Navigating Digital Marketing Feat: Ashley Cline

Dustin Steffey: 0:00

Hey chop nation Dustin Steffey here. Are you tired of the same old boring gym routine that has yielded no results? If so, look no further because Inferno performance is your one stop shop to transform your body, health, life and overall well being. With multiple locations in the Phoenix area. There is no better time than now to drop in and see what Inferno performance has to offer to their clients. Inferno performance is owned and operated by retired NFL linebacker, Dante Mo, who offers personalized coaching to help anyone reach their goals. This gym truly is a one stop shop offering supplements, meal plans, apparel, and custom training at affordable pricing. If you haven't done so already, please drop it into one of the multiple locations and check them out

Jaden Norvell: 1:00

Welcome to your top rated business entrepreneurship self development and smart investment podcast. This podcast is hosted by creator and founder Dr. Dustin Steffey and also hosted by coach, music producer and influencer yours truly Jaden rush Nora Bell we are blessed for our many accolades such as being nominated for the People's Choice Award for Best Business Podcast, as well as raising over $5,000 last year for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation as well as for the Boys and Girls Club, spending a global reach our podcasts in the top four downloads in four countries. Without further ado, welcome the chopping wood fire ladies and gentlemen, let's chop it up

Dustin Steffey: 1:42

Hello, Happy New Year and welcome to season two, episode two of chopping with fire. You're joined with your host today Dustin Steffey Jaden is enjoying life on an island away from everyone not in the snow like I am, and having fun golfing, and all the fun things. So hopefully we see him soon. But for now, we'll just be stuck with me and have some fun and go from there. I have no housekeeping. Actually, I just wanted to remind everyone since we are in season two, there are a lot of changes that are coming down the pipeline. It would be greatly appreciated. If you could go to any of your favorite social media platforms. And subscribe to choppin woodfire. We are on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Tik Tok, which that's been fun for me. And Snapchat, which has also been fun for me. And we do have our website that houses everything WWW dot chopping with fire, CH O, P I N, wi th F ir e.com, where you can go and see everything, all of our guest profiles, which are amazing. We have awesome guests that have been on the air starting a blog this year, which will be kind of a pseudo after the episode kind of take on how we felt after that episode key points if you missed them when you were listening. So you can kind of take a read on that and understand where these episodes are heading. We do have a lot of special things planned for this year, we do have a military interview with a veteran, which will be a five episode series. That'll be great. I'm excited for that. We also are going to have a sports series as well, too. Not your typical sports series, just for all my sports fans out there. It's going to be on the business side. So a lot of talking about this transfer portal, talking about the business transactions within sports and how that works. We wanted to spice things up a little bit. I know we've been talking a lot about entrepreneurship chasing your dreams. We've been talking a lot about cryptocurrency investments, smart decisions there, but we want to spice it up a little bit more. Want to Be That One Stop Shop podcast that gives you guys everything. So we have a diverse audience. So with that being said, I do want to dive right into our episode again. This is season two, we're definitely upgrading right so as of right now, if you guys notice the camera camera quality's clear, because we're upgrading our equipment, we are definitely trying to make sure that we provide the best that we can for you all, and we're gonna continue to do so. So I'm going to introduce in my guests I'm excited to introduce Ashley Klein. She has 15 years plus of experience within the digital marketing landscape with expertise including building strategic market plans, strategic edge execution, and optimizing specific strategies to make sure your business is successful. She is currently VP and co founder of ice cream social, which is a digital Marketing widget that incentivizes word of mouth marketing. There will be a lot more that we can discuss on that. But I didn't want to introduce everything and then she doesn't have anything to talk about. So without further ado, let's invite Ashley, how are you?

Ashley Cline: 5:14

Hey, Dustin, thanks for having me. I'm doing great. I'm ready for this interview. It's cold and rainy in Southern California, got my cup of tea, ready to hang out and chat.

Dustin Steffey: 5:26

We have a foot and a half of snow up here. So I'd rather be in the cold and rainy.

