In this episode of the Sales Hacker Podcast, we have Marley Majcher, Boss at The Party Goddess! Inc. and author of But Are You Making Any Money?, a book she wrote to answer her dad’s persistent question and solve her own money problems. Join us for a funny and insightful conversation about entrepreneurship, productivity, making money, and managing time.
If you missed episode #187, check it out here: Category Creation & What Sets You Apart From Competitors with Veronika Riederle
What You’ll Learn
- Why SMB owners need to track their time
- Understanding your personal productivity cycles
- Bringing enthusiasm and good humor to your work
- Alpacas are not the same as Faroe sheep
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Show Agenda and Timestamps
- About Marley Majcher & The Party Goddess [1:55]
- The origin story for Marley’s book [7:52]
- The mindset you need to develop about money & time [12:58]
- Event planning in the time of COVID-19 [19:20]
- An amazing story about an A-list celebrity and “strategic leakage” [23:08]
- Sam’s Corner [26:25]
About Marley Majcher & The Party Goddess [1:55]
Sam Jacobs: Hey everybody, it’s Sam Jacobs. Welcome to the Sales Hacker podcast. We’ve got a great guest on the show this week. We’ve got the Party Goddess, the number one event planner in LA and a small business coach. Her name’s named Marley Majcher.
Before we get there, we’ve got a couple sponsors. First is Outreach, the only engagement and intelligence platform built by revenue innovators for revenue innovators. Traditional tools don’t work in a hybrid sales world. Find out why Outreach is the right solution at click.outreach.io/30mpc.
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Finally, Conga. As doing business becomes increasingly complex, it gets harder to do it well. Businesses often sacrifice agility and lose sight of the customer experience. Conga’s expertise and comprehensive solution suite for commercial operations help businesses meet customer needs while increasing agility to adapt to change. Conga.com/saleshacker.
Marley Majcher is the party and profit goddess. She is LA’s number one event planner and a small business coach, helping owners and entrepreneurs get the most out of their time, investments, and messaging. Marley’s been featured on shows such as Fox and Friends, Fox Business, MSNBC, Good Day, LA, and Bravo. She’s also the author of the book, But Are You Making Money? Marley, welcome to the show.
The first thing we like to do is start with your baseball card, an opportunity to learn more about your business.
Marley Majcher: I got into the restaurant business right after I got my business degree from Georgetown. You don’t usually go to Georgetown and then say, “Oh, I’m going to go into the restaurant business.” But I married a chef.
Very long story short, he and I split. My dad was like, “Listen, your life is a hot mess at this point. What you love is the events. Why don’t you do that?”
I was at a low point in my life. What do you do when you are at a low point in life? You come up with the best name you could think of. “I’m going to call myself the Party Goddess.”
Who says they’re the Party Goddess when they are basically in a ditch bleeding out? But that’s what I did.
My problem was that I was so focused on my sales and not on my profit. I eventually went to write my book, But Are You Making Any Money? to solve my own problem.
The origin story for Marley’s book [7:52]
Sam Jacobs: Well, I want to learn more about your book. Give us the Cliff Notes for But Are You Making Any Money?
Marley Majcher: I had a really tough time applying what I learned in business school to my own business. I find a lot of entrepreneurs have the same thing.
The other thing I found is that creative people — and yes, it’s a stereotype — but creative people seem to have this fear of numbers. And women, we have this imposter syndrome. You just get in your head and all of a sudden everything becomes very difficult.
What I boiled it down to was, “Wait, it is not that complicated.”
My secret sauce really involves time because that is where we all blow it. We do not take into consideration how much time it takes to produce our product or service.
Let’s say we’re a masseuse .
Someone asks: “How much do you charge?”
(I’m making this up.) “$100 an hour.”
We think, “The massage is an hour. I make $100.”
You do not, and you’re lucky if you’re making $5 an hour.
How do I not have this in my bank account?
