USMC Veteran, Brian Keith Noonan, dives deep in The Marvel of Marketing. Serving as the Managing Partner of Buzzsource Agency with more than 15 years in internet marketing, he is known as the “Million Dollar Marine Marketing Machine.” He chats with Tonya Dawn Recla on The Marvel of Marketing and why he considers himself a liberator for entrepreneurs. His agency’s services can not only impact change in his clients’ operations, but he aims to offer liberation from what he describes as a ‘feast and famine’ cycle of prospecting for new business. Listen in to hear his secrets for marketing success.

Once a Marine, always a Marine.
Photo by Colin Maynard on Unsplash

Hello everyone. This is Tonya Dawn Recla, your Super Power Expert. Today we’re talking about The Marvels of Marketing and I have a treat for you all today. I have with me Brian Keith Noonan. Now before I let him talk, I want to brag a little bit about him. So, not only is he a Marine, or once a Marine, always a Marine, right? But a lot of people refer to him as “The Million Dollar Marine Marketing Machine.” So, if that kind of, starts to paint a little bit of a picture about how he’s taken that experience and that world and kind of it into the work that he does in a global way to impact the world, I think you’re gonna start to get a glimpse of just how amazing this guy is.

And so, not only does he talk marketing, but he also gets it, you know? Of course our people always get it. And so, he knows that he’s here to have an impact. He works with his wife at raising their children. So, he’s very much cut from the same cloth. So, I’m really excited to have him and his perspective on the show today, to talk about how to really do this stuff.

I know a lot of entrepreneurs get caught up in, “Okay great, I get the self-help and the growth and everything else, but how do I actually create something that helps people, and that is effective?” And so Brian’s gonna help us, Brian Keith is gonna help us figure that out today. So, please join me in welcoming him to the show. Hey, Brian Keith, how are you?

Hey, Tonya. Just Brian’s fine. It’ll be a little easier to say. Thank you for having me. You have a long list of very esteemed peers of mine that I’m really happy to join here in the ranks of your Super Power Experts podcast.

Oh, well, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, we attract to some pretty cool people. I think you’re right there on the top of that list. So, we like to jump in and ask, what are your superpowers?

You know, I was thinking about this question. I think it can be kind of, boiled down to one concept or one word. I consider myself to be a liberator. And the reason I consider myself to be a liberator, even though that my main profession is in the marketing world, the lead generation world, I’m able to liberate my clients from what is typically a feast and famine cycle of prospecting for business, and then fulfilling, then needing to prospect again, and going back and forth, so that they’re on that roller coaster.

So, I’m able to liberate them from that with my services that I provide and through my agency, Buzz Source Agency. But, also, I do work in other areas of the community, mentoring veterans, for instance. Something I do on the side to give back. And I find that they’re often liberated by seeing different perspectives and changing their mindset, and the way they’re going at the world and transitioning out of the military into, what’s next? So, I like to consider myself a liberator. And that’s what gets me up in the morning, not cost per lead or cost per acquisition or Google or Facebook ads, in particular, but what they do for people, when we put these systems together.

Well, and there’s such a huge need for that. As I spoke about in the introduction, the concept that, or the biggest challenge that I see most people having in this sort of transitioning from maybe, really typical employment-type situations into really wanting to have an impact and wanting to make change, and what they find are the harsh realities of that, right? Those are some really muddied and bloodied waters at this point. Especially, if people are in the coaching kind of consulting arenas.

And it’s really challenging for folks to get a foothold. And what I like about the services you offer, and really what you stand for what you embody is the idea that, number one, you’re not kind of, blowing smoke anywhere. You’re not telling people that, “Oh, you’ll follow these three easy steps and you’re gonna be rich,” it’s, there’s work. Like, it is work and if you’re willing to do the work there are tools available to you, and there are people who can help you in implementing something sustainable and scalable and profitable. Is it a good way to sum that up?

Absolutely. And, I couldn’t agree more that entrepreneurship is not for the faint of heart.

I say that all the time.

Get down into the trenches, because it’s, I mean, certain days you’ll be on top of the world, but other ones you’re definitely under the bus.