Ashley Cline: 5:34

I don't mind we don't it doesn't happen very often here.

Dustin Steffey: 5:38

Absolutely. So I mean, having you on. It's amazing. Your accolades are amazing. I mean, you and I could probably have accolade war and have some fun and talk about all of that. But I want people to get to know you a little bit. I mean, you have all this experience. But let's peel back a few layers. Like, how did you get all this experience? How? How did you decide to go into digital marketing? Right? I mean, 15 years is a lot. I felt like I had a lot, but now you beat me out on that. I'm just curious. So let's, let's let people know who you are.

Ashley Cline: 6:11

Sure. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna throw it back way back to childhood. And I think that's a great place for people to reflect. And as I was, in this time period, I never thought, Okay, I'm gonna grow up and be this. But as my journey evolved, and I had to learn which paths to take, it was very informative for me to reflect back on my childhood, as many people advise you to do and think, what were you good at? What did you enjoy doing? Before you had the pressure of life and making money with your career. So, as a child, I was an avid video game player, because I'm sure many of us were had a Nintendo. And honestly, the only game that we really had was Mario. And you can only play the game so many times before you beat it. And as a kid, quickly, my brother and I beat the game. And to keep ourselves entertained, what we would do is just set new challenges for ourselves. Every time we sat down to play, you know, how quickly can we beat the game this time? How many more coins? Can we get this time? All those little things and reflecting back now I see how that played such a vital role. And what I like to do today with marketing campaigns, and it's all about optimization, what are those little tweaks that you can make to further improve, you know, your, your campaigns and how they're performing day after day. So I like to think of what I'm doing now is essentially just a big video game. Always working on better ad copy, you know, better email subject lines, trying out new tools, like SMS and different kind of online marketing widgets.

Dustin Steffey: 8:08

I'm definitely a fan of video games for sure. A good video game every once in a while, especially one that makes you think so I know when I grew up, right? REO Oregon trail that was kind of my jam. And then, and then it evolved. I wanted to tear computers apart and learn what they insides look like and build those. So very much so technology driven for me as well, too. So this podcast, our upgrades and everything right down my alley. Have fun. And misery. Yeah, at the same time. So yeah, you and I have a similar kind of upbringing. Taking it back. Right. Let's move forward though. Let's fast forward a little bit. Obviously. You grew up right. We both did. We went school. What happened after school and what like led you to where you are now?

Ashley Cline: 8:59

Yeah, sure. So actually, when I was in high school, and I grew up in a really small, small town, almost one stoplight farm town an hour from a real city or any kind of, you know, civilization. And we did have a marketing club in high school though and me senior year, performed really well made it to a national level got to lead my hometown, which I'd never really done before and traveled to California to compete. And this marketing Club was called DECA for anyone interested. And I was competing in sales. And obviously I'm in high school, so no sales experience or marketing of sorts. And I carried that with me right out of high school. I was able as I started enrolled to my local community college for visual communications, knowing I wanted to do marketing because of this marketing club. But I leveraged that success But I had in high school competition and kind of parallel path and was able to get my foot in the door at a web development agency who wasn't hiring, but said, if I want to do sales on commission only, I can do that. And I could come in once a week at night, and one of the developers would teach me how to code and took the opportunity, you know, to do that, while I was going to school, took me nine months to close my first job and make any money from it, but did not give up. And not too long after that, maybe a year and a half later, this company said that they were going to move to California and start a new office, does anyone want to go with us. And so immediately, I signed up and said, Yes, I'll go packed my bags, I was 1920, at the time, moved to California, had $100 in my pocket, and was going to be working on commission only still, to this day, I still work with these people. And they like to make fun of me, because I literally boarded the plane holding my SpongeBob pillow. With tears running down my face, I was so scared to leave. But putting myself looking back now. And that situation where essentially your backs against the wall, and you have to figure it out if you want to survive and even just thrive in so that was kind of the start of a lot for me, because I quickly was able to build trust in myself and realize, you know, I'm capable of a lot more than I'd ever thought I could be. And that was kind of the beginning of my career there just working for this web development company, which later evolved into a company that I still work for to this day called Ticket socket. And through ticket socket, we found it ice cream, social. But even through that journey, I was just learning so much about digital marketing, and kind of became the go to expert in my town for marketing, because I knew about websites. And from there, I kind of branched off and started my own consulting agency where I just focused on social media marketing for many, many years and then evolved that into just kind of full stack digital marketing, email, SMS, social ads, SEO, all of that,

