Test Before You Invest - Diane Moura - The Revenue Maze - Episode #017

Today’s guest has been a consultant for 30 of the Fortune 500 companies and has over 30 years of business experience. She focuses on business simplification, growth, and profitability. Diane Moura is the CEO of ZenChange Marketing. Diane joins host Valerie Cobb to talk about how companies can drive up their revenue.

Takeaways

  • A great way to get out of the revenue maze is to test before you invest. Before you invest into a new tool, you want to test other ones and make sure you are comfortable with the software you will be using.
  • Before you put some money and marketing behind an idea, you want to make sure there is a target audience for it and that it can be a profitable idea.
  • Your competitors are not just offering the same service as you, they are also filling a separate need that your clients might have.
  • In the big picture, you aren’t selling stuff or things. You are selling a solution to a client’s problems.
  • You need to understand your target audience in sufficient detail so that you can identify the needs and problems that you can try to solve for.
  • If you’ve chosen the right investors and board members, then they will have a mind for being nimble which is very helpful to an entrepreneur.
  • The product or service is the most important part of marketing.

Quote of the Show:

10:53 “At the end of the day, you’re not selling stuff. You’re selling a solution to a problem.”

Links

Ways to Tune In

 

The Revenue Maze is produced by Ringmaster, on a mission to create connections through B2B podcasts. Learn more at https://ringmaster.com/

—

Watch the episode here

For privacy reasons YouTube needs your permission to be loaded.
I Accept

Listen to the podcast here

Test Before You Invest – Diane Moura – The Revenue Maze

Welcome everybody to another episode. I’m super excited about this episode. This is an amazing human. She has consulted with 30 Fortune 500 companies. That is amazing in and of itself. She’s had over 30 years of business experience. On top of that, she approaches every challenge with passion. You’ll get that through this episode. That’s amazing. Here’s the crutch. She’s very humble but I want to say that I’m sitting at the feet of a master. She’s got honors and all these amazing things. She won’t like me saying that but this is true. I am sitting with the CEO of ZenChange Marketing. Welcome, Diane Moura.

Thank you so much, Valerie. It’s great to be here.

I’m glad to have you on the show. We’re going to hear about all these wonderful things that you’re doing. I want to start the show all the time with what the guests are waiting for. What is one thing that you can tell the guest that will help them get out of the revenue maze?

It’s a tough question to nail down to just one thing, but if I had to choose one, I would say test before you invest. What do I mean by that? If you have a startup or before you invest in a platform, maybe look at integrating some tools and white labeling. Put it to market to a small test group and see what the responsiveness is. If you’re a services business, test a new service on a small group of your clients and see what the responsiveness is so you can continue to improve it in order to make sure that you’re meeting market demand.

I find that a lot of the time, as entrepreneurs, we get very excited about our ideas. By nature, we’re very creative. Sometimes we’ve got this whole thing going on in our heads, and we haven’t tested it with real people to see if they will spend money on it. We all know the importance of testing and learning in marketing when it comes to advertising campaigns and all of that. This is another level of making sure that whatever product or service that you go to market with, you’ve refined it as much as you can before you start putting a lot of money behind it.

When I start to think about testing it beforehand, you’re right. With marketing, we do a lot of A/B testing and things like that to make sure that we capture that. A lot of entrepreneurs are like, “My neighbor liked the idea” or “So-and-so liked my idea,” and all of those things. Give us a little bit of sample size or how you would test that first because that’s very open. Some people think, “Five people said it’s a good idea, therefore I tested it. We’re moving on.”

I like to think of it more like a mindset than a specific algorithm. Taking it completely out of the context of business, you were talking in the intro about my Fortune 500 experience. One of the things that happens a lot when you work in consulting for a big firm is you move around a lot. I got relocated a ton of times.

I’m not sure how things work now because it’s been a while but back in the day, they paid for everything when it came to your relocation, right down to any of the real estate transaction costs. It was financially in your best interest if you were moving from one city to another to sell your house in one city, buy it in another, and then the company would pay for any out-of-pocket.

It was great but what would happen to me a lot anyway is because I was moving site-unseen to a number of different cities, I would tour around with a realtor and rely on their expertise. I would find something and think, “This is nice,” and then buy it. Invariably, I would move in and a few months later think, “There was this other cute neighborhood that I would’ve wished that I had known about, and maybe bought there instead.”