I tell people like, you don’t just fall into this accident. There’s no just, slipping into success, that’s not how this works. I don’t care what people tell you or how it appears on the surface. It is the entrepreneurship, just like the consciousness journey, just like the self-help growth journey, that development, they’re identical in the sense that you have to be willing to face every aspect of yourself. And if you’re not willing to kind of, marry those up, then what we find is, we may have some really highly-developed individuals, but they haven’t done anything with it.

Or, people who are trying to do stuff but they haven’t developed themselves, and so what they’re putting out there either isn’t taking hold or it’s actually not having quite the impact that they would like for it to, because there’s no substance behind it because that growth is lacking. And so, it really is a marriage of kind of, those two paradigms that, I think it’s kind of, new that we are talking about it in that way.

I mean, you’ve got Napoleon Hill and Og Mandino, some of the greats who spoke of it, but in the business sectors, that personal growth and development just wasn’t always the topic, right?

Yeah, undoubtedly, we’re always the greatest bottleneck and greatest obstacle in our own businesses and lives, I find. It’s my strong opinion, anyway. And so, we need to address ourselves in that personal and professional development in order to thrive in our businesses. Without that, you’re kind of, stuck. I know also, that there was a time when I was doing everything myself. So, I really had to be deep into the technical aspects of the advertising and lead generation.

I’m lucky enough to have a team.

And now I’m lucky enough to have a team. But that took work, as well. So, absolutely, positively, we’re our own worst enemy in every aspect of life, and we don’t have to be, we don’t have to stay that way. It’s just, I think in almost any aspect, you’re gonna face yourself and your capacities in any given area of life, and have to be able to take a realistic stock of what you’re looking at and where you need to get to.

I love what you’re saying, and I like the idea that you did a lot of it yourself. Justin, my husband, and I, we’ve built everything together, and what we found is exactly that. You cannot successfully outsource something. Well, I can’t say everybody. We couldn’t. We couldn’t successfully outsource anything unless we were willing to kind of, dive in to it, dissect it, put a process to it, all of that stuff, and then be willing to manage the outsourcing of it. I mean, that’s been our journey. If people have found a secret sauce to skip that, I would love to hear about it.

But, most of the people we advise and consult and coach are in that exact same arena. And most of them kind of, employ what we call this Savior mentality where they think, “Oh, if I hire this marketing division, they’re gonna handle everything for me, they’ll be magical, I know we need to do marketing. I don’t really know what I want or how to do it or anything else.

Well, I like to say that clients will always get to me, eventually. Or someone like me, because they come through and they’re scarred and beaten from either trying to do too much themselves or hiring the wrong people. So, it’s kind of, my little inside joke. I was really thrilled actually, that Justin reached out to me and we’re talking about some of those things in terms of, now that you have systems in place that you’re pretty much a well-old machine, he’s ready to scale it. That was a very exciting conversation.

In terms of the amount of work involved and the number of moving parts in successful online regeneration and online sales, it is a lot of work and it takes a lot of knowledge. And, people who specialize in it and eat, breathe, and sleep it every day like myself, are gonna be pretty much, the only ones who are capable of taking it to a high level and scaling it and making it into really, what it can be, the optimum version of what it can do for you.

If it was easy, everybody would do it, is what I’m thinking, and what I always think. And so, there are a lot of silver bullet pushers out there with, “Here, buy my $49 easy solution and it’ll do all your marketing for you,” or some bullshit like that. And it’s just not true. It’s just not true. You have to have a business, you have to have a real business that’s profitable in order to support something like what we do for people.

But, I also deal certain startups, and they have funding. If you don’t happen to be at that level, though, then we do have a couple of groups that we work with, smaller companies that can’t necessarily, put in a five- or six- or seven-figure budget into this type of thing. And I help them on live calls similar to what we’re having here, to work on their projects and to learn strategy and to implement what it’ll take to make their own systems work. So, I like to have that option available for people to just starting out to give them a chance and give them an option of not going with all these hucksters, and actually getting the straight dope from somebody who knows what they’re talking about.

And so, that’s really why we opted to create some scalable models in both the due diligence and vetting worlds, as well as in the personal development worlds, was exactly that reason. And, going through that process really helped us see the amazing value in having solid referral partners. We just have been so blessed over the last five years to develop some really amazing relationships with solid people who are willing to operate their businesses transparently, who know what they’re doing, have chosen a niche and have gotten really highly specialized in it.

