Hi everyone, and welcome to this week's episode of relationships rule. My guest this week is Nathan Young, who is bicoastal? I think these days he lives in Vancouver and is also in Toronto half the time where he is today as we speak. So first of all, welcome to the show, Nathan.
Thank you, Janice for having me.
My pleasure, I'd love you to share with the audience a little bit about who you are and what you do. Because from what I've read about you, you had what what one of my friends calls a squiggly line career. So it wasn't a straightforward path to where you are now. So can you share a little bit with with our audience of who you are and what you're doing?
Yeah, so I've been an entrepreneur ever since I was really young, it was kind of like what I always wanted to do. So I went to school for a program called Marketing and Entrepreneurship at school called BCIT. And that was a, that was a fast track program. So I actually completed that in two and a half years. So I always wanted to do marketing. But that was not definitely my first job. My first job was
actually a VP of Finance in China. And for all you listeners, the funny thing is, I actually don't speak Mandarin. So you asked me how that was. That's, that's another story. But as a VP of Finance in China, and then after that, from being completely burnt to the ground. And I really mean that. I was a management consultant for about four to five years working for various angel investors in their investments and, and helping
with kind of m&a management and change management. And then, essentially, you know, life changed and kind of thought about what I was going to do for the rest of my life. And I went to kind of help my family business, I moved to Toronto to help one of our business partners open their office in Toronto. And then I found out, I'm too much of an entrepreneur, not great for a corporate environment. So I went back into
entrepreneurship. And here I am running, find your audience, find your audience is a business where we're a bolt on marketing department. And the reason why I did that was because during my times, advising people, I had really felt like I would advise people in management consulting, and then I would never see the fruits of my work, or you would be kind of given off to these freelancers or other consultants, and it wouldn't be
executed well. So I found that very frustrating. So I wanted to solve the whole problem of like, I want to be able to advise, but I also want to be like fully accountable to deliver that work. But I need a team to do that. So that's essentially what find your audiences we do everything from strategy all the
way down to nitty gritty execution. So my company is now like 2627 employees, we hire like one or two employees, like almost every month, and I kind of call this like a scaled up fractional business, because now there's a lot of like different fractional buyer advisors. There's fractional CROs. There's fractional CMOS, you know, there's interim CEO CEOs too. But I come with a full team. So that's kind of a difference. And that's, that's kind of where I am right now. So about 10 years
of quote, unquote, professional marketing experience. But you know, if I were to be honest, I've been doing marketing for probably well over 19 years, I've been doing marketing since I was 16. I was dabbling in email at a very young age, I was dabbling in like, automated social media at a very young age. So my, my, my amateur or maybe not informal years of experience is 19 years, but my professional experience is about 10 years.
Wow, there's a lot there to unpack. That's great. Thanks. Anything. I have to ask you, though, I'm gonna go back to the very beginning first when you were the the financial? Yeah, yep. Oh, I think our
VP of Finance, not the CFO. So I had no fiduciary duty. That's actually the reason why I was like, I'm not being a CFO, am I too young?
Right. So the VP of Finance, you lived in China, then I lived
in China. And if you want to talk about relationship status, that entire role came from relationships, and None None for my family, all ones that I built myself. And and that was that's like a, that's a beautiful story of just like, when you hustle. And you do what people can't think you can do and you deliver and it surprises them. Like, that's how it got me a job. I flew to China two weeks after I graduated, and
I presented something to a consultant in China. And I was like you had people all across North America looking for this I brought it to a you don't know who I am, I want a job. That's literally what I did you want?
What's your idea? Right then there that you wanted to go and live in China for a bit? Or no,
no, I was just like, this is a phenomenal opportunity. And if I can get a job here, it's going to like, you know, leaps and bounds my experience leap into math in my professional experience. So I was like, if I can get this done, like, this is amazing. So So I took a chance I literally flew to Shanghai didn't have a place to live and I showed up at this guy's door, showed him what I got him and essentially he was like, Okay, well, I don't have a job for you right now. But how
will you just work for me and just do it jobs. And that's actually how I got the VP of Finance job. It was really like relationships and hustle.