That’s more what I’m thinking in terms of business. If you have an idea, look to do things like maybe bring on contractors to test out delivery before you hire a whole team. Perhaps look to partner with other business professionals to deliver something, and white label that together. It’s lean thinking in a nutshell, “How can I very cost-effectively bring my idea to market, test it, refine it, and make sure that I’m heading down the right path, and that people are genuinely as passionate about it as I am in my head?” You can then look at putting some money and some marketing behind it.

TRM 17 | Test Before Invest

Test Before Invest: Lean thinking is about how you can very cost effectively bring your idea to market, test it, refine it, and make sure that you’re heading down the right path.

I love the analogy because we’ve all felt that. You said it’s been a while. They used to relocate you, and then you end up in the neighborhood. You were like, “I wish I would’ve taken some time because this is a big investment.” I’ve done that myself. We talked earlier about me renting now because I’m building a house and that was the product of that. Hopefully, this 3 to 4-year stint gets me in the place that I want to finalize living in for the rest of my life because I’ve moved twenty times.

That’s a great example, Valerie. Had you been living at home with your parents and then immediately said, “I’m going to build a house,” you wouldn’t have a clue as to what the best layout for you would be. You need to go out and test that. In your case, you would test it by renting. You live in other places and realize, “I want a kitchen that does this. I want this type of layout.” It’s the same in business.

Probably as entrepreneurs, we get new ideas every day, every week. It depends on the person. If you have a limitless source of capital, then put those all out there and see. If you don’t, then part of that testing is maybe brainstorming the idea with your team or with some people who are close to you. Ultimately, if you’re going to put it out to a small group of clients or customers, then find a way to deliver something in a scaled-down model so that you can get that feedback before you’ve put a ton of money into something.

In the product development haunts, you would forecast five years out to see where you’re going as the foundation to see if it was even worth doing. Secondly, you would start your peer advisory summits and bring customers in. You start with peer advisory, summits, and stuff to gain and capture that stuff after you get a thread from that. You then bring in peer advisories to make sure that you’re right. Sorry, I didn’t say peer. I meant core groups to test it. In healthcare, we call it clinical trials. In other companies, you call it customer trials or whatever before you set off into your launch. Sometimes when we get in the bootstrapping mindset, we think we’re not losing money, but we are. We’re losing whatever took the place of your value and of your time.

We’ve all learned, especially through COVID, that time is your most valuable asset. If you’re spending too much time going down paths that are not going to be fruitful, then that becomes costly, or if nothing else, the opportunity cost of what your time could have potentially generated. One of my favorite marketers is Seth Godin. One of his key principles is the product is the marketing. If your product or service is that good, then you shouldn’t need to put enormous amounts of marketing spend behind it.

We’ve all learned, especially through video, that time is our most valuable asset.

Take a close look at how you can differentiate your service. How can you differentiate your product when you put it up against your competitors? Remember, your competitors are not just direct like, “I’m offering the same service,” or “I’m offering the same product as you.” What else fills that need? A lot of times, I’ll talk to entrepreneurs and they’ll say, “I’ve got this cool idea and it has no competition.” It does because something else is filling that need perhaps in a different way. Maybe not well now, but it’s filling it.

If people have a need, they’re figuring out a way to get it done. Maybe it’s not as elegant as what you have in mind but they’re getting it done. Your competition could be, “I’m going to do it myself,” or “I have to buy these three things because there isn’t one thing that does what I need.” Those are still forms of competition. It’s all of that upfront testing, planning, thinking, and analysis. The more of those that you do, the less you’re going to end up in a cash-strap position later on because you underestimated what it would take to bring something to market.

I love it because there are the Uber, taxi, and Lyft models. What are other people doing besides Uber, Lyft, and taxis? They could be walking from A to B. It’s not efficient but that’s what they can do because it is all transportation. You’ve worked with big sales teams. When you’re trying to train reps to realize that, it’s like the light bulb goes off, “That’s a competitor too?”

At the end of the day, you’re not selling stuff. You’re selling a solution to a problem. If the problem that you think is there is not recognized in the minds of enough people, then you don’t have a viable product or service. If your product or service doesn’t meet that need in a way where people truly see enough value to justify whatever you want to charge for it, then it’s also not viable.

