Figuring Out What You’re the Best at With Dusti Arab

Dusti Arab  0:00  
If something feels excessively hard ask why. First of all, do you need to be doing that thing? Because the answer is 90% of the time gonna be no. Is it something that you can get some help with, go make friends, go make friends who are early stage and grow with them like that. I mean, that, for me has probably been the most satisfying part of entrepreneurship in general.

Meg Casebolt  0:22  
You’re listening to social slowdown, a podcast for entrepreneurs and micro businesses looking for sustainable marketing strategies without being dependent on social media. Social media is a double edged sword. It’s a wonderful way to stay connected. But it also can feel like an addictive obligation. And it’s even more complex for businesses, your audience might be right there, but you’ve got to fight with algorithms to maybe be seen by them. So whether you want to abandon social media altogether, or you just want to take a month off, it’s possible to have a thriving business without being dependent on social media. This podcast is all about finding creative, sustainable ways to engage with your audience without needing to lip sync, send a cold DMS, run ads or be available 24/7. Let’s get started. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the social slowdown podcast. I’m your host, Meg Casebolt. And I’m here with Dusty Arab. I’m so excited to have this conversation with you dusty, I was just ranting about this topic in a co working group with you. And you were like, Oh, I have thoughts. So welcome. And thank you for being here today.

Dusti Arab  1:26  
Thank you so much for having me. Mag.

Meg Casebolt  1:28  
You want to get started with just telling us what your business is and how you work with people, that’d be a good place to leave in.

Dusti Arab  1:34  
Awesome. So I am the founder of the reinvention CO we are a marketing consultancy. And I like to work with women who have small teams, and are looking to transform their marketing to something that is more strengths based and sustainable versus you know, being very tax focused.

Meg Casebolt  1:53  
Yeah. And I think a lot of people start especially when they start their businesses, they’re they’re thinking in terms of tactics, not what’s the big picture that I need my marketing to do for me? And how do I get that out of it? It’s more just like, What do I need to post on Instagram instead of like, well, why Instagram?

Dusti Arab  2:08  
Exactly, exactly, which is the question they should be asking. And I generally find in a lot of the work I do, especially as a fractional cmo coming in and helping, like lay out their marketing plan, their larger strategies. Those are the questions that we tend to ask more of especially early in session, because everyone is like, Oh, I don’t want to do video. Like that’s usually the one that I hear the most often. Okay, cool. Kiska, you don’t have to do it. So what do you want to do? So that’s usually where we

Meg Casebolt  2:37  
start. Alright, so what other permission slips? Are you giving out in terms of like, here are the things that you feel like you have to do, but actually, you don’t

Dusti Arab  2:45  
consistent email newsletters? Oh, I know that that is like sacrilegious. But you know, who doesn’t send consistent email newsletters this approach? And what I’m doing fine. Like I, I am, you know, I have ADHD, I am definitely the kind of person who has to kind of go with the Muse a little bit and has to follow that. And like, obviously, I want to prop that up with really good systems and lots and lots of automation, so that I can still operate well in spite of my natural proclivities. But for the most part, like, I don’t find that being super consistent is like the magic solution, either, like, does it help? Absolutely. But if that doesn’t, like light you up and I’m sitting down to write your email newsletter makes you want to shoot yourself, your audience is gonna know. Yeah. And

Meg Casebolt  3:39  
like if if you say, I need to write this email newsletter, because it’s Wednesday, and people will be upset if it’s not in my inbox, like, have you ever emailed someone, but like, where’s your newsletter? Because I have never, I’m subscribed to so many newsletters. I’ve never in my life done it.

Dusti Arab  3:54  
And yeah, seriously, I am not. That’s not how I like, that’s not how I enjoy consuming media for me, like some people really do. And they love substack. As a result of that, it’s not really my thing. I am reading the, you know, the clip art version of that, that they’re putting on Instagram, because that’s how I prefer to consume my media. So

Meg Casebolt  4:14  
and I think we have to know like, as both creators and consumers, what is the method in which we want to engage with other people’s marketing? Apps? What is the way that we expect our audience to engage with our marketing?

