Here is the transcript of the audio file provided, formatted for readability with speaker identification.
Transcript: The Biz Communication Show Host: Bill Lampton Guest: Lorrie Thomas (Lorrie Thomas Ross)
Bill Lampton: Hi there, welcome to the Biz Communication Show. I’m your host, Bill Lampton, the Biz Communication Guy, hosting and outstanding business professional who will share with us tips and strategies that will boost your business communication. We’re now in our eighth year of broadcasting, podcasting The Biz Communication Show. And as is true with our past presentations, today we have an outstanding guest coming to us from the greater Atlanta metropolitan area, Lorrie Thomas.
Lorrie Thomas is a marketing strategist, speaker, and advisor who helps leaders rethink how they market, replacing stress, hype, and overwhelm with clarity, ethics, and success. I’d call that a pretty good trade. Lorrie is the founder of Web Marketing Therapy and creator of the Mark-eting Approach, a philosophy that blends marketing and education so leaders finally understand what works, why, and how to sustain it. Known as the marketing therapist for her candid, compassionate, human-first approach. Her thought leadership has been featured in Inc, Forbes, Success Magazine, Entrepreneur, and Fast Company.
Lorrie Thomas is a California native, now living and loving life in Georgia. Lorrie enjoys time offline with family, friends, and her rescue animals. Ideally outside and paired with a great meal and a fabulous glass of wine. That sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? Let’s welcome Lorrie Thomas to the Biz Communication Show. Hello, Lorrie.
Lorrie Thomas: Hello Bill. Hello everyone.
Bill Lampton: Great to be with you. It’s been a while since we’ve had conversations. We met, I remember, networking through I believe the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce, and I’ve had the privilege of hosting you here before. It’s great to do that again. To begin with, Lorrie, there are many of us, I’m sure, who have confusion or lack of clarity about the difference in the purposes and the activities of marketing and sales. And you’re the expert. So please explain to us the function of each and how they interrelate and maybe where the boundaries end.
Lorrie Thomas: The relationship between marketing sales is often confusing. And one of the easiest ways to distinguish the two is to understand first that they are related, yet the marketing piece comes first. Marketing is the invitation. It’s the connection piece. It’s the credibility. And sales is about conversion. And when marketing is done well, sales becomes a natural next step. It feels like something… you’re actually expediting the sales process. You want marketing to feel very ethical. When it’s ethically done, it’s more effective. And it’s about magnetism, not manipulation.
And I have built my entire career on helping amazing leaders and organizations break down the “ick, yuck, stress, overwhelm” of marketing and sales. And understand that just like sales and marketing are related, marketing is about maximizing relationships and bringing ideal audiences into your container so that ideal audiences are converting and ideally self-selecting. And when we look at marketing as magnetism and not manipulation, we’re also removing kind of the “shoulds” and the things that we’ve been taught. And often for leaders, it’s about unlearning. You know, there’s a lot of focus on the tactics and the tools and this and that. Where when we look at marketing as “how am I attracting ideal relationships” and “how do I serve and support as a way to sell,” versus pushing and promoting—which, fun fact, is still the academic definition if you look it up, you’ll see definitions for marketing to the tune of pushing and promoting products and services. And while that’s not incorrect, that’s just a sliver of what the whole marketing world is about.
I feel that when we’re aligned with our message and our mission, sales becomes soul-fulfilling, it becomes easy, it becomes fun. And it just is win-win-win. It’s win for your organization, it’s win for your team, it’s win for your audience.
Bill Lampton: One of the points that I’ve noticed time and again, and I know that as a professional you have as well, and that is that there are so many people who don’t recognize that we need those marketing steps before we do the sales. And one of the phrases I see often, especially on LinkedIn, is when someone refers to what they call a “pitch slap.” In that I pitch Lorrie to get connected with her on LinkedIn and next thing you know, she slapped with a sales pitch from me. And I’ve often thought, Lorrie, that why do people think that’s effective? And I like to compare it to this: that if I am walking down the street and a complete stranger comes up to me and says, “I’ve got just what you need.” And they haven’t analyzed me and they’ve done no explanation ahead of time—that is a pitch slap. I noticed one definition that you wrote: “The true meaning of marketing is maximizing relationships.” And that, I would guess, is why you would consider possibly networking so important as a part of our marketing?
