We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Susan Baier. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Susan below.

Alright, Susan thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What’s the kindest thing anyone has ever done for you?

When I was a senior in college in 1986 I had the arresting realization that I was going to have to get a JOB! I didn’t really know what I was interested in pursuing, but my advisor suggested I might consider advertising. He had a friend in Boston who he said would be willing to give me an informational interview. I didn’t know anything about advertising, so I prepped for the interview by creating some ads by myself (hand-drawn) in a portfolio. I got all dolled up and drove 90 minutes up to Boston, arrived at the address — a skyscraper downtown — and took the elevator almost to the top. I was ushered into a huge office with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. The man shook my hand, asked me to sit, and opened my porfolio on the desk. After looking at a few pages, he closed it and pushed it aside. (I’m a writer, not an artist. The ads were terrible, and the drawings looked like they were drawn by a second-grader.) All of a sudden I realized I was totally unprepared. But instead of kicking me out, he sat back and said “Let’s talk about advertising.” He picked up the phone and canceled some meetings, and spent almost two hours teaching me about advertising. And THEN, he called two other agency leaders in Boston and arranged for me to meet with them before I headed back to school. I graduated, went back home to Arizona, started working in an agency and have now been a marketing strategist for almost 40 years. I’ve tried to honor that gift he gave me by paying it forward for my entire career.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I’m a speaker, strategist, and researcher, and owner of research agency Audience Audit Inc.

I started Audience Audit after being laid off from my last agency job in December 2008 during the recession. I’d managed brands for Dial, been category manager for ConocoPhillips, and had helped to run an agency. I decided I wasn’t going to work for anyone else again.

We are a boutique thought leadership strategy and research agency. We help experts — agency owners, business leaders, professional speakers, and authors — build their reputations with their ideal prospects by developing custom quantitative research. Our research is unique in that it reveals the mindsets within a respondent group — not just what they do, but how they FEEL about a topic, category, decision, or challenge — that drives their decisions.

B2B decision-makers have become very skeptical about the concept of “thought leadership”, because most of what they’ve seen and heard from people billing themselves as “thought leaders” has been garbage — regurgitated advice, pitching from the stage, ego, and self-promotion. Our work helps true experts cut through the clutter by providing what our research has shown B2B thought leadership followers want — information that provides new insights, that is helpful, and is coming from someone they like and trust. Original research offers a way to establish credibility and provide new, helpful information and perspective from someone generous enough to share what they know.

I’m most proud of the quality of the work we do and how we’ve helped wonderful, smart people get their message out to more effectively to their target audiences and build their businesses and brands with generosity instead of pitching and pressuring people to buy from them. I call it being Relentlessly Helpful, and it’s a core tenet of our work that sets us and our clients apart.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Our own thought leadership — being helpful and generous with new information that supports our clients and ideal prospects in the work they do every day. We conduct two studies a year for our own thought leadership, and I share research and guidance about effective thought leadership in my speaking, my YouTube channel (Fun with Research) and other content.

We do no outbound selling at all — ideal prospects come to us. It’s a gamechanger for owners of small businesses.

Are there any books, videos or other content that you feel have meaningfully impacted your thinking?

My two favorite business books are Die Empty by Todd Henry and The Widest Net by Pamela Slim. Both of them have inspired me to think of my business not just as a corporate entity, but as an engine for helping others and collaborating with other smart people to achieve mutual benefit.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://audienceaudit.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanbaieraz/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@funwithresearch/videos