You can put all the marketing money in the world behind it. Maybe you’ll get initial traction. If you don’t get referrals or repeat business, however your model is set up, then you know you’re not going to have the longevity that you need as a business. All of that upfront planning and strategy is going to make the difference.

That’s challenging for a lot of entrepreneurs because you have an idea, and you want to put it out tomorrow. One of the nice things about having a smaller enterprise, whether it’s a small business or a startup, is that you don’t have 25 layers of corporate bureaucracy, where you have to run it up the flagpole and get a bunch of people to weigh in and approve.

If you’re the founder and you like it, in theory, if you’ve got the capital, you can just do it. The thing is, should you? The market is a factor for sure, but should you push out whatever you have in mind? Surround yourself with experts and people who can test your thinking before you start to spend that money.

Push out whatever you have in mind. Surround yourself with experts and people who can really test your thinking before you start to spend money on it.

That’s the beginning of the marketing message too because if you do have that, then you uncover all the differentiators while you’re doing that. You’re testing the market, you’re finding what their voice is, and you’re doing all those things. We know with small businesses, a lot of times, they have great success from a couple of neighbors or people down the road or whatever. I love what you said about enough people as well. It’s the analysis of what is the market share out there that you are expecting to capture. It’s not good enough to have ten people buy the product unless the product is $1.5 million each and you have a 20% net market.

That’s not everyone’s product or service though.

We would love it. It’s like, “Here you go,” and everybody is going to buy that. That limits your possibilities as well but I love it. It’s interesting on this show because there are all these cool little nuggets that people say capture the essence of what you’re trying to convey to the rest of the audience, which is amazing. It’s enough people. Not that there is demand, but enough demand for what you’re doing.

A lot of times, when I’m talking to entrepreneurs, I’ll ask them, “Who is your target audience?” They’ll say, “It’s Gen Z.”

That’s pretty broad. That’s a TAM.

That’s another risk. The broader that you go, then you’re that much less attractive. If you are looking to solve the needs of a target audience, you need to get inside the heads of your target audience, which means you need to define them perhaps more narrowly than you might expect. You need to understand what are their emotional buying triggers. Maybe you’ve got something that’s cool, but what’s going to make somebody take out their credit card and buy it?

Sometimes we take out our credit cards and buy crazy stuff that we don’t need, but it’s because it fulfilled an emotional need for us. It made us feel cool, interesting, smart, funny, or whatever emotional needs it fulfilled. Those are perfectly valid. It’s not like you necessarily have to solve world hunger to launch a business. You do need to understand your target audience in sufficient detail to be able to identify how you are going to meet that need.

That comes out in your story. How you’re describing your product and service, the words you use, and the imagery you use, all of that is marketing. The more you understand who you’re selling to, then the more that message is going to resonate. Realistically these days, if you launch a website, somebody is going to go to your website. You’ve got three seconds to capture their attention, and to figure out whether they’re going to scroll or they’re going to be gone.

The more you understand who you’re selling to, the more your message is going to resonate.

If they do decide to hang out for a couple more seconds and scroll, then whatever it is that you’re going to tell them has to be compelling enough that they look at that message and go, “You get me. This is something that will solve a problem that I have.” How can you make someone feel like you get me unless you understand that target persona? You could have multiple personas, but your message needs to be very clearly directed at them.

Wendy Pease was on the show and we were talking about the cultural dialect or language within that to capture who you’re talking to. She does a lot of translation services. She was talking about Google Translate versus translation efforts for marketing. What flies in the UK doesn’t fly even in Australia or here. We use different terms. We calendar and they diary. People buy from people they like.

Part of that, getting over the 20 to 50 points of familiarity means that they won’t even get past the first point of familiarity if you aren’t speaking their language. I’m not talking about English, French, or whatever. I know you speak tons of languages, but the reality is what you’re saying is right. People want to feel at home when they hit your website. They want to feel at home when they talk to a sales rep. They want to feel like they are unique and human, not a number. I love that. That’s awesome.

All that is part of your strategy. If you think what you’re developing is cool, you may not be your entire target audience. That’s something else to keep in mind. When you’re asking people what they think, they might not be your target audience either. In some cases, you have to take their feedback sometimes with a grain of salt. Maybe they don’t get your target audience and you do, and that’s perfectly fine. The more that you understand them, the better. Going through that upfront strategy exercise is critical.

