133 Cracking The Facebook Code: Entrepreneur, Copywriter and Facebook Ad Expert Mari Connor Shares Her Secrets of Success

If you’ve ever run a Facebook ad campaign, or want to, this episode is a must-listen. Entrepreneur Mari Connor is the go-to maven of Facebook advertising, and she shares what works, what doesn’t and why. We talk about her leap from copywriting to building an agency, and how she did it.

Melinda Wittstock:         Hey, Mari. Welcome to WINGS.

Mari Connor:                     Hey, Melinda. Thank you so much for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:         I am excited to talk to you because Facebook ads, it’s a little black boxy, I think for most people even if you know a lot about digital and online media, it’s confusing because the algorithm’s changed, all kinds of stuff is going on. Describe your day. You run this agency, you’re doing this amazing work for a lot of clients that are really happy with everything you’re doing, what’s it like? What it’s like running your agency?

Mari Connor:                     I feel like the luckiest person on earth literally. I run my business from my home in Phoenix, Arizona. I have a team of 12 at the moment, a mix of freelancers, vendors, team members, etc., who are all U.S. based. Yeah. We run a full service Facebook advertising for mostly medium and large sized businesses or influencers who are offering courses online that seems to be a little bit of a good fit for us and a good fit for Facebook advertising, and you’re so right. Facebook advertising straight up is not easy and at this moment in time, I need my team of 12 to help me implement everything that we need to implement and keep an eye on and monitor and optimize and scale for my clients. I couldn’t even go back to when I was a one man … It’s hard for me to even think back to when I was doing all of the ads and the execution myself.

Mari Connor:                     You mentioned that Facebook ads were confusing, and you know what? You’re right. They are confusing, and it is hard and it’s not easy, but if you understand some fundamentals about online advertising and that it’s actually moving full circle back to what a normal relationship is like in the sense that you can’t just run an ad and pitch people out of the blue. That doesn’t feel comfortable on social. It’s not natural when you and I … We were to become friends, which I’m sure we will after this call, and if we were to pass messages back and forth, there wouldn’t be any pitching. There wouldn’t be like, “Hey, Melinda. I’m offering $10, $100 off.” We have those friends that are maybe working for multi-level marketing who are taking advantage of that, but a lot of people are marketing those people, those profiles and those ads is, “I don’t want to see this.” Companies really have to think about, “How can I build a relationship and how can I provide value before I make a withdrawal on that value by offering them a product or a service that’s maybe on promotion?”

Mari Connor:                     It’s a lot more similar to what a natural relationship is, and a lot of companies that I talked to just aren’t comfortable with that. They’ve been making radio or TV ads for so long that they’re used to just sort of, “Call me right out with the pitch and with the fast close.” That just doesn’t work on social.

Melinda Wittstock:         It doesn’t work. Period. You know what’s interesting? I’ve been saying for a while that companies that sell B to C, business to consumer, it’s actually flipped over now, it’s consumer to business. The consumer has all the cards and has so much choice and has never been more informed and distrusts everything and sees through every ploy. When you’re making a Facebook ad, the ones that I see worked the best. They’re just very conversational, like they’re social in social media, and they’re contextual to Facebook and contextual to the conversation that’s happening. Advertising is conversation. What’s …

Mari Connor:                     I love [crosstalk 00:21:22].

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry.

Mari Connor:                     No, I was just going to say that on the same note that you were talking about that it’s C to B now, that Ryan Deiss, I think said at T&C 2017, if I’m right. It was one of the T&Cs that we’re moving from B to B and B to C, to H to H, which is human to human.

Melinda Wittstock:         Human to human. Yeah. That’s the same … That’s really what I’m saying with C to B, except the consumers hold more cards than the businesses.

Mari Connor:                     Absolutely. Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:         The power relationship has changed.

