John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. You can learn the science behind great marketing with bite size 20 minute episodes packed with practical advice from world-class marketers and behavioral scientists. And it’s not always about marketing. Great episode. Recently you learned the surprising truths about and tips for beating, stress and anxiety. Sounds like a great program, doesn’t it? Listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts.

(00:48): Hello and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch. My guest today is Amanda Holmes. She is the c e O of Chat Holmes International, which has worked with over 250,000 businesses worldwide. At age 24, she inherited her father’s multi-million dollar enterprise, which specializes in helping companies double their sales. A lot of their works based on the bestselling book, the Ultimate Sales Machine, of which they have a new edition coming out. Amanda’s name will be all over the new edition as well. And she has merged her father’s proven process with her own forward thinking ideas to connect the old school sales process with hybrid, online and offline instant gratification and short attention span that we see in consumers today. So Amanda, welcome back to the show.

Amanda Holmes (01:38): Thank you so much, John. You know what means so much to me that you interviewed my father and then you interviewed me so many years ago and here we are again. It just, it means a lot. I, not a lot of people interviewed my father either,

John Jantsch (01:51): So I I was gonna say, I might be one of the few podcasters who has interviewed you both . Yes.

Amanda Holmes (01:58): I have never heard it from anybody else and I’ve done hundreds of interviews, so you are the only one

John Jantsch (02:03): . That’s funny that, that was about 29, 20 0 9, 20 10, something like that maybe. And podcasting was in its infancy at the time, but somehow I’ve stuck with it

Amanda Holmes (02:15): .

John Jantsch (02:16): So we also have another shared connection. My daughter has actually worked for me for about 12 years. Uh, she is our chief operating officer, so I really kind of have to go there. Didn’t work in the business as a family member. Right. You really brought, came into the business. I would have to think in some ways that was a pretty tall order. Becau, in fact, I think you were studying music in college and you know, not necessarily preparing for a career as a C. Right. So what’s it, I guess I was gonna ask you what’s like working with family, but that’s not really, it wasn’t really your experience. So what was it like really? And I know you’ve told this story many times, what was it like basically being thrust into an ongoing organization, but as a family member?

Amanda Holmes (03:01): Yes, it, well, it was hard because me and my father were very close. I was actually born on his birthday. We shared the same birthday February 13th, and it was as if just the stars aligned. And so losing him was like losing air. It was like I didn’t know where up was or down was. I couldn’t eat, I couldn’t sleep. So getting all of that while at the same time, like I can remember just days after his funeral. And the only reason why I remember that cuz all that time is such a blur, but I just remember all of these flowers around my room from his funeral and I was sitting there and they had just sent me the p and l of all the companies and it was the first time I’d ever seen it. And it just felt like this p and l was never ending.

(03:45): I kept scrolling and scrolling and I just broke down. It was like, how, how is this possible that, so my father battled with cancer for a year and a half before he passed. And he spent 352 nights in the hospital and never once did he spend it alone. So it was me, my mom, and my brother. We just, we rotated spending all nighters with him. So I spent easily a hundred all nighters with my father in the hospital. Never once did he say, Hey Amanda, let me explain to you what my businesses are . Let me explain to you who runs them. Let me tell you about where I’d like this to go. We never had that dialogue and there was time and I speak on that because I think it’s critical that more parents take responsibility for the fact that there are other people that if you leave this world without a plan, you’re hindering them.

(04:42): So I do talk on that every once in a while. But, so it was utterly shocking and it really is. I look back and I think it’s a miracle that we’re here today based on the fact that Right, I knew nothing. I was trying to get over the loss of my father while couple hundred staff, you know, this crazy enterprise. But here we are. I stepped in and it took me two years to step in cuz it just looked like this is crazy talk. I don’t know why I ever would. But then over time I fell in love with our clients. I’ve recognized that there was something that was really beautiful about what my father had built and it could be carried on. It just needed that heart in the center of it to make it all work. And yeah, I increased our leads by 1176% the first year I stepped in and doubled our coaching clients multiple years in a row. And this year we’re up over 300%. And that’s without the book releasing just yet some, it’s a lot of wonderful things. My father had a great system and a great framework for how to grow organizations and I had to learn it from his books and his training programs instead of him explaining it to me. But nonetheless, I think I am probably one of his greatest success stories just because of that. Right.

John Jantsch (05:58): What was hard for you? I mean you, you, you obviously made some changes, you know, what was hard for you to change? I mean, not necessarily resistance, but just really hard for you to even wrap your head around

Amanda Holmes (06:10): Changing. So we had never processed an an order online. My father was very strict around, you know, every sale should come from a salesperson to having a conversation either over the phone or in person. So I can remember the first time that I put some pricing online and I took a moment and it was like, I’m so sorry dad. I know you said this , but times have changed and I have to do it, have to put some of our stuff online. So that was a big, that was a big turning point in learning how to do digital marketing was critical and selling things online. And then also a huge change was for me, the people that I surround myself with, a lot of them were very different than who my father surrounded himself with. So I find that the culture that he thrived in is different than the culture that I thrive in.

(07:02): And making that distinction because at first it was anybody that my father respected, ultimately they would say, well your father said I was the best in the planet on this. And I’d go, okay. And I’d put them up on this pedestal of who was the best, right? Cause my father said he was the best, even though I started realizing that everyone said that my father said they were the best. So then I started reading through his emails to try and figure out what he really thought of them. That was the way that I would find out. And then the next level was okay, just because my father said he was the best, now I have to discern, is this somebody that I can work with? And there were quite a few of them that did not work with me very well. And that’s okay. It’s just a little bit of a different modus opera Ren, but still the strategies are the same. So it was interesting to see that culture shift.

John Jantsch (07:52): So shifting gears a little bit to maybe a more positive, less of a challenge, what’s been the most fun for you?

Amanda Holmes (07:59): ? The marketing and sales part. Oh my gosh. Oh y’all appreciate this John. So I just, you know, I’m in this whole book tour thing going on right now, right? I just went to all these different trade shows. I spoke at HubSpots inbound, that’s where I saw that you’re in HubSpot Network. Congratulations on that. That’s awesome. So I went there with a four foot billboard strapped to my back cuz I was looking for a way for people that my father teaches, the first thing you need in a trade show is to get noticed. Yeah. And I was googling like, oh, maybe we’ll do a backpack and we’ll design a backpack or something. And then I found, I typed in human billboard and this huge thing, it’s a backpack, the straps, but it’s, and it lights up, it glows like the billboard sign. So I’ve been walking through all these trade shows with this four foot billboard on my back. I call her Bessie now because I’m very fond of her. And on the last day of trafficking conversion, actually they shut me down because I was creating such a buzz and generating so many sales that the sponsors, the booths were getting jealous

John Jantsch (09:04): .