Dustin Steffey: 12:28

yeah, we've discussed a lot of different strategies, SEO, SMS, all of that, not in great depth, right. But at least we have kind of a knowledge within that business, in my opinion. But what led me to it is, while a lot of people take it, it's advanced, there's a lot of different avenues that you can go into that are fun and interesting in a lot of niche markets as you as you know, and as you have with ice cream social, obviously. But there's a lot of terminology. And there's a lot of stuff that people don't realize, especially when like you and I are looking at it right like entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship, all of that, like I think we should kind of help scale it back a little bit and help people understand in your journey, kind of where the differences lie.

Ashley Cline: 13:19

Definitely. So I was Dustin and I were chatting a little bit before and I was talking to him, I kind of identify in this world of business as a printer. And that kind of covers three different areas. One being an intrapreneur, where I am an executive at ticket socket, and have been able to kind of play a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit role kind of within that company and you know, build my own little department and kind of have that freedom and flexibility. As well as an entrepreneur with you know, getting out there working on a scrim social, starting that company, and then the solopreneur because I do still enjoy taking on, you know, the right consulting projects and having that open to me as well. And you're probably thinking like, well, that's a lot like, how do you get it all done? How do you focus? And I'll say, for many, many years, I did focus because you have to put in those hours to get that mastery. And then I reached a point in my career. So I'm not saying you can necessarily jump that you still want to get the that mastery level and put in the hours and dedicate yourself to a certain craft. But I just kind of got to a crossroads where I had to decide like, what, what am I doing? Where am I going? So many. I think anyone who's an entrepreneur might have what we like to call the shiny shiny object syndrome, where there's so many new opportunities that are coming at you and you want to be a part of them all. But you have to to figure out what's driving you and what path you want to take, and I was reading this book, highly recommend this book. It's called the desire map. And it's by a woman named Danielle Laporte. And it's more than a book, it's also a workbook. And it takes you through all these different questions. And it'll take you a few days to get through. So give yourself time and space. But when you get to the end of it, you kind of determine what are these core desired feelings that you want to live day to day. And I tried to do the desire map every couple years, because, you know, your life evolves, things change. And, as I've done this, the two words that always come up for me, that I'm looking to kind of live in my day to day life is freedom, and flexibility. And freedom can mean different things to different people. To me, obviously, yes, financial freedom. Also, it's just opportunity freedom, if something really interests me, I want to be able to pursue it, I don't want to be stuck somewhere where I can't, because I'm committed to this or it just don't have you know, the time, money, resources, whatever to focus on it, I always want that freedom and flexibility to just be kind of opportunistic. And if anyone's read Michael stingers book, what is the Untethered Soul, that's a great one, we're just you know, having that kind of freedom and flexibility to also follow where life will take me. So kind of knowing what your end end end goal is, and where you want to go, is really important before you can kind of just decide, you know, which path you want to take.

Dustin Steffey: 16:49

As you were talking about that I, it sparked a question for me, right? So why? Why did I go through this journey? What, what have I gone through so far? And what led me to being an entrepreneur? What led me to wanting this lifestyle versus versus just while I still work a nine to five or nine, whenever, right? But I mean, as this grows, obviously, the nine to five gets less and less. But again, you sparked a question me? Why did I want to be an entrepreneur, and like you were saying, there are so many different avenues, right? Financial freedom, maybe you have children, or family, and you want to spend more time with your family. And so opening a business or doing something entrepreneur wise, might be advantageous. Although you did bring up a good point too, with being an entrepreneur as well, it takes many, many, many hours. And it takes a lot of blood, sweat and tears in the very beginning. So it may not seem like you're in game is in sight, depending on what you open. But in the same time, as you start establishing, then you start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel with some of these, these different avenues that people want to go, whether it be financial freedom, whether it be more time with the kids, more vacations, whatever the case may be. But the question that I had for you is what led you down this lifestyle. So like for me, I'm the single father. So yes, I want more time with my daughter. But I also want financial security, and I want to teach her financial security as well. And I want to teach her that whatever she chases in a dream she can attain as long as she puts in the work.