Dusti Arab  4:29  
Right? And then and that really is something I don’t think enough people think about, like, I know, like, you and I are in a writing group. We love to write we’re big readers, and that’s who we hang out with. And something that I have seen a lot of concern up with folks like us who do you know, we’re good at long form content were already love

Meg Casebolt  4:49  
form.

Dusti Arab  4:50  
And I love long form content. And I think that, you know, there’s always that push pull with short form video, being as you know, As short, like two or three seconds in some cases, and what it takes to create something that’s small, that’s only there for like, a minute, most of the times, you know, versus, like, do you want to serve that audience? Or do you want to be serving the people who do enjoy your long form content, who are willing to put in a little bit more effort to get a lot more out of it, because you want to have a deeper conversation with them? Those are my clients like, and those generally speaking, are the people that I like working with the best.

Meg Casebolt  5:29  
And I think knowing that is huge, because if you were you know, I mean, you and I both have ADHD, so it’s like, we could very easily fall down like, quick, quick, quick, give me the impulsive thing, give me the quick answer, I want to be able to create, create, create, create, create, create, like that could be our hyperfocus very easily. But I and you know, that has been for me in the past, where I’m like, I’m going to just go hard on these social media platforms and burn out on the social media platforms and then have to back off, like, I have no more energy left in my body, because I went so hard because I went into hyper focus. So it’s like, you sort of have to know your own creation style. And I mean, if I if I were trying to talk to an audience who expected that from me, then there would be some sort of fundamental cognitive disconnect there. Absolutely,

Dusti Arab  6:18  
absolutely willing, especially with the way that a stereotypical launch sequence goes as we know it in the online marketing world. That is just a constant stream of posting, emailing everything all in advance. And like, and I’ve seen lots of people try to live launch and also be like, creating a product at the same time, things like that. I basically, yeah, I pretty much like coming up with the two bye for now. And for clients who just that they’re going to do that like absolutely not, no, we

Meg Casebolt  6:51  
we can pre sell it and launch and then you can create it as you go. That’s how we’re gonna do this back to back. But we’re not going to do it at the same time. Nope, nope, nope. Hard. Nope. speaking my language. Oh, it’s the worst when you think I won’t, because you think like, oh, I can, as long as I’m creating all the content around it, then I’ll be in creation mode. And what’s the big deal? I’ll just record some videos while I’m recording the pre launch videos, and then all of a sudden, adrenal fatigue, you know, you yep,

Dusti Arab  7:19  
that’s exactly what happens. That’s exactly what happens, you would like you’re setting yourself up for burnout. And that is exactly what was happening to me in my business, like for a long time. So my business model for anyone who’s new to me has changed a lot in the past year and a half. Yeah, like I before was running a full course creation agency, like we would do at all copy design, launch help, like the whole thing, I should have been charging triple what I was now. So like, I will preface everything with that. And I tell people that first because I probably wouldn’t have burned out so hard if I was making more money. But it just turned into this, like this really terrible cycle where it’d be like from one clients launch into another and Oh, my God, that clients off retainer, and now I need to replace them with three more, you know, whatever the case was, and like, I just burned out so hard, like I couldn’t get out of the burnout cycle. And like, I ended up having to take off a lot more time than I thought I was going to, to be able to separate myself out of that. And, you know, really get to the core of what it is that I really help people with, and who I can really serve at the highest level because I wasn’t with the way that things were structured. And I think also like, as shitty as it is to say like kind of, we all have to go through the process of

Meg Casebolt  8:43  
making a lot of mistakes in order to distill what it is that we do best. And it sounds like like you had all of these different skill sets, you had a team, you had project management skills, you knew how all the funnels and all the lunches and everything needed to fit together. And now, having been through that experience, it’s like you kind of came out like a phoenix from the ashes, you know, just like, Oh, I see the big picture now because I was so deep in it, I was in the forest. And now I’m zooming out and I can see the trees

