#192: Drive | How To Build A Solo Marketing Business with Lashay Lewis, Founder of Authority Plug

This episode is from Drive 2024, our first-ever in-person event for B2B marketers in Burlington, Vermont. Lashay Lewis, Founder of Authority Plug, hosted a session on making the transition from in-house marketing to building a solo business.

Lashay covers:

• How to niche down by focusing on one problem for one ideal customer profile.
• Why it’s important to develop a strong point of view to stand out in your category.
• How to create a repeatable, results-driven process that builds trust and sells your service

Timestamps

• (00:00) - - Intro to Lashay
  
• (05:34) - - When Change Outweighs Pain Of Staying The Same
  
• (09:12) - - Step One: Narrow Your Job Description
  
• (11:49) - - Step Two: Develop a Strong Point of View
  
• (14:35) - - Step Three: Use the L.O.C.K Formula
  
• (21:03) - - Step Four: Let the Process Sell Itself
  
• (25:05) - - Niche Consultants vs. Agencies Are The New Normal
  
• (28:01) - - “Live Your Dash”
  
• (30:55) - - How to Approach Selling Your Brand vs. Your Name
  
• (32:16) - - How to Figure Out Your Niche
  
• (35:12) - - Closing Remarks

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Dave Gerhardt [00:00:14]:

Hey, it's me, Dave. This is a special episode. This was a session that we recorded live at Drive, our first ever in person event, which was early September in Burlington, Vermont. It was incredible. We had 200 people there. The NPS after the event was 88. We're going to do it again this year. Don't worry.

Dave Gerhardt [00:00:30]:

I know there's a lot of FOMO out there for those that didn't make it. We're going to do it again September 2025. But we have all of the recordings right here for you on the Exit Five podcast. Now, this is just the audio if you want the full video and see the slides and everything that is available exclusively in our community. Not on YouTube, not on the Internet, nowhere else except inside of Exit Five in the community. Join 4400members exitfive.com and you can see all the content. Okay, let's get into this session from Drive.

Dave Gerhardt [00:00:59]:

All right, all right, all right. We got one more and then we're going to hang out. So Lashay is somebody that I met through our podcast also, and she has built an interesting business and I wanted to have her come and talk about. Actually let me pull the audience. How many people are solo, like work solo? Not at a company. You work for your own. You start your own business solo. Okay, cool.

Dave Gerhardt [00:01:20]:

So not to get everybody to go quit their jobs because we'd have no sponsors left and Everybody would leave Exit Five and it would be a mess. But there is an interesting trend with work where as a knowledge worker, if you have expertise in a niche, you can build a business and gain a lot of freedom and do your own thing. And Lashay has done all of that over the last year. And so we wanted to end today just giving you a little, a couple of ideas and she's going to cover how to build a solo marketing business. So give it up for one of my favorite people in the Exit Five community, Lashay Lewis. Hello.

Lashay Lewis [00:02:04]:

Hello. Show of hands. How many of you in here work for somebody? All right, I'm gonna teach you how to leave your job today. All right? So the most important thing to a lot of you in this room is probably one of two things. One, you're an in house marketer and you wanna know how to transition and go solo. Or two, you're an agency owner or a solo founder already and you want to know how you can further grow your business. And when I say grow your business, I don't necessarily mean in terms of headcount, but I mean in terms of profit and time, back to yourself. So when you think about building a solo business, actually, that's a question for you guys.

Lashay Lewis [00:02:43]:

What does a solo business mean to you? Does it just mean one person? What does it mean to you? Anybody? Yeah, a one person business. So for anybody that doesn't know my backstory just a little bit, I struggled my entire 20s trying to figure out how to be able to build a solo business. And the thing that I struggle with the most was self confidence. And I think a lot of times people put the concentration on, oh, this strategy and this tactic and this framework and this thing. But a lot of my struggle was internal. I didn't believe in myself. So I preface that really just by saying when you. Damn, y'all, I'm using my trainer pot.

Lashay Lewis [00:03:24]:

I'm nervous.

