With Tad Hargrave, a trailblazer in conscious business marketing, entrepreneurs find a new way to promote their work without losing themselves in the process. Tad’s journey started in his teens when he got caught up in a mix of sales and marketing techniques—some felt genuine, others felt like they crossed a line. After years in the field, he stepped back, questioning what he’d been taught and rethinking how marketing could actually feel good. What he found was a way to market that’s both effective and rooted in respect, where integrity and connection take center stage.

By 2006, Tad had become one of the first full-time coaches focused on helping values-driven entrepreneurs grow their businesses without compromising who they are. Since 2001, he’s traveled across Canada, the U.S., Europe, and online, sharing his unorthodox approach with conscious entrepreneurs, often on a “pay what you can” basis. Now based in Duncan, BC, Tad honors his Scottish and Ukrainian roots, along with his hometown of Edmonton, Alberta (Amiskwaciwaskihegan), by dedicating himself to building a more respectful, human-centered culture. Through his workshops, and in the sixteen books he’s written, Tad continues to help business owners find success that aligns with their values.

Join us in our conversation as Tad shares insights into resourcefulness in entrepreneurship, highlighting the power of identifying and celebrating unique talents—especially within the Indigenous community. He also discusses ethics in marketing, emphasizing respect, simplicity, and authenticity, along with practical techniques to create a more relaxed, pressure-free atmosphere in sales. Tune in to explore how marketing can be not only effective but also deeply meaningful and aligned with values.

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Takeaways & quotes you don’t want to miss from this episode:

• Why authenticity matters more than closing techniques.
• The importance of determining fit in client relationships.
• How “point of view marketing” builds trust and attracts ideal clients.
• The connection between desperation, deviousness, and ethical marketing.
• Why does ethical foundation reduce shame and empower business owners?

“Stop trying to get immune to kryptonite… and use your superpower to help other people and then make it easier for other people to promote you.”

-Tad Hargrave

Check out these highlights:

• 06:19 Tad shares how his marketing journey began…
• 07:12 The importance of going for “truth” over pushing for a sale.
• 24:30 How is the word of mouth consider the most powerful marketing tool?
• 33:06 What are the consequences of taking on non-ideal clients?
• 1:00:11 Listen to Tad’s final takeaways for the listeners…

How to get in touch with Tad on Social Media:

Imperfect Show Notes

We are happy to offer these imperfect show notes to make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who prefer reading over listening. While we would love to offer more polished show notes, we are currently offering an automated transcription (which likely includes errors, but hopefully will still deliver great value), below:

GGGB Intro  00:00

Here’s what you get on today’s episode of Guts, Grit and Great Business®…

Tad Hargrave  00:05

People think they need resources to make a business work. That’s true. But even more important is you need resourcefulness. You’ve got to be resourceful and sometimes, okay, there’s no more wood at the lumber yard. Where can we get wood? You got to have a little bit of get some dirt under your fingernails in some of this work, it’s not all just hippie love and it’s good vibes. The good vibe ultimately comes from the fact that you’ve done the deeper work.

GGGB Intro  00:31

The adventure of entrepreneurship and building a life and business you love, preferably at the same time is not for the faint of heart. That’s why Heather Pearce Campbell is bringing you a dose of guts, grit and great business stories that will inspire and motivate you to create what you want in your business and life. Welcome to the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast where endurance is required. Now, here’s your host, The Legal Website Warrior®, Heather Pearce Campbell.

Heather Pearce Campbell  00:59

Alrighty, welcome. I am Heather Pearce Campbell, The Legal Website Warrior®. I’m an attorney and legal coach based here in Seattle, Washington, serving online information entrepreneurs throughout the US and around the world. Welcome to another episode of Guts, Grit and Great Business®. I am super excited today to welcome Tad Hargrave. Welcome tad. Yeah, good to see you. I was saying before we went live Tad and I connected last year, and he was doing quite a bit of travel, and I have known that this would be a fun conversation, and I love his approach on this particular topic. So stick around. This is relevant for everyone who I serve in business, and I think it’ll be a really good, fresh perspective and a reframe for many people on how to approach this particular topic. So for those of you that don’t know, Tad. Tad Hargrave is a hippy who developed a knack for marketing (and then learned to be a hippy again).  He spent his late teens being schooled in a mixed bag of approaches to sales and marketing – some manipulative and some not. When that career ended, he spent a decade unlearning and unpacking what he’d been through. How had he been swept up in it? Why didn’t those approaches work as well as advertised? Were there ways of marketing that both worked better and felt better to all involved?  It took him time but he began to find a better way to market.I can tell in listeners already bells are like ding, ding, ding. By 2006, he had become one of the first, full-time ‘conscious business’ marketing coaches (for hippies) and created a business where he could share the understanding he had come to: Marketing could feel good. You didn’t have to choose between marketing that worked (but felt awful) or marketing that felt good (but got you no clients).  Since 2001, he has been touring his marketing workshops around Canada, the United States, Europe, and online, bringing refreshing and unorthodox ideas to conscious entrepreneurs and green businesses that help them grow their organizations and businesses (without selling their souls). Instead of charging outrageous amounts, he started doing most of his events on a pay what you can basis. He is the author of sixteen books and workbooks on marketing. Now we were just visiting. We were talking about where Ted lives. He is now currently north of me in BC, so we’re practically neighbors. Tad welcome. I mean, when you’re talking about the world, and you know how often I’m connecting with people on the other side of the world, it does feel that way good to have you. You’ve got quite a bio. I think a lot of people are probably going like, Huh, that’s refreshing, right? I was literally just on the phone before this with a friend out of Florida, and both of us, you know, like many people listening to this podcast, have expert and service-based businesses, right? So we’re talking to a lot of people in service-oriented businesses, and he was just saying, you know how many experts just want to do what they do, just can’t be bothered and just really don’t want to get into the whole sales and marketing thing. Why is that?  Is it what you’ve touched on in your bio about how icky it has felt to so many people for so long?

