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Hard to Market

Hard to Market

Written by: Podcast Chef
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 On Hard to Market, we discuss the challenges marketing nuanced products and services in the B2B space. Guests include marketing leaders in diverse industries that have products or services that are tricky to sell. Expect to hear success and horror stories from the marketing front-lines on the very next episode of Hard to Market.@2021 Podcast Chef Economics Leadership Management & Leadership Marketing Marketing & Sales
Episodes
  • Steering Success: A Small Biz Growth Masterclass

    Steering Success: A Small Biz Growth Masterclass
    Feb 13 2026

    Dive into the challenges of marketing with Loralyn Mears from STEERus! Uncover the art of balance as we explore her journey from burnout to brilliance, helping businesses shine online, snag grants, and gear up mid-level managers for the top. Tune in for her transformative tales and practical advice that could steer your business to success!


    Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Hard to Market Podcast.


    Resources:

    • SteerUs
    • Podcast Chef


    Connect with Loralyn Mears:

    • LinkedIn


    Connect with our host, Brian Mattocks:

    • LinkedIn
    • Email


    Quotables:

    • 03:50 - Brian: That's normally the way it works. Right? It's never a direct line to success. It's always much more of a search algorithm, a much more of a spiral pattern.
    • Loralyn: Yes. Downward spiral being a lot of it, but yes. And then now I'm spiraling up. I've got it. 'cause it's really the messaging is now really more clear. It's helping people get seen and get paid. And what does that mean? Well, if you're a mid-level manager that everybody's overlooking or you're not getting along with your staff, well, you need to get seen, right? And do all of these things differently so that you get promoted or keep your job.
    • 17:14 - It's so much easier to fix other people's problems rather than your own always plus, right? The cobbler's children has no shoes, right? Because we're always fixing everybody else's thing. So like, my website sucks, but everybody else's that I do looks really good. And that's a whole other thing.
    • 15:11 - The cost of change is often not measured in dollars. It's often measured in organizational fatigue. It's measured in all sorts of the emotional cognitive expense work that isn't easy. It's the same as going to the gym in a lot of these kind of environments where it's like you have to do the, you know, you have to lift the weights, nobody can do it for you. And so you have folks that come in in the small business space, and very often they wanna buy their way out of a problem. And it's like, no, you exercised your way into this problem, you're gonna need to exercise your way out of it. And that creates a very, very difficult dynamic.
    • 17:29 - I think it's the state of overwhelm. I think you talked about change, that there is a cost. Mentally, people aren't ready. They know that they need to make change, but it's too much because they've got to change everything on every axis. Right? It's like that movie, first it was only a little bit, and then everything all at once. And it really does become overwhelming, and it's all-consuming, and people just don't have, not even the, the financial capital, which of course is a constraint. You look at the number of small business loans, and two-thirds of small businesses are subsisting on loans. But you look at just the mental energy, it's too much.
    • 23:29 - The third thing I would say on go to market is don't get so hung up on the perfection. It's gotta be 99.99% perfect. I really like this. No, I like this image a little better. Let's craft this. Hmm, that post isn't quite right. Just do it. I really believe Wayne Gretzky greatest hockey player of all time, although Alex mentioned, is like taken over. But that's another story, and good for Ovechkin, but Wayne Gretzky said famously, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take. And so that's what I say, don't wait till you're 99.99, 80% is good enough. Get it going. See if it works, test it, try it, refine it.

    Connect with our host, Brian Mattocks:

    • LinkedIn
    • Email
    • Schedule a Free Podcast Consult
    Show More Show Less
    26 mins
  • Elevating Experts to Market Dominance with Ann Carden

    Elevating Experts to Market Dominance with Ann Carden
    Jan 21 2026

    Discover the secrets to propelling your expertise-driven business to new heights with Ann Carden on the Hard to Market Podcast. Dive into transformational strategies that go beyond basic branding, leverage your full potential, and harness high-level marketing to close major deals and amplify your influence.


    Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Hard to Market Podcast.

    • Elevate beyond entry-level offerings
    • Specialization should be market-specific
    • Leverage assets to build client relationships
    • Avoid the "one-trick pony" approach to business
    • Premium market strategies drive bigger profits


    Resources:

    • Expert In You Marketing & Media
    • Podcast Chef
    • Expert In You Podcast


    Connect with Ann Carden:

    • LinkedIn


    Connect with our host, Brian Mattocks:

    • LinkedIn
    • Email


    Quotables:

