Unusually Unusual Marketing Insights with Amy Bailey

Unusually Unusual Marketing Insights with Amy Bailey

In this episode of 'The Wireless Way', host Chris Whitaker converses with Amy Bailey, the force behind Unusually Unusual Consulting. Amy shares her journey from working for her father's call accounting business to becoming a marketing dynamo and the creator of memorable experiences, from incentive trips to marketing content enrichment. The discussion delves into the nuances of channel marketing, the effectiveness of virtual vs. in-person events, the strategy behind successful marketing swag, and the evolving landscape of channel marketing. Amy emphasizes the importance of creating memorable experiences and the impact of thoughtful marketing materials over quantity. The episode also introduces the Channel Marketing Association, founded by Amy and her partner, aimed at sharing best practices and fostering community among marketing professionals.

00:00 On the Road: A Special Episode of The Wireless Way

00:20 Introducing Amy Bailey: The Heartbeat of Unusually Unusual Consulting

02:15 Amy's Journey: From Call Accounting to Marketing Maven

05:41 Mastering MDF: Strategies for Maximizing Marketing Funds

10:53 The Evolution of Event Marketing: In-Person vs. Virtual

16:38 The Art of Follow-Up: Maximizing Event ROI

18:06 Swag Strategy: Investing in Quality Giveaways

18:31 Rethinking Swag: Quality Over Quantity

19:27 Innovative Swag Ideas: The Reader Glasses Story

21:13 Understanding Your Audience for Effective Swag

23:49 The Future of Channel Marketing and Community Building

26:26 The Evolution of Channel Marketing: Data-Driven Strategies

28:10 Personal Insights and the Unusually Unusual Company Story

Transcript

Chris: 0:00

This episode was recorded while I was on the road, so, not at my usual studio location, but none the less, it is a great conversation. Welcome to another episode of The Wireless Way. I'm your host, Chris Whitaker. And as always, I'm just, I'm so grateful that you're here. And I'm equally grateful that my guest, Amy Bailey, is with us today. And before I bring her on just a little bit about her. If there's one thing you need to know about her. And I can attest to this. I've seen it firsthand. She lives for the thrill of creating unforgettable experiences. And again, I've seen them firsthand. She's going to tell us a bit more about that today. But she's, for the last year or so, she's been the heartbeat behind Unusually Unusual Consulting. We're going to ask her a lot about that. Actually, I'm very curious about that. And she's done everything from captivating lunch and learns to legendary incentive trips. Again, seeing it firsthand. I'm a believer. So when she's not orchestrating these signature experiences, she empowers partners with snazzy content to boost their marketing prowess. Whether you're a supplier or a partner out there listening, and you're wondering how can you level up your marketing efforts, Pay attention to this next this next episode. I have to throw this in here. She's a proud alumni of alum of San Diego State University. And when she's taking a breather from her events, you could catch her kayaking, riding their Razor, which I had to ask, Razor is a all all train vehicle. So maybe she'll fill me in more on that. And if she's not doing that, they're cruising in pickup limes. Which is the name of their Malibu wake Setter. I'm more of a boater, so I can relate to that one. And she also has some other hobbies that I love, hiking and then something I can't so much relate to is chasing after her next goal on Peloton. And yeah, check the show notes. I'll have her username there. If you want to get some extra dose of motivation, she can help you with that. So again, I feel like we just scratched the surface there, Amy. There's so much more to Amy Bailey. And I hope we can dive into that. But again, thanks for making time and joining us today.

Amy: 2:01

Absolutely. Thanks, Chris. It's always good to see you.

Chris: 2:04

Yes. Yes. Likewise. I've known you for years and you've been my marketing bar that I like, Hey, what would Amy do? I've always come to you for advice and I'm so glad to see you're doing what you're doing today. But before we get into that is, traditionally My first question, is what's not in the bio? How did you get here from your career professional perspective? And maybe share a little bit more about your journey.