Tad Hargrave  04:26

I don’t know if that’s true. I think that’s part of it. I mean, I think part of it, we just want to do what we want to do. It’d be great if the people just showed up. I said that at a workshop a while ago. I said, I don’t want to do the marketing any more than you. I’m not one of my the taglines, I guess, is the marketing can feel good, but that does. I’m not saying marketing has to be your favorite thing, but marketing has to be the thing you dream about. And I just wish I could actually stop doing the work I do, so I could do the marketing. It’s not that marketing will always be something that’s necessary, but it’s important that it feels good to everybody involved, not that it becomes our favorite thing, not that it becomes our new passion. But yeah, if it feels bad to us, you know, there’s immense consequences to that. And if it feels bad to other people, the marketing we do, it has even more consequence.

Heather Pearce Campbell  05:21

Well, I appreciate that practical reframe. I think it’s so true that we have to pay attention, particularly in businesses where it’s a small business, maybe, if you’re listening, you’re actually a solopreneur. Maybe you’ve got a small team, but it’s really hard to do something well, that feels bad, right? Like an impossibility, I would say, yeah.

Tad Hargrave  05:45

And I think part of it is also people don’t learn how any way to do it. It’s very rare, actually, that people come to my workout and they’ve already taken any marketing training at all, so they’ve learned the modality, but they didn’t learn the business side of it, you know, it’s like show business. They learned the show, but they didn’t learn the business.

Heather Pearce Campbell  06:06

So what were you doing in your late teens that taught you, you know, the early lessons in marketing, even if some of those were the wrong lessons, it sounds like what were you doing in your teenage years?

Tad Hargrave  06:19

I was volunteering for a franchise of Tony Robbins. Ah, I did a video based workshops in Edmonton, and so I just volunteered shopping, pencil stuffing envelopes. And it was wonderful. And then they hired me to do some sales, which was following up from people who’d been to live events where Tony had come to town. And, yeah, so that’s what introduced me to this whole world of marketing and sales. And again, some of it was I still teaching, and some of it was this pushy, aggressive stuff. And it took me a decade to really unpack the tangle of all of that.

Heather Pearce Campbell  07:01

And how did you do the unpacking? How did you figure out what, like, what worked for you and what didn’t work? Was it trial and error? Was it just a lot of mindfulness? How did you get there?

Tad Hargrave  07:12

Well, part of it was, I took a break. The franchise collapsed, not due to any lack of ethics, just a few situations, it fell apart. And in falling apart, I got space, you know, I went down to the states and I went to a bunch of anarchist protests and hung out with a bunch of activists, you know, protesting globalization, etc. And I had some space. But then I came across the work of a fellow, Ari Galper, who’s still out there, still doing stuff Unlock The Game.com. is his website, and he was the first person I ever heard who really nailed why it feels so bad, which was that we’re taught in almost all sales training to go forward the sale, to go for the clothes, to go get them to say yes, that that’s the purpose of it all. And his understanding was that you don’t go for the sale, you go for the truth of if it’s a fit, and if you go for the truth, then it’s going to feel good, and if you go for the sale, it won’t. And I’d never heard anyone say that, but it was true that was implicit and explicit in everything I’ve learned in sales, is that the whole focus, the hidden agenda never spoken about is that I’m trying to get this person across from me to buy and it’s a terrible thing to be on the receiving end of that. It’s a very one sided relationship, you know. So there was that, and then from that seed and other conversations with other people, things just started coming together for me. But really, it took a decade of traveling around, teaching it, working with people, for the whole thing to come together in the it feels fairly simple to me now, but you know, I had to go through the valley of complexity on the other side.

Heather Pearce Campbell  09:01

Yeah, well, and I’m so looking forward to hearing the highlights. I love what you say about going for the truth of whether it’s a fit like above anything else. It’s when I think about my own career in law, I remember really early on, there were one or two clients that I had to fire. It was like, I would do the research, give my best advice and get in response like, yeah, but my Uncle Bob, who his attorney, says this, or, you know, to mean, or my neighbor, who’s been through a real estate thing, says this, and it’s like, listen, you can listen or not listen, but this relationship really doesn’t work if you’re hiring me for my best advice. And so I learned early on, I think the pain of those scenarios and spotting, like, if I’m not the fit for somebody, I’m gonna tell them I’m not a fit, like they need somebody else. And so even though it was painful to go through a couple of those experiences as a young person out of law school, and, you know, trying to serve my clients. Ultimately, it served me so well, because do you know what I say at the start of every conversation, if I can’t help you, if I spot that I’m not the person to help you, very happy to help, refer you or help you find somebody who can and that, just like for me, takes the pressure off. 

