We’re talking to Colleen O’Connell-Campbell here on 🎙The 4 AM Report🎙. Colleen is a client of ours – we’ve been working with her for a year and a half now. And we thought her story of getting more headspace by outsourcing some of her marketing to us would be a good example for small businesses, founders and entrepreneurs looking to outsource or get fractional marketing support.
Colleen runs a wealth management practice in Ottawa. She is the founder and host of the podcast “I’m a Millionaire, So Now What?” and brings together a small group of entrepreneurs for Elevated Conversations. She also founded Double to Sell, a workshop that helps business owners make a cash-rich exit. All part of her big, hairy audacious goal to double the number of self-made millionaires in Canada!
What keeps Colleen up at night depends on what’s going on around her. A few years back, it was the thought of launching a podcast without knowing anything about the technical side of it. Now, she’s built a podcast flywheel and she thinks you can too!
A podcast origin story
Colleen realized that she wanted to do more than just support her clients optimize how they spend, save, and share their wealth. “At the end of the day, who is creating the most amount of wealth and really driving our world – our business owners. I came to realize that it’s about self-reliance, which ties into the self-made millionaire.
I listened to podcasts and went on a program that talked about building out your million-dollar message. And it wasn’t just one day or one weekend where I figured it all out. But from that I said, “Oh, I could do a podcast.” But I couldn’t do a podcast all on my own. This would require me figuring out the technical pieces. And that’s when I started to realize that I didn’t have to know how to do everything🧠. I could hire people to do those aspects, and then focus on the things that I know how to do, where I have expertise.”
The podcast flywheel
Colleen knew that there wasn’t an actual 💲💲 value that comes out of podcasting, yet that didn’t stop her. She knew that the value of podcasting comes from building relationships, networking, improved engagement, credibility, and reach. She’s now on 170 episodes and going strong. But it was when she changed her mindset from trying to do it ALL to allowing herself to get help that her podcast flywheel gained momentum.
“It started by letting go of the technical part of the podcast at the get-go, to letting go full control over the entire script of a blog. In business, it just makes more sense to leverage your zone of genius and have other people do the things that you’re not as good at.”
Which brings us to the top four benefits of outsourcing to a fractional marketing team – and how this affected her podcast flywheel:
Management becomes easy
We always say that incremental improvements lead to momentum which leads to improvements. For Colleen, everything came together when started outsourcing.
“When I ended up hiring C+P digital, things started to really work, because it brought the podcast in with the writing with the integration of the events I was running, and the launch of this other big idea, which was the Double to Sell program to support cash-rich exits for the self-made nation.
From writing my blogs, working on the podcast, helping me manage everything including the strategy and planning for each quarter and year so that it serves the same purpose, there is a lot of value in one marketing team providing consolidated marketing support. It creates time and space as you don’t have to coordinate with multiple parties and have everything in one calendar. It’s also a huge benefit to be paying the salary of one person to a company that has an entire team of people.” 💰💰💰!
Referencing Martha Beck and the 1% improvements we can make that add up and the tiny changes that James Clear writes about in Atomic Habits, Colleen believes the flywheel will start to gain a force of its own.
“Sometimes you can get really stuck on that mechanism of launch, get compensated, launch get compensated. If you’re a brand-new entrepreneur starting your business, you must have faith, because the flywheel mechanism is going to take some time. But it will be well worth it in the long run, because you won’t be on that hamster wheel, you’ll be on the flywheel.”
Uplevel your marketing
Another benefit for Colleen was the push to uplevel her marketing. Just like a flywheel needs force to build momentum, we sometimes need a strategic push into new areas.
“It’s taking one thing, for example the podcast anchor piece and actually creating the social posts, the blog materials, the themes for Elevated Conversations, the white papers, emails and videos around this. And working with a team that pushes you to take those next steps.”
Accountability for the win
The podcast gives Colleen the discipline to process what’s going on in her mind as she reads, interacts, and connects, and is a focused, central place that she is accountable to.
“I’ve made a commitment to come out every single week and either have a guest or share my thoughts. It’s the discipline of putting those thoughts together and then it’s the evolution of where those thoughts have taken me and hopefully the impact that I’m having on the people that I want to boost up in the world. It’s not all about the dollars and cents (although I hope and expect that along the way those connections are going to turn into actual dollars and cents) but it is the marathon vs. the sprint.
And when you have a deadline, and must report to somebody else, it’s always much more likely that it’s going to happen. I have a lot of self-discipline, but it’s helpful to have that additional layer of accountability.”
Efficient systems and communication
For Colleen, the rules or protocols of the system have helped her to be accountable and organised. By removing the do-overs where inefficiencies lie, consolidating and coordinating, she knows where to find everything and won’t ever have to start from scratch.
“There’s no thinking about “oh that had to get done, or when is that going to get done or how come I don’t have that?”. We have a regular check in that can run from 10-15 minutes to an hour depending on what’s going on. On Thursday afternoon the items required for the next week land in my inbox. And that relieves the headache. And with you guys being part of a bigger and broader system, you know, it’s clear, it’s A, B, C, D.
And that’s what happens when you are working with a professional organization. In order for you (C+P Digital) to be able to support more than one entrepreneur, you have to have your own internal system of communication.”
We love this! Not just because it’s almost a full-blown testimonial for our marketing services (not-so-humble brag 😉). But really, it’s about how the podcast flywheel can start to work for you, when you get your own head out of the way.
For more, 🎧listen to the episode 🎧.
And if you’d like to contact Colleen, she’s always keen to connect on LinkedIn or send her a mail on colleen.campbell@rbc.com. You can also listen to “I’m a Millionaire, So Now What?” on Apple.
If you’d like to chat more about your marketing concerns (or any of your content!), please give us a shout at C+P Digital – we would love to help!
Plus, if you’re losing sleep over a particular marketing/business related problem or if you would like to suggest a guest on the 4AM Report, let us know.
You can find us on Apple Podcasts – subscribe to us – you won’t regret it!
And as always, sweet dreams😴…well, hopefully!
