SPEAKER_01 1:47

Hey, hello. Um, this is Kevin Sagers with the Hilltop Globe Podcast. I am here today with um Simon James at the Simon Marketing Agency, one of our proud sponsors of the season, uh, of the season of the Hilltop Club. Um, Simon, how are you doing today? I'm good, I'm good.

SPEAKER_00 2:02

How about yourself?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Doing great, doing great.

SPEAKER_00 2:05

Um, I'm glad to be on here.

SPEAKER_01 2:08

Awesome, awesome. Like I said, one of the things I definitely want to do is I definitely want to thank you for your support um of this season. Like I said, because without the support of you and then many of the other sponsors that we have, we want none of this would be possible. Um, and so we one of the things we want to do this season was we wanted to instead of just doing just like simple drops, because that's something everybody does standard um within the industry, we want to do something where we're actually highlighting the um actual um businesses and sponsors that support us um by doing a special um episode um just highlighting your work and a little bit your background. Okay, if you could, Mr. James, um just go ahead and um give us a little bit of information, a little bit of background.

SPEAKER_00 2:46

A little background for me is uh I'm a vet military veteran myself. Um I did 22 years in the army, got out recently. Uh been all over the place, but I ended up back home, back here in well from Mullins, but I'm in Florence, South Carolina. Okay. So, you know, just right down the street. And uh came back home, decided uh, not decided, but I was already into the marketing thing, and I thought uh I saw an opportunity here. So um I decided to come on back home, close to family, and um kind of have the best of both worlds. Family, friends, opportunity. Why not have it all in one place?

SPEAKER_01 3:26

Excellent, excellent. If you want to ask, so what branch were you in?

SPEAKER_00 3:29

I was in Army. I was in the Army. Okay. Oh, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:32

Good, good. Awesome, awesome. So I gotta ask this because I get always getting my interview mode. So, what was probably your favorite thing about service, being in the service?

SPEAKER_00 3:42

It's a lot of things. The travel, of course, the opportunity to be expended in different areas of life that a lot of people don't get an opportunity to see, go, um, experience. That was, you know, some of the things there. Uh, meet new, you know, meet people from all kinds of walks of life. You know, we get caught up in our own little bubble sometimes, and it's good to get out of that and see how other people are living, how their cultures are, um, interacting with different people. Oh, I I loved all that stuff. And then you make friends for life. We think you make friends for life.

SPEAKER_01 4:17

Beautiful. And so what was probably your least favorite thing?

SPEAKER_00 4:20

One of my least favorite things? Oh man. You know, uh, before if I said I wouldn't say least, you know, you make it what it is. If you get up in the morning, you go to work, you come back home, and you do that over a course of times, you get it comes into a repetition. So when it when they say what's the least thing, I was like, I don't know because I've done it so much. Just just you just keep going with the flow. And I guess you know, when you look back at it, it's like I don't miss getting up at uh three o'clock in the morning, going running, and yeah, that probably that's probably the part.

SPEAKER_01 4:57

But I guess that part even to an extent is good too. Like you say, you are the discipline aspect, obviously. Yeah, that's why. But they're good. So obviously, you gotta have, in order for you to do what you do now, you gotta have some aspect of discipline, right? Being able to like manage your time effectively and uh working with businesses, work, you know, individuals just trying to get, you know, just trying to get whatever product or service visible to, you know, just to the general um community or they're target on. So can you just share a little bit of um what you specialize in?

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Okay, yeah. So I specialize in marketing, the marketing aspect, but it branches out into branding, and then my niche down is videography. But using marketing, I use videography to market, but I use branding to do the videography for marketing. So it's uh encompass a lot. So but the whole umbrella of it is marketing, and under the umbrella has different things that are doing the marketing, the brand and the videography, the SEO, advertisement, you name it, all that stuff. So I that's what I do there. Um, enjoy it, been doing it a long time. Um, you know, the bad part about doing it a long time, you act you sometimes you feel like you can't learn anymore, and that's the wrong thing to have. So I have to keep saying what's relevant because look at it, look at how AI just popped up, and a lot of us we wasn't on that. So now we got to come to the stage, get introduced to it, learn it, master it, how to develop in your business, and keep going. Keep going there.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah, excellent. I think that's one of the awful things too about, especially individuals that have technology have backgrounds with technology, and whether or not it's from more of like a like a creative standpoint or practical standpoint, is you you become conditioned to always being cognizant of what's trending or what's going on as opposed to a lot of other professions, right? Because I just noticed even just from like nine to five, I know that individuals you gotta go back for training. You gotta go back. And it's like one of those things like they gotta be forced to do. But when it comes to things like you said, like with marketing, comes to things like um technology, like working with computers, things like that nature. That's something that's part of the culture. Anyway, just for you to be able to survive, you gotta be able to do that.

