Catalytic Leadership

Why Most Marketing Fails (and What a Fractional CMO Fixes)

• Dr. William Attaway • Season 3 • Episode 114

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If your marketing feels scattered, your team’s unclear on what’s working, and the KPIs don’t connect to revenue, this episode was built for you.

I sat down with Josh Ramsey, fractional CMO, founder of JRCMO and a full-stack marketing agency, and the strategist behind more than 80,000 campaigns. We talk about what happens when marketing becomes too tactical, and how to rebuild from a systems-level perspective.

Josh shares why clarity in messaging, positioning, and internal operations matters more than chasing the next trend, especially for digital agency owners scaling past 7 figures. He breaks down how he uses personalized KPIs, 30-day diagnostic audits, and team alignment frameworks to fix the real problems under the hood. This episode explores blind spots, strategic navigation, and how a fractional CMO can help you scale without wasting time, money, or team energy.


📚 Books Mentioned

  • The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

  • The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John C. Maxwell

  • The Silva Mind Control Method by José Silva 

To learn more about how Josh helps companies solve what others miss, visit jrcmo.com or Google "Josh Ramsey Marketing." As he says — “I'm pretty easy to find online.”


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.

Connect with Dr. William Attaway:

Dr. William Attaway:

I am so excited today to have Josh Ramsey on the podcast. Josh is the owner and operator of both JRCMO and a full-stack marketing agency. He's developed principles and strategies for businesses since 2001. During that time, joshua has successfully created and executed more than 80,000 successful campaigns across the US. Josh is a fractional CMO author and highly regarded speaker. As someone with experience in speaking since 2005, he teaches executives and business owners exactly how to cut costs and improve their current business so they can continue to grow. As a true fractional chief marketing officer, josh gives business owners unique executive experience along with a fresh perspective without having to pay the high salary of a full-time employee. He helps them to develop new strategies for growing their brand, increasing customer acquisition and generating new sales. Josh, I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for being on the show.

Josh Ramsey:

Hey, I love that you have me. It's great to see you again.

Intro:

It's good to see you. 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 Attaway.

Dr. William Attaway:

I would love to start with you sharing a little bit of your story with our listeners. I hit a few of the high points, but where did all this get started?

Josh Ramsey:

You know I was even chatting with you about this before. But you know God, I think he works in ways that are unseen and then things just fall into place. And for me, I was a little bit of a wanderer in my early years. I grew up working on ranches with my family. My aunt, my uncle, my dad would take our family sailboat racing and also chartering boats in the Caribbean. So I did a lot. I was blessed to do that. It kind of led into my years of teens and out of high school into college.

Josh Ramsey:

I traveled a lot different countries and such, played soccer at a very high level and then I started a profession and career of sales. I just was really good at chatting with people. So I was selling like crazy through traditional media back in the late 90s, early 2000s. So radio, transit advertising, billboards, yellow pages, print I did all of the traditional and my problem was always I was frustrated because I kept having to sell and sell and sell. I wasn't able to retain the client and I couldn't figure out why. And I went to work for a really large ad agency and was hired on as a junior project manager and within two years became senior head of, basically, client acquisition. So all clients onboarding. I was working with them, closing them, building up their system and then handing them to the agency to go execute on the plan that I would build for them.

Josh Ramsey:

And what I learned and what really catapulted me to that next level was understanding that marketing is a whole lot more simple than people think. It's basically two elements that you focus on in the beginning your strategic message, which is what you say and what's perceived by your audience, and then your tactical placement of that message. So the tactical placement's easy because everyone goes oh, I can set you up in AdWords, I can do SEO, I can do this and this and this. Anyone can put yourself on the radio or on television, right, anyone can do it. Anyone can do a podcast. But the content, the strategic message, the way it's perceived and the engagement level that's the strategic side of it. Of the tactical placement, which is simple, which is you put on a light, you push, go right. So these are the two elements and the harder one is that messaging. So that was the change and then, when I did that, it really catapulted 2009 through.