Amy: 2:27

Yeah, I think it's really about saying yes to things and be open to new opportunities. I came into the space by working for my dad. His website was callaccounting. com. So he was one of the original call accounting guys and would hook up to a PBX and report on calls. And so I worked for him and did that. And that ended up going and working for the product that that he was working on. Sold the extractor. And then, we ended up selling that to Americom technology. And so I ended up working for a VAR and understood how to learn the channel and learn the bar world. And then Telarus came along and bought the VX suite which was a few products by then. And all of a sudden it was like, I went from being a sales manager, a channel manager to say somebody going, Hey, we need you to do some marketing stuff. And then when Telarus bought us, they said, you keep doing that marketing stuff. It seems to be working. And so I went from a. I've been doing the the solo marketing department at VX suite to me and three people on my team, which was a lot of fun. And, we were scrappy, we did a little bit of everything and that was a lot of fun. And when I left Telarus, it was me and 22 people. We had a television production studio, as and podcast studio and all kinds of crazy stuff. Just being willing to say yes to a lot of different things and opportunities as they arise. One of the things I enjoy doing is mentoring. Students, usually college students, and they always have this career path, right? I'm going to be a marketing manager, and then I'm going to be a marketing VP. And then I'm going to be the CMO. And I'm like, it just doesn't work like that. Sometimes you'll go through field marketing. Then you'll move over and you'll do some product marketing and then maybe you'll decide to get into sales so you can understand the other side of the fence. And, I think zigging and zagging is what I've done and make my way through my career path and had a lot of fun on the way.

Chris: 4:07

That's fantastic. I do love that about you. You're the mentoring aspect. You're part of many different organizations helping usher in that next generation. And, yeah, that's so important for any industry is what are we doing for that next generation of leaders? And especially around the idea of marketing, there's, I've seen it done so many different ways. And I've worked with a lot of different marketing leaders over the years. And I think you just answered, why our relationship is so different. I feel like, cause you, you didn't really start your career as a marketer. No, there's more cells and operations. And so you understand the ripple effects of everything is put out there, right?

Amy: 4:45

Yeah. Yeah. And my major in college was elementary education and speech communication. I was a double major. And my intention was I was going to teach. I could teach K through 12 with those two degrees. And I realized that I love kids. But I do not like parents and I didn't want to deal with all of those nosy parents getting in my way of doing what I wanted to do. And I relate a lot of times I feel like, working with people is, break it down and work into the elementary education, the systematic, conversations of how do we get from here to there and where do we want to go and then, take it step by step for people.

Chris: 5:20

So I can imagine gosh, even our time working together, Telarus in the past and your current role the conversations of MDF and ROI, probably the most two common three letter acronyms you deal with. And it's a hot topic. Having been a channel leader myself at some other companies and even my role now, hey, show me the money. I'll give you the money, but show me the money. Let's talk about that a little bit. What are some best practices and observations you've had, both in your past roles and today when it comes to properly having an MDF strategy? And capturing and measuring ROI.

Amy: 5:55

I always say that it's really easy to get MDF from a supplier the first time, but the difference is getting it the second time. You have to prove your ROI, prove your worth, show what you brought to the table. So whether that's for, a supplier who's going to give it to a partner, whether it's a partner that's asking for it's from a supplier, I think having an understanding of, what it is that we're going to do with this money, how are we going to make this happen? Because that really is. Is laying that found out foundational great groundwork there. Then from there, we can say, okay, let's say we're going to do an event. How many people are we going to bring in? What are we going to do to get them there? What are we going to do? Before the event, what are we going to do at the event? What are we going to do after the event? I so often see people do events where they don't have a follow up plan. I've also seen people do events where they have 15 people reserved. They, we're going to have a great event, a little lunch and learn 15 people and six show up and they're devastated. Okay, but you had nine other people that said yes. So what could you do with those nine people to get that supplier that ROI? Schedule appointments after the fact. Hey, we know life happens, but we did commit for you to be here. So can you do a demo with us with this part with the supplier? Can you have a conversation after the fact, right? It's really about what moments are you creating to bring value on both sides of the table. And that's one of the things that I see the most is in that delivering of ROI. Be able to know up front what you're going to commit to and deliver it. Do

Chris: 7:19

you see a formula that a lot of companies may use? There's how do you know you've met your ROI goals? Is it, 10X, 20X, 5X. Have you seen, is there any kind of formula or is this just going to vary from company to company on what is an acceptable ROI point of event?