Lorrie Thomas: Absolutely. And it’s… your analogy about walking up to someone on the street. I often say you don’t walk into a crowded bar or restaurant and say, “I’m single! Who wants to get married?” I mean people would be like, “Ah! Like, that’s creepy.” You have to date first before you get married. And the average, I believe the average touch point today to make a sale is around eight or nine touch points. And that could be a connection: “Lorrie Thomas, meet Dr. Bill Lampton.” When we start connecting and we might chat on LinkedIn or we might see each other at a networking event. We need to be in multiple places. We don’t just instantly click and purchase. And that’s often a misconception. It’s like, “Well I got clicks and people aren’t buying.” Well, yeah. They’re going to look at your site, they’re going to go away. Or they’re going to Google you, or they’re going to go to their meeting and talk to other people.
It’s a process. Relationships are a process. They don’t happen overnight. And it would be terrible if they did. And to your point, I love that term “pitch slap,” where I don’t know… to me, talk about starting a relationship on the wrong foot. If someone says, you know, “buy my thing, this is what you need,” and someone instantly buys it, I feel like that relationship is already off to the wrong foot because they don’t know each other. The trust is kind of like, “Ooh, they pushed me to buy this and I agreed.” I just see messy, mess, mess.
And why people do that? Because there’s a focus on tactics and not on truth and not on making a connection. And that’s not lazy, crazy, or bad, it happens all the time. We just need to understand that it’s not the tactics or the tools that help us be successful. It’s about being true and being authentic and providing value. We don’t just sell; we serve and support as a way to help support the sales process.
Bill Lampton: And relationships come first, don’t they?
Lorrie Thomas: Absolutely. Absolutely. And when you take in… customer service is often the most overlooked piece of the marketing puzzle. You know, you can do all the marketing in the world and get people into your business; you gotta take great care of those people. Our best clients, 99.99% of the time, are our existing clients. And those clients can be upsold—not in all industries, but in a lot—but they can also be referring sources of business. I think about all of the entrepreneurial groups that I’m connected with and I’ll say, if someone in a trusted circle says, “I need help with my communications,” I’m going to say, “I know Dr. Bill Lampton, I’ve personally worked with him. This is your person.” And that has expedited… instantly there’s credibility, there’s connection. And so yes, to your point, networking is absolutely a piece of that puzzle. And to that point, someone might Google after I say “Contact this person, I highly recommend him,” and people might look at your LinkedIn or look at your website or all of the above. So it is a sum of all parts. It’s holistic.
Bill Lampton: It reminds me of someone I knew probably almost three decades ago who wrote a book about promoting ourselves. And she said, “Just imagine for example that you go downtown and you’re walking by and here’s a restaurant. And as sometimes happens, somebody is standing outside and they’re wearing a big sign and the sign says ‘Eat at Joe’s.’ And you might be impressed by that until you find out it’s Joe carrying the sign.” So we need other people carrying our sign for us. And I came up… I’m not abrupt enough to do this often, but every now and then, once in a while, maybe I’m in the mood for it, somebody asked me to connect, let’s say on LinkedIn, and I accept. And within an hour, here comes a pitch. And I used a mixed analogy, but I think they get the point. I write back and I say, “You pitch me, you strike out.”
So the people who… and I’ve often wondered what is the percentage, and of course this goes along to the technical side too, where we’re flooded with emails, we’re flooded with texts from people we don’t know and they expect us to all of a sudden just be entranced by their product or their service.
Lorrie, switching topics, I noticed today that you have just reached the 20th anniversary of success as an entrepreneur. We have many viewers and listeners who are considering becoming entrepreneurs, either by their choice or because the job market has pushed them in that direction. And I know from your story, you started out with very meager resources. $2,500 is not enough to fund a business ordinarily.
Lorrie Thomas: Your memory is amazing, Bill.
Bill Lampton: So let’s have you give advice to those who are either new entrepreneurs or those who are considering becoming an entrepreneur. That can be some of the most valuable advice that you give us today. What are some of the do’s and don’ts that you offer?
