Resilience and Marketing Mastery with Joshua Ramsey

Tim Melanson: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of the Work at Home Rockstar podcast. I’m talking today to the fractional CMO. His business is JR CMO, and what they do is they help companies to cut costs, streamline the marketing efforts, and implement data-driven strategies that increase ROI excited

to be hearing more about that.

First we have Joshua Ramsey. So Joshua, you ready to

rock?

Joshua Ramsey: I’m ready. Let’s do this.

Tim Melanson: Awesome. We

always start off here in a good note. So tell me a story of success that we can be inspired by.

Joshua Ramsey: Man, you

know, there’s, there’s so many good stories out there. You know, I, I think I, how to, how to pick

a good story of success

when you were laid off from a company in 2009 when the, the, the economy wasn’t great and it was 30 days before. You are about to get married and it came outta the blue. And next thing you know, here you go.[00:01:00]

What are you gonna do? No one’s hiring. How are you gonna make money? And you’re getting married

like

it’s, it’s bizarre. And you fast forward from 2009 to 2025, you have four companies and three beautiful kids. You know, companies, you started from home, working from home, but you put in the hard work, you put in the effort, you drove the

hours

to the client meetings perspective, you know, you did all that work.

I.

And

Tim, I think you kind of have somewhat of the same story. I don’t know everything about you at this point, but you know,

I know

a little bit of it and, and you know, to me that success, but that success comes from the hard work that you put in, right? The, the school of hard knocks when, you know, I was at a point to where I had to clean my dad’s office warehouse just to pay rent and could barely pay

rent.

Even then to now I try to give back and help other business owners and hear their narrative, hear their story. To try to [00:02:00] help them succeed in the same way. That’s why I really like your podcast is because I, I saw the glimmer of, Hey, work at home. How do you get better? How can you create it? I mean, Tim, you shared with me, you’ve done

so many

podcasts with so many people that have had this success story.

Um, I’m just, I’m, I’m grateful to be here in the world right now and I’m grateful that you had me on the podcast, man. This is, this is a good

time.

Tim Melanson: That’s

awesome. That’s awesome. And it’s so cool to hear that because, I mean, you know, if you’re looking at the social media stuff, it seems like everything’s crazy. But then I keep getting on these podcasts with people like you, and we’re like, life is good. I suppose life is what you make of it, right?

Um, but yeah, I, I have a similar story.

I got laid off

as well.

Um, mind you, for me it was definitely not out of the blue. The company was laying off like crazy the whole time I was there. But,

uh, it’s

exciting to hear that people will take that, you know, negative event and turn that around into something super positive. Right. [00:03:00] That’s awesome.

Congratulations. Now, along with a good note though.

I’m

gonna guess that things weren’t all just, you know, shooting straight up the whole way through with no mistakes. I’m wondering, can you share with us something just so that you know, if someone’s sort

of afraid

to fail right now and they’re thinking, oh, I don’t know if I could do this, just it’s gonna happen.

So why don’t you share a story with us that, you know, we can learn from?

Joshua Ramsey: I tried to. Rode too

fast at certain points in my career. Uh, I tried to hire and scale and go down avenues that I didn’t know enough about, and it, uh, a, a combination of all of it coming together almost made me go bankrupt in 2014. It, it went really, really bad. I went from literally within two weeks. Two week period of

time or just under, I went [00:04:00] from having

15

full-time

in-office employees and another 12 contractors to having

basically

one

lost everybody.

Like it was just gone in a blink of an eye

and

uh, it was, part of it was just. Unforeseeable knowing of my mom died and it was one of the hardest times ever in my life that compa that that was part of it. But I think I had kind of hit a point to where

whether people

believe in my beliefs or not is indifferent, but for me, I believe in God and that there’s a greater power.

And I believe that God just kind of had it timed where he wanted to show me. At that time that I had probably relied on myself too much and that I had not structured things well enough, and therefore when that one event happened, [00:05:00] everything just crumbled behind it. And I’m able to stand here today and and say, things are great.

