The 6 C's of Successful Marketing with Dark Horse Entrepreneur Tracy Brinkmann

Hey everybody. It's Terry McDougall, your host at marketing Mambo. And I'm really honored today to bring you our guests. Tracy Brinkman. Tracy is the founder of dark horse entrepreneur school. And he likes to teach about entrepreneurship, productivity, mental toughness, and maintaining a positive mindset. 

Tracy is a man after my own heart, because he really has an ambitious vision about what can be accomplished in life. He's definitely somebody who has taken. Personal tragedy and transform that into inspiration for himself and others. So he's going to be sharing with us a lot of meaningful aha moments that happened in his life. And I, again, just feel so honored. 

To bring him. Into marketing Mambo to share his insights. And the lessons that he's learned about. Entrepreneurship about marketing and most importantly about life. Now I want to switch gears for a second here. Before we get started with the podcast and let you know about a really exciting. New happening. In my world. I have very recently launched a group coaching community, which is called winning at work. So as many of you know, I have for the last four years, been working with. 

High-achieving professionals on a one-on-one basis doing coaching. I also work with companies. To help them transform their culture so that they can tap into the full potential of their employees. But one of the things that's been left out is people that maybe don't want to invest the time or the money in one-on-one coaching, or maybe don't work for a company that is providing that to their employees. So now there is a solution for the rest of everyone. 

And that is the winning at work community. I would. Love for you to join the community. It's free. And if you enjoy it, maybe you'll decide to upgrade to a paid membership. But you can check it out. At. Live spot.co. Backslash coach Terry. There's some free content out there. I'm running a special for the first month. 

So go to live spot.co backslash coach Terry. And check out the great content that I have out there that can help you expand that overlap between your professional success and your personal happiness so that you know, that. Every bit of energy that you invest in your profession, it's going to come back to you in spades because you know how to play the game of work. That's what I'm all about. So anyway, without further ado, let the Mambo begin.  

Hey everybody. It's Terry with marketing Mambo, and I am so excited today to bring you my special guest Tracy Brinkman.  Tracy is an author, coach, and entrepreneur,  and he's also host of the dark horse entrepreneur.  So Tracy, welcome to marketing Mambo.

 Hey,  you know, it was funny as all day to day. I've had that song stuck in my head. Hey, Mambo,  Mambo. I don't know why, but 

I'm glad to be here. Thank you for inviting me. Okay. 

Well, Tracy, I just, scratch the surface of what you actually  do. So I would love it. If you would spend a little bit more time introducing yourself to our listeners.

Sure, well, let's say obviously you mentioned  the host of the dark horse entrepreneur this is my second podcast.  I started podcasting when yeah.  Podcasting. Wasn't cool. Probably around 2007. And that one was all focused on personal development. Right? Get on the microphone and spout, all the things that Jim Rohn's Zig Ziglar's  Tony Robbins kind of stuff. And, , it was funny. It was, it was doing well.  And, , started going through a pretty wicked divorce and I felt like such a poser. And we all faced  that imposter syndrome, I felt really bad getting on the microphone saying, Hey, here's a great way to make your life awesome. Meanwhile, my life's falling apart. so I hung up my microphone for a while until I got myself back on, squared away trail met an amazing woman, got married and like, okay. Things are.  Better. So I picked up the microphone again here recently, and I wanted to add, the lessons,  I've traveled as well as bringing other folks like yourself, bringing them on and  so they could share their lessons.

So we have interview episodes every Monday and then.  Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, I do those solo episodes and kind of expand on the topic they may have, , brought to the forefront. And behind the scenes, we're doing things like, helping other folks get their podcasts up off the 

ground. If they already have.  Getting them noticed, , like we were talking about before you hit the record button, so many folks have a business or have an opportunity,  some knowledge they want to share. And it's like this amazing neon signed they've honed over the years, but it's in their basement right 

in, and nobody sees it.

So we try to get them  that authority play and that,  online presence.  Amongst  the interwebs out there via any number of techniques. Right. And then it helped them to stop trading hours for dollars. Right. So many, coaches. I know, they're doing all those one-on-ones, which is excellent.