Mari Connor:                     A lot of businesses are just super uncomfortable about that, when I can sit down with them and say, “Let me tell you, the silver lining about that is you get to tell the story about why you started doing what you were doing, and tell us about how you fell in love with it.” That’s what the audience actually wants to hear.

Melinda Wittstock:         Why? It’s all about the why, the mission.

Mari Connor:                     Yeah. 100%. 100%.

Melinda Wittstock:         I know you started life as a copywriter and broadcasting as well, which absolutely must be a part of your secret superpowers here for why you do so well with Facebook ads. Is there a direct correlation?

Mari Connor:                     Absolutely. When we talk to prospects who were talking to several different agencies, we’ll stay straight up our superpower is copywriting, our superpower is storytelling. If you’re looking for a certain level of targeting or you’re looking for a certain level of graphics, I’m sure there’s someone else that spent 20 years doing that. What I’ve spent 20 years doing is telling stories, which is likely and it already is starting to trump things like graphics and targeting, etc. People are so … We’re a little bit disconnected because we’re all on our phones and just going about our lives, and everybody’s super busy, but there’s actually a very deep craving of four stories that are being told on social, whether it’s by someone on your profile that’s sharing a tough time that they’re going through or by a business that’s telling you a little bit about their background and sort of pulling the curtain back a little bit on the companies, so that you feel like you’re a member of the family as opposed to just a prospect who’s being pitched a product.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. That’s so true. That emotional connection that allows people to, I don’t know, trans … Rather than transactional sales, just much more of a transformation to be able to get there. Thinking about Facebook though that’s interesting is that it does allow you a high level of targeting, but what’s vexing to me is this, how do you know that you’re getting the right content or the right story or the right message to the right person at the right time? There’s so many different ways you take any kind of Facebook ad and AB test it, and it might be working or not working, but it’s difficult to know why. What variable is it? How do you do that whole back end piece to figure out, “Oh, God.” In an AB testing or in a multivariate testing environment to really, really get the conversions, get the leads, get the price per lead, the price per conversion, all those kind of things lining up in the way your clients way?

Mari Connor:                     At a very basic level, there is a fundamental philosophy in our company that we study what works and what doesn’t work. That’s both long term and short term. What has worked in the entire six years that we’ve been running Facebook ad? There are some systems, processes, copy, templates and things that have worked all six years. A lot of those have become outdated, and so we look at, “All right. What’s worked in the last six months?” Both on a particular ad account or with a particular client that we’re working with or because we work with up to 20 or 30 clients at the same time, we can look across the board and see what types of offers are converting in March of 2018. “Oh, this client who was struggling with getting a lead magnet to work suddenly started offering a checklist. You know what? They’re coming in it at a really low cost and they’re happy with the quality of the leads, let’s test this on another client. Let out another client know.”

Mari Connor:                     Well, we don’t share actual data or actual names of clients between our clients, we let all of our clients know, “If there’s something that’s working here, we’re going to share that with the other clients because it’s only a benefit to you.” When we drill everything down, it comes down and I’m always asking my team, “What’s working and what’s not working? Let’s scale up what’s working and try to get more clients to do that, and let’s optimize, fix or scale down whatever is not working at any given moment and time.” That includes copy styles. That includes graphic types. That includes the type of targeting that we’re going after. That includes the type of targeting that we’re going after. We’re huge fans of split testing.

Mari Connor:                     Most campaigns, I think we launched somewhere between 20 and 40 ads with the expressed goal of finding one to two ads with the lowest cost that’s generating the highest quality lead after a few days because we’re smart enough to know what we don’t know, and I’m smart enough to know that the market … I can put out some options and give the market a few choices, but I have to be studying what their responsiveness is to each graphic, to each type of copy, to each type of targeting to see what works.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wow. I love the creativity of it mixed with the data part of it. That just so speaks to this weird right brain, left brain balance.

Mari Connor:                     I think that’s …

Melinda Wittstock:         [crosstalk 00:27:22].

