Ep60 Behdad Jamshidi - Marketing Matchmaking: Get the Right Fit Without Wasting Money

Behdad Jamshidi  0:00  
The way that I kind of think about my marketing, and how I've learned is I run multiple channels at once, and I'm always thinking about, how do I incrementally improve each one of these channels and make them more efficient? Yeah, as time goes off, if you're focusing on just one marketing channel, you always hit a limit and you're pretty like your risk is not diverse.

Suzanne Taylor-King  0:19  
Hey, hey, welcome to a podcast where dreams meet determination and success is just around the corner. I'm your host, Suzanne Taylor King, and I'm here to help you unlock the full potential of your business and your life. Welcome to unlock your way with STK, let's unlock your path to success together. Hello. Hello, everyone. Suzanne Taylor King, here for another episode a little later on a Friday of unlock your way with STK. And we are here today with a new friend, badad. I'm gonna say your last name, jam sheety. And I did it. I love it. Everybody calls you b, so we're just going to go with B, which I love, and your company C, jam is really a marketing matchmaker, which, before we went live, we were actually talking about how business is so much like dating. So I think this is really perfect. Well, yeah, I'm excited. Thanks for having me. Yeah, you're so welcome. I know with what you do and how we were connected through networking, that your network and referring business to other people is really important to you, and I want to hear how you ended up exploring this gap in the market of companies not knowing who to hire for their marketing needs?

Behdad Jamshidi  1:50  
Yeah, I'd love to share it. I think, through this journey of running this company, I think I found I'm very good at one thing, and that's like, there's one word to encapsulate it all. It's just connection and connection at just multiple different levels, but that's typically how my brain works. And so why that is, is I started out as an engineer, basically, I used to work for a big telecom company called TELUS, very so much like the verizons of the world. And a lot of what I used to do in that role, I did a whole bunch of different stuff, but the main one was I worked with a lot of B to B customers, anywhere from about 50 to 1000 type employee range, understanding what's going on from like a C level perspective, it perspective in a business, and then building out roadmaps like, Okay, how do you get from A to B to C within the organization? Typically around technology, but it would touch a whole bunch of other stuff. And so when I was doing that role, is a lot of business to technology and how that all connects. And so I got to work with really cool customers, like the luscious of the world, big not for profits, law firms, senior homes, like over 400 to 500 different businesses. And so I built the skill set of just like business consulting, sales leadership and technology experience from that on my marketing side, six years ago is super randomly fell it into building out websites, Google ads and SEO. It was more curiosity than anything, just some fun stuff I would do on the weekend, but I very quickly hated doing 80 hour websites on the weekend. I was like, I don't actually really enjoy doing this, and I don't need the couple extra 1000 bucks on the weekend. I have a full time job I really like. And so I started looking for different marketing agencies to work with, and as I did that, I noticed that most marketing agencies didn't really understand business, and most businesses didn't really understand marketing. It was always this, yeah, yeah. And I thought, Okay, well, if I'm putting people in the same meeting, they don't speak the same language. Agencies say they can do everything, but most of them can only do one to three things well, and 85% of them don't do anything. Well, I kind of just thought, can I find like, 10 marketing partners and I'll solve all the world's problems by connecting and matchmaking people? So today, I've talked to 1018 different marketing agencies and experts, and I work with about less than 11% in the vetted network, and that's kind of how I got into this whole matchmaking space.

Suzanne Taylor-King  3:59  
Well, I think it's really I want to just highlight that most marketing companies don't know their individual clients businesses very well, right? Even if they're they are super niche. And then the idea that most business owners don't really know what marketing is. For example, I met a client one time who was spending $5,000 a month on SEO, and they didn't even really get any business from their SEO. And I was, what are you doing? And you know, said SEO wasn't really what they needed, which was so enlightening. And it just shows you that gap in communication with language and what SEO really is, and or websites, or whatever. And I, I love. The fact that you saw this pattern happening, yeah, yeah.

Behdad Jamshidi  5:07  
It happens all over the place. Like your One example is one of so many examples, right? I've talked to a business just recently at a conference, and they were just talking about how they didn't have any money for like, an internal marketing resource. They're 100 person team. So this business is doing well, right? And as we kind of dive into it as a bull, they're like, We have a marketing agency, and we're spending, once again, $5,000 a month on them. And I said, What are they doing? He's like, I think they're doing seven or eight social media posts and a newsletter a month. And I was like, I'm sorry, how much are you spending on this resource? Just for that like, why don't you just take that exact same budget and just do an in house resource and get them to do those seven to eight social media posts in one newsletter and a whole bunch of other stuff, because they're still gonna have 130 hours left over a month to do work on your marketing campaign. And this goes against, like, I mean, my service, right? Like, I work with outsource partners. I don't do a lot of in house. I have people that do that, but that's what the business needed. And so when you can see it from a high level perspective, like what an organization looks like and what they actually need to get to the next level. Because once they get, for example, an in house marketing resource that starts doing more things, they're going to need support from outsource partners. And that's when they'll come back and like, now it's you're at the point where you're going to hire someone specifically for paid ads, or Google ads or SEO or design or whatever it is. And there's so many examples of that, oh,