TRM 17 | Test Before Invest

Test Before Invest: Just because you think what you’re developing is cool, doesn’t necessarily mean it will be to whom you’ll sell it to. You may not be your entire target audience.

Let’s say it’s a product that they’re going to launch. Maybe it’s million dollars a year at first or whatever. I know it’s a broad category, but I think that people also underestimate the time it takes to build a strategy. In your estimation, how long it’s going to take to build that strategy? First, you have to have the strategy, then you got to go to the people and do all the questioning and all of that. How long does that usually take in your experience?

It’s one of those big consulting terms of it depends, but it does. Part of the time depends on how much knowledge and information is already in the heads of the people who are working on your team. A lot of times if I’m working with a startup, we’ll start with a workshop with them. We’ll bring those leaders together and we basically try to get out from them what they think of the target audience, the strategy, the key elements of the message, the positioning against competitors, and all of those things that can then help you to build out that roadmap of what needs to happen next.

In some cases, depending on the scale of what you’re doing, you may have enough knowledge in the room. In other cases, you don’t. In those cases that you don’t, then the it-depends part is, how am I going to go and get that information? Am I doing research? Am I bringing in some potential clients or customers? Maybe I’m building a platform and I’m going to partner with a couple of customers to build that platform and make some a deal with them. In exchange for their time in helping me to refine what it is that I’m creating, maybe they get it for free for the first year, or whatever the particular solution is.

In cases like that, you could start developing fairly quickly if you have a partner that you could develop with. One of the large corporate companies that I worked with many years ago did that. It was business intelligence software. Every single time they had a release of their software, they would partner with a client. That client would help fund that release because it was in their best interest. They knew that they were going to very quickly get the benefits. They also could shape it in a way that made sense.

The balance is you can’t shape it so much in the direction of one client that it’s not marketable for everybody. That can be a viable strategy that would allow you to get to market more quickly or you could look at breaking it down into pieces. I’m a big fan of that. How can you phase out what it is that you’re trying to launch so that maybe you can start generating revenue sooner from the first piece of whatever that solution is, and use that to help fund the subsequent phases?

It’s that old expression about perfect being the enemy of goods. It doesn’t always have to be 100% perfect. It can’t be crap or it’s going to tarnish your reputation, but there are people who are excited to get in on a beta of something if the benefits are there. That’s always an option. I hate to say that it depends, but there are so many variables in terms of time. It could be weeks to months to years, depending on what the groundwork is that you have to put in place.

It was a broad question. It was probably a dumb question on my part because it also depends on the industry.

How long is it going to take to bring a new drug to market? That’s the regulatory layer. That’s a whole other question.

The thing I was trying to point out a little bit is a lot of people underestimate the strategy portion, and how much time it takes to do that. In software and some of those things, that’s going to be faster than heavy equipment. That’s going to be faster than Volvo developing a car. We did a product lunch in heavy equipment. Everybody was like, “That’s so fast,” and it was two and a half years. The strategy of how we were going to even test the market took a year building it the right way.

We had other product lines that we were working on as well. I couldn’t tell you which one, but sometimes you can turn software very quickly but it’s still not overnight. It’s still going to take time. Those who don’t map out the strategy, the things that you have step by step, “This is what we’re going to do. This is what says that this is accepted,” whether you’re using stage gate processes or whatever you’re trying to do. If they don’t map it out properly, then they waste time too on top of it. I was trying to reinforce what you were saying with it, and make sure that people understand that this is not a day usually.

It could be a day if you’re launching a service. All the people that would be able to deliver it are already in your company, and all the minds are already in the room. You need to basically bring everybody together. Somebody has done some research in advance of that. You pull it all together and crank it out. There are some quick-turn things you can do but there are so many “It depends.”

Your point about the cost of making mistakes is very well taken. If you think of strategy as a series of paths, you can go as far as you want down any given path. The further you go, the more expensive it is to back up and then go down another path. As frustrating as it can feel, that time upfront can save you a lot of time and money from heading down the wrong path.

TRM 17 | Test Before Invest

Test Before Invest: If you think of strategy as a series of paths, you can go as far as you want down any given path, but the further you go, the more expensive it is to back up and then go down another path.