    • 18:14 - McKinsey and Deloitte have said that like the consulting and the professional service industry is going to hit trillions of dollars in the next two years, in 2026 and 2027. But they also said that the premium market is going to be where the real opportunity is which is great news for me because that's where I help people play, right? So I'm like, oh, yes, sounds good. This great. Finally, now it's not a want anymore. Now it's a need, right? If you wanna stay relevant in the market, go high.
    • 38:33 - Brian: What are the three biggest takeaways that you've picked up in your journey so far?
    • Ann: The three biggest takeaways is get help from someone that can move you faster, really move you forward faster because business is not waiting any longer and it is, you really will become irrelevant very quickly if you are trying to DIY things. So that would be the first thing. A lot of people think they can DIY it, they can get the information, but information doesn't equate to being able to do it. So that's where I believe everybody now needs help because things are moving at warp speed. It's, it's just not like the old days. Right. Yeah. The second thing I would say, especially with AI coming onto the scene, is don't think AI can do it all for you.
    • 32:49 - It goes beyond just their online presence, but everything that we do is to drive revenue. So a lot of people start a podcast to put out value, to put out content that's not what we do. There's a more strategic approach in the way we utilize those assets so that they are either working through the people they're having on their show. To get to the right people, or they are actually interviewing the people on their show that could be clients for them or could be referral partners for them.
    • 11:45 - ​​I am such a proponent of specializing, but a lot of people do it the wrong way, Brian, and this is, this is the problem. When people say the riches are in the niches, that doesn't mean you only show up with a portion of your value, because that's how you put yourself in a beginner category.
    • 23:34 - There was such a gap in the market. I call it the elevation gap. You've got startup and getting good at what you do over here, and then you've got scaling. Nowhere in the middle is anybody closing the gap, right? So people are jumping over the elevation phase in business. They're not, they're not going as high as they can. And then scaling that, they're trying to scale what they first did or what they originally did. And that's why they end up. A lot of the clients that I work with have tried to scale, and they have found they're unfulfilled. They, they're working with clients beneath their skillset. They don't feel like their value is really being seen or appreciated.

    Connect with our host, Brian Mattocks:

    • LinkedIn
    • Email
    • Schedule a Free Podcast Consult
    Show More Show Less
    42 mins
  • Digital Marketing Convo with Luke Eccles

    Digital Marketing Convo with Luke Eccles
    Oct 28 2025
    Dive into the dynamic world of digital marketing with the self-taught maestro Luke Eccles on this episode of "Hard To Market Podcast". From the roots of social media marketing to the blossoming tree of AI integration, Luke shares insights on authentic content, niche marketing, and the beauty of learning through failure.Here are a few topics we’ll discuss on this episode of Hard to Market Podcast.Luke's journey from MySpace to SEOThe blend of IT and marketing expertiseLocalizing marketing strategies for impactContent with personality wins audiencesEmbracing AI while keeping it authenticResources:Red Bearded MarketingPodcast ChefConnect with Luke Eccles:LinkedInConnect with our host, Brian Mattocks:LinkedInEmailQuotables:08:30 - Luke: So one of the things I've really always pushed since I started was I would say I'm a unique individual.Brian: Why Luke? Why would you say that?Luke: Yeah. But I feel like everybody's unique. Everybody has like, their little quirks, their little things about their personality, and content is one of those things where when you get really good at doing your content, that personality starts to seep into it. And sometimes it makes it the best content because it's surrounded by your personality. So I think that's one of the things I've really honed in on and really pushed with my clients is what are you into what.06:20 - And most marketers are like, well, I can only really help you with this part, and like right here. Whereas, think of it like a spider web. I kind of understand, and I handle everything surrounding it. And I think that really plays off with the questions I ask my client. 'Cause when people come to me, they sometimes have an idea of what they need or they think they know, they know what they need. Sometimes they're right. Sometimes it's like the inkling of what they should know, but sometimes they think they need “A” and they actually need “F” You know, and I think having that diverse background of different services and different parts of the digital marketing field allow me to kind of say, okay, well yeah, like this is something that maybe we should, we should just do right now really quick. But like SEO is what you really need. 24:18 - Be prepared and be excited to fail. I think one of the things that we overlook when somebody screws up or fails is like, how do you learn usually by failing, usually by screwing up. And, that's, I mean, like I said, that's how I learned web design. It was a, you go in, how do I do this? Google, okay, is there a video for it? Watch the video. And then you do it, and sometimes you mess up. Sometimes you've had some bad customer interactions where, you know, maybe you weren't completely wrong, but you know, like, you know you messed up a little bit. Or like, there's something new that you didn't know about, and they get pissed that you didn't know that. And it's like, like again, like I said, there's no open source, streaming, saying like, all right, this is what's going on in our industry. This is how you do it. It's like you mess around and find out, and sometimes, you know, like you're gonna fail, and sometimes it's gonna be really bad. And how you rebound from that and how you learn from that. I think that really pushes right into that topic of how you expand, how you learn.22:05 - It's people that are looking at it as like a negative thing. Like, you, you can take that approach, but you're just gonna get steamrolled. And everybody's like, the people that learn how to use it for their industry are gonna exceed. They're gonna way beyond everybody else. That's not. So if your industry is using AI, learn it, it's two years from now, this is going to kind of be like the conversation. Like you remember in 2014 when like the older guys were like, yeah, I don't do that email stuff. I don't do that internet stuff. Where are they now?Brian: Yeah, yeah.Luke: You know, it's like, it's like the transition from radio to tv. It's just, it happened, and all those disc jockeys were done.19:54 - Luke: Ot's still the same principle. It's just that we were playing with a gun before, now we're playing with a nuclear, you know, a nuclear bomb. Right. You know, AI is, it's insane what we're gonna be able to do.Brian: So apart from the capacity side though, it's also flooding the sort of marketplace of ideas with content, and then differentiations harder and harder. Because again, just the volume of signal out there, you know, the volume of noise to signal is so, so much higher. Connect with our host, Brian Mattocks:LinkedInEmailSchedule a Free Podcast Consult
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    29 mins
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