Elevate Your Business: Tyler Hille

Video Transcript

Good afternoon, welcome back. Kent Payne with Nine Business Group and Elevate Your Business Spotlight. We have Tyler joining us today.

Tyler, please introduce yourself, your company name, but more importantly, what makes you different? What sets you apart from your competition? Welcome. Thanks, Kent. I appreciate the opportunity.

My name is Tyler, Tyler Hill, and I run a marketing agency called Rocket Grid Marketing. I mean, what we do that I think really sets us apart is we integrate with our business owners. So we always work directly with the business owner and companies that are structured that way, and we really try to sit down and create a strategy based on exactly what it is the business is trying to do.

So maybe a business has lots of leads, has lots of clients, but they need staff. So we work on strategy to get them staff, better staff, staff that is going to work their long term. Again, maybe it’s lead generation, maybe it’s selling a specific product or service, but whatever it is, we create that long-term strategy by being part of the business.

So their success is our success. If they don’t succeed, we don’t succeed. So we’re very, very integrated.

It’s hard to kind of get that, you know, no one cares as much about the business and the business owner kind of deal. That’s where we come in and go, no, we do. We care.

We really care. We want you to succeed. We want you to spend your summers with your kids and doing what you want to do or whatever those life goals are.

The business is the best vehicle to get to that destination. I think I’m with you 100% on that one.
A business is nothing more than a vehicle to help a business owner get more of what they want in life.

I can’t agree more. You’ve been in the marketing space now for a couple of years. You’ve been an independent business owner for most of that.

In those years, what has been your biggest challenge? I would say the biggest challenge I’ve had personally running a business has been understanding the sort of nuances of, you know, leadership and strategy. I come from more of a creative background in terms of the marketing
side of things, the physical design, video production, that sort of a thing. So for me to sit down and go, what’s my strategy? How am I going to grow my business? Creating policies, procedures, hiring checklists, that sort of a thing that was not second nature to me at all.

So it’s something I’ve really had to struggle with and just kind of learn, bring in, bring in help, hire up in a lot of cases, having somebody come in with the experience to help me build those sorts of processes. But I found that it’s super important to lay the groundwork and build those strong foundations for growth by creating those policies, procedures, and KPIs, and those sorts of things. Good for you.

Tedious, but important work. You mentioned before, before we went online, that you spent 15 years in the IT background. Now, we’re all out there wondering how we go from being IT, a very stable, very structured work environment to the creativity of marketing, the fluidness of marketing.

How do you talk to us about transition? What kind of, what is the process you had to go through? Or was there a moment in time where if there’s an entrepreneur out there who’s stuck in a job job, what advice or what can you share with them about kind of that transition or that point of, you know, it’s when to make the leap when? Absolutely. Yeah, that was huge for me. And it really was a life changer in my personal life and, and beyond.

You know, working in IT, very technical role, not super client facing, especially in my situation where it was back end infrastructure, creating server builds, that kind of thing. So I didn’t work with a lot of client facing stuff. So for me, I really kind of got to that point where I realized it didn’t really matter how much money I was making.

And in my job, I was just, I would wake up in the morning and not want to go. I just have that feeling my in my gut that it was just sort of, Oh, is there anything maybe my tire will blow out on the way to work and I can call it and be late or, you know, like any excuse possible, because
you just start running through them in your head as soon as you’d wake up in the morning, I just don’t, I don’t want to do this. And once I kind of realized that I was doing that and thinking that way, I got to the point where I’m like, Okay, well, what am I passionate about? And I realized, you know, over the years, I’ve always, always done logo design websites, that kind of stuff for people on the side.

And I always enjoyed doing that. That was my reason for getting into computers as a teenager, was I had to figure out my own problems all the time with software and whatever doing design.

So I decided, well, this is what I’m going to do.

And the way I actually made my transition. I basically went to the company I worked for at the time in it as an IT manager role. And I said, it is an operational cost to you guys.

How about I start moving into doing things that help generate revenue and more revenue generating roles, such as proposal building and creating client facing content and helping bring in money versus just kind of spending money in it. And they were obviously open to that. So that’s kind of how I started my transition.