Tad Hargrave  10:26

Yeah, that’s the whole thing is the pressure piece. People are taught in sales training that the number one skill you need to develop is not everyone says this, but it’s certainly out there. You’ll learn how to overcome objections. Yeah, the fact that you’re getting objections is a sign that the pressure is already there. So that the main skill is actually to be able to first of all identify that there is pressure appealing. It may not even be from you. It might be that they’re perceiving that you’re trying to push them when you’re not just because you remind them of somebody else who did that in the past. So it may not be personal to you, but if you can’t identify that, there’s pressure there, number one, and diffuse it. If you don’t know how to do that, then what you have is you’re not having a human conversation, because they’re not looking at you as a human being. They’re looking at you as a salesperson. And if they’re looking at you as a salesperson, it’s all over, and so there’s a real and they’re not going to tell you the truth, and so you’re not going to be able to diagnose properly. Your advice isn’t going to be helpful. And they may also just waste your time and use you to get information to compare and quote against somebody else. So it becomes very important to just be able to say exactly what you said. I tell people to say the exact same thing of it’s like, yeah, look, before we get started. You know, my intention on this call is, I’m just trying to see if this is a fit, because I don’t know if it is. I don’t know if I can help you, and if I can’t, I’m so happy to refer you to somebody else that diffuses so much and throughout the call. You know, when asking questions, just like, hey, no pressure on this. Or even when you get to the pitch, if there is a pitch at the end, if you really think you can help, it’s there are certain pressure reducing for I did a few videos on this on YouTube, just pressure reducing phrases and two videos, but it’s the kind of thing. It’s this funny. It doesn’t sound like rocket science. It doesn’t sound like it’s not that impressive, but the consequence of it is impressive, because people relax and then they’re there with you, but just saying things like, look, no pressure, or hey, a no is just as good as a yes or no, hard feelings or even it’s interesting. There was a video this woman, I took it down because it felt too exposing for her, but she’d come on to a free first Thursday call that I do once a month, just open to the public. And she’d said, Well, is there a more empowering way to say if it’s a fit or something like this? And I said, I don’t know if I understand your question. She said, Well, just it seems like it introduces doubt. And I said, doubt is your best friend. Ambivalence is your best friend. If you’re walking into an interaction already certain that you can help them, you’re not looking for a fit anymore. You’re looking for conversion. And we see how well conversion is done in the history of the world. So we want to be walking in ambivalent. We want to be walking in completely, not uncertain that we can’t help anybody, but this specific person. Is it going to be a fit and I help them? I don’t know. So when we meet with them, when we just say these things and remind them that our agenda is just to get to the truth, they’re going to relax, most likely. And then we can get to it and very cleanly, very directly, and then at the end, you can say, look, I think I can help you. I have a package or an offer, or, you know, a thing, and I think it’s just what’s going to help. I think it’ll be very useful for you. Here’s the basic deal, and no pressure on this, may not be a fit on your own, timing wise, money wise, so no problem. But here’s what it is you have any questions, and then it’s just okay. Where do you think we should go from here? And then you just leave it to them, rather than trying to do, you know, all these closing techniques that are fundamentally cornering people and psychologically bullying people into doing the thing that you want them to do. But it’s just wondering, like, do we want to do that, really, in our heart of hearts, do we want to bully people? Do we want to because if you get somebody who’s not a fit, two things will happen very quickly. One, you will get drawn up. Second, they will get disappointment. And those two things happen very soon, and it’s the drama takes time and energy to clean up, and sometimes money and the disappointment makes it less likely that anyone, whoever, who does what you do, is going to get business. Yes, because in the, well, in the whole industry.

Heather Pearce Campbell  15:04

I mean, I’m putting down notes. I’m an eternal note taker. I think there’s a label for that specific problem, too many notes. But up top, like, one of the things that I love, that you said, that I think is so important for approaching these conversations in the right way is that the pressure may not be personal to you. I think that’s a huge aha for so many people, because I think a lot of what happens in these conversations is this feeling of like personal rejection, or, you know that human nature coming up of fearing like, somehow, if you had just done or said something better, you know, and you combine that with all of the messaging around marketing that is definitely designed to be more persuasive where it’s like, if you know, you can help them. You have have an obligation to convert them that kind of language, right? And it’s like, what you just said about it may not be the right time. May not like, maybe it’s a timing issue, you know. And I regularly tell people like, look, some people are a clear yes or clear no. You might be one of those people. And if you’re a clear No, or if I’m a clear No, I’m going to tell you I’m just not the right fit. You might be somebody that just needs to go think about this, or go research the marketplace, and if you need to do that, great, and if you have any other questions, come back, right? But I find that people then are like, Oh, okay, when you don’t feel overly invested in whether or not they say yes, they have such better clear energy in which to say yes, because it’s not this tug of war of like I’m being persuaded to say yes, right?

Tad Hargrave  16:51

Yeah. Oh, man, that brings up four thoughts. One is, there was a friend of mine who’s a dating coach, and he was out at a club one night, and he saw these two women, and he went up to go talk with him. And one of the women, not even she didn’t even turn to look at him, but she just did this. She was sitting to the side as he’s coming up. She just does this. Oh, man, he gives him the finger. And so she stops. And you know, it doesn’t get any closer, because this woman clearly just wanted to hang out with her friends. She didn’t want to be hit on by anybody, and but what he said at this workshop, he said, Look, he said that wasn’t about me. That was all the other guys that night and then the past she’s had to deal with who couldn’t take no for an answer. So she’s developed this brickly thing, so he just didn’t take it personally. The second thing was, yeah, there’s a lot of rationalizations for selfishness in the marketing world, like, well, yeah, you have an obligation to help them. And aren’t people indecisive? And so, you know, it’s important, it’s powerful, and you’re serving them by helping them make a decision. And I call all of these things, Novocaine for the soul, you know, because then you get to turn your conscience off. Yeah, you know, I say this frequently to to my clients who come to me with things like this, and I say, Well, I get it. It’s being framed as a limiting belief on your own, that you can’t push people that your unwillingness to use these shady tactics is in some way, your disempowerment, that evidence. But what if you don’t have a limiting belief? What if you have a conscience? Yeah, what if that’s the best part of you, not the worst part of you. You’re showing up for duty well.

Heather Pearce Campbell  18:40

And what if? Because I think the the driver behind a lot of these behaviors is like, my business will be harmed if I don’t do these things, somehow I’m going to suffer if I don’t do these things right, right?

Tad Hargrave  18:53

And that could be true. I mean, here’s what I’ll say about those tactics. That is true. It’s good not to get fundamentalist about this, but what those tactics do work in the short term, I’ll give it that in the short term, most people, particularly women, have a very hard time saying no. So if you create a psychologically pressuring, cornering situation, a lot of people have such a hard time with boundaries, they’ll just say yes to deal with depression. So if your goal is that in this moment, people sign a piece of paper, if you’re a guy going out to the clubs, and your goal is in the moment, you’re going to get a phone number, all these tactics can work. But number one, is it a real phone number? Number two, if it is, will they even reply when you get like, Do you want a bunch of fake members? And in business, do you want that the next day, 90% of the people who signed up at your workshop because you used all these tactics call and ask for a refund. That’s right, which is what happens a lot. So it does work in the short term, but yeah, in the long term. That was my experience. It actually didn’t work. It backfired. And for anyone who’s saying, but if I don’t do this and it hurt my business, I’d say, Okay, make a list of the reasons of all the ways and the evidence you have that will hurt your business, because there probably is some evidence. So let’s look at that, then make a separate list that by using these tactics, it will hurt your business, and see whatever this you can come up with. And then let’s compare the lists, because I’ll tell you, especially if you let me at that list, it’d be no question of which is more harmful. And something that’s important is to make a distinction. Do you need clients for your business? Of course, everybody you know, if you have a business, you need clients. That’s so the agenda to get clients is not a problem. It gets tricky when it’s I need the people in this room to buy. I need that person across from me to buy. And if you haven’t set up the structure of your business in such a way that you can be relatively assured that you’re gonna have a steady stream of ideal clients. Then you get desperate. And when people get desperate, they get devious. And my the case I want to make for people is, instead of getting devious, when you’re desperate, get deeper, you gotta go deeper and deeper in a number of you know, you gotta go deeper, sometimes in your commitment, and your connections with people, and certainly in your clarity, you gotta go deeper into clarity about what you’re about in business and stop being so fuzzy. But depth is the answer, not deception.