And I think that has we’ve developed, we see that there’s a real fulfilling way to go about business, but you have to kind of, be willing to traverse those waters, be willing to ask some hard questions. You know, oftentimes we see people in referral groups referring people that they don’t really know if they have a valid business, they don’t really know what they can do, but they really like the person.

And so, that gets us, that just creates more of the same. And through the Super Power model, we really work with people to gauge their own resonance, to get confident in who they are. But then require that of other people, not just you know, skate on the surface, but be willing to say, “I get that you say you can build a website, but can you actually? Have you built one?” Or, “Where we at this equation,” you know?

Yeah, what it came down to for me is, that I would much rather a or company an individual has a real and truly competent expert to consult with from the beginning, not necessarily, put it off till later when they think, “Oh, I can’t afford this for now, so I’m just gonna do what I can this way and that way, and then eventually I’ll get to it. Because they often don’t ever get there, because they’re just throwing off on these different tangents and chasing the next shiny object. And so, they never achieve what they were going to. So, I would much rather they had that expert like you or me or Justin or Tiffanie in their corner from the get-go. And even if they don’t use us to the greatest degree that’s available, at least they’ll have that counsel and that direction and that strategy to begin with.

But, I would love for you to mention, and I’m not sure if you were getting to it, but the experts’ directory or, I can’t remember the exact name of that group that you have, that pre-vetted group, of those referral partners that Justin invited me to be a part of, and can you remind me what that was called and exactly how that works?

Oh, sure. You’re talking about the Clear Directory?

Clear directory, that’s it. That’s it.

Yeah, so the process there, like I said, we kind of, chose to knock ourselves off in the sense that when we started off coming from the counter Intel world, we were doing a lot of defenses kind of vetting. Some of it was kind of, clandestine and stuff like that, but what we found was that, if we could just encourage companies to operate transparently, then a lot of this bullshit would be stopped. The biggest issue is people purporting to do stuff that they really have no business purporting to do.

And so, the companies who operate in those industries such as yourself in marketing or website development, apps, technology, coaching, consulting, where it’s just the noise is so great with a bunch of self-proclaimed experts, how do you help people who truly have legit businesses stand out? And so, that’s where that concept came from. And it’s not a check the box, it’s not a ranking. It’s a, you’re willing to operate transparently. It’s pretty simple. And so, that’s where the concept came from.

I love it. Love it.

Visit SuperPowerExperts.com/theNET for more!

That’s been a labor of love, as you can imagine. We met up with our fair share of resistance. And, that’s kind of, what I wanted to get back to you about, is that it’s not new. To me, it’s very common sense. And maybe that’s the military background, maybe that’s why we connect in that space. But to me, it’s like, if you can’t do what you claim to do, you don’t last very long in a lot of the military teams. You just don’t. Eventually, the systems weed it out or they’ve got places for people like that. It just kind of, becomes obvious.

And what we found we came to the business was, it was very disheartening to see just, the level of fraud and ineptitude. And there was no check and balance. It was like, it just didn’t make any sense to us. And so, I wonder if you can maybe, speak to, kind of, adopting that kind of no BS attitude, but with love and compassion. It’s like, that balancing act seems to really trip people up, and then they feel like they have to be a hard-ass, and upset people, and be aggressive, or they have to be a doormat and turn the other cheek. Surely, there’s a middle ground there.

Yeah, absolutely. I definitely have a reputation for being a no BS kind of guy, a straight shooter. And that’s just because I have to vet my clients out the same way that they have to vet me out and determine if it’s a good fit. And so, I let them know how it’s gonna be. I’m not gonna give them rainbows and unicorns on the front end til they pay me and then be a drill instructor on the other side. So, I need to take them through and let them know, I’m gonna tell you things that you may not want to hear about what you have or what we’re doing, if they’re true, and if it’s advantageous for you to understand this. And, I’m not gonna mince my words. And this is gonna take time, this is gonna take money. It’s not an overnight thing. It’s not an instant fix.

And so, are you ready? Are you ready to commit to that? And really what it amounts to, more of a partnership than just a provider. I mean, they’re trusting me and my team with a mission-critical, some would say maybe, the most mission-critical part of their business. So, we don’t take that lightly, especially since the numbers can get up to six figures, seven-figure rather, per month. That we are the stewards of these companies’ money, and it’s imperative that we treat it responsibly and take it very seriously.