But I think it's time for many of them  to level up their game, maybe come out with a digital course or some other avenue where they could share.  This line information at a reasonable price and people get exposed to them and say, oh my God, Terry's amazing. I need to know more about what it is she's doing.  And now you get to go to them at the next level of pricing and say, all right, you want no more let's chat. And you know, maybe it's a group setting or maybe it's a one-on-one, but now it's at a level of pricing where you can bring yourself up and not have to keep dealing with that money. 

 Yeah, well, I can certainly relate with that. Sometimes I do one-on-one coaching and,  sometimes.  Well that are interested. They like me. They'd like to work with me, but it's just a big leap to go from,  not paying for any coaching to working one-on-one and sometimes,  just getting a taste that's at  a lower price point.

Sometimes  is an easier,  on ramp I guess, to working together.  So how did you get started?

I got started in coaching back in my corporate America days. My first corporate America job was with the Coca-Cola company and I was lucky enough to work with them for 12 years. And they had an amazing  mentorship program inside the company.  So you could say since my, oh gosh, late twenties, I've always had a mentor or a coach across the decades. And as I started learning the benefits of that, I started taking those opportunities to be a mentor and a coach, to other folks within company. And then, yeah.  It started moving to outside.   I had an 18 month old daughter who passed away.   When I lost my daughter, I started going out there in speaking on any stage,  getting on podium of soapbox, just my feet, sharing the messages about organ donors, right. To anybody that would 

listen and probably a few people that didn't want to listen. And so. , after she passed away, I threw myself into the personal development world because I didn't want to go into this dark abyss,  of depression and what have you. And I had my first daughter, my oldest daughter.

So, she was like five. So she's looking up with those big brown eyes. 

Daddy you. Okay.

So as I started learning these amazing tips and techniques that we've heard all the great guys, , I mentioned their names earlier share. I started implementing them and it's really started me on his rocket ride. I got like five promotions in three years inside the Coca Cola company by implementing. Right. So when they say it doesn't work, or you probably haven't really implemented. And so then I started melding the,  personal development and the coaching outside of my corporate life. And that kind of stepped me into that, coaching arena of other folks, people are like, how did you do that?

And that's usually how it starts for anyone I've talked to you. Right? 

Someone says, how did you do that? Like, come on, let me show you. It's really easy.  I think it's easy anyway. 

Well, can definitely relate with what you're talking about in terms of wanting to take an experience  and, maybe share the things that you've learned to make the journey easier for other people. And,  I'm so sorry to hear about your daughter. That's just heartbreaking.

I don't have anything.  Harrowing that I went through, but in my career, grew up in a,  blue collar background and was the first person in my family to go to college. And I really wanted to make it in the corporate world, but I didn't really have any role models. And so I was sort of like, Bumbling along  in my career, trying to figure out, like, how do I get ahead?

 I really want to be successful in the corporate world. And how do you do that? And, I learned a lot of lessons the hard way, but you get to a certain point where you want to give back, right. And you see other people and much like you, I did a lot of coaching and mentoring, just as part of my job.

And it just made a lot of sense to me.  Empower other people that were on my team, 

 A little bit self-serving quite honestly right. If other people are doing a fantastic job, it makes my job easier. 

Secret. Don't tell anybody. 

Yeah, exactly. I always thought that it was really  a very, , worthwhile investment of time and energy.

I got a lot more back from it and the company got a lot more back from it than I had to invest quite frankly. 

 but, yeah,  I can understand that motivation for wanting to share lessons.   So, you mentioned some of, the situations that you see that, people maybe they have parts of the puzzle, right?

They know they need a website. There are certain things they know they need, but maybe they're not using them in the right way to be as effective  as they'd like to be. What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see entrepreneurs making when it comes to mark?

  I think probably the biggest mistake I've seen folks make is, they get this amazing websites, whether they make it themselves or pay someone to do it. And then they start throwing paid traffic at it right out of the gates. and I think for me, the biggest warning sign for that is. Do you know what converts. With regular, just organic traffic. Can you throw, you know, a hundred, 200, 300 people or visitors to it and get some sort of feedback, do they click play? If it's a podcast, do they click, sign me up for your freebie.  And if not, well,  So on that money out the door, and I have an open pocket that you're welcome to throw it right into.  But I think that's probably the biggest thing I've seen folks do to like, oh, I did all this ad spend and here's what I've been seeing and it's not working. I said, well, let's back up and start, you got the website up and then you. Well, then I do ad spend. Ah, okay.

