
EP. 43 Tech Stacks, Content Creation, and other Curiosities with Ecamm’s Katie Fawkes
July 9, 2024
Ep. 45: The Dark Side of Online Summits: What No One Tells You (And What to do Instead)
July 23, 2024Episode 44
Start-up Success Strategies: Anne Laffin's Marketing Advice for Start-ups and Founders

Have you ever wondered how to effectively use email marketing and paid ads without blowing your budget? In this episode, we break down the strategies that work!
I sit down with problem solver, strategist, and content creator Anne Laffin. Together, we dive into the world of start-ups and marketing, exploring essential strategies and practical knowledge for entrepreneurs seeking to flourish in their ventures.
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Connect with Anne on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alaffin/
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Connect with Jennie:
Website: https://jenniewright.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jennielwright/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniewrightjlw/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjGQCVDgaOGsxrqq-w0Osmw
Want to grow your email list or launch your next product to a ready list of leads? Let’s talk
On This Week’s Episode:
- Email Marketing and Paid Ads Strategies: We talk about the importance of collecting email addresses even without a lead magnet, emphasizing the need for a good objective and call to action when using paid ads.
- Ad Budgets and Data Monitoring: We explore the significance of being cautious with ad budgets and having clear objectives, and how to reevaluate strategies in response to declining ROI from running LSA ads.
- Delegating Control and Scaling the Business: We delve into common mistakes of founders struggling to delegate control, and discuss the necessity of scaling by hiring the right people and relinquishing control.
- Transitioning to a Scalable Business Model: Anne shares insights on finding a way to trade less time for money, the challenges involved, and the importance of highlighting the founder’s story for early-stage companies.
- AI in Marketing: We discuss understanding AI as a tool, not a replacement, in marketing efforts, and caution about over-reliance on AI for content creation and its future impact on marketing.
- Scalability and Ideal Clients: We cover making a business more scalable, finding the right fit clients, and highlighting the importance of working with people seeking to make a positive impact.
- Marketing Strategies for Start-ups: We emphasize the crucial role of marketing for start-ups, building a foundation with limited resources, and the impact of messaging, ideal customer targeting, and partnerships.
- Flexibility and New Ideas: We talk about the challenge of convincing founders to embrace new ideas and offer advice for startups to focus on creating their own content and using social media and email marketing.

Jennie Wright
Lead generation and online summit queen, the host of the Aquire podcast
Jennie Wright [00:00:02]:
Everybody. Welcome to the Acquire podcast. I’m Jenny Wright, and I’m so glad that you’re here. The Acquire podcast is brought to you by the The Phonic Podcast Network, and this is the podcast that delves deep into the world of list building and online events. It’s completely designed to empower entrepreneurs and marketers with the knowledge and strategies that they need to master these essential business growth tactics, And I’m really excited. We have Anne Laffin here today. Anne, I’m so glad you’re here. Thank you so much for coming.
Anne Laffin [00:00:29]:
Thank you so much for having me. Excited to be here.
Jennie Wright [00:00:32]:
Absolutely. And you are a problem solver, a strategist, a content creator, extraordinaire. And from everything that I’ve been reading about you, your passion lies in bringing founders’ ideas to life and witnessing start ups flourish. With over 20 years of marketing experience across diverse industries like marketing research, tech, Financial services and even animal health, you’ve been through it all. And your journey started as the 6th employee at a series a funded Fin a funded start up. I was gonna say Fintech, but that’s actually different. And it ignited your love for the start up world. Actually, I found that that was Probably the thing that ignited your idea for actually starting your own marketing agency, like your own consultancy agency.
Jennie Wright [00:01:14]:
And so you’re devoted to helping early stage Startups. Is that right?
Anne Laffin [00:01:19]:
That is 100% accurate. You nailed it.
Jennie Wright [00:01:21]:
Awesome. Awesome. So that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Marketing plays a big part of getting start ups out in the world. I mean, we we there’s a lot of other stuff, the financial side and all the money side of start ups. And but I wanna focus a little bit more on the marketing side. So let’s talk about that.
Anne Laffin [00:01:39]:
Love it. Let’s do it.
Jennie Wright [00:01:40]:
Alright. So talk to me a little bit about because I don’t know too too much in this space, But talk to me about what the marketing would look like in getting a start up. I can imagine it would be really difficult from the inception of an idea to getting people to Be interested in actually what it is or even get enough interest to warrant, like, a series a.