Things are great. But yeah, they’re not always great. But this might be an interesting little mind wrap for

you that

we didn’t even talk about before, Tim, but I have been studying and reading some new, interesting perspectives, and one of the perspectives has challenged me to consider the fact that maybe our brains are wired more to think about and deal with the good times and comprehend the good times more than the everyday recurrence.

Because we all want the good times, but they don’t always come. The occurrences are always there. So really our brain goes on overload when it’s something good and maybe we should be considering how we can.

Handle

it better rather than getting so happy and then feeling like, oh, this is a letdown. Right?

So it’s more about being, [00:06:00] being happy in the main moment and dealing with such extreme measurements of happiness. I don’t know if that goes anywhere for you, Tim, but it’s something I’m still trying to comprehend myself

Tim Melanson: Joshua, this has gotten real deep. Real

fast

is good. I love it. Oh, I love it.

I love it. I

love it.

I, I think, I think you’re right. I think the, like we, we sort of like, I think we sort of focus on the ups and the

downs, right? We,

we take the ups too seriously. We take the downs too seriously when really, uh, you know, ’cause I, I’ve had some mentors in the past that are like, no, no, no, you need to kind of, I.

React to everything the same way. Kinda like with this, even, even keel, like when it’s a bad thing, it’s okay. When it’s a good thing, it’s okay. Right? Because we tend to just over celebrate the good things and just be devastated with the bad things. And then that just puts us on this crazy roller coaster that we

can’t sustain.

Right.

Joshua Ramsey: yeah, yeah. [00:07:00]

It’s a lot to take in, man. I didn’t know that we were gonna go that deep, but hey, I mean, that’s what I love though, you know, because it’s like the only way that you’re really gonna grow is to be challenged. And to go through stuff. Right. And you and I were talking about this part that I’ll just kind of maybe move us into if that’s all right.

But you know, in business, we all want money. We all want business, right? And,

and

to be able to set ourselves apart, it’s what I call the USP, the unique selling position. So. Whether you’re

working from office,

you’re working from home, whatever you do, we all have

a USP. I think

where business owners overcomplicate it and don’t need to is use your story to be your unique selling position.

You know, I’ll, I’ll put it this way, this is one way for me to frame it. I married my wife at

the age of

29. And when I met her, her USP was not her [00:08:00] name. Now think about this ’cause I used to do a radio show and I used to say to people, no one cares what the girl’s name is.

What you care

about when you look at that person that you want to start a relationship with is you look at ‘

em in

something about them or

how they carry

themselves.

Something triggered you, you don’t care what their name

is.

I love

it when

people come back, oh, I do care. You don’t,

you didn’t care

what their name was until you found out that something about them made you want to care. Now, her name is Halon, which means peace and tranquility, and she brought a lot of peace and tranquility to my chaotic life.

But I look at it and I go, I cared more about her ethics, morals, and values

and what

she brought to my life. So when we take that into business, I think people have to understand that the USP is their narrative. It’s what their ethics and morals and values are. What makes them relevant to their friends, their family, their kids, [00:09:00] their parents.

What is it that brings them joy? And that’s

what they’re

doing in work. And

if they enjoy it, they need to help. Teach their prospects about what they enjoy and why

they enjoy it,

and what brought them to this moment today to make them feel down or up or level. Right? And that kind of ties back to what we were talking about.

So again, Tim, I don’t know if I went too deep

on

Tim Melanson: No, that’s

great. And, and,

and I, I totally get that. And I think that a lot of people are probably held back because they’re worried that they’re gonna lose business. You know, they’re worried that they’re gonna alienate certain people when really, I mean, hey, what’s your thought on that? Like, is is

that

good or is that bad?

What, what do you mean?

Joshua Ramsey: I mean, if

you can’t enjoy your life, what are you doing? So if you’re gonna alienate someone, then there’s probably a reason that they are alienating ’em. There’s a reason why you shouldn’t be working with them. One thing that, that my wife was

very.

How do I say it? Very motivating, very helpful, [00:10:00] very loving towards me is that I’d lost some big clients over the years and one thing that she said to me way back in like 2013 or 2014 when I lost a really big client, her words and, and she continues to encourage me with this and I continue to think about it, was that’s gone so that you have more bandwidth and availability to do something bigger and better.