 Let's Let's tweak that. Yeah.

A little bit first. Right? Let's make sure you've got some sort of offer, be it a soft offer or a hard offer or whatever it is. And now let's start getting you some organic traffic via any number of ways, right? Maybe you do a podcast guesting tour. You get on shows like Terry's and  people get exposed to who you're on.

Like, oh, I want to learn more about you.  You get the opportunity to share your website and they go check you out or you do, I'm from the old school, right. Guest blogging, you put other content out there for websites  that accept it. And then that points back to you. And that's a, win-win in a couple of different ways in the fact that.  As you do that, you get your name out there on other sites that link back to you. It raises your authority level. As far as the Googles and the beings in the Yahoo search engines are concerned so that when someone searches for a keyword that's related to your topic,  you come in a little sooner in the organic, game. So now when you start getting organic traffic and it starts to convert, okay, now we can start talking about, let's throw some ad spend at it. 

Hm.   Yeah, because there's nothing worse than, , driving traffic that is not interested in buying. 

Yeah, 

right. 

and if you don't understand what attracts people to you, you might just make something up in terms of like, whatever kind of advertising you're doing and that attracts people, but it's not attracting people that want to buy from you.

 , and  that's a complete waste.  

Absolutely. 

Yeah, and  I would presume also that that might even diminish your authority from a SEO standpoint, because if people come to your website and then leave it very quickly, that it actually hurts you.

It does, if you.

have a high bounce rate and that's what it's called is a bounce rate. Someone comes in and clicks away within the first few seconds. that's one of the things you'll see in Google, any good analytics dashboard will show you that metric of your bounce rate. And you want to have that as low as possible. because the Google says, well, I send traffic to you and they turn around and leave. Then they're like, okay, you're not giving my folks what they want. So I'm going to stop sending my folks to you. 

 Yeah. that makes sense. 

You know, I think one of the big things I like to share with the folks out there in some of the. Understand, maybe some of them, but they miss it  I coin it as to the we'll call it the six CS of entrepreneurship and it really leads right in the marketing and whatever it is you're doing as a business or considering doing as a business, you will want to follow these CS. And number one, the rest of them aren't really in order. But this one. Is number one for a reason and it's clarity, right? You want to be clear on what it is you're going to do. Right. And when I mean by that is what problem are you going to solve? For me, it's like, okay, I can get you up and running with a good podcast and get you ranked and get you an audience pretty fast.

Right. Which is good. So I know what problem I can solve. And you want to make sure you hone in on the problem you solve. And everyone hears that. The next one. C number two is connection, before your product is even out there. You want to start building a connection with your audience and inside your audience, you're going to find your tribe.

And I usually call that those really passionate that subset, those are the folks that they totally resonate. With who you are, how you present your content. They're like, dude, you and I, we just, I don't know what it is, but we click, right. So you

want to start building their connection. You're not trying to sell to them yet.

Right. This is a mistake. I think a lot of people trip up here and you're nodding, right? So you're like, Yeah.

I get this one. and then you're going to go into the third C, which is community. You want to share your story? You want to establish some credibility. You want to show what you bring to the table, what you have to offer them.

And you know what? Just give it to them. I'm all about this, leave it all on the mat. If you have something you think is worth a thousand dollars, go ahead and share it. Odds are two people out of all, those that are listening will even do anything with that information in the first place. Right?  So, and then inside of that, the communication piece, you want to hone, call it your message and whether that's your manifesto or your elevator pitch, you want to hone your message so that you're speaking to your audience. Number four is when we finally get to where everyone usually goes to first capitalism. You want to monetize your mission. I get it. And you want  charge. What you're worth is what we were talking about earlier, right? If you're in there doing those one-on-ones for, a hundred dollars an hour, but your value is worth more than that. Then come up with some way to deliver them that hundred dollar version so that you can. Tapping those folks on the shoulder that are willing to pay you what you're truly worth. Right. 