Anne Laffin [00:02:03]:
Yeah. I think in the beginning, a lot of it is I mean, not a lot of it is. You have to build a foundation for how you’re going to market. Okay. So not only to your point do we have to start to build interests, right? You have a product that’s literally unknown. You may not have a lot of resources to get the word out there, but You have to figure out how The, what do I stand for? What am I gonna say? And then given the limited resources I probably have, How am I actually going to spread the word? So you do have to be both very precise in where you choose to be while also being flexible. So I feel like those 2 things can be a little at odds with each other, but necessary. Limited resources and potentially resources that don’t work.
Anne Laffin [00:02:53]:
So it’s a it’s a lot of experimentation. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of experimentation.
Jennie Wright [00:02:58]:
I mean, that sounds like every marketing job I’ve ever done. It’s like it’s we have, like, limited resources. You know, some things may not work, some old tech, some new tech. Not everybody’s on the same page. By the way, we have really lofty goals. Can you get us there?
Anne Laffin [00:03:14]:
And we’re cutting your budget. Yeah.
Jennie Wright [00:03:16]:
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And we let we and we let 2 people go before you got here. So congrats.
Anne Laffin [00:03:22]:
Yep. Sounds good. Right?
Jennie Wright [00:03:24]:
Yeah. I mean, it sounds like an ideal situation now. But, so how do you do it? Like, how are you gonna get how do you get people’s interest on these new cool ideas because my guess is that the founders aren’t necessarily marketing people.
Anne Laffin [00:03:39]:
They’re usually not. The founders have the idea, right? That’s why The the founder. And it can be a little sticky at times to have to sell in marketing and why it’s important. But where I actually start with my founders is with messaging. For me, messaging is it is the literal foundation. It is the core of anything that we do. So before I pull together a plan, before I figure out what channels we’re gonna do or process or anything like that, what are we actually saying? And more importantly, why are we saying it? Because to me, that’s actually like the magic, the spark that’s coming from the founder. That’s the why, And that’s what people will attach themselves to.
Anne Laffin [00:04:23]:
So I start Wright, I answer simple questions. Why, how, who, And what? And we start there. Sounds very easy, but usually that’s not been written down on paper, usually not been agreed upon. And it’s actually far more difficult to answer than you would think.
Jennie Wright [00:04:42]:
Yeah. I can imagine it would be a little bit of a a can of worms sometimes because then that really opens The discussion Question is to who’s our ideal customer, client, or user? Right? Who you know, are we getting into the psychographics? How deep do we go in the demographics? Most people always say that their product is for everybody. Why does everybody do that?
Anne Laffin [00:05:03]:
I don’t know. Oh, I think it’s easier. Me too. I think it’s it’s just easier to say that than to have to really dig in to find out who’s using your product when we both know that at the end of the day, your marketing is gonna be far more effective. You actually have a true target audience Or audit maybe 1 or 2. Right? It might not be just 1. I think the Stanley mug stat is actually a great example of that if target audience Changing. Right? So,
Jennie Wright [00:05:35]:
I think kidding. I mean singer, sadly. Oh, you’re on it too? Oh my gosh. Okay. So the the Stanley mug trend, let’s let’s Let’s talk about that for a second because it is everywhere right now. And this is this is all about a company. Obviously, if you know Stanley Muggs, you you probably already know the story. Stanley Muggs is huge, mostly geared towards men.
Jennie Wright [00:05:54]:
They were finding that women were starting to use them. They started putting out colors, pastels, and things like The, mostly for women, and it is now yeah. Exactly. Nice, like, blue The. And now it’s a whole thing. And where do you think that’s gonna go? Like, why do you think it’s so in the news right now.
Anne Laffin [00:06:12]:
You know, from what I heard of the story, there was and I don’t know who the influencer was. The a Woman had a video of her using a a Stanley Cup. Clearly must have had a good audience. Right? Had a good message. Don’t know what that was, But that is sort of what launched the initial madness. So when Stanley got wind of it, that’s when I started to your point to create the additional colors and realized that their new audience was Really was women. I don’t know the exact age range here, but I think they went from something like 78,000,000 in sales to 750,000,000 in sales, I think for last year.
Jennie Wright [00:06:46]:
Yeah. Insane. And nuts.