It wasn’t long before I was helping them hire my replacement in it. And I moved into an IT management role, in that sense where I was able to, sorry, into a marketing manager role, which allowed me to kind of make that transition in within the current company I was in. So, you know, making a transition from one career to another doesn’t always necessarily mean, you know, quitting your job and starting from scratch.

You can kind of get creative with it sometimes and work with the situation you’re in. But I would say, go for it. Do what you’re passionate about.

We only live once. Make the most of it and wake up in the morning doing what it is you want to do versus, you know, just trying to, I call it the every two weeks guy. Being the every two weeks guy.

Just got to make it to my next paycheck. Just got to get in and not think too much. Just sit at my desk and do my work.

Make it every two weeks, which to me was not a very high quality of life in terms of your mental health. No, it sure isn’t. Good for you.

How long do you think you went through that journey of sort of angst, regret, animosity in terms of, was that a day? Was it a week? Do you think it was a couple years? How long do you think it actually, how long was that internal strife going on in you? Years. Yeah, probably two to three years. You know, reading self-help books, kind of trying to figure out what the problem was.

It took a while for me to actually understand I’m not doing what I want to do. And that’s really what this came down to was I’m just not, I don’t feel like I’m hitting my potential because I’m doing something that I feel kind of forced into. And I know for a fact there’s a lot of people in
that state right now where they’re just pushing through doing what they think they have to do.

But I promise you there’s a way, there’s a way to do what you really want to do. Good for you. I love it.

No, that’s, that’s great insight. And that’s definitely be valuable for anybody thinking of becoming an entrepreneur is, yeah, when that internal strife and that noise in your head gets so loud, start listening. You’re now in the marketing space.

So let’s, let’s share with other entrepreneurs out there some awareness. And we’re going to, we can do this any number of ways, but I’m going to simply start with what do you enjoy about the marketing space? And in that marketing space, what do you enjoy most about helping your
clients do? For sure. The thing I enjoy the most about the marketing space is watching, watching my clients go from A to B. You know, for example, they come to me and they’re, let’s say it’s a construction company.

And they really want to work on building custom homes from scratch, full builds. And right now they’re kind of doing a lot of like maybe basement rentals or bathroom rentals or that sort of a thing. And they’re busy with it, but it’s not the revenue that they want to bring in, in terms of the kind of projects that, that it is. And it’s not doing what it is that they’re passionate about, which let’s just say it’s, you know, building high-end houses and they’re kind of stuck doing bathroom rentals or whatever, like they’re happy for the work. But it’s not really why they started their business. So seeing them go from say that, that point to them going “Hey, I just locked in a new build in this beautiful neighborhood”.

And we’re so excited. And the homeowners are awesome to work with. And you start seeing them get that passion because their business is starting to get to exactly what it is that they originally wanted, the whole reason for starting their business in the first place.

So for me, seeing my clients go from A to B is like, obviously super rewarding. Something I didn’t get in IT, which was fixing a computer problem or a network problem or building some backend thing. So I get to really see, see that.

And I guess from a client perspective, it’s their quality of life. Seeing them just get happier.

Maybe seeing them spend more time at home with their families and less time working 16 hour days, seven days a week, or, you know, they’re down to five day work weeks and they’re home at first supper, that sort of a thing like that’s, that’s huge to me to see them see their businesses grow and help them in that sense, get to where it is they want and improve their quality of life overall by changing their business.

Love it. In the number of years you’ve been in marketing, what are the biggest changes you’ve seen that entrepreneurs need to be aware of and start paying attention to? I mean, obviously the big thing right now is AI. That’s probably the biggest pivot or paradigm shift I’ve seen since Google, since people started using Google and the internet in general, like it’s, it’s massive, it’s, it’s such a game changer.

And it’s changing the way businesses are going to interact. So for example, you know, something as simple as running Google ads, which might be like a really standard way to get the word out there, get their business in front of other potential clients, might not look the same in a year from now, or especially five years from now. So that’s something that I see has changed a lot in the last year.

And every month it changes more and more and more, even with open AI now moving into the search, search engine realm where people are just going to ask chat GPT, what they would normally Google, just ask chat GPT, it gives you more specific results, it’s tailored to you and what the kind of things that you’re looking for. And it has more of a almost personal perspective, like a personal assistant would, you don’t have to kind of get really specific, it understands where you’re coming from what you’re trying to achieve. So how does that look for businesses who are traditionally running Google ads, or really focused on Google keywords and trend trending on organic search, those sorts of things are going to change a lot going forward.