Heather Pearce Campbell  21:34

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Heather Pearce Campbell  23:17

You speak right to the challenge I think that so many small businesses face, which is this concept of being able to have a steady stream of clients making their way to you and that you know that overlap with timing, with consistency, with desperation, if somebody’s like, I have to have a client now, right? It’s really hard to remove, I think, the pressure from those types of sales conversations. And for me, one thing that I’ve always known, and maybe it’s just my field, like the the legal field, I’ve always felt like, but I think it’s true, really, of any expert based business people really need to be able to trust you for that relationship to go well. And so if you’re violating trust right at the start, if you’re doing anything that is not setting this person up to be, you know, an eye to eye equal to meet you in the middle, and you know, do their share of the work that it takes for legal representation. You’re twisting arms or convincing them of something. It’s like you’re right, that long term game that is not a fun game to have to play. 

Tad Hargrave  24:30

No, at the end of the day, the most powerful force in marketing everybody knows it is word of mouth. That’s what works reputation is it at the end of the when you know, when we are looking for a plumber or a mechanic, we all do the same thing. We go on Facebook and we ask our friends, or we text a friend who we think would know, and we get a recommendation from somebody we already trust, and then the trust is imported. So in the short term, yes, so there’s going to be some talking to strangers. All of that’s true, but in the long but that’s not sustainable. Is the thing you can’t do the hustle thing forever. It’s like building a house. To build a house. There is a short term hustle that is more expensive and takes longer than you think it will, but at the end, you get a house, and you can then live in that house for a long time, but that house is your reputation. So if you build that well, you just get to live in that forever. But if you conduct yourself in a shady way, you can’t that doesn’t mean that persuasion doesn’t have a role. It’s just that we misunderstand the function of persuasion. I’m a fan of persuasion. I’m all about it, but my take is what we’re making the case for as persuasively as we can is specifically not that they work with us. We’re making the case for an understanding or an approach. And the phrase, this may sound like a throwaway phrase, but I recommend people write it down and use it is, look whether or not you work with me or somebody else. Here’s the approach I recommend. So I’m making the case for the approach, and now, for whatever reason you know you don’t like people with beards. I got it. You got a thing. You got a thing against waistcoats? Am I a waistcoat? I understand I remind you of your ex. No problem. You’d rather work with a woman. You’d rather work with somebody older, younger. There’s a lot of reasons I’m not going to be a fit for people, and that’s fine. That’s okay, but I’m still going to make the case for a point of view, for a perspective, for a world view, or for a way of looking at it. And then the pitch basically becomes, if you like this, here’s where you can get more. That’s it. We put so much pressure on the pitch and not enough on the point of view. So people think they have to learn  these stealth tactics to close and be so persuasive, and all these NLP, trans inducing techniques, as if that’s the real secret. But yeah, I just actually came up with this this morning as a simplification of something else. But if you can see it so it’s a pyramid, the basic pyramid is, there’s the deep work, and that includes the ethics, the leashing, the point of view work. And then there’s the structural work, which is the business model, making your offers and all that, how that fits together. And then there’s the external stuff of, how do you actually take it out there? But what I would say is, even on that pyramid, the pitch, people are always like, Where does sales in? The pitch? Where does that fit in? And it’s like that. It’s just the tiniest, tiniest part, right?

Heather Pearce Campbell  27:34

For people not watching the video. He’s pointing at the very top of the pyramid.

Tad Hargrave  27:40

You know it’s so small. Now it’s an important piece, because, let’s say, if it was an arrow or a spear, would be the tip of the spear tip. Spear is important because that is what punctures through things. If you have a spear tip with no shaft of the spear, it has no heft. And the heft is doing the deep work, doing the structural work, doing that work on the external side of the business of kind of getting out there, what I call hub, hub marketing. If you don’t have that stuff in place, your spirit don’t mean nothing. It’s not gonna, you know, you’ll throw it at people and it might scratch them and annoy them, but you know, it’s not gonna you go hunting with that. You’re gonna come back very hungry most of the time. You’re gonna hit a rabbit once in a while, but that’s not enough to feed your family. And you can’t figure out why it’s not working, because I go out and I work so hard, I throw this in pointy rock at so many people, and it’s just somehow I throw it at the bowls, but the bulls just get angry and charge me. And so I gotta got a couple squirrels again, and your family’s upset, and you think, Well, I gotta get better at throwing the the tip of the spear, as if that’s the solution. But actually, no, you have to find a chef, and you’ve got to do the work of tying it, tying those two things together, so that when you throw it, it has a thunk.

Heather Pearce Campbell  29:00

It’s such a great metaphor, right? I’m just getting such a good visual about you talk about the heft of that shaft, and how many people, and you think about the reverse experience of the customer or consumer, all the problems that show up into a business, even from a legal perspective, right, aside from, you know, partner, those kinds of people, problems on the client interaction side. The reason these problems arise is because the shaft was weak. There was no substance, or not the substance that they thought was there, right? All the effort went into that tip of the spear. So people, people get sold something that they think is going to be a certain way, and it’s just not.