When I talk to other leaders, they’re like, “Why is it that I have to make all the mistakes first?” It does feel that way a lot of the time. Sometimes you get these ideas because entrepreneurs are often on the leading edge, and sometimes the bleeding edge of some things. It’s untested ground. You get this great idea and you start going. The cost of going down that wrong path can be significant, but it’s not like there are a hundred other companies who’ve done the same thing before that you can use as guidance. Surrounding yourself with smart minds so that you can at least intellectually model those different strategies and get that feedback is helpful.

It’s great advice to the audience. How did you get to all of this? Thirty of the Fortune 500s, and now you’re doing ZenChange Marketing. I’m trying to figure out what led you down this road. You’re very passionate about it. We get that it is solving challenges. Let the audience know how you got here.

It was a little bit of a winding path. Going into Corporate America, doing consulting, getting to see the world, and engaging with leaders from all different cultures, you can’t get that knowledge in school. I have a business undergrad and an MBA but it couldn’t possibly have taught me all that I learned in the field. We’re not talking about age, but you’re not going to get that information from a textbook or even from talking to educators who’ve been there.

Some things, you just have to do. I talk about making mistakes because even working with Fortune 500 companies, they make a lot of mistakes. They head down the wrong path more often than you might expect. Going through some of those experiences and feeling what that feels like is incredibly educational. It was a wonderful experience. I don’t regret a moment of it. Ironically, when I was in my undergrad, I was tapped by one of the professors in the business school to lead the small business consulting program.

This was an interesting program where we would basically deliver consulting services for free for little entrepreneurs in the area. It was some of the most fun that I’ve had. It was everything from somebody showing up, “You’d love this,” with a shoebox full of receipts. They need help with getting their books together and figuring out their finances, to somebody who needs help with a marketing plan. They need some financial input and all sorts of things that we would do for them.

It was a lot of fun. I tucked that away then went off and did my stint in corporate, which was rather lengthy. I was traveling all over the world. I was at the point where I had a young daughter. I was away from her all week. I thought I did not purposely choose to be away from my daughter. I’m trying to raise her and be with her and enjoy her. I know this is going to sound very cliché but I decided that I need to do something more local.

At the same time, I also wanted to make sure that whatever I was doing, I had more impact. Sometimes when you’re working in a large corporation, it’s hard to turn big ships around. It takes time, and there were so many times when I would see what needed to be done. You talk to clients and you knew what needed to be done, but there were so many layers of process and control in order to make those changes. It gets a little frustrating after a while.

TRM 17 | Test Before Invest

Test Before Invest: Sometimes when you’re in a large corporation, it’s hard to turn big ships around. It just takes time.

I thought, “I’ve seen things work at scale. I want to now take that experience. I’m going to launch something where I can help other entrepreneurs to scale and use that expertise, but also do it in a way where I can be more connected directly to make those changes.” That is one of the beautiful things I think about startups and small businesses. If you’re the owner, you can make the change.

Maybe you’re a startup and you have investors that you need to consult with. Typically, if you’ve chosen the right investors and the right advisory board, they’re going to have a mind for being nimble. That’s the whole purpose. You’re going to be able to make those changes and nibble away at the market share of those big companies that couldn’t get there in time.

One of the companies that I worked for back in the day is a technology company. We were trying to do business with one particular area of the Federal government of Canada, which is where I’m originally from. Having such a large company that had so many layers of costs that had to go into all of our pricing, because you peanut butter the corporate overhead, made us not competitive for this particular segment.

I was part of an organization that spun off from that company, behaved as a funded startup, and was able to then go and get those contracts. The difference of having that nimble structure makes a lot of difference in terms of what you’re able to accomplish. Honestly, it’s a lot more fun. I’m enjoying myself more now than I did then.

Making a difference is what some of us thrive for. Especially in the environment that workers are in now, a lot of them are complaining because they feel like they’re not making a difference. It’s the whole cultural turnaround. I have daughters that want to be passionate about what they’re doing. It doesn’t mean that you want to be rewarded openly but you want to feel like you’re helping somehow and making that difference, versus walking through the door and doing the same thing every single day.

You see the up-rise in the work-from-anywhere groups. You see the up-rise in the fractional markets because of it. You see a lot of people wanting to make a difference in something. That’s what’s going on even with the onslaught of social media. We see all the political environments across the globe now that we didn’t see before.

