Betsy Muse  0:03  

Imagine enjoying coffee or cocktails as you sit around with friends, talking with top marketers and inspiring entrepreneurs about the challenges and joys of business and life. That’s what we do each week on the Yes, but however podcast, when we’re not interrupting each other. 

Molly McBeath  0:23  

drive me insane.

Kathleen Fealy  0:24  

I may try the video announcement that this is being recorded because I gotta tell you that one feels like when you’re on the plane and the pilot starts to talk to you all sudden and get blown out.

Betsy Muse  0:36  

My hair looks better than it is. And that’s really important for a Podcast

Molly McBeath  0:46   I’m why we’re checking the important stuff. Kathy’s checking the tech. Betsy’s checking her hair.

Kathleen Fealy  1:04  

Hi, and welcome to Yes But Howevers first episode where we have three seasoned marketers talking about life, marketing, business. And so our first episode, we’re going to try to let you know a little bit more about us. And when we got started with this podcast, and so I’m gonna throw it to Molly.

Molly McBeath  1:23  

Okay, so I’ll introduce myself first I guess my name is Molly Macbeth. I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, and I am a technical content copywriter, which means that I work on very highly technical very dense material. So my something larger why I do what I do is for a couple of different reasons. But the main one is really, to be honest, is because I am dyslexic, and mildly dyslexic not severely. But it’s unusual to have a dislike, a dyslexic technical writer, it is certainly something that has affected my life quite greatly and I have lived a life where I was been very frustrated with how well people, explain things, and how accurate, how precise they are. And so that became something that I was really interested in making sure that other people did not feel as frustrated about really important things. So I started working in technical writing. And that’s really important to me because I work for clients who work on cleaning up the environment they work on creating clean energy well paying jobs well paying jobs in clean energy I mean, and they work on supporting patients who are struggling with addiction, they work with retirees to make sure they’re not being that they’re not giving their money to fraudulent agencies, so making sure that those companies those innovators that I work with are able to extend their reach and amplify their message and draw their customers to their business is really important too. So that is how I ended up as a technical content copyright. That’s where I came from. How about you, Betsy.

Betsy Muse  3:09  

I’m Betsy Muse, and I’m the founder of Women-Led Summits and Rocket Fuel Strategy. I am a conversion copywriter, and a lead gen strategist. I started doing what I do now, because I was tired of what I did before. I was a political copywriter. Worked in politics for decades, and it’s a very, very tiring work, because you don’t work for people that you aren’t passionate about seeing them win their race, and it’s easy to get very tied up emotionally in that work. And while I’m tied up emotionally in this work it’s very different. And when I first started I worked mostly with women. I like to work with small businesses that need that extra boost in marketing, and to get their name out there. I love to see people succeed. That’s why I do what I do.

Kathy, how about you?

Kathleen Fealy  4:05  

Okay, well it’s an introduction I’m Kathy Fealy with KF Multimedia. I’m a website strategist which basically means I can look at everything very holistically, as far as your website and your marketing, um, I have a background where I was one of the youngest video producer directors for corporations when they used to have television studios in those corporations, and I worked with a lot of the Fortune 500. I worked in graphics with the National Marketing Committee for a large accounting firm at one point, and basically discovered at that point that I really liked working for myself instead so started my own business and have probably been in business now for going on, 20 years which is just a little overwhelmingly surprising, especially since I’m only like 26 in my head.

Molly McBeath  4:56  

I’m 26 in my head. 

Kathleen Fealy  4:59  

Thank you, Molly.

So, I think I got involved in this because I knew I wanted to have my own business, but I really wanted to help companies, understand technology and how they could really get their vision out there, and also how like some probably just need to have a strategy which everybody always hears me talk about strategy, a lot but it’s because I guess probably because I have the background in video if you didn’t have everything laid out. It was really hard to have there’s always a phrase called garbage in, garbage out, you can’t fix it because people you say fix it in the post and you can’t always fix it in post. And it’s the same way I approach anything with digital marketing. You can adjust, but you really can’t fix it in the post so, um, I really love seeing companies like get that concept and start to like really see how they can grow and just, you know, run with the concepts of, you know, making a plan and then being able to watch it and learn from it and because sometimes things don’t work out as we all know in marketing you know you can hope that you’re going to get a certain result but it may not work, but you learn something, and that I also think is fun because marketing is changing all the time so that’s one of the reasons I love doing what I’m doing right now.

Molly McBeath  6:13  

Okay, I have another question for you, Kathy which is. This podcast was your idea.

Kathleen Fealy  6:19  

Yep guilty.