Amanda Holmes (09:06): But that’s been a blast. And just being really creative about ways to get attention and then converting those, that attention into sales and leads and sales. That’s a ton of fun for me.

John Jantsch (09:19): Would you say that you’re, uh, and I know this is gonna sound sort of stereotypical, but would you say that your music background, your arts background, has brought a level of creativity that maybe didn’t exist?

Amanda Holmes (09:31): Absolutely. So the new edition of the book The Forward, instead of saying Dear Reader, I instead said Dear dad. And that was a, and it something that Julian Eon, my book coach at the time, had suggested I do. And when I wrote it, everyone that read that majority of grown men that read it would cry reading it. And they thought they, out of all the every page, every sentence, I made sure that it was some way to double sales. But that letter to my dad, everyone said lead with that cuz that’s going to touch more people than just doubling sales techniques. And I put that into a video actually. And that’s been what I’ve been using to promote the book. So to me that video is a music video. I wrote the lyrics, even though I’m not singing them, they’re written. But everything that I had as a songwriter, I put into that video. To me, that’s the single that came out with this new edition of the book, which is kind of funny to think about. But man, it is hitting people in a completely different way than I never expected. And it was the most nerve-wracking thing on the planet to put that thing out. I really thought that. I didn’t think that people would like it, but everybody kept saying, I love it, I love it. You should put that out. And it’s been such a loving response. So yeah, that, that songwriter in me, I think.

John Jantsch (10:55): Are you an agency owner, consultant or coach that works with business owners? Then I want to talk to you about adding a new revenue stream to your business that will completely change how you work with clients. For the first time ever, you can license and use the Duct Tape Marketing system and methodology in your business through an upcoming three day virtual workshop. Give us three days and you’ll walk away with a complete system that changes how you think about your agency’s growth. The Duct Tape Marketing System is a turnkey set of processes for installing a marketing system that starts with strategy and moves to long-term retainer implementation engagements. We’ve developed a system by successfully working with thousands of businesses. Now you can bring it to your agency and benefit from all the tools, templates, systems and processes we’ve developed. To find out when our next workshop is being held, visit dtm.world/workshop. That’s DTM world slash workshop. , describe who C HHI at CH Holmes and international works with. Who’s your typical client?

Amanda Holmes (12:02): Yes. Okay, I’ll answer that by asking you a question. And you probably know the answer to this. What percentage of businesses do you think make it to a million in annual sales?

John Jantsch (12:11): I don’t know the exact answer other than it’s relatively small. Not

Amanda Holmes (12:15): Really small. Yeah. If

John Jantsch (12:16): You had to guess, I’m gonna say 9%.

Amanda Holmes (12:19): Okay, let’s close, let’s close 5% of companies. Make it to a million of that 0.08%, make it to 5 million of that 1.5%, make it to 10 million so it gets a little bit better. then 0.004%, make it to a hundred million and beyond. So what we teach is how to get from a million to five, from 5 million to 10, from 10 million to a hundred million and beyond. Because it’s actually not about our product or service, which majority of entrepreneurs think, yes, if I just tweak this a little bit more, then I’ll get more. Right. If that was true, McDonald’s wouldn’t be the number one grossing hamburger joint in the world. Right? It’s a terrible burger. It’s skills it takes to grow the business and skills can be developed. So we assist entrepreneurs to grow from that one to five, from five to 10, from 10 to a hundred million and beyond.

John Jantsch (13:12): One of the core concepts, I have actually not, not seen what you’ve done in the second edition yet, but in the, certainly in the first edition. Well, and, and I know it’s a core concept of your coaching, is this, uh, concept of the Dream 100. I wonder if you could kind of describe that. Cause I know that’s a big E for

Amanda Holmes (13:28): You. Yes, it’s the fastest, least expensive way to double sales. This one strategy has doubled the sales of more companies than any other. My father invented it working for billionaire, Charlie Munger, co-chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. So he doubled the sales of nine different companies for Charlie all within 12 to 15 months, and several of them multiple years consecutively. So he realized that he had a system for doubling sales and it went something like this. So he was given a list of 2200 potential prospects and they said, okay, go cold. Call these 2200. But when he did some research, he realized that only 167 of them purchased 95% of the space. So instead of going after 2200, he led an intensive dream 100 to just those 167. Now it being in their face and their place and their space. What can we do to provide the most value for them?

(14:20): For him, back then it was direct mail, cold calling and faxing. So twice a month he was doing direct mail. Four times a month he was cold calling and following up with a fax in an email every once in a while. And he did that for months. For the first four months he got nothing, which un talked around the office like what is this? Why is this expert in sales? And he hasn’t generated a thing. But in the sixth month he closed the largest contract that the industry had ever seen. And then subsequently after that doubled the doubled. Now. So by definition, there’s always a smaller number of better buyers than there are all buyers. That means that marketing and selling to them is cheaper than marketing and selling to all buyers. And I’ve even, as I look at this and what you’ll see in the new edition is so many people get, they see the Dream 100 and they go, oh my gosh, how do I do direct mail?

(15:09): How can I make this work with direct mail? And how do I get a hundred people on my list? You’re missing the point if you’re super focused on just those two things. Because we have so many marketing mediums in our use today. I show how I used a dream. One, I focused on one potential dream client and I followed up with them every single day using social media. Every time they post something on social, I’d comment with something of value. Every time they posted another thing I’d add another piece of value and another comment. And another I, for every single day, for three months, I commented on every single thing that this person said. And three months in they came back to me and said, Hey, I’d like to buy 650 books of the Ultimate Sales Machine. I’m still reaping the benefits of that three months of pigheaded discipline and determination.

(15:57): Today they bought another thousand books. It’s actually, it was the CEO of ClickFunnels, so Dave Woodward I did this with. So the point is, it’s about picking who’s one person that could completely change your world. And then can you multiply that even by, you could have four, you could have 10, I’m calling it the target 12. It doesn’t have to be a hundred, right? The whole point is just to get laser focused and follow up with pigheaded discipline and determination, whichever medium that may be. If you wanna use direct mail, that’s great because it will land cuz nobody’s doing direct mail, right? Yeah. But if you wanna do it on Instagram dms, that’s where I did it to get that client. Right. It could be on LinkedIn, it could be on V voice drops on cell phones

John Jantsch (16:41): Or all of them. Right? Or all of them. Or all of them, right?