Dave Gerhardt [00:03:26]:

Hey, it's all good. You got this.

Lashay Lewis [00:03:36]:

On one hand. You think about the massive upside of what it takes to build a solo business. I get to spend more time with my kids. I get to do the things that fuel me. I get to double or even triple what I was making in house. But then at the same breath, you think about the downsides of what this looks like. What if I blow through my savings trying to figure this out? What if I can't find my messaging? What if I can't find my positioning? What if I'm dealing with imposter syndrome? What if the algorithm messes up all these things and the reason I'm telling you about them is because I've dealt with these same thoughts, feelings, and emotions. So let's rewind back to March of 2022.

Lashay Lewis [00:04:17]:

I was standing outside my house and my husband had took an off guard picture of me. And ladies, we know when off guard will do it. So I'm looking at this picture and I don't even recognize who I'm looking at. Mind you, I was like seven or eight months postpartum after baby number four. I could have gave myself some grace, but that didn't matter to me. What mattered to me was I'm looking at this picture and I don't even know who I'm looking at. At the moment I looked at this picture. Change triggered in my brain.

Lashay Lewis [00:04:47]:

So what do I mean when I say change triggered in my brain? Well, the moment I looked at this, the pain of staying the same became greater than the pain of change. The pain of, oh, I'll take it. I'll take it. The pain of not feeling how I wanted to feel, not looking how I wanted to look, having anxiety about my health not wanting to look in the mirror, not wanting to go outside, all became more painful than counting my macros, than staying consistent in the gym, than not eating what I wanted whenever I wanted, more than the pain of self discipline and self control. And £55 later, I can tell y'all, that was a good decision. Thank you. Now let's fast forward to March of 23. I was working for an SEO agency in conjunction with my in house job just to be able to hit six figures a year.

Lashay Lewis [00:05:47]:

And I believe it was a Wednesday. The SEO manager had sent me this long spreadsheet of just things that I did that they did not like since I had gotten hired. One of the things on this list that specifically is still burned into my brain is training on company time. My plan was to resign that Monday. They let me go. That Friday, two weeks after I got let go, I booked my spot on Exit five. The reason I booked that spot on Exit five was because when I read this feedback, it pissed me off so bad because it was a harsh reality check that I did not own my time. And when I read the feedback change triggered in my brain, the pain of staying the same became greater than the pain of change.

Lashay Lewis [00:06:38]:

The pain of not owning my time, the pain of not spending enough time with my kids, the pain of financial instability, the pain of morning meetings, I hate meetings y'all like so much all became greater than the pain of I don't wanna see myself on camera. Then the pain of, oh, I'm scared to pitch this podcast host. Then the pain of I don't know what my messaging and my positioning is gonna be. Then the pain of not even wanting to hear my own voice. I'm raspy right now, y'all. My first plane ride was here and I got sick on the plane ride, so ignore this rasp. But all of those things were less painful than staying the same. The training that I was doing on company time, it was a podcast guest training and it was to teach me how to gain the confidence to get on camera and speak to my skills and expertise in a way that would make clients want to work with me.

Lashay Lewis [00:07:33]:

So all of that to say it needs to be the same for you. The pain of am I going to find my messaging? The pain of am I going to find my positioning? The pain of I'm scared of the algorithm. The pain of I don't know what I'm going to do. The has to be less than the pain of you staying the same. Whatever challenges you're dealing with, your wantingness and willingness to change has to be greater than that. So with that, I want to talk about one of the things I was able to do to be able to not just go to market in a way that was different, but to literally carve my own lane and become a leader in my category. And that thing is niching down. So what does niching down mean? What does that even mean? Niching down is the process of focusing on one ICP with one problem using one solution.