Molly McBeath  6:21  

So, I want. I want to hear where that came about, or how it came about

Kathleen Fealy  6:29  

It came about because of great conversations between all of us which for good or bad, you guys are all guilty parties in this now. So really it started as we work together in an accountability group. And we would bounce ideas off of each other to help us improve our business and we talked about life and we were talking about marketing and we were talking about starting businesses and how we did it and what we ran into with problems when I was like, we should share this because we also what people can’t tell yet probably from our conversations is all three of us have wickedly odd sense of humor. And then they show up is very much worth the conversation and listening. So it sort of became that idea because we would spend so much time laughing about things as well as learning from each other I thought it was a perfect idea

But what made you two sign on?

Molly McBeath  7:27  

I was thinking about it earlier. Yeah. So, one of the, I was totally flattered. First of all, but I also wanted to challenge. I kind of it’s fair to say that I wanted to challenge the industry. But I certainly wanted to challenge the other people about what marketing is what it can be what it should be used for what it should not be used for and just broaden that conversation with people who have had a lot of experience in business. I’m tired of listening to advice from people who’ve only been in business for a few years, and they just know that there’s a reason why our tagline includes that we’re seasoned they we’ve all been running our own businesses for decades. And so you’ve just done the rollercoasters up and down and the feast and famine. And COVID is new, but pretty much, I don’t know that you could surprise any of us really anymore. I feel like you don’t hear a lot of voices of from people who have a lot of experience. They just have a lot of opinions. And I’m interested in opinions that are tempered with experience

Kathleen Fealy  8:44  

I’ll also add that I like the fact, one of the things I make that I admired about you two, and that why wanted us to all three be on here is that we both are all three of us are strong women and tend to challenge each other. So, if somebody says something we don’t just let it go. If we think that someone is not holding you know their own or doing their best we challenge each other, and in a friendly manner. And that’s just making us better as well, and you often don’t see that so I think that that’s one of our strong points is that, you know, I’ve said things about myself or about my work and both of you have jumped in and said, Wait a minute. Let’s rethink this or whatever and that has been very helpful to me the business part. And I think in some ways we’re able to this podcast allows us to almost be the virtual accountability group for other people to they get a chance to hear us go back and forth. And, you know, not just hear what each other’s doing or what’s going on in life for the best advice but also to question it, and to sort of be like a weird little board of directors for each other. 

Betsy Muse  9:58  

I don’t know why you would call us weird. I do want to give a shout out to our accountability group, because that’s where we met. And we have a support group beyond ourselves, we are all women. But, that wasn’t by design, that’s just how it worked out. And so it’s wonderful. Because this is, this is one of the reasons why as Molly says we are you know we’ve been through the ups and downs we’ve experienced self employment for decades, so we we’ve been through tough times good times what have you. And it’s wonderful to have good clients. But it’s wonderful to have. I’ve done it alone for so long to find a group that cheers you on picks you up, put you in your place when you need it, that’s priceless. Absolutely priceless.

Molly McBeath  10:56  

I agree with Betsy. I have also I have worked for myself for over 20 years, because that’s a long time to be on your own, and there aren’t a lot of people that I can bounce ideas off of. And so I’ve had to try all kinds of crazy ideas and taken all sorts of jobs that probably never should have taken, and you learn a lot that way I failed many times I’ve flopped on my face and I’ve had some really painful experiences, and I would like to share those with other people because I don’t want them to have to go through the painful experiences if they don’t have to. And I want to support them, if they have have gone through or are going through the painful experiences to say, Yeah, it sucks sometimes if that’s what it’s like. And this is kind of how you can help pick yourself up and get through it.

Betsy Muse  11:50  

I like to think that we’re offering something different, maybe slightly different viewpoints than the total vacuum that exists in places like marketing Twitter, and the marketing groups on other social media platforms, because we don’t always agree, and with what they say and when, when something new comes out I know we we’ve talked about the social distancing that we’re all going through, and when something new comes out. There seems to be a chorus that goes up Oohing and ahhing over, you know, whether it’s a new ad or a new slogan or something like that, and we don’t. We sometimes take issue with that. And I like to think that we’re a place for people to get different ideas, so that they aren’t caught up in the chorus, that everyone else seems to join.

Molly McBeath  12:46  

Yeah, I can’t get behind virtue signaling in anything. Frankly, especially not in marketing, it’s so irritating. And it’s rampant. I came into to marketing through the side door I mean I really was heavily into just technical content for ages and was and never thought that I would do anything that was related to copywriting because I hated that aspect of it I mean that’s what I saw marketing was was just sketchy and sleazy and, and added no real value. And then a client of mine that I really liked and cared about asked me out of frustration. If I would rewrite his website because he’d already been to two agencies at that point, and nobody got their value proposition, and I had worked for him for years helping him, edit his reports, and so I knew his business really well. So I said, Well, okay, I’ve never done that but sure I can write. Take your website and rewrite it. And it was really fun and it was really rewarding to do because it was genuinely serving that his needs and getting the information that his clients needed, about how his service works. And it was just that that set me down this path of saying, oh, maybe there is a way in which marketing can be ethical and about people and for people 

Kathleen Fealy  14:15  

It’s interesting you say marketing be ethical, because, well, I have a background in SEO which of course sometimes people think that’s like the used car sales people of marketing, but it’s not, not if you do it the right way. But also, you are writing for his people and what they needed and wanted. And as we’ve all been trained basically to always think about who the person is who’s going to use the website, and from having the usability background that I have is also you always have to look at what their needs are, what their motivations are, and their wants, but also like in order to get from step, a to step, D. Is it a logical progression etc. I think if you always keep that in mind. You don’t end up. You get rid of any possibility of being sleazy unless your business is sleazy to begin with. So,

Molly McBeath  15:10  

You can’t fix that in post. 