Lorrie Thomas: I would say first and foremost, listen to your inner GPS or your intuition or whatever you want to call it. I knew in my soul that taking the solo path in 2005 was the right way for me to really share my magic with the world. I had a career in corporate sales and marketing. I was teaching for UC Santa Barbara and UC Berkeley. My students were mostly business owners, entrepreneurs, or marketing professionals. And in my courses where I was teaching week after week, these entrepreneurs, small businesses, marketing employees at corporations were moving like this. And week after week coming back sharing success stories. It was so aligned. Meanwhile, I’m in corporate moving at the speed of stop. Everything took 17 meetings, there was all these politics. It wasn’t aligned with… I’m an optimizer. I make things better. I like to grow and move on to what’s next. And I just had this moment of, I’m not going to help people unless I’m in a consulting role. And that’s where I’m going to move mountains.
And yeah, I still cannot believe that all these years we’ve known each other Bill that you remember that all I had in my bank account was $2,500. And that was for rent and everything living in Santa Barbara, California, which let me tell you, that wouldn’t get you very far. I wrote my resignation letter, I packed up my box at my corporate job, I came home to my dining room table and I put that little box on the table and I bawled my eyes out like ugly crying. And then I moved on. And everything I did… so number one, you know, listen to your inner GPS even if it doesn’t feel like… your brain can sometimes overanalyze it. I just knew in my heart it’s what I needed to do. And some of my best decisions have come from making those moves that may not make sense on paper.
The next thing is everything you do, do from truth. I talked earlier about tactics. Market from truth, not tactics. I went home and yes, I cried my eyes out. And then I also went into my little Hotmail account in 2005 and I wrote emails to my trusted contacts, people I used to work for, former vice presidents, colleagues. And I wrote an email that said something along the lines of, “I’ve left the confines of corporate hell and I’ve started my own consultancy and I help make small businesses big with the web,” I think was my tagline at the time. And I just talked about the work I did and I was honest. And it wasn’t fancy and it wasn’t pretty, but it was true. And so when you market from truth, not tactics, it is done… everything you do starts with integrity.
And my last piece of advice for budding entrepreneurs is to get okay with being an outlier. I say even to this day that I may not always… I may not be like the other kids sometimes, but that’s always been my strength. And from a marketing perspective, it is our distinction, our unique value that helps align with ideal audiences. My company name did not start off as Web Marketing Therapy. My clients who did not know each other repeatedly called me their therapist or their marketing therapist or said things like, “Lorrie, I’ve got to get on your therapy couch, I’ve got a marketing problem.” And I listened to these patterns. And I knew that in order for me to stand out in a sea of competitors that I needed to be clear as to what my distinction was. And it was about being taking the “ick, yuck, stress, overwhelm” out of marketing and having this therapeutic approach. And also being a little, you know, a little fun. And I will say that people that don’t think the name is fun or you know, they would prefer I have a more serious name like “Thomas Enterprises,” they’re not my ideal client. And so by being an outlier, you actually become repelling—and stay with me—when you repel non-ideal clients, you actually spend your time talking to the right prospective clients and it minimizes how you spend your time.
Because for entrepreneurs, many of us don’t factor in how much time it takes to do sales and marketing. You know, we think about operations and doing the act of doing what we’re going to do as entrepreneurs. We have to build in just the time cost, the energetic cost, and for some of us, the financial cost of marketing. And it’s, you know, it’s a sum of all parts. But yeah, 20 years later I did incorporate in December of 2005. Don’t incorporate at the end of the year… I paid taxes on a year I didn’t do any business in. But I did it all with passion and purpose and I still do that today. And, you know, nine employees later and being a seven figure business for, you know, a long time, it’s all worked out.
Bill Lampton: Those are wonderful kernels of advice. And the one that I would like to underscore is that first step of yours in letting influential leaders that you were acquainted with, that you had credibility with, letting them know your direction. Because yes, there are ways that we can get words around ourselves, but as we have already indicated, referrals from somebody else are absolutely vital. In fact, I think of Mark Twain, someone said to him one time, “Mark, you know I’m a self-made man.” And Mark Twain replied with his usual caustic wit, “Well then that relieves the Lord of a great responsibility.” We don’t do it alone. And entrepreneurs, we’ve already talked about networking and getting the word around and getting referrals. It’s not a solo act.