Josh Ramsey:

Everyone in the US remembers the great world of 2009, 2010. I went through that as well with the layoffs. And it was 30 days before I was getting married and boom, I don't have a job anymore and I'm going. Oh, this is going to be fun. And my parents paid me. They had some real estate and they paid me to basically go wash toilets, clean toilets, to pay for my rent. My wife was a paralegal. She was laid off also, so we moved into the flight path of DFW Airport and saw our windows would shake all the time. So I constantly have a buzzing. I'm kidding, it never went away. It's still there.

Josh Ramsey:

But you see, me like shake.

Josh Ramsey:

It's still there, that's right. But you see me like shake, it's probably what it is, but but you know I mean so it was a hard time but but because I've learned so much, when I got to that 2009, it was kind of that make or break. You got to step out there, you just got to go, you just got to do it. So I went and did it. So 2009 to 2018, I built my ad agency. I was able to step out of the ad agency and have it run without me. Then I went and started a small SaaS company. So I have a small software development company. We do some basic builds that doing the same thing. I've got a leader on that. I've got a leader on the agency. So then I moved into what I'm doing now. That kind of brings us full circle.

Josh Ramsey:

So now what I do is I'm a chief marketing officer. I walk into companies and identify where they're weak, where they're inefficient, where they're overspending, why, how do we leverage it, and I use key core principles and strategies to implement and no matter what business it is or what they sell, there's core marketing pieces in today's market and KPIs that we identify and not. You know if I gave you a list of 50 KPIs. Not all 50 is going to go for every single business, but you're going to find a lot for each business in each segment and the way they do marketing.

Josh Ramsey:

So that that's where I'm at today is I'm building more than just coming in and being, you know, a professional of one thing, of just, let's say, a HubSpot or a Salesforce, or just knowing digital marketing. I'm the guy that knows all of it and I help companies figure out the pieces of the puzzle, not just one little part, and I think that still falls on so many people and I'm sorry. I'm sorry, william, I'm going down a huge road here, but it's this part right here. I'll end on and kick it back to you. To me, this is the biggest pain point that is out there today is that people keep going back to these marketing gurus and they're getting this rechurned pitch, that they're getting sold on and they're not seeing what they need. They're being sold what someone's good at, not what they actually need, and that's it's mind-blowing to me.

Dr. William Attaway:

It's so true. You know, with your experience, you have a very unique perspective here. You have worked for an ad agency, you built a marketing, a digital marketing company from the ground up and now, as a fractional CMO, you're going into other people's companies to see what's under the hood and ad agencies.

Josh Ramsey:

Ad agencies also hire me to come help them improve.

Dr. William Attaway:

So you've got a pretty broad perspective. You're not just looking at the whole board of what you've built. You're seeing a whole bunch of other boards on the table. So, thinking about that, I love where you were going there, talking about how people so often come in and they want to bring their solution, their one hammer that they've got in their bag that's supposed to hit every nail, supposed to do everything you want to do, the one solution to fix them all. That's a wonderful myth. I've never found that to be actual reality anywhere, but I know a lot of people bring that in. What do you do different? Like as you come in as a fractional CMO or as you come in as a marketing agency, instead of saying, hey, we do this and this will solve every problem you ever have now or ever will have. What do you do differently?

Josh Ramsey:

You know, I like to be honest with myself and people that I talk to as much as I can and be very transparent on a lot of things. So I'm going to tell you what I do and what I believe is true for me, and I don't want to say necessarily that other people don't do this, but I have not seen it and I have not heard it. And I don't want to say necessarily that other people don't do this, but I have not seen it and I have not heard it. And I try to pay attention to a lot of channels but, as everyone knows, there's so much media out there. It's like you have to pick and choose what you listen to. Yes, so, with that in mind, don't want to act like I am the world's greatest, but I have figured out some really key things that are always consistent with every single business, and it's what some people call the unique selling position. So the USP of being a unique selling position, I think, where people like the idea but they don't know how to get to it. So where I do believe that I'm better is as you get more and more narrow into something I'm really good at diving into those intersections to find it. So USP really, in my vision, is built on what's called your narrative.