After my dad had asked me that question — but are you making any money? — about the thousandth time, I wrote down what my costs were for my last event.
It was a never-ending laundry list. That’s when I started realizing that’s where all the money was going.
One day I just sat down and was like, “I’m going to freaking find it.”
The mindset you need to develop about money & time [12:58]
Marley Majcher: Time adds up.
Sam Jacobs: Do you find yourself telling people to raise their prices?
Marley Majcher: It’s about a mindset. I don’t care how much somebody charges or how much they want to make. (I care to the extent that I want them to be happy and successful, but it’s none of my business.)
If they want to work for $5 an hour, okay. But I want them to know they’re working for $5 an hour. It’s about the discipline of saying, “Here are my costs, here’s how much time it’s going to take, and this is how much I’m making in my current scenario”
You get a lot more efficient, and it is amazing how much fat you can cut when you focus on being efficient.
Event planning in the time of COVID-19 [19:20]
Sam Jacobs: Tell me about the event planning business. How did you respond to COVID? What is your plan for growth?
Marley Majcher: All I can tell you is that I am multifaceted. I’ve had to pivot so many times in my life because of the messes I created, but you get really good at seeing where the market is going.
You can only make so much as an event planner. Even if I get paid a million dollars to do an event, I can’t do two of those a night. You still are dependent on staff and, and how do you scale that?
Okay, well you scale it the usual ways. You start a franchise. Well, that’s harder in my higher end market. The coaching piece is a little more scalable because then you can bring in the digital components.
But with COVID, thank goodness we’ve had very, very, very loyal customers that we’ve had forever. We have built a platform on having a lot of notable clients, and so what happened was we were getting a lot of interviews during COVID.
You’re like, “Well, interviews aren’t going to pay the mortgage.”
But I started saying, “Hey listen, can I be an influencer at this stage in the game and start getting influencer gigs?”
I’m really good at coming up with random ideas.
An amazing story about an A-list celebrity and “strategic leakage” [23:08]
Sam Jacobs: Your bio says, “She has amazing stories from her work with A-list celebrities.” I would like one amazing story please.
Marley Majcher: We were doing this thing for Britney Spears, and we were in charge of absolutely everything. It was at one of the houses of the Real Housewives at that time.
I had signed confidentiality agreements till the cows came home and was so paranoid.
We had everything buttoned up about that event. There were no leaks. They were trying to figure out where we were getting the goody bags so they could follow me to drop them off. They’re trying to find the location, the whole thing.
The day of the event comes. There’s helicopters everywhere swooping down, and all I can think of is, “Oh my God, my life is over. I’m going to be sued because they know I’m the only one that has all the tickets with all these vendors and all this stuff.”
And then I realized their camp leaked it. Here I am worried, and then I really realized that that’s how the celebrity world works is strategic leakage.
Sam’s Corner [26:25]
Sam Jacobs: Hey everybody, it’s Sam Jacobs, fun conversation with Marley Majcher. She wrote that book called But Are You Making Any Money? One of the key insights is to track your time, especially if you’re a small business owner. Figure out the activities you’re doing that are most productive and your least productive activities. Do that by going through every day for about a week and every 15 minutes writing down what you’re working on at that point.
Marley learned so many things about perfect timing, about how she’s more productive and more analytical in the morning and less productive and less analytical in the afternoon. That’s when she does some creative work. If you’re a small business owner, all you have is your time and so it’s really, really important that you figure out how to track it accurately.
The other thing is, what does it take to be successful? Well, clearly one of the things that it takes is passion and enthusiasm. Being enthusiastic and passionate can propel your success, and Marley clearly has a ton of passion and enthusiasm. She approaches the world from an interesting and unique perspective, and I think that translates to her success.
If you want to reach me, you can email me sam@joinpavilion.com, or go to LinkedIn.com/samfjacobs.
Thank you so much for listening and I’ll talk to you next time.