Tim Melanson: Totally,

Joshua Ramsey: I was just like, man, like I was like in the, in the midst when you’re told that, you’re like, stop. I don’t want to hear it. Right. But then it’s like you see it come to fruition. Where, where I am today is a very different person standing in front of you and on this video than in 2009. I’ve gotten better because of the things that have caused.

Trauma, but also caused positivity. Right. Three kids being born. That’s positive. That’s

great.

And it’s made me better. It’s, it’s been chaos, you know, but it’s made me better. [00:11:00] So I think that

if

you, I’ll, I’ll use myself. I don’t work with everybody. I can work in any industry. Any business. I can do marketing, I can build brands, I can build company, I can manage budgets.

I can build a website, I can get you ranked. All of that I’m very good at doing. I’ve done it since 2003 when I started working in the ad agency world, but I still don’t work with everybody simply because I’m not a personality match for some. So I think when you can alienate ’em. It makes it better for the people that you are working with because you can be more impactful and not beat your head against the wall.

Being frustrated and angry every day. You can go to work with some type of level of, I feel good about what I’m doing right, like I’m motivated to do what I do. That’s my take on it.

Tim Melanson: Well, and if I can make an analogy, it’s like a genre of music. You know, if you’re a, a country artist or if you’re a rock artist, or if you’re a whatever, folk, [00:12:00] artist or whatever it happens to be. You’re not, everybody’s gonna love your music and that doesn’t mean you’re not good at it. And that doesn’t mean you’re not gonna find anybody that does love it.

Right.

Joshua Ramsey: Yeah.

Tim Melanson: I think that that’s that kind of like, if you were to just

take that story

and, and go, okay, well this is my story, that’s my genre. Right. Some people are gonna be attracted to that story ’cause it’s probably similar to their story maybe, or it’s what they’re attracted to. And so, you know, I think, I think like what, what you’re saying and, and what I’ve heard before is that you just lean into it rather than being afraid that someone’s not gonna

love it.

’cause you know,

if you’re a country artist, you’re leaning into it. What, what are you doing? Are you trying to do all different genres all at the same time? You know,

how’s that gonna

work? Right.

Joshua Ramsey: Yeah,

yeah, yeah. I mean, everyone has different tastes, right? That’s what

makes the

world go around. You know? Different people like to work in different careers. That’s what makes the economy and the world work, you know? So, yeah, with you man.

Tim Melanson: So tell me about your, your [00:13:00] band. Tell me about the people that you have around you. Do you, do you delegate, you know the work?

Joshua Ramsey: Yeah, so I, you know, I, I mentioned back in 2014 when

things got

really big and then really rocky and really rough. Um, you know, today I have about 15 people on staff. I have it, it took me a while and I still don’t feel like I’m perfect with this. No matter how many books

I read,

how many people I talk to, coaches that I’ve had, counselors, everybody else, I, I don’t feel great at it, but I feel like I’m a whole lot better.

And the answer is, I have learned that I do better

and most

people do better when they’re working with small groups. So for me, I have basically

three or four people

in my group, and then outside of them, they each have three or four

people that

they work with. And it doesn’t mean you can’t speak and communicate with others.

But these smaller clusters of of people make it better. The hard thing for me was being the CEO, trying [00:14:00] to help and manage all these different people and running out of time and then I can’t go do the things that I have to get done ’cause I’m trying to coach and manage and oversee and it’s not even micromanage, it’s just help.

Right, like just impact their lives in what the work they’re trying to do. So I delegate a lot, but I have found that I’m trying to also teach my leadership, my, my three or four people, how to also do the same with themselves and the people around them. And I think that’s been a new shift for me over the last three or four years where I’m now trying

to not just do it

myself, but walk them through my journey.

I think

that takes a level of vulnerability for me to be able to say to anybody, Hey, I’m not great

at it,

but I’m working towards it. And when I started saying that, I’m not great at it, but I’m walking towards it, I’m working towards it, walk and

work. [00:15:00] I

think it opens people up. Where again, now we go back to what

you said, Tim, this is great.