Josh Ramsey:

So now we're moving into psychology. So, william, you anyone might be watching listening follow me for a minute. We're not going to talk about marketing. We're going to talk about ourselves, our people, who we are as a person and what we have, and it's going to come full circle If you'll stick with me for just a minute here. But what we have as people is we were raised a certain way and in humans we were raised with a mother, a father they were there or they weren't there a grandmother we had humans around us to help raise us. The narrative is what does that look like? Whoever raised you? What did you get? What did you not get?

Josh Ramsey:

You can learn a lot about that with different types of psychology, but one that I like the most personally is what's called the trauma egg, and the trauma egg is you draw this. You get a big piece of paper, and I'm not going to go through all the details, but you get a big piece of paper, you draw an egg, you start at the bottom and you don't write words, you only draw pictures and you think through things that have happened in your life with the very first memory you've ever had and then, chronologically throughout your life, you write and draw pictures of everything that you remember of your life, every impactful story, good or bad, it doesn't matter. You write it out. And when you do that, what I have found time and time again is that you start to find trends and patterns from your history to where you are today, and what I found for mine is I had a very blessed life. If anyone's been listening to this, they heard me. I got to do some awesome things sailboats, work with horses, break and train horses. Put my hand and arm and shoulder into the rear end of a cow to preg check. I mean, it was the grossest thing you've ever could imagine.

Josh Ramsey:

But while doing all that crazy that I've done, I did find that a big thing for me was what's called abandonment, because there were times in my life that I felt very alone. There were things that happened where I just felt like I'm gone. One of the big parts of that was my mom died of a heart attack in her sleep in 2014. And even now it gets me emotional, so I can't think about it too much right now, but it was such a ground shaking event for me and it just was out of the blue and there was so much going on and it rocked me hard and that abandonment again, she did like she wants to be here, you know what I mean, but she, she's gone and it's like that abandonment. What it did for me, as I as I now bring it back to marketing is because I have the abandonment issues. I work extra hard, without even realizing it, to make people happy and give them what they need so they never feel abandoned, they never feel alone.

Josh Ramsey:

But that comes from my USP. So my USP is I've got all this knowledge, I know what's going on, I know how it works, I've been there. I've done that. Very rarely does something come across my table where I'm like, whoa, that's new, that doesn't happen. And I can even talk about ai in a second, if you want, because everybody has this buzz on ai. But I'm looking at, I'm going, you know, the, the, the usp of people understanding their narrative through whatever way that they want to do it and building that on their business. Businesses are built by humans, they're built by humans, the algorithms and ar built by humans and connected and running based on humans, right. So when you look at this. That narrative is really what makes you, william, you, anyone, listening. That's what makes you unique. So, whether you work for someone or you are the company, you are the brand. Whatever it is, we all have that USP. It's more about how we take that USP and use it to draw people.

Josh Ramsey:

In One of my main statements that I share a lot in conferences, it's Zig Ziglar said it's not what you say, it's how you say it. Yes, but in today's age that's not true. Today's age, it's not what you say, it's not how you say it, it's what's perceived by your audience, because too much of our world is in digital marketing. So the perception you don't always know where I can say something to you, william, and then I go whoa, william, I kind of missaid that. The only reason I would say that is I see the expression on your face and realize I made you mad. And then I go wait, I didn't mean to make you mad, I misspoke. It's still that perception. But on the web, on your website, on your flyer, on your tactical marketing, where you can't see their re, their reaction, that's where your USP has to really play its part and your strategic message has got to be locked in.

Dr. William Attaway:

Wow, that's so good. I'm just I'm blown away because I'm thinking about my USP. Like hearing you tell your story, I'm thinking about mine and thinking about how that drives so much of what I do. You know, my dad started a traditional ad agency back in the 70s. You know, ran traditional media 45 years. Right, I watched that. I grew up in that world. I watched it, I saw it, but he didn't have somebody to come alongside of him to help him see what he couldn't see, to help him discover and deal with his blind spots, and that caused a whole lot of ripples that touched all the people around him because of what he built it wasn't done in a healthy and sustainable way. What do I do now? I come alongside leaders and the niche I specialize in is digital marketing world and I help them see what they can't see so they can make their run at a healthy and sustainable pace. That's my USP. That's what I'm hearing. I love that man.