Mari Connor:                     That’s one of the reasons I feel very lucky to be doing what I’m doing. I did really well in calculus. I didn’t do well with spreadsheets, but I did really well with calculus. I’ve always kind of got …

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh my god. Me, too.

Mari Connor:                     Yeah. Like bookkeeping now is the first person I hire to my company.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right.

Mari Connor:                     It was like bookkeeper [inaudible 00:27:39]. I am not even messing with that. You tell me what I need to pay, and let’s just keep the checks to the IRS flowing, so that everything is good, but I love solving complex problems, and I do have a very artistic side, and I’ve traveled the world and I’ve been to art museums all over the world, so I have an idea of like symmetry and what types of images are a motive, and I’ve never been a photographer of graphic designer myself, but I know what makes me feel and there’s an episode of Mad Men where Don Draper asked, “Peggy.” Peggy kind of says if it’s good or not. He’s like, “Does it make you feel?” If it makes you feel something, the chance that it makes someone else feel something is really high, so I’ve taken all these very random stills and talents and little things I pick up along the way and tools, and you jumble it all up and Facebook advertising itself with the data, the science, the art and the copy and the writing all mixed together to create ideally a perfect result for your client.

Melinda Wittstock:         You grew up as a bit of a military brat traveling around all over, and I know you’ve referenced a couple of times, you spend a lot of time traveling. How did that influence your career and your move into copywriting, and now as an entrepreneur?

Mari Connor:                     As devastating as moving around can be, especially as a child because you get settled somewhere, you make friends, your dad gets the orders that you’re moving somewhere else, and at particularly young age, you don’t know how to digest that. However, what you start to become very good at everywhere you go is walking into a room full of people that you have no history with, that you have not met before, and that you don’t know. That skill in itself, and I got very good at showing up to schools and clubs, and youth centers, meeting people that I did not grow up with and that I didn’t know previous to walking into the room and I’ve learned to get comfortable in those scenarios.

Mari Connor:                     In fact, as of this day, I’m almost more comfortable in a room of people I don’t know than being in a room like at a wedding, or a family wedding, of people that I do know really close, who know me really intimately, which is kind of an irony in itself, but that ability to walk into a room where you don’t know anyone has definitely helped me at conferences. It’s helped me with networking. It’s helped me approach new clients and have a little bit more of a confidence with someone that I didn’t know than had I not have those experiences.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. That’s so interesting because traveling is something too that gets you used to being out of your comfort zone, and helps you really understand different perspectives. As a copywriter working with all these different clients, I could imagine that connective tissues, you can see things in a way perhaps that other people can’t.

Mari Connor:                     Absolutely. You hit the nail on the head. I do love traveling and I’m one of the weirdos, I feel very comfortable in an airport and a lot of that came from moving and traveling so much as a child. I really find it very centering. It’s a part of who I am and everybody else just usually thinks TSA and have to rush to the gate, and then we’re setting the tin can to fly wherever we’re going. I find such peace literally in an airport like just sitting at a chair doing the people watching, and watching people walk by and rush by and wondering where they’re coming from or where they’re going. That definitely lands to the creativity of that, and one of the places where we were stationed when I was a child was in Belgium, where I learned French as a child and I think I just said that twice, where I learned French as a kid and knowing the French language, having French as a second language also gives me a whole another vocabulary to play with when I’m doing my copywriting.

Mari Connor:                     While a typical American or English speaking child has the one language that they master, and I thought I heard it saying at one point that was something like the average person has a working vocabulary, 3,000 words. A journalist has a working vocabulary of about 6,000 words and Shakespeare had a working vocabulary of 24,000 words, yet I don’t remember a famous quote, I don’t know who it’s from, but that I feel kind of a kinship with the journalist having learned two languages as a child. It definitely has allowed me to pull vocabulary that we might not think as typical or traditional that we might use, but that is perfectly acceptable to pull from and to use.