If, if

they’re not gonna be appreciative of that of me, then they’re probably

not a

fit for me to keep in my circle. Right.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Oh, I love that. I I love that you’ve found these smaller groups to work with too, because it can be overwhelming if you’ve got too many people that you’re trying to manage. Right. And I, I think that the other part of it too, ’cause I love what you’re talking about, the vulnerability part. ’cause I think a lot of entrepreneurs

kind

of the same.

I think

we’re, we’re very, I don’t know what it is. We’re very hands on kind of let’s get it done. And we’re also very protective of what we’re doing. I don’t think it comes naturally to most entrepreneurs that, well, I’m just gonna go give up control to this whole area of my business. Like I don’t, I don’t think that’s a natural sort of thing to do.

Right.

Joshua Ramsey: It’s,

it’s scary, right? I mean, you know. One thing, just a little bit on the same thing. I don’t want to [00:16:00] segue us into something else, but I, I tell business owners, you didn’t get into business to,

to

do marketing. I’m like, well, what do you mean? Well, you’re a roofer. You’re a landscaper. You know, like you, you build Yeti cups, Stanley’s, whatever.

You know? You didn’t do that thinking, oh, I’m great at marketing. Let me start this. You did it thinking this. So delegating out the marketing. Can also

be difficult because they’re

like, well, I gotta trust somebody. How am I supposed to

trust them?

How am I supposed to delegate this? And, and here’s what I would tell people, and hopefully everyone tunes into this.

There’s

something that I learned a while back that

I lived by now,

and

it’s called

KPIs, key Point Indicators.

And

no matter what you do, the leaders, your kids, yourself, your significant other

I.

The KPI is always set of what are the key point indicators? What is it that makes success, whatever success is, right?[00:17:00]

My wife

appreciates if

I will take the trash out on a certain night of the week, so that way she doesn’t have to worry about it. If I don’t do it, she doesn’t necessarily get mad at me, but I try to do it as an appreciation and an agreement. My employees, I try to ask them to do certain things, and those KPIs

are

set, so there’s a standard.

So even in marketing, when you look at marketing and you’re trying to manage somebody, I think you can judge them based on specific KPIs, whether it’s an employee or a vendor, or you setting a precedent. I’ll say this, then I’m gonna kick it back over to you, Tim. I was actually just asked to come speak at one of the largest SEO events in the US and the whole topic for one hour that they want me to teach on is how to set proper expectations from an agency to the prospect, to your client.

So you have this big company and you’re an ad agency. How [00:18:00] do

you, the

ad agency set the proper expectation so you keep that client longer? Ad agencies don’t know that. So what I’m doing is coming in and I teach businesses how to set that. That’s one of the things that I do. But I think if you can first comprehend that, or your listeners can comprehend setting the KPI, not just for yourself, but also for your clients, you’re gonna have a longer lifespan with that client.

It’s gonna

be a

better relationship also, and not as toxic because you then don’t work on feelings. You work on facts, and there’s a big difference there.

Tim Melanson: Yeah, there’s so much to unpack there. I, I think one of the, one of the things that is very different from, you know, an employee mindset now, hey, the world’s changing. I haven’t been in a, an employee for a long time. But I think it’s the difference between performance based and hourly based,

right? I

think, I think a lot of people think, oh, you know, I’m, I’m, you know,

I’m hiring this person for so many hours a week, and I think what I’m hearing from you is that doesn’t matter.[00:19:00]

As long as the work gets done, then you’re happy. And

I think

that empowers people too, and empowers you to bring on. I know when I was an employee, that was part of the thing that I hated the most. I have to be here for so much time, but I can get so much more done than the other guy in the cubicle next to me.

Come. It

just doesn’t

matter about what I do. You know? And, and, and then when you become self-employed, it is about

how much

you can do. And

then I think

that that sounds really good about how when you’re bringing people onto to your team, if you focus on what they’re doing rather than how much time it takes them to do it, then that just empowers them.