Josh Ramsey:

That's so good you just nailed it and you've seen it, and I think you could probably go even deeper with that, william, like if I worked with you and I'm just using this I'm not, this isn't meant to be a it and you've seen it. And I think you could probably go even deeper with that, william, like 100, if I worked with you and I'm just using this I'm not, this isn't meant to be a pitch but to understand more, because you can do this on your own, without me. Anyone out there can do this without me. I'm not a. I didn't create it myself. Someone else created the trauma egg. I've just put together the pieces. I put together the algorithm, if you on how I see it working in my mind. But back to what we were saying. I think if you did the trauma egg, I think you would also start to identify other key characteristics and pieces. That would take your USP, where maybe you were here at the bottom when we started talking and then you jumped 10 levels. But I bet if you went down the USP and you really dove into your narrative and really tried to identify all the key factors, I bet you'd jump 30 or 40 more. And the key is, william, that when you just using you for a minute. If you can take yourself from zero to 10 and then you take yourself from 10 to 40 and you're 40% better. Now the key you have to think about is we go back to what I said. It's the perception. So, william, someone's looking for a business coach. They go to your website. Right now you've been at zero. We just had a conversation. Your mind opened to something different. You're now going to look at your website and you're going to take your website from zero to 10. Is it better? Yes, but you're still competing with how many people that maybe already have that? How many attitudes are you still stuck in? If you jump from that 10 to that 40, it shifts so much more where now you start to realize you get away from the platitude of a statement and you can show people how to explain the deeper passion of what's going on, right. So so that's where you end up.

Josh Ramsey:

If you build this in a web world. That's when you have the maze and the clicks and the and the funnel traffic of where people can go in the navigation. You know, for instance, when we talk about USP, I see this and it drives me insane. It is my biggest pet peeve.

Josh Ramsey:

I look at websites and the first thing that I see is their navigation and I see the word home and blogs, along with a bunch of other crap. But they're using the word blogs and I'm going to tell you, I've asked thousands and thousands of people. I said hey, everybody, the majority of the time how many of you have ever gone to a website looking for something like a service or a tool or something? And then when you're looking at the service or a tool or whatever it is on the website a car, whatever and you go up and you look in the navigation and you see the word blogs and you click on it and not one person has ever been honest and said no, everyone's like. No, I don't do it like, but you're not controlling the user navigation to tell them what they should know.

Josh Ramsey:

Because now, when we start getting deeper in this and hopefully, william, this is going the way of the podcast you wanted.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's just great. No, totally, yeah, totally.

Josh Ramsey:

But now we get to the next level of you know, I ask business owners what are the three main questions people ask you when they walk through your door? And I get these answers from them. Then we pause, we talk through it and then I go okay, now reset the table. What are the three questions they should be asking you when they walk through your door? And it's interesting, when the business owner, they shift their brain and they go holy crap and immediately the conversation and the narrative changes. Because now we get to this level of like okay, my website sucks and I'm like your website doesn't necessarily need to be rebuilt, it just needs to be reorganized, right. So you know, my kids they are kids, they like to throw stuff on the floor and I walk in there and it's a mess. It's not that we need to redo their room, it's that it needs to be organized differently, right, right. So that's where you have to kind of think through that process of now. What's your user navigation and controlling the user navigation?

Josh Ramsey:

Because you're a business coach, there's probably three to five things that most business owners are thinking about before they hire you. You should already know what they are. You should have on your website should already know what they are. You should have on your website. These are the four things that people want to know and then you can go. If this isn't it, go here and search the rest of my material. Then, if you have a crap ton of blogs, then do a blog right and do a search bar for the blogs, but start leading them and showing them. You're the expert, no matter what you do. You're the expert no matter what you do, even if you're a bath and kitchen guy. Find a unique way to put it up there and a unique selling position of that. You know people buy stories, man. That's the life.

Dr. William Attaway:

And this is why I think you've just illustrated the biggest difference that I have ever seen illustrated of why you hire a fractional chief marketing officer, because what you're describing is not tactics. What you're describing is at a higher strategic level. You're looking at the entire board and saying how is it that we can win, how is it that your clients can win, based on where all the pieces are, including the client, the potential clients? How are we looking from their perspective? That's a gift man. That's a gift Josh.