Dusti Arab  9:15  
totally now like and and I absolutely would not be as effective a CMO. If I would have gone through that experience. Like there’s no way because I’ve worked on every single part of online marketing. And like because I would just say yes to money. That’s, well, that’s how I entered the online space. I was a barista, you know, 13 years ago, and like, I learned that I could make money writing words on the internet. And that was very, very exciting to me. So you know, I just I kept picking up skills and like coming out of it like I wanted to make sure that first of all, I wasn’t in charge of implementation anymore, because like it’s just too easy for me to get trapped in the weeds now like I will get on with any of your team members, I will riff with them, I will make sure that like we can massage some language and stuff, you want to send me something, have me give you feedback and edit it. Hell yes, I’m here for all of that. But like, I had to like, really, really draw firm line, I was like, I am not doing design, I’m not doing social media, I am not doing copy like it just across the board in order to, you know, to be able to push revenue where we want to go like, it’s, that’s not where you want me on your team. And it took me, I think the hardest part honestly was like believing that people would just pay me for that, and not like the asset.

Meg Casebolt  10:40  
And that’s such a huge, huge shift to be like, sometimes on my team, especially when we’re talking about the structure of the team, and who’s doing what we talk about, like, who’s the voice, who’s the brain, who’s the hands, who’s the heart. And so every member of our team has some portion of that, and often more than one of those topical body parts, which is weird. But you know, like when I’m talking to my team, and I’m like, I need to be the brain and the mouth right now I need someone else to hold the heart right now, I can’t, I can’t do all three. And I think for so long, it sounds like you were the brain in the hands of the brain and the hands of the brain in the hand. And like being in the midst of things implementing, supporting the team, it means you can’t then also have the heart of like nurturing the team or the vision of where it needs to go. Like there’s only so much that one person can do. And God it’s really hard to figure that out about ourselves is what’s the thing that we do best?

Dusti Arab  11:35  
Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, then, and I’m curious for you, when you say the heart, like what does that what does that mean for you? What does that encompass?

Meg Casebolt  11:44  
For me, that’s values, alignment. And team support. It’s kind of a combination of both for me and for my team. It’s like making sure that the clients that we’re taking on the services that we’re providing are, are everything that we say that we are, we’re curious, we’re transparent, we’re honest, we’re inclusive, are we still embodying those values every day and the things that we’re doing? And then also, and I’m making sure that my team is not burning out, that they feel supported, that they are doing their best work, and that not even just like they’re doing their best work, but they’re doing the work that they want to be doing and that they do the best of the people on the team? Are we are we building into people’s strengths? Or why are we forcing them into a job description that isn’t the right fit for them? And if it’s not, then what can we do to to sort of make sure that everyone feels like they are contributing to the best of their ability. Right. And that’s, I mean, that’s management. That’s basic management. But it’s not something that they teach you in entrepreneur school, because there is no entrepreneur school entrepreneur school is I have a skill, I’m going to be a freelancer or I have a blog, I’m going to write about this thing. And then I have to figure out like, my friend, Johnny, and I call it the scrappy bitches manifesto, where it’s just like you scrap and then you’re like, oh, I need this thing. Let me figure out let me scrappie That together. Just like everything is scrappy, everything, you figure it out until you finally get to the point where you’re like, Oh, now I can hire a VA and the VA can take some of this, but no one teaches you how to delegate. No one teaches you how to strategize. And you can have business coaches who are teaching you all the wrong things, you know,

Dusti Arab  13:19  
oh, and they really like

Meg Casebolt  13:20  
to do that, like, because they were specialists too. Yeah. You know, a lot of business coaches. And I’m not even saying like, didn’t go to business school, because that’s not necessarily going to be helpful. But a lot of business coaches also came up through whatever that track is that they’re trying to bring you along on. They started at what’s it like E Myth will say, like their technicians, and then they moved up into managers, but they don’t necessarily have management skills, they don’t necessarily have the skills to get you to the next level, they have the skills to continue doing what you’re already doing, but maybe in less time.