Suzanne Taylor-King  6:26  
over and over again. I've seen it so so many times. And, you know, meeting you, I immediately knew, Oh, I'm gonna have people for you, and which is a beautiful connection. I love when that happens. But I also see where this happens in other industries, where, you know, some of the doctors and dentists that I've worked with over the years, they're great at doctoring and dentistry, or chiropractors, or, you know, even some health coaches that come into the online space, but they don't know online space. They don't know the social media and the marketing and the all the ins and outs of having a website. Just had a conversation with somebody this morning who's an incredible photographer, and she she needs clients right now. It's springtime. This is the time of the year, and she said, I have to work on a landing page. I was like, get the heck out of here. You do not, don't go work on a landing page. Call every one of your past clients. Tell them you have a spring special. Call every person in your local area that you've met in the last three months local networking. Tell them you have a spring special. You don't need a page. You don't need anything except your appointment book. Like, oh my god, that's so easy. Yeah, it is. But so many people get stuck in those, you know, Hamster wheels of having marketing,

Behdad Jamshidi  8:06  
yeah, they make it too complex. I mean, what you just kind of talked about was one referral based marketing and Account Based Marketing just done on a small scale, right? And there's so many different things that you can do. Like, for example, I was talking to a manufacturing client this week, and they were saying, hey, we need marketing support. They heard me on a podcast, and they're like, You do, you know, small, low seven figures. We're a team of four, and they do a really interesting business. It's just like the, you know, when you go to put air in your tires at a gas station, or you use the vacuum machine, they manufacture those, right? Yeah. And when we were talking about it, I was like, going through all these different things, and I'm like, listen, like your level of understanding and marketing, in a nice way, is just not at the level where I can bring any partners in, because it's just going to fail. You're going to put money towards something you don't understand. And if you're doing that, you're not going to keep with it, right? You'll probably do SEO for three months and you're out, you might run some Google ads for three months, and then you're out, and you'll just say it doesn't work. And so where, kind of like, I come in as, like, that marketing broker or that consultant. I was like, Listen, before we even talk about, like, what strategies we use, like, let's jump on a call. I can talk about all the different strategies. I'll do a consultation session. I don't do this that often because I like to focus on the matchmaking process, but when I see a customer need some sort of education upfront to make something work, I'll spend an hour to do that, charge a small amount of money, and just here's what SEO looks like, how long it takes, here's what it looks like to improve your website, and here's what your competitors are doing, right? Like his response was, b Do we need to update our website? It makes five or $10,000 a month. In parts. I'm like, Cool. I understand that it's making money, but how much are you losing? Like your website looks like? It's from 1995 so I guarantee you, most people don't trust it, to buy their parts off of it and tell them just balance, right? He's like, Oh, I never thought about that. I just thought about what money it was making, not the money that I could be potentially losing, because it's not a good user experience, for example, right? Yeah. So there's all these like factors that, as you talked about, there's just knowing what to do, when and at what. Stage of business.

Suzanne Taylor-King  10:01  
Well, how did you come to that, like, scope of knowledge with, I mean, you were an engineer, like, where did that awareness for you come from?

Behdad Jamshidi  10:14  
So this is a great question, and if I kind of look back at it, I go, I learned from the experts. Like, I've had 1018 conversations around marketing just on a first call. This is not including any follow up calls, any deep dives, because I have deep dives that I do with agencies. So imagine me talking to like Amazon marketing agencies, and I'm talking to eight of them, and I'm working on one customer with them. I get to hear all their strategies for about one customer, and I go, cool. Six out of eight are using one specific strategy, so they all look pretty average in that aspect, but this one said something super interesting that the others didn't say, and they're looking at it deeper. And so now multiply that across every channel, like website development, paid ads SEO, like I've seen, everything from all these different agencies, and that actually sparked an idea for me where in the future. I mean, I mean, I already ran one episode, just to kind of test it out, but I'm going to get business owners to follow along with me as I learn things. So, you know, if I'm going through like programmatic marketing right now, I'm going to have a beginner level session where I'm asking programmatic marketing experts the questions around beginners, and then have intermediate, and I'm going to have advanced and so that people can learn alongside of me from multiple different partners and put the picture around themselves to go, oh, this is what this channel takes to get it to work. And that's obviously gonna change, right? There's gonna be updates and algorithm changes and all this different kind of stuff. But that's kind of how I learned to just through experts, and it's just a lot of conversations and then just doing the work I love it.