One thing that you and I need to talk about for a few minutes is the impact of something that has come along since you and I first met, since you published your book, since you started your business. And that’s artificial intelligence. We can’t give a course on that in the remaining few minutes, but we’ll get back to talking about that in just a few minutes.
(Advertisement Break: “Do you wish you felt confident about giving speeches? … Call the Biz Communication Guy today…”)
Bill Lampton: Lorrie, as I said, artificial intelligence has revolutionized the way businesses operate, and certainly entrepreneurs have to have a grasp on it to some degree at least. When you’re dealing with, let’s say, a new business or an individual client who has not had exposure to artificial intelligence, what do you try to teach them in the way of understanding and skills?
Lorrie Thomas: Just like any other technology, AI is a tool, it’s a resource. I use this analogy and I’m crediting my husband before I steal his phrase… he described it in a way that I feel is so simple and just so digestible. And that AI is like your virtual sparring partner. I think about my former days in sales and marketing at corporations where I could turn my office chair around and say to my co-worker, “Hey, I’m struggling with getting this line of copy to sound better” or “This just… this sentence doesn’t sound right” or “I’m trying to get this outline or gosh I need to do a recap” or “Someone just wrote me a really tricky, tough, sensitive email and I just need to get my ideas out and help write it.” There are so many things that AI can do. It does not replace your brain. It still requires humans to drive it. But it’s a great sparring partner to ideate with. The key is to be a critical thinker. And it’s about the prompts that you give AI. It’s about being a healthy skeptic. And if something just seems bogus… I mean I’ve said things to AI before like, “I don’t talk like a cheerleader, I’m irreverent, this does not sound like me” or “This sounds like a bunch of word fluff and words for the sake of words, this isn’t what I’m going for.” “Oh, okay, I understand.”
But it’s having this thought of like it’s your sparring partner and you can say things that maybe would offend your co-worker or boss, but in a way that’s highly constructive. And it’s a way to expedite marketing. It’s a way to help move things along faster. It’s… yeah, I cannot say enough about the power of AI. And I feel like as the CEO of a marketing agency, my team and I are just scratching the surface and we’re sharing things all the time. And it’s just truly exciting. I mean, I got into this wacky wild wonderful web world and web marketing world in 1999—and that’s a podcast for a whole other day. There was no Google when I started selling online advertising in 1999. You know, cut to my marketing positions, there was no Facebook, there was no social media. This was all… and so for me—and listeners can’t see how gray my hair is—but I have seen it all. I’ve seen the dot-com boom, the crash, the rise of social media, now the rise of AI. The only constant is change. And we need to stay curious. The most dangerous words are “I know that.” We don’t know it all. We need to stay curious. We need to be continually learning. And you know, this is part of the world that we’re in today.
Bill Lampton: My own experience with AI, I got into it fairly slowly because I really wasn’t aware of the great advantages. But you don’t have to be terribly sophisticated technically to use it. I think it’s quite useful. And one of the thoughts that has come to me often is: How would you like to be an encyclopedia salesman now? How would you like to be trying to sell all those books of different topics? I may remember wrong, but there were about 12 or so, and every parent was told “if you don’t buy this for your child or children, they are going to be way behind everybody else in learning.” We’ve come a long way. And you mentioned some of the changes. What I often think about is, and if so much has happened in the last 10 years, what kind of changes and adjustments will we need to make to stay on track during the next 10 years?
For me, AI has been great as a topic researcher. For example, I might ask, because I’m a speech coach, I might ask, “What are some famous sayings that people have made about the value of pausing in speeches?” And you know as I do, as soon as I type that into ChatGPT or Perplexity, the second I quit typing, here comes the answer. And of course it would be plagiarism to just copy and paste that and use it. I use it to get ideas and to sharpen my own content. But it is extremely valuable. And if any of our viewers and listeners are not into artificial intelligence and all that it can do to help you expand your business, help your marketing, help your sales, I encourage you to do that.
Lorrie, this has been as I expected, knowing you as I do, it has been enjoyable, it’s been informative, it’s been very beneficial. And I know that we have viewers and listeners who would like to get in touch with you. So please give us your contact information.
Lorrie Thomas: For sure. The best way to reach me is just to Google me, Lorrie Thomas. And LinkedIn is a wonderful way to connect with me. Just let me know you listened to the show and that we have Dr. Bill Lampton as our connection and I would love to have a conversation and stay connected.