Amanda Holmes (16:43): . Yeah. If you only have a hundred, right? And you’re sending, if you’re doing Facebook ads to them, if you are sending them text messages, if you’re arriving at their door, they’re like, you are everywhere. It’s like, yeah, I’m only everywhere to the select 10, right? Select a hundred. So they’re just amazed, right?

John Jantsch (16:58): Yeah. And I think what’s so important about that lesson is you can now afford to spend money and time and energy that is gonna just swamp what anybody else is doing, you know, to that same person because they’re spraying it, you know, 10,000 people at a time.

Amanda Holmes (17:16): Absolutely. We had a client, so I went, I’ve created these bootcamps and a client went through the bootcamp, they went after four people that had already said no to their services. It was a hard, no, I’m definitely not interested. And then he led with an education to those four. After he gave the presentation of an education, he closed 8.4 million worth of sales in just six weeks. Six weeks. And the average sales rep would sell 8 million in an entire year. He did it in six weeks. Cuz he targeted his dream. He only needed four. Dream four to generate 8.4 million.

John Jantsch (17:54): So one of the challenges, I th I, you kind of alluded to this, we’re so focused on digital right now, you, you have yourselves firmly in what you’re calling old school processes, but they really, in some ways, some of the old school processes are working better than ever, aren’t they?

Amanda Holmes (18:12): Absolutely. I mean, take what I just did at trade shows. It’s shocking how many people at trade shows have no idea how to have a face-to-face conversation. I’d walk up to a booth and 90% of them had no idea how to start asking questions. You know, I’d ask, what do you do? And they have no idea. They look starstruck. Like what? You’re talking to me in real life. I don’t know what to do. . It’s so bizarre how we’ve lost the frameworks and the basic foundational principles. Everyone thought, oh, a billboard. Yeah, that’s brilliant. But then I also QR code there so that I could collect people that were taking pictures. Anyways, the first few days they were taking pictures of me cuz they thought it was hysterical. But then they didn’t realize that now I’m converting them cuz they’re clicking on that I’m getting their email and then they’re buying.

(19:00): So it’s blending of the two. My funnel online got me the sales, but me walking around with a four foot billboard on my back in a trade show got the attention in the press. And now I’ve taken vi video that I got from influencers in the space that were recording me cuz they thought it was hilarious. And I’m using that in my ads and I’m repurposing it, right? So there’s so many different ways that I think in person too. It was just at a mastermind with Grant Cardone two weeks ago, and there were 80 people in the room, all of which would’ve loved to talk to Grant Cardone. He walked out of the room and nobody followed him. And I’m looking around the room going, are you kidding me? That’s a billionaire. I’d love to talk to Grant Cardone. Why not? So I run out there and I start to have a dialogue with him. It’s like, it’s as if we only can communicate through a text or on right in an in a social media aspect. He was right there, live breathing. And I handed him the book and I said, you should watch Dear Dad, it’ll make you cry. I’ll send you a book. And he’s like, I will definitely cry from that. I’m sure I will. I love that. Thank you .

John Jantsch (20:01): Amanda, thanks for dropping by the Duct Tape Marketing podcast. Tell people where they can find all the work that you’re doing and certainly get a copy of the new book or the rev revised updated, fully updated book.

Amanda Holmes (20:12): Yes. Ultimate sales machine.com is where everybody can pick up the book, but it’ll give you a bunch of extra bonuses that you wouldn’t get on Amazon. And then if you wanna online, I’m a lot of different places, but I spend more of my time on Instagram. My name Amanda Holmes was taken, so I’d use my salsa name Amanda Dita. So you can find me on Instagram at manita holmes.

John Jantsch (20:34): All right, awesome. Well, great having you back on the show again and uh, hopefully we’ll run into you again, one of these days out there on the road.

Amanda Holmes (20:42): Thank you John. It was such a

John Jantsch (20:43): Blessing. Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. You can learn the science behind great marketing with bite size 20 minute episodes, packed with practical advice from world-class marketers and behavioral scientists. And it’s not always about marketing. Great episode. Recently you learned the surprising truths about and tips for beating, stress and anxiety. Sounds like a great program, doesn’t it? Listen to Nudge wherever you get your podcasts. Hello, welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and my guest today is Andrew Warden. He is the CMO of S e m, rush Sam Rush. We’ll talk about that time. Rose in a second as well. That half our conversation, right , it’s an online visibility management SaaS platform that is used by millions of marketers worldwide, including this one. So, uh, Andrew, welcome to the

Andrew Warden (01:14): Show. Great, thanks so much. So good to be here. And let me just cla, let me just jump really quick cuz this is like one of the hottest contested things in our community, I would say. And beyond. It is some rush here. It’s here, here. The way that it sounds, the way it rolls off your tongue. Think people, it’s true. Historically it was s SCM rush and it didn’t help when we went public because our stock checker is S E M R. So people automatically, but if you wanna know where the brand of the heart is, it’s with Cem Rush

John Jantsch (01:39): . Yeah, I actually was gonna ask you that directly and then I actually blew it in the intro , but I know I’ve even seen some of the videos you’ve produced of, you know, making fun of. Sure. The idea , is it, I’m curious since we got on the topic, even though it’s a goofy topic. No. Is there a regional preference? Like, do Americans use one or the other? No.

Andrew Warden (02:00): Or you know, I think it’s, I actually, I don’t think it’s necessarily linked to geography. Yeah, I think that’s linked to history, right? Number one, because originally right, the founding of the company was, it’s always like right square in the search engine marketing at the Yeah, yeah, yeah. Kind of diehard SEO community. And that’s true and that’s still very much a core of our community. But you know, now, gosh, 14 years later, we’re 55 plus tools, not only seo, not only at the sweet spot. So I think it’s probably more linked to his history and maybe our, maybe our diehard SEO fans. Right. S e m, right. Yeah.

John Jantsch (02:34): So you’ve been, in fact, I think you had a LinkedIn post at celebrating your one year anniversary. Mm-hmm. . So you’ve been there a year. I’m curious, just because I didn’t give a lot of background, obviously, what prepared you to take on this job as, you know, really a somewhat mature organization?