Tad Hargrave  29:43

Yeah, and because, you know, the spear tip is, what do you say in that sales conversation? And then even within the sales conversation, the end of it, so you can see how people focus on this little the remnants at the very end. And where they’re focusing on the close of the whole sales conversation. So they have a conversation they actually don’t care about at the end, they whip out the big guns of all these. But didn’t you say you care about your health? Didn’t you say you cared about this? I thought that was important to you. And don’t you think that that’s being inconsistent. They try to manipulate people as if where the persuasion lives, or their decision to buy or not is going to live in that last moment. But actually, they made the decision to work with you way before that. Almost certainly so if you’re doing a present, you know, to me, the evidence is, if you imagine you you attend a workshop, and the workshop at the level of substance is terrible. The case they make is weak. You just disagree. You think they’re full of shit. Even if they have a good pitch, you’re not going to buy it. But if you go and it’s a real problem, you struggle with, you know, so maybe they go to your workshop around legal stuff, and they go, and by then they say, Wow, she’s talking sense. This really makes sense to me. Even if you had the shittiest pitch in the world, you’re having a rough day. And you’re like, if you want to work with me, you probably don’t. It’s a shambling, dissembling, kind of self effacing disaster. Still, people would walk up to you at the end or email your offense. I didn’t understand if you work with people, but do you and they so it, it’s and it’s not. That’s not me suggesting don’t think through how you share your work, of course. But if people think that there’s a way some magical words and phrases that you can tag on to the end of a terribly uncompelling, unclear presentation, that’s going to suddenly make people buy, you’re wrong, because if they don’t buy the concept, they’re not going to buy the course, if they don’t buy the point of view, they’re not going to buy the package. If they don’t buy the message, your marketing won’t change it.

Heather Pearce Campbell  31:52

You know that substance first model. It’s like when I actually, when I think about what caused me to launch this podcast, Guts, Grit and Great Business®. It was really about, how do we create business? Small businesses of substance that have sticking power, right, that do not rely on the gimmicks and the latest marketing trends and whatever else, but like true businesses of substance that have the grit to stick it out. And, you know, COVID was coming over the hill at small businesses at that point, which is why I thought this conversation is really important. Turns out, it’s always important. And I think small businesses in particular are really susceptible to chasing strategies and trends that may not be, you know, particularly good uses of their time. But the point that you make about people having made the decision long before that final flows like you also want clients making decisions based on substance. You want those clients, not the ones who are caving into pressure.

Tad Hargrave  33:02

Yeah, no, those clients are a nightmare. Yeah?

Heather Pearce Campbell  33:06

They’re the ones who are going to wiggle out later, like, Oops, I made the wrong decision. I want that refund. 

Tad Hargrave  33:12

Or you know, it’s because one of two things will happen with the client. It’s not a fit. One is they leave. Yeah, it’s just they ask for the refund, they leave, potentially in a very dramatic fashion, and now that space is empty, then you have to refill it, and all of this, you’re out the money. But even worse, as they stay, it’s even worse, they stick around. And here’s where it’s worse. One is probably just low level drama. The whole time you don’t want to work with them. You dread the sessions with them. It brings your energy. But also, the thing people don’t tend to think about is the opportunity cost of it. It’s like, Wait, so you’re coaching this person once a week, right? Okay, so it’s one hour every week, and have they made any progress? No, if anything, they’re backsliding, but they seem to be happy. They’re paying me the money, and they just keep showing up. Okay? But no results have happened. No. How long have you worked with them? Six months. Okay, so that’s six times four. So that’s 24 hours of your time has gone into this person. Let’s just call it 30, with emails and back and forth and all this. And say, right? I say, here’s the thing, that person will give you no word of mouth. They will never tell anyone how fantastic you are. If you had worked for 30 hours with somebody who was a perfect fit, an ideal client, they would be thrilled and tell everyone. And I define ideal client as these are the people number one who lights you up. Yeah, when you see them on the roster, it’s like, oh man, I get to talk with them today. Oh, job. I love that job. You know, that’s number one and number two, that they bring out your best work. Because if they don’t bring out your best work, and you’re not doing your best work, there’s a huge opportunity cost that you won’t see period, I mean, but in the long term, you just it because it’s an opportunity cost. It’s invisible, but it’s real. The opportunity. Enemy cost is so real of the business, you could have gotten the reputation, you could have developed the referrals that might have come to you if you’d worked with somebody who was a better fit. But in the short term, and this is, you know, speaking of these words guts and grit, it takes real guts to say no to somebody who’s not a fit, because where my business going to come from? Now, I don’t want to make it a binary, like somebody either is or isn’t an ideal client. It’s more like a it’s a bull’s eye, not a binary. But they’re going to be people where you look at them as like that. That’s too many rings out on the target. It’s not a fit, I will be improvising and trying to make something up to please them. It’s going to be stressful. I’m going to have the imposter syndrome galore, because I am being an imposter here. So it takes real guts to just say, you know what, this isn’t a fit. Let me refer you to somebody else. There’s a lot of guts. And it also takes guts around the point of view piece. When I wrote an ebook called Point of View Marketing, I’ve done it, put out a bunch of content on it, and when I did, it never occurred to me the level of fear that people would have in just sharing their point of view. And I’m defining point of view as point of view marketing is just telling the truth about what you see from where you’re standing, because we’re all standing in different places, and you look out in the world and you see something different and unique, and nobody else sees it quite like that. And it never occurred to me how terrifying that was for people, because but what’s interesting is the terror is almost never about what their potential clients will think, because almost by definition, their ideal clients would be thrilled that they’re saying this stuff, because it’s a bit of the emperor’s new clothes. You know, somebody said it. The fear is all the people who aren’t paying them, family, their friends, their colleagues.

Heather Pearce Campbell  36:52

The market plays, that’s right. 