Kathleen Fealy  15:12  

You can’t fix that in post. But it. I think it eliminates that part of marketing because if you’re going, and really caring about your customer or the person who you’re writing the website for. We always talk about the one reader, then that helps get rid of that, that level of people that try to turn marketing into something like the spin doctor marketers versus the true marketers. And I’m probably going to hear now from all the spin doctor marketers Please don’t. Because I just won’t listen.

Molly McBeath  15:47  

Don’t bother. We don’t care. I always thought it was very interesting though because it. Um, it was making me realize all the ways in which tech, all the things that technical writing and conversion copywriting have in common, which is, there’s in the Venn diagram of these things, there’s actually quite a bit of both need to be very logical, you need to be accurate and you can’t give people like the wrong information on what the guarantee is but also that the writing should be as much as possible, invisible, that if you’re being clever that needs to go because then you’re distracting the reader you’re taking the reader out of their train of thought. And that’s either not helpful for the conversion process for conversion copywriting or in in just technical content. You’re distracting them from them. Hopefully learning about something that’s really quite complicated then, and that they need to know for their job, for example, or for their health. So you don’t want to distract them by your key words. And I’ve never really thought about those two together. So thank you, Kathy 

Kathleen Fealy  17:04  

Love being of service. Anytime Molly. 

Molly McBeath  17:08  

Okay, what was your other question.

Kathleen Fealy  17:09  

My other question is we haven’t told anyone that’s listening, where any of us are located. And

Molly McBeath  17:16  

I did. 

Kathleen Fealy  17:17  

Did you tell them? I wasn’t paying attention to the phone sorry.

Molly McBeath  17:23  

I’m hurt and upset. Understood. 

Kathleen Fealy  17:25  

Yeah, sorry. 

Molly McBeath  17:27  

I live in St. Paul, Minnesota, 

Kathleen Fealy  17:30  

and Betsy.

Betsy Muse  17:31  

I’m in Monroe North Carolina.

Kathleen Fealy  17:34  

I’m now in Denver, Colorado. And we’ve all lived in different places throughout our lives so 

Molly McBeath  17:40  

absolutely

Betsy Muse  17:42  

not many. It’s here and it’s Ohio. That’s it.

Kathleen Fealy  17:48  

Well that’s two.

Unknown Speaker  17:50  

I was about to say omeo Omio I’ve lived in Ohio.

Molly McBeath  17:58   And Kathy you lived in, even in Denver now but you just moved from New York City 

Kathleen Fealy  18:03  

From New York City and before that I lived in the Midwest, sort of Wisconsin Indiana, Illinois, but travel a lot of my love to travel. So, you know, I go to a lot of places, I like to, I like to get in a car and just discover areas, go to like little diner dive restaurants in the small town so now you get a chance to experience things and listen to people have conversations in the booth next to you though right now after COVID this could be a lot harder to do that.

Molly McBeath  18:33  

Yeah, there’s a lot less eavesdropping. Yeah.

Kathleen Fealy  18:36  

I’m the great eavesdropper. It’s one of my true talents in a restaurant.

Molly McBeath  18:42  

Allright, I’ll watch out for that. Look for you. Okay. It occurs to me that now we need to transition for well to end. Basically, which I assume would be at what the next episode, or episodes where we’ll be, which of course we don’t know at this point, where they’re going, 

Kathleen Fealy  18:59  

So this is the perfect teaser, 

Molly McBeath  19:01  

but we do have some plans.

Betsy Muse  19:03  

Not that we know we have, and we you know we have some things planned out, we’ve brought things from our email inboxes. And we don’t always agree, and it’s always an interesting conversation, if I do say so myself.

Kathleen Fealy  19:19  

Stay tuned 

Molly McBeath  19:20  

for our next conversation.

Kathleen Fealy  19:27  

This has been Yes But However, I’m Kathy Fealey with my co-hosts Betsy Muse and Molly Macbeth. This episode was written edited and produced by the three of us. Our theme music is tourist in Punta Cana, which is available through Audio Hero. The show’s website where we post show notes transcripts and more information about us, can be found at Yes But However Podcast dot com. You can contact us through the website, or email us at talkers at yes but however podcast.com.

Thanks for listening.