Right?

Joshua Ramsey: Yeah.

You

know, I mean, I, I’ll take that and I have not thought about this in a long time, but I, I love what you said, and I’m gonna save this in my memory bank as I recall my narrative. When I was a little kid, my dad had a printing business and he’d

have these

business card boxes and he had labels

and he

wanted his label on every single business card box that went out.

So

he would pay me to basically take all of

these little [00:20:00] labels and ‘

put em all over the

business

card boxes and there

would be

500, a thousand. I mean, there’s a lot. Okay. And I would think to myself, okay, if I go fast, I can get all this done, but then I would get a little paycheck because I did it so fast.

He

paid me based on

time

rather than the job. So if he paid me on the job, then it’s like, okay. But then he shifted. My dad shifted and he taught me. He goes, okay, wash my car and I’ll give you like 150 bucks. I was like, sweet, a hundred, 150 bucks for a, you know, a, a junior high kid. Cool, I’ll wash a car. But I didn’t pay enough attention to detail that he wanted.

Therefore, I would rush through that and still have the wrong outcome. So, as a manager of my father to a son in these two scenarios, he paid me different and he got different outcomes. So sometimes it’s difficult as a manager to go, well, which one do you wanna do? But again, if the KPI [00:21:00] was set of, Hey, you have to pop open the gas tank area and I want it wiped down, you gotta open the door, and I want the inside of the door wiped down.

I was like, oh, well you didn’t tell me that before. You just said, wash the car. I washed the car.

You

know what I mean? So KPIs, the KPIs of here’s your checklist, here’s my expectation. Matching what we do here.

Tim Melanson: Wow. So now, in order for you to know that those details though, uh, like don’t you need to know a certain amount about

that area

of your business? Like how does that work? Like let, let’s just say like, like you say, you’re not a marketer

and you’re a roofer. When you start your own business, why do you know what to ask the marketer to do if you don’t know what marketers should be doing?

Joshua Ramsey: So you and I spoke about this and I gave you a statement that I’m gonna use again. You, you,

I’m gonna use actually the story of where

this came from.

When I

[00:22:00] bought my first house, I had to trust people around me. To,

to,

to educate me, to work with me, to do all of these things, right? So I went through the whole process and two or three years after I bought my

house,

something happened and I figured out that I had not filed it as a homestead.

I’m like, well, I, I don’t know. And people look at me and even now in conferences when I use that story, they’re like, they’re real estate people. And they’re like, really? And I’m like. Really, I had no idea. And someone one time looked at me and kind of

said along

the lines of, well, you’re dumb. And I said, you know what?

I didn’t know what I didn’t know. And now I know what I should have known. And shame on me for not knowing, but shame on me even more for not knowing to ask what I should have known. But why didn’t they tell me? And it’s like this maddening circle of chaos where, how am I supposed to know? So now back to your question.[00:23:00]

Ad agencies sell you what they’re good at, not necessarily

what you need.

So I think business owners have to seek counsel from someone that’s not always

just trying

to sell them something. So you can do that a lot of different

ways, but that’s why a

lot of people have counselors or business coaches.

That’s why I got into the fractional CMO world. ’cause as a chief marketing officer, I look at businesses and I

go, I can’t work

and don’t wanna work with everybody. You and I, again, we had this conversation. I’m not a fit for everybody personality wise, time, energy, direction, vision, just, it’s not always a perfect fit.

So, but what I can help with and what I help business owners with all the time for free is showing them what are the KPIs that are important to their business and why? Because you could have two different powder coating companies. Doing the same product, but the vision and [00:24:00] how they wanna grow to succeed can be very different.

So there’s not one simple book other, uh, there. There’s not one simple book. There are foundational pieces to marketing. You have to have a website. You have to be able to collect information and share information. Marketing consists of two parts, tactical placement of a strategic message. That’s marketing.

Two things. That’s it. Tactical placement, meaning someone can see it, hear

it,

read it, taste it, feel it, touch it. And then what are they doing? What is that that they’re feeling, seeing, tasting, touching, right? Like that’s your strategic message. So I know it doesn’t really answer your question directly, but I think it frames and creates a KPI and A frame around what the answer should be for your question, which is.