Tad Hargrave  36:54

The marketplace, the mentors, you know, yeah, all these people in the marketplace who would never be an ideal client who might come after them. And it takes a lot of guts to just say, to call a spade a spade, to say, I think the emperor is naked. I don’t think he’s wearing any clothes at all. That takes an immense amount of courage, because the backlash can be very real. And I will say that what I’ve seen time and time again, and this isn’t advice of to share any particular thing, but I’ve had a number of clients who sat on it for years something provocative, controversial, not that they’re any of being controversial. They just knew it would be that when they finally said it, they got the best positive response they’d ever gotten it, and that there was negative response, but it was much less. The backup lash was way less than they thought it would be so. But it does take guts. And you know, to the ones who are willing to be bold in that way go a lot of the spoils, because otherwise the alternative is you have this sort of mediocre milk toast, lukewarm opinion, and it’s so broad, and so then nobody really can understand if it’s a fit. They’re trying to understand, but it can’t get clear. They can’t locate you. People often say, you know, well, where do I find all these ideal clients? And I’ve heard this woman, Simone Gray Seoul, say something like this, but it’s like, no, no, no. Where do I find you? How about you show up first. You want ideal clients to show up. You think it’s easy to show up, you show up. Let’s see how easy this is. And then it takes an immense amount of grit to to just stay around long enough there’s a there is a certain amount of tenacity and just hustle. And sometimes you got to white knuckle it through the hard times when you’re building you got to be scrappy. You’re building a house, and that’s when I talk about structure. You know, business model. People think they need resources to make a business work. That’s true. But even more important is you need resourcefulness. You’ve got to be resourceful. And sometimes, okay, there’s no more wood at the lumber yard. Where can we get wood? Let’s go to the junkyard. You gotta have a little bit of get some dirt under your fingernails in some of this work. It’s not all just, you know, hippie love and it’s good vibes. The good vibe ultimately, comes from the fact that you’ve done the deeper work, and you built this house that is ready to receive people when you have those things you find, because when you know, when I when I show this, this pyramid of like, well, then there’s the external work of going out. That’s what people think of when they think of marketing. And then even within that, they think, oh, but it’s really the clothes and the pitch on the tip top of that. But actually what’s happening is all that marketing, the going out into the marketplace and laying down the trails where people can find you, all of that is built on the expression of that other stuff, of the deeper work, of the structure. Because I tell you, if you’ve really done. The ethics style. You have a clear niche, you have a very well articulated thought through point of view. And then you’ve built a business model of structure. You kind of built the house ready to receive guests. It’s a very different feeling going out into the marketplace. You’re really excited, because otherwise, what happened most of us can relate to this. Years ago, I had a website that I liked for a little while, and then I hated it. And part of the reason I hate it is people at my workshop, at the end of my weekend workshop, would say, Tad, thank you so much. This weekend was great, and I hate the photo on your website. I was like, oh, and they’d say, Tad, I have a question. Like in the middle of the workshop, I have a question when you’re talking about niche, by the way, I hate that photo on your website, but my question, but like, it would get inserted. So I got so self-conscious. So when people would say you have a website, I say, Yeah, but just to email me and we’ll just talk about and I would so if you’re embarrassed about your home, but you want to invite company over, and that’s getting people in the door for your business. And people think, Oh, but wait. How do I get better at inviting people to my home? No, you’re fucking embarrassed about your home. That’s the issue. You actually got to tidy up your home. You got to do the Renaults. You got to do the Marie Kondo and, you know, just let go of anything that’s not sparking joy and tidy. Yeah.

Heather Pearce Campbell  41:18

Well, you said a phrase, when you get really clear, when you got the ethics dialed in, that’s what you said when you’ve got the ethics dialed in. And I love the topic of ethics, because really, what you’re saying about the clarity that you have once you’ve done that work, like the rest of it just flows easier, but it’s the work that it takes to getting to that point of like, okay, I’m a recondo and everything, like, I’m so clear.

Tad Hargrave  41:51

Yeah, if you have, I mean, in Christianity, they talk about it as a putting on the armor of God. But, there’s a, and I think the Ephesian night they call it. Was it in Ephesians. But this idea that a certain feeling of invincibility, you know, nothing, temperature and the thing that makes people so vulnerable to hurt is shame. When people are walking around feeling ashamed that I did something wrong to, you know, I manipulated somebody. We’re terrified all the time. We’re so scared and if somebody then lashes out and points out the truth that we were unethical. I mean, you just got to stay home for a month. You can’t go out. It just destroys your ability to do business. And when you have an uncomplicated heart in business, your people, there’s a poet, David White, and he had an interview with a fellow brother, David Steindl rest, and brother Steindl rest said something like, you said, you know, David, he said, exhaustion is not always a result of overworking. He said, what’s it about? You said, it’s about a half heartedness you’re not fully in. So if you have marketing tactics or sales tactics that you’re at best, half hearted about, well, there’s going to be a friction, and that friction will wear you down over time, and it’ll exhaust you. But here’s the challenge is, I think most people actually don’t believe it, that marketing can really feel genuinely good to all involved. And I put in three parties there, you can feel good about it. Really, truly. Marketing can feel good to you. Number two, it can feel very good to the person receiving it. And number three, anybody witnessing and that’s often forgotten about, that there’s a whole marketplace paying attention to these interactions, and they could actually look at a situation where you’re marketing yourself and saying that was beautiful, like that. Marketing is as beautiful as the work they’re talking about. It can be like that, but I think most people don’t believe it. And in their heart of hearts, I think most of the sales and marketing trainers out there don’t believe it either. So that’s therefore the justifications of all the manipulation. Because what they’re saying without saying, it’s like, look, if we could find a way to market that was ethical, we would, but we can’t. So what we’ve got to do is rely on Robert Cialdini’s book Influence and all the unconscious tools of persuasion, and using them in ways he never intended. But we’re going to use reciprocation and liking. We’re going to love bomb people. We’re going to use social proof, and we’re going to use, we’re going to use urgency and scarcity. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  44:25

Oh my gosh, right, everybody’s bills are like, ding, ding, ding. The number of times you’ve heard about these things.