Dusti Arab  13:52  
Totally well, and it’s like, and it’s so interesting, because this is such a problem in corporate to like, creating good managers and like ensuring that everyone has good mentorship. And like for me, like when I was still in like an agency model. That was honestly probably the thing that I ended up being the most proud of, like, at the very end of it was I got so good at bringing up up and coming copywriters, like getting them like being like, Okay, I had to be really scrappy about this. But now you don’t have to, like, we can kind of give you you know, the Cliff Notes. So you can get in there, start getting your hands dirty, figure out like what’s working, what’s not working, so that we could focus more on more on the soft skills of it realistically, because I never took on anybody who I didn’t see already had incredible writing skills, like they’ve already got a skill. It’s just figuring out how to apply it in a different way. And like and that for me was probably the most satisfying part of the agency. Like I really loved my team. And I also I just did not love running an agency, because of what that ended up meaning for me and my team members, like I really wanted to focus more on our relationships and all of that. Versus like, you know, there was just so much about agency work for me that still felt like extractive in a way that didn’t sit right with me. Like, and again, like part of it, I should have been charging more. But that was kind of the conflict that I never could quite get over for myself.

Meg Casebolt  15:30  
And I’ve found with the agency, like running a small one, myself, too, it’s like, you have to have this balance of client work, but also lead gen, because you know, that at any point your clients are going to be leaving, so you never get a break of. Now I get to just go do the thing that I built the agency to do. It’s like, you always have to be connecting, you always have to be scrapping, you always have to be launching something, you know, it’s like the marketing is nonstop, and it is exhausting.

Dusti Arab  15:59  
Yep. And, and that eventually, more than anything else was why I was like, I’m done. Like, I cannot keep doing it. And for me, my you know, my kind of exit strategy was like, I took on one large client Brianne. Yep. As I was thinking

Meg Casebolt  16:15  
about what I said, like the vision versus the implementers, I was like, Yeah, you and I both have the pyramid happening in our brains right now from 3%.

Dusti Arab  16:21  
Yeah. Brand dick, visionary, CEO, Academy, everybody highly recommend other frameworks. They’re great. They’re incredible.

Meg Casebolt  16:31  
That’s where I met dusty, you know, the 17th time that we met. It’s true. We just

Dusti Arab  16:37  
kind of floating around each other for like, a decade. You’re not the only person I have like that, by the way, like Lacey and I were totally like that, too. Like, we were in the same spaces for probably about a decade. And it really took us like meeting through VCA.

Meg Casebolt  16:51  
Yep. I mean, that’s pretty typical. I feel like this this online business world, people feel like it’s much bigger than it is. And once you fall into, like, a group, it’s I mean, I was, No, it was I was on someone else’s podcast. So I haven’t talked about this recently on this podcast. It’s like Dunbar’s number, are you familiar with this idea of like, your brain can only hold 150 people? Yes. And like, there’s a couple that are super, super close to and then some almost like you have this, this target practice happening. And it’s like, everyone has targets that overlap. But you and I have been on the outside sphere of each other’s targets for a while. And then our targets just like kept sliding slowly, closer together until we became enough friends that I could be like, let’s talk on boxer, well, we don’t guard dogs, you know, like, I’m just gonna leap into this conversation, even though we’ve never actually talked. But we’ve been technically friends for like a decade. It’s ridiculous the way that this business world works, because like, we don’t even know same time, so nothing but it just when you meet someone, when you’ve been in someone’s world for so long, it’s like, well, I have never talked to you, but I feel like I owe you.

Dusti Arab  17:58  
So this is actually such a good segue, because this thing that you’re talking about right now, is exactly how I was able to pivot from doing agency stuff to doing fractional cmo work, because like, I mean, first of all, like doing coming in and doing the strategy, like the only ways to work with me, are to do a VIP day where we create your marketing plan, you can hire me on a quarterly basis to help you like to maintain accountability to coach your team, like all that stuff, it like it kind of varies on a company’s size and needs. But the main thing is I need way less clients, way less clients. And I’m never sweating for clients, because I’ve been in this long enough now that like, because I’m offering something so specific, those 150 people now actually know what I do. And I don’t know that that was the case before like people knew dusty candidate copywriting and does. He kind of does Kajabi stuff and like, but there was just, I was trying to do way too much. And pulling back and getting this kind of specific has just been like, so good for my brain, oh, my God, and not giving myself 30 bosses, because that’s what agency work always felt like to me. I was like, I have too many bosses. And even if I love them in the beginning, I end up hating them at the end of the leaving, like because that’s what I would do with every job I had ever.

