Marketing Happy Hour Podcast

Send us Fan Mail Doing everything yourself can look like dedication, but it often feels like a slow chokehold on your time, your focus, and your revenue. Shelby sits down with Leia, an adult ADHD and executive function coach, to talk about the real moment entrepreneurs hit: keep taking clients and risk burnout, or start delegating and build a team that can actually scale. We get specific about wha...

Send us Fan Mail You’ve heard the advice: post everywhere, grow fast, go viral, and let a great product sell itself. We don’t buy it and we explain why. We’re doing a quick, focused deep dive into the marketing myths that quietly derail small business growth and leave people feeling like “marketing doesn’t work.” First up: the pressure to be on every social media platform. We talk about choosing o...

Send us Fan Mail $48,000 in 14 days sounds like a book sales fairy tale, until you hear the real numbers: Shelby has sold about $710 worth of books. The twist is the point. She writes “Market Like a Boss” to make money through her business, using the book as a lead magnet, a credibility shortcut, and a trust-building sales asset that walks into every room with her. We talk through the mindset shif...

Send us Fan Mail AI is not waiting for anyone’s comfort level, and small business owners feel that tension every day. We talk through the good, the bad, and the ugly of AI marketing from a real-world perspective, including what’s changed as of June 2026 and why “it knows too much” isn’t a strategy. The goal is simple: use AI to move faster and think clearer without letting it erase the thing that...

Send us Fan Mail I opened a second sign shop location, got three months in, and then lockdown hit. Suddenly my calendar meant nothing, my assumptions about growth got tested, and I had to figure out how to keep two employees paid while the world argued about curfews, safety rules, and who was “bringing COVID” into town. What kept us afloat wasn’t luck. It was a fast pivot to the unglamorous work e...

Send us Fan Mail Your LinkedIn isn’t broken, it’s just missing you. Shelby McFarland sits down with LinkedIn specialist Katie Rasure to get radically practical about what actually grows a personal brand, drives B2B leads, and builds a reputation people remember. We start with the real-world moment that proves the point: meeting someone in person and instantly recognizing them from their LinkedIn p...

Send us Fan Mail You can feel the energy of a real networking floor in Conway, Arkansas as we bounce from booth to booth at a Women in Business Showcase, asking one simple question at a time and letting the answers stack into a blueprint for modern entrepreneurship. Founders and leaders share what helps them recover from burnout, how they set boundaries when business feels all-consuming, and why “...

Send us Fan Mail Most business owners don’t need another marketing “hack.” They need the uncomfortable truth about why visibility does not automatically turn into sales and what to do when the phone is not ringing. Shelby McFarlane talks with Arkansas insurance agent Nick Tuberville about the gap between marketing and selling, especially in service businesses where you are not shipping a product,...

Send us Fan Mail You can study marketing for years and still feel unprepared the first time a real client and a real deadline land on your plate. Mattie and Alexis step in for Shelby and tell the honest version of what it looks like to break into a marketing career when your path is not perfectly linear, from a creative background to an esthetics business owner who fell in love with the marketing...

Send us Fan Mail One painful week in a 500 square foot apartment changed everything for Shelby McFarland and it eventually became the foundation for how she leads, sells, and builds. Shelby shares the part of her story she rarely tells, then connects it to a simple framework she uses to guide decisions when life feels messy and business feels heavy. We break down her BOSS mindset acronym: Bold, Op...

Send us Fan Mail Your best marketing content is already happening, and it sounds a lot like the questions people keep asking you. We take the everyday conversations from sales pitches, client meetings, and team chats and turn them into a simple, repeatable content engine. When you notice the same 10 to 15 questions showing up over and over, you’re not stuck for ideas anymore, you’re sitting on a r...

Send us Fan Mail People don’t choose the “best” service on paper. They choose the person they trust with their money, their time, and their expectations. Shelby McFarland sits down with Alexis Valenti to talk about what we’re both seeing right now in sales and why buyers feel more cautious, especially when they’ve had a bad experience with a past provider. We break down the real differentiators th...

Send us Fan Mail Marketing can feel like a black hole: you post, you pay, you wait, and somehow nothing changes. We get real about why so many small business owners reach the point of saying, “I don’t think my marketing is working,” and why that feeling is often a signal that the strategy, expectations, or partner relationship is off, not that your business is doomed. Shelby brings Mattie onto the...

