How To Stop Wasting Time & Money With Your Marketing - With Tim Fitzpatrick

Tom Bailey, founder of Succeed Through Speaking, interviews Tim Fitzpatrick.

Tim is an entrepreneur/business owner with expertise in marketing and business growth. He has 20+ years of entrepreneurial experience with a passion for developing and growing businesses. That passion served him well in operating and managing a wholesale distribution company he co-owned for nine years. The company grew an average of 60% a year before being acquired in 2005.

Since then, he’s had failures and successes that have been valuable learning experiences. He started Rialto Marketing in 2013 and has been helping service businesses simplify marketing so they can grow with less stress. Most people overcomplicate marketing. It doesn't have to be that way.

Here are some of the key takeaways from Tim's episode:

- Tim works with experts, coaches, consultants, professional service providers, and any people that are selling their knowledge and expertise as part of their business.

- Learn why so many business owners are battling information overload when it comes to marketing.

- Why Tom thinks planning is key to effectiveness, whether we're talking about marketing or anything else, plans outline our priorities.

- How to get access to Tim's six step 90 day marketing plan template.

- The importance of having a plan to get your message in front of the right market.

Resources / Links

https://www.rialtomarketing.com

https://www.rialtomarketing.com/succeed-through-speaking/

Transcript

Tom Bailey  00:07

Hello and welcome to succeed through speaking the place for experts and entrepreneurs who want high value ideas to boost business results. Hello, I'm Tom Bailey. And in today's episode, we'll be getting to know Tim Fitzpatrick, who is the founder of reality and marketing, and has over 20 years of entrepreneurial experience with a passion for developing and growing businesses. So Tim, hello, and a very warm welcome to today's episode.

Tim Fitzpatrick  00:42

Tom, thanks for having me, man. I'm excited to be here.

Tom Bailey  00:45

I appreciate you being here. And Tim, whereabouts in the world are you right now?

Tim Fitzpatrick  00:49

I am based just outside of Denver, Colorado.

Tom Bailey  00:52

Okay, perfect. Thank you so much. And I just want to share a little bit more about you before we did get started. So Tim specialises in marketing and business growth. And he helps service based businesses to simplify their marketing so that they can grow with less stress. He believes that most people overcomplicate marketing, and that it doesn't have to be that way. The title for today's episode is how to stop wasting time and money with your marketing. And Tim's gonna show us how to do that in just under seven minutes. So question number one today is Who are your ideal clients?

Tim Fitzpatrick  01:27

So our ideal clients, they're experts, coaches, consultants, professional service providers, you know, people that are selling their knowledge and expertise as part of their business. So, you know, they've typically they've had some success, but they're hitting a ceiling. You know, they want to get to that next level, whether that's the next six figure mark, or seven or eight figures. Yep. And they need help getting there. And they know that they need outside help. And so they're open to working with, you know, a marketing consultant like us to do so.

Tom Bailey  01:57

Great. I'm sure they have plenty of challenges. But what would you say? Is that number one biggest challenge that they typically face?

Tim Fitzpatrick 02:03

Yeah. Yeah, you're right. There's a lot of different challenges. But to me, it boils down to the same thing, right? So many business owners are battling information overload when it comes to marketing. Yeah, there's just there's no shortage of marketing channels, tactics within those channels. Guru saying, hey, Tom, you need to do this or that. And it is enough to make even the best of us feel overwhelmed. Yeah. And when we're overwhelmed, what most of us do is we start throwing marketing tactics up against a wall like spaghetti, hoping that something's gonna stick. And man, that's just that is no way to run a business. Right? And so we that's the the challenges. We're battling information overload. And we do not have a plan, right? And we don't have a plan because we're overwhelmed.

Tom Bailey  02:51

Yeah. And we're moving from one shiny object to another, to the next. Yeah, of course. And when they do this, or when business owners face this challenge, what impact would that normally have on them or their business?

Tim Fitzpatrick 03:04

They waste time, and they waste money on marketing. That doesn't work. Yeah. Which in turn leads to either I don't accomplish my goals. Or I accomplish my goals. But it takes way longer than it should to get there and said,

Tom Bailey  03:20

Yeah, understood everything. I guess, there's probably gonna be plenty people listening to this, that are starting to hear this and start to think you know what, this sounds a lot like me. And so if that is the case, what what's one piece of advice that you might give somebody to help them really get started moving in the right direction?

