Taking Action with Erin Marcus

Erin Marcus 0:23
Just like the whole origin story. Yes. Give me everything. You got, like three minutes, let’s hear the whole thing. Why do I do let’s do that? Why do I do what I do?

george grombacher 0:02
Aaron Marcus is founder and CEO of conquer your business. She’s creating brand and scaling strategies to build multiple six and seven figure businesses. Welcome, Erin.

Erin Marcus 0:12
Thank you. Thank you. I’m excited to be here. Good morning. Good morning. excited to

george grombacher 0:16
have you on the show. Tell us a little about your personal life’s more about your work, why you do what you do?

Erin Marcus 0:33
One because after doing a million other things, you finally figure out where your genius zone is. And when you’re right, what are you good at? And where is what you’re good at intersect with how to help other people. Right? So not that I haven’t been good at other things. I have a corporate background at a small business working with families with aging parents, but the thread really seem to my brain works when I listen to other people talk about what they’re trying to accomplish. And I can’t even help it, my brain just goes and rearranges their ducks, puts them in a different row. Like, okay, this is how you do that, right. And then after many years, I finally took a Strength Finders test, and it said top three were visionary, strategic thinking and learner. Oh, okay, now it makes sense. Why does my brain do that, and I’ve been having these amazing conversations lately about, the more you can narrow down and work only in your in your genius zone, the faster your business will grow. And the happier you will be. The other thing that somewhere in my background, that I one of the things that I learned along the way, in my corporate world, I was lucky enough to have a mentor in my corporate life that really brought me into rooms that were way above my paygrade. And my fancy title, before I left was senior vice president of business development, for the largest Long Term Care Insurance wholesaler in the world or in the country. Don’t worry about what that means. If you’re not in the business, it means absolutely nothing to you. But what I learned from those experiences is the difference between people who pass and people who don’t have is access to information. It’s access to information. And so one of the things that I absolutely love is providing information, we have a very heavy education based marketing approach to our business. providing that information and showing like, you can be in charge of your own world, yes, you can grow the business. Here’s how. Here’s how here’s why. Here’s how this crazy world all works. Because I do believe that change happens from the ground up, not the top down. And I want people to be able to be self determined. And it’s very much in alignment with who I am and what I value. So for the people who also want it, I love being a part of making that possible. I don’t know if that was linear enough. But in my head, that all goes to welcome. Which gives you some insight there as well. Right?

george grombacher 3:15
Well, I certainly resonate. I know that it took me a little while to figure out not that it’s my zone of genius. But that’s all kidding aside. It’s a tick, I think, maybe there are some people out there that it just clicks for them early. And they’re doing exactly what they ought to be doing. And God bless them. But for the rest of us, it does take a little bit of trial and error and figuring out when these personality profiles Oh, that actually does make sense. I knew of their existence forever, but I didn’t actually get it. So when when you say that people have access to information, is it like that? Or do they just not have it? Or is it right in front of them? And they can’t pick the thing up and use it?

Erin Marcus 3:56
Oh, I think it’s a mixture. I think it’s an absolute mixture. I mean, if you really want to get into the socio economic version of the conversation, look at the way people make money off of real estate off of financial services, right. Those are all done through Commission’s. So if you’re talking about a lower socioeconomic client, people don’t pursue those clients, because they can’t make enough commission off of what they sell in order to grow personally. This tool, it’s like a non judgment thing. I’m not trying to be judged about it. It just is right. It just is. But what that means is there’s not as much access to the information. So the legal tools, the financial tools that exist, they have lower barriers to entry than we think. They really do. They have lower barriers to entry than we think. But the lower level I don’t say lower level but the lower socioeconomic group, they’re not being pursued. And if this is so externally, no, they don’t have access to that information at the same level and then internally, people don’t think it’s possible. And that happens at all different levels, right? Internally, we don’t have access to the information because our brains are literally stopping us from thinking that it’s possible for us for a wide web, and you can go into limiting beliefs, you can go into representation, you can go into a million reasons why that happens at every level. So externally, yeah, you can say, you know, the one thing is truthfully, we don’t live in the world of information anymore, right? The information age, there’s nothing out there that you can’t find out how to use. Thank you, YouTube. Thank you, tic tac, thank you, Google. But how do you apply it to yourself is really where the rubber meets the road. You can tactically learn like this things out there, but how do I use it? And that’s not as prevalent. Right? The person that can help you break through whatever story you’re telling yourself, and at the same time, apply the information. So for example, one of the ways I talk about what I do is I work at the intersection where what you need to do, you need to be to do it. And I say that because the best marketing and business plan in the world doesn’t matter if you can’t do the plan. So where the business and what I do leads with creating the plan, one of the things we have to keep in mind is how can you do the plan. So it’s, it’s one of the reasons why I’m so against what I call instant tactics. Just do this one thing, just do this one thing, I sent one email, I made a million dollars. Yeah, but you sent a million emails that made $0, right, like, instant tactics, not only do they not work for most people, but you end up feeling worse than when you started. Because the marketing would have you believe it works for everybody. But then it didn’t work for you. And it didn’t work for you. Not because the tactic was wrong, by the way, or that they were bad for marketing their product. I’m very like non judgmental about this. They did what they had to do to make their business work, they did marketing. But maybe your business wasn’t ready for it. Maybe your personal strengths weren’t the right fit for it. Maybe you didn’t have the team it took to pull it off. Maybe there’s 800 reasons why it didn’t work. But the instant tactic approach, it doesn’t let you know that. It doesn’t let you know that. And so that’s why for me, it’s like strategy over tactics every time. And where is the intersection between what you’re trying to create, and what you can actually do. And if you’re not quite at the point where you can do the thing you want to do, that’s fine. What’s the step back from it, but we can do so we can build the ladder so we can build the staircase to get you to where you want to be?