Lashay Lewis [00:08:25]:

Niching down is the difference between being seen as the steakhouse versus the buffet of your category. When you go to the steakhouse, you expect to pay a little bit more money, right? Like, you expect for the steak to be a one. No pun intended, but y'all know what I mean. Like, you expect the steak to be good versus when you go to a buffet, it's like you might feed the family for a little bit less, but there's no specialization in one dish because they're cooking 50, 60, 70 different dishes. And it needs to be the same for you in business. So with that, I want to get into the four steps that you need to take in order to be able to make a successful transition from in house to solo founder, or if you are already a solo founder or an agency owner, how you can grow your business without having to work harder. Thank you. So step one is going to be narrow your job description.

Lashay Lewis [00:09:23]:

You should not be going to market with your entire job description. Going to market with your entire job description is like being an employee without the benefits, right? Like, what you will do as a solo founder will be predicated on what you're good at, what you can get paid for, and what you enjoy. Your solo roll is gonna sit somewhere right in the middle of that. So imagine you're having problems at your house, right? Your shower tile is coming off, maybe your faucet's leaking a little bit, toilet's not running, right? Window frames popping off. You call a general contractor versus if you have a roofing or a foundation problem, you call a roofing or a foundation expert. Meaning if you go to a market with your entire job description, you're gonna get asked to do more. Because where the general contractor would have to do six, seven, eight jobs, the specialist would only have to do one and make the same amount of money. So maybe in the sense of like, for example, anybody wanna give me, like, their role, what role you are? I'm a HubSpot consultant, right? So instead of you need to choose something specific within that.

Lashay Lewis [00:10:29]:

So when you say HubSpot consultant, what do you mean specifically?

Dave Gerhardt [00:10:32]:

I focus in revenue operations.

Lashay Lewis [00:10:34]:

So what that would look like for you is finding something specific within revenue operations and focusing there.

Dave Gerhardt [00:10:41]:

So again, was Tim Davidson in here? He's gone. He's chopping fruit somewhere. Like, he had a great example of this. When he came out and did this, he said he was just doing like, at first it was like ABM. And he's like, nope, I specifically do LinkedIn ABM ads for B2B. Like it was the most specific thing. That's all I do is LinkedIn ads for ABM, for B2B marketers.

Lashay Lewis [00:11:02]:

That's it. Yes. Again, your solo role is going to sit in the middle of all these. That's. First thing is narrow your job description. Second thing that you want to do is develop a strong point of view. I didn't realize it at the time, but when I had got on Dave's show, I had some pretty strong points of view. For example, I believe that 95% of these tools are, you know, these SEO tools are like inflated.

Lashay Lewis [00:11:25]:

You don't need a lot of them. I believe that if you want to draw inbound leads, you need to focus on search intent versus search volume. I also believe that you should not task a freelance writer with writing your content because your most important information is found internally and not through a Google search. So when I got on Dave's pod and I started talking about all these things, what happened was it was almost like I was stepping to the forefront and everybody that was in house that had been begging executive leadership to do this stuff, it's almost like, ooh, she was on Exit Five. She said it, she did it. It must work. She must be legit. I became a point of reference, meaning I became my champion's champion.

Lashay Lewis [00:12:04]:

And when that happens, not to say that executive leadership is gonna approve the decision right away, but when it comes time for them to make the decision on wanting a bottom of funnel strategy, they know to call the queen.

Dave Gerhardt [00:12:24]:

So the queen of bottom of the funnel is just really good.

Lashay Lewis [00:12:28]:

Imagine. Yeah, I want y'all to imagine this real quick. Imagine like a giant dam, right? And somebody just takes like a Thor size hammer and just starts boom, boom, whacking this dam and they put a huge hole through it and the water just comes rushing through. That's literally what it was like being on Dave's pod. I didn't get clients despite of my differentiated point of view. I got clients because of my differentiated point of view. Now, I don't mean being contrarian for the sake of being contrarian. Right.

Lashay Lewis [00:12:58]:

I'm not telling you to purposely get a rise out of people, but what I'm telling you to do is find those hills you will absolutely die on and speak to them with conviction. So maybe if you're in sales, the hill you'll die on is like trigger based prospecting. Or maybe if you're a revenue leader, you believe that MQLs or SQLs or what other acronym you want to throw in there shouldn't be split across teams, but be collectively hit across all teams. I just told you how to end the sales and marketing beef right there. So step two is going to be develop a strong point of view. Now, this next step has changed my business in ways I could not have imagined. It's got me working three to five hours a day, four days a week. It's got my clients really amazing repeatable results.