 And then, inside that same time, that's where I re echo that stop trading dollars for hours, unless they're, big dollars, 

right? Give me big dollars. I'll trade you. There's a gentleman.

I was listening to his content and to get onto the microphone with him was zoom call or a meeting or whatever for his podcasting services. It's $75,000. 

Now, mind you, this guy is the top dog in his arena, but he has a $97 course. And then he has a,  2 97 and a four. And he's got this ladder of Ascension, 

right.

That he can take to. And he's got himself to the point where if you want to engage with him, one-on-one, there's a price tag. You can do it. And he takes on like maybe three clients. 

Yup.

That's tough. Okay. the last two are commitment, right? Make sure you've got a plan of action. Make sure you hold yourself accountable.

And when sometimes we know the easiest person to lie to on the planet is ourselves.  , I'm a big fan of getting a coach or a mentor, whichever that is, I'm not saying you got to pay them, but someone that's going to help hold your feet to the fire. And that could be, your spouse, your son or daughter, whoever, and then see number six is cultivation, 

you want to cultivate your own beliefs so that you can overcome that doubt. And that procrastination, when it comes. Not if it comes because we know it's gonna come, right,  you're gonna hit that first roadblock. You're going to stumble. You're going to Bumble. You're gonna trip. You're gonna fall.

You're gonna face plant. You gotta get up, dust yourself off. And it's that motivation. That's gonna get you to take that next step after bruising, your ego, let alone your nose. Right. And then I think inside of that, I would urge folks to. Look for their de motivators. And these are usually different for different folks and there's something in there and in the journey you're going to take that.

You're like, as soon as I hit that task or that event, I'm going to be like, oh God, So 

now The plan is how do I avoid it, or how do I make it motivating so that when I get there, I'm ready for it. And could be, there's something that you have to do yourself the first few times, but the minute you have a. Revenue cashflow going on I'm putting it over there because I hate doing it and I suck at it. 

So I'm going to give it to John or Jane or someone over here. Again? That's a cultivation piece of it in a, not just all about what motivates you, but what Dean motivates you. If you look at both sides, you can make yourself just rocket fuel. 

Yeah. Well, jotted down your six CS as, you were saying them. And the thing that I think is really interesting about this, I mean, we are talking about.  Marketing and effectiveness in business, but really three of them are what I would say are, 

hard skills in a way, or,  like typical marketing, like connection, communication capitalization, and then three of them are really mindset and things that coaching can help with. when you talked about that, number one, C being clarity. That's where I start with all of my clients too.

Right. We can't start unless we know what our destination is. Right. So let's start by getting clarity on what that goal is, 

because once we understand that and then everything else just logically, that's the next step is like, okay, well, if that's the goal, how are we going to get there? And then,  the commitment, right?

So you've got this fantastic plan, but Hey, guess what? You got to work it, you got to work the plan.

Gotta work the plan. 

And then, probably one of the most important things too, is you said the cultivation  that, understanding yourself.  I always think about, we have only so much energy each of us as individuals.

And, if we can recognize the things that drain our energy. And, 

Plug those holes and whether that is okay, I'm going to shift my mindset. So I think about this differently, I frame it differently. So I don't get bummed out when I have to edit my podcast or, I recognize like I really don't like doing this, so therefore I'm going to delegate it to someone and I'm going to pay, that's smart because once you plug those holes, Their energy's not leaking out.

Cause you're saying I hate this and it stinks.   That energy is available to be focused on some productive outcome, which hopefully is,  running a very   business where you're, bringing in money, hand over fist.

Yes. Yeah.

And you've probably seen this too. I think so many times people will get five of these. Right. And the one that's usually holding them back is one of those soft skills. Right. Those things between their ears. Right. And a lot of the times I see it's, the clarity in the beginning. And if I speak about the podcast arena, well, what kind of podcasts you want to get? Well, I want to talk about parenting stuff. Okay. That's kind of broad 

Yeah. 

get it and it usually comes down to they're afraid too, when we've heard this and it's almost overused niche down. Right. I need you to niche down.

You get way down there. Yeah. But the audience is so small. Yeah. But they're so passionate. Don't talk about parenting skills. Talk about parenting someone that's between five and nine. Right.