So, for me, even though I run ads for multiple clients on a daily basis and work on all this lead generation, and everything that I do, I haven’t had to run an ad for myself in three-and-a-half years or so. Because, my business comes from referrals, from satisfied clients, from thrilled, no, from raving fan clients for the most part, which I feel very grateful for. And, even though it costs more than ever to have us work for a client, we have most times, a waiting list of people that are just waiting for us to put the resources together for their particular project. So, it’s amazing, really, what happens when you do the right thing.

That’s the quote of the day.

It’s amazing what happens when you do the right thing.

Well, we could laugh and everything else, but it’s like, it takes you a while to work around to that. And there’s different layers of thinking that you’re doing the right thing, and what we use the verbiage we use is getting clarity. And it’s like you think you’re clear, you think you know what you’re doing, and then it’s like, “Oh, wait, here’s this whole other level.” Then you kind of, look back, you go, “Wow, I really didn’t know that. I really didn’t know what I was doing at that stage.” And then, here’s this other level of clarity. And sure enough, just around the corner there’s another one.

So, it’s like, but when you start off with that as your basic principle and you commit to that integrity above all else, I think our saving grace from the beginning was the fact that we had, our reputation as individuals was all we had, starting off. And so, and then we built a business that stands on that, also. So, the reputation of our business, not just how do we look online and stuff, but truly, that integrity relationship, our energy, we have to be willing to manage all of that. Because if not, we have distinct businesses that rest on those principles. And if we get caught up in a way that’s disingenuous, sure, we screw up. But owning that and being transparent about it, and coming from that real heart space with ourselves as well as with our clients, speaks to what you’re talking about is that, it creates that relationship currency that just carries forward.

But you really have to be willing to stand there and go, “Okay, these are my limitations, I’m gonna work on these things,” but right now, what can I do with 100% cellular confidence that I know I can help people with and start from that space.

Yeah, it’s that congruence and that integrity that sells or more accurately, attracts people to us. That want to work with us. But the growth never stops. And like you said, we’ll look back on certain things, whether they’re mistakes that happened or just the way we were showing up or going about something, and realized, we’re glad we evolved past that. And a lot of it comes down to, and you said your reputation was all you had in the beginning, and really, that’s what anybody has, I think, at the core of it. And, you know, oh, man, I totally lost my train of thought.

It’s really important to keep that at the forefront, and this is where I was going, to be accountable. The buck stops here. Mistakes are gonna happen, or deadlines will be missed, or whatever the case is, something’s gonna happen. As an entrepreneur, or even in a job, that you gotta take responsibility for. And, even if it was your team that made the mistake or your dog nature homework, whatever the case is, it’s ultimately your responsibility and your fault. And your opportunity to rectify.

So, sometimes that involves paying for something that someone else did wrong, or making up, extending you know, a discount or additional time working with a client because of some delay, or whatever the cases. But ultimately, I believe in extreme ownership. If it happened on my watch, I’m responsible, no matter who did it. If it’s under my name, it’s got my name on it, or my agency’s name on it, we take responsibility. I take responsibility, personally.

I believe in extreme ownership.

I love that. I love the concept of extreme ownership. One of the things I want to talk to you about, because I think this is also nearly dear to you is, you know, over at Super Power Experts we have a membership base. The whole point of that model was, look, we can support each other, there’s mentorship that can happen in a really good, solid way. This is how development gets done on a day-to-day basis. So we have what’s called the Super Power net. And that’s our membership base. But for the components of that really are support and guidance and, operating transparently in the presence of others, how important was mentorship and support as you were developing into this person who can take extreme ownership of things?

I have to say, it was the most important thing, and it continues to be. And over the past five years or so that I’ve invested heavily in mentorship, coaching, mastermind groups, all of the above, professional development, personal development, that has blown up my world in the best of all possible ways, in terms of the people that I’m able to associate with, people that I do business with, my circle of friends, everything in all important aspects of life has improved from that process. And I’ll never stop, I’ll never stop spending at least five figures a year on coaching and being in these groups that help me continue to grow.