At the same token, we have also seen in globalization what people want to do, how they work, and why they want to work that way. With what you’re doing, it makes sense. Now that you say Canada, I know you speak Portuguese and French. Was that because you grew up in Canada and you were close to all the languages?

I worked in French for a while in Canada. That was where that came from. I did a lot of traveling in Latin America. My husband is Brazilian, so there’s some connection there. Getting back to what you’re saying about the Great Resignation and the whole wave of people seeking meaning in their work, there’s a very important message there for entrepreneurs in terms of how you describe your business and how you run your business.

People want to either work from home or they want a hybrid model now. That’s something that we need to accommodate, and an even more creative model. We switched at ZenChange to a four-day compressed work week because that’s something that the team felt like they could be more productive if they had that extra day off.

It’s been a great move for us as well and we’re all virtual. We were virtual and on Zoom before Zoom was cool, but we’ve seen some shifts. If you are running a business, you need to think about how I am describing what I do and what our company offers in a way that my target audience is going to resonate with, knowing that they’re looking for meaning and they want to make a difference. People are thinking about where they are spending their money, and whether that’s the type of company that they want to support.

In some cases and a lot of cases, it’s not always all about price. It’s about impact. It’s about meaning. I like to think of our company as being the wind beneath the wings of businesses that are trying to make a difference in the world. You could be an attorney making a difference in the world. You could be helping people in that regard, but doing something good and having that choice. That’s one of the other beautiful things about having your own business.

It’s that you get to choose who you work with. It may not feel that way at the beginning when you’re first starting and you’re desperate for revenue, but you will reach a point where you can choose the clients that you want to work with. If they don’t have similar values that you support, you can say no. That makes a difference also to your team, knowing who they get to work with as clients.

One of the beautiful things about having your own business is that you get to choose who you work with.

That whole aspect of meaning, giving back, being genuine, having a message, and telling your story are critically important pieces to your marketing strategy these days. We’ve seen that escalate even more since COVID. A lot of people have done this searching reflection of, “What do I want to do for a living? How do I want to live my life?” That’s why we’re seeing so much of a shift happening in the workforce. That’s being reflected as well in the economics of how people want to spend their disposable income. I’m going back to the product or the service as the most important part of your marketing. That is a very important element as well.

That’s amazing. We’ve worked from anywhere in 2004 from the Cayman Islands where it was a bit before all of this, but we did homeschooling through K-12 and through the state of California at the time. We did a lot of things that they were doing in COVID now back then. I remember how challenging it was. I was talking to John from work from anywhere and that whole group. I don’t know if you’re a member of that, but it might be a great group. His whole thing is about tax treatment in multiple companies because you’re working from anywhere.

When you said that it’s not always about price, you’re right. It’s about the trade-off. Sometimes you earn more because you’re not driving your car. You’re not stressing out, and even health benefits. Michelle Lederman wrote The Connector’s Advantage. I saw that you are associated with B&I and stuff like that. Just the health benefits for some of the things if you can connect, but being in your own space seems like a great way to go.

I applaud that you guys have been doing that before Zoom is a thing. I love that a fellow sister uses that term because you’ve lived and walked it. That’s super important for this new regime that’s coming through. The Great Resignation is being addressed but not at the same time. A lot of people are bearing their heads and going, “Why are we having these shortages?” It is the cultural shift that we need to be working on. Obviously, I’m opinionated.

It’s the relatability too. Not to overly generalize, but people who grew up in my generation tended to work for decades for the same company. You worked your butt off. You didn’t ask for more. You wanted to show your company what you could do and what you could accomplish. You put your whole heart and soul into your career, and often sacrificed your personal life as a result. That’s not how things are. People my age are the people who are leading in Corporate America now. There’s that relatability aspect. It’s always easy and very cliché to say, “The young generation.”

It always happens.

It’s always going to be different. At some point, somebody looked at us that way too, but it is a positive movement in terms of social change. I love seeing what today’s younger generations are doing, what they’re thinking, what they’re willing to speak out about, and what they’re willing to fight for. They’re way gutsier than we ever were.

I could not be more excited to see what they’re able to accomplish as they rise into the leadership rank. For any leaders out there who are feeling like, “The Great Resignation is going to go away,” or “Why can’t people just suck it up and go get a regular job?” Time to open your eyes. There are some good things coming as a result of the fire in the belly that today’s younger people have.