Tad Hargrave  44:31

We’re going to use all these tools, and we will use fancy language patterns and stealth tactics and Ninja closes. Now, why does it have to be hidden? Well, it has to be hidden because we’re ashamed of it, because we know we’re doing something wrong otherwise. Why is it stealth? Why can’t you just be upfront? Because you cannot sit down with somebody and say, Look, my agenda in this conversation, I believe in transparency and authenticity, is to get you to say yes by the end of this conversation, whether or not it’s a fit for you. If you say that, anybody with any self respect will get up and leave, and worse, they’ll stay if they do. But if you sit down with somebody and you say, Look, I don’t know if I can help you, that’s the truth. I’ve helped a lot of people like you. I don’t know in your particular situation if it’s going to be a fit. So my intention of this conversation is just to get to the truth of if it’s fit, and if I can’t help you, I’m so happy to refer you to somebody who might be able to if I know anyone, that’s where I’m at. You can be so transparent, and then your heart is full. It is strong, it’s uncomplicated, it’s whole, and there’s such an ease that comes, and I have this, I see this look sometimes in my workshop, through with my clients, and a look comes over their face. I say,do you want me to tell you what that look on your face is right now? And they’re like, what am I feeling? And I say, what you’re feeling is you can’t believe it’s this easy. You can’t believe that it could actually be this simple and feel this good, because it feels like something must be wrong. If it’s this easy, you’re missing something. You’re like, there’s got to be some shoe that’s going to drop somewhere. You’re suspicious of it. It seems too good to be true, but it’s not too good be true, because there’s still a lot of work. But the work is, maybe we could sum it up like this, most conventional sales and marketing training positions, all of the work at the tip of the pyramid. And I’m saying all of the work is almost all the work is at the base. Almost all of it is there. And the truth is, even if you had a spear with a really solid shaft to it, very heavy and the spear tip was not sharp, you could still use that to hunt it better. That it’s sharp, that’s that is a big part of it, but the biggest part is just that it’s sharp enough. You know, you can, you can hone that over time. But if you think that the sharpness is what Pearce is, it’s not the sharpness alone. It’s mostly the weight, the heft of the thing. And that’s the work. And so then this is part of the trouble, of course, is people start businesses too soon that, you know, if you build it, they will come. They sort of leap in. And anyone who started a restaurant and get three years of bridge financing to sustain themselves, they would think that through. But you know, a lot of people, for a lot of good and bad reasons, make the leap before they’re ready, and so then they have to build the plane while they’re flying, which is a just a very stressful proposition. It’s like the rains are already starting to fall in monsoon season, and now you’re building a house. Can you do it? Yeah, but it would be better to give yourself a few years to build the house, rather have to have it up in a week, because what you’re probably going to end up with is something very subpar, possibly damaged by the conditions. And so for a lot of people, the best advice I give is get a job. Get a part time job, go back, get some take the edge off of this, but the desperation is hurting you right now. Or downsize dramatically. You know, live in a smaller place. If you really can’t go back to the job, I get it, but then dramatically reduce your expenses and simplify everything, sell things, and just live lean, and you just know it’s going to be lean for a while, and that’s okay, as long as you don’t think it shouldn’t be like that.

Heather Pearce Campbell  48:28

The phrase that comes to mind is, like the concepts, the process. It’s like mindfulness marketing, but goes way beyond marketing, right? It is about mindfulness and ethics in business period. And I think what I particularly appreciate about, I mean, there’s so many things that you’ve said that I think are going to really ring the bell for people, but this concept of ethics in marketing, where ethics should be personal to all of us, but it is also an obligation to the marketplace, because, like in law, there’s a concept like tragedy of the comments right, where nobody takes responsibility for what’s happening in public places. So what it means is, you know, the resources are unavailable. Things degrade, and I just love the the idea that your own marketing about your own business, yes, it’s huge for reasons you know beyond yourself, that you do it right and that you do it right for your clients as well, but that it matters to the marketplace. It matters to the the good of the whole. And I think that’s a concept a lot of people can can get behind and appreciate as an alternative to this other model they’ve been sold about. There are no other options. 

Tad Hargrave  49:50

Yeah, I mean, that was Margaret Thatcher’s line. There is no alternative to this model. But of course, there’s many alternatives. And you know the basis. Thought about it for a while, and I realized the base value of ethics is respect. Is, do you respect other people? Do you regard them as an equal to yourself? Because if you don’t actually respect people, then you will be willing to manipulate. You will be willing to use them, because you’ll see them as an object? Yeah, you’ll see them as a tool that you can use to further your own aims. And nobody likes to feel like they’re a tool.

Heather Pearce Campbell  50:30

No, or a means to an end, or just paying somebody’s bills or whatever it is. It needs to be holistically woven into the fabric. You know, it’s such a bigger, more complex topic than that, and the approach is simple. I just love the way that you’ve so eloquently described it. And I think that, you know, everybody needs to hear this message, because marketing is still such a sticking point for so many people, so many businesses. Tad, I totally want to be respectful about your time. You’ve been so generous, and we are right at the hour. One more question, what do you love most about what you do?

Tad Hargrave  51:10

There are so many people out there doing such beautiful work, and that I get to help them get that work into the world. One of my dear friends from Edmonton, Lewis Cardinal, who’s a Cree indigenous fellow from there. And he said that his elders told him that when we’re born, we come in with our fists closed, see babies and and he said the reason they come in like that is because they’re coming with gifts for us, and the one of the major functions of culture is to identify what those gifts are, and to make sure that little one is able to give them while they’re alive, that is one of the fundamentals of culture. And so many of my clients come to me with these incredible gifts, and they’ve got the show, they don’t have the business, and so to be able to help them with this other side, and then see that work, get out into the world. You know, there’s a woman, Nisanka, and she is a coaching with nisanka.com website, and her business is all about helping people who are co-parenting with a narcissist. And it’s such beautiful work. But if she and in the work together, she came across this niche, and then in through the work, we’ve been articulating and getting the point of view and the thought of people out there who’ve been struggling, trying to co-parent with a narcissist and feeling so beat down them having access to this and not feeling alone and getting the help they need. I remember at the funeral of one of my dear friends, her mother had died by her own hand, and she had tried to get help over the years and wasn’t able to get it. And at the funeral, I said, I said, you know, the reality is that most people never get the help they need, people struggling with mental illness, people struggling with, you know, all the brutal blows that life can give, they actually never get the help they go through their whole life, never finding a therapist, never finding a shaman, a medicine person or coach, a counselor, nothing, and they just have to carry it, and eventually it breaks them so to be able to play some role in helping people find the help they need, which is what marketing is. Marketing is not you finding your ideal clients. It’s making it easier for them to find you. That’s the purpose of marketing. Is laying down the trail so that the people who are so desperate to find you find you before it’s too late.