Ashley Cline: 18:39

Yeah. So I'll be real as, as I pursued this path that you know, 1819 20 years old, it was very superficial. And I just didn't have like the knowledge in life or anything experience. Grew up, you know, single mom and I just wanted to be rich, I wanted to make my own money, I wanted to be able to take care of myself, come back, take care of my family. It was a little superficial, but that was my motivating driving factor. And that was enough to kind of carry me through to my next phase in life. And then I did have children. So I have two children. And that's really where that freedom of flexibility came in place. Because soon as I had a child, I knew I absolutely wanted to build my career around being able to be the most present mom that I possibly can. And for me, you know, knowing those driving factors is important as an entrepreneur because I think anyone will tell you, it's not for the faint of heart. There are times where it gets tough and there's times where, you know, you're really wanting to give up and just applying for jobs and kind of in that despair of not wanting to carry through but knowing what's motivating you is important and I knew that I never wanted to stress about having to call in sick to work because my kids are sick and I don't, I get to stay home and watch them or always want the freedom flexibility to attend all their little programs at school or take them to their different sporting events and just be as present as possible, while still showing them that I can chase my dreams and achieve things. And so kind of, that's been my new motivating factor. And I think it'll always evolve and change as you grow. I mean, my children are getting older, want to continue to be that example. But then I also know very soon, they're gonna be, they're gonna be gone, they're gonna be at college, starting their own lives, I'm gonna have to find, you know, even further motivation for myself. And that driving force that wants to keep me going and drew me.

Dustin Steffey: 20:49

And I know, this is going to be another topic for another discussion maybe later for you and I. But I also want to make sure that I'm developing my daughter, right? You know what I mean? Because I see these generations that are ahead of us right ahead of you and I, and I don't, I don't necessarily like where it's heading, especially for business and everything like that. And a good example of this, just to put it into perspective for you and me, right, is you and I are in a generation, where we're taking over like, the baby boomers coming out and us coming in. And there wasn't a good transition even for us in taking those positions right now. Because our work ethics are so polar different. The baby boomer generation even, and even our mom and dad's right, they were about working long, hard hours to put food on the table. And it didn't matter what they were doing, where it's our generation, when I look at you and me right among millennial, whatever you want to call it for us, ie, we had technology backing us. So we were smart enough to realize that if we leverage technology in the right way, we should be able to create some time to be able to spend with our families and do a little bit more and develop our children a little bit better. But I'm not seeing that extrapolate right now, between you and I right? I'm not seeing that we are able to put that time in because now with technology be in here. Especially if you work in a nine to five or if you work for a company, they're taking advantage of that by giving you seven or eight different jobs. Yeah, for one job, right. So we're, we're falling trap, essentially to the same trap that our mom and dads our grandma and grandpa's fell into, with the difference of we're producing more output than they did in their time.

Ashley Cline: 22:54

Yeah, I was listening to a really interesting philosophy the other day, and I can't remember who it was. So apologies to this person. But they were talking about, you know, how can we support our children with their future careers, because the time that we're in, it's going to be very different for them. And really, what we're shifting into is this world of creation, and very soon, technology will be able to replace most of our jobs. And at that point, you know, for our children and our children's children, they're going to get back to this period of creativity and entertainment, like what is their true passion that they can give back to the world in the form of creativity and creating content, because a lot of the day to day basic jobs that we have now will essentially be replaced with technology. And they found that really interesting. And the person was framing this up in a way of, you know, they want to experiment and make YouTube videos like let them because that is going to be an important skill for them in the future, knowing how to create rather than, you know, the typical Education