Melinda Wittstock:         Gosh. You and I have so much in common. I went after college, I just up and moved to London and I became a journalist. I’ve always been [crosstalk 00:32:36].

Mari Connor:                     That is super cool.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’ve always been [crosstalk 00:32:38].

Mari Connor:                     Your cool factor like just shot through the roof.

Melinda Wittstock:         Well, I said, “I just really want to live in different places. I want to understand the world.” I’ve always been an explorer and a traveler. I love to travel like you, but I think just having to report everyday on a culture that’s different from your own, and be an expert on it. I joined the London Times when I was 22, and I wrote about business and then I wrote about the media and there was this new thing called the internet.

Mari Connor:                     You who I want to be. I was over in France studying abroad going, “How can I stay here? How can I stay in France a little bit longer? How do people get jobs in Europe?”

Melinda Wittstock:         Right? Well, I was lucky I had an English grandparent, and so I had like a work permit because of that. Then, of course, when I was in London, it was easy to just take the train over to Paris. It was an amazing life, but you do have a different perspective. When you come home after doing that and traveling the world, you just see things a little bit differently. You can connect dots in a slightly different way, and I think it’s not just about copywriting or ads, it’s about entrepreneurship as well because the best entrepreneurs that I know have this curious thing where they’re able to connect dos like they’re multi-disciplinary in a way, right? They have different experiences and they put that together in a way that hasn’t been done before.

Mari Connor:                     Yeah. It totally comes in handy with the copywriting, but also what I’ve noticed throughout my life is the fact that I’ve done so much traveling, when I need someone from a little country like Holland and I can rattle out, “[Dutch 00:34:30],” which is like, “How are you doing?” In Dutch, their face lights up. They’re here maybe visiting America. They don’t have any family. Nobody speaks Dutch here. They just looked average and going about their day, but you speak a little sentence to make someone feel comfortable and their entire being lights up and they feel like they’re home for a moment. They go, “Oh my god.” They starts ratting off Dutch to me, which I don’t know much more than, “How are you doing?” Or, “How are you?” I’ll tell them that, but they just think, “Oh, that’s so cool that you visited and that you took the time to learn a little bit about my culture and my world.” That’s definitely served me well with the business owners that I’ve transacted with over the years. Being able to talk about traveling in general is also something that …

Mari Connor:                     Being in the military family, money was an issue. Money was tight. We certainly weren’t wealthy. Yes. We were able to travel the world that we rode like in the hallway on trains down the with our head kind of beating up against the aisle, but we made a priority of doing it, but the fact that now to this moment, I can go to … I live in Phoenix. I can go to The Ritz-Carlton locally here, go pull up at the bar, go to the tea time, start a conversation with someone and talk about how I’ve been to Rome. It transcends class and it transcends status, and that’s been a ticket for me to move up and down status wise and class wise. It’s just having been able to travel, and my parents just making the effort to do it.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right. Well, the curiosity that’s inherent in that and asking questions. I think when you have clients and customers, a big mistake that a lot of business owners make is not getting close to those customers, not really asking the questions that need to be asked or really bonding with them as deeply especially after the sale once they’re already clients or customers.

Mari Connor:                     Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         Do you find of that natural curiosity makes a big difference for you in terms of how you keep your clients happy overtime?

Mari Connor:                     I find humans extraordinarily interesting. Even if I feel like I’m working with a client that I feel like I may have seen before, I’ve seen that personality or that personality. Everybody is an onion, and it is really cool to peel back the layers and find out more and more and more and more, and just the other day, one of my team members, in fact, just yesterday, we’ve been working with this client for over a year, and we found out that the client went to dentistry school or dentistry college in Omaha, Nebraska, and she’s from Omaha, Nebraska. Again, her lighting up and going, “I love watching the video that we’re promoting about Dr. Espinosa. He went to the dental school just right now the street from my childhood home.”