Amy: 7:37

Yeah, it's going to vary company to company, because if you have, a smaller supplier name, you're just getting into the market. You're looking for more brand recognition. You're looking for more understanding and awareness. Then if you're, a 10 billion company that, doesn't, everybody knows who Comcast is, right? Everybody knows who AT& T is. And you're not looking for that brand recognition. Maybe what you're looking for is, a different understanding of what they're providing, right? Maybe you're a supplier who's been pigeonholed. Oh, I just do connectivity. And now you're doing UCaaS. Or now you're doing, cybersecurity. Or now you're doing SD WAN. And sometimes it's about, how, what's, What's your messaging goal and what do you want to get out of the event? And that's really going to vary from supplier to supplier and really from, event to event, because sometimes you have a partner who is going to invite customers who maybe are familiar with the base layer of what That supplier does, and they're going to bring those customers who, you know, Hey, I understand who you are and I'm going to educate you to the next thing we do. And maybe it's, Hey, I'm just totally new into the market and I just want to get, understanding of who we are and that we're here. And that when you think of AI, you think of us kind of thing. So I don't think that there's a formula that I've ever seen that would apply to everyone.

Chris: 8:42

Interesting. In my past life too, I would always interview new suppliers. And they would have great technology, good leadership, but that I would ask that question, Hey, what's your marketing strategy, crickets, they're like, what are you talking about? In your experience and in your opinion, how would you define the difference between like consumer marketing, straight to end user versus channel marketing, what's the difference?

Amy: 9:09

Yeah. So channel marketing is, anytime that you're asking for your product to be sold by people who don't work for you. And so if I have, a third party sales force, like an agent channel or a VAR or an MSP channel, I am depending on people who don't. Cash a paycheck for me to understand, my selling proposition, who I am, where to position me, what my benefits are, all of those things about me, and yet I don't pay them anything. So I have to figure out a really good reciprocal relationship with them and provide them the materials that they need to be able to go and put their best foot forward. So a lot of times in channel marketing, you'll hear people talk about through channel marketing. And so it's giving the partner, the reseller, materials that they can use that are end user focused, but that they can maybe co brand. If I'm a SpectroTel and I want to be able to get an agent to sell my materials, I'm going to leave a spot on my brochure where they can put their logo, they can put their name and contact information, right? The last thing that they want to do is hand a flyer over to a prospect and not have any way to contact them. And then what happens? They're going to go onto the Spectrotel website and they're going to go find out, you, and they're going to reach out to one of your direct sales team. And all of a sudden that agent is out of the loop. And so there's a lot of that through channel marketing where they're doing, email campaigns or marketing assets or, co branded materials that really help the agent put their best foot forward as well.

Chris: 10:34

That's a great advice and great thoughts for sure. We've both seen it done well and not so well. Um, pivoting to a similar, but different topic event marketing. There's always been a lot of chatter over the years of, what do I do as a supplier? Do I go out and do my own supplier branded lunch and learn or a ballgame or something? Or do I invest, considerable amount of money for some companies into a TSD program? What's your opinion on that? Is either one is one better than the other? Or, What have you seen in the market in terms of that, supplier led, branded versus TSD events?

Amy: 11:14

Yeah, I'm not seeing as many of the supplier led events these days. What I was seeing is the supplier partnering with a TS with a, sorry, an agent or an MSP or a VAR to help sponsor their events because the agent has customers that they're already presumably selling into. And so if I can get in front of those customers, it's going to be, a better deal for me because there's an agent who already has a relationship with that company, as opposed to me just trying to like market onto the internet or market to some. List and hope that people show up. So I'm seeing a lot of suppliers partnering with agents these days to do events, and I'm seeing even more than that, two or three or four suppliers getting together and working with a single agent so that they have an event that, maybe they're only paying$1,500 or$2,000 for, but they're also gonna go to. Vic and Anthony's for lunch and then go to a ball game, or they're all going to a cerlatop cooking class, or they're all going to an axe throwing event, right? But it's, a lower point of entry for each supplier, because they're going to share that burden of the cost with a couple of other suppliers. The TSD route is very expensive. I worked for TSD, right? We, when we were there, we were bringing in millions of, literally from our suppliers to cover our events. And you were

Chris: 12:28

spending millions too, right?