Dustin Steffey: 24:12

Well, good news, I'm ahead of that game. My daughter is definitely watching me with the podcast and with all of that going on. Creativity behind that. She's very artistic which I don't know where she got that from because I'm not artistic. I mean, a lot of my friends say I am because of this because it's a different form of an art but she's super like pen and paper artistic right? And so the job she wants to go into which I want her to continue to chase her dreams is like a veterinarian, right? I don't think a veterinarian is going to disappear anytime soon. We're gonna need we're gonna need doctors. We're gonna need veterinary right. We'll need engineers to engineer this new technology obviously, isn't so isn't disappearing, either. We're going to need people to be able to run business, kind of like you and I do so though a lot of jobs are going to stay even with technology advancing, but like you said, a lot of these other like Lower, lower jobs that are that can be automated, are disappearing. A good example of this is we walk into Walmart and I have to check out myself, right? Yeah. And so I look at that, and I'm like, well, they're saving overhead. That's a good thing. But they're not paying me to do this either.

Ashley Cline: 25:27

Right? Yeah, it's really interesting. And I think that's great, just letting her kind of evolve those passions.

Dustin Steffey: 25:36

Well, I think I think you and I have had some some good points that have come come up. I think we've addressed those pretty pretty well. But I want to give you a little bit of a moment to ice cream, social one awesome name made me made me want to go get an ice cream for sure. But let's kind of explain that a little bit to my audience. Obviously, you have a lot of experience backing you. So I'm curious about it. I'm curious what it does. And I'm curious who it would impact. In general, it doesn't sound like something super crazy. It doesn't sound like you're trying to sell anything. So let's let's dive into that.

Ashley Cline: 26:16

Yeah, well, sorry to disappoint. It doesn't have anything to do with ice cream. But I will explain the name in a minute when we get to it just because that's a frequently asked question that I get. I'll say the most important factor to consider with ice cream social. And some of the success that we've already seen is ice cream social was birthed from a need a need that our clients already had. I mentioned before I work at a company called Ticket socket. And we're a white label ticketing platform. So we power a lot of race registration, time ticketing, museums, all kinds of different circuses. So essentially, it's ticketing. I'm sure many of you without even knowing it, have bought tickets through the ticket second system. And I work with our clients to help them strategize better marketing tactics, you know, how can they sell more tickets this year without increasing their marketing budget? You know, what are those little tweaks and things that we can be doing. And through talking with our clients a few years ago, we came up with the idea ice cream, social, and very simple. You guys have all seen this kind of philosophy, somebody gets to checkout, they make their purchase. And as soon as they purchase, we say, hey, this event would be a lot more fun if your friends went with you. So here's a promo code, send this to your friends. And if you get five friends to buy, we'll refund you for your ticket. And that was kind of the premise of it. There's a lot of different ways that you can do that. It could be the goal could be three friends 10 Friends, you could give them a gift card, you give them free swag. But at the very basic level, the idea is kind of gamifying and rewarding your already existing customers. So that was were one way to optimize a marketing budget is we're tapping into existing customers and asking them to invite people who they already know are going to enjoy coming to this event. And it's essentially kind of taking that word of mouth marketing and bringing it online. And that's kind of where ice cream social came from. Because way back in the day, before we had all this different kind of marketing. A lot of people would share, you know, their favorite products and what's happening in their life at these different socials, whether it was like a Mary Kay party or a Tupperware party or like an ice cream social. That's where they swept ideas is where word of mouth, word of mouth marketing happened. And people were sharing you know what their new favorite products were. So that's kind of where the name was birthed from. And, again, just focused on what is something our clients need, that it's just a no brainer. And we also found that putting that on someone's confirmation page after they make a purchase, especially when it comes to events. That's prime real estate that confirmation page because that is when someone is most excited about their purchase the second day purchase it they can't wait to go to that event. They're so excited. And that's the best time to ask them to invite people