Send us Fan Mail You can post every day, run Google Ads, perfect your Google Business Profile, and still wonder why revenue feels stuck. The missing piece usually isn’t another platform or another funnel, it’s sales. We talk through a hard truth for small business owners and service providers: digital marketing creates interest, but it doesn’t replace the face-to-face trust that closes deals. We d...

Send us Fan Mail You know that moment when your marketing agency pulls up a dashboard and someone says, “So you’re just going to show me numbers?” We get it. But those numbers are the receipt. In this Marketing Happy Hour conversation, we walk through the core Meta analytics that show real progress on Facebook and Instagram, then translate them into plain English so you can actually use them to gr...

Send us Fan Mail Trying to post everywhere, run ads, keep up with algorithms, and still deliver for clients? That’s not a marketing plan, that’s burnout. We’re coming to you from a casual volunteer day at a local nonprofit that supports small businesses, and we crack open Chapter Nine of my book Market Like a Boss for a reset you can actually use. We talk about how marketing has evolved from “hard...

Send us Fan Mail If the first question you ask about marketing is “How much does it cost?”, this conversation is going to challenge you in the best way. I’m reading one of my favorite chapters from my book, Market Like a Boss, and it’s a blunt reminder that a business with no marketing budget isn’t being “scrappy” it’s choosing invisibility. When you skip the investment, you don’t magically save m...

Send us Fan Mail Worried that AI will edge out your creative work? Let’s flip the script. Shelby shares how she uses AI to win back hours each week, then invests that time into better research, clearer strategy, and stronger content. The goal isn’t to replace your voice; it’s to remove the busywork so your voice gets louder. We unpack how Google’s AI Overview chooses sources and what it actually m...

Send us Fan Mail The noise around AI makes it feel like a silver bullet or a looming threat, but the real advantage comes from pairing smart prompts with strong SEO bones. We walk you through a practical, repeatable system to win local search and get cited by AI tools like ChatGPT and Grok, without chasing every trend or burning cash on guesswork. We start by resetting expectations: AI pulls from...

Send us Fan Mail Ever feel like the algorithm ignores your best work? Here’s the twist: the feed isn’t random—it’s consumer-first. We break down what that really means for small businesses and creators, and how to design content that actually reaches the people you want. Instead of chasing volume or praying for virality, we map audience segments and craft posts that match intent—education for lear...

Send us Fan Mail A lime green carpet shouldn’t be the reason you walk away from a dream. Shelby takes us inside the leap to open Little Rock Creative—a new photography studio and hybrid office built to raise the bar for content creators in west Little Rock—while celebrating ten years of The Marketing Broker and nearly fourteen years in entrepreneurship. This is a candid, behind-the-scenes look at...

Send us Fan Mail Ice on the roads turned into clarity on the plan. After six days at home with my five‑year‑old and a full notebook, I’m sharing a practical visibility blueprint for small businesses that want more than likes—they want bookings. We start with the foundation most people skip: crisp clarity. If a stranger can’t describe what you do in one sentence, the algorithm won’t either. I walk...

Send us Fan Mail Ready to grow a new business without draining your wallet? We break down five free, high-impact moves that build a clear brand, boost visibility, and turn real-world connections into steady referrals. Shelby McFarland, the marketing broker behind Marketing Happy Hour, lays out a lean playbook you can execute right now and refine as you scale. We start by building a brand foundatio...

Send us Fan Mail Ready for a hot take that might change how you grow? We unpack why competition—not vague “collabs”—is the engine that sharpens your craft, speeds up decisions, and wins better clients. From a fast start to 2026 with a new office and a rentable photo studio in Little Rock, we dig into the systems that turn momentum into measurable wins and the partnerships that actually add value....

Send us Fan Mail Stuck in that “blah” headspace but still need to ship content that moves the needle? We’ve been there—staring at a blank calendar, juggling client work, family, and admin, while the algorithm and your sales pipeline quietly drift. Today we share the exact system we use to market consistently even when inspiration doesn’t show up, and why it led to a 25% lift in sales after just th...