Lashay Lewis [00:13:48]:

For example, generating less than 10 leads a month to 95 in a month for one product line out of several in under a year. Y'all ready for this next one? Productizing. So you've probably heard of productizing before, but nobody ever really shows you, like, how to do it. So I've been able to productize my entire business using something I call the lock formula. So the lock formula go as follows. L list out everything you do from beginning to end. I mean, the moment somebody reaches out to you for a sales call, you need to be listing that down. So for me, that looks like, okay, they find me on a podcast, they find me on LinkedIn.

Lashay Lewis [00:14:27]:

They reach out. You know, then we have the strategy call. Okay. Then we go through procurement. Okay, then they send the contract. Okay, then I onboard them into notion. Okay, everything that you do, organize it from start to finish. Again, step one, step two, step three, step four.

Lashay Lewis [00:14:44]:

What does that look like for me? Well, step one, we lay out a canvas and we put everything on this canvas. Shout out to the Fletch Bros. I use their canvas and that's the first thing we do. The next thing we do is we do keyword research based on that canvas. Step three, we fill in the framework. Step four, we track. Step five, we optimize and iterate. Organize everything in subsequent steps from beginning to end.

Lashay Lewis [00:15:06]:

C is create frameworks for each step of the process. There should not be one step of your process that does not have a framework in it. Frameworks cut your time down significantly. And then K is know how to match each step. Dad, hold up. I'm thinking I had a typo. Hold up. Okay, know each step matches the customer pain points.

Lashay Lewis [00:15:26]:

Okay, know how each step matches the customer. So what does that look like for me? So for me, I know when somebody comes to me, if they're having a bottom of funnel problem, like, they're not aligned internally. Meaning the first thing that we do is we grab this canvas and we lay out everything on the canvas that's matching a customer pain point to a specific part of your process. Not only does it help give the customer clarity, but it also sets you up for finding your product market fit in the event that you want to start a software. A lot of people don't want to do that, but it's how you use your service market fit to find your product market fit by doing that. Let me give you an example. Imagine. This is gonna sound crazy, but I want y'all to think about Subway sandwiches real quick.

Lashay Lewis [00:16:11]:

You know, when you go on the subway, like, you got your worker, you got glass, you got your ingredients. You got your lettuce, your tomatoes, your sweet onion chicken teriyaki, your honey ham. You got your vinaigrette, you got all these ingredients. If I went into Subway and was like, let me get some chicken, some steak, some rice, pinto beans. Oh, and give me some chips with a side of queso sauce on the side, they gonna look at me like, ma'am, what are you smoking? And is it white? Like, it's because you don't go into Subway asking for chipotle recipes. So what does that mean? Nobody comes to me asking for top of funnel. Cause they know that's not what I do. So I get kicked back on this a lot, right? They're like, okay, so you've carved out this niche, this thing you do, and not only are you doing this little, tiny, specific thing, but you've already created frameworks around this tiny, specific thing.

Lashay Lewis [00:17:05]:

Aren't the customers going to get, like, the same content over and over? Isn't this going to be, like, repetitive? And the answer is no. Let me tell you why. Your frameworks will serve as your ingredients and your customer research as the recipe. Let's say me and Jess went to Subway. Two totally different people, two totally different tastes. Let's say she walks out with, like, a smoked honey ham. I walk out with a chicken teriyaki, right? I know y'all like, I know she a foodie. She done talked about food, like, three different times.

Lashay Lewis [00:17:34]:

Very specific. Yeah, but we walked into Subway wanting two different things, right? And we came out with those two things we wanted. But here's the thing. Her and I got two different sandwiches, but they were derived from the same ingredients. Just because you're plugging somebody into your frameworks doesn't mean they're going to get the same thing over and over and over. Why? Because your customer research is dynamic. That's the recipe. Jess and I could go into Subway and get two different recipes, but they're derived from the same ingredients.