Dustin Steffey: 29:38

it's a clever strategy when I when I look at it, you're you're right, if we look at the Pathway to Purchase is what we call them business right you and I Yeah, people are excited about a product. They purchase a product. So let's just use an example here. So I like flannels, right so I love Dixon flannels, and Dixon is an awesome Same company I go through, I get one of their limited edition flannels, it would be cool. At the very end, if they incentivize customers like me that spend tons of money on flannels and have a closet full of them, to be able to refer people and market for them, because one, it saves that business money on marketing, right? Because word of mouth marketing, probably, in my opinion is one of the most powerful forms of marketing to, it incentivizes me to continue to buy more, and to continue to refer refer more people. Three, it's just a clever strategy in general, I think that that's clever. Um, with that being said, Is this something that you guys niche and only use for yourself? Or do you guys help other businesses kind of create a platform similar, where they can kind of create the same success?

Ashley Cline: 30:53

Great questions. So working in events a couple of years ago was a very different, difficult industry to be in when COVID hit. So what we did is we already had a scream social, built, and it was just part of our ticket socket system. And then when COVID hit and none of our clients had events, what we did is kind of pivot our, our dev team and say you don't want let's extract ice cream social out of tickets socket, build it as its own standalone product, so that we had a lot of clients that also had to pivot. So we had a lot of clients that couldn't have events, but they did have an online retail site where they sold, you know, different types of merch. And so they're like, Hey, can we use ice cream social on our retail site. And so that's kind of where we started branching out of events, and also doing some online e commerce. So it does work across many different industries. Events is still an area where we love to focus. And we actually work with other ticketing engine companies, and in help them integrate ice cream social into their system. So we also played pretty nice in the sandbox with other event companies that, you know, could have potentially be considered competitors. But we found a way to work with our competitors, too, which has been a really interesting kind of pivot for us. And, yeah, it's, it does work. In more than just events, it does work in retail, as you mentioned, flannel, it really creates that customer advocacy, because people who are buying their favorite products online, why not reward them to invite their friends, because you're gonna know other people who love flannels, because you're wearing them every day, and you're probably getting compliments, and then you can share, just like you did with us, Hey, I love this company, and you should check out there. So why not arm them with the link to easily incentivize them and their friends with the promo code.

Dustin Steffey: 32:58

I think it's even advantageous. And you can correct me if I'm wrong, because obviously, I'm learning about this with my listeners. But I think this would be something that's advantageous for consultants, that consultants certain things, whether it be web design, whether it be financial consultant, accounting. And I also think it would be advantageous to content creators and coaches as well, too, because we're in the day and age now, where we're seeing a lot of people that are saying their business coaches, right, or their coaches, for relationships, or their coaches for how to make money or coaches or a motion, whatever the case may be, I think this would be great. Because essentially, what they could do is they could take this strategy, they can apply it to their website, and then use that word of mouth marketing to get more clientele essentially, is my thought, correct me if I'm wrong? Yeah,

Ashley Cline: 33:55

absolutely. I, I kind of always think back and laugh about if anyone remembers seeing this movie, it's probably been 20 years. I don't know when it came out. But Idiocracy. And essentially, everyone is a walking billboard, if someone is purchasing from you, or has any kind of close relationship with users, they are kind of a walking billboard for you if you give them the tools to be. And we found back to this whole love and drive for optimization and video games. My clients that I work with, and I take their cost per acquisition to acquire a customer and kind of calculate it, what's their cost per acquisition for Facebook ads for email for SMS for ice cream, social ice cream, social always comes in at the lowest cost per acquisition, because it's just word of mouth marketing, and now you're able to quantify it. I'm not saying that you can just do that. I mean, all the other marketing is still somewhat of a necessary evil, but it allows you that optimization away where you're not like, well, I guess we got to spend more money on Facebook ads, because we don't know how else to convert anything. By growing your word about marketing, you grow your email database. And you can, you know, essentially find ways to optimize that with email and SMS as well. And not just always that pay per click marketing that we're used to, or have become so reliant on.

Dustin Steffey: 35:24

So the million dollar question, are you ready for it?