Dr. William Attaway:

I want our listeners to really key into this, because if you are not thinking at this level with your business, whatever it is that you're leading, whether it's an agency, whether it's some other type of business if you are not thinking at this level with your business, whatever it is that you're leading, whether it's an agency, whether it's some other type of business if you are not thinking at this level, things are about to change. You mentioned AI a minute ago. Things are about to change. We're about to see a significant shift in the digital marketing world and having somebody in your corner like Josh, who is thinking at that strategic level, who is helping you see around the corners, is going to become increasingly important.

Dr. William Attaway:

Josh, as you talk with people and you talk with potential clients, you talk with your clients, businesses all over. What are some of the biggest things that you see them struggling with? That you say, hey, I want you to spin that jewel and catch that light just a little differently, because you're looking at it one way. There's a whole different way. What are some of those things?

Josh Ramsey:

I don't ever like putting. I know I appreciate the question, I'm going to answer it, but I like to. I like to frame it a little bit differently, because every business owner really comes in with something different, because their narrative is different. So where one person is strong, another person is weak. What brings me the uniqueness for myself to to the, to the relationship is I'm able to see that and I'm good at analyzing where are you strong, where are you weak, what team do you have and what do you need to do? So I'm able to set up and framework within 30 days where they're at and where they want to get to, and that's what I do. So first 30 days I work with anybody. It's a starter program is what I call it. It's very transparent pricing. If anyone ever wanted to look me up, they could find it. But we spend the first 30 days really analyzing what have you been doing, where do you want to go, how are you trying to get there, who do you have on the team All these other questions and it's always unique information.

Josh Ramsey:

Back, the number one thing that happens that is consistent is that I work more with CFOs than CEOs Interesting, because CEOs don't get involved until the CFO tells them they have to. Because the world that happens is that a CEO says all right, and I'm going to simplify this All right, I'm the CEO, I want money. Who do I go to if I want money? I go to my head of sales, or I go to my CFO, or both CFO, where's all my money? Where's it at? I don't feel like I have any money, like what's going on. Well, you need to sell more Head of sales. Sell more Head of sales. Well, we need more marketing. Stop spending money. Sales, right. So that's what happens.

Dr. William Attaway:

So when you ask me, what do I?

Josh Ramsey:

do. That's what happens in every business, right.

Josh Ramsey:

That's good and they all point at each other. What happens is I step into a picture that's I'm going to use the word dysfunctional it's not really dysfunctional, but if you're in that and maybe you have it going, but now you got to get to that next paradigm, right, and maybe you have it going, but now you've got to get to that next paradigm, right, maybe you've worked through that struggle. Maybe someone's hearing me and going, yeah, I used to be there, but I'm not there anymore. I'm on the next level, great. Well, if you're on the next level and you're hearing this podcast with Dr William here, you're trying to figure out that you don't have that function. Now you're at that next level, but what happens is what got you here won't get you there, bingo. So you still have to figure out the right people on the bus for you to be able to get to that next level.

Josh Ramsey:

And sometimes, like what Dr Williams said here, sometimes it's a strategist, not a marketing person, right, and I kind of fall into a lot of different buckets of you know, mental health coach to a degree, as well as a psychologist to a degree. You know what I mean A CFO to a low level degree, but it's what I'm good at is is seeing where the blind spots are. We can't see our own blind spots, but we can see others and when you have that right strategist they can help you guide through that. But again back to my main point. The CFO comes to me typically first because they go the CEO is asking for money and I can't produce it, our marketing is out of control and we don't know what we're really getting for it. So I walk in and set the proper KPIs for the entire company related to marketing and spending and lead gen.

Josh Ramsey:

When you have that, it creates a very clear picture of what you need to do. And that's where I work is. Sometimes I'm that 30 day guy and I'm out. Sometimes I'm a three or four month guy and then I'm out. It just depends on. Each scenario is a little bit different, but that's pretty much the common commonality in every business out there. So good man.