Amy: 12:29

Absolutely. We were very conscious of not having a pay to play format when I was there, all of the money that the suppliers were spending with me, we're going into events and we would keep about a 20 percent overhead was our goal on every event, and that was to cover our staff time and travel and things like that, but other than that, we weren't banking money on the but it's still very expensive because They're doing hundreds of events. Most of the TSDs now have moved to a pay to play. You buy a package, and you spend usually six figures, and then you get a bunch of things within that package. And so it's hard for a smaller supplier to go in and enter into that TSD market, because you just can't buy the number of events that you want to go to, or The cities that you want to, attend, maybe already sold out because of people who are spending more money than you are. So it's hard. I think that a smaller supplier is definitely at a disadvantage if they're not ready to, lay down six figures for TSD event support.

Chris: 13:27

Speaking of, being budget conscious and, trying to get the most out of your MDF, but let's pivot again to virtual events versus in person events. Obviously. You know this they're so different but sometimes Maybe it's because you're trying to reach a greater audience across multiple cities or you know what, I'm sure there's a lot of different reasons, but, so what's your opinion when it comes to a webinar, a multi TSD or non TSD type webinar for a supplier, versus that in-person event strategy are virtual and online events, are they still relevant or. What were your thoughts there?

Amy: 14:02

I'm not a huge fan. I think that we tended to, we went to the extreme during COVID and I think that people are Not attending them the way they are. I know personally, I sign up for a lot of events and I don't show up for most of them. Most of them will send me a recording of it and I would say one out of 10 I go back and listen to after the fact. It's just, it just gets pushed aside, right? Work shows up and a call happens or that email comes in that you decide to respond to and then you forget. Or maybe you do log in, but you're only half paying attention because you're multitasking and doing You know, doing eight other things at the same time. So yes, there can be successful online events. I think I'm seeing suppliers do that more with their funnel. So as a prospect comes in and is interested in their products, they're putting them into a webinar path. But for the agents, I don't see it being quite as successful. I, we're such a relationship based channel that I feel like people want to be in person. They want to, be able to connect, with other partners or with their customers, whatever the case may be. So I'm not seeing as much success in the virtual events. I'm not saying that no one's doing them and there aren't some successful ones. But. By and large I feel like the agents that I'm working with are doing better, even just getting a half a dozen people together for a breakfast or something like that, keeping it on the lower end or doing a really cool experience, doing an axe throwing or doing something that's fun but not, doing as much virtual.

Chris: 15:30

Cause I, you mentioned it earlier, you alluded to it, it's really more about quality over quantity. Now I've talked to some marketers and they're like so focused on we got to get at least a hundred people to attend this webinar. I'm like to your point 90 percent of them are multitasking or just signing up and not showing up. What about I'm okay with 10, 15 good partners to your point. If they're coming to a virtual event, they probably have some, Interest in the topic. It's not, they're not doing that. If just like they got nothing else to do that day. It's wow. Oh, that's an interesting topic. Cybersecurity. I don't know much about it. Maybe I should check this out. And you're right. I do believe, cause I've even take that tactic on. Hey, if you can't join us live, don't worry. I'll send you the recording because, obviously I feel like. If I have a proper registration page, I'm going to capture a lot of good information, their city, state, their business name. I'm going to get a lot of information that may help me for future marketing tactics. So it's not a, end all be all the webinar. That's just a part of the greater strategy.

Amy: 16:24

Exactly. And as long as you have a strategy where you are doing that follow up and you are reaching out after the fact, I work with a lot of suppliers who are doing channel partners and they set up their booth at channel partners and they do their lead scanning and then they're like, I don't know what to do after this and they almost just don't, they don't do anything right. The number of times that I was scanned at the show versus the number of emails that I received is one in 10. If that, right? And so what is your follow up strategy? And that's really important. I talked to supply the other day and I said, how many of the people that you scanned at the show, have you called? What do you mean called? Picked up the phone and called somebody wanted to engage with you enough that they came by your booth and let you scan them. You need to figure out what you can do to be able to reach out back out to them. And a lot of times that's fine. Place the phone call. Hey, it's Chris. We met at the show. We talked about this. If you're doing your job correctly, where you're actually scanning them and putting notes in that lead scanner of, Hey, I talked with Amy about this. When you call back, you say, Hey, when we were at the show, we talked about this. I'd like to follow up with you some more when they get that voicemail. It's Oh, yeah, I talked to them about that. I really do want more information on that. But having that follow up, whether it's after a webinar or a trade show is critical because if you're going to invest the money and you're not going to do the after work, don't bother.