Mari Connor:                     That’s a good outward example of that experiences. I do find the experiences to be terribly fascinating. I do love to get to know people, and then over the years, it’s gone from just sort of like surface interest of like, “Where have you lived? Who are you? How did you get started in your business, etc.?” To more like the psychology like, “What was your childhood like? How did you start this company? Where are the seeds?” I want to learn about those, and I want to expose some of those to the public and/or your super fans who would love to know about that. I do think that traveling definitely planted a seed for that curiosity, and that’s something that sure does make our company a little bit different. I’m always very, very curious because of the travel background.

Melinda Wittstock:         What are some of the biggest challenges you think you’ve overcome in business?

[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Being thoughtful about what I’m projecting out into the world and doing my job to my best ability even when I’m not feeling 100%, and realizing that not feeling 100% is totally normal, that’s a successful day. #WINGSPodcast #WomeninBusiness @mariconnoraz[/tweet_box]

Mari Connor:                     Waking up when I didn’t want to wake up. Getting out of bed when I didn’t want to get out of bed. If I went through some period where I felt defeated for whatever reason. The day before hadn’t gone the way that I wanted. I’ve been meaning to put up a little framed picture on my wall that says, “Just keep going,” because I need to hear that. It usually within a day or two, something positive will counteract whatever it is that I perceive as like hugely negative. Just keep going no matter what, and that when I wake up and I attend all of my calls, sometimes it’s just getting through a day, that’s a successful day. Just getting through the calls that were on my schedule, being thoughtful about what I’m projecting out into the world and doing my job to my best ability even when I’m not feeling 100%, and realizing that not feeling 100% is totally normal.

Mari Connor:                     It is like so normal and it’s okay to feel bombed out. It’s okay to feel angry and it’s okay to have a bad day. The deal is just getting up, and I hate to make some boxing reference or something, but I think they always say like, “The one who wins is the one who just keeps getting up.” It’s not so much the strongest or anything, it’s just about how you just keeps getting up. No matter what’s going on, I just try to keep going.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. Most people who fail just give up too soon. I’ve had this experience. Actually, I remember a sale. I remember I was trying to do several businesses ago, and I remember I’d called this prospect multiple times. I’ve probably gone to the fourth time, and they weren’t ready yet, and I think I give up. I didn’t keep going, and I remember when I finally called them again or I let too much time go, they said, “Oh, gosh. If you’d call me a week ago, I would have been ready,” instead we went with … I learned from that. I was like, “Oh my god. Never give up. You do not give up in sales or just in persevering and growing your business, or whatever,” unless they’ve got a restraining order on you or something.

Mari Connor:                     Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         Literally, or you’re literally out of alignment like you’re doing something that you weren’t meant to be doing. Sometimes, it’s really hard to know the difference between the two.

Mari Connor:                     Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right? When to persevere and double down? Say if you’re doing a business that isn’t truly in alignment with your mission and all your talents, your soul purpose, if you will, right?

Mari Connor:                     Right.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. That makes total sense, but what about people who are doing a business because they think they should do it and it’s not really quite right for them. What are the signs? When do you know when to walk away, when not to walk away?

Mari Connor:                     There’s a side of that where I want to say like I don’t know because I’ve been doing my business since I started, and I wouldn’t have thought necessarily that I was an entrepreneur. I didn’t set out my whole life to be an entrepreneur. I didn’t start until I was 37, so I had been through jobs and the thing about jobs and having lived through a recession, they are no more secure in my perspective. They are no more secure than being able to take your destiny into your own hands with the entrepreneurial journey. Now, with the entrepreneurial journey, you’re dealing with all the uncertainty that your bosses deal with at a job, so it may feel more comfortable because you’re not having to deal with all of that incoming and outgoing information and having to make decisions and stuff, but decisions are being made for you and you don’t have input. It’s sort of a six one way half does in another. I’m definitely at the end of, “Do what’s right for you. Gain that self knowledge. Get to know yourself. Figure out how you’re built.”