Tactical placement of a strategic message and then setting the KPIs

within that.[00:25:00]

Tim Melanson: I think if I were to generalize though, like really there’s two ways you can get go about this. You can either try things and fail and figure it out as you go, right? Because. You’ll hire the wrong person or you’ll get the wrong, the wrong result, and then you’ll go,

oh,

I need to ask for this now. Or you can go find someone that knows what they’re doing and get some coaching or

get some

mentorship from them.

Right.

Joshua Ramsey: Let me also jump on

that though, because I like what you just said, so I use another term. Called test Before you Invest. How much can you invest into something without sinking your ship? I highly and strongly recommend to anybody, don’t dump all of your money into one thing and pray that it’s gonna work.

Diversify enough in your advertising that you can test it and come back. I literally just had a call. I think I mentioned this to you, Tim, just had a call before we, before our podcast here, your podcast that you’ve had me on again, I appreciate that, and [00:26:00] that call was me saying to the business owner.

Don’t just dump all your

money in.

I said when we run a campaign, we put a little bit of money into something. So we had gone through this whole analogy, budgeting system, gross profit margin, what he would spend, why he would spend it, what’s he gonna make, time, length of client. All this other came up with a number randomly through it.

All of $5,000 is what he would spend to get a client. He would spend 5,000. And I said, what you don’t wanna do now is

take that

5,000 and go dump it into AdWords. Spend it in 30 days, don’t do it. Spend 500 and see what you get back from the 500. Can you even get one valid lead for that 500? Because you’re gonna have to minimum have three good leads to make one sale.

So now you

start to

set these KPIs. Of, okay, I spend X dollars to get X leads. Closing this percentage. Right now it becomes logic. But test before you invest. [00:27:00] Try before you buy. Get involved, get engaged. Don’t sign a long-term contract with some ad agency. If they are that good, they should be able to perform within the first couple of months of working with you.

And if they don’t, you need to be able to get out

of it.

Tim Melanson: Yeah. Yeah,

one, one of the, I think, very important things is you have to learn when to get out. You have to fi, you have to figure that out. And so same thing with firing too. Like, you know, there’s so many

situations

where, uh, you can just get right. And a lot of it has to do with not knowing, not having for exit strategies, for just about anything that you have set up.

Right?

Joshua Ramsey: Yeah.

Huh?

Tim Melanson: I love that. And, and I love that. So,

you know.

I have met a lot of entrepreneurs and the good thing about it’s that most of them do understand math and statistics, and this is what it’s gonna take in order to get a, to get a, a result. And I think that is

[00:28:00] important. And if

you are not a math person, then you’re probably gonna have to find somebody who is, because when it comes down to it, like you say, if you, if you’re not keeping

a, a track of

those numbers on what it costs to get certain

results, then

like you say, you’re going into it blind.

Right.

Joshua Ramsey: Yeah, I mean

the. I created a thing called the Crystal Ball of Marketing, and honestly, it’s math and logic put together. It’s just the formula, the algorithm, the formula of math and logic formed together with your logic of educated guesses because you’ve been in the industry. And then when you pair that up with a marketing person who’s been in the industry and a CFO who’s been in the in industry, you take these minds, you put ’em together, and you get, you get a better forecast of what could happen.

Tim Melanson: Joshua, it’s time for your guest solo. I wanna know what’s exciting in your business right now.

Joshua Ramsey: So one thing that I do in my narrative is I don’t believe that I can understand a company’s narrative until you really spend the time to [00:29:00] understand the narrative.

So

the narrative is where we are today and what’s formed us in our life from birth

to

current, and what challenges. Successes and failures have we had to get to where we are.

That’s your narrative. It’s all the things that have happened to you. And as I look at that, when I consult with businesses and I have a heart to help businesses, because if you’ve heard this podcast, you’ve heard my story. And if you wanna hear more of my story, you can find me online. Just type in Josh Ramsey marketing.