Suzanne Taylor-King  11:37  
And is this gonna be a YouTube channel, a podcast, and I'm gonna set up on, like, what is this gonna be? Because this sounds amazing. Yeah, it's

Behdad Jamshidi  11:46  
gonna, it's gonna be on YouTube first, so the lawn firms will be on YouTube, and then there's gonna be reels all over my social so like Instagram and LinkedIn and stuff. And then as it evolves, we'll see, kind of, if we build a platform out of it, right? There's a whole bunch of ideas around it, and also to kind of add in how I learned a lot of this stuff, I run like nine different marketing channels myself, right? So I run cold email, I run cold LinkedIn. I do five posts content on LinkedIn and Instagram. It's like I do a lot of channels. And my whole theory around how I do marketing is, even if I'm doing my channels at two or three out of 10 level, if I'm doing nine of those channels, if you multiply all of those together, they're going to end up beating that one channel in the long Yeah, yeah. That's my that's how I look at marketing. There might be one channel today, like, if I focused all my energy on cold email, for example, I would probably be able to hit it and grow scale to like seven figures. But you always hit a limit, right? There's only if you're focusing on just one marketing channel, you always had a limit, and you're pretty like your risk is not diverse. That channel changes. You're it's harder to get into Outlook inboxes or whatever it is, all of a sudden you go, I had a lead machine that was sending me 20 leads a month, and now I only get two. But I have not invested in any other marketing channel. I have to start them from scratch and to get marketing channels to work, sometimes it could take you 234, years of testing. So the way that I kind of think about my marketing and how I've learned is I run multiple channels at once, and I'm always thinking about, how do I incrementally improve each one of these channels and make them more efficient as time goes on?

Suzanne Taylor-King  13:13  
Well, I love that so much. Everything I teach my clients is experiment. There is no one way to do anything, especially when all my clients have different ideal clients, and for me, and people say this to me all the time, and I know you'll, oh my gosh, you're everywhere. Like, oh my gosh, you're on every platform. I see it over here and I see it over here, and oh, well, isn't that amazing that not only do you see my YouTube videos, but you see because you're subscribed, and then you get that same YouTube video in my email newsletter, and then you see a post about it in my community that you're paying to be in, and you see it in my free Facebook group? Well, of course, it feels like I'm everywhere, but it's really all the same, repurposed content. And how many times is it now that somebody has to see you and hear you, to buy from you? Used to be seven. How many

Behdad Jamshidi  14:21  
seven it's it's high. It could be any it depends on the price of the product, but you could be 30 to 50 times. Yeah, if you, if you look at the user journey nowadays, like it's crazy, because, as you said, it's everywhere, like people are seeing you in little, little pieces. There's, there's like, pipe decks, for example. Man, that followed me around for a year and a half before I bought right? And I saw it like, look, I said everywhere. Like, every now and then I would come back in, come back in, and every single time it's just itched itch, itched forward until I ended up buying the service or the product. Yeah, right, yeah, that's how it works. Because you go, you just want to have something in your head. And when I was like, oh, I want a storytelling product. I want something to help me better. Tells. Stories. Where'd I go? The thing that's been following me for a year and a half telling me, yeah, that's all it

Suzanne Taylor-King  15:04  
does, yes, yes, and I will say on Facebook. So I used to be really, really popular on Facebook when I was a health coach, and then when I kind of transitioned and I got my master's degree, I started business coaching and all this other stuff. The reach went down, Hmm, why? Oh, I wasn't posting as much. When I was an active health coach, I was posting more, and it was more personal stuff, pictures of me, things I was doing, blah, blah, blah. And I just thought, Okay, well, I'm going to have this business entrepreneur group now. I need to take the lessons from back then, but the algorithms different, and Facebook groups are different, so that means I need to do things differently. Let's experiment. It took a year of experimenting how to post personal I don't even touch my business page anymore, personal page, other people's groups, setting up your personal profile the right way. So when somebody comes to look at you, they see your free group. Oh, I see what she does. Oh, let me click here. Oh, yeah, and they end up in my Facebook group. That's it. That's exactly it so long to figure out what's, what's the formula of that. And when people look at my formula, or I teach it, it's slightly different for each person. And you know, you're You're really great. On LinkedIn, you, you post pretty much every day, correct? Yeah, I do as well. What have you noticed the difference between Facebook and LinkedIn for attracting people to you?