You know, whatever, just take it all the way down. Now let's talk about parenting skills as a single parent of someone of a toddler or of an elementary school student.

Now, when that podcast goes out, someone's going to look at it and say, well, that's. Right. And you're going to actually capture more of those folks as a result of that clarity. Because if I just saw well parenting skills, well, yeah, for who,  but when I see parenting skills for a single dad, I'm like, whoa, 

hook, that's different for me, right? 

Yeah, when I was going through my coach training they would say niche to get rich, 

Yes. Right. 

And I remember that feeling too, when I first, was getting trained and they were challenging us to say like, okay, well, what's your target?

What's the arena that you want to coach in? And I remember that fear very well. Like don't want to miss out on anything. I don't want to miss out. Like,  what if somebody wants to do business with me? And I say that I only work with, female marketing managers,  but the interesting thing is that sometimes people still want to do business with you, even if you have a narrow niche, 

because they learn about you and they're like, well, do you work with.

And 

Okay. I'll make an exception. 

make an exception. this time. Right? 

You seem kind of awesome, but therein lies some of the gyms and I think, you know this, I mean, how many passionate customers do you need to be at whatever level you want to be at? Five 10, a hundred, right? And once you go past a hundred, you're going, well, really that's extra money or whatever it is, whatever that number is for you. It's usually a hundred or less for most of the folks I talk to. Now there's 

another level of folks, right? Okay.  You can live very well, very successful 

business for a hundred passionate people  in that range. Right. Well then, okay. It's going to be  a much easier to find them when you say  who they are.

And I'm not just like you were saying, I'm not just talking about, yeah, it's going to be a guy between 50 and 55. Who's retired,  I'm not 

saying like that, man. What is it about them? That makes sense. Clique with you and you'll find those hundred people. And then guess what they're going to tell, one or two people.

So now your audience is three, 400, but your passionate tribe is that hundred that just like every time you put out an offer, they're like here, take my money, please. 

 Yeah. That's so interesting. 

One of the lessons I've had in life  is overcoming adversity. So when I started I'll use the example of starting my most recent podcast, I thought, okay, I'm going to interview these folks that are ahead of me in their entrepreneurial journey. Because then I can share this stuff I've experienced, right. That those are my nuggets. I want to share stuff that I don't know yet. It's my opportunity to pick their brain as well. Right. I can get them on there and not have to pay the thousands of dollars to get into the mastermind. But what I was finding with all these successful people without even asking them  I would say, okay, here's what I want you to do. When we get on the mic, I'm going to do the intro like you did. And then I'm going to say, Hey, I want to step back from the mic and let you tell your story. unprompted. 

Whatever you want to share. And every single one without exception have overcome some adversity in their life.

And I'm talking about spousal abuse, death experiences, car crashes, Alcoholism, whatever it is, it's covered the gamut. And every single time, I'm always shocked. Like never knew that about you. Some of them I've known for a while. Others it's like I followed their careers and like, I never knew that. And I've overcome what I call three,  I call my roller coaster of life, right? So I mentioned obviously the death of my 18 month old daughter and the really wicked divorce I went through. And the one that happened first was overcoming drugs.

Right. 

I got hooked into the drug scene in Southern California when I started my first business. I started my first business.  I had the first real money in my life and I was in 

my early twenties. Right. You know, so I just stepped into the wrong scene. And man, I just went for it for like two years.

It was this downward spiral and it got to the point where the police literally kicked open the door to my home. 

Oh, 

You know, and they 

raided the place. It was 

just like the movies, so I've overcome those adversities. And I think there's a number of people out there that either are starting or considering starting.

And They're still holding themselves back because they feel unworthy because they've experienced those things. And it's those folks. I think we need to reach out a little bit deeper and let them know, look, you aren't that? What is the executor say?

You're not your experiences you just experienced. 

Yeah. Yeah. It's so 

true. 

if you can look back at that and learn the lesson, glean, whatever lesson you need from it today, and step forward, say, okay, I got it. I'm not that sure person yet. I'm not a drug addict.  I'm not in a depression cause my daughter's gone and I'm not that person that went through that wicked it's anymore. Boom.  I can move forward and I can learn from that and deliver that value. In addition to everything else to whomever, I engage with my customers or clients, my peers. so Yeah.

we've all got our adversities. We've come through them. You're not alone in that boat. 