Mari Connor:                     If running a business and making these uncomfortable decisions on a daily basis is just not who you are and you rather have things explain to you or hand it to you or a set job description given to you, then by all means, go after. I’m not one of those that hustle an entrepreneurship no matter what. I sort of fell into it. I was really good at building businesses, and I had a mentor who when I was about to turn in, abut to send out another resume when I was 37 years old, I sent to to him for review and he called me back and said, “Can we go to breakfast tomorrow morning?” Well, that sounds a little ominous, but like I said earlier, I get up and go like I do what I’m supposed to do. I got up and I went to the breakfast, and he just sat down very matter-of-factly and said, “Mari, I got to tell you, I was disappointed in getting this resume.” I thought he was disappointed in how it was designed or written.

Mari Connor:                     He said, “I watched you now over the last 10 or 12 years build three to four businesses. You’ve been personally responsible for doubling, tripling or quadrupling the sales of these businesses. I can’t bear to see you go work for another company.” He just said, “I feel like you can go out on your own.” I remember him specifically telling me, “It’s going to feel like you’re jumping out of window and it’s going to feel like you’re falling without a parachute,” but he said, “Rest assured, I know you’re going to be fine.” I just will start crying at that moment and started asking some very logistical things about like, “How do I do that?” Then, he said, “Go down to the Kinko’s, and get some cards made. Go figure out how to get a website built. You’re a smart girl. You have a cellphone. Boom. You got communication. Go to the bank. Tell them you want to open a business account as a BBA.” Then, I remember him just getting up and leaving.

Melinda Wittstock:         Wow.

Mari Connor:                     That was how Marigold was founded, and I just think he was right. He knew something that I didn’t, and so perhaps asking those around you too for their opinion about people that you really respect and trust, that you have a lot of integrity with and that you respect their advice and their words is to say, “Do you think I’m cut out to do this because I’m feeling like I’m not. What do you think?” It did take someone that I had 100% trust in for him to say, “You got this. You can do it. Chow. Call me in a few months.”

Melinda Wittstock:         How wonderful though that he did because sometimes we need that. We need that kind of push to go do what we’re meant to do with our lives. It’s not always comfortable like the biggest growth both of the personal growth variety and the business growth variety comes, I found in my career, when you’re feeling uncomfortable when there’s just something like …

Mari Connor:                     Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         If there’s just a new challenge or you’re growing beyond what you’ve already mastered.

Mari Connor:                     It’s a bittersweet feeling now when I feel I’m comfortable because in the moment, it feels horrible. It feels like I’m uncomfortable. I feel imbalance. I don’t feel like I know who I am at this moment in time, but aha, when have I felt this before when some major change or shift or evolution was going to happen in my life? I can’t say that I remember that in the moment when I’m just feeling like low self-esteem and that my hair isn’t doing what it’s supposed to, and I feel like am not doing my calls well and that I’m cutting people off and that I just feel very imbalanced, but when does that happen?

[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]When am I acting a little goofy? It’s like a toddler’s entering puberty, like not knowing why your voice is changing or when I’m feeling uncomfortable, I know I’m on the cusp of a very big shift.[/tweet_box]

Melinda Wittstock:         Isn’t it funny how entrepreneurship is therapy?

Mari Connor:                     I tell my friends whenever spirituality is mentioned, I’m like, “Do you want to go on a spiritual journey? Start a business.” Because everything reflects back. Ultimately, everything reflects back on you as a business owner, and so you do learn what your skills are and what the things are that you don’t do so well and your true nature when three or four clients call in a road because they’re having budget issues and just need to cut advertising for whatever reason, and in other times when a ton is … Everything is going really well and knowing not to celebrate, celebrate enough to compliment yourself for your hard work. Don’t celebrate so much that you think that the world is not going to change and it’s always going to be that way, and the same thing with the lows. They’re not going to last forever. Realize that the highs and the lows are temporary, but total spiritual journey like everything is going right and wrong, it’s all you. Right and wrong.