Dr. William Attaway:

I love the generosity that you're displaying just today in sharing some of what you've learned so far and how you're helping other people. You know you have to continually be growing as a leader. Your business needs you to lead at a higher level today than it did five years ago, and five years from now that's only going to be more true. Your team, your clients, your business they're going to require more of you. How do you continue to level up? How do you develop the skills that you are going to need to be able to lead your team, your business, your clients at that level?

Josh Ramsey:

Yeah Well, there's no magic, magic bullet. The thing that drives me insane, honestly, is that I watch reels or podcasts or something, and everyone's like I'm gonna tell you the three things that'll never fail you and I'm like, and then they'll end. They'll end with something like and plug in ai, you know it'll, it'll be your brain, and I'm like it won't. You know, I come on, you know it. Just so. The first thing is is that anyone out there that hears my voice is unique. Every, every single person is unique and they and every one of us, as humans need to lean into our uniqueness and and while it's weird to one person, it's not to the others you just you have to be who you are. There's so much more. I could just pour into people on that topic alone, because that's where my heart is is like. I have been that outsider. I have moved a lot. I have that narrative of abandonment. You know, indifferent. It's different for me than it was for someone who grew up in an orphanage. So I want to be very clear and careful of it's just. This is how I lived. It's not a comparison, it is me. So when you asked me this great question of how do I grow. I want people to realize this is just me. It's not necessarily what you should do, but what I have found is, if you can find, I love the statement and I wish I could find this author.

Josh Ramsey:

But back when I was a little kid I heard my dad listening to books on tape and this man one time said it drove me crazy, all these books on tape, but this one thing stuck with me and it was huge on tape. But this one thing stuck with me and it was huge, he said. He said if you walk into a room of a hundred people, it asked each one of them to open and close their eyes and ask them what do they see when they walk into the room? And he said you're probably going to get about a hundred different answers. He said the key is why does every one of those hundred people look at the room differently? He said they all have a different narrative, a different way to see the world. And if we only use 30% of our brain, according to science, why could we not bump that 30 to 40 to 50? If we can see the world the way others see it?

Josh Ramsey:

So when I look at things, and I go all right, I hear Dr Williams say something and I really like that. I'm going to take that and apply it to my life. And then I hear this over here and I take it and I apply it to my life, so my knowledge really becomes everything that I do. I use a platform that I have really enjoyed. It's not what I would say is the best of the best, but I like them. So here's a shameless plug for the company Masterclass. It's been really good, because what I'm paying for in getting out of it is I'm listening to different CEOs, authors, experts, people that have functioned at a high level in their field, and even a storyteller gave me some interesting insights. To stop every day at the end of the day and journal something interesting that happened that day. And just by trying to do that for even a few minutes and I'm terrible at it, but even when I do it, I do find a huge transition in my brain to the next level.

Josh Ramsey:

And again, I think some people need to work harder and I think some people need to work less hard, and for me, I feel like I need to work less hard Again. I don't want to go too deep on this, but it is one of the things that I teach, but in my narrative it was always go, go, go. I was the go-getter, I'll get it done, just give it to me. Let me go Now, me, let me go Now. I'm having to learn a new level in my world and my growth and what's going to be next for me, to where I need to stop. I need to rest, I need to relax and take a breath, because every time in my business that I have stopped, I've handed things off and trusted someone else to do it for me and trusting with confidence and giving him the support I have 10 X where I was to where I am now Wow.

Dr. William Attaway:

There is no such thing as a wasted experience, and everything you have described that has made you into the leader, the business owner, the fractional CMO that you are. Every bit of that has has contributed to your story. That is true for every one of our listeners too. I love the trauma egg. I think that's a phenomenal exercise to walk through. As you are learning, as you are taking in all these things, you know whether it's masterclass like. Is there a book in particular that has made a big difference in your journey that you'd recommend?

Josh Ramsey:

I think that there's. There's principles and laws that have made it, and I think that there's only a few handful of people that have written them. I think, uh, steve Covey is is probably one of the main ones, you know social proof and you know, seek first to understand before being understood.