Chris: 17:45

Yep. Couldn't have said it better. I love, I agree with 100%, along the same lines of conferences and events. Let's touch on swag just for a moment, you either love it or you hate it. And I've talked to marketers that just despise it. And I've talked to marketers that spend so much money on what I would call jump swag. And I got to give you a compliment. My time working with you was probably some of the highest quality swag I've ever had in my life. I think I know where you stand knowing it, but talk to us a little bit about the strategy around if you're investing in giveaways and swag. What's the best practices there?

Amy: 18:21

So I'm not a fan of trick or treaters. So trick or treaters, the people that come to the booth and they have the big, huge bag and they just shove whatever you've got on the table into their bag. That's not what I want. I want to be able to have a meaningful conversation with somebody and hand them a nice piece of something and have them go, wow, this is really quality stuff. And like you said, when you were at our events, you saw really quality items spent a lot of money on swag. You're right. A lot of that was to outfit the team, right? Because we wanted to have a certain look when we went out places. And so that, was a really big. Differentiator for us. But also, we wanted to buy a nice golf ball. We wanted to buy a nice golf tee. We wanted to, give you things that were really going to be high quality items. And that's going to that's a big difference. So I don't believe in the little 99 cent dollar 99 items that are going to sit at the trade show booth and have somebody come and take those away. I do believe, tying something in with, Okay. With your theme Roger will tell a story when I used to work for Roger Blum at at Telarus. We had a theme called see what others can't and I went, okay, see thoughts, magnifying glasses. Oh, glasses. Oh, what can we, wait a minute. Let's go buy reader glasses. I said to Roger, I want to go buy reader glasses for our booth. And he said, that's the most ridiculous thing I've ever heard. No. And I said no, it really, it's not ridiculous. I want to go buy reader glasses. And he's no, you're not going to buy reader glasses. So I didn't listen. And I went and bought a hundred pair of 1. 0, a hundred pair of 1. 5 and a hundred pair of 2. 0 reader glasses. And I put them out on the counter and he got to the trade show and he goes, what are these, and I go, they're reader glasses. And he said, this is ridiculous. And they were gone the first day. Because you know what the channel is full of? People over 40 who need reader glasses.

Chris: 20:09

Gray hairs.

Amy: 20:10

Gray hairs, right? And they forget them. Oh my gosh, I left them on the bedside table. Oh my gosh, I left them in the, in my car, in my bag, in my whatever. Can I have two? I would love to have a second pair. The funniest thing is, we didn't put our logo on them. All we put on them was see what others can't. But you know what? People remembered that they got the reader glasses and I had people come up to us for years asking for reader glasses. I'd ordered 3000 pair of reader glasses at my time, Chris.

Chris: 20:38

It's a

Amy: 20:38

lot of reader glasses. They were 5 a pair. They were just like the ones you get at the dime store. You know what I mean? The other funny story is I told my team, Hey, we're going to order reader glasses like you at the dime store. And my team said, what are greeter glasses and what's a dime store? And I said, Oh my God, it makes me feel really old. But trust me, this is going to work. And no, nobody believed me. And it was hugely successful. So a lot of times for me, it's a gut feeling of what I know is going to be successful, but I also know who my market is. I know what they're going to like. And I am trying to buy things that are more specific for them. When I look around the show, I don't see a lot of people with young kids anymore. I, people like us have grandkids, but they don't have a lot of little kids that they're taking tchotchkes home to. And so investing in high quality items is really important. You want to make sure that you have something that people are going to remember you by that's going to be good quality that they're going to keep. I think that the battery packs are dead. I think the beverage glasses are dead. So I don't need another Yeti Tumblr mug, coffee cup, fill in the blank, whatever in my life. But there are some people who are going to, go do those things. That's fine. I'm not saying I don't pick them up when they're the right color and they match my razor and they're really good. So I'll throw one in every now and then. But but yeah, I think that you can find the next thing. One of the ones I saw really recently that was cool was AT& T did air tags. I can always use another air tag. I put one in my luggage. I put one, I actually hide one in the boat. So if something ever happens to the boat, then it's going to pick it up, right? I mean something like that. That's a 30 item. That's a nice quality item. But again, it's easy to take home from a trade show. It doesn't take up a lot of room in my suitcase. Something really high quality. I noticed that you're wearing airpods. When you want to go on a plane and watch a movie, You can't connect your AirPods to the movie, but what you can do is buy a little adapter. They're about between 15 and 30, depending on the quality. You plug it into the back of the TV and then it'll air, Bluetooth to, to your AirPods. So something like that, every time you get on a plane, you're going to pull that out and see that logo. That makes a difference.