Behdad Jamshidi  16:56  
Yeah, it's different for me. So like one, figuring out the ICP is really important. So on LinkedIn, you need to know who you're really targeting, and I and I'm still figuring this out, right? Like on iterations, like I had an initial ICP list that I would run, running for the last, like, three years, and then that changed, and ICP is like your ideal customer profile, like who you're trying to target, right? So originally, I had built up, for example, my ICP to be like businesses that are anywhere from zero to 505 100 and 500 to 3 million, 3 million to 10 and then, and then, kind of go from here, right? But I realized that that's not the model anymore, right? Like I work really well in that, like three to $30 million range, like I work with customers smaller and bigger, but that's the range where I really work well, because I can help people scale by bringing the right partners in place, like they have right partner market fit, then they can scale. So when I look at that, I go, look at my ICP now, and I go, my ICP is, for example, e commerce, businesses, service based, businesses that don't have marketing in place, but they're already at seven or eight figures because they just do a good service, and they get tons of referrals, and they haven't touched the digital marketing world. It's such a vastly open place for them to grow. Serial entrepreneurs, like successful serial entrepreneurs, and ones that are running like four or five businesses. I have, like, multiple clients in that space where they hired like 12 people for me across their five different businesses, right? And I'm like, That's a cool customer to have, because I'm a unique resource for them, right, right, right? So you start looking at the ICPs, and then when you're targeting on LinkedIn. Now you want to be following and connecting with those ICPs and then writing content for them and trying to distill it down. This is another unlock that I had recently, is the messaging that you want to give needs to feed a specific type of emotion that that ICP has. And an E commerce business, a service based business and a serial entrepreneur all have different emotional triggers that they want to hit. For example, a service based business likely has worked with a marketing agency before, it's failed, and so they're scared. They want like, security and someone that they can trust, right? So that's kind of like the messaging you'll start putting towards them versus a serial entrepreneur, right? Like they're running multiple successful businesses. It's more around excitement and just having like that resource. So you want to get them excited about that business growing and the next business going so they can keep doing stuff, right? So the messaging becomes different. It's like, hey, continue growing your business while I'll take care of the outsourcing needs, yeah, for example, right. So anyway, so to be your question, on LinkedIn, you find the ICPs, you follow them, and then your messaging changes towards that. Whereas on Facebook, I have a little bit of a different strategy, because I have a lot of friends or people that are in different mastermind groups, like Facebook is a little bit more personal to me, though. It keeps growing and people are following me from all over the place, but that's more of like a friend group, and so the audience is different. And also on Facebook, I post into communities a lot. So every one or two weeks, I have a whole content community strategy where I'll just knowledge drop. And it's not like, get in touch with no, it's just like, here's what I know. And I hope that this helps your business. And I just walk away, the number of people that start adding me as a friend after that, yeah, that's quite high, right? Because they go that message resonated with me. You. And so the audience is different, and my content is similar across both, but the audience of people seeing it is different. So one post might do really well on Facebook, not do well on LinkedIn, and then vice versa.

Suzanne Taylor-King  20:10  
But no, I noticed. I noticed that too. It's really funny, like, I had a story post that, you know, was basically me before I did X, Y and Z. And I do those a lot like, Oh, this is how it was. And then I discovered blah, blah, blah, and, and what I noticed is those posts, you really well on Facebook, not so much on LinkedIn. Interesting. And, you know, I know your LinkedIn profile. I think a quiz would be an incredible thing on your LinkedIn profile to segment who actually is, you know, coming into the pipeline with that quiz. And it could be the whole marketing, you know, matchmaker quiz, find your perfect marketing partner. Just an idea, but I notice that on Facebook being a little more polarizing, because the people already know me. They're like, Oh, Sue's got a rant today. They're really popular. Yeah, people on LinkedIn don't know me as well, so I would never post, you know, a rant like that. Yeah. So it's just interesting to kind of notice what does well on each platform, and what what actually hits engagement. And you said something really cool about interacting in communities. Do you have I'm curious if you have the same strategy, when I if I was in your community, I would post my knowledge about marketing and you know, all of that genre, making you look good, dropping knowledge. I'm not soliciting clients out of your community, but adding to the value that you're already providing. That has doubled my followers in a very, very short time.

Behdad Jamshidi  22:12  
Yeah, 100% that's exact same strategy. So for me, it's like I have a bunch of different communities I go into, and I just post content that I think is gonna be relevant to that community. It could be things around, for example, one of the recent ones is, like, around communication and business, and where I think a lot of people fail is just around that. It's what tells you the difference between, like, a seven figure business and an eight figure business, because if you, if you don't have communication, for example, you can't build out a proper leadership team. You're not gonna be able to communicate with that leadership. You're not gonna without leadership. You're not gonna be able to communicate with outsource resources and all that different kind of stuff. And so you'll hit a ceiling. You think the ceiling is because of, you know, the business or headwinds, but no, it's really you and not being able to communicate, right? So that's like, that's content that will work in any type of business group, for example. And then I'll have content around, like, you know, the five different levels of marketing agencies and partners and where I think they fit into different business sizes, right? So that's another knowledge drop, and knowledge bomb is very unique to me. So one, um, that's the kind of content that I to put in those groups is a lot more high value. Like, I, I write all my own content. Like, I'm not using chat CBT to write my content from scratch. I use it to improve my content. If I might do the thing, I'm like, Oh, I'll add this in, but it's a human adding it in, yeah. So the daily stuff, I think, is still strong. But then for the community stuff, typically, I'll put even more effort into those.

Suzanne Taylor-King  23:33  
Well now for everybody watching in the IDEA Lab, for entrepreneurs on Facebook, please drop some love for B in the comments, whether you're catching this live or the replay, and maybe we'll get him to drop some knowledge bombs in the group for us, for all of you, I really appreciate that. And you know, I want to just say this idea of community, it's, it's been a passion of mine for like, 30 years before social media, you know, my community 30 years ago, oh God, almost 40 years ago. I'm getting old. Was on a legal pad, and I had people's names, phone number, address, and when I was planning another adventure, I would pick up the phone and call those people, and I would say, planning an adventure to Innsbruck, Austria. You in, you out. It was like yes or no, and sometimes I would mail a postcard, but most of the time it was human connection. Old Fashioned pick up the phone. Hey, Sally, doing another trip. We're going to Innsbruck, Austria, for 10 days snowboarding. You want to come? And it would be yes or no, and I don't, there's so much value in people actually being in your phone.