Anne Laffin [00:06:49]:
And nuts. And I I read something today actually about how they, I think just did some partnerships with, I wanna say, Wright Starbucks and Target. So where they go from here? Woof. I mean, you know, I don’t know if this will be if there’ll be lasting power here, but I think it’s a great example of being flexible And understanding that the audience you think you might have may not be the only one or may not be the one. Right? In this case, there was a huge market in Women ages, what, 25? I don’t know. 22 to 45. I don’t know. You know? So, it’s a good lesson for marketers and for companies.
Jennie Wright [00:07:26]:
It is. It’s a massive lesson, but also, like, Influencers jumping on a trend that you’re seeing happening, having that flexibility, and also not being so, rigid, stuck in your, you know, your own like, branding. We only deal with, you know, Jennie who work in construction or go to like gyms and stuff. And having that flexibility. I think that’s important. Have you ever been into a startup that you’ve been working with where the The founders or the, you know, the the c suite are just not movable in an idea that you know will actually make sense and help them along the way. Like, What was that experience like, and how do you change somebody’s mind?
Anne Laffin [00:08:09]:
Wiehler That’s
Jennie Wright [00:08:10]:
a big deep breath.
Anne Laffin [00:08:11]:
It is a big deep breath because I’ve had this happen multiple times, to be honest with you. Even with even with founders where they’re usually flexible And are and are open to ideas because that truly is the ideal founder for me. It doesn’t necessarily matter The, industry. It matters that they’re they’re open Wright to ideas and and brainstorming. So even The sometimes those founders are like, no, This isn’t for us. I don’t see the value. No way. And sometimes I’m able to sell that in even with that type of answer.
Anne Laffin [00:08:47]:
But often where I go what the process looks like there is I present the idea. Wright? I present what I feel are the benefits. I present, you know, yes, it’s an investment. Yes. Here’s what I think it will produce. To me, I feel like my job, particularly as a consultant, is to present the options. And at the end of the day, the founder still has to make that call of whether or not it works for the company. And, yes, I suppose, you know, my effectiveness at selling in The The option is is also, I guess, in question here, but it’s not always gonna work.
Anne Laffin [00:09:27]:
And I I have had to realize that, Sometimes that’s okay. I can’t like, not every idea is going to be accepted. And as frustrating as that is, some days to not have your idea that you think you know I
Jennie Wright [00:09:43]:
know, I know. But you can’t be married to it almost, right?
Anne Laffin [00:09:46]:
You can’t. You can’t.
Jennie Wright [00:09:47]:
No. You just can’t.
Anne Laffin [00:09:48]:
You gotta you gotta move on.
Jennie Wright [00:09:50]:
Yeah. Absolutely. Because they’re I mean, you can’t have any and then the thing is you can’t have any ego about it. Right? So we know as marketers and as consultants that we have the expertise and stuff like that. We run into people who are like, no, not for me or I’m too like, Some of it’s fear based. Some of it’s experiential based, and we can only say what we can say. And if they, you know, they decide to do it, great. If they don’t, I mean, I had this I had this happen to me with a client that I was working with, and they were in the startup stage, And he was like, I only want to work with women.
Jennie Wright [00:10:24]:
I only want to do this. And I’m like, have you ever worked with women before? He’s like, no. Okay, cool. Why wouldn’t you wanna work with men and women, and why wouldn’t you wanna work in this space because this seems more aligned? He’s like, no. No. No. I only wanna do this. And about, 16 months later, he re The this person reached back out, and he’s like, I think I should go the route that you mentioned.
Jennie Wright [00:10:45]:
What can we do to make that happen? And I’m like, K. Here we go. Right? Okay. Because 16 months, it it just didn’t work. You know? And, there was validation in that, I’m sure, and you’ve probably had that happen to you too.
Anne Laffin [00:10:58]:
It’s funny sometimes, though. Like, that’s an interesting point to explore because it’s the idea of, I guess, like, Seeing is believing as opposed to going on recommendation. And I I get The. Right? Even as running my own business, sometimes I’m like, I don’t know. And I just need to try it first. And that’s tough because you know The the one of the advantages of being a consultant is having that Kind of, removed layer. You’re not totally embedded in the business so you can be objective about what you’re recommending and why you’re recommending it. And you also likely have perspective across different businesses that your founder you’re working with doesn’t have or may not have.
Jennie Wright [00:11:40]:
Yeah.