You’ll see me everywhere. But as you understand my story, my narrative is. From abandonment is the term. Now, I didn’t have a terrible childhood. There was nothing drastic that happened, but there’s still a level that I have to

deal with of abandonment

where I feel like I was left out. I feel like I was put on the sideline that I wasn’t,

I didn’t

matter enough in certain situations and it impacted me.

So what I do now [00:30:00] is I work with business owners and I spend two

hours.

Having a conversation, understanding the narrative, and helping them verbally walk a path of what is the next step in their business when it comes to marketing and business growth. What do they need to do? What have they done? Because I can’t give them that forecast and help them know what to go do until I understand what they have done.

Because everyone’s narrative is gonna be different. So that’s why I offer a two hour free consultation because number one, I don’t want others to feel like I have felt in the way of any level of abandonment in their own business. And when I can help them, I feel better. It makes me feel better to help others.

So that’s why I do that for free. The second part is. I can’t work with everybody. So I work with

business owners

that I believe I really can help with and that our ideas match and they like the vision that I give them and they say, yeah, this is great, and then they wanna work with me. So it has to be a

cohesive [00:31:00] conversation

with a business owner, but I can help anybody at a minimum of just that two hours of, let me kind of give you something to think about.

Let me kind of point you down this direction.

Tim Melanson: Hmm. You know, I think that that’s a really good indication of whether a company has your best

interests at heart

or not, is if they take the time to get to know you before you get started. I mean, a company that’s just offering to do something for you without knowing who you are, I mean, how, how good could they possibly be?

Right?

Joshua Ramsey: Yeah. Yeah, a hundred percent.

Tim Melanson: That’s so awesome. So, um, so now tell me what would be the. The, the, the person or the business that would get the most outta

working

with you.

Joshua Ramsey: If

you’re, if you’re spending, you know, $10,000 a month

or more fully loaded in

marketing, then. I’m that that’s something you probably want to chat with me about. If you’re trying to figure out your business, I can definitely help. If you’re trying to spend a couple of grand in ads or something like that, I can definitely help and give you that.

The people that [00:32:00] really need me are the ones that are in that flux window in between spending around $4,000 a month up to $15,000 a month,

because

that’s where most companies and marketing fail. They fail because they’re trying to make that transition into, they’ve already been spinning a little bit and they’re comfortable, but now they’re trying to figure out, how do I make that next jump?

And oftentimes that’s when they fail and they use that one agency, that one marketing person that doesn’t have all the knowledge of everything else. They’re just good at one thing. They’re not good at all the things they need to be. In essence, the difference is a chief marketing officer rather than a marketing director.

I. It’s not throwing shade at marketing directors. I once was a marketing director. The difference is, is that I have educated myself, I have studied, and I continue to work and do everything I can to be the best marketing director slash chief marketing officer at that highest level. So then my resume stands behind [00:33:00] that and that’s why people, they read my resume and they understand, okay, this is the difference between a marketing person and a chief marketing officer.

Tim Melanson: So.

If a company like maybe already has a marketing department but it’s not working, would you be a good fit for them or do you need somebody who doesn’t have

that?

Joshua Ramsey: No.

I mean,

even if you have a marketing

director who’s

doing a great job, a fresh pair of eyes coming in and helping

that person

and offsetting their workload or helping them get

that,

that, that new, that new idea, that new vision, that’s huge. Um, most people don’t realize

this, but

the average CMO in a company lasts 48 months.

That’s how long they last. The most impact that they have is in the first 12 months.

Tim Melanson: Hmm.

Joshua Ramsey: What happens is in between

going through

red tape, but also the lack of vision, because you’ve been in

it

so long, you become more and more with the blinders on. You come in like this, I’m ready. Let’s go, let’s go. And then the more you work, you’re more, you’re like, you are beat down and you’re [00:34:00] tired, and you’re just like, okay, I just gotta show up and get it done.

The other thing that most people don’t know is this. The biggest companies out there when they hire a new CMO, 90% of the time they hire A CMO from outside their industry, not in their industry because of outside the industry. A CMO understands the premise. See,

Tim,

whether you realize this or not, all of us humans buy based on three elements,

advantages

to ownership objections.