Bill Lampton: I know for sure that many people will know how to contact you because I’m going to publicize our conversation—and I don’t call it an interview, I call it our conversation—I’m going to publicize it very widely. And now Lorrie that you’ve given your contact information, I would like to mention mine briefly. My YouTube channel, invite you to go there, Bill Lampton PhD is the title of my channel. There are over… nearly 700 instructional videos there now. I’ve been doing that since 2007. Don’t look at any of them that I did in 2007! But some of the recent ones I encourage you to look at, even a lot of YouTube Shorts. And hey, it’s the best word we know: it’s free. And then my website, because my tagline is “Biz Communication Guy,” my website is bizcommunicationguy.com. And just as I hope when you go to my YouTube you will subscribe there, on my website you can subscribe to my podcast. Give me a call please to discuss your communication challenges and opportunities. We can explore those at an initial no-cost conversation. Call me at 678-316-4300. And then before closing, I want to give credit to the co-producer of my program, Mike Stewart, based in Nashville. I’ve been relying on Mike’s marketing, technology, sales advice, and everything else since 1998 when we met at the Georgia chapter of the National Speakers Association. So note that you can catch his website, localinternetpresence.com.
Lorrie, again, thank you so much for being our guest on the Biz Communication Show. You’ve given so many gems of wisdom in business and communication. In 30 seconds or a minute or so, how would you like to pull together a thought that you would leave with our viewers and listeners?
Lorrie Thomas: I would say that if marketing feels icky, yucky, stressful, overwhelming, expensive, then you need to hit the pause button and take a marketing chill pill. It doesn’t need to be anything other than relaxed and enjoyable. And you can’t have marketing success in… what I want to leave everyone with is instead of thinking of marketing in the old school way—the pushy, promot-y, focused on sales—instead let’s think about this concept that I trademarked called “Mark-eting.” That’s M-A-R-K, hyphen, E-D, I-N-G. It’s a mashup of the words “marketing” and “education.” And if we think instead about education first—what do I need to help my audience understand? What are things that they need to know about me, whether it’s my about page or describing my products or services or information on my blog or social media posts that are of service and have value and substance—that will instantly start to help change and refine the way that you make decisions, what to prioritize, what decisions to make. It’s not about spending time and money on marketing, it’s about investing so that you’re continually putting things out there that have a long term impact.
So think about education first and this concept of “Mark-eting.” You can take that back to your organizations and it’s ethical, it’s effective, and dare I say, fun. Yes, marketing can be fun.
Bill Lampton: And no pitch slap.
Lorrie Thomas: And no pitch slap. Be nice. Respect is reciprocal, y’all. It’s, you know, be nice. And yes, education is one of those easy north stars of, “Oh, whoa. I was about to say yes to this pitch slap that someone hit me with when… whoa, whoa, they’re actually not educating me on how they can help me. They’re pushing their services. They’re not talking to me about solutions.” We need to be critical thinkers. So education out, but education in as leaders. And while I have the floor, Bill, I want to say a huge thank you. I was going through just in getting prepared for our time today and I reflected back to when I was first connected with you. My book had just come out and I want to say it was 2010 or 2011. McGraw Hill, the publisher, actually sent me a video testimonial you did. And I was touched and moved and you are the true brilliant business communicator. I feel like your summary and your recap of my book was probably better than my book. And it was so succinct and all the right nuggets. And I remember reaching out to you and thanking you. And when I moved from California to Georgia, you were such an ally and you are just a gem. And working with you and I am a better communicator because of you and I’m just grateful to know you. So thank you.
Bill Lampton: Thank you so much. I appreciate that. And in fact, I looked at your book on Amazon today and saw my video review there. And of course I gave you top review, as you should. I appreciate your words. I’ve welcomed what I learned from you and what I continue to learn from you and the opportunity to host you again. This is not the last time. So keep your calendar handy and we’ll do that again. Lorrie, thank you so much for your expertise which you shared with us today.
Thanks to those of you who viewed the Biz Communication Show or listened to the Biz Communication Show today. We invite you to be with us again next week for an outstanding conversation with someone who can give you and me vital biz communication tips.