So it’s the sort of thing that you kind of already have to keep in mind, like, you know, spending five grand a month on Google ads right now, maybe I’m not generating a ton of conversions off of that. Maybe it’s something we shouldn’t even be running anymore. Maybe we should be putting that money to better use somewhere else in our marketing strategy, or pulling that money in, in preparation for whatever platform is going to kind of take the lead here.

And using that for advertising. So that’s going to be really big, they kind of outweighs any other changes I’ve seen in the past, like, you know, the change in cookies, or the ability to collect data on sites, that sort of thing. Those were obviously big shifts, but this one’s kind of taking the cake.

Can you give us another example? Because I mean, artificial intelligence is a big word, and it seems like people throw it around for fun. And I’m not sure everybody even knows what it means. So can you give us maybe some other examples how artificial intelligence is either how we can work to help it work for us in marketing, or how it might work against us in marketing?

For sure. I mean, AI is something that I mean, we even use a lot in our agency. But it kind of has to be used with discretion, and it has to be used with a little bit of foresight in terms of how it functions out in the real world. So an example of that would be creating blog posts, or advertising copy using AI-generated text.

So you go to ChatGPT and tell it to write you a blog article, and then you post that on your website. Search engines like Google and Bing have already started doing this pretty heavily, which is downranking AI-generated or AI-flagged content. So if you’re just spitting out AI-generated copy, there’s a very good chance it’s actually going to harm your business.

It’s actually going to push you down and counteract maybe years worth of work in terms of getting up in organic search results. So that’s a negative way it can be used. But in a positive spin on that would be there are tools to humanize the copy and to test the copy to make sure that it’s ranking as 85% or higher as human-generated content, and not to be flagged by Google and Bing as AI-generated content.

So versus just spitting something out in ChatGPT and going, that sounds cool, and posting it, there’s a few more steps that you can take to make sure that that copy is humanized in a way that is more organic and authentic, I guess. So what you’re saying is, even though the high school students and the folks who got into early using ChatGPT for science tests and math tests and essays, the teachers soon will have a tool to put that same essay into the machine and kind of go thumbs down. Yeah, I’m sure it’ll be an automatic process at some point very soon.

Yeah, love it. Okay, in all the years you’ve been in business, let’s go back in time. So think about all the things you’ve learned.

Share with us the greatest lesson you have learned that you would like young Tyler, Tyler, day one entrepreneur to know. Never undervalue yourself. If you’re confident about the product or service or offering that you have, don’t undervalue that.

And don’t downsell yourself, which is really, really common, especially when you first get started in running your own business. You’re like, as long as I break even on this, at least I’m getting a client in, at least I’m moving forward. If I could tell myself something on day one, it would be don’t do that.

Don’t cheapen or undervalue what it is you have to offer, because it’s basically you’re digging yourself a hole mentally and financially in that sense. So really make sure that you stick to your guns, you stick to your pricing, you set your pricing, a fair price, something you think is market
value and competitive and stick to it and don’t shave things off to try to, you know, maybe make yourself not feel as uncomfortable about asking for a certain price for something. Great advice.

Absolutely. Thank you. If there was a pirate, a thief in your business, what would they be stealing from you? That’s an awesome question.

I love it. If a pirate was to steal something in my business, I would probably say it would be processes and procedures, the sorts of, you know, templates and documentation and just sort of the way we approach communicating with our clients, I think is very unique and very high end in that sense. And it takes a lot of work to put that stuff together.

And I think that that’s probably a pretty valuable asset. I think you’re probably right. And it’s where not a lot of people put processes in place first.

So one last question, the most important one, who’s your ideal client and where should they find you to get more information? Ideal client is any small to medium sized business who is looking to attain a certain goal or set of goals through marketing. So again, whether that be growing their business, hiring new employees, selling a specific product, just getting out there, rebranding. And the best way they can get in touch with me is just head over to our website at rocketgrid.ca. Thank you very much.

Love the storytelling. Love the examples. And thanks for being part of our progress and looking forward to hearing the rest of your story.

Awesome. Thanks for having me on. I really appreciate the opportunity.

You’re welcome.