Lashay Lewis [00:18:04]:

That's how I want you to look at your business. This cuts the process down significantly. And again, your customers as customers aren't going to have the same pain points and the same features and the same benefits and the same capabilities. Those are going to be dynamic, where your frameworks will be static. Again, when you go into Subway, very seldomly are they changing the ingredients, but the recipe varies per person. That's how I want you to think about productizing. The last step of this process is let it sell itself. Very seldomly when I get on sales calls, am I trying to sell anybody.

Lashay Lewis [00:18:43]:

What I'm doing is I'm walking them through my process, right? So I pull up my notion. Anybody familiar with my, like, Dashboard or whatever? I pull up the notion. I walk them through it. Okay, Step one, we get a line. Step two, we fill in the framework. Step three, keyword research. Step four, so I'm walking them step by step. I'm letting them sell the process.

Lashay Lewis [00:19:01]:

And there's this misconception that you have to create a custom solution for every client. That's not true. So what I find is that processes sell better because predictability eases uncertainty. If a client comes to you and they've seen that you've worked with clients similar to them, automatically their brain is gonna start to connect the dots and be like, okay, so if it worked for them, it'll work for me too. And when you let the process sell itself, it just takes so much off of you. Not only will it become easier to sell. Cause I tell everybody I'm not a good salesperson. Like, look how terrible I am on stage, right? I'm not a good salesperson, right? But my process sells itself.

Lashay Lewis [00:19:42]:

I'm good at walking them through the process, and it needs to be the same for you. Let the process sell itself. So when somebody gets on a sales call, step one, we do this. Step two, we do this. Step three, we do this. Step four, we do that. So now you know the four steps, right? Like, you know, to narrow your job description, you know, to craft a differentiated point of view, you know, to create frameworks and productize, you know, to let the process sell itself. All of this sounds great in theory, right? Like, most Things do.

Lashay Lewis [00:20:15]:

But does it actually work in real life? So I have a case study that I would like to share. And her name is Taz. So when Taz reached out to me, August of last year, she had messaged me. She was like, oh, I'm going to be on Exit Five and stuff like that. And we got all giddy. At the time, I had the free version of Zoom. I think that thing ran out like three times before we got off the call. But now that I think about it, we ran her through this exact process.

Lashay Lewis [00:20:40]:

She ran herself through this exact process. So let's go back through and I'll contextualize it for you. Step one, narrow your job description. She was coming out of in house as a head of digital, meaning she oversaw a lot of different things, right? So when we first started talking about this, it was like this or whatever had like these four quadrants on it, and each quadrant represented something she oversaw. It was everything from like SEO to website development to paid ads to landing pages, all these different things. And I asked her, I said, so what is it that you like to do? Like, what is it do you feel like you're good at? And she's like, I'm pretty good at landing pages. I said, okay. Second thing we did, she crafted a strong point of view.

Lashay Lewis [00:21:24]:

Anybody that follows Taz on LinkedIn knows some of her points of view and the spice that comes with it. So instead of conversion rate optimization, she talks about consumption rate optimization. And she also believes that changing a button color on a landing page won't necessarily increase the conversion rate or not anything meaningful anyway. She also believes that you should let somebody know exactly what they're going to go through before they ever sign up for a demo with you. Pretty strong points of view. And then step three is using the Locke formula. But let me like, contextualize this even more and tell you what happened. So I was working with one of my clients and she had reached out to me.

Lashay Lewis [00:22:06]:

She was like, do you know anybody that's like, pretty good with landing pages? And I'm like, I do happen to know somebody that's good with landing pages. And after a year of working, you get testimonials like this one. So consultants versus marketing agency is curious what other SaaS startups teams are doing these days. Anyone else you'd recommend on this list? After a year of trying both, I truly believe that hiring individual consultants with a specific niche is the new normal versus hiring agencies who cover a broad space. When you do good work, your clients will give you your Testimonials throughout this process, all of us, everybody on this list we went through, started crafting the frameworks again. When you work with one client and you find something that works, create frameworks out of that. So when we started putting this together, we had, okay, step one, align the internal teams. Step two, create frameworks around this.