Well and and what I call it what the the Jewish people call hutzpah, okay, you did it on nerve, you did it on footside, like you believed in yourself and you were you were brave enough to go and make that happen. And that's the heart of an entrepreneur, I totally believe that a true entrepreneur, we use that word very loosely these days. But I think the true entrepreneurs are the are the visionaries, and the people that are willing to do what it takes to make it happen.
And that totally sounds like that's, that's amazing. Thanks for sharing that. So you talk about being involved in all the aspects then of marketing, and I can see why because it's feels so much better when you can see the fruits of your labor. So I saw somewhere in one of your your posts are great, by the way, on LinkedIn, I think that you definitely have the gift. And marketing is definitely oozes out of you. So what
essentially, you know, when you what, what would you say? Or who industry wise are, you don't have to be specific if you don't want to name the companies, but your ideal client? So what gets you excited? When you get that job? What is it about it? Is it the industry? Is it the client? Is it the size is the the challenge?
You know, um, I think the number one thing that gets me excited is when my client trusts me, and makes me fully accountable, I think that's the really, really exciting part. So I'll give you a great example. Like we work with a variety of different clients and in a variety of different ways. And one client, they're not on their largest
retainer, but they're on our medium sized one. And they have a sub business unit that they're kind of spinning up because they have a person who owns a p&l themselves, and they want to spin this up as a bit more of a business. And so the the, the the owner of the business, or the CEO came to me and says, you know, hey, you know, I don't really want this to be additional scope and like, how are you going to do that. And I said to him, I was like, Look, as long as you give us creative
freedom. And as long as you are okay with us doing what we think is the most important, which actually streamlines our work a lot. The reason why our work is not streamlined is typically because of client feedback cycles. If we actually were just allowed to be accountable, we would actually be far more efficient. So so the CEO was kind of like, yeah, absolutely. And I was like, Are you sure? Like 100% He's like, he's like, Nathan, I hired you guys, because you guys know what
you're doing. This is not the most important business for us. But it is important. And I don't want to increase scope. So if you're telling me you just need to be accountable, and you're not gonna charge me for it, and it just can fall under our current retainer. That's great. Go do it. I was like, okay, but here's the name. Are you cool with this name? He's like, it's a little corny. But yes. And I was like, well, it's corny, because I have no budget to market it. So it has to be a
little quirky. Right. And so he was just like, go for it. It's not sexy. It's not huge. But we get so much joy because it's like full accountability, our creative angle, our copywriting, our headlines, our taglines, our benefits statement, like it's all us. That's really fun. So our ideal client is really one that understands, hey, I don't have marketing chops. Or at least I've come to the realization I don't, I need to go hire someone. And I don't have the capacity to hire a full
team. So I'll go to Nathan. And I'll hire him because I know he's got eight designers, you know, three web developers, three content writers like all these things behind them. And that's a full team. And I can't afford $40,000 worth of overhead a month for a full team. So it makes sense to hire me. That's like our favorite client, because there's a lot of clients that kind of call us accountable, but they hold the reins on everything, and everything is designed by
committee. And that is that's not really fun for us.
Because that would take away your creativity immensely. Yeah. And
honestly, it's kind of defeats the purpose, right? So it's like if you're hiring us, you're hiring us to help you prioritize, you're hiring us to help you align, you're hiring us to help you execute. So to put us on a leash, it's kind of counterintuitive to the hiring process.