Anne Laffin [00:11:41]:
And so I think that’s why Sometimes it is so frustrating when a piece of really sound advice isn’t, listened to. Mhmm. But it is Validating to know, you know, sometimes that when they come back around, it was like, good. Okay. Now we’re on the same page. Now we can make magic.
Jennie Wright [00:11:59]:
Exactly. And if you run into a startup, like like, if you could give some advice to people who are possibly in that startup stage now, And and start up doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to be running something from Silicon Valley. Doesn’t mean that you have to be doing something in tech. A lot of people are starting up in their own businesses that would be really relatable, and they don’t have a lot of funds. What would you suggest as a really great way to get started in the marketing of your potential idea or your business when you have that limited space, that limited runway in the beginning.
Anne Laffin [00:12:31]:
It’s a good time to focus on the content you own. So things that your website and you can make a website pretty So even with limited funds, you can still get a landing page, even a 1 page landing page together so that you have a credible spot you could drive traffic to. Even if you’re not a great writer, you can probably throw together some content and or utilize a service like Fiverr or Upwork to get some content written a consultant, Wright? Something like The. To get some blog posts, maybe pulled together, something that can drive some organic traffic And social media. So, I mean, these are not this is not a rocket science plan here, but it’s a good way to kind of get you on the map initially. That Doesn’t you know, I mean, it’s there’s really no cost associated with social media. Not I mean, you can’t you can make it costly if you have ads, but you can get on there for free. Sure.
Anne Laffin [00:13:26]:
You know? And so there’s it’s it’s a good time when you’re strapped for funds and starting up to focus on your organic, the content that you own. And, you know, from there, if that starts working, the next place I would look at would actually be email. So if you have a website, you can drive traffic to, you know, where are you driving I’m from, how are they getting there? If they’re coming from social, maybe they’re coming from The, coming from word-of-mouth. Hopefully you’re collecting some email addresses. You can also you own your email list. Again, you can email pretty inexpensively, so that would be the next thing I would look at.
Jennie Wright [00:14:00]:
I’m so on board with all of that. I’m such a pusher for having email and getting email addresses as soon as you can. Even if you don’t know, we’re like, even if you don’t have a lead magnet, Just saying, like, hey, enter your name and email and just be part of my newsletter. Wright? Even that is is good enough if you have nothing to do in, like, in terms of a trade. But, I was gonna ask you. You mentioned you mentioned ads, and it sparked sparked an idea in my head, and I wanted to kinda go deeper on that. What are your thoughts In the early stages or even, when we’re starting to get a little bit of traction on things like Google Ads, LSA ads, Facebook ads and so on. What do you think about using those as a tool?
Anne Laffin [00:14:45]:
I think I mean, I like paid ads, right? It can definitely be a great way to build awareness and also potentially drive in some leads. I think you need to be careful because there can be a runaway budget. And again, like The the companies I work with, don’t necessarily have a The of money to spend. So I think it’s important just to have a good objective in mind of what are we trying to accomplish here. How do The, like, how will we know if we’re being successful?
Jennie Wright [00:15:13]:
Mhmm.
Anne Laffin [00:15:15]:
And to have kind of like a laser focus initial call to action. So I have a client right now where we haven’t been running paid ads for a long time for various reasons, and we’re just about to get back in. And I’m excited because it’s little I think it’s been a year and a half since we’ve been, running ads. Oh, that’s a big break. Very big break. But now we’ve got a new landing page. We have a different focus for where And why we’re driving people to the ads and what we want them to do. And I’m excited to test that because I’m really hoping that this is going to resonate with our audience.
Anne Laffin [00:15:55]:
It’s a it’s a hypothesis. Right? I won’t know until we run it. But either way, this time around, I guess, I guess my answer to your question is, I’m excited. I think ads are great. I do think you need to be mindful of budget and mindful of watching the data here to see, like, you know, I would hate to say I’m 8 months in and be like, well, this wasn’t effective. I wasted a lot of money. You know, like, I think you need to be on top of what’s happening. So
Jennie Wright [00:16:19]:
Yep. I completely agree. I’m, I’ve been looking at sort of the historical data of a company who’s been running LSA ads for a while. Like, for 3 years, they’ve been running LSA ads. And the 1st year, they actually got quite a few Clients, because this was an LSA to actually close a client. And so they did actually close a good number. I think it was, Gosh. I think the percentage was, like, 5.25 of all of the costs with the r on their ROI, and they actually did make money off of it.