Lashay Lewis [00:23:00]:

Step three, optimize and iterate. Step four, paid ads. We productize the process. And for the last step, step four, let the process sell itself. Very rarely does Taz have to sell herself on calls. And y'all probably like, how the hell do you know? I've seen them. Don't worry, I've seen her sales calls. We share that stuff back and forth.

Lashay Lewis [00:23:21]:

But very seldomly does she have to sell herself. She's selling the process. Okay, step one, we get alignment. Step two, I create the framework. Step three, we publish them. Step four, heat map. Step five, optimization. Just the same thing over and over and over.

Lashay Lewis [00:23:36]:

All of this to say if two women, and not just two women, but two minority women that had to fight for everything they got, that had nothing handed to them, can do this, you can do this, too.

Dave Gerhardt [00:23:51]:

Hell, yeah.

Lashay Lewis [00:23:54]:

Hold up one more thing, y'all. I wanna put something into perspective for you real quick. As you all can tell, I come very unprepared. I'm literally opening the Sharpie pack right now.

Dave Gerhardt [00:24:08]:

I thought it was part of the whole act. I'm like, she hasn't even opened the markers yet. This is just like. No, I need, like, you had all day to open the markers.

Lashay Lewis [00:24:16]:

I really did. I was worried about this all day.

Dave Gerhardt [00:24:20]:

Sound effects are great.

Lashay Lewis [00:24:21]:

Y'all like the sound effects? Okay.

Dave Gerhardt [00:24:24]:

It's like a magic show.

Lashay Lewis [00:24:26]:

All right. No way. Holy shit. It's white and not black. Now I need. I need a marker. Oh, my God.

Dave Gerhardt [00:24:38]:

Come on.

Lashay Lewis [00:24:40]:

Somebody. Somebody. I need a marker.

Dave Gerhardt [00:24:42]:

If you think Tass is ever going to let you live this down, okay.

Lashay Lewis [00:24:45]:

All right.

Dave Gerhardt [00:24:46]:

Hey, do you want a Sharpie? We have a Sharpie.

Lashay Lewis [00:24:47]:

I got a Sharpie. All right, y'all, who wants to give me a birthday?

Dave Gerhardt [00:24:52]:

June 9th.

Lashay Lewis [00:24:53]:

What year?

Dave Gerhardt [00:24:54]:

Y'all don't remember?

Lashay Lewis [00:24:55]:

1987. November 10th, 1984. What was that other birthday?

Dave Gerhardt [00:25:00]:

June 9th, 1987.

Lashay Lewis [00:25:02]:

Everybody has a birthdate, but we also have a second date that's coming up, too. Nobody knows when the second day is coming. You've got two options. You can either say, damn, I spent my life not chasing my dreams, not fulfilling my heart's desires, being scared. Like, look at me, y'all. I'm up here like, scared doing it. You know what I mean? And when that day comes, you could say, damn, now I'm sitting here regretful. Or before this date gets here, you could say, I did everything I wanted to do.

Lashay Lewis [00:25:32]:

I lived the human experience to the fullest. I chased my dreams. I accomplished my goals. Even if I didn't accomplish all of them, I tried. The fact that you're all here with me right now in the present means that we're living in this dash right here every day. You don't take that chance and do what it is you want to do is a day. This dash gets shorter and shorter. It's already short, y'all.

Lashay Lewis [00:25:56]:

Right now is your chance to leave an impact on somebody. It's your chance to change somebody's life. How Dave changed mine. Live your dash, y'all. And if this does not put it into perspective for you, I honestly don't know what will. Thank you.

Dave Gerhardt [00:26:12]:

Yeah.

Lashay Lewis [00:26:17]:

Let me take that side here. I gotta answer questions and stuff.

Dave Gerhardt [00:26:25]:

Good job. I'm proud of you. Congratulations.