Ashley Cline: 35:27

Yeah, hit me.

Dustin Steffey: 35:29

All right, let's do it. If someone were interested in doing something like this, what is the cost to start it up? And the cost to get it going? How expensive is it? I mean, you and I already talked about how word of mouth marketing is the least expensive cost per acquisition. But there's still a cost to systems like these, especially since it's been put together. So what is that cost?

Ashley Cline: 35:55

Definitely a great question. And back to that optimization and love for video games, we love to have a little skin in the game to its especially as we are venturing into new markets and new industries. So typically, the way that we charge for ice cream social, is we will charge a percentage of net new revenue that we bring in for you. So let's say you have a site, you want to install ice cream social, will charge 10% of any new revenue, that ice cream social directly Branxton for you. So it's kind of like you're paying us as a salesperson on commission only.

Dustin Steffey: 36:37

And how does one determine how much they make for it? So just to because the questions are pointed. So I'm sorry, I'll make it easier on you. Yeah. Multilevel marketing. We know it's around. We know it's been here for a long time. So we're talking about the Mary Kay's the seven C's, the, the melaleucas, all of that if they decided they wanted to do something like this, because it's a good strategy to help bring in people especially if you get one person locked in, they start, like snowballing, how do you determine how much they make because they're paid so polar differently based off of how much they bring in, even to

Ashley Cline: 37:16

Sure. So it is different than multi level marketing, I would say it's more in line with affiliate marketing. So one person who has a link, an ice cream social link to share your website, they're not building a team of people underneath of them to also build traffic for you. We're just focusing on your customers, who essentially are everyone's an influencer. Even if they have no social media presence, they're still an influencer. They have friends, they do have people they have a life outside of social media. And and essentially what happens is, you create the goal. So if an influencer gets five friends to buy, and they get a ticket refund, great games over. That's it. It depends on the industry. So that's where we kind of work with you Strategy Session of what campaign is going to work for you and your industry in your business and your price points. If you have something more in lineup, okay, every time someone gets one person to buy, we want to issue them a $10 gift card, we can do that too. And they can repeat the reward as many times as they want. One way that a lot of our clients use it is to identify influencers that they can go out and approach and work more closely with. So we'll log into the system and we'll see a lot of people will get, you know, one friend to buy two friends to buy. It's not that all these people are out there and reaching their reward, you're giving out all these free gift cards and refunds. Most people don't necessarily always reach the reward. So that's great too, because it gets you a lot of word of mouth marketing without necessarily giving out all this free product and promotion. But what we'll find is someone will get 60 people to convert within a one day period. And so then we can identify, Okay, that person, we can see they shared it on Facebook, they got this many people to buy. Let's reach out to them and see if they want to do a content campaign with us because obviously they have whether they are an influencer or just an average person that has like a loyal friend group that you know, trust what they have to say. This is someone that we probably identify and want to work more closely with.

Dustin Steffey: 39:41

There's some great information I want to remind my listeners that we go after interviewing people, not only to give everyone information on how to chase their own dreams, but to give solutions to people that are already within entrepreneur. Leadership. So this, again, is great for my business coaches that follow me, this is good for anyone who is looking to propel their business to the next level. So again, not trying to sell anything. But in the same token, as everybody knows in business, in order to make money, you got to spend money. And this is good avenue with someone who's been in digital marketing for 15 plus years. So I just want to remind everyone that I also want to remind everyone that we will have Ashley's information on our website at WWW dot Troubleman feiyr.com under her own profile on our website, so we do have guest profiles, her information to contact her will be on there. But we will actually talk about that. Now. Ashley, if people want to get a hold of you. What's the best median?

Ashley Cline: 40:50

Yeah, sure. So I would say, for ice cream social, you can go to ice cream social.io. For ticket socket, you can go to ticket socket.com. Or if you want to connect with me personally, to kind of touch on anything I've shared with you, you can go to Ashley n klein.com.

Dustin Steffey: 41:08

And I want to tell everybody, she's very approachable. So don't think she's scary at all. So if you want to get to know her, I recommend it.