Josh Ramsey:

That's a big exactly. Yes, so I would say that. And then on the business side. So I think that, like Covey is more of the marketing, in my, in my learning style, is he's more of the marketing. How do you communicate, how do you build social proof? You know, how do you consult with somebody? And then, um and I'm going blank on the name, but you'll know- it the 21.

Josh Ramsey:

Irrefutable Laws of Leadership. John Maxwell yeah, and Maxwell has written a lot of good stuff, but that's probably one of my other favorite ones that probably about once a year, once every other year, I will go back through that book and the workbook and try to process that again, just to kind of see what did I think a couple of years ago and what do I think now. So I have the same old workbook that I'm in, so then I can be like oh wow, I used to think that way, but now I'm here and when you see that maturation for yourself, you know what I mean. It's yes.

Dr. William Attaway:

So well, growth happens on the other side of change. Everybody wants to grow, but it takes change to get there. And's that maturation, that transformation process, yeah, and having the ability to see that in your scribbles, in your notes over time, that's invaluable because it increases your self-awareness.

Josh Ramsey:

yeah, the other one that I will say is jose uh silva. Um, if anyone's ever seen this, I do not subscribe to it. I'm not telling people to subscribe, subscribe to it. But Jose Silva came out with mind modes and, uh, this was quite interesting because if you start thinking about the different levels of your brain and how it operates, you have alpha mode, beta mode, theta mode, delta mode. You have all these different modes in your mind of how it operates in between, like your sleep, your deep sleep, your REM sleep, your high functioning, high awake, and his theory was I can teach anyone to transition their mind to these mind modes quickly and interesting. And that was his, his theory and I I believe that it did work. I have read things that it did work, uh, but he did it with his kids was where he started and he taught them to be a high level thinkers and be able to move their brain into a higher source. And if you think about it, a professional athlete has to operate at an alpha mode in the highest form, right, right, while most of us live in the beta. I take that and again, I've got a million stories that I that I love and I'm always hungry for more, starving for great stories all the time, but one of them.

Josh Ramsey:

I was listening to talk radio and they were talking just randomly, a little snippet interview with a guy that worked for the Dallas Mavericks and he was in charge of the announcements, the uh music, the entertainment while the game was going on, and so like whenever you like for the Dallas Mavericks, the NBA team, you have let's go Mavs, and then you know, you have, like, you know, defense, defense, right, these chants. He was talking about the ebb and flow of your brain and how your brain has to know when to relax versus when to amp up and it has to be at the right time of the game. Last five minutes, first two minutes, the most impactful, last 30 to 60 seconds of each quarter. These are like impactful times where he's like there are also low times, where it's like after the first, like I don't remember what he said, but the first six minutes of the first quarter, he's like that's the lowest time, cause people are still finding their seat, they're getting comfortable, they're talking with their friends. The game has a long way to go, but like the middle part of that first quarter is just the most dead time of the audience. So he said I don't try to amp it, but I try to just get them involved enough so that we create an emotional attachment to them. So I find that fascinating, because when you take that and you think about someone speaking at a conference, what is the majority of the time that you lose them? You take that and you look at your ads, when is the majority of the time you lose them? So I'll just tell you on social media and then I'll stop again. William, sorry, I actually don't know these games. No, this is great, keep going.

Josh Ramsey:

But when you think about the engagement of reels, most people don't realize this. But it's a three-step process. It's disrupt, engage and then offer. Those are the three simplified ways that social media reels need to work. No reel ultimately should be more than 15 seconds, should never. And it's structured very clearly. First three seconds is your disrupt. It is make them stop. Don't let them keep scrolling. Make them look at you and do something that they're like what? The next nine seconds is the engagement of education. The engagement of nine seconds is let me dive in a little bit deeper, let me get you going into this more, putting them into the setting them up for the last three seconds of hook them, get them to take the next step follow, like, comment, go to my website, sign up for this, whatever it is. That's what you want them to do in that next three seconds.