Behdad Jamshidi  24:58  
100% Just like having people's phone numbers checking with them, I leave voice notes, like, hey, just thought about you. Hope everything's going well. Here's a quick update on my side. It's one minute. I just got a message from my mentor. I think I left him a message two weeks ago, right? Like, it was just a voice note, hey, how you doing? Checking in, and he'll respond in two weeks. But like, that's how we built a connection over the last three to four years, right? Yeah, it's so, so important, and most people don't realize how important connections are and networking is. Everyone says like, your network is your most valuable asset. Yeah, I don't think a lot of people truly understand that. When you become I don't have a better term for this. I'm still trying to figure one out. But when you kind of become a super connector, you start realizing how crazy your network is, because you can make an introduction for someone that could make them millions of dollars. Like, it's just, and I've done that for some customers, but they're like, beat the three connections you made. Me, we did 10 million and 3 million in profit. I was like, yeah, maybe I should change my model a little bit, because this is kind of crazy. Yeah,

Suzanne Taylor-King  25:57  
it's happened to me. I I can't tell you how many times I referred somebody to one of my mentors, and you know, she charges $100,000 a year to work with her. And I didn't think of it from that standpoint, the person wasn't a good fit for my coaching, and she had everything in place that I normally do with my clients, and I just said, it sounds like you need a mentor. And she said, I do. I would love that. And I said, I would love to make a connection with an incredible coach and mentor of mine for the past couple years. And I made the connection within 20 minutes. She was hiring my mentor, and I was like, wow, because it was trusted person to trusted person, which you know, so it's like a concept of borrowed trust. If I connect one of my trusted people to you, we're establishing trust with each other. It's not full blown yet, but because I'm closer than that person is to you, they're actually accelerating their journey of trust with you when they come through a referral, kind of like getting fixed up on a blind date. Who do you trust?

Behdad Jamshidi  27:19  
That's exactly it. And people wonder, like, you know, why do like, why do people pay referral fees and stuff like that? It's because one aspect of it is it takes a long time to build trust. And what a lot of people don't understand, like, for my business, you know, sometimes I work with agencies and they're a little bit more junior, and they're like, V Why would we pay you for the reflect these referrals in this way? And I was like, You do realize the referral that I'm giving you is four years of relationship building. I had to build relationships with nine people to get to that one person, right? Yeah, that's what you're paying for. And like, if you try to do that yourself, you're running a business, you're doing all this other stuff. You're getting operations going. Like, my entire core business model is building relationships. And BD, that's basically it. And so, and I think it takes a certain type of person to be able to connect with as many people as we connect with, like yourself, right? Because you need a certain amount of energy to connect with humans, right? Yeah. And if you're an introvert, you're going to be limited on the number of connections you can make in a day like I have probably six to eight to nine calls a day for the last six years, like consistently, and so even for me as an extrovert, that's tiring, but you need to have a certain amount of energy to be able to connect with people, and also a certain level of understanding of who you are and authenticity to be able to connect with people in terms of like values and things like that

Suzanne Taylor-King  28:37  
as well. Yeah, I think so too. I think that many people don't understand what is involved in, you know, having a really quality network. And I'll ask this one thing too, because a lot of times, so many people, I've heard this at least 1000 times in the last 10 years, I'm just not meeting the right people. I'm not in the right rooms. I'm going to networking events, and everybody's just pitching me. What do I do? Yeah, and my advice is always the same, but I'm I want to hear your advice first when you hear that,

Behdad Jamshidi  29:21  
yeah. So the biggest thing for me, I also approach it like I approach marketing. So for the last like, two years, because I used to work full time, right? So I didn't have a lot of time to go to conferences and masterminds and those types of things. So the last two years for me, it's been like, I've been going a bunch of different conferences and a bunch of different masterminds and just getting a feel for the people in that room, right? So there is a testing period. Once I figure out the rooms that I like, I'm going to spend more energy in those rooms and with those people. And so the other piece is, if you're always getting pitched or whatever it is, then you're not having genuine conversations. Sure, there's going to be the people that are going to try to sell you like, that's just part of, you know, any conference and things like that. But I don't have a lot of. Pitches. It's very rare. It's because I go in with like, hey, where you're from. How are you doing? Like, tell me, kind of brought you here, and you start building relationships from the ground up, and then you can talk about business, but, like, you just have to go into it, not transactionally, right? Like, I've built relationships in. Like, I went to an EOS conference recently, got a whole bunch of numbers, whole bunch of people that I got to meet, and my follow up was like, hey, it was great connecting with you. Would just love to learn more about you and your business and see kind of where that goes. And I had a conversation yesterday. I'm like, There's no opportunity here that's totally fine. Like, I'm really happy connecting with you. Hey, I'm gonna check in every two or three months and see how things are going with the business. And you just build that relationship over time. It's just how you I guess, the mindset you bring into