Meg Casebolt  19:24  
And there’s the ADHD talking again. But I think what you’re saying about like doing so so many things versus being incredibly well known for one smaller thing like that. That’s a messaging issue. That’s not like yes, there are operational things that’s happening there. There’s an agency issue, but it’s like so many people especially like in the SEO work that I do where I’m like getting really really hyper specific about what you do or who you do it for or how you do it or when you do it, like find something that sets you apart within this global marketplace and then like double down on what makes you unique People get so scared to do that because, well, if I do that, and then I can’t do all these other things, I’m like, hell yeah, you can do all those other things, you’re just not going to get referrals for them, you’re not going to get traffic for them. But you can still do like, you can still pick up a Google Doc and do copywriting anytime you want. Absolutely referrals that you’re getting are for Mark quarterly marketing strategy. Cmo work, right? Like, because you become so clear about this is the way to hire me. Yep, the deliverables can still be really very low. Yeah. And that’s probably what you’re also advising your clients to do is like, hey, get specific, get clear on your messaging?

Dusti Arab  20:39  
Uh, yeah. And I mean, a lot of my clients, I would say, with the level of folks I’m working with now, our messaging usually isn’t the problem usually, like, because now I’m working with teams that are like, like, between one and 5 million. And what I’m seeing with those teams is a little bit different. Like, I mean, I would say, you know, pre 500k, it’s all messaging, like, almost entirely and not committing to a tactic, it’s, you know, they’re spreading their efforts too thin. And, you know, they’re, they’re trying to go wide, and that’s wrong. So, you know, having having made that mistake very confidently, myself, I don’t know, I can now advise on that. But with the clients that I’m working with, now, it really is more about being able to come in and see all of the stuff that they’ve got going on, because if they’re at that level, they’ve been in business for a few years. And they’re usually sitting on just a mountain of content that they’re not using. And like and that for me, like, I was like, look at all the things we could play with. Because it just it gives us so much to work with, without having to necessarily sink a bunch of money into Facebook ads or into new content, or whatever the case is, I will almost never recommend people create new content, like not at that size, not not unless we’re launching a book or something.

Meg Casebolt  21:58  
Right? And then how does social media fit into this, like, both the ways that you’re advising your clients, and also the ways that you were running your agency and how you’re getting your clients from that, like, even when you had the agency? Where were those folks finding? You? Probably still word of mouth. Yeah,

Dusti Arab  22:15  
I am. 100% Word of mouth and social media. Like, I couldn’t tell you the last time that I closed client in an email, like, from like, my email marketing, email marketing has never been, like my business’s strongest point. Because I don’t care. Like,

Meg Casebolt  22:32  
if you never said your consistent emails dusting,

Dusti Arab  22:35  
I don’t, I’m not going to, I don’t care. I email when I have something to say, like, you know. And obviously, I generally speaking, don’t advise my clients to use that particular strategy. Most of them require more clients than I do. So especially for going for volume, obviously, email marketing becomes much more important. But for me, I have pretty much grown my business from day one on Facebook, and like, not with ads, not with anything else. But by being in space a long time by just running my mouth on the internet. Like, the more that I grant, the more clients I get.

Meg Casebolt  23:18  
Sometimes I’ll just say to people, like, platforms, yours, here’s your soapbox, climb up, tell me what you want to say, you know, like, why are we so concerned about being polarizing, when the polarizing thoughts are the things that set us apart the things that we do differently? Or the ways that we can articulate our uniqueness within the marketplace? So if there is something that bothers you, like talk about it, I mean, I’ve spent a year and a half now talking about the fact that social media maybe can be beneficial, it’s a tool, but in the wrong hands, it can be problematic, right? Exactly.