Yeah.  I absolutely love that perspective and, I mean, we've all heard that saying that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger. And I think that's so true, right? It causes us  to be resilient if we survive that we've come through it and we get perspective as well.

Right. Because what could be worse than losing your 18 month old daughter? 

Like nothing. Right. so, 

 If you look at anything that you're looking to do, any risks or anything, you're like, whatever I've already been through hell and, you know, 

and I survived right. 

right. 

exactly, 

exactly, exactly. I would imagine that,  you hearing these stories from guests that you've had on your podcast, feel really, really honored when people share with me the things that they've been through.

 Because I think sharing our humanity. Makes it okay for other people to show up as they are also like, because none of us are perfect. None of us are, and we all have our own crosses to bear.  We all have the things that we've been through. And,  I was actually talking to somebody earlier, about the saying that my dad has, which is,  if we all threw our troubles into a pile and we saw what everybody else's troubles were we probably go and pick up our own.

Yeah, I'm going to take mine back.

Yeah, exactly. I thought it was bad until I saw everybody else's I'll just pick mine back. 

Exactly 

Yeah. And,  it's very inspirational. What you've said, and  I think that, the other thing, kind of going back to your sixties and , in that cultivation and looking at your de motivators  I think that.

Both entrepreneurial-ism but also just even working in the corporate world, it's not for sissies, right? I mean, there's a lot of things that we need to withstand, , to get through I think that sometimes it can be really easy to think that like, oh, you can escape through.

Whatever needs to be done easily. And sometimes when people, I see it in coaching that sometimes when people make mistakes or they trip up or they hit an obstacle that they start getting discouraged  feel like, oh, well I've screwed up. I guess I'm not management material. I don't know  if I'm cut out for this and that kind of mindset can be really, really detrimental.

And I'll share this, that  I wrote a book called winning the game of work and  it's about a lot of lessons that I learned the hard way in the workplace. And I wanted to share them with people so that they, hopefully would get some encouragement or some tips on how they can navigate in their careers.

But I guess over the course of time, I was sort of like, Mentally collecting stories of people that I knew who had interesting careers. And I interviewed 11 people for my book about their careers, much like what you were saying, that, these people that you're like looking in there, coming on, these really successful entrepreneurs.

And they're telling you what they've been through. Well, that's a lot of, Why I chose some of the people that I chose to interview for my book too, because, if you just saw them and saw what they'd done, you'd be like, oh wow. They're so successful. And then when, you know the story behind it, you're like, oh my gosh, like, wow, how did you even survive that?

Um, but yet they kept,  getting up or figuring out how to overcome the obstacles and they just kept going. And  I think that that's really the key to. Being successful. You just keep going. 

You gotta you soldier on, right? 

Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Well,  I'm going to start wrapping things up, Tracy.

So what are the last words that you'd like to leave with our listeners to marketing?

I think whatever you're going to do B. It's something I try to preach from on high all the time, because I found whenever I was having some sort of difficulty, 

whether it was in my corporate career, my entrepreneurial journey or in any  if I look back and reflect, I wasn't just being me.

I was being someone that someone else wanted me to be  to fit into that box. And I became unhappy. B as a result, which means, everything I was doing started to, dwindle in productivity, dwindle in effectiveness. So always be you sometimes it might be a little bit tougher in the beginning, but you'll be able to put your head down with a big smile on your face and that confidence that you know what, I didn't sell my soul to no devil today. I'm going to sleep like a baby. 

 I love that, it's like, what did they say? Be yourself because everybody else has already taken. 

Exactly there it is right there. 

Yup. Yup. Well Tracy, where can people find you?

They can find  the podcast on any of the platforms. It's the dark horse entrepreneur. But if they want to check me out and not to go searching for it, they can find me at the website, which is dark horse schooling.com. 

Okay. Great, Tracy, thank you so much for bringing your wisdom and your really great perspective to marketing Mambo. I really appreciate you. 

No, it's my pleasure. Thank you for having me.