Lashay Lewis [00:26:27]:

Thank you so much.

Dave Gerhardt [00:26:29]:

I think the bottom of the funnel thing might be over and your days as an inspirational speaker might be over.

Lashay Lewis [00:26:33]:

I gotta get a little bit. I need some more practice, y'all.

Dave Gerhardt [00:26:36]:

Yeah.

Lashay Lewis [00:26:37]:

Questions.

Dave Gerhardt [00:26:38]:

We do have a couple minutes for questions if you wanna talk to Lashay about something. Cool. Hold on. That really was a white Sharpie.

Lashay Lewis [00:26:44]:

It really was. Oh, my God. So bad.

Question [00:26:47]:

Okay, first of all, you said you were a bad salesperson. I think you're an amazing salesperson. Your authenticity shines through, and that is the best stuff for the best salespeople. I have the very practical question.

Lashay Lewis [00:27:01]:

Yes.

Question [00:27:02]:

I saw you were like. You had a brand name. Founder, authority. I don't remember what Authority Plug.

Lashay Lewis [00:27:07]:

Yes.

Dave Gerhardt [00:27:07]:

Yeah.

Question [00:27:08]:

So I also have a solo, I guess, printer brand thing. And people buy from me. They buy Benjamin. They don't buy my brand, but I still have a brand, and I utilize it kind of in contracts and, like, it's sort of, like, professionalized me a little bit. I'm curious to how you do that. Like, how you approach your brand versus your name.

Lashay Lewis [00:27:32]:

Hmm. That's a good question. So, honestly, I'm going to be totally real with you. When I started Authority Plug, my goal was to have it be a sellable asset. So in a way, I wanted to detach my name from it. Although there's nuance there because it's also my name that grows it too. But really, the core thing behind that was just understanding how to separate the two. Right.

Lashay Lewis [00:27:56]:

So I, again, all my branding is around Authority Plug. But again, I grow this using my personal brand. But the cool thing about that is if I ever did want to sell Authority Plug, I could still go and start something new because now I'm, in a way, I am the brand, right? So I'm kind of following Dave's path a little bit as it relates to, like, not being so much of the brand, but trying to step aside and let Authority Plug be the brand. Because honestly, the goal is to build money making assets and then sell that off. But one thing I will say is don't worry about selling so quickly because sometimes that can overshadow the right now. Worry about building a strong customer base. I don't know who it was, but somebody came up to me and was like, lachey, Authority Plug, right? It really put it into perspective for me that I am building a brand even though I don't feel like it. I don't give myself a lot of credit for stuff, but I am building a brand.

Lashay Lewis [00:28:51]:

So again, be mindful of the separation between the two. Again, if you're doing the founder led thing, just make sure to delineate between, okay, this is me and this is my brand. But the nuance again there is you are going to have to use your personal brand to build your business brand.

Question [00:29:07]:

First off, you killed it, so well done.

Lashay Lewis [00:29:12]:

Besides the sharpie part. Good lord.

Question [00:29:17]:

My question is like, when you're. When you're niching out, do you kind of just lean on, like, what you think you're really good at or do you validate that externally with like, how do you figure out what of multiple things you kind of own is your niche?

Lashay Lewis [00:29:30]:

That's a very good question. So funny thing too is I leaned into what I was good at. But again, here's the nuance with that. Nobody gave a shit about it when I was in house. They're like, oh, we want to focus on search volume and we want to focus on top of funnel. We want to focus on demand generation. And I'm like, y'all, it's this thing over here called bottom of funnel that actually generates good leads. Why are we not doing it? So I took the thing that when I was in house, nobody gave a shit about and built an entire brand around it.

Lashay Lewis [00:30:01]:

So don't think just because you're in house and nobody cares about this thing that you do. If it works, somebody will pay you for it over here.