Mm hmm. And so it's from a company standpoint, it's a project it's not I have to don't have to hire somebody for the entire year as a marketer or as like it's a project kind of based thing right? They get your company
a lot a lot of our companies hire us for over a year so like our average our average client in years like three and a half years and the reason is is because like my job as like a fractional cmo comes in waves, because it's such as like Identify and now like I analyzed the needs, identify our priorities, and then we initiate those projects. So as they start to initiate projects, that goes back to the team so that my involvement cycles, right, but the the execution of marketing
activities is happening all throughout the year. And I break this out, as there's two types of activities, there's like maintenance activities, and I use that word lightly. Because it's sometimes can be misconstrued as like, post maintenance, just like posting a social, it's like no maintenance, it's just like, the general activities like, what like a well oiled car, right, you need the oil, so you need the oil to work, it doesn't do a lot. But like, if you don't have
it, it's not going to work well. And then you have like, the special initiatives. So that's like, the turbocharger on your car, right. So that's the one that gives you the boost. So every business has maintenance activities, and then every business should have additional budget for special initiatives. So those are either launching new products going into a new market, or just like promotions, or things like that. So those
are your campaigns and things like that. And and so, so we kind of ebb and flow with maintenance and special initiatives as needed for most of our organizations. Okay, that
makes sense. So your role, obviously, you know, that my podcast and my beingness is all about relationships and relationship building. And you said it right at the beginning of that last piece about trust? And I would imagine that your role, then is your that you're the person out there selling right, you're the front of the company, right?
Yeah, absolutely. I think I think a lot of times when companies choose us, it's because of potentially, my relationship with them. And the trust that's built from that relationship. And I think, because I've said this to a lot of people, marketing is actually very simple. All you have to do is your marketing needs to build a level of trust that your services or solutions will get them to their desired outcome. And I think that's something that a lot of people forget,
it's, it's less about selling them on. Yeah, yes, you have benefits and pain points and all these fancy copywriting language. But the point is, is that when a person makes that decision, it's actually trust. And it's trust, that you will deliver that outcome or trust that I have the highest amount of trust for you, as a consultant or a vendor to deliver that desired outcome, right, because everyone is
promising the desired outcome. So a lot of the things that we do, whether it's through marketing, sales, or just purely just relationships, is building that trust to attain that desired outcome.
Right. And like, I was thinking, I read one of your posts on LinkedIn. And I think it was about the familiarity principle. And I'm not sure if this fits into it or not. But when I was thinking about that, I was thinking that I think I'm always a label shopper, I've always been a label shopper, and I hate the generic brand. I don't have the same trust in those things as I do in the Apple product, or the, you know, the, I don't know, if I think you know, I always want
to buy the brand name, not the copy. I don't know if it's snob appeal, or if it's just that familiarity, that it's always been a brand that I can trust. I think your article talked a bit about the word the the song that gets stuck in your head. And that's how you talked about you can share it if you like a little bit about that. But what does that mean? Am I on the right track this?
Absolutely familiarity principle just comes with the fact that like when you are familiar with something or someone, there is actually an inherent trust that's built from this. And I describe this in a layman's kind of analogy, or metaphor in the sense of like, lets us imagine you're going to school, you don't have a car. So you are taking public transit.
And as many of you know, when you're going on public transit, whether that's going to work or to school, and you have a very regimented schedule, you likely run into the same people on transit. And if you don't, every single time, you know that maybe about 30% of the people are actually repeats, they're not repeats every day, but you definitely see them, you know,
once twice, three or four or five times a week. What's really, really interesting is you aren't really realizing it, but even the fact that you're just simply on that same bus or train or whatever you are, whatever public transit system you are on, you're actually creating this very thin layer of trust amongst yourself and you don't even know it because it now if I want you to think about this, I want you to imagine this for a second. I just want you to imagine a random stranger coming
up to you and asking for your cell phone. There's there's a lack of there's a there's a ton of anxiety that gets built into you. Now out of just being a nice person you might feel obligated to give that person your phone because you know like what could go wrong, but Now I want you to take an imagine that same scenario, but now imagine it with that one or two persons, or one or the two people you've always seen on the same bus or
train again, and they asked you for the cell phone. And I want you to be really honest with yourself, do you think you actually have the same level of anxiety, giving you the sale? And so just through familiarity and frequency, they build trust with you with absolutely no interaction? Right. And that's what familiar you guys. And so subconsciously, as you are repeated as you have repeated exposures to the same things,
trust is actually being built, whether you know it or not. And that's essentially what the familiarity principle does in layman's terms is that when you are frequent, this is why people do retargeting, right? So retargeting ads to make sure you see it. That's why you see a lot of ads everywhere. And that's why you see a lot of studies about frequency, and how many times you have to show ads to certain people. So that is the
familiarity principle. And and it's a beautiful thing. But it's also really, really important for relationships, like think about it as simply simply as like, Do you really think you're going to have a great relationship with a client or a potential vendor? If you only see them? Once a year? Or you've only emailed them once or twice? No? Right? So so constant interaction constant frequency, that's building familiarity. And when you build familiarity, you naturally build trust.