Jennie Wright [00:16:52]:
So if they spent, I don’t know, Forty grand on LSA. They obviously they did 5.25 on that, so that was really good ROI. The following year, that was cut down to, like, 2.25, so that was like half the size. And then last year, that was like it was like 0.02. Yeah. So the client’s like, do we continue with LSA? And LSA is always good. We can have like, this is a completely different podcast potentially, but it’s like LSA is really good for brand affinity, brand recognition, and that kind of thing. But if your numbers are dropping that low and you’re not getting a good ROI, do you continue them? So it’s a really interesting conversation.
Jennie Wright [00:17:34]:
Have you ever run into anything like that where it’s like, Do we do we continue because it’s giving us brand recognition, or do we turn it off because we’re not getting a distinct ROI, like closing an actual client?
Anne Laffin [00:17:48]:
So, I mean, that’s with this example I was kinda talking about before. Yeah. That is sort of the experience that we were having. We had actually we had been steadily increasing our budget to see if that was helping increase conversion rates, if that would Get us more exposure, and it just seemed like we were dumping more and more money in. And, actually, the numbers were kind of going in the opposite direction. So we stopped altogether, Realizing that maybe we weren’t really sure to be perfectly honest with you what was happening, whether or not it was the ads, whether it was the landing page, Whether it what you know, like, we’re algorithm maybe yeah. Or no. It’s, like, hands up.
Anne Laffin [00:18:27]:
Just yeah. A little I hate to I hate to do that, but, you know, we we rather we wanted to stop and kind of reevaluate what we had As opposed to just continuing dumping money into something we just knew was not giving us what we were looking for. And maybe that’s not the channel for us is is The kind of the conclusion we came to at the time now mind you, we’re just going back into it with a different set of objectives. We’ll see if the outcome is different. But I think and
Jennie Wright [00:18:54]:
I think that’s really, really smart because it may not be it may not be the landing page, but in my experience, it usually is the landing page or the copy. Let’s just I mean,
Anne Laffin [00:19:04]:
Usually Yeah.
Jennie Wright [00:19:06]:
Yeah. Every time I get into these, I’m like, okay, let’s start from the landing page. What’s our conversion rate? Oh, your conversion rate’s 1.22 on a landing page. I think we need to review. Like, let’s take a look at that first and so on and so forth. If you’re looking at, in all of your experience doing this And being a consultant that works with start ups, what is the biggest mistake that you see founders do on a regular basis that you can almost Set your clock to catch and potentially change.
Anne Laffin [00:19:42]:
Truthfully, what I see the most, it’s the lack of being able to let go of control And hand the reins off to their team. And I say that with love because I get it too. Right? Like, also also, it’s just me. I’m also a founder, but I have worked I’ve worked with consultants too on my own business. And sometimes it’s hard to be like, yes. Just it’s fine. Go do it. And but it causes problems when you start to have a 20 person business, The 30 person business, like you’re not really you’re Small, but you’re not tiny, tiny anymore.
Anne Laffin [00:20:19]:
And when a founder needs to still be involved in everything rather than letting their team do the job they were hired for. It really can gum up the works for lack of a better term. And, while I fully get that that’s scary, it it the outcome of not letting go might be scarier.
Jennie Wright [00:20:43]:
Completely. It happens so often. And if you and I think that if you want to get over that Hump. Like, there there is The is a hump to scale The scale of the like like, it’s it’s really a scalability hump of if you really wanna get to that next level and to the next level, you’re always gonna be either growing the size of your team, changing who your direct reports are, giving away control, also hiring the right people, right, which is always going to help, but giving away that control so that other people are actually doing the job. This is when you look at having somebody who’s gonna be doing You’re copywriting or you have somebody that comes in and does your marketing, who does your SEO, and so on. Because you in the beginning, we wear all the hats. Yep. And there’s usually I mean, I think I made a list once.
Jennie Wright [00:21:29]:
There was about 33 hats that I wore in the beginning. 33. Right? And I’m really good at wearing 33 hats 10 years ago. Yeah. But, You know, 10, 12 years in now, I don’t wanna wear 33 hats. I might wanna wear 3 or 4
Anne Laffin [00:21:47]:
hats. Yeah. And I
Jennie Wright [00:21:49]:
want The rest of it. It’s exhausting, and it doesn’t allow you to grow because you’re so, my partner calls it being in the weeds. Mhmm. You’re so in the weeds of your own business that you can’t be the visionary and the founder that you actually wanted to be, and you can grow to hate your business.