Suzanne Taylor-King  30:39  
it, yeah, it's the lack of attachment to the outcome. You're just curious about people. And you know, if there's no plan in your mind for what's going to come after the conversation, you get to show up so much more authentically and more real. And I have to, I feel exactly the same way. And I was speaking at a conference last year, and I was kind of touring the vendors of the conference. So I guess they, they didn't know this. One vendor didn't know I was one of the speakers. And they were selling public speaking, coaching, stage selling from the stage type stuff. And I mean, it was hardcore pitch on me. As soon as I walked up and I said, I'm going to stop you, because I want to get to know you, the person behind this business, and let you know I've been a speaker for 10 years, and I'm actually one of the speakers on stage, so I'm happy to listen to your sales pitch after you listen to my talk. But what do you mean? I said I'm up in a couple hours, and I guarantee I'm the best speaker here today, but you don't know that because you didn't talk to me before pitching me Yeah. And he was like, I've never had somebody answer me like that before. And I

Behdad Jamshidi  32:13  
was like, Yes, I love it. I love it. I've done the exact same thing to people. I'm like, Listen, you need to slow down for a second. Like, yeah, because you and I both know when it comes to, like, sales, it's not about, like, if you can understand the person on the other side, understand what their struggles are, where they're at, where they're going, when you come to talk about what you do, you can actually align it to everything that they told you. So if you're going with no information, like, ask a curious like, so most of my and this might be useful for people. Most of my let's get discovery calls are in the first minute I have who I am and what I do. I say that within one minute, which you kind of heard in the beginning of this podcast. It's the same thing I say, and then I go, cool. The rest of this like, meeting is about you. So the next let's say it's a 30 minute meeting. 25 minutes of it is just me being curious, asking questions, understanding the business, and then at the end going, and you'll throw in little tidbits here and there, like, you're like, oh, that made sense. You should know this blah, blah, blah, but at the end, it's, I think I can help. And if I think I can help, here's how I think I can help. Does this make sense? If so, this is how we can move forward. Yeah, that is so much more effective. So you just bring up a slide deck and starting to talk about what you

Suzanne Taylor-King  33:18  
do. Yeah, my personal favorite is at the end of those, you know, first conversations, when I explain what I do in a very interwoven, you know, authentic way, and they say, oh, I need that. Can we talk about that? And I say, Well, that was not the purpose of today's call, let's actually explore that in a longer conversation. Beautiful if, if that's what you want, right? And it feels so much better to have people lean into you like that, like B, I love what you're doing. I would love to know if you could actually help my company and or if I could refer you to this person? Let's explore more. So much better.

Behdad Jamshidi  34:11  
It's way better. It's just a different style. And, yeah, that's a non transactional style, right?

Suzanne Taylor-King  34:16  
Yeah, yeah. Where did you learn that from? Well,

Behdad Jamshidi  34:21  
like I used to decide I used to work at tell work at TELUS, and I used to do about a bunch of sales stuff. Like I when I was growing up, like I worked at like, Rogers video, back in the day when Blockbuster and stuff existed. And I remember the day when something triggered for me where I was like, Oh, I got the pitch. Like, I figured out the pitch. My sales went from like, you know, I can only get this many memberships a day to now I'm getting like, 10 or 15 a day. And that same thing happened again, when I was like, kind of like a wireless wave, where I was like, building relationships and things like that, and then all of a sudden, something triggered. I was like, Oh, if I do something this way, it has a much better outcome. And this is like, rinse and repeat consistently got in. Those were more retail. L jobs and so this, the structure is different, right? Lower price points, that kind of thing. And you can do it, you know, make sure people are educated, make sure they feel comfortable, and then they would, they would buy the thing that you want to buy, because you listed it out for them, very logically safe when I got to the Telus World. Now, you're dealing with much larger organizations and much longer sales cycles, and also a whole bunch of other stuff, right? So there I learned, okay, it's like the relationships, the storytelling, the understanding of the other side. Because you can't just pitch things unless they feel understood. If someone feel understood, they're not gonna buy from you, right? So that's kind of like just what I learned going through TELUS and realizing, okay, when you really understand a business, I use the same model when I'm working with anyone in my like the current business that I run now, I go through the same discovery session that I did for those large organizations, like understand every aspect. Once I understand all the aspects and where they're at, then I'm so much better off actually giving them a strategy that makes sense, and it's just happened naturally over time. Not to mention I probably had over 100 $250,000 in training put into me when I was working at TELUS. So, huh? Conflict Resolution, emotional intelligence, speech training. It's a combination of all that that kind of brought

Suzanne Taylor-King  36:11  
it together well. And you do come off, I will say you when you first meet, you very intelligent, but very down to earth and very emotionally aware, very connected, even though you know you're meeting with me virtually. When we first met, I definitely felt like a human interest in each other, and I think that's missing so many times in online networking, connecting, whether it's one on one or in a group. And I think the idea of a human connection on Zoom can be as powerful as in person, but it has to be super intentional, and it has to be felt by both parties. And this idea of matching people up together, you know, companies with marketing agencies. I'm curious how much personal vibe and energy comes into play for you when you're making those matches. I