Heather Pearce Campbell  53:59

So beautiful. Total goosebumps on that and reversing that perspective of it’s about people finding you right the benefit of that service or message or whatever. I love it, Tad. I so appreciate you. I’m so glad we had the chance to connect. I know you’re a busy guy and you spend time around the world and it’s hard to get on your calendar. So I really appreciate the chance to chat with you today, and I’m super excited for all of those that are going to hear this conversation and have their perspective changed by this which I know they will. Where do you show up online? Where do you like for people to connect with you?

Tad Hargrave  54:36

You know, most of it’s at marketingforhippies.com. I suppose I’m most active on Instagram @marketingforhippies, but you can find pretty much everything through my website. 

Heather Pearce Campbell  54:46

Excellent. We’ll be sure to share all of your links. So if you’re listening and you want to follow and connect with Tad, hop over to legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast, find Tad Hargrave’s episode, and we’ll be sure to share your website, your socials, anything that you’d like for us to share out your books, it sounds like you’ve got some amazing resources that will be very helpful for folks. What final thought, action step takeaway would you like to leave people with?

Tad Hargrave  55:15

For most people, self-promotion is kryptonite yet to make people weaken the knees, this thought of promoting themselves. And here’s the truth as I know it. This is from over 20 years in the business, so just for everyone listening, I’m talking to you. I’m going to say two things. You’re going to resonate with. The first one, and you won’t like the second one, but there’s redemption on it. You are shitty at promoting yourself. You just are. You’re not good at it. It’s hard for you. You struggle with self-promotion. It is your kryptonite. Number two, you will always be shitty at it. That’s not an ironic statement. That’s what I see as truth. The best you can hope for self promotion to ever be for you is less shitty. You get less bad at it, but you’re never going to be great at it. This seems like such a downer in this whole beautiful conversation on but stay with. There are some people who are really good at self promotion. They’re called sociopaths, who just aimlessly, you know.

Heather Pearce Campbell  56:29

They’re the ones that clients show up to me like, Hey, I just paid somebody $20,000 and they’re not delivering.

Tad Hargrave  56:35

I hear that more often than I wish I did. But okay, so if there’s kryptonite, that means there’s a superpower. So then the question is this, what’s the superpower? The superpower that all humans have, because all humans have the kryptonite. That is just a human wide thing, self-promotion, if you feel awkward, if I say, Hey, you got one minute, convince us to work with you. Nobody wants to do it, nobody. But there’s a superpower. The superpower is this promoting other people. We are all incredible at promoting businesses and people we love, and we know that there’s certain businesses that, whether or not they’re grateful and have thanked us for it, we have sent them 1000s or 10s of 1000s of dollars of business, and we’re so good at it. It’s so easy. You’re at a networking event and you want to introduce your friend to somebody who’s a good connection for them. You know exactly how to work it and to lift them up and pump them up. But if you tried to say the things that you say about your best friend about yourself, you would sound like the total touchback. So you can’t, it’s just not built into the architecture. So if let’s rewind, we’re bad at promoting ourselves. It’s our kryptonite, and it’s always going to be our kryptonite. There’s no getting immune to that. But there’s the superpower of promoting other people. So then again, it still seems hopeless, like, well, then oh, so I’m just supposed to promote other people. No, you’re supposed to realize that this is the truth, and then what does business become? What does marketing become? It becomes making it easier for the people who already love you to promote you. You harness their superpower, because they will always be better at promoting you than you are promoting you, no matter how less it’s less bad. You get it. How much you work in it. You go to therapy. You get go to the inner work, 101, Coaching Academy. And then you do their whole pyramid. You spend $100,000 doing the inner work. And you heal all your ancestral lines that yada yada yada. At the end of all of that, all the work that you could do. And you spend 50 years on it. You do Ayahuasca, sit on crystals for a decade. You just will never be as good at promoting yourself as the people who love you. So just give it up. Stop trying to get immune to kryptonite, you know, and use your superpower to help other people and then make it easier for other people to promote you. And this gets down to you do the deep work of your honing the ethics, so that people feel okay sending their friends to you, because if you’re behaving unethically, people will not send their friends. You hold your niche so that people know who to send to you for what you hone the point of view, so that people and you share it so that people can check you out from a safe distance to see if they like your perspective and if they want to step closer. You really work on the structure and the business model, so that, again, people can check you out from a safe distance, try out cheap things you know not have to spend $20,000 and be wrong. And then you do, you set you lay down the trails what I call the hub marketing, and you find key influencers and people, and you build relationships with them, and then they promote you. But stop trying to get immune to kryptonite. Stop trying the exposure therapy. Superman never got over it. You can’t just, I expose myself to kryptonite enough, and then doesn’t hurt. No, you’re slowly poisoning yourself. You’re just hurting yourself with it. So give up on the self promotion and just make it easier for others to do it for you.

Heather Pearce Campbell  1:00:11

I love that so much. First of all, so appreciate the humor built into that, but also just the truth of it, and it feels like such a pressure release. I mean, so just anyways, such a fan. Tad, I this has been one of my favorite conversations in quite some time. So I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your perspective. I can’t wait to share, and I look forward to hopefully crossing paths again. 

Tad Hargrave  1:00:36

Oh, I would love that. I would love that. I’m going to be down in this in the Seattle area for a scholarship storyteller coming up in a few weeks. So maybe I’ll send you the advice.

Heather Pearce Campbell  1:00:48

Totally. Please. Do I love it when people come to my hometown. Thank you, Tad. So appreciate you. Take care.

GGGB Outro  1:00:58

Thank you for joining us today on the Guts, Grit and Great Business® podcast. We hope that we’ve added a little fuel to your tank, some coffee to your cup and pep in your step to keep you moving forward in your own great adventures. For key takeaways, links to any resources mentioned in today’s show and more, see the show notes which can be found at www.legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you enjoyed today’s conversation, please give us some stars and a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast so others will find us too. Keep up the great work you are doing in the world and we’ll see you next week.