george grombacher 8:05
Lots of good stuff? Certainly we’re all right,

Erin Marcus 8:08
the ramblings of Aaron and myself, but your you’ve triggered my soap boxes. I don’t know. Could you tell

george grombacher 8:12
like that? I think it’s awesome. I thought to myself, you know, do do fish know what water is? Like? Do we know that information as do we, it’s just ubiquitous and and I beat myself up if this thing, which is supposed to work for everybody, what’s not working for me? And I’m not me. I I’m not going to fall victim to that. At least that’s what I thought until I did. Because I you know, and that’s happened to me pretty recently.

Erin Marcus 8:41
Well, the one thing I’ll tell you about that too, like, let yourself off the hook a little bit. I call it give yourself a break. But don’t let yourself off the hook. Right? Give yourself a break. Don’t beat yourself up for it. But the reasons we fall, one of the reasons are several reasons why we fall to those victim I use that word wrongly. But number one, we don’t reverse engineer what we’re trying to create. We started step one, and we go and we do things. And that messes us up. Because if you’re just taking step in front of staff and you’re looking down at your feet the whole time, God only knows where you’re gonna end up. So you have to reverse engineer what you’re trying to create. Because not every tactic is right for every outcome. But if we don’t know really specifically what that outcome is, and by the way, the finances of the outcome that I want to make a million dollars out to make six figures is the tip of the iceberg. Because there’s so many ways to make a million dollars. But if you don’t know what that million dollar business looks like for you, you’re gonna pick the wrong tactic. So we don’t have the clarity around the outcome, right? We don’t do the work before we go out and go to work. We don’t have the clarity around what truthfully we’re trying to create So then we just if we start at square one, we just do any tactic that looks like it worked. And it appeals to us,

george grombacher 10:07
or truthfully tried to create. What does that mean?

Erin Marcus 10:11
Well, as opposed to I want a million dollar business, let’s just keep it there, right? I want a million dollar business Great. Well, you can get there, for example, by selling a high volume of low level priced offers, or you can get there from an elite status of selling just a couple really high priced offers, you can get there doing it all yourself being really high priced, or you can get there with a team of 30 people. Like there’s so many ways to get there. But we don’t think about that, we just say, well, I want a million dollar business. Truthfully, as odd as it sounds, the marketing tactics you choose are going to be different based on what a full picture is of what you’re trying to create. And then the other Pitfall, because I just had this happen with a client yesterday, where I said, Well, do you have someone who can help you deliver on this offer, and he’s like, Oh, I don’t want a team of 30 people done it. And he’s not wrong. But his brain went to 30 people, and he’s one person, there’s 29 options between one person and 30 people. But because he’s human, his brain went to all or nothing. And our brains do tend to do that. We think we exaggerate and we go to all or nothing. So I don’t want to run a big team of people. Purely fair decision. Turns into I don’t want any people probably not going to help you grow your business.

george grombacher 11:42
That makes a lot of sense. And do you think that we’ve thought through that right there, it’s like, okay, you say you don’t want to run a big group of people? Why is that? And then it’s, the answer is not. Okay. If you actually think that all the way through, and that’s the correct answer, that one or two people is not, you know, can we think that through to,

Erin Marcus 12:02
right, and we save that oftentimes, I hear people say that, because they’ve had a bad experience. totally get it. I’ve also made hires that didn’t work out. So you need to decide. And I go back to really black and white to help me with this stuff. Because it makes it almost weird, right? It shows us how weird our thinking is, okay. I don’t want to have a team of people because I hired, you know, John Doe over there, and it didn’t work out. All right. So what I’m saying from a priority standpoint, is it’s more important to me to never have a difficult higher than it is to make my million dollar business. It Right, it always go back, it always always goes back to your priorities, we just don’t realize it. So what I’m saying to myself is this avoiding this problem over here is on one hand, more important to me, then creating what I truly want over there. And every time we tell ourselves, these limiting beliefs, or the stories of what we don’t want, we are effectively prioritizing, avoiding that challenge over achieving what we want. So we have to go back, what do we truly want, okay, because you can still have your million dollar business, but you better than learn how to charge a lot of money. As you as a solo freelancer, and for example, if you’re, if you are the business, now it’s not soluble, that’s also perfectly fair thing, but know that going in. I’m a big fan of you get to pick absolutely whatever you want. No one can judge you for having a hobby business instead of a big business, or having a side hustle. Instead of a full time entrepreneur, or having a personal brand where you’re the whole deal Freelancer situation versus a team, there is zero judgment. But only thing is, choose it on purpose. Don’t settle for it because of blocks, choose it on purpose, truly choose it on purpose, because it’s what you want. Not what you think you could pull off not what you think you deserve, not what you think you can have. Because of all the mess in our brains that we have to muddle through.