Graham [00:30:11]:

Lashay, the example you use sounds like an amazing person. Anyway, I just want to actually co answer that question because I love to speak on her behalf. The landing page thing, she gave me credit for that idea, but because I was doing all of it as head of website and digital, and I showed her two slides with, like, six blocks and all the things that I was in charge of, and I was like, I'm good at everything, but it actually sometimes takes someone outside of that to tell you what you could be doing. And so when I first went out of my own, I had a lot of, like, networking calls and conversations, and someone said, you know what? I have talked to 150startups because they were further along in the journey, and they're always asking about landing pages, and that's just not my expertise, but maybe that's something that you could do because you have all this website and digital background. So it's not like I was like, I woke up one day and I'm like, landing pages, the passion of my life or whatever.

Lashay Lewis [00:31:11]:

Right, right.

Graham [00:31:12]:

I was like, oh, I can be really good at that. And so then they said, what is your differentiated POV on landing pages? And I was like, well, I don't think they necessarily, like, CRO works for B2B. And, like, that just went on to be a thing. On my first podcast with Dave, I was like, we're talking about everything website and digital. And then the second one, it was like, only landing pages, and that was just way more valuable. But I think the biggest thing is people think niching down means you're going to like, oh, they're not. Then people aren't going to come to me for all the other stuff. It works as kind of an introduction.

Graham [00:31:42]:

You're helping someone check a problem off their list, and then that dopamine hit of that delivery and then going, dang, what else can she do? And that's literally it. I mean, landing pages are my niche. Everyone's like, you're the landing page girl. Right? Right. It's only, like, 30% of my business. So everything else is like, website, digital advice, and you can go that way or you can stay completely focused, but it's that. So no questions. Great talk.

Lashay Lewis [00:32:07]:

Thank you for rounding it out for me.

Graham [00:32:08]:

This is Graham, by the way, who was also on that list. Paid ads Expert Adam on LinkedIn.

Dave Gerhardt [00:32:13]:

Excuse me, ma'am. This is my event. Yeah. All right, give it up for Lashay one more time.

Lashay Lewis [00:32:21]:

Thank you.

Dave Gerhardt [00:32:22]:

Good job. You got that clicker?

Lashay Lewis [00:32:24]:

I left it over here. I got it.

Dave Gerhardt [00:32:25]:

All right, will you. Will you go click that then? All right, we're done. We're done for today. That's it. How About a round of applause. We did it. Heck yeah. All right.

Dave Gerhardt [00:32:35]:

Real easy. My guy, the CEO over there. That's why we pay him the big bucks. He made the executive decision to move the band outside. That's good. Good job, Dan. So we're going to have happy hour. So right now we're going to do happy hour drinks and everything is going to be inside but we're going to be able to hang out outside.

Dave Gerhardt [00:32:52]:

Band patio. My two little animals are going to be here running around, so watch out. And we can be here until 6:30. We can be here till 6:30 hanging out people that are staying at Hotel Vermont or the hotels right near there. There's going to be some shuttles coming starting at 6 if you want to get back there. I would also say it's like a 30 minute walk and it's pretty nice out if you want to get some steps in after sitting in here all day. Not the worst idea. Shout out to Calendly for throwing down the big bucks for this happy hour.

Dave Gerhardt [00:33:22]:

Do me a favor. At least go to their website and accept except the cookies. That was a joke from this morning that I forgot to use so I gotta use it now. And then we're. We will be. We're back here tomorrow. Just if you need some places to go, come find me. I recently moved here four years ago and I have a list.

Dave Gerhardt [00:33:41]:

But you could walk to Zero Gravity Brewing, which is right down the end of this street. You could go to Pizza 44 is a good little pizza place. Or just enjoy going downtown. It was weird. I was picking up pizzas for the team last night, Founder Mode, and I was bumped into like six people that I know from work and LinkedIn. It was just surreal to have you all here in Burlington. This has been a blast. We got a half day tomorrow.

Dave Gerhardt [00:34:02]:

We're going to. We're going to send you out of here. Nice. This is a 12 out of 10 for me. I don't even care what you say. I'm having a blast. Don't even fill out the feedback form. We know we're going to do it again.

Dave Gerhardt [00:34:12]:

Thank you for an awesome day. Let's go have fun.

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