Tim Fitzpatrick 03:36

So you got to create a plan? Yep. Okay. It's not going to be the perfect plan, there is no perfect plan. And the plan you start with is not the plan, you're going to end with that you have to create a plan and start executing on the plan. Because planning is key to effectiveness, whether we're talking about marketing or anything else, you have to have a plan, plans outline our priorities. When we know what our priorities are, we have clarity on where we need to focus. And when we have clarity, what happens to our stress goes down.

Tom Bailey  04:07

Yeah, yeah, got it. So. So what we're not saying is we're not saying that there's one best marketing strategy, what we're saying is whichever one you choose, make sure you do a plan and make sure you follow that. And tweak as you go. Yeah,

Tim Fitzpatrick 04:18

you're hitting on a really important point. There is no like one right marketing plan or strategy. All the different tactics out there can work for almost any business. But when you look at your plan and create your plan, you have to look at where are you? What do you want to accomplish? And what tactics are going to work best for you based on what you want, you have to look at it from a whole picture. Yeah,

Tom Bailey  04:44

that makes complete sense. Thank you so much. And what therefore is one valuable resource or somewhere that you can send people right now so they can get started in solving this problem.

Tim Fitzpatrick 04:54

So we put together a resource for your listeners if they go to reality marketing.com forward slash six See dash through dash speaking, we have, there's a tonne of resource on there. But the one I want to hone in on is our six step 90 day marketing plan template is one page us, okay makes it super easy, you're not going to overcomplicate it, when it's on one page, you will actually use it and start to implement.

Tom Bailey  05:17

Great, perfect. And what I'll do is I'll put a link to that in the show notes. And so people click on that, and they can go and download that resource right now. Awesome. Next question is more towards yourself and your journey. So over your journey, what would you say is one of the biggest learnings, mistakes or failures that you've made either in life or in business? And what did you learn from it?

Tim Fitzpatrick  05:38

Boy, champ, I failed so many times.

Tom Bailey  05:40

Where do we start?

Tim Fitzpatrick 05:41

Yeah, where do I start, but the one that comes to mind, top of mind for me right now is I was in residential real estate for about three years. I consider it a failure because I did not accomplish what I know I'm capable of. But I got to a point in real estate where I just could not stand doing it. I hated every day. And I was like, I cannot do this anymore. But one of the things that I really pulled from that experience was I put myself outside of my comfort zone almost every day while I was doing that, yes. And the more I pushed myself outside of my comfort zone, I realised that my my comfort zone expanded. And so I just grew so much more things that I couldn't do prior to that I could easily do and I didn't even think twice about. So yeah, push yourself outside of your comfort zone, and you will continue to get better and better.

Tom Bailey  06:33

Right? And whether that's becoming a podcast guest or whether it's you know, doing a YouTube video, just trying different things will help you really grow that confidence. And like you said, Yeah, great. And the last question for me today is what is one question that I should have asked that will also bring some great value to our audience today?

Tim Fitzpatrick 06:50

So here's what I would say, Where is the lowest hanging fruit? For most businesses to get quick wins with their marketing? Right question. Okay. Um, I think we do need to think long term with our marketing. If you think short term, you're gonna make a lot of bad decisions. But there are quick wins we can get in there are two things that I think we need to focus on with this one. If you do not have the fundamentals in place, you need to start there, if you do not understand your target market and have that really honed in, you have to have that honed in. Because if you don't have that honed in, you cannot create a message that is going to be clear and engaging and grab their attention and interest. And you have to have a plan of how you're going to get that message in front of those people. The second thing you can do to get a quick win is look at what's already working in your business. Okay, most of us have things that are already working. But you know what, those things are probably not taking advantage of those things as much as we could we haven't optimised them fully. And there may be gaps that we can fill. So look at what's already working and work your way backwards to figure out are there gaps we can fill and how can we optimise and scale this to get even more wins than we're already getting from that.

Tom Bailey  08:04

But I love both of those. So you know, get those foundations right, and then figure out what's already working and do more of that. So Tim, thank you so much again for your time today. Really appreciate you coming along and sharing such great value with our audience.

Tim Fitzpatrick  08:18

Thanks for having me, Tom. I appreciate it.