Becoming a Hometown Hero – In Just 7 Minutes with Tom Gaddis

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• Learn about the ways on how you can be a hometown hero yourself
• Find out the common mistakes people do when marketing their business
• Discover a training ground where you can be helped on becoming aware of the ways you can market a business

Resources/Links:

• Do you want to know more about what Tom Gaddis does and be trained with stuffs related to how he helps people in becoming a hometown hero? Learn more through clicking this link: https://www.offlinesharks.com/resource/

Summary

Are you one of those people who have always dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur but have no idea how to go out into the public’s world?

Have you ever thought of being a ‘hometown hero’ in your local position?

Just like you, Tom Gaddis has always wanted to be self-employed and free from the butt-smooching of the corporate world. He started from zero but he wanted success bad enough.

This led him to struck the entrepreneur dream – positioning himself as a local ‘hometown hero’ – that has now resulted to a successful local marketing consulting business he manages. Now, he teaches others to do the same.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 1:55 – Tom’s ideal client: “So, my ideal clients are agency owners, freelancers, people looking to build a business in their local area, helping other local business owners either with their marketing or getting more exposure to what they’re doing.”
• 2:28 – The nature of the problem Tom helps to solve: “So, specifically we help, like the agency owners, the freelancers bring in more qualified prospects.”
• 3:11 – Typical symptoms clients do: “Well, one obviously, inconsistency of cash flow, right? The kind of up and down inconsistency. But I think another thing is maybe just feeling stuck like they are not really sure where to turn, where to start, and they’re kind of forcing sales on potential prospects.”
• 4:05 – The common mistakes people make before reaching out to Tom: “Typically they’re doing a lot of outreach themselves, like they have to physically go chase their prospects, instead of attracting them to what I like to call their sphere of influence.”
• 4:44 – Tom’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “So I think the first step is realizing that you don’t have to go big right out of the game.”
• 5:37 – Tom’s Valuable Free Resource: https://www.offlinesharks.com/resource/
• 6:37 – Q: What does it mean becoming an entrepreneur? A: “The big turning point was just starting to develop the habits and the actions that successful people take, right? Developing the morning routines, the showing up for appointments on time, showing up prepared.”

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:09
Greetings, everyone! Another very warm welcome to yet another episode of Marketing the Invisible. My name is Tom Poland, beaming out here from a little castaways beach in the exotic Queensland, Australia, joined today by Tom Gaddis. Tom, good day. So, welcome from down under. Where are you hanging out?

Tom Gaddis 0:24
Aloha. I am on Maui in Hawaii.

Tom Poland 0:28
Another beautiful part of the world. Why doesn’t everyone live where we live? I don’t know. Go figure.

Tom Gaddis 0:32
It’s a rough life, but somebody’s got to live it.

Tom Poland 0:34
Somebody’s got to live it, right? Folks, I had a look at Tom’s website and I kind of stalked him a little bit around the internet, and he has just one of the best thought-out value propositions that I’ve seen. And I know he’s been remarkably successful at what he’s doing, and he’s going to share with us a lot of really helpful insights, but let me give you that, that’s my unofficial introduction, Tom. But apart from the fact that I just love your first name – it’s the best one out there. Both from that, you should hear about what else he does. He’s always wanted to be self-employed, free from what he calls the butt-smooching of the corporate world. But, you know, kind of you wanted to be the master of your own destiny, right? And live the dream – the entrepreneurial dream. So, Tom started from zero, built successful local marketing consulting business, positioning himself as the local hometown hero. Now, here’s the thing. It was so successful that now what he’s doing is teaching other people how to do the same thing. So, brings us nicely to the title of our interview which is “Becoming a Hometown Hero” and you’re going to tell folks how to do that in less than seven minutes. Our time starts now. Tell us, who is your ideal client?

Tom Gaddis 1:55
So, my ideal clients are agency owners, freelancers, people looking to build a business in their local area, helping other local business owners either with their marketing or getting more exposure to what they’re doing.

Tom Poland 2:11
Terrific! Thank you, sir. Six and a half minutes left. Tell us about the problem you solve. I imagine that probably feels like they’re the world’s best-kept secret. You know, they got a great product or service, but where are all the people banging the door down. So, tell us more about that, what is it specifically that you help them with?

Tom Gaddis 2:29
Yeah. So, specifically we help, like the agency owners, the freelancers bring in more qualified prospects, right? That tends to be the number one issue most people have when they want to start a business; like this is like, how do I get out there? That’s how we do it.