Yeah, that's, it's so funny. I had a woman that I was introduced, I wasn't introduced. I had a campaign going on LinkedIn, and her name came up to someone to connect with. She said, Yes, I looked at her profile. And I went, I think I know this woman. And I went to my closet and found this book that I knew that's what it was. And it was a workbook about telephone courtesy that I had bought when I was teaching telephone courtesy back in the 90s. Okay. And this was the
woman who had written that book. Now, I didn't know her at all, I just bought that book. She was a person at that time and still goes by the telephone doctor, because she was all about telephone courtesy. Well, when that when her name showed up, as she accepted my connection request, I had to tell her that story. We were like, best friends in five minutes, because of that interaction, so many umpteen years ago, that, you know, neither one of us knew the other person, but that trust in
that that connection was there. And now we're like best friends. It's so funny.
Yeah, and familiarity is the same principle as finding, like, you know, like subjects that people are interested in, right. So if you know that your your potential clients has kids, and those kids like karate, and your kids go to karate, there is a sense of familiarity when you have that topic in common. And that again, builds trust, right, and so familiar to you know, is is just the outcome of, of
certain things in life are certain effects in life. But familiarity, just that feeling, really, really encapsulate like a lot of opportunities to build trust. And if you know how to create familiarity, it's a great tool to use.
Yeah, I call it when I'm talking, when I'm teaching people on LinkedIn, how to engage with people that they've just met, or that they want to get to know because they want to pursue any possible lead generation from that is building rapport. It's about building rapport. And it's looking for those signals that you know, those things on their profile that they could use to leap frog from that, you know, to build
rapport, which is so true. I had hoped that when I first met you that talking about your little girl, which just made you light up, amazingly. And I have the same experience with my little granddaughter who's a little bit older than Naomi, right, is that your Yeah. And that was a way to build rapport with you. And and, you know, and then that was one of the first things that I
wanted to talk about when I saw you again today. So yes, I think that's so important is building rapport, female building familiarity, and getting people to trust and the sooner you get it, the better obviously, I wanted to ask you this was not on anything except that actually, I saw this on your LinkedIn profile, that you are part of pavilion. Now. Is that because I had the owner of that on my podcast, Sam Jacobs? Yes. Yeah. So that was an interesting platform that he created. Are
you still part of that you were quite involved with it? I
think I am still a part of it. So I'm hypothetically an envoy, which means I lead a small group, the line Law Group in Toronto. I'm also a part of the fractional Consulting Group and also the CMO group. So I'm part of a different group, but I only lead the language group which is a Toronto, kind of segment of the pavilion group. And it's been,
it's been an interesting experience. Um, I would say that, you know, as a person who also grows private community, so I have kind of our private community executives that I kind of curates and program events for, I would do things differently. It's been a great platform to meet new people I've met, probably what I would consider Shara Bell, if you're ever doing Account Based Marketing to be called out to
her. And Janice, if you get an opportunity to talk to her, she's an amazing person, Shara is I would go on to be considered a lifelong business friend. She and I have a small little private community together, and we talk very openly and honestly about our business. So I've made some, you know, absolutely amazing relationships. I think just in terms of some of the event programs, there could be some changes,
of course, well, you should tell Sam.
I've left my feedback.
Okay. Yeah, no, it's just such a small world in a way because his book kind folk finished first was, wasn't his story. And, and he also talks about the the importance of trust and building relationships to you know, to do what you need to do. And so he created his own platform around that. So just an aside as a busy entrepreneur, and I've got two more questions to ask you. One is, as a busy entrepreneur, do you read, listen, or watch the most? Right, so are you a book? Do you
read books? Do you listen to books? Do you watch videos? listen to podcasts? What's your favorite thing?