Chris: 22:35

So I guess what I'm hearing you say, think it through, don't just have some cheap pins on the table, just to have cheap pins on the table, which again, that's like the worst expense. I that's like my pet peeve. Cause again, they're cheap pins. You pick it up, start to write with it. This thing sucks. Throw it away. He said, whatever goes on it. That's a negative relation there, but think it through again, go quality over quantity, you get a thousand or something, but I like what you said there too. Not everybody could just get it. You have to earn it. Have a conversation with me. Hey, you know what? Hey, thanks for stopping by. I like to give you this. Now it's a gift. You're giving something of value versus someone kind of stealing stuff off your table with no conversation.

Amy: 23:16

Exactly. Yep. Yeah. Make it worthwhile, and that's something that, we talk about a lot, in, Channel marketing circles when we get together is to try to figure out, what is the next thing? What are people doing? What are best practices? I'll put in a shameless plug. My partner and I, Catherine Rose have created the channel marketing association because we didn't have a best practices program. Sharing place. We didn't have a community where people could get together and say, What should I do here? When I was at VX suite, I was a solo marketer. I didn't have anybody to ask. I had to go figure stuff out. And it was, there was a lot of trial and a lot of mistakes, right? When I came to Telarus, it was me and three, and we were trying to figure stuff out. And, we had a cable marketing summit where Comcast and Spectrum would get together and invite two people from each of the TSDs to come and share best practices. And about the first hour of the first day, we all sat there with our arms crossed and looked at each other and I went, those are my competitors. I'm not going to share my secrets. And about an hour and a half in, I was like, Oh my God, did you try that? I tried that. It totally failed. I spent like 12, 000 on that. It was a huge flop. But instead I tried this and it went batter. What did you try instead? And we were sharing and we were realizing that it was helping all of us and we were elevating the channel as a whole. And, it was an incredible opportunity for us to learn and grow. We did that for four or five years, COVID happened, it stopped. And then they stopped doing that. And so we decided to create the channel marketing, some marketing association. And then we have a summit in three weeks, we all actually get, I'll get together in Dallas. We'll have about a hundred channel marketers where we'll get together and share best practices. So if you know of somebody in your organization, who's a channel marketer, who wants to learn, wants to grow, doesn't know where to do it. Channel marketing association. com. We're there. We're here to help. We've got a community. You can log into the mighty networks and be able to, share and ask questions. There was a question the other day, somebody asked about MDF and what do you use? Do you use a platform? Do people have to log in? How do they fill it out? All of those questions that channel marketers are trying to figure out right now.

Chris: 25:18

Gosh and that is, that leads me to my next question and kind of final question that before last words, but you, we mentioned gray hairs, joking, I got gray hairs, obviously gray hairs, but we're seeing like this change into the guard. There is the next generation is coming in and we're seeing more and more children of channel people coming in, much like you, you're an oddball. I thought I asked most people how they got here. They started out in insurance sales or copy repairs or, One guy was a lawyer, and he said, I can't do law anymore. So most, a lot of the early, or I would say the more tenured channel people, they didn't even start out in telecom. But now we're seeing a lot of young people coming out of college, starting out their careers in telecom. Is the marketing, channel marketing experience different? And expectations different now than they were, say, 10 years ago.