SPEAKER_00 7:14

Yeah, yeah. Look at it like um, you know, a certification. No matter what you get a certification, how often you gotta go back? Oh, at least about 18 months. Recertify or see what's new, it's the same thing. Call it a recertification or stand up to date.

SPEAKER_01 7:30

Exactly. And so what do you what do you found for your business? Um, what do you what's your most what's your favorite thing about um about being in marketing?

SPEAKER_00 7:39

Uh my favorite thing is to see where a business is now and where they become to later and then the process that we went to get there. I love to um open eyes to different things that you pr you may not have been aware of. I love that. Oh, I didn't know that. Oh, you're absolutely right. I love to see those things. But the most important, I like is the win-win. It's it's the win-win. I like to see um a small business grow into a larger scale, larger scale and so forth, expansion. And uh the fulfillment for me was I was a part of that at some point. Not say we'll uh stay with you for the whole ride, but at some point I can say, you know, I was a part of that, that growth. And I love that. I love that.

SPEAKER_01 8:25

Excellent. Um well, one of the things I definitely want to um share, of course we have our drop, but why should anyone that's listening to this um this um interview, why should they um do business with the silent marketing agents?

SPEAKER_00 8:41

Okay, absolutely. Uh one of the first things you gotta understand marketing is just flirting. There is no A to B structure. And you have to be uh a forward thinker, which we are. Um you have to be uh what's the word I'm looking for? Um not magical, but strategic. Strategic. You have to be strategic, which we are, um and you have to be up to date on uh what's relevant today. What worked yesterday may not work now. Going into the new things, what's what's out here now, and we stay on top of those type of trends. Uh so I'm a marketing agency, we are full-blown, like I said, everything won't fit to you, but the things that you need is what we offer. Um, it could be as much as uh just uh getting more traffic to your website with just a SEO article or uh a PR repress or something. It could be the small things, it could also be the largest scale of things. If you're a new business, you may need a full-scale marketing plan. You know, when you start a business, the first thing is um you do your business plan, and the the largest part of that business plan is the marketing plan. How are you gonna market this, get it out to the public, and that's where we come in and help you with that plan. You know, that's one section that's overlooked a lot. Uh the marketing plan. I mean, the marketing plan is one of the most important things in a compass to the other things, but the marketing plan is always in that top five category. So we we help you that marketing plan, we help you develop that into real actionable events to get the outcome that you're looking for.

SPEAKER_01 10:24

Great, great. Um, so with that said, I know one of the things is I do want to get ready to wrap up. But if anyone is interested in contact me, how would they go about doing so?

SPEAKER_00 10:35

Yeah, absolutely. Go to my website, it's www.simonmarketing.agency. That will take you straight to my landing page. I'll give you a brief overview of what we do. I'll ask, same thing, you click the link and get in touch with me. First thing we do is have a conversation so I can see what your needs are, and we go from there. And Simon Marketing.agency is the link that I use for everything. I you know, as a marketer, you you want to be all over the place, but I use one place to be all over the place. That makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 11:07

Yeah, yeah. Amazing, amazing. Oh, yeah, and I love your site too. Like I said, I love it very interactive, and I love the way how you can go in and you can see the office, you can see everything set up for the studio, um, when you sit down for your consultation setting. It really the thing I liked about that is especially for people who may be like looking at the um you know, getting services through a market agency, a lot of times just that word itself marketing, and then you got market agency. People think big bucks, they think they think a big, huge build, you know, like skyscrapers, things like that. You know, you kind of go through like the things you might have seen on TV when you were younger, and so it could be kind of overwhelming, you know, it can be kind of overwhelming. So it was really neat just being able to see just like the way you set the site up and how people can go through, they can learn about your products, like your services, how you support businesses, and it just made it very approachable. And that was one of the things that I was really impressed. I really appreciate that. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_00 12:01

I appreciate that. And you're absolutely right. That one keyword, agency.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Yeah, the agency.

SPEAKER_00 12:09

You're right about that. I appreciate it though. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 12:13

Yeah, but like I said, I love that though, because like I said, it just makes it, like I said, it really makes it tangible to where people can under they under they can they got a vision, they understand it, and they can see how those things actually can benefit and impact them. A lot of times they know they need it, but they can't, they don't see how it fits within what they're trying to do.

SPEAKER_00 12:32

Yeah, right. It's not that's where we have that conversation, so we can see how it will fit in what you're trying to do. So um it's not just uh like I said, it's just a flirting. Marketing is just flirting because everything is not gonna work, but there is something in there that will work specifically to you and your brand or your business. Yep.

SPEAKER_01 12:55

Awesome, awesome. Um, like I said, with that said, um, I'm Kevin Staggers. Um, one of the hosts of the Hilltop World Podcast, and I'm here today with my Mr. Simon James at the Simon Marketing Agency. Another thing, too, make sure to follow Mr. James um on Instagram at Brand Simon TV. Um, awesome um um Instagram page, check it out, and that's at brandsimon TV. Um but with that said, um let's still talk to the podcast signing out. Peace.