Andrew Warden (02:49): Yeah. Well, I mean, this is my third time as a cmo, right? So it’s not my first rodeo, I would say. I think you’re referencing this, this LinkedIn post. I, you know, it’s taken me so many years to be absolutely comfortable with being vulnerable as a leader, wearing my heart on my sleeve. There’s a lot of people who totally go against this concept or they say, no, you should always be rather stoic and be very, you know, but I, you know, after years and years, you know, working with people from all different backgrounds know late state, later stage career, early stage career, at the end of the day, you know, people just want a path to grow. They want a path to grow themselves. They want, obviously we want to earn, but people wanna be engaged, you know? And so that post I was reflecting after a year, you know, it’s like all of the things, all of the points in my career of the super heights, you know, being at Cisco when I was in my early twenties, you know, promoted several times in a couple of years to crashing and burning effectively with a startup with our own money and, you know, several other people’s money and we’re all still friends.

(03:47): But the points of the kind of the peaks and the valleys and even some of the troughs, it’s like, you know, have this moment, this illuminating moment a couple weeks ago where it’s like this was all preparing for this exact moment, actually. Right. And that’s really resonated with, I’m, I’m really curious and happy that you bring it up cuz a lot of people have been talking about this, right? It’s like, not many officers of public companies are making such statements, but I have to, you know, and it resonates with our team internally. It resonates with people outside. Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:13): Frankly, I think self-awareness is the new, like, key leadership skill. Frankly,

Andrew Warden (04:17): I, I couldn’t agree with you more. I, you know, really, you know, I, I, for years it’s always kind of this player coach mentality. You know, people at the, my job, at the end of the day, again, I am a very hands-on cmo. I get stuck into any given day. I get stuck into ad copy or going to board level to ad copy. I’m always there to jump in and help a junior and a senior member of the team out. But at the end of the day, you know, I just try to remove as many blockages. And those can be sometimes budget or resource blockage, but it can also be psychological blockage, right? Sometimes people get in the way of themselves how to unlock people. And that’s where I think the awareness that you’re talking about, you know, really comes in. Yeah.

John Jantsch (04:53): . So as a cmo, given the DNA n all these acronyms, of the organization, do you feel a tug to just do more SEO sometimes?

Andrew Warden (05:04): So I feel a tug to do more seo. No, actually it, yeah.

John Jantsch (05:07): I mean, you use that like as your core channel.

Andrew Warden (05:09): I got you. Yeah, that’s a great question. Yeah. Actually, I can tell you something. No, cuz it’s been the opposite this year. I can tell you that this year, this past year, we made significant, I mean, incremental, significant and material investments into large scale paid campaigns. And actually that was a really interesting inflection point for us as a company. It’s like, you know, we, we are on a rocket ship trajectory, right? We have the, again, all the DNA as you said, of startup culture, right? High educated risk taking, high experimentation, fast fail in like a matter of weeks versus quarters and quarters. And I really look at the whole mix. But one of the things that I noticed as soon as I came in September of 29, excuse me, 2021, is that we were not experimenting as much as I would like to with paid, right? Because we have very, very competitive, I’d say ad positions compared to other others in our set. But I will tell you that the organic piece for next year and for the others, there will start to be more balance. But no, I don’t, I don’t, I don’t face any problems of inertia, if you will, on, you know, given that SEO is at our core. But at the same time, it’s also something that we should be pretty damn good at, right? Because we, that’s how we started .

John Jantsch (06:20): Yeah. I hate to say it. I always, you know, I get pitches like everybody from SEO experts that are gonna put me on page one and it’s like, I can’t find you . This

Andrew Warden (06:29): Is a big deal. And also anyone promising a silver bullet like that, especially so quickly, right? It’s always something to be very wary of. Yeah.

John Jantsch (06:37): Yeah. Absolutely. So, so let’s talk a little more about your experimental process. Yeah. I mean, do you have a process for saying totally, you know, we’re gonna throw these 10 things out there, here’s how we’re gonna measure ’em. I’d love to

Andrew Warden (06:47): Hear them. We absolutely do. So I’d like to, we have a, a system set up, and this was already in place, uh, before I joined. I’m just putting, I’m just adding more fuel to it. I would say, at least from a marketing side. So we have a quarterly bets and experimentation program. And I like to think of it, these are totally my words. I was like O OKRs on steroids, right? Yeah, yeah. This is like, you know, bets are what we believe is possible. And we have a format that’s really clear. It’s like, what is it that we wanna do? Why is it needed? Why do we believe X is possible? And here’s how we measure success. Like, here’s what success is and here’s what failure is. And the most important thing is crucial for me is that it’s okay for ABET to fail. And when, you know, for me, this is also the big difference in my opinion of like kind of big corporate, uh, versus a company like Seru, right?

(07:39): I would rather a leader, usually, you know, BES can be conceived by anybody in the company, right? But I will hold our VPs or heads of accountable for, for the mixture between experiments and bets. The, I would rather somebody focus on two, three or four bets and know if one of them pans off, you know, pans out. Like we’re off to the races. I’m always after a sign of life, you know? And so it is so helpful to hear how teams think about bets on a quarterly basis of, yeah, we think that we can capture more people through advertising on Hulu. We think that Bec, which is a new channel, right? We think that’s possible because, you know, X percent of our demographic for this persona hangs out there, right? And we believe it’s possible to achieve X number of registrations, trials, subscriptions or payments.

(08:26): And if it makes less than a certain amount, we’re like, you know what? It just didn’t work out and we should not do that for another couple of years. And it’s very similar with experiments, I would say are a little bit even more further afield. Like it’s a could even little more out there, right? But we have a hypothesis that actually we just did one of these experiments, I don’t have the result yet, which is kind of a letdown for this kind of conversation. Sorry. But we did a direct mail experiment. How’s that for a SEO or for a digital marketing company? You know, it’s like, I wait for the team and I said, has anybody sensed literally a mailer to small business owners? You know, cuz I have this contention that small business owners, it’s not necessarily like me or like you or somebody else who hangs out online, right? The barber,

John Jantsch (09:08): Yeah. They’re not reading search engine land.

Andrew Warden (09:09): The barber who’s cutting my hair, who I love, right, is opening the door for me, cutting my hair, sweeping the floor register. You know, like, this person isn’t on LinkedIn, you know, it’s like, how are you reaching that person? So, so we did two different tests over the summer, or sorry, one over the summer. I think one just went out as well. So I’m waiting to see, I have no idea, but this is what I, you know, you ask about experimentation and you always have to make sure that you’re carving out, you know, 10, 10, 15% of your budget, of your spend to try new channels. Because the moment that you rest on the laurels of the channel that’s working so well for you is the moment it stops doing that.