Dusti Arab  23:49  
Exactly. And like, and I’m not going to say that I have a perfect relationship with social media either because it is very, like it is very up and down for me. Just like with lots of other things. It’s easy to get too sucked in and to, you know, I feel like I’m on a cycle where like, every six months or so I have to delete all the apps I have to like reset on my phone so that I’m not just you know, perma scrolling and especially like, you know, I have a newborn now. So I’m not, you know, I’m not doing that like I was, but when I was pregnant, oh my god, especially big pregnant. I’m just trapped on the couch, man. And I’m so brain dead and like scrolling on the phone was like, all I had. So like, I just love myself for a couple of months. And that was fine. But now I’m like coming out of it. And we’re like, okay, yeah, that’s not the relationship that I want with that, like I need to kind of reset and rethink but the, so the client who, you know, I’ve talked to you about who she kind of replaced Brianne, for me if she’s, I’m probably going to be working with her for the next year, at least I would guess, with the projects that we’ve got going on. The way that I found her was via somebody on Facebook, who I had never had a conversation with Yup, not one. But she’s been watching my content since 2017. So obviously, I was doing something right somewhere along the way. But that’s the thing, like, I’ve spent so much time in the space now just like feeding the machine that like, the machine feeds me now, like so. I mean, as far as like something to take away from that, I guess it would, you know, be to go hard on one platform Wi Fi, you

Meg Casebolt  25:33  
don’t have to be everywhere, you don’t actually know marketing, and you do have that consistent thing. Maybe you want to be on email, maybe you want to be on substack. If you really do love Instagram, and you love creating those reels, go hard on Instagram, go as hard as you want. If your people are on LinkedIn, like spend your time there, sounds like your people are on Facebook. So that’s where you are. And that’s where you want to be spending your time.

Dusti Arab  25:53  
Right. Like, for me, it’s all written content, like, I mean, I can do video, I’m good on video. But at least up to this point, it has not made sense for me to make that a primary strategy. Like now I have like, we literally just finished the remodel, I have to paint in here and hang up on my art that’s, you know, back here behind me. But now I actually have a space where I can do video, and like and where the sound quality.

Meg Casebolt  26:21  
You don’t need to write because what you what you said a minute ago about, you’re working with clients who need more clients, and they need the volume. So you’re gonna advise them to do email marketing that you don’t need to I think this is also something that people get really confused about, which is like, know, the size of the business that you want to be running and apply the marketing strategies that are appropriate for that size of business, because we’re taking these like relationship based businesses and putting traffic based marketing behind them, or we’re taking service businesses and putting influencer marketing overtop of them that isn’t necessary. And we build these businesses that are way bigger than they need to be.

Dusti Arab  27:03  
Yeah, absolutely. And, and like, I simplified mine, because I knew I was gonna have a baby. So I had like a really clear deadline. First of all, it’s helpful. But also, like I just knew, like, even pregnant, like I had a bunch of miscarriages over the past couple of years. And I’ve never really suffered from chronic health issues before. But I would qualify this as a chronic health issue because I would be pregnant for eight to 12 weeks, like several times, like I spent most of the last two years pregnant, which is just like, you know, it is it’s so weird to think about, because like, I mean, I was half brain dead during during like big sections of that, like, my body does not do pregnancy. Well, man, like I am now.

Meg Casebolt  27:51  
first trimester, oh man to go through first trimester and then

Dusti Arab  27:58  
it was brutal. It was brutal.

Meg Casebolt  28:00  
It is breaking for you in so many ways, not just the physical, but the emotional and all the hope that Oh, I’m so sorry.

Dusti Arab  28:07  
It’s it’s okay, because I have a, I have an adorable 10 week old now. And he’s so fat and squishy and fun. But like, as a result of all of that, though, I had to do the bare minimum. I was like, what, like, there was no option left anymore to be like, well, I can just do that. No, I couldn’t like no, I absolutely could not. I had to keep things simple for me, even before I can keep them simple for my clients.