One other note on marketing when it comes to that is to think about that generation, and how your products and services are going to evolve to meet the needs of that generation. Even if they’re not the direct consumers of whatever it is that you’re selling now, you can better believe that they are very strong influencers because their families are listening to them. Other people who might be a little bit older are listening to them, and they are very quickly going to grow into being your customer. What are you doing to meet them where they want to be?

That becomes part of the strategy that you were talking about, to begin with. Who will that be in the next five years? Who will that be in three and that kind of thing? Diane, I love everything that you’ve been saying and this has been so engaging. I know that you have got to have a passion outside of business. What do you do for fun?

I got a COVID puppy as many did. She’s a lot of fun. I love hanging out with my family and watching movies and going to the beach. I live in Miami, so the sun, the pool, and the beach are a big part of our lifestyle. All that wonderful city has to offer are also exciting pastimes for us.

Are you a scuba diver out there? Are you at your home?

I have not done scuba diving in years. Maybe I’ll get back to it someday.

It’s been about six years for me. I love that part of the world because of the scuba diving, then the hop and jump from Miami to any of those islands out there that give you all the warm water. I’m out at Coeur d’Alene now. It’s wonderful in the summertime and everything. The lakes are massive, so it feels like oceans and we’re surrounded by them. It’s lovely, but they’re like 50 degrees.

I remember. I grew up swimming in very cold Ontario Lakes, so I get it.

The same with the Pacific Ocean. I go, “How did I do that when I was younger?” I pine for your ocean temperatures and all that fun stuff.

I tell my Canadian friends and family who tell us, “You get to live in Miami,” I’m like, “Life is about choices.”

It’s about choices. You come and go. You can make that decision, especially if we’re talking about work from anywhere.

Why can’t you work from a beach?

There’s got to be some product involved with that. I don’t know what it is but I love it. The group would love to know how to get ahold of you, ask you questions, and do those types of things. What is the best place for them to be able to reach you?

Reach out to me on LinkedIn. You can message me there. It’s Diane Moura or you can catch me on Instagram @MarketingStrategyGal.

That’s awesome. Thank you so much, Diane, for being on the show. Thank you to all the guests. If you like it, like it on the podcast and LinkedIn. Show Diane your love of the show. It’s been exciting.

Thank you, Valerie. It’s been fun.

 

Important Links

About Diane Moura

Diane Moura

I approach each challenge with passion and an approach of diving right in, quickly grasping the issues and creating a structure to drive results. I thrive on creating order from chaos and leading teams to achieve exciting goals. With 25 years experience in CRM, marketing and process optimization consulting and over 30 years business experience in the U.S., Canada, England, Australia and Latin America I have had the opportunity to see what works, risks that will need to be mitigated, and to share that experience with my clients and team.

I have consulted with 30 of the Fortune 500 as well with many entrepreneurs and startups. I truly enjoy working with organizations who seek to launch and grow great ideas. I have facilitated over 200 strategy workshops from vision and mission to business strategy and processes, incorporating decision analytics, statistical models and data. I have managed financial and cultural turnarounds and have successfully led sales teams to close deals to $100 million. I have managed teams up to 300 people and annual budgets to $20 million.

I focus on business simplification, growth and profitability. I tend to have a systems way of thinking, likely from my years of consulting on business strategies that would be executed through technology, so while working through problems I balance strategy with execution. For strategic clients, particularly technology start ups, I will take on a Fractional CMO, COO or CEO role to accelerate their growth.

Here at Revenue NorthStar, we are passionate about sharing experiences and first-hand knowledge from the trenches. No fake gurus or consultants; we get into the execution of well-proven steps, strategies, and frameworks to help your business grow faster and more efficiently. Stay connected with us on social media for regular updates, tips, and insights:

Connect with us on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/revenuenorthstar
Like us on Facebook: facebook.com/revenuenorthstar
Keep up-to-date with us on Instagram: instagram.com/revenue_northstar_llc/
Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/RevNorthst1
Subscribe to our YouTube channel: youtube.com/@findyourrevenuenorthstar

Join our community and let’s embark on a journey of business growth together!

About The Author : Valerie Cobb

Categories

Recent Posts