From Setback to Success: James Donovan's Journey to LinkedIn Leadership and Digital Marketing Growth

Imagine the scene: you've been handed your final paycheck and shown the door. Now, envision transforming that corporate farewell into a burgeoning career as a marketing leader. That's exactly what James Donovan, our guest this week, did. He takes us on his exhilarating journey from a layoff to LinkedIn luminary, and unveils the essentials of crafting a profile that commands attention. James doesn't just stop at profiles; he dives deep into the finesse of automation tools and the art of organic engagement. His approach redefines lead generation from a relentless sales hustle to an authentic cultivation of B2B relationships.

Hold onto your hats, because we're about to explore the emotional rollercoaster that is entrepreneurship. The paths to success are many, but they all come with their fair share of obstacles. Through the lens of James' venture, 9-2 Media, he shares the raw realities of setting personal milestones and the vital act of celebrating each victory, big or small. We also unravel the complexities of digital marketing success, revealing why personal connections triumph over cold metrics, and why your previous achievements should be your only competition. Get ready to shift your perspective on success and discover how a balanced approach can redefine your digital marketing wins.

Connect with James Donovan on LinkedIn for potential collaboration and valuable insights in the world of digital marketing.

Join Dr. William Attaway on the Catalytic Leadership podcast as he shares transformative insights to help high-performance entrepreneurs and agency owners achieve Clear-Minded Focus, Calm Control, and Confidence.

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Transcript

Host: Dr. William Attaway (00:00):
James, I'm so glad that you are here on the podcast today. Thanks so much for being here.

Guest: James Donovan (00:04):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me, William. I'm looking forward to it.

Intro/Outro (00:09):
Welcome to Catalytic Leadership, the podcast designed to help leaders intentionally grow and thrive. Here is your host, author, and leadership and executive coach, Dr. William Hadaway.

Host: Dr. William Attaway (00:25):
I would love for you to share a little bit of your story with our listeners, James, particularly around your journey in your development as a leader. How did you get started?

Guest: James Donovan (00:35):
I was actually laid off from my corporate job four and a half years ago, right before the pandemic, and I came across an ad on Facebook about starting a marketing company and how easy it is. You get five clients, you make 10K a month, and there was no talk of expenses, all the headaches,

Guest: James Donovan (00:56):
Even a 10 KA month. Oh, okay, perfect. So pretty much invested majority of my cashflow at the time into a course to figure out how to do this, and it was petrifying and lots of ups and downs, but four and a half years later, still doing it and have put together a remote team and have vested a lot in myself with different coaches, different programs, and just trying to continuously learn to better myself and help our clients and team members more. So it's definitely been a long journey. There's a lot more to go, but it's been very exciting so far.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (01:37):
You do a lot of work on LinkedIn for your clients and for yourself. I see for your business on LinkedIn as well. That's a playground that not a lot of people are comfortable on yet. For somebody who's listening and they're like, boy, Facebook, YouTube, even Instagram and TikTok, I can see that, but LinkedIn, how hard is that? How challenging is that? Is that a place I really need to be? What would you say to that?

Guest: James Donovan (02:06):
It depends who you're trying to get in front of and who your ideal audience is. I think Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, they're great platforms for B2C, but when it comes to B2B, you're looking to get in front of other high value or high level decision makers. LinkedIn is definitely where you want to be hanging out. It's a lot more socially, I think, acceptable to be on LinkedIn during the day and scrolling through that versus scrolling through Facebook. So it's a lot easier to get in front of that owner of a company who's five plus years in business and you know exactly how many employees they have and you can target that job title. So yeah, if you're looking to do any prospecting for to get in front of other business owners, I'd highly recommend being on LinkedIn.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (02:55):
Are there strategies that you use that can help to generate leads and appointments in that platform?

