that’s like rochester hackathon.com, it still exists if you’re interested in seeing how I put a hackathon together,
Speaker 3 00:04:02 I love it.
Speaker 2 00:04:03 Right. And then like all of a sudden, and I charge people $10 to come. Right? Because I was like, I’m not paying for pizza outta my pocket. I’m not paying to rent space outta my pocket. And people paid $10, which also made sure they attended, right? Because very few people pay for something and then don’t show up. But if they don’t have to pay, they’ll be like, and it didn’t cost me anything. I’m not gonna show up. I had like 40 people in the room. I had three nonprofits, local nonprofits who participated, sent somebody there. I had people at, at each table with diff varying levels of abilities so that nobody like got super stocked with a ton of developers and everybody else only had people who know how to surf the web. Right. And so everybody was able to participate. Um, I got sponsorship for it, so it, we paid for the bills and I got people from outside of the immediate area to watch online when we did the presentations at the end. And Judge, cuz we did like a little judgy thing so people could win and they’re the nonprofit that whose site one got like a hundred dollars Amazon gift card, that kind of thing. And it turned out to be an amazing day. People loved participating. I’ll do it again. It was like pre pandemic. It’s like, eh, people have to be comfortable getting back together
Speaker 3 00:05:14 Room. Cause I was liked to say, I’m gonna throw a hackathon. Exactly. I just am. Yep.
Speaker 2 00:05:22 I could build a website and nobody, nobody wants to do it. Then it’s like, oh, okay, well that didn’t fly. But like if you ask, it’s amazing how many times people will come through.
Speaker 3 00:05:32 Yep. I think, uh, honing our skill of resilience is what is to become our agents. You have to end up being, being able to work that resilience. If I was gonna give top three tips for Audacious, for being audacious, what would they be? Like, what would they be from us? Michelle? I would say top number one is just ask
Speaker 2 00:05:50 Absolutely. And ask with a thick skin, it’s okay. Like you said, it’s okay to hear now and it’s even okay for somebody to say no in a snarky, rude, or how dare you away. Like, who cares? So they’re clearly not your client. They are clearly not your sponsor and you don’t have to ever work with them again. You’ve just discovered who they are. Mm-hmm. .
Speaker 3 00:06:13 Exactly. Exactly. And I think about all of the sales emails and cold emails I’ve received over the years, and the very, very absolute worst thing that happens if I’m on the receiving end is I get kind of annoyed and I’m like, Ugh, this person emailed me again. Usually I kind of just either respond or I just kind of forget about it. Mm-hmm. . So like, if the worst thing is gonna happen is an email in somewhere and someone kind of forgets about it, that’s not that bad of a worse thing to me.
Speaker 2 00:06:38 No, not at all. Um, I would think the, the second thing I’d say is don’t be afraid of failure. Right. Because you can’t be audacious and expect to succeed every single time. You have to ex you can, you can expect that you will fail, you can expect that you’ll succeed. You can set those goals and those expectations, but you can’t be afraid to fail and you can’t be afraid to succeed
Speaker 3 00:07:01 Sometimes. Absolutely. I think that’s why sometimes
Speaker 2 00:07:03 Success is scarier.
Speaker 3 00:07:04 . Well Michelle, you, I have worked together and you know, I’m real big on having like some kind of foundational baseline so you have opportunity to be audacious. So if you have, I wouldn’t have Audacity as your go-to marketing strategy for everything if you just have some, some things working right in the background, but it really opens up doors for me. Number three I would say is to follow up and actually complete. Um, and I know that sounds like it goes without saying, but just like you’ll surprise how few people will be out there being audacious and going and actually asking even fewer go actually do what they say they will do. And I know that seems like a simple thing, but the more that you will respond, uh, in a timely manner and do what you say you’re gonna do, you’re gonna outshine so many people out there and it makes the pay off. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2 00:07:50 . Absolutely. Absolutely. I love that. Um, I, if you don’t ask, if the answer’s always no, if you don’t have a thick skin, you will get hurt easily. If you don’t have a baseline, you don’t know what audacity is and you don’t know where to go from, these are all really, really good tips, right? So Absolutely. I think of, um, I often think when I think about Audacity being that like, um, that that leap of faith, you know, that step of faith out, like, I may not see exactly where I’m going, but I’m gonna just be like, yep, the floor’s gonna rise to meet me. And I always think of, now this is showing my age, but I always think of that scene in Indiana Jones, um mm-hmm. the first one. Mm-hmm. , the the Laus last arc where like, or no, I think it, I don’t remember which episode it was, it might have been the last one actually where he like this, like the leap of faith and he just sees this giant chasm ahead of them. He’s like, how do I get from point A to B?