Meg Casebolt  28:36  
Can you imagine running the agency like that? No, no, no. Just the like expectation. And I would even say more so than expectation, the obligation of showing up at a certain level at all times. It’s just like, I keep hearing people slide these conversations about chronic illness into the larger conversation that we’re having around marketing and social media and energy management and mental health and, and chronic illness as a term just keeps showing up. And everyone’s chronic illness is slightly different. But this feeling of like, I started this business to have the flexibility so that on the days that I didn’t feel great, so that when I needed that recovery time, I could choose to back away from it. But then my marketing makes me obligated to show up for the Tuesday live or the Wednesday email marketing broadcast or whatever. Like we build these. We build a business for freedom and then we put ourselves into obligations within this build a business that was supposed to be giving us freedom, because somebody told us we had to. Yep, drives me crazy. Shouldn’t take gradients drives me bananas.

Dusti Arab  29:46  
Yeah, it’s not sustainable. And I mean that that is probably the biggest permission slip like that anybody gives around marketing is that you don’t have to do all the things and if you are doing all the things you’re probably doing them poorly. You and like, if that’s the case, like, that’s not how you want to represent yourself or your business online, especially if you are primarily like, a solo service provider, like I was just gonna say

Meg Casebolt  30:11  
is, you know, you’re saying don’t do all the things and we’re talking about dusty and reinvention coat like you as a person cannot do all the things. But then when you are the marketing director for these one to $5 million businesses that have teams that can be doing all the things that employees whose jobs it is to do, just that small part of it, they can do all the things, but then they’re the ones on social media telling you like, oh, just do all the things that your clients in particular, obviously, but that vibe of you know, these giant companies are telling you that you have to do all these things that they’re not in the same space as you they’re not in the same business model as you but they want to sell you exact license model as an ascension man. Oh, man, don’t even get me started about that. There’s my soapbox, yeah.

Dusti Arab  30:58  
We don’t need to all turn our businesses into pyramid schemes, as it turns out.

Meg Casebolt  31:03  
But I really like pyramids.

Dusti Arab  31:07  
I like pyramids on paper. I don’t like them when you put lots of people under them, like true. But yeah, I mean, like having understanding the overview and getting to work with people, small teams, with specialists on board who love doing whatever their specialty is, oh, my God. Like, as someone who like loves the like setting up to strategic stuff. I tell you what, like, this is easily the most satisfying version of the work that I do that I’ve ever been a part of. Like, just being able to partner with people who I don’t have to explain, like all the details of what I want. And they just know, because they’ve been copywriting so long, or ever, like I got you I already pulled all of the assets that we’re going to need to figure out, you know, what’s our next step here, having people who are that detail oriented in their particular specialty, is just like the greatest thing in the whole world,

Meg Casebolt  32:02  
for me. And that’s a good reminder to people who want to stay generalists, which is if you have a specialty, you become much easier to work with, when I was just web design. And I was trying to do every I’ll do Squarespace and I’ll do WordPress and hey, this Kajabi things new, I’ll learn that so I can and then you can’t get good at anything. And when somebody asks you a question, you’re like, oh, but is there a plugin for that, because you’ve forgotten because you’ve been spending so much time on this new thing. But then once I got into SEO, and then specifically, like, certain types of SEO, that changed everything for me, as a as a creator, as a leader, it changed everything for me. And then it also made it so much easier to message to my clients and to hire the right people. I mean, just getting specific, and then having other specialists that you are able to collaborate with, like you don’t have to know everything. And as a strategist, you’re then going to your team and being like, here’s what I’m thinking, tell me what you know, because the you are the specialists,

Dusti Arab  33:03  
which is the best way to hire to like I 100%. Like, that’s so hiring is definitely a piece of what people usually bring me on to do, because usually if they need marketing help, they like they probably tried to hire like individual specialists to like, kind of fix the problem. But your specialist isn’t always like capable of doing the stret the strategy for like the for the bigger thing. And a lot of times I’ll end up coming in and hiring someone like you, because I’m like, oh, there’s this huge hole in their SEO. Like, we got to fix that. I have no idea how to fix that. But I know Meg does.