John Jantsch (09:45): No question bec if it’s working well for you, other people are using it too. Right? To me, when I hear that, it sounds like, like if I came to you and said, Hey, I have an idea, we should do both. It sounds to me like the hypothesis has gotta be really, so like, you really believe this is going to work

Andrew Warden (10:01): Because

John Jantsch (10:01): Absolutely.

Andrew Warden (10:02): Right? Yep. Yeah, yeah. No, you can’t just like, you can’t just be like, Hey John, I want to, you know, I want to go and take out an ad in the Wall Street Journal. Okay, why do you wanna do that? I don’t know. I mean, a lot of people read it. No, you know, you know, you have to be able to, I mean, look, you could, there are ways to make that more scientific. You can say, you know, during this period there, or the Wall Street Journal, you know, more for financially focused people, it’s like earnings typically happen between this day and this day. Tech earnings come out between this day and this day. So we want to run this and with this type of promotion, because people in that demographic tend to buy around that period. It all has to be, it’s quite, it’s a lot more scientific than I had anticipated. I’ll put it that way. Love. But I love that

John Jantsch (10:42): You’re gonna get, you’re, you’re gonna get a sales call from the Wall Street Journal now, I

Andrew Warden (10:45): Guarantee. Yeah. Well, we’re already talking to him. That’s okay. ,

John Jantsch (10:48): Are you an agency owner, consultant or coach that works with business owners? Then I want to talk to you about adding a new revenue stream to your business that will completely change how you work with clients. For the first time ever, you can license and use the Duct Tape Marketing system and methodology in your business through an upcoming three day virtual workshop. Give us three days and you’ll walk away with a complete system that changes how you think about your agency’s growth. The Duct Tape Marketing System is a turnkey set of processes for installing a marketing system that starts with strategy and moves to long-term retainer implementation engagements. We’ve developed a system by successfully working with thousands of businesses. Now you can bring it to your agency and benefit from all the tools, templates, systems and processes we’ve developed. To find out when our next workshop is being held, visit dtm.world/workshop.

(11:45): That’s DTM world slash workshop. All right. You kind of may alluded to this already, but I was going to ask you, I mean, it’s certainly, I’ve been, uh, a some rush user for many years. Thank you. And I certainly saw it as, uh, as an SEO tool. Mm-hmm. over the year. Well, it was more than that years ago, but it is certainly more than that now. What’s been the challenge of getting, of changing people’s thinking that oh no, it’s 50 tools and it’s, you know, it’s a, in fact, I think you even called it an online visibility platform as, as a differentiator. Yeah. Is that mo moving the definition of what your company is? Yeah. Has that been

Andrew Warden (12:23): A challenge? It’s a, it’s a huge, I mean, it’s still very much in progress, right? I mean, again, we are so, and thank you for being a user for all these years as well. You know, I don’t take anything for granted. And there’s so many solutions out there. I would say that, you know, we, we believe, you know, over the next several years, and we, I mean, we see it right now. We feel it right now, but we also know, particularly with small business owners, that breaking through the noise in today’s market, right? This, and, and that’s, it’s not even necessarily new. This kind of like fragmented view for a consumer. And, you know, people spend on average seven hours online. You know, it’s, but how do you actually get through all of that noise and reach a prospective customer? How are you building your audiences?

(12:59): And you know, again, all respects like that started out with seo, you know, but at the same time, we realize over time that there’s a need amongst our own user base and our future customers for content creation, for market research. You know, you name it, you know, for traffic analytics, right? It’s not only about finding what your audience is looking for, what they’re searching for, it’s also like, how do I solve the problem of now figuring out how to talk to them and engage them, right? So if you’re asking me is it a challenge to change how we’re, how we are viewed in the market? Absolutely. You know, but at, you know, at the same time we’re adding, uh, we’re adding, our growth rate has not slowed over the last couple of years. So when you think about a comp a cagr, a compounding annual growth, we are, our velocity is not slowing down. So we are adding more and more people in expending our own audience in reach. So I would imagine the days where this is a big, you know, question for the future, the days are, you know, this kind of s e m rush or the core of seo, I think that will always remain amongst, especially our initial users. But I think that there’s also a future people join because they have like myriad problems they’re trying to solve. Right? Not only seo. Yeah.

John Jantsch (14:07): Yeah. And that’s how they’re introduced to you. Yes. Yeah. You know, of the brand is different. Yeah. Let’s move a little bit to, could you, cuz I know you’re running some, you know, some television that is, I would call it very branding oriented as opposed to say growth oriented. Has that, is that a conscious, in other words, it’s not saying buy this because it’ll get you this result mm-hmm. , it’s more like your CEO will think this, you know, that

Andrew Warden (14:29): Kind of, are you talking about the, that kind of thing? Are you talking about the most recent one? Yeah. Okay. Okay. I call this,

John Jantsch (14:34): And that’s just an example. My real question is, yeah. You know, how do you as an organization that’s this mature, how do you start, how do you start balancing mm-hmm the need for branding mm-hmm versus the need for just like, we gotta have X amount of new

Andrew Warden (14:46): Users. I think the problem starts is that we think they’re separate because those campaigns are, the goal for those campaigns are new users and they’re achieving them. The first one we did in the year will exceed the target. The second, which was the second campaign, which is, which was a dedicated for small business owners. And we’re, you know, this year is as much as it has been. Alright. You know about growth, we’re also doing what I call these gro experiments, large experiments. So these foray into connected TV advertising, the using the same creative that can be used for, of course, banners and digital classic. We can also then use that. There’s so much production value you can turn around to Hulu or YouTube, connected tv, Disney plus, like you name it. And you can like literally upload that ad and set a budget and go.

(15:33): So this year is also about testing new audiences, new ideas, uh, new ways to engage. And one of our big bets is looking at what I would call, and I didn’t mean to correct you, but what I mean is that there’s like brand, you are right? That like the approach is more about positioning the company and how it can help you grow, right? This is this, I call, these are, this is a customer needs based play versus a classic like, you know, every tool you need for x per month, right? That’s more of what you call the classic performance or growth marketing. Yeah. Those hacks. But guess what? We’re really good at the ladder. Like we’re pretty okay at that, right? In terms of digital and paid and even on the organic side. But we have incredibly aggressive growth plans over the next five to 10 years.