george grombacher 14:27
Choose it because it’s what you want. It’s super powerful, super simple. Every one of those terms carries with it so much weight, hobby, business side hustle to one person that could just be like touching a hot stove or another person it could be really, really exciting. And who cares about what anybody else thinks? Absolutely. What’s important is that you care what you think. Yeah. And have you have you taken the time to think through this? And I can answer that question. It’s like for a lot of my life I had not So I’m sure it’s true of a lot of people.

Erin Marcus 15:03
Absolutely. I did that in corporate one of the, you know, you said that earlier, people who figure it out early, that’s been like, this odd thing I could never quite understand, like, you meet these kids in school. And they knew what they wanted. And then they went, and they, they started doing it. Like, by the time they were 12. And then they focused on it in high school, and then they went to college for it. And there that is, so far from my life. No idea. It was always kind of this mythical creature to me, a someone who knew from early on what they wanted and went about doing it. I had a boyfriend, I had a boyfriend, great guy. He just recently got married, my brother went to the wedding, like great guy, ex boyfriend had one job out of college, one job. He literally knew what he wanted, he went to college to do what he needed to do to get it, he got the job. And he stayed there. I mean, we dated in our late 40s. And he was still in the business still doing one job, and he worked his way up so far from my life.

george grombacher 16:17
So do you call it a process? How do you how do i iterations? How do I figure this out?

Erin Marcus 16:29
You keep taking action. You cannot think your way out of this stuff. You can only act your way out of this stuff. There’s two pieces to this for me. Maybe there’s more as I talk this through, there’s two pieces for me, there’s taking all that action, and then becoming as honest an observer of your own behavior as you can. Right? Take the action. So the process is make a decision, take responsibility for the outcome. Make a decision, make a decision, make a decision, make a freaking decision. It’s hard. It’s hard. That’s why I say it that way. And then take action based on that decision. Take all of the action, not a little bit of action. People seriously underestimate the amount of action it takes. It’s something that I end up seeing if people are you. Did you try? Or did you just start? are you actually trying? Or did you just kind of start and give up? Because I’ve had people say, Oh, well, I wanted to do this? And I’m like, great. This is a great idea. Yeah, it didn’t work out. Really? How many times did you Well, I talked to three people and nobody that’s not trying that started. Let’s just put that out there. Right. So you make a decision, you figure out what you want, you take absolute responsibility for creating it. And you take massive, massive more action than you ever wanted to think possible. Right, brutally more action. And then you get the results, you get the results, you don’t get the results you want. By the way, you just get some results. And then you try as best you can to objectively observe those results, just so you can make a better decision. It’s right, you say it’s a process and it is a process. But to me, that word is very linear. And this is not going to be linear, it’s iterative. It’s iterative, you make a better decision based on everything that just happened. You take responsibility for making that new version, better version, next version, hopefully better, meaning you’ve learned something. And then you take all that action. And the faster you can iterate, the faster you will get to where you want to be. And then the other warning, I’ll tell you is if you’re in the entrepreneurial world, this never stops. This never stops because the market changes you change, your clients change. This never stops. As soon as you start telling yourself I need to fix my offer. I need to fix my business and to fix my calendar, I need to fix my time management, I need to fix my mindset, you are dooming yourself. Because one you’re making yourself wrong is if you’re broken and it needs to be fixed and that nothing good ever comes from that place. But to you’re going to take your eye off the ball. You don’t need to fix it, you need to measure it. It can’t be fixed. All of this stuff continually changes, but you do have to measure it so that you can adjust your business, your mindset, your calendar, you can adjust it sooner rather than later. To US economy terms, can you function off of leading indicators instead of lagging indicators? Meaning don’t wait until it all fell apart before you make your next iteration.

george grombacher 19:55
Powerful. Well Aaron, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about jus How can I engage with you?

Erin Marcus 20:01
Awesome, we make it really easy. It’s all at conquer your business.com. Right? If you just go to conquer your business.com, there’s free resources. There’s my podcast, you can get a hold of me we are not hiding, I promise. I say we because there’s a whole team involved. Not me the most of my background, but we can all be reached at Concur at your business.com.

george grombacher 20:22
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did, So Aaron, your appreciation and share today, share with a friend who also appreciates good ideas, go to conquer your business.com. And take that first. Make that first decision and take that first step in your iteration knowing that you’re not fixing what’s broken, you’re just iterating changing and then measuring. Hopefully, I summed that up decently. So check out the podcast, check out the great resources, get in touch. And yeah, thanks again, Erin. Thank you. Till next time, remember, do your part by doing your best