Guest: James Donovan (03:01):
Yeah, so it definitely starts with setting up your personal profile on LinkedIn as essentially your sales page. You want to let your profile do as much of the heavy lifting as possible, having a call to action in your cover photo. Many people, for whatever reason, are hesitant to have their contact information readily available on LinkedIn. But if you want people to reach out to you for your services, make it easy for them to get in touch with you, put in your email, your phone number with the problems you're solving to your audience. From there, there's a lot of different automation tools you can use to get in front of people. That's part of it, but really targeting who you want to get in front of and then having a message that is going to agitate the pain that your audience has, that is a really solid way to start generating some leads. And then being active on LinkedIn, one of the things we just started to do for our clients is give them essentially a KPI checklist of what they need to do to go hand in hand with our efforts. So commenting on other people's posts on LinkedIn, liking their posts, posting their own content, because all it's going to do is bring your name up in someone else's newsfeed and drive traffic back to your own page.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (04:15):
That's brilliant. That's brilliant. So when you get that connection, do you nurture that over time? Do you immediately start putting in people's inboxes, links to calendars? I see that a lot. Is that good?

Guest: James Donovan (04:28):
Yeah, so there, there's a lot of incorrect ways to do it,

Guest: James Donovan (04:35):
I'm sure you've been on the receiving end of it. Someone sends you a message and then send a huge JK rolling novel where it's first name, I see you work at company name and then everything they do versus trying to have a more organic conversation. And you can still do that through automation by putting in their first name, but having really short messages where it looks more organic and you see everything because most people are seeing their messages on their own. So if your message is only one to two sentences and the whole message appears on their phone, it's going to come across a lot more organic than the novel or the huge paragraphs.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (05:13):
That's such a good word. I get 10 or 15 of those a day of people just sending me these long messages and at the end and here book a time with me on my calendar because I've read all that. I'm not going to read all that. I'm just not going to do it, and you're spot on. So often the scrolling is on my phone, which makes it even more likely. I'm not going to read all that,

Guest: James Donovan (05:35):
Especially because a lot of those messages, it hasn't identified anything you want. It's just them telling you they do, and I don't even have this need. So if you can figure out what it is your prospects need or the problems they have, you're going to get a significantly higher response rate. There's not filters on LinkedIn. So for example, we work with accounting firms. That would make our life a lot easier if there was a filter for people who are looking for accountants, but that's not the case. But if we can get our messaging in front to ask other business owners if they struggle with their cash flow or when was the last time their CPA gave them some insight on their numbers or even if they're open to having a fresh set of eyes, look at it. Those are the most common objections we get. So if you can pre-frame those objections with your messaging, you're putting yourself in a significantly better position than, Hey, this is what we do and this is why we can help you, et cetera, et cetera. No one for the most part is going to be interested in.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (06:35):
That's so good. You mentioned automations a minute ago. Sometimes automations are seen as the problem, right? They're the ones that are spamming you. They're the ones that are sending out all these impersonal, non-relevant messages, but you leverage automations in a different way.

Guest: James Donovan (06:56):
Yeah, so again, I think it just comes down to trying to use that tool for what it is and not rely on it 100%. You still need to craft messaging that can come across organic, and if it's written one to two sentences, that is going to look significantly more organic than again, the long novel on what you're doing and just systematically spreading out where those messages are. And it is a lot of trial and error, but figuring out, all right, if you're sending out too many consistent messages, what is your audience saying? And if they're telling you to consistently stop or the messages are too frequent, well you got to adjust for that and start spreading out. But really it's just trying to figure out what is the pain point of your audience and continue to agitate that pain.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (07:49):
I think that's super helpful. I'm curious, you work with a lot of different accountants and accounting firms, and I'm guessing you have some stories from those of successes or even some things that didn't work. Can you share some of those?

Guest: James Donovan (08:05):
Yeah, definitely. So not everyone's successful, unfortunately, but that is just a world of digital marketing. I wish everyone was. And what we tell our clients is we're going to do our best job at getting you in front of as many qualified opportunities as possible, but at the end of the day, it's you who needs to get on the call, provide value to them, figure out if there's a hit and close 'em. A lot of people, that doesn't happen unfortunately. They get on the phone when they speak to prospects. They sound like their dog just died every time they get on the phone. Oh,

Guest: James Donovan (08:42):
I mean, we try to provide some coaching for them, but sometimes we can't be held responsible for that type of sales call. On the other end though, the clients that are successful, they're eager to get on the phone and meet with people. We just had a client yesterday, actually, his first appointment that we set for him. He's two weeks in. He has already been paid and with the contract signed for five KA month for his fractional CFO services. So that's super exciting and encouraging. When we see it works well, we know it works, but just getting the reinforcement of, okay, cool, here's a qualified appointment. The person, our client did the right job by asking the right questions and now they've been paid, makes us feel really great. So the investment they made is already paid off, and we can go back and interview that client and really extrapolate everything they did to give that information to the rest of our clients to try to help them become more successful.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (09:38):
That's really good. I think a lot of people struggle with some of the things that you're talking about. I think some of them struggle with this whole idea of reaching out, finding leads, generating appointments, and then when they get the appointments, having those conversations, knowing how to close the sale. And I love that you help your clients and you walk 'em through that process and even help 'em a little bit on the back end of that and say, Hey, we'll help you. We'll encourage you because we want you to be successful. It sounds like you're running an agency that is for your clients.