Oh, I'm so that's so that's a great question. I am so incredibly busy these days, I probably my form of consumption or two things, I would say audiobooks right now, and YouTube videos. So I used to love and I still have an absolutely monstrous Kindle library I have yet to play through. But I would say like, just because I'm so busy, I try to maximize my time with audiobooks. And definitely when it comes to hands on execution, it's definitely YouTube videos.
And that's like this, that mostly then for looking you're looking to how to do something, or is that podcast type things, or interviews and things like that.
So for audio books there, they're mainly just books on marketing. So I'm always trying to think about like, I can't be the smartest person in the room. So I have to listen to all these books, because they must have better angles than me. So I'm always listening to marketing books, strategy, books, management, and just relationship like, you know, kind of EQ type books, leadership books, so everything is business oriented. Basically, I'm a very boring audiobook
person. Um, and then courses by any chance, like so the the teaching company was something that I loved listening to, because they all had Ivy League Teachers speaking about courses. So I used to listen to those all the time. For YouTube. It's definitely instructional how to, so I'm, I'm not going to consider myself like a fully graduated Python coder. But I'd give myself like a level 200 like I'm on my second year. So
I'm very comfortable. But I'm not a fluid programmer. So often, I am trying to hack my way through generative ai, ai, and I'm creating small tools for myself. So I'm generally watching those videos just because there are a million people smarter than me in that space. And there are at least 100 YouTube videos that are far easier for me to do it than for me to try to figure out on my own.
All right, fair enough. And are you that, of course poses another question about AI and chat GPT. And all of that, do you incorporate that stuff now into your
1,000,000%. So as soon as Jack GPT and I said this on another podcast, as soon as GPT came out, I had literally reallocated one of my resources to be a full time AI person. So his first month on the job was literally just analyzing AI tools. So I was like, I don't want you writing a word. I just want everything to be generated. And then I need you to come back and tell me like, how is it working? What are the constraints? Why won't it work? And let's figure out what this
looks like in my workflow. So like AI is massive in our organization. And if you're listening right now, and you're not using any AI tools, you are going to get behind and you're going to get behind very quick.
Yeah, it's interesting. I know it's hard to keep up with everything these days, but it seems as though if you use if you use it my limited experience if you use it. Number one you got know what to ask it and be specific. And number two, you have to realize that it only has access to what's already happened. So don't you know, you've got to make it your own after that anyway? Then it would be okay. But I would never, you
know, there's so many dangers around it. But that's the same with anything when something's new and people try to find their own way around. Right. So, yeah, definitely interesting. Okay, last question. It's two parts. And I love to ask my my guests this. And my favorite word is curiosity. So number one, do you think curiosity is innate or learned? And part two? What are you most curious about these days?
It's innate or learned? I think that's such an interesting question. And I think if I were to lean into it, I would say curiosity is innate. And the reason I would say that is because I think some people feel like many people aren't just naturally curious. And I would counter that comment is no, they probably are, you're just not interested in the same topic. Okay, and so therefore, their curiosity is not one of
generality. It's one of specificity. And so therefore, if you don't have that same interest, and you're not going to be curious, and neither are they, so So I would say, I think everyone is curious. I think the only reasons why we don't find things curious to one another is likely the fact that they're not they have no interest, essentially. So I would say I would definitely be on in need. What am I most curious about God, I'm curious about a lot of things. I am, I am definitely
the type of person who will read like a Wikipedia article. And then we'll go through every single footnote, because I'm curious. So I'll give a good example I started right. So if any of you guys ever decide to follow me and want to see my face every day talking about psychology topics, on marketing, I ventured, this year, just the beginning of year starting my content. And I started moving towards this direction where I really want to make marketing and consumer psychology really
easy to consume. And I want to I may want it to be applicable to agile marketing tactics. And so I have essentially journeyed into this whole, like, mountainous, incredibly uncomfortable amount of research, where I'm reading, I think there's a total of 635 research articles that I have in my library right now that I've compiled. And I am going through them to essentially create the content that I'm producing on
LinkedIn, and Instagram and Tiktok. And I love it. Because every single time, I actually get a chance to go through one more article, I go, Oh, my God. And then I want to read one more. And it's like, Oh, my God, I don't want to read another one. I'm like, Oh, my God, like, what? Why didn't I know this before? Or why don't you know this research existed? And I find that fascinating, like, I love learning something and not knowing that I didn't know it, right. Like, it's like, it
bothers me. There's like an innate thing that bothers me about it. So I just want to learn more. So I'm just curious about everything like, and, you know, I think I'm the same. I'm very curious about business oriented things. So if you, you know, maybe talk to me about, you know, flowers, I might not have the best follow up questions of curiosity. But if you if you talk about, you know, the greatest copywriter in the 1900s, I'd be like, Oh, who is it? Oh, what kind of framework
did they use? How long was he alive? Or what publisher did he work for? I'd have a million questions. So I definitely love business and I love and I'm definitely like very much in love with like consumer psychology and the parallel paths that they have in marketing. And that's been incredibly fascinating for me.