Meg Casebolt  33:45  
Right. And that’s where those referral and partnership relationships become so freakin important where I don’t You don’t have to, like, go on a Facebook group and be like, who knows somebody who does this because even though we hadn’t spoken at that point, it was just like, well, I know that this person does. And I’ve seen this person referred enough times and like, I just I just feel like people make things so much harder than it needs to be dusty.

Dusti Arab  34:07  
Yeah, you are. You should write a book about that mag.

Meg Casebolt  34:11  
Oh my gosh, I should thank you for this wonderful idea. I’ll just rant about everything that I’ll just you know, I’ll just take the transcript from this and just slap it right into chapter three. It’s fine right now.

Dusti Arab  34:24  
Perfect. It’s called repurposing. Hello.

Meg Casebolt  34:29  
Any final thoughts about I mean anything that we talked about here?

Dusti Arab  34:34  
Oh, man, I guess I guess like

Meg Casebolt  34:39  
any soap boxes that you want to leave on top of because I’m here for it.

Dusti Arab  34:45  
Oh my god, I have a newborn. I’m too tired to rant man. That’s um, but I would say that like, just it really doesn’t have to be so hard. Like even at the beginning of Your entrepreneurship journey if your earlier stage, if something feels excessively hard, like, ask why, like ask why first of all, do you need to be doing that thing? Because the answer is 90% of the time gonna be no. You know, is it something that you can get some help with, go make friends, like, go make friends who are early stage and grow with them like that. I mean, that, for me has probably been the most satisfying part of entrepreneurship in general is like, I mean, Hillary and I have been friends now for 15 years. Like something like that. 15 I didn’t realize the two of you went that far back. Wow. Because we were both baby copywriters. And like, our voices were similar enough back in the day that like, we were interchangeable, like, and people would like we’d refer work back and forth, like, but we were both like, 22 when we got started. I mean, we were babies, God help all of us. But like the internet was a baby at that point, too. So you just came up with the Internet. Right? I still call myself a blogger back then, good lord. But like, I mean, now Hillary, and I hold the events together, like being willing to just meet everybody and talk to everybody and find your people so that you can have your own little Dunbar’s situation like that is so worth it. So worth it every time. Like I would get on a coffee chat for 20 minutes with anybody still, like, Well, maybe not right now. But you should, in any other time when I’m not on mat leave, like I’m good for, you know, a 20 minute conversation, because I think that everybody has something to teach me.

Meg Casebolt  36:35  
Yes, more than once. I’ve been in a call with you. And you’ve been like, ah, kid just had a blowout. I’ll be back in 10 minutes. And when you work with other people who have been through the same thing, you’re like, oh, god bless. Take your time. Yep. I had a friend who called this like, this is the entrepreneurial bonfire. Like we’re all just coming and going from this bonfire. And sometimes you’re there roasting marshmallows with people and you know, you things don’t come right away. But you just go to the bonfire, you crack open a beer, you make friends, and at some point, it’ll probably lead to business. But like, that’s not the intention. The goal is to go have fun, meet cool shit people and like, realize you have a lot in common. And then when it makes sense, you bring people into your world. Yep. Doesn’t have to be that hard.

Dusti Arab  37:21  
It doesn’t have to be that hard.

Meg Casebolt  37:23  
Well, with that in mind, if people want to hire you for a VIP day to do their marketing strategy, they want to just connect with you online or hire you for marketing. You know, how do they get in touch with you best?

Dusti Arab  37:36  
Totally. So you can find my site and my scheduler link at the reinvention.co and I am extremely accessible on social media. Yes,

Meg Casebolt  37:45  
go watch her rants on Facebook because they’re awesome.

Dusti Arab  37:49  
Thanks, dusty. Thanks. Bye.

Meg Casebolt  37:53  
Thank you so much for listening to the social slowdown podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe or come on over to social slowdown.com and sign up for our email list so you never miss an episode. We’d also love if you could write a review to help other small business owners find the show you can head over to social slowdown.com/review Or grab that link in our show notes for easy access. We’ll be back soon with more tips to help you market your business without being beholden to social media Talk to you then.

Please forgive any typos or errors, as this transcript was automatically generated by Otter.ai