Guest: James Donovan (10:10):
Yeah, I mean, we're trying to solve as many of those problems for our clients or make their life as easy as possible to a certain extent. There's probably in the future, maybe an opportunity where we do the sales for them. I don't have a background in accounting. I'm not a CPA, so right now it doesn't make sense for us to get on and try to sell a service for our clients because if it's not a good fit, it's not helping anyone out. But if we can handle the lead generation, set up a qualified appointment, give them the tools on how to run a sales call, but to look for how to follow up with the prospect after the proposal has been sent, that's a lot of the process that we can take on and leaving them with just say, the 45 minute zoom call or the 30 minute phone call.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (10:59):
That's good. Our accountants, is that the only people you work with?

Guest: James Donovan (11:03):
For the most part, we do have a couple clients who are other marketing companies, ironically enough, who need help generating leads or they just want to outsource it like many firms do. We're working with a water restoration company right now, but for the most part, I would say 98% of our clients are all in the accounting space.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (11:24):
So let me ask you, you stepped into this from the corporate world and you started from zero, and now you have built on two media into something that is healthy and sustainable and has a great future in front of it. But I imagine that wasn't a journey that was just up until the right. Imagine you had some hiccups along the way. I think some people listening may be thinking, yeah, well James, I mean, he's just super successful. He just got it all right. He just got lucky. What would you say to that? If somebody thinks that your journey has just been up and to the right,

Guest: James Donovan (12:02):
That is not the case at all?

(12:06):
No, it definitely hasn't been. There's certainly lots of challenges, but working with you, working with other coaches and really learning to invest in myself has been the biggest almost hack in a way. I definitely wouldn't have been able to get here by myself or without guidance from other people who've either been through it or on the same journey. So the biggest part is just really leveling out the highs and lows. I used to get really excited when we'd sign a new client to the point where just, okay, I'm going to go out and buy a yacht. We're so excited, we're rich. And then you lose someone and you feel like you need to pack up your house, you're going to be in the box on the side of the road. So as dramatic as that sounds being significantly more levelheaded now with the wins and losses, I would say that's one of the biggest growth moments over the last couple of years.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (13:07):
And I've watched that in you. I've watched that development of the calm control so that you don't have such wild peaks and valleys. And I think those wild peaks and valleys are inherent partially in the entrepreneurial space because there's not a meter to tell us, well, how big is a big win and how low is a low fail? And so we just set our own metrics. We set our own bounds for how high the high is and how low the low is. And that can be such an incredible challenge, particularly for somebody new in the entrepreneurial space like you are.

Guest: James Donovan (13:44):
Yeah, and I love that one of the exercises you always ran with us in a group setting and even individually, is to celebrate those wins and record them to look back. And that's something that's really stuck with me, and I bring that to all of our team meetings as well, and I try to get even friends to do that when they're talking about, but it sounds like they're kind of starting to spiral, all right, what's going right, big or small? That's massive to look back on where you have those data points and definitely not comparing yourself to other people, which is really easy speaking from the marketing space where everyone posts these massive revenue months, what they're doing, but they don't talk about how much maybe they spent in ads, what their overhead is. So yeah, you can see someone, they're doing 200 KA month, but they might also be spending $190,000 to make 200 grand, but that's the other side of the coin they're not talking about. So that was also a challenge at the start, feeling like you're not making any progress. Oh, I'm only making X amount. Everyone else is 10 x 15 x ahead of me. But if you look at your own profit margins, sometimes you're in a significantly healthier place. So just comparing yourself to where you were six months or a year, a year and a half ago, that's really the true test of how much you're progressing.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (15:07):
There's so much wisdom there. James comparison really is the thief of joy. And I find so often that the comparison game is one that a whole lot of people play and nobody ever wins. You either compare yourself to somebody who's farther down the road than you are and you feel like a failure, you're not there. Or you compare yourself to somebody who's not as far as you are, and you begin to get puffed up and proud and arrogant. You don't win either direction. There's no way to win that game.