(16:19): And so I’ve gotta be able to lay my head on the pillow at night knowing that we’re testing every new channel, every new style of marketing and advertising that we can to keep new or existing and new customers engaged. So, but I do love how you distinction. You make a distinction right from off the bat. Cause I get that a lot. People are like, well, you know, but this is a big kind of like kind of branding push on connected tv. And it’s like, yeah, but we can trace back the connection that we acquired that that user, the attention of that user from that ad, and we can trace it through to visiting us. We can trace it through to registering, doing a trial and eventually becoming Summer’s customer. So

John Jantsch (16:58): Yeah, you, I think you can almost make a case for saying it’s targeting It is in a way because I think your core acquisition person that says this tools for this much and they know what those tools are, right? . That’s right. Whereas your typical business owners actually, like, I don’t really wanna know what the tools are. Yeah. I wanna solve this problem.

Andrew Warden (17:14): Yep. Yeah. And again, these are very large plays and I, I’m not here saying every single one of these is gonna knock it out of the apartment. It’s a goal obviously. Sure. But think that, I can tell you that the entire team, the entire, you know, it’s 200, 200 marketers and, and the organization every day we’re learning every day. We’re stretching what we thought was possible, again, on our existing user base, what people want to expand for their relationship with Somers, but also like net new people who have totally different needs and value sets compared to existing. Yeah.

John Jantsch (17:43): So couple, maybe these are your easy questions. Maybe these are hard question. Sure. Just a couple more questions. Is there a small set of metrics that you rely on as

Andrew Warden (17:53): A cm, A small set? No, they’re only big.

John Jantsch (17:55): I wanted to say small because , because I didn’t wanna see what you can measure. Yeah, I, yeah, .

Andrew Warden (18:01): Well, yeah, I, I would say small at Sam Rush is big and it would be, I would, that I wouldn’t want in any other way. But the ones that I really live in the stress or get excited, you know, we measure very much on new user mrr. So look, you know, as a SAS based company, you’ve got sa classic SA SaaS metrics, and we’re a very different organization in terms of marketing than I would say at other kind of corporations or big comp, you know, and a lot of companies, marketing is assisting with sales and kind of provides MQs or SQLs to sales leadership, and then they carry on and close the deal at Sun Rush. Actually, it’s a little bit different. We are responsible for bringing in new user acquisition, right? And that’s a material difference from other companies. So the emphasis and the laser focus on metrics is like, not optional.

(18:49): You have to know every day. So I’m looking at, I’m looking always at registrations, at trials. Trials is always a leading indicator. If, you know, if we see a swell in trials, there will be a, certainly a bump in new subscriptions. But new user MRI is my first, the first kind of traffic light, if you will. I’m also looking at increase or decline of our own spending, right? Because sometimes we slow down the engine either during holiday periods or periods where we don’t think people are gonna have the propensity to buy. And that’s, we don’t always get that right. You know, it’s hard to know when to pull, pull or release that lever. I’m also looking at global dynamics, like different by different markets. Like right now, the dollar fluctuation, you know, is difficult for a lot of companies, right? And Yeah, yeah. You know, in Europe, gosh, I just came back from meetings with the team in Amsterdam in London.

(19:34): I got back late last night. And you know what you actually, you see and feel not only inflation, but also the currency, uh, fluctuation. You know, in London it’s like 1.15 to the dollar. I mean, even when I was in grad school in 2007, it was never that low. You know? It’s like it hasn’t been that low in, in 30 years or something. So, so there are different dynamics about the global economy, but I would say if you’re asking for the shortest list, the shortest list, I get nine emails every morning at 7:32 AM that give me the holistic view of the business. But I would tease those as the kind of the ones that really matter. Yeah.

John Jantsch (20:09): Yeah. All right. So pretend you were speaking to a group of CMOs in an audience only today and somebody said, what do you think is the biggest challenge for most CMOs today? What would your answer

Andrew Warden (20:22): Be? I would say the loss of innovation culture. And I would say too much emphasis on having to be the smartest person in the room that is to the CMO audience. I would say that it is increasingly more and more difficult. Look, as marketers, we are, it’s almost like encoded in our own dna, our personal dna. Every single action you take must yield an outcome, must yield a financial improvement, right? To, to the top line even. And I think that the reality is, you know, again, it depends on which stage of growth you’re in as a company or even if you’re, even as a small business or, or a large business. The fact is marketing is a constantly evolving and field. Literally the pitch, the field, the markers change every day. You know, as soon as, like I said before, as soon as you find a channel that works, it doesn’t work anymore.

(21:10): Or you say something that your audience doesn’t like, and then you kind of get like temporary put in the timeout box. You know, it’s like, it happens. And, but I think that is also condition people, and I would also, I do say this to my peers, that it conditions us to like be risk averse and to not take, take too much time on experiments. I mean, I have, for example, every month I have what I call elevator pitch sessions. Like, anybody can turn up to this call. It’s like 15, 18 minutes long. You get two slides, you get five minutes. You know, it’s like, what’s your idea? What do you wanna do? What do you, you know, and it can be a request for like a 50 k campaign. It can be a request for a 5 million acquisition doesn’t, or 10 or whatever. You know, that’s not the point.

(21:49): And it’s funny, these are, they’re meant to be intentionally very snappy, very quick. Like if anybody’s kind of droning on, it’s like, come on, tell me the, what’s the point? What’s the point? But, you know, I’ll tell you like, we’ve done real things based on those, like we’ve done, we’ve made That’s cool. Real investments. Material investments. And so, yeah, I would just say that, you know, I think especially as a cmo, it’s very easy to get kind of stuck in your own routine and rhythm of what works. And I think that’s why I was just reflecting after a year, like, I have more energy, John than when I started. And usually like, you know, you kind of know yourself at this stage in your career. Usually you’re like, okay, I found this works. We’re gonna go ahead into budgeting season and then we’re gonna, we’re gonna keep going. But like, I make stuff, I make shit every single day, you know? And as soon as, as a CMO, I think is an executive leader, as soon as you stop doing that, like, like you personally, I think you have to kinda reevaluate what’s going on. Right? Like, I

John Jantsch (22:42): Think those little mini pitches sound really empowering, especially imagine somebody who like, got their deal.

Andrew Warden (22:47): Anybody. Yeah. No, but really, but we have like junior pr ex execs within the team, like with a handful of years of experience. Like, I want to do, I wanna try this, you know? And I’m like, why is that a good idea? Well, are you sure? Why? Tell me why you believe it. You know? And it’s like, it’s even just going through that experience or in your career, it changes you, right? It, it opens your mind. And that’s also, you know, really important to me.