Melinda Wittstock:         True. There’s a great quote, I forget and I apologize in advance. I forget who this is from, but it just says, “Have you ever noticed that when there’s a problem, you were there.”

Mari Connor:                     I love that. I love that.

Melinda Wittstock:         Isn’t that interesting? It made me think for a while because I was like, “Oh, I see. There’s something about me.” Where do we take responsibility for things that are going wrong because it’s so easy to fall in the victimhood of, “Oh, it’s that person and it’s that person,” but in reality, we are creating our own reality like in every minute of every day by what we think, how we show up, and it’s a radical notion to some people, but the more and more and more I go down this path, I think there’s just the only other way whenever I change my thoughts and I’m really positive and I’m getting rid of just old baggage or old limiting beliefs or whatever, there are synchronicities in my life. Things just show up. There’s more of an ease. Even when there are problems, when you say, “Oh, that’s interesting.” Literally, that reaction like, “Oh, that’s interesting. What does this show this about me? How can I grow? How can I [crosstalk 00:49:31]?”

Mari Connor:                     As tough as that is, I’m a huge fan of that. What was my part in whatever happened? Really, when it comes down to the business itself and the team, everything is … If a team member is not working out like I hire them or I assigned whoever did like it all … The box stops with me. Now, that doesn’t mean I have the right to go beat myself up for days and days and days when I’ve done something wrong. It does mean that I need to be very acute to the idea of apologizing when and where appropriate, and as quickly as possible either between my being able to recognize what my part was in something and/or being able to get a hold of that person in order to rectify the situation. I am a huge fan of paying attention too, and I love learning all of that about me that as much as I can try to …

Mari Connor:                     That’s one thing I love about running your own business is there aren’t a lot of people to point the finger at and it’s very sort of adulting, doing the adulting thing, experience of being like, “Whoa!” Short of a client being disrespectful, which I feel like is on their end. There’s never an excuse for that. Everything else is on my … As far as my team, the flow of my business, a process working or not, someone showing up or not to work, like I hire them. I hire that person and I have a decision to make based on them showing up or not showing up or doing what they’re supposed to do or not supposed to do, and it’s either attempting to correct that behavior, letting them go, but it’s on me if it continues. It’s one me if I’m not taking the steps that I can talk to other people about in order to solve, in order to get it solved.

Mari Connor:                     I don’t know if you feel the same way. I’m okay with it, but I’m not okay with, and I tell myself, so I talk to myself a lot apparently, but I’ll tell myself when I’m feeling angry, I have about a day. I’m allowed to experience anger for no more than about 24 hours. After that, I have to start getting into letting go. I was telling a friend a story about how something came up. When I used to work for a company, a situation came up where I went to the boss and I wanted to vent to her and tell her about whatever … I don’t remember the situation. How it all just blew up and it all went wrong, and it was basically all her fault and while I was in a meeting, she made preparations both with me and with whatever she needed to do in order to solve the problem. She made all the preparations necessary. She apologized. She was sincere, and at the end of it, she’s like, “Can we move on?”

Mari Connor:                     I remember thinking, “Move on? I’m still mad. What are you talking about move on?” I remember, “Could we just move forward? Move past? Move on?” I remember being so insulted by that phrasing of hers, which now as a business owner, I’m very highly interested in.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh, isn’t that interesting? I just came back from Camp Maverick. I think summer camp for entrepreneurs.

Mari Connor:                     Super cool.

Melinda Wittstock:         Seminars and whatnot, but a lot of fun like crazy Mad Hatter costume. Part of the theme was Alice in Wonderland, and it was amazing. Anyway, one of the speakers there was Hal Elrod. I don’t know if you’ve heard of Hal, but like …

Mari Connor:                     Yeah. The Miracle Morning?

