Can’t quite figure out why your website isn’t driving any results for your business? The answer lies in your website being a digital billboard versus a digital employee/salesperson. Discover how to use the World’s Best Buyer persona to transform your website from a digital billboard into a digital employee and “training” it to communicate more effectively to get a higher quality of leads, a better conversion rate, and happier customers.
On the Management Blueprint Podcast, Stormie Andrews discusses entrepreneurial journeys, digital employees, and buyer personas.
Steve Preda: Good day dear listeners. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast and today’s guest is Stormie Andrews, the president of Yokel Local, an inbound marketing agency and HubSpot partner that helps companies generate revenues, reduce sales cycles, and increase customer lifetime value. Welcome to the show, Stormie.
Stormie Andrews: Great to see you. I am so excited to be here with you today.
Steve Preda: It’s great to have you. So, we always start the show with the question on the entrepreneurial journey. So, what’s been your journey to running Yokel Local Marketing? How do you get here?
The Journey from Vice President of Sales to Marketing Entrepreneur
Stormie Andrews: Well, it’s interesting. Yokel Local was founded back in 2010. But how I got here. I’m located in Las Vegas, and for those of you that can recall back in the 2007, 8, 9 timeframe, there was a major mortgage housing crisis meltdown. And Las Vegas was the epicenter of that disaster.
I was here in Las Vegas. I was the Vice President of Sales and Marketing for a homebuilder and we got crushed. While I was in that role for the homebuilder, I was in charge of marketing, and I was able to cut my teeth in the world of marketing. Unfortunately, we were private homebuilder and had to close our doors.
I wanted to get out there and help local businesses. I knew I was in charge of marketing, however, I was struggling with this world of digital marketing. That’s when I met my business partner, Darrell. He was an internet marketing guru.
We were able to join forces put our heads together. Originally, when we started, we had a purpose of helping local Las Vegas businesses. We did that and now we’ve grown and we’re helping businesses all over the country.
Making Better Decisions with Management Blueprints
Steve Preda: Oh, that’s amazing. So, before we get into how you actually did that, and what you’re doing, I like to ask you about business frameworks. Have you used any management blueprints or business frameworks to kind of shortcut your way to success to systemize your business Yokel Local, or maybe your previous to the home builder business? Maybe you use something there? Can you tell us something about that?
Stormie Andrews: We’re fortunate enough where I would say five years ago Yokel Local, local, we joined a business peer advisory group. And in that peer advisory group, we have some incredible people that come and speak to us as business owners, but we also have a phenomenal business coach, someone who sits there with us. We meet monthly and he holds us accountable. I have a firm belief that if it wasn’t for him, we will be in big trouble or we may not even be here today because there were many times we wanted to make a decision but based on his experience and his leadership, we were able to make better decisions.
Over the years we’ve been introduced to systems like EOS and quite a few other systems where we were able to integrate different elements within our business, CEO tools, and a few other platforms where we’ve been able to integrate bits and pieces from the various systems into our business. It’s been very, very helpful.
Steve Preda: Okay, so you mentioned CEO tools, which is a really interesting toolkit. When I was in this stage, Craig Kramer, the “great Craig Kramer,” was still obviously a speaker, one of the best speakers on the circuit and one the most invited speakers. I had the privilege of seeing his talk about the CEO tools. So I’d love to hear some of the tools that you have used from his toolbox. If you could talk about that.
Stormie Andrews: Oh. Wow! The tools from his toolbox? That may be difficult.
It’s interesting because we have this I’m going to call it a hodgepodge. I don’t know. Now it’s to the point where some of the advice we’ve gotten from our business advisor, some of the elements we’ve taken from EOS and some of the elements we’ve taken from CEO tools, I’m not sure which came from which. I would probably have to go back to the book and say, “Did this come from CEO tools, or did this come from EOS? Or did this come from our business advisor?”
You know, we’ve been fortunate enough, you know, like I mentioned where we had some incredible speakers in the group that I belong to, which is very similar to a Vistage group. It’s laid out almost identical, and being able to pull the specific tool from CEO tools may be difficult for me to pull out off the top of my head right now, but it has been instrumental. I don’t want to give credit to a different platform or the wrong platform, thinking it’s part of the CEO tools because in reality; I don’t know which came from which at this stage.
Strata Levels of Work & Organizational Structure
Steve Preda: You also mentioned the book which you used. You said that in this book you read about the Strata Level of different employees and how it impacted their activity level and their impact. Can you kind of remind me of that book and perhaps talk about that concept?
Stormie Andrews: Absolutely. We had a gentleman come speak to our group. That’s where I first learned about Strata Level. His name is Tom Foster. And he had a couple of books, one of which being Outbound Air. I ended up buying that book on Amazon and there was a great fictional story about an airline that would promote people the way we typically promote people. We would say this person’s been here the longest. Let’s promote them to the next position of leadership.
“The further [your employees] can see into the future, they better they’re wired to handle strategic thoughts and strategic thinking.”
Stormie Andrews
What I learned from his teachings as it pertains to Strata Level is that we’re all wired differently, and each of us has a different strata level. So, someone who has a Strata and the higher the number, the better and basically what Strata Level represents is how far someone can think into the future without having additional outside input or oversight. That’s a very valuable tool to have, especially in the world of digital marketing and really any business.
What I learned from the Strata Level is that some people look into the future. You know, they can only see an hour or two into the future. Is that someone even if they’re exceptional regarding what they do, is that someone you want to put in charge in charge of long-term strategies? Probably not
What some businesses do, and we were absolutely guilty of it, we would promote people based on longevity and based on being great people, but they if didn’t have the ability of understanding and seeing almost immediately that this action will lead to this result which will lead to this consequence and it may have devastating consequences 3, 4, 5, 6 months down the road, that may not be the person who we would want to put in leadership. So basically what the Strata Level concept is, it’s being able to measure someone’s ability of seeing far more into the future.
Listen to the rest of the interview to learn more about training your digital employee aka your website and the role that the World's Best Buyer Persona® System plays in allowing your website to communicate more effectively.