John Jantsch (23:10): Yeah. Awesome. Well, Andrew, it was really a pleasure to have you stop by the Duct Tape Marketing, uh, podcast. Yeah. And I, we can, you can tell people how they can reach Sim Rush. You can spell it for them , if you like. Oh, sure. We’ll have it in, well, we’ll have it in the show notes. It’s on your shirt. Yeah. Sim

Andrew Warden (23:25): Rush.com. Seru dot Yeah. I’m not, I can’t, yeah. So I, I would That’s as simple as it can be.

John Jantsch (23:30): Yeah, absolutely. Well, hopefully we’ll run into you one of these days out the, uh, on the road. In fact, the end of this week, I’m gonna be in Aus. Oh,

Andrew Warden (23:36): Great. Stop by .

John Jantsch (23:37): Yeah. Which I know you’re

Andrew Warden (23:38): Go for. Go for a drink. Cool. Alright. Thanks for having me. Cheers. Appreciate

John Jantsch (23:42): It. Hi. Hey, and one final thing before you go, you know, know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketing assessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.

John Jantsch (00:00): This episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast is brought to you by Nudge, hosted by Phil Agnew. It’s brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. You can learn the science behind great marketing with bite size 20 minute episodes, packed with practical advice from world-class marketers and behavioral scientists. And it’s not always about marketing. Great episode. Recently you learned the surprising truths about and tips for beating, stress and anxiety. Sounds like a great program, doesn’t it? Listen to Nudge wherever you get your s

(00:48): Hey, hello, and welcome to another episode of the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast. This is John Jantsch, and I am doing another solo show, just you and me in the radio, as they say. I guess somebody probably said, I’m gonna talk about something that I’ve been talking a lot about lately called the Customer Success Track, little plug for my latest book, the Ultimate Marketing Engine. I talk about it in depth in there, and there’s all kinds of resources. And if you’re listening to this show in August of 2022, you can pick up the Kindle version for 2 99. Okay, there’s a commercial today, but if this topic resonates, go get the book because I go so deep in into it. So here’s the basis premise behind this customer success track. Over the years, I started to recognize, and again, I didn’t wake up on day one and say, this is how the world is over tons and tons of experience, years clients, prospects.

(01:46): I’ve started to realize that there are about five stages of marketing that many businesses go through, and some of them rush through them. Some of ’em hang out in one stage or the another for a long time. But I’ve been able to recognize the characteristics of a business in that stage based a lot on what’s going on in their marketing or what’s going on in, you know, increasingly in their online presence. I know what challenges they’re probably facing at that point because of where they are, but I also know have been able to identify the milestones that we need to move them through, and consequently the tasks associated to each of those milestones. And if we do that, I mean, it’s basically a task list of things that need to be accomplished. If we do that, we can also say, but here’s the promise of moving through that stage.

(02:38): I’m gonna go into some depth from a marketing standpoint. So if you’re a business owner out there thinking, okay, he’s talking about me right now, , maybe it’ll give you some clues to what you need to be looking at in your marketing. If you’re a marketer, if you’re a consultant, listening to this and you work with folks on their marketing, this is a great way to start thinking about how you would retain clients for a longer time, because you’ve got a roadmap that you’re working from. And again, as I said, the much, much more depth on this in the Ultimate Marketing engine and a lot of things that I’ve been writing about. But I thought I would bring it out today, because I think what happens is a lot of times people can’t really identify the problem, or they think the solution is, I just need more leads.

(03:20): Well, what I’m gonna share today is that’s not always the challenge. Uh, there is sort of a linear order to how things need to be done, how things need to be built, how your business will evolve. And I think to some degree, you can start recognizing it’s hard you if you get stuck, because a lot of businesses get to a certain point, frankly, and they’ve grown. They’re doing some things that maybe now they’re juggling a lot of balls, dropping a few plates, but outwardly they appear to have succeeded some. And so they a lot of times dig in and just try to do more where they are. And what I wanna suggest through this idea of the customer success track and the stages in the customer success track is there’s certain things you as the owner, the founder, the head of marketing, whatever your role is, need to start doing differently at each of these stages.

(04:08): And I think sometimes that’s what trips people up. There are a lot of people that, that they love tinkering. They love DIYing, they love getting in and digging under the hood and figuring things out, even if it takes ’em all day long to do it. And that has to change if in fact you wanna move through these stages. So that’s a little bit of what, what I’m gonna talk about today. All right, so let’s talk about the stages. I’ve given ’em names. There are five of them. I’m gonna go through the characteristics, and I’m hopeful that you’ll listen and go, oh, wait a minute. That’s some of what I’m experiencing. So that must be where I am. All right. The stages are foundation, level up, organize, stabilize, and scale. Now, those are arbitrary names. That’s just a name that we pinned to each of the stages.

(04:54): If you’re thinking about developing something like this for your own practice or for your own offerings that you go out there, obviously five’s even an arbitrary number, but we just found that who we worked with, that was a good way to delineate. All right, so what are the characteristics of that foundation business? Quite often, sometimes, but not always. They’re in a startup mode. They’re very founder-driven. All the sales are typically happening from the founder going out there and knocking on doors almost. There’s no website leads coming in. They’ve maybe built a website, it’s kind of a brochure, but no leads coming in. They’re talking about their company, they’re talking about their products in most of their marketing, the, there’s not a consistent online presence. I mean, we see this all the time. Maybe they’ve got a LinkedIn profile, they’ve got a a, you know, Google business profile page, and there’s off branding, off names off what they call it. I mean, there’s just, it’s a lot of inconsistencies. And typically it’s because they’ve not attached any value to participating in social media. They’re not using email in a consistent manner. Even if they’re getting, getting clients, they’re not using email to nurture those leads, to nurture those clients to actually get repeat business.

(06:06): Part of the reason, some of the challenges of being in this stage, marketing’s changing quickly, or at least it really feels like it. I think it, we run into folks all the time in this part of their, and they just don’t know where to invest. I mean, somebody tells me I need to buy this. Somebody tells me I need to be here. Social media in a lot of cases, feels like a waste, particularly when you use it the way you see so many people using it. Repeat business is not coming your way, and frankly, you’ve got too many tasks.