And, I was having this conversation with Jesse Elder and a few guys that I’m working with the other day, and I said, “I never made 25K a month before I spent 25K on myself, to be a part of a Mastermind group, it just happened to be. It’s a big thing, and it has a huge return on investment. Most people are extremely hesitant to make an investment like that in themselves. I’m not talking about $2,500 of this or that, because people go out and want to sell and provide high-end services, products, programs, services, but they’ve never bought one, they’ve never been a customer for one. And so, they have a hard time with it. They have a hard time charging what they want to charge, they have a hard time attracting the right people, because they’re not the right person. So, we have to be the right person, and then we get to have what that person has. And, I had a lot of mentors.

Beautiful.

A lot of things in my life in place to make sure that I’m constantly moving in that direction. And I am far from fucking perfect, I have to tell you. I’ll admit right here on public podcast. I work on it every day.

I love that. Well, and there’s so much liberation in that. Going back to the full circle, beginning of the podcast, we talked about being the liberator. You really, in order to do that with others, you have to be willing to do it with yourself, and that’s layers and layers and layers. And every time you peel back a layer, now there’s another layer. And I remember, what was it, about a year, two years ago now, I just made a commitment to myself, and I said, “I want to be shown anywhere, anywhere, I don’t care how painful, I don’t care how minute, I want to be shown anywhere in my existence that something else has a hold over me in some capacity.” I want to see it. I want to see it, I want to face it, I want to choose whether or not I want to continue that relationship in that way with whatever aspect of myself that it was.

And sure enough, they came forward. And what that let me to was really, playing with cool concepts around autonomy and sovereignty. When you can truly say that you know, you are the authority in your existence, it changes everything. But that is not for the faint of heart. That extreme ownership is extreme responsibility, and that means being able to say, “I think I have a permanent spoon that says, “Eat crow,” you know, “That’s my eating crow spoon.”

And it’s just like, “Okay, cool.” I’ve gotten down on my knees and apologized to my daughter before. And it’s like, you just have to be willing to get in that space and say, “Yeah, wow, that’s right, I just did that thing. And it doesn’t mean I’m a horrible person. But it sure means that I’m gonna atone for it.” And, that’s it. And when you’re willing to do that with everybody, with yourself, with all the people that you’re in relationship with, and then you just expand out from that space, it really is a very liberating place to operate from.

Hugely, hugely. And, it’s a lifelong, it seems like a lifelong process. At least, it has been for me. But, I actually posted something today. I’ll read this quick quote to you, because I think, I know you’ll get it. It says, “Make no mistake about it, enlightenment is a destructive process. It has nothing to do with becoming better or being happier, enlightenment is the crumbling away of untruths. It’s seen through the façade of pretense. It’s the complete eradication of everything we imagine to be true.”

I’m laughing because I posted that I don’t know, a couple of months ago. Yes, yes, and yes. Amen and all of the above. I agree. Thank you for reading. And it is, I’ve kind of, gotten to that place where it’s like, the lip service has gotta end. I don’t have a lot of patience for folks who really aren’t truly, willing to get deep with themselves. Because that is where the work is.

But I have to say, you’re the second person on my show to mention Jesse Elder. So, I’m thinking that I’m just gonna have to reach out to him and have him on the show, now that we’ve talked about him a couple times. But, regardless, I digress. I really want, I know people are gonna want to know more about you. I know there are so many people who are doing amazing things in the world and they need a valuable, reliable transparent resource in the marketing arena. Where can we send folks to get information?

Absolutely. I’m happy to speak with anyone that comes by your recommendation. My website, buzzsource.co, is a great place to start. I even have a live chat thing on there that comes directly to me. So if you want to get in touch with me. Or, by email at mailto:[email protected]. That’s a personal email of mine. Also, on Facebook a lot, mostly running ads and in groups, but if we’re friends there, please shoot me a message, by all means. And, I’ll help you any way I can.

Awesome. And I believe that. And I feel that from you. And I thank you and honor the work that you’re doing in the world. I know that it’s serving a huge need. We’ve got a lot of folks who have some cool, sustainable, creative ideas, and they need to get them out there. So, for those of you listening, be sure to check out his website, and just kind of, get a feel for it and know that you’re not gonna find a marketing savior, but certainly, when you’re ready to do the work and your business is positioned for it, find those folks who can assist you in the way that is worthy of that vision and what you’ve put into your business. Brian, thank you so much for joining us. It’s been delightful.

Thank you Tonya, likewise. Appreciate it.

Very cool. And to all of you out there, as always, we appreciate your loyalty. And until next time, go out, uncover your superpowers, and change the world. Take care, everyone.