Anne Laffin [00:22:06]:
Yeah. Right. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. A 100%. It and that makes me so sad because, again, like The Spark that magic that usually comes with the The. You want that out there.
Anne Laffin [00:22:17]:
They need to drive that. And instead, if they’re making postcards, I’m like, Don’t stop doing that. Please don’t do that.
Jennie Wright [00:22:25]:
Absolutely. Please don’t sit and play in Canva. No. No. No. Please
Anne Laffin [00:22:28]:
stop. I know it’s fun, but you’re making me insane. Yes.
Jennie Wright [00:22:31]:
You’re you’re driving me to the limit of my ability to smile while I talk to you. Yeah. You know what I’m talking about.
Anne Laffin [00:22:39]:
Oh, yeah. I do.
Jennie Wright [00:22:42]:
Oh my god. We’re killing ourselves over here laughing, which is good. I mean, these are good conversations to have because, you know, we’re trying to be real. We’re trying to be open and talk about these things. Where do you see marketing going, Like, for the next 6 months or so, what do you see happening, or what what trends are you seeing that are, I don’t know, just catching your interest right now?
Anne Laffin [00:23:06]:
Wiehler mean, founder story has actually been I’m not sure that’s necessarily new new. But again, for early stage companies in particular, the founder being able to highlight that spark, that story, that Why they brought themselves into this crazy chaotic world to begin with is huge. I think it’s huge for, getting funding. It’s huge for growing that awareness and that kind of early attachment that you want customers to have. Like, they’re looking to The founder to drive that a bit. So I’ve been trying to focus more on getting the founder story out there and helping the founder have a voice. So I think that that is huge. I know everyone’s been thrown around AI and my thoughts here I mean, listen, ChatGPT has been a lot of fun.
Anne Laffin [00:23:56]:
AI is fun. I think Wright have seen it go and where I think I, I feel like the trend is going is that it’s just another tool. Right? It is not, It is not a replacement for I don’t think for, for much, but it is a great Ideator, idea starter, you know, like points you in the right direction for where you might need to go as a human being. So I think also maybe finding ways to incorporate that still, a trend.
Jennie Wright [00:24:27]:
I use it as a tool. I recommend that people use it as a tool and not a replacement. I don’t think it places copywriters. I don’t think it replaces you getting your own voice into your story. I don’t think it replaces any of that. It’s it’s fun. I even I even created a kid’s coloring book on chat g p t for Christmas. I mean, I didn’t know that was a thing, but apparently it was.
Jennie Wright [00:24:49]:
Yeah. You can create a coloring book. No joke. There was literally a, like, a Santa Claus chat. There was a there was a Santa Claus GPT, and you could ask it to create a coloring book, but we won’t go there. And Yeah. I mean, it’s a really it’s a really great tool, but, like, every good tool that comes along, everybody hypes it up for a Wiehler, And it kinda goes crazy, and people jump in, and it’s a great moneymaker for people, and it’s a great content driver for people because it’s, you know, Current topic and things. And then just like everything else, it will die down or quiet down until the next big thing Pops into our world, whatever that’s gonna be.
Anne Laffin [00:25:25]:
Yeah.
Jennie Wright [00:25:26]:
Right? Yeah. So, you know, it was Clubhouse during the pandemic. That was, like, the craze. You know? And I think, and then I think Instagram thought that threads was gonna be it, and Wright wasn’t. I mean, that didn’t go well. And and, you know, I mean, not did not go And then chat g p t, obviously, that’s been huge in all the different things. And, like, you know, Google Google’s coming and Google’s got their own, and everybody’s got their own GPT or or AI. Yep.
Jennie Wright [00:25:57]:
But I really think it’s gonna chill out and become that that really interesting tool like you’re talking about. Yeah.
Anne Laffin [00:26:05]:
I mean, Jason, I’m I’m happy it’s here, and I’m happy it’s here as a resource. And I’m happy I understand that better now The I did 6 months ago where initially I was really nervous, and I’m like, no. Not so nervous. Now it’s more like I just gotta learn what works best for me and my clients.
Jennie Wright [00:26:21]:
Yes. With the cautionary tale of Everybody who is watching and listening and reading anything that’s been created by AI can now distinguish AI usually, like, on the written side. And so if you’re using it constantly, people will actually be able to potentially tell. Right? Yeah. And and you can tell that the the voice is a little bit different and things like that, so there’s something to watch out for. I I always tell my clients, like, do not rely on this thing to completely write your blog posts or or your social media content. It’s just not it’s not gonna do it. Yeah.