Tom Poland 2:44
You solve the problem of not having this consistent flow of clients that are happy to pay the money that people need to sell the product or services. So, question three is what are some of the typical symptoms that people have with this problem they are going to be experiencing now? Clearly, there are not enough sales, but what else do you think is going on in their business or their life that would kind of give them a heads up that they should go to your website and check you out a bit more.

Tom Gaddis 3:11
Well, one obviously, inconsistency of cash flow, right? The kind of up and down inconsistency. But I think another thing is maybe just feeling stuck like they are not really sure where to turn, where to start, and they’re kind of forcing, they’re like forcing sales on potential prospects, right? It seems like a chase, instead of their ideal clients and prospects coming to them. That’s a pretty good indication that we can help them.

Tom Poland 3:41
Because they are probably trying too hard to get the sale because they don’t have enough prospects coming in. Okay, so that probably leads us quite nicely to question number four. Five minutes left. These business owners are probably pretty smart people – they’re going to try things, they’re not just going to sit there and passively go, “Oh, well, shocks, life is hard,” but they might make some mistakes before they find your solution. So tell us about some of the common mistakes that these folks are making before they find your solution.

Tom Gaddis 4:06
Typically they’re doing a lot of outreach themselves, right? Like they have to physically go chase their prospects, instead of attracting them to what I like to call their sphere of influence.

Tom Poland 4:20
So, in that, I guess it’s quite time consuming, a lot of personal inertia has to be overcome and so on. Okay, cool. So, that serves the saints pretty well. Let’s get on to how we’re going to help them. Question number five, four minutes left. What’s one valuable free action that someone else could take that’s going to move them a step closer to solving the problem? Not the whole thing but just a step taken to move ahead with.

Tom Gaddis 4:44
Sure. So I think the first step is realizing that you don’t have to go big right out of the gate. I think a lot of agency owners and freelancers think they need this big national presence, they need to be this big corporation, they need to have that kind of authority behind them to be successful. And what I really focused on in my agency was becoming a hometown hero like really just focusing on what’s in my backyard, and surprisingly, there was more than enough business there. I didn’t need to go big to be successful.

Tom Poland 5:15
Got you. So the problem wasn’t, you didn’t have big enough catchment areas. The problem was you weren’t achieving penetration in the area that you did have. The grass was greener in another state, sort of thing. So let’s go to question number six. Now we got three minutes left so you’re doing really well. What’s a valuable resource that we could direct people to that’s going to help them even more with this problem?

Tom Gaddis 5:37
Sure. So if they go to https://www.offlinesharks.com/resource/. It’s a free training that we did on a strategy we implemented towards the end of 2020 in the beginning of 2021, where we actually reached out to local business owners and made them aware of grant money that they could be getting. We will kind of help them through that process. And then as a result of that, we brought in just a little over 250 grand in revenue to our agency because when they got the grant money, they turned around and hired us to help them with their marketing and getting the word out.

Tom Poland 6:17
Oh you clever thing here. All right, so that’s https://www.offlinesharks.com/resource/. Thanks for that Tom. Question number seven, we got two minutes left. What’s the one question I should have asked you, but didn’t, and the answer as well please.

Tom Gaddis 6:34
I think the biggest thing is, I talk a lot at Offline Sharks about becoming an entrepreneur, and so one thing that I don’t think people ask me enough is what exactly does that mean? What does it mean becoming an entrepreneur? And for me, I struggled for a really long time. I’m what they call a late bloomer. I didn’t really get into the entrepreneurialship game until I was over 40, and a lot of that was because I didn’t have the discipline and the correct mindset to make anything work. So I spent a lot of time spinning my wheels, trying a lot of different stuff that just never seem to pan out, right? And you know, we get so wrapped up in all the business strategies and all that stuff that I think for me, the big turning point was just starting to develop the habits and the actions that successful people take, right? Developing the morning routines, the showing up for appointments on time, showing up prepared. All things that I used to just think were like, Ah, I’ll do that stuff once I’m successful, right? And it turns out, you have to do that stuff first and then you become successful.

Tom Poland 7:47
I love what you just said, just the whole showing up on time, and having practicing that and having disciplined about preparing these foundation habits. Great stuff. Terrific advice. https://www.offlinesharks.com/resource/. Go get it. Discover how you can become the local hero in your own hometown. Tom Gaddis, thanks so much for your time.

Tom Gaddis 8:10
Yeah, thanks so much, Tom. Was a great time being here.

Tom Poland 08:13
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.