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. Miracle Morning, and his rule is not 24 hours, it’s five minutes.

Mari Connor:                     Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         Even when he had this catastrophic car accident that almost cost him his life, he wasn’t supposed to live. It’s incredible that he did and that he recovered, but at one points, he tells the story that at one point, the doctors took his parents aside and said, “This isn’t really natural.” We think Hal is in denial. The parents talked to him about this because that kind of denial could result in all kinds of things later a delayed reaction, which could really horrible and Hal told his parents at that point that he can’t change anything that’s already happened. There is nothing you can do about something that’s already happened. There’s no point feeling it for longer than five minutes.

Mari Connor:                     Hal Elrod is like a super evolved human being. I wish for the day when I can get down to five minutes. I would actually say that I tend to try to deal with feelings before I go to bed, so that I sleep well. On any given day, I really do try to think through, talk through, experience right, apologize, whatever I need to do to take care of whatever’s happened. However, I realize that I’m human and there are those times when I can lay in bed.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, exactly.

Mari Connor:                     Have that same situation play over and over, but I’m not willing to do that to myself day in and day out and day in and day out, and moving forward and moving past, and not ignoring. I carried around anger for years about things. I choose not to do that anymore.

Melinda Wittstock:         Most people do. Most people do and overtime, it becomes resentment and overtime it affects their actions and they don’t even know even … Right?

Mari Connor:                     I’m hurting myself [crosstalk 00:55:01] more than I am hurting the other person.

Melinda Wittstock:         Absolutely. Absolutely right. This is so true, and it’s so interesting that entrepreneurs, I found are the people who are … I don’t know. Getting pretty in touch with this because I’ve just come to the conclusion now that it’s impossible to succeed as an entrepreneur or in a sustained way or as a serial entrepreneur with multiple businesses overtime unless you sort this stuff out. This is why on this podcast, we talk so much about this combination of mindset mojo and money because they’re all absolutely connected.

Mari Connor:                     Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         They’re totally interwoven. They’re totally in the same grade. Yeah.

Mari Connor:                     No, absolutely. The fact that you and I as successful entrepreneurs, this is something that we’re … A path we’re going down by choice, and that we’re enjoying talking about. It’s obviously something that comes up in our lives and that we are learning to deal with. That’s probably the biggest gifts of entrepreneurship is letting go and moving on because I can apply that also personally. Family issues that may come up or issues that may come up with friends and what type of friends are? The friends that do hang on this stuff longer now, I’m not as interested in investing as much time as I did before I was an entrepreneur and didn’t know my value.

Melinda Wittstock:         Isn’t that interesting? I found that as you work on this stuff, you attract a higher caliber of people, but also a higher caliber of client. You start to be much more aligned with the people that you’re serving and creating value for, and it plays out in so many beautiful ways, in fact.

Mari Connor:                     Totally.

Melinda Wittstock:         Oh my goodness. Mari, it’s so amazing talking to you. I could talk to you … We only have a short time. [inaudible 00:56:52]. Believe it, I can just keep talking to you because there’s so much more, so you’ll have to come on again.

Mari Connor:                     I would love that. Thank you so much. Yeah. No, I would love to come and jive any time.

Melinda Wittstock:         I love checking in with guests that we’ve had on before that particularly, as you come back and there’s different things going on in your life. Yes. Open invitation. Thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying today, and before you go, just remind everybody where they can find you and work with you?

Mari Connor:                     Our website is Marigold Marketing Group. We’re a Facebook ads agency that’s full service. You can get information about our company there. You can find me on Facebook, Mari Connor, M-A-R-I C-O-N-N-O-R, no .com.

Melinda Wittstock:         Awesome.

Mari Connor:                     Yeah. Yeah. Feel free to connect.

Melinda Wittstock:         Fantastic. Well, thank you so much again. A delight to talk with you.

Mari Connor:                     Thank you. This is a ton of fun.