Behdad Jamshidi  37:19  
didn't say no, thank you for the kind words. Those really do touch the heart, because that's what I like to come off as my internal self a lot, so, like, an insane amount. I don't think I can underscore the importance of that. Like, a lot of what I do, like, I fundamentally, at a core, love helping people. Like, that's the biggest thing for me. Yeah. So when I'm talking to a business owner or an agency owner, like, I just want people to be upfront with me, authentic, give me their true self, because then I'm just way better at matchmaking and just setting expectations. And so I have to understand the business and the business owner, because their personality feeds into the culture of their business, which then, when you're taking a look at like, how you connect with an agency. The agency also has someone running the company and their own cultural values. And so you're basically taking these two guys and matching them together. And what makes it even harder is like, you know, this business at different scales always break like. Businesses never really like, becomes like, well, like, become a well oiled oil machine, but it's basically taped together by people processes and that kind of stuff, right? And every time you hit another level, you break in business, that's just part of growth, yeah. And so imagine having to take a business that is essentially a broken entity growing, and then an agency which is also a business and essentially growing and trying to match them at the same point to allow them to grow together. That's a very hard thing to do if you're not taking account like

Suzanne Taylor-King  38:41  
personnel, like fixing up two newly divorced people. That's

Behdad Jamshidi  38:45  
what it is like. Yeah, I like how you said it, and I didn't have to say it, but that's basically it.

Suzanne Taylor-King  38:52  
Yeah, I was reading your mind there. That's what it's like. You know, when someone is broken or struggling or needs help that's the hardest time to make connections for them. So I totally applaud what you're doing.

Behdad Jamshidi  39:09  
Yeah, no, 100% so you definitely got what I was saying under, under the hood,

Suzanne Taylor-King  39:13  
yeah, yeah, right under there. And I'm always willing to go a little off color or a little, you know, polarizing, because it is, it is polarizing to to feel like you need help in your business, and to feel like nobody understands and you're bridging that gap so well for two companies at one time, bringing them together. Love it.

Behdad Jamshidi  39:37  
Love it, yeah, yeah. It's been, it's been a crazy and rewarding journey. There was a time when I was like, what two, three years in, I talked about four to 500 agencies, and I was like, why am I do this? Is so hard. Like, why am I doing this? You know, this is part. It was part of the process. You like this. Like, I started understanding that fundamental truth of like, broken and bring together. I'm like, You. And then I asked myself, like, beta, who can do this better than you, like, if you met with like, 500 agencies at this point and you're struggling to do it, how is anyone going to do it without the network? Right? And I was like, right? That's kind of what drove me. I was like, Oh, that's true. So I'm just gonna continue to get better and better at what I do. Love it, and when I get there, it's gonna be the most valuable thing for businesses to have a resource in their pocket. Love it. What's

Unknown Speaker  40:23  
next?

Behdad Jamshidi  40:24  
Oh, man, I have so many things going on, which is so most people don't see under the hood, but I am building a marketing community like it's a secret marketing community. It's not out there. Yeah, I call it a secret marketing community because only specifically people get to know about it. Oh, okay, so I'm telling it here, but only certain people are invited into it. Okay, as I'm kind of building C jam, I kind of have two sides, right, like I have the aspect of building my brand and getting out there. But then also, I was like, Why don't I take some of the best marketing agencies and fractional CMOs and expert consultants that I'm meeting and put them in one place, and then that would then breed an environment wherever I need to find something. I'm asking them to an environment that I control, and I know who the people are in there, and they're gonna recommend other A players. So that was the, kind of, like the idea around it, and already kind of built it up to about 75 people, and I hadn't even reached out to my whole list yet, but slowly building that up. So that's like part of the play to build up that community in a strong way, and then just continue doing the marketing stuff that I'm doing. And one shift that you'll probably start seeing already in my content is I'm talking a lot more around how to be a connector and how to super connect people, because I think that's fundamentally what I do, and a part of what my core business is. But that topic really interests me as well. It's like, how do you reverse engineer how someone can really connect with humans, and how to do it at a high level? Love it. Yeah, that's what's going on.

Suzanne Taylor-King  41:51  
I love it because you see patterns. You see patterns. So seeing patterns with people is actually really easy when you're good at seeing patterns in other places. So looking, brain

Behdad Jamshidi  42:03  
is just made to do that. Yeah, my brain is made to do

Suzanne Taylor-King  42:06  
that. My, my brain is kind of season in, like funnel maps. That's, that's the best way to explain it. Like I see, you know, whether it's a funnel map or a website or whatever, but I can, I can see, like a map of, you know, from this person to this person, to this person, or not this person and this person like, No way, yeah. And I love that about myself. I think it came, I thought it came from healthcare because I was a dental hygienist for 20 years. And, you know, person after person after person. I was talking to, building rapport, making feel safe, learning about them. It was never about me sitting them, sitting in the chair. And I remember having a conversation with somebody one time, and they said, Oh, you were a dental hygienist. You'll have no problem in the business world, because you knew how to talk to people and have them feel safe. And I said, Yeah, safe with metal instruments and they're like so there's not much, much harder things to do than that. Marketing is easy. Come

Behdad Jamshidi  43:15  
here, yeah, I would say it's much easier. You're just good at building trust at that point, it's such a cool connection between what you used to do and what you do now, and how that skills overlap.