Guest: James Donovan (15:39):
And that's definitely something that's taken me a little bit of time to learn, especially going when I started going to other networking events with other marketing or agency owners, someone could be making significantly more, but they've also been at it for 10 or 12 years or just whatever the case is. They either have other business partners or they just work with a niche where sometimes they're able to charge more, the services are higher for the end user, whatever it is. Yeah, it's not a winning recipe. So trying to just think about, alright, where was I four and a half years ago? Where was I six months ago? That's really what's important.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (16:18):
So true. You mentioned earlier that you lead a remote team, and that is a difficult challenge. To lead other people is a challenge in and of itself, but to lead a team that is remote adds a layer of complexity to that. I'm curious, what are some things that you've learned about leading other people as a small business owner, and what are some things you've learned specifically about leading remote employees?

Guest: James Donovan (16:49):
It's a challenge for sure. A big thing for me is working on my own patients and understanding if I'm asking for a certain task to get done, trying to be as clear as possible. And even I had some team members the other day tell me that that's not always the case. So asking them questions that maybe I don't want to hear the answers to is really important. And they told me the other day, you just need to be more clear with what you're asking from us because you give a task and then when it's done, it's not what you were looking for. And it's easy to put the blame on someone else, but the reality is I need to take massive accountability for everything that's going incorrect and look inward first at what I could have done differently. So there's still a lot of room to grow there, but I think I've come a long way. But yeah, the remote part of it is definitely challenging. It'd be a lot easier I think, at times to be in the same room and have a whiteboard and really explain what we're doing. But it's just trying to figure out who the individual is, what makes them tick, what's going to motivate them, and the best way to communicate with them. And it's certainly not something to figure out after a week of working with someone or even two months.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (18:12):
So many good insights in there. I think our leaders will recognize some of what you just said as similar to what Mark Miller shared on an earlier episode in his new book, uncommon Greatness, he talks about how leaders who lead at that uncommon level who achieve greatness in an uncommon way own what's going on in their team. And when their business, they don't point fingers, they don't assign blame, they own it. They say, Hey, what could I do here? And that's what I'm hearing from you, James. I'm hearing the willingness to look at this and say, Hey, where is it that I can improve? Where is it that I can get better when it comes to dealing with my team when it comes to communication? Because there's always room for improvement. That teachable spirit, that humility, I think is what sets a leader apart.

Guest: James Donovan (19:01):
Yeah, it is hard to take a hundred percent ownership of things that go wrong, especially when it feels like you did everything and it was still maybe someone else's mistake. But to really look inward and figure out, is there anything else that I could have done to change the outcome of this? And a quote or saying heard before, when you point a finger at someone else, you have three pointing back at you. So trying to really figure out, all right, did I give this person everything they needed to be successful or is something else I could have done? And just owning that goes a long way. That's good.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (19:39):
So you as the point leader, as the owner of the business, everybody's looking at you, everybody's following your lead. What are you doing to stay on top of your game? Whatcha are you doing to level up your leadership skills so you can be the leader that your team is going to need you to be in 2, 3, 4, 5 years from now?

Guest: James Donovan (20:01):
The real quick and easy answer is investing in myself and working with you and a number of other coaches. That's been absolutely massive and the lessons learned and just having that soundboard to bring back to the team is really valuable because it's not something I can just figure out on my own or almost needing the prompts from someone to figure out the answers that maybe I already have within. But without having the prompts, it's hard to find them that, and I try to read every single day. I've actually just been jumping on the treadmill most recently and put it on incline and read for like 30 minutes, so getting a bit of a mental sweat in there as well. But reading books on leadership or team building, I think that goes a long way. And just trying to pull out certain pieces from the book and think, how does this apply to our team? And then filtering back what would be important for them to know.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (20:57):
That's really good. And then do you share what you're learning with them?

Guest: James Donovan (21:01):
Yeah, for the most part. I try. I think I was for a little bit in the past almost oversharing and it was consistently too much information and there was probably a sense of overwhelm. So now I'm trying to sleep on some of the information and then decide, okay, what needs to be shared? What can I retain for maybe a little bit down the road, what actually doesn't need to be shared versus just kind of word vomit and everything I'm taking in spewing back to them.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (21:34):
That's really good. A couple of quick fire questions for you.