Jennie Wright [00:26:55]:
Yeah. Yeah. So all The companies that got rid of their social media people and their content writers are most likely We bringing those people back.
Anne Laffin [00:27:02]:
Yep. Yikes.
Jennie Wright [00:27:03]:
You’re gonna have to. Yikes. Awesome. Oh my goodness. Okay. We’re having a really good time. There’s a couple more question there’s a couple more things that I kinda wanna, like, talk about before we wrap up. So Yeah.
Jennie Wright [00:27:15]:
You have this really cool sort of, background. You’ve been working with so many startups. You actually have your own agency, which is awesome, and you help people and things like that. Where do you wanna take your own work? Like, how do you as a founder yourself, what’s the next stage for you?
Anne Laffin [00:27:31]:
I think for me, I still struggle with the idea of I feel like I don’t hopefully, it doesn’t sound out of, like, it’s The idea of trading time for money. There’s only so many hours in a day, and I wanna be able to help people The really that is literally why I started Started on my own company, went out on my own. But I also need to figure out how to make my own business scalable. I don’t necessarily wanna hire employees. Mhmm. Maybe, you know, I I’m very open and have freelancers that I work with. So finding ways to either kind of package up some of my offerings. So, like, I’m working on an email course right now that’s coming out hopefully early February.
Anne Laffin [00:28:12]:
So So things like that, incorporating more of those things into my business Mhmm. Is definitely on the list of things to do. Other than that, I don’t know. I think for me, it’s still finding the right fit clients, but you’re just clients that are open And, looking to make the world a better place. And I every time I say it, I feel like people probably cringe or like, but That really matters to me is that I work with people that are trying to to leave the world better than they found it. So
Jennie Wright [00:28:42]:
It it does sound contrived a little bit because we hear
Anne Laffin [00:28:45]:
it all the time. However I know. I know.
Jennie Wright [00:28:47]:
Like, it is the right thing to say slash do, which I think is important as well. And and for you in terms of, like, the scaling side, yeah, that everybody needs to find that thing that they can trade less time for money. I don’t wanna work 16 hour days anymore, so I don’t. But I have products and services and things that don’t need me in them to be able to generate income, which is great. Getting to that point and making sure you have those things is a challenge because you still have to keep doing the dollars for, like, the the hours for dollars thing, but you’re still and then you’re building this thing on the The. You’re actually working harder until you can get it out, which seems counterintuitive, but it’s a payoff down the road. So there’s, you know, I mean, It’s true. And that was really it’s really something when you go from being a consultant and working on people’s businesses to providing information where they can work on them themselves, And you’re getting paid for your knowledge that can be, like, rinse and repeat it.
Jennie Wright [00:29:50]:
Snead. I I love that. I love it too. We’re having a good time talking about it. Okay. So we should wrap this up. I don’t want to, but you can just keep going, but this is you know, we We only have so much time. We’ll probably have to have you come back and talk about a totally different topic.
Jennie Wright [00:30:04]:
But before we do good. With you, learn more about you and your own business. You can
Anne Laffin [00:30:12]:
find me, on the web at finmarketingm.com or on LinkedIn, Ann Lathan. I would love to connect with whoever wants to chat with me. So those are 2 places.
Jennie Wright [00:30:24]:
Absolutely. Awesome. Thank you so much for doing this. Really, really appreciate your time. Got it. I think this has been, like, so much fun talking about start ups and founder conversations and where things are going. And, hopefully I hope everybody goes and checks out what you’ve got going on. Good luck with your course.
Jennie Wright [00:30:39]:
Hopefully, that’ll be up on the website. People can go and check that out as well.
Anne Laffin [00:30:44]:
Yep. Awesome. Thank you so much.
Jennie Wright [00:30:45]:
Thank you so much. And the acquire podcast is produced and edited by Jason Wheeler. And if you found this episode to be valuable, please don’t forget to Subscribe, rate, leave me a review, whatever you wanna do and wherever you listen to your podcasts. Thanks so much for being part of my growing community, and consider joining my Facebook group. We’re excited to keep delivering content that empowers entrepreneurs and marketers with list building, lead generation, and launches. And the Acquire podcast is brought to you by the Audphonic Podcast Network.