Amy: 26:05

Absolutely. It is all data driven people wanted to be able to have metrics. They want to have numbers. They, what we were doing was flying a lot more by the seat of our pants, and we were trying to figure things out as we went. And now there are a lot of really good tools out there that can help you track your progress, help you track your ROI, help you, track your partners, there's. Partner development management tools that will help you to, communicate with your partners, provide them those marketing materials, track their sales, track their opportunities. All of those kind of things are readily available now where they weren't before. So I think that the data piece of channel marketing has really changed.

Chris: 26:40

No, that's that's why it's just so important to keep collaborating. Now I've heard someone say years ago, I forgot who, amazing things happen with like minded people with similar goals work together. You could, yeah, the sky's the limit if I get my words out here. Wrapping it up, is there anything we haven't touched on or any last words you want to share with us?

Amy: 26:59

Any last words?

Chris: 27:01

So it's not such a daunting, it's not really the last words, just the last words for this episode. I know you got a lot more words.

Amy: 27:07

Yeah, people won't remember what you said, they'll remember how you made them feel. It's a, take of a Maya Angelou quote, but it works for events. It works for the channel. We are a relationship builder. And, people want to feel something when they talk to you, when they engage with you, when they look at, your brand, your product, your, your personal brand or your company brand. And so what can you do to make sure when people see that they feel something about you, they have a shared experience. I think that's what really matters the most. It's not about the words that you put out there. It's about the person that you are and how you show up.

Chris: 27:43

Man that's great words to end on. Thank you. That's just great. Not only for business, but our personal lives, right? Didn't get into as much as I'd like to about your company. What do you, what does your typical customer look like? And, where do you see, you're at the most value.

Amy: 27:59

That's really interesting. I think back to my days when I did, do the solopreneur type thing when I was at VX and I got to do a little bit of everything and that's what I do these days. So I'm in the middle of planning Mitel's 450 person partner conference. I'm planning. TPX's Excellence Club, so some big partner conferences, some incentive travel, but I also am helping a former Telarus employee with his new website. He's going to go be an agent, and so I like to do a lot of partner websites. I help some suppliers with their websites and their marketing so I've, do a little bit of everything, which is You know, what I missed when I got to be, SVP of marketing and managing 22 people and, not getting my hands on the product, on the stuff. And that's what really, I really get to enjoy now. A little bit of everything, a lot of strategy. But the website piece, I always have a fond spot in my heart for agents because my dad was an agent. And I believe that they need to have a quality website. That's not going to break the bank. So I love helping them with that. You laughed about my company name. I'll tell you the quick story. So I'm a long time country music fan, and there was a band called Lone Star and they have a song called Unusually Unusual. And the first line is she introduced herself as Amy said, call me Caroline for short. And it's all the ways that this girl is wacky and unusual. And when I was starting my business, I knew I wanted something fun that would be, memorable. I didn't want. Bailey Consulting. I didn't want, just a name. I just wanted to be something special. And I thought, I've had friends that have always called me Caroline. It's a nickname. I've got a mug that says Caroline on it. It's just always been a thing. It's going to be trademarked. It's going to be copyrighted. I'm not going to be able to use it. And no, it wasn't trademarked. It wasn't copyrighted. And my partner in CMA, Catherine Rose actually did one of those cameos. and got the band to send me a message saying we're so excited. We learned that you named your company after us and that's such a cool feeling and good luck. And so fun. So that is very fun. Unusually unusual.

Chris: 29:54

I dig it. Definitely check out the show notes. I'll have all the links that Amy or Caroline mentioned. And please check it out. And, if you're in the industry, whether you're a partner or supplier or maybe a startup looking to get into the channel what a great resource, what you're so much experience, you can let, you can do it the hard way, or you could work with someone that they can show you the way.

Amy: 30:15

Exactly. Yeah,

Chris: 30:17

excellent. Amy, thanks a lot. We've covered a lot in a short time. Again, there's always, this is at the end of the conversation. Conversation always continues on. Thanks for being here. Absolutely. Thanks so much, Chris. Appreciate it. All right. There you go. Another episode of the Wireless Way. And just remember, it's a double entendre, wireless is no strings attached. No judgment in the ways, the path, the journey, the venture, and boy, I think we covered all that today. Again, thanks for checking out this episode. And as always, if you like what you heard, or you think someone else could benefit from it, please share. That's the best thing about this kind of content, share it with others. And we'll see you next time on the wireless way.