Guest: James Donovan (21:38):
Okay.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (21:39):
What is the top podcast that you're listening to right now?

Guest: James Donovan (21:44):
I like listening to Artless with Jason Bateman, will Anette and Sean Hayes. Yeah, there's no value or no, I guess value for business or mindset growth, but it's really just a good hour to turn off and enjoy listening to some other people, tell some jokes and kind of zone out for a bit.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (22:03):
I like it. What's the best advice that you have ever received

Guest: James Donovan (22:11):
To invest in yourself? You're going to get the highest return significantly higher than 10% or even 12% in the s and p 500. You can. I bought back to the start of this podcast, I spent $3,500 on a course where that was basically all the money I had at the time, and if I invested that much money into the s and p four and a half years ago, it wouldn't be where we're at now. So investing in yourself is you get massive returns.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (22:44):
Is there a book that you would say has made a big difference in your journey so far that you would recommend that every leader listening, and if you haven't read this, you should check it out?

Guest: James Donovan (22:57):
I'll say two. One is the slight edge. I can't remember off the top of my head who the author is, but I remember reading that about four years ago, and just you're either progressing positively or you're progressing negatively. There's no kind of staying level, even if it's just 1%, 1% over the course of the year is massive, is massive gains. So that one was really big. And then most recently I read a book, the two week vacation test. So getting out of your business and learning how to properly delegate and having the systems that your business can rely on, that one's been really huge.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (23:39):
Excellent. Often people are going to walk away from an episode like this with one big idea. James, if you could define what you want people to take away, what would that one big idea be?

Guest: James Donovan (23:54):
One big idea, I would say. Again, mentioned it a couple of times, but really just to invest in yourself and trust what you're doing. That and life's going to be really hard, and you just got to choose what your heart is, your version of what that looks like. I've said it on a couple other podcasts and I have it on the background of my phone, but you just have to choose what your heart is. It's really hard to work for someone else. It's really hard to build your own business. It's hard to be rich, it's hard to be poor, to be fit, to be unhealthy. You just have to choose what's your best version of heart and work towards that every day.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (24:36):
Love that. I know folks are going to want to stay connected with you and continue to learn from you, James, and find out more about the LinkedIn services that you provide and marketing all the way around. What is the best way for them to do that?

Guest: James Donovan (24:50):
LinkedIn.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (24:51):
LinkedIn.

Guest: James Donovan (24:52):
I'm on it every day, so you can find me on LinkedIn. I'd say that'd be the easiest way. Let's connect on there. Let's have a conversation. If there's a fit, would love to work with whoever comes their way, and if not, can try to send them in the direction of someone else who'd be a better fit for them.

Host:Dr. William Attaway (25:10):
James, thanks for your generosity today. You've been so honest and transparent in your journey so far about what you've learned. I can't wait to see what's next for you.

Guest: James Donovan (25:20):
Thank you very much. Thanks for having me. This is awesome.

Host: Dr. William Attaway (25:22):
Thanks for joining me for this episode today. As we wrap up, I'd love for you to do two things. First, subscribe to this podcast so you don't miss an episode, and if you find value here, I'd love it if you would rate it and review it. That really does make a difference in helping other people to discover this podcast. Second, if you don't have a copy of my newest book, catalytic Leadership, I'd love to put a copy in your hands. If you go to catalytic leadership book.com, you can get a copy for free. Just pay the shipping so I can get it to you, and we'll get one right out. My goal is to put this into the hands of as many leaders as possible. This book captures principles that I've learned in 20 plus years of coaching leaders in the entrepreneurial space, in business, government, nonprofits, education, and the local church. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn to keep up with what I'm currently learning and thinking about. And if you're ready to take a next step with a coach to help you intentionally grow and thrive as a leader, I'd be honored to help you. Just go to catalytic leadership.net to book a call with me. Stay tuned for our next episode next week. Until then, as always, leaders choose to be catalytic.

Intro/Outro (26:42):
Thanks for listening to Catalytic Leadership with Dr. William Attaway. Be sure to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts so you don't miss the next episode. Want more? Go to catalytic leadership.net.