Ashley Cline: 41:15

Yes, definitely. I'd love to hear from anyone. You have

Dustin Steffey: 41:19

LinkedIn and social media? I would imagine too, right?

Ashley Cline: 41:22

Yes, it's linked up on all the sites. So you can find me?

Dustin Steffey: 41:26

Pretty Yeah, it's pretty easy to find people these days. So yeah. Perfect. Last question for you. fun question. Are you ready?

Ashley Cline: 41:35

Yes,

Dustin Steffey: 41:36

let's do it. So I like to end everything. And I don't want to change this going into season two, with if you had one major piece of advice to give to my listeners that are trying to chase dream going entrepreneurship, whatever the case may be, what would that be?

Ashley Cline: 41:55

So I would have to say, the foundation of where I'm at today, in my business for the first two or three years of my career. Even if you're already into your career, but you're not where you want to be, you can still do this, this isn't something you only do at the beginning. All I did was network, people to people network, I went, I joined a group called BNI, Business Network International, joined all my local chambers. And you could find me every breakfast, lunch and sunset mixer at one of these networking groups, meeting people handing out my business card, getting to know people finding people at these events who I thought that there's some sort of connection and somewhere down the road, we can work together on a referral basis on a client basis and scheduling follow up coffee meetings. All I did for two to three years straight was network. And that allowed me to build such a strong foundation in my career that essentially, I'm not saying don't network because I still do. I'm heading to CES this week to network but essentially, everything flows. And now people refer me to people. I'm not out there, you know, kind of ever really looking for business. And it just comes.

Dustin Steffey: 43:16

I give you all these compliments. And then you tell me you're going to CES and you don't even invite me. Thanks a lot.

Ashley Cline: 43:21

Sorry. Yeah, let's go see Yes,

Dustin Steffey: 43:24

has been one of the biggest things that I've always wanted to go to I love I watch it right. And so technology that's like the mecca of new technology coming out.

Ashley Cline: 43:34

Yes, I'm excited to see see what's coming down the pipeline. So if

Dustin Steffey: 43:39

you have to call me because I doubt I'll be able to make it. You'll have to call me and tell me how it

Ashley Cline: 43:44

was. Yes, I will. I'll let you know. I'll let you know what's coming.

Dustin Steffey: 43:48

Where's it out this year? Is it same place as always? Yeah, it's in Vegas every year, so I thought okay, gosh, I'm so close to Vegas. Yeah, I'm so far away.

Ashley Cline: 43:57

I know. I know. I can't turn down a weekend in Vegas.

Dustin Steffey: 44:02

No, it's not my favorite place. But then again, it has everything that is nice, like CES and other fun events. So

Ashley Cline: 44:10

yeah, I'm a foodie. So Oh, you're gonna enjoy your

Dustin Steffey: 44:13

life there. You're gonna get back like 10 pounds

Ashley Cline: 44:16

bigger. Yeah, for sure. Looking forward to it.

Dustin Steffey: 44:20

That's awesome. Ashley, thank you so very much for not only providing some awesome key nuggets, but just kind of talking about how your journey was and what you do now and providing such a awesome and powerful value added widget essentially for marketing.

Ashley Cline: 44:39

Yeah, thank you. I appreciate you having me on the show and looking forward to getting to know some of your your listeners. So please reach out. We'd love to chat, love to network, Zoom coffee, whatever it is. Let's let's connect.

Dustin Steffey: 44:54

Yeah, that's the biggest thing guys so challenging this year for season two. I'd love to hear from more of you. You and so with my guests as Ashley just said, so please don't hesitate to reach out to any of us and let's let's kind of start chasing some dreams this year. Let's go into this new year. Really like just taking it by the horns. So let's have some fun again. Ashley very approachable. I love her. She's awesome. Welcome to it. We're hitting the ground running so here it is.

Ashley Cline: 45:25

Yes, thank you Dustin. Let's do this. 2023

Dustin Steffey: 45:28

Yeah, let's let's kill it.