Well, you just basically use yourself as an example for what you had stated in part one, which is brilliant. Yeah. That you know, if it's something you're interested in the questions just start coming right. Yeah. Yeah, that's thank you for sharing that your your answer actually was was one I hadn't really heard very often before and maybe once before,
but it's so true. I get what you're saying. That being said, you know, there's an argument for we may all it may be innate, but a lot of it gets kicked out of some people depending on their, you know, their path through school or their paths through their Life, whatever. And then, so I don't know, like, I mean, there's no I'm not gonna say your answers wrong or right or anybody else on my shoulder, it's just really interesting that the majority of people actually, well, I'm not gonna
say, it's all good. Anyway, someday I might, I might use these these quotes in the book, I don't know, we'll see. I'll let you know. But um, but thank you, this was a delight and really interesting to, to talk to someone who's so passionate about what they do. And I could tell that I know that there's, there's as passionate and as you know, blinders on as you are about business and learning, I think that you have probably a lot more, I know, you look fit. So you probably care about that.
You've got a child, I know you love that. So that's a whole other world for you. And I'm sure there's other things as well. So interesting conversation. Glad to talk to you. Thank you so much, you have one last business tip for my audience.
Be aware of the spotlight effect, or spotlight syndrome. For all you business owners, I know that it's scary for you to start. And likely you have something called the overconfidence bias, which you probably think you're smarter than you are, which you may or may not be. But that also lends itself to this idea of you're you think your failures are
going to be bigger than they are as well. And so my biggest recommendation for anyone, when it just comes to business, especially when it comes to marketing, if you're if you're a small business owner, you can mess up on marketing a whole lot before it really matters because you don't have the reach. You don't have impressions. Okay, you might mess up one or two very key relationships. But I'm just going to tell you right now, when it comes to sales, that's one or two of 1000 that
you're going to have to deal with. So don't worry about that. Don't be a perfectionist, start and iterate. And it's okay. I think that's my biggest thing. It's just some people get far too caught up on their image. And being perfect, it's not worth it. spotlight effect does not affect you, you don't have the reach, you don't have the impression. So just go do it. Go have fun, and be silly with your marketing. Here's the number one thing that I'm going to say for everyone, this is the biggest
tip, okay? If you don't have money, and you don't have distribution, you have to somehow create an impression that matters. And the only way you're going to do that is by invoking some emotion or being a little bizarre. So don't be scared about having a silly brand. Just make sure that you actually care and are passionate about it. So that's the big thing, right? So make sure it's memorable and own it. And that's okay. So don't don't try to be professional off the bat,
especially if you don't have the money for it. Makes no sense. I think that's
great. And I think that my audience should go and check out your website, find your audience, dot online dot online and go and look at the 20 tips on how to promote your small business for free, because that was really useful. But there's lots of other cool things in there as well. But that just caught my eye this morning. So thank you. Thank you and to my audience, you can read reach Nathan at his website, find your audience dot online or on LinkedIn I'm sure and I know
that you're on LinkedIn for sure. And and remember to stay connected and be remembered