Suzanne Taylor-King  43:24  
Well, I will tell you that that connection was made by Tony Robbins. I was in a mastermind group very early in my coaching journey. That was all coaches in this Tony Robbins mastermind. It was very expensive out of my comfort zone at the time. And he asked what we all did for a living before we became coaches. And this was on Skype, so, you know, it was a long time ago, and I type in the chat demo hygienist, right up on stage. He was like, You don't understand you. You will have no problem building a business for yourself in coaching because of being able to walk from the waiting room back to your room. Person lays back in the chair and invites you into their body within one or two minutes. And he said, If you grasp that, you will really understand what it's like to build rapport and trust in a really speedy, authentic manner, and you've already been doing it for 20 years, so just own it.

Unknown Speaker  44:39  
That's cool, because it

Suzanne Taylor-King  44:42  
was worth the whole price of the whole mastermind.

Behdad Jamshidi  44:45  
Yeah, that one thing, I think that just blew my mind, because now I start looking at people like physiotherapists and massage therapists and all those people who invite people to touching their bodies sometimes when you're got no clothes on, yeah? So that's super

Suzanne Taylor-King  44:59  
insightful. Cool. Yeah, it really it meant the world to me to learn that about myself and to be able to take that past career and bring 20 years of having a one on one relationship for 40 hours a week for 20 years, that's cool. That's a lot of experience to bring forward, and you're doing that with all of the conversations that you've had. It's really inspiring to

Behdad Jamshidi  45:32  
fire to hear your story, doing it, it's it actually brought up a story or a memory in my brain, and I kind of asked about So growing up, my mom was very protected, so I wasn't allowed out a lot. So a lot of the places where I would connect with humans was through MSN Messenger back in the day, and that was the only way I could connect with people outside of school. And so at that time, I would always find ways of like, how do I learn more about this human? How do I connect with this human at a deeper level? And I think that skill set that I built over the two or three years in my room, connecting with people through MSN Messenger translates into what I do now a lot, like, just even with my friends, a lot of my friends go I'm about to share something with you I've never shared with anyone, and it's like you're creating that environment for you to be comfortable and know that you can be trusted and also, like, not judge. And a lot of maternal work like that, biggest aspect for me, it's like I got nothing to judge you, man, like, I have a whole line of stories and things that made me who I am and had no control over that. Why would I ever have a judgment on how you, like, do something? Like you're now, you're working on it so great. My judgment on you is you're working on things to get better. But, like, that's the greatest thing. But I think that, like, skillset from, you know, past young times, like figuring out where those lines come from, where your superpower is, it's always there. It just shows up in different ways throughout

Suzanne Taylor-King  46:45  
life. Yeah, totally agree. Thank you so much. Thank you. Yeah, appreciate you being here. How can everybody get in touch with you?

Behdad Jamshidi  46:54  
The best way to get in touch with me is either through LinkedIn, so beta Jamshidi, you'll find that there or on my website@www.cjammarketing.com, at WWW dot c jam marketing.com you can book a call with me there. And also, at the bottom, there's resource section for business owners or anyone that's just wanting to have, like, good questions to ask marketing agencies, pitfalls to watch out for pricing guides, like, there's a whole bunch of stuff there for people to use it for their business.

Suzanne Taylor-King  47:17  
Love it. Thank you so much B for joining me here today. Appreciate your vulnerability and the connection, and I look forward to more conversations

Behdad Jamshidi  47:25  
with you me as well, and thanks for having me and the great questions. You're welcome.

Suzanne Taylor-King  47:29  
Have a great day, everyone. Thank you for tuning in to another empowering episode of unlock your way. I hope you found today's discussion inspiring and you're ready to take your business and personal growth to that next level. If you're feeling as fired up as I am and eager to unlock that full potential, I'm here to help you on your journey and provide that personalized guidance tailored to your unique goals and challenges. Simply book a one on one coaching call with me, and we'll dive deep into your business aspirations and see how we could co create a roadmap for your success, and whether you're striving to scale an enterprise or just getting started. I'm here to support you every step of the way. To schedule your coaching call, simply visit the website at unlock your way with stk.com click on the book a call button, and we'll turn your dreams into that reality. Subscribe and review on your favorite podcast platform and on YouTube, plus, you can join over 800 entrepreneurs in the IDEA Lab, Facebook group. Let's make success as an entrepreneur happen together, until next time I'm SDK, keep dreaming big. Stay focused, and most of all, have fun while you're doing it. You

Speaker 2  49:03  
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