To the advantages, objections to everything. And then vendor selection. Who do I buy from? What is the advantage of this microphone? Of this shirt, of this guitar? Of this type of picture. I want a picture. I understand the advantage vendor. Am I gonna get it framed or is it frameless? Is it glass or is it cloth?

Right? Like that’s objection. I understand the advantage, the objection. [00:35:00] So everything around

us

and everything that we do are based on those three things. So what I mean by that, when we wrap that back to what we were just saying is you hire. An outside CMO that has a clear vision. If they understand the premise of how buyers buy, then they can come in and understand a new product and go, if I walk in and I just heard of this product, what is it that makes it special?

They can find those things and

there’s

ways to do that that I work with. So hopefully that answers your question a

Tim Melanson: Oh,

it definitely does, and I mean it’s, it even is a little bit logical because

the

person buying your product isn’t necessarily, the person that makes that product is definitely not the person that makes that product the way that you think about it as a. Maker of the product is gonna be very different than the consumer of that product.

They have no idea. ’cause they don’t make it. Right.

Joshua Ramsey: Yeah, yeah,

Tim Melanson: So you’re

better off to have somebody from outside ’cause they’re more likely to be closer to your customer

than somebody who’s inside. Right.

Joshua Ramsey: yeah,

yeah. That’s it.[00:36:00]

Tim Melanson: So tell me, how do we find out more then?

Joshua Ramsey: So you can Google. Josh Ramsey Marketing. You can find me. My name is Josh Ramsey. I’m a fractional Chief marketing officer. You can find my direct website. It’s called J-R-C-M-O, stands for Josh Ramsey, chief Marketing Officer. So you

can find me

that way. I also am pretty proud of this fact. If you Google fractional CMO, which is my main keyword, and then you type in one, any one of about 32 major cities in the us.

I will show up for sure on page one, probably in the top five, if not number one. So you type in fractional CMO Dallas. I’ve had that number one spot since 2018 and I still have it. You do Austin, Tampa, uh,

Los

Angeles, Denver, Boise, all these other cities. Uh, you can find me fractional. CMO Dallas, you know, number one keyword.

And I tell people, you know, I mean when you’re gonna go hire a marketing person, [00:37:00] I. Then you need to be able to know that they can rank for their own website, not just their name, but

one of

their major keywords. And that’s my only keyword that I focus on.

Tim Melanson: Wow.

Yeah, that’s proof in the pudding, right?

Like you say, when

you’re hiring somebody to get you on, uh, you know, a good placement on Google, they

don’t have a

good placement on Google. I don’t know. Awesome.

Joshua Ramsey: If you’re gonna hire someone to do, to do something, are they doing it themselves? Right? Like that’s big. So you know, there’s something to consider. Ask an agency. By the way, let me also drop this for you. We didn’t talk about this

earlier, but

I’m gonna mention it now. I do and have published this book. So how some, how some.

SEO Companies Dis Sky’s laziness and hide poor strategies. This is, I’m working on a new series. It’ll be three books drops, but the first chapter of this book, and this is a free download on my site. The first chapter gives you five bullet points on how to hire the right ad agency. So [00:38:00] interesting. Read for somebody,

Tim Melanson: One more question before we go. Who’s your favorite rockstar?

Joshua Ramsey: Bon Jovi.

Tim Melanson: Bon.

Joshua Ramsey: I don’t, I mean, he’s awesome, man. I mean, I could go with a lot of people, but I don’t know, I haven’t even heard his music in a long time. But, um, you know, living on a prayer, like, I don’t know, like

Tim Melanson: Very

relatable music. Such a great rockstar. Absolutely. That’s awesome. Good answer.

you so much for rocking out with me today, Josh. This has been a lot of fun.

Joshua Ramsey: Thank you. I appreciate you having me.

Tim Melanson: To the listeners, make sure you subscribe and comment. We’ll see you next time with the Work at Home Rockstar Podcast, and as always, go to workathomerockstar.com for more information.