Josh Ramsey:

And then, internally, we set our KPIs based on whatever call to action was, if it was a like, if it was a follow, if it was a view you know what I mean. How many seconds was the view? Those become our KPIs that we set. And that kind of goes back to what you asked me earlier. Well, you walk into a company. What do you set? Well, if we're not running social media, we're going to have a different set of KPIs than we will. You know what I mean if we're doing print or billboards. So that's where you know what I mean. Some of that comes in. So, again, I took you a huge tornado.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's so good, though. That was incredibly helpful. My goodness, it's so good, josh. All right, last question, and then we got to tie a bow on it. So you are operating at in a very high level, not just in your agency, but in everything else that you're doing. If I had the ability to snap my fingers and solve one problem for you right now as a business owner, what would you love for that problem to be?

Josh Ramsey:

as a business owner, what would you love for that problem to be? You know it's really for I think a lot of business owners run into this and you and I spoke briefly about it as well it's being able to elevate yourself, knowing your blind spots, knowing you have a blind spot, being aware that you have a blind spot but you don't know what it is. So it's finding someone that can see that blind spot for you and clearly communicate that blind spot to me, but also others. You know, building that team but building me to where I can step out and hand off to someone else, because if I can hand off to someone else, that allows me to free myself up to move on to other places. Now I know you're asking about me. Maybe that helps somebody, but I think it's going to be different for everybody, right? But I do believe that the consistency there will be.

Josh Ramsey:

Do you have someone in your life that can speak to your blind spot? And I do. I have those people, but I don't have right now and I'm looking for is that I think we all need to have and be open about it. We need to have that coach. You know, pastors at churches they have that coach big CEOs. They have that coach, they have somebody, and even if they're just a shoulder to cry on because they can't cry to their people that they work with or their coworkers or, you know, their bosses they need someone else.

Josh Ramsey:

That counseling, that's a part of mental health. That's always been there. It's just now it's more you know out there that people are more willing to talk about it, but it's always been there. It's always been good. It's just what does the form and shape look like to identify your blind spot? Cause your blind spot can be a lot of different things. Right, it can be hurts, habits, hangups, and it also can be hey, you have a blind spot that you're actually better than you think, and if you don't have a good leader, then that leader doesn't know how to tell you that you are better than you think. Therefore, you should maybe be leapfrogging that leader and that becomes something again, a totally different direction, but something else to consider.

Dr. William Attaway:

That's so true. This is why I've had coaches for decades in different areas, because they help me see what I can't see. I think this is so critically important. If you don't identify your blind spots, you will never overcome them because you can't. So, so, so, so helpful, josh. We could keep going and I know we could do another hour or even two. There's so much insight and wisdom you have dropped today in such a short time. I know people listening are going to want to connect with you and stay connected and learn more from you and about what you're doing. What is the best way for them to do that?

Josh Ramsey:

I would say you could probably go to my website. You can Google me. We're working on my social media right now. I've been so busy in so many other things it's kind of what we've been talking about. I've been so busy with just running the day to day that I haven't really focused on my own social media. So we're building that up. So, depending on the day that someone hears this episode, it may change. But you can Google me by just typing in Josh Ramsey Marketing or you can go direct to my site, jrcmocom. It stands for Josh Ramsey, Chief Marketing Officer, and I'm pretty easy to find online and I always like to make a joke. Most people know who. Dave Ramsey the financial guru is right, that's right. So my dad is Dave Ramsey, the financial guru is right, so my dad is Dave Ramsey. He's not that Dave.

Josh Ramsey:

Ramsey but my dad is. Dave Ramsey my dad is Dave Ramsey and he's the older Dave Ramsey, so does that make?

Josh Ramsey:

him more wise. I don't know, one day I'm probably gonna get a call from Dave Ramsey. I'll be like nope, really, I have them on my phone. My dad is Dave Ramsey, so I'm clear on it. Okay, no infringement. But but you know what I mean. Here's the deal. Right Like that, that ties something in your brain into a podcast. Now you, you get off the podcast, you go, get in your car, you go here, you go there and you're like who was that person? Dave Ramsey, Josh Ramsey, Ramsey Marketing, Josh Ramsey. Then they're like boom, it connects and it ties it through. That's part of branding. So I use it as branding and people remember me and they come back and find me Josh Ramsey Marketing, and I'm everywhere on Google.

Dr. William Attaway:

It's so good, josh, we will have all those links in the show notes. Thank you so much for your generosity and your time today.

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