Speaker 3 00:08:41 Oh yeah. I don’t know which one that is either, but yeah,
Speaker 2 00:08:43 I think it’s the last one, the last crusade one. Um, and he like throws the dirt across it and you see that like the floor was hidden, but it was there all along. Like that’s how I feel like about Audacity is like, yeah, sometimes you might not actually see where you’re going because nobody’s tread that way before. But like, it’s not a chasm, you’re not gonna follow your death. It’s okay.
Speaker 3 00:09:04 .
Speaker 2 00:09:05 Yeah. So Hazel, one of the things that you and I did together was Word camp us last year, and we put some pretty bold ideas. I say we, I didn’t actually come up with any of the ideas. You came up with a lot of ’em. The team came up with a lot of ’em, they were executed to perfection and there were a lot of moving parts, but we had one of the most talked about booths at where camp us and we had zero swag left at the end, like literally nothing to donate to charity, nothing to pack up and bring back with us. As a matter of fact, we didn’t even get our own swag because we gave it all away. I’m like, I want a candle. There are no candles. I mean like, literally
Speaker 3 00:09:43 Like, I know I wanted one too . It’s like, yeah. So that campaign was really fun. We, um, went to Word Camp and we really wanted to do, to focus on the community that was gonna be there, right? Because it wasn’t really about trying to teach all these brand new people who had never heard of WordPress plugins. Uh, it was more trying to harness and say, Hey, we’re part of the community. And the reason I feel like that was so audacious was it was largely based on a gut feeling that we understood this community so well that because you’re part of this team, Michelle and you under you speak this language so well that we, we really felt like, hey, this is, this is gonna be audacious. It’s kind of ridiculous. We’re gonna make candles for people. We’re gonna do a t-shirt press station, we’re gonna have a Coachella party. Um, we’re gonna have a
Speaker 2 00:10:29 Magic, a magic eight ball that helps you pick your swag. I mean, who thinks
Speaker 3 00:10:33 Of this stuff? Um, but I think, I think we ended up, it wasn’t really about the exact swag, but it was about that it spoke the language of the customer, of the audience. Yeah. So well, and that was what was really exciting to me. And it, it paid off in spades.
Speaker 2 00:10:47 It really did. It was, you know, people were talking about it even weeks afterwards. Uh, we were able to follow up with a lot of the people that came, people that we, one of the most audacious things is we actually sent postcards to people who had RSVP’d in advance, right? I hand wrote almost 200 postcards that we mailed out in advance and people were tweeting about the handwritten postcards because nobody does that. And I think to bring it right back, that’s the audacious part, right? So it’s not audacious to do what everybody does. It’s audacious to think outside the box. I hate that phrase, but let’s, it is what it is, right? So it think outside, absolutely think outside the box, do things that other people aren’t doing, but that will delight, right? I think that’s what true marketing is, is how are you delighting your customers, your potential customers and your community in a way that is fresh and exciting and I think
Speaker 3 00:11:42 Authentic, right? Let’s be authentic,
Speaker 2 00:11:43 See who you’re, absolutely. And, and I think we nailed it with that campaign for sure. Um, yeah, super exciting. So if you like audacious ideas come along, subscribe to our podcast. We’re getting it out there in the world. Um, we would love your questions. We’re gonna, you know, we have a Twitter account. Well, we will by the time this is out there, we have a Twitter. We’ll,
Speaker 3 00:12:04 We’ll we, you know, we’ll be audacious this afternoon and start .
Speaker 2 00:12:09 You can DM either one of us on Twitter. You can DM us on our own, on our new Twitter account. We have a contact forum@audacitymarketing.com. We also have ways that we can help you. Um, you could pick our brains. We have sessions, we have, um, services that we can offer. There’s lots of ways that we can help you. If you need that kick, um, in the pants to be audacious, we can give you that audacity kick if you need it. So come along for the journey, that’s what we’re gonna be talking about. Um, and we’re very excited to share.
Speaker 3 00:12:39 Thanks Michelle. See you next time.
Speaker 2 00:12:40 See you next time.
Speaker 1 00:12:43 This is Ben Michelle Rochette and Hazel Kimo with Audacity Marketing. Dare to be Different and dominate your Market with Audacity.