(06:38): Any of that sound like you . Those are the challenges. Now, here’s the payoff. , if we can fix, if you can fix those challenges, if you can start addressing the fact that you have to look at your website, for example, in a much different way, you have to actually start telling stories. You have to actually start using email. You have to actually start understanding the problem you solve for your customers. Some of the strategic things that go into actually creating a consistent online presence, the promise of that is that you’re now gonna have a website that’s prepared to not only attract leads, but convert them. You’re gonna get traffic flow from the search engines because you’re creating useful content that people want to find, people want to read, you’re addressing the problems they’re trying to solve. You can start generating reviews, perhaps automatically using some of the tools that are available today. And you can start thinking about re-engaging past customers. That’s the promise of getting just the foundational stage built.

(07:40): Now, obviously, that may not make the phone ring, that may not actually take you from a revenue standpoint where you want to go. So what’s the next level of maturity? The next stage, we actually call that one level up. A lot of times people will get that website built, they work with a marketer. I mean, they’re starting to produce content, they’re starting to optimize some of their assets out there, but they’re not really converting any of that web traffic. I mean, I guess the first trick is to get some traffic there, , but they’re, it’s not converting. So, so frankly, if you get things out of order, let’s say at this stage you wanna start running ads, well, you’re gonna be wasting a lot of money because until you’re converting traffic that comes to your website, there’s no point sending or or getting traffic that comes there.

(08:26): You’re not getting into page one. You know, search engine results are on maps in for local businesses. They’re, they’re still okay, you’ve bought into social media, but there’s no engagement, which is really the only thing that matters. Leads are coming in, but you don’t have any real systematic way to follow up on them. You’re starting to think about online advertising, but not really sure what to do. And then this is what another thing we commonly run into at this stage. There’s no sales process, not one that’s repeatable anyway. Everything just kind of happens as it happens. Now, again, part of the challenges of being in this stage is maybe you’ve got customers, maybe you’re fulfilling orders, but you don’t have enough time to produce content that, or at least the volume of content that marketers say you need Today. You’re not really sure what content to produce.

(09:16): Online advertising seems both complex and expensive. You’re not converting enough leads. You’re starting to have those conversations, but you’re not really converting them into customers. And unfortunately, at this stage, in many cases, because there aren’t systems built for fulfillment, you’re not retaining those clients. So at this stage, what we’re working on doing now is creating landing pages, creating and narrowing the focus of an ideal customer, creating ways in which we can make content really for all stages of the customer journey. Creating trust on the website, creating an actual journey with calls to action, and maybe some free downloads so you can start capturing those leads that are, or that traffic that’s coming to your website because they’re interested in something you’re putting out there. So if we can get that, now we’ve got the foundation built, and now we’re starting to layer on conversion. I mean, we’re starting to layer on, okay, we’ve got people coming now, what’s gonna turn them into customers?

(10:17): Or what’s gonna at least put them into our pipeline? So the promise there is that, that now first off, you’re gonna start attracting higher quality traffic and leads, because that’s one of the real challenges in that foundation mode is you might be attracting some leads, but they’re the wrong leads. So you’re gonna get more ideal client interactions at this phase. Search engines and maps are gonna start noticing you, you all, you will create, because at this stage, you’re now ready to create some automatic lead capture and follow up. You’re going to create a solid sales process at this stage so that you can start to consistently converting leads that in, in those sales conversations that you’re having. Are you an agency owner, consultant or coach that works with business owners? Then I want to talk to you about adding a new revenue stream to your business that will completely change how you work with clients.

(11:08): For the first time ever, you can license and use the Duct Tape Marketing System and methodology in your business through an upcoming three day virtual workshop. Give us three days and you’ll walk away with a complete system that changes how you think about your agency’s growth. The Duct Tape Marketing System is a turnkey set of processes for installing a marketing system that starts with strategy and moves to long-term retainer implementation engagements. We’ve developed a system by successfully working with thousands of businesses. Now you can bring it to your agency and benefit from all the tools, templates, systems, and processes we’ve developed to find out when our next workshop is being held, visit dtm.world/workshop. That’s DTM world slash workshop. All right, now we’ve got somebody up and running. So, so you can see we’re kind of building on this. So once we’re up and running, we’re gonna move into organized.

(12:06): Now what’s happening here is, okay, now I’m starting to get leads. I’m starting to have sales conversations, but now I’m kind of a mess . Now I’m not tracking client relationships. I’m not really fully tracking my marketing results because I’m running too fast. I’m not upselling, I’m not cross-selling, I’m not taking advantage now of the fact that if I just drove more traffic there, say, through advertising, I’m really in a, in many cases, I’m still fighting that competitive dynamic. I’m not seen as a leader necessarily. Now, again, , the challenges that that this stage brings quite often is that your lead cycles are really up and down. Sometimes it’s busy, sometimes it’s slow, , sometimes you can keep up, sometimes you can’t. I mean, marketing return is hard to understand. There’s so many things that go into it, and if you’re not really accurately tracking, it’s a challenge.

(13:01): Client acquisition seems really hard, or maybe expensive. Sales processes still at this point are very manual and customer service. Now, has become an issue and is in inconsistent. So what are we gonna go to work on here? This is a place where we certainly are gonna start talking about the need for a CRM . At this stage, you need to be using some of the tools that allow you to automate some of your marketing, to track some of your clients, to Segment who’s coming to your website. We’re gonna set up a dashboard. You know, at this stage, we want to know what’s working, what’s not working, . We’re gonna track calls, we’re gonna track emails, we’re gonna track ad spend. We are going to start thinking about campaigns now to retain customers, campaigns specifically to sell more to existing customers. We’re probably gonna start talking about referrals here.

(13:52): We are certainly at this point, can take advantage of some of the online advertising, but we also have to really focus on what happens when somebody becomes a customer. This is the stage where we certainly could go to work earlier on this, but we find that this is where it becomes so crucial that we can make it a priority. And that’s the customer experience, the onboarding, the follow up, the communication, the orientation. I mean, all those as set intentions that we can repeat, you know, time and time again. So we do this in this stage, and now we’re gonna see a consistent lead flow. We’re not gonna be wasting money on advertising because we’re gonna understand what works, what doesn’t. We’re gonna automate some of the lead nurturing, not as a way to shield ourselves from having to talk to customers, but as a way to actually create a frictionless, better experience for prospects and customers.

(14:44): We’re gonna be converting the right customers and we’re gonna have much higher retention and referral. This is the place where a lot of businesses, I mean, getting to this space is really the goal. Many businesses don’t even reach this stage, but also this is a place where now all of a sudden, if we’re gonna go beyond this, we can’t just add more revenue, we just can’t add more sales because we’re not gonna be able to handle it. We have to add team, we have to add delegate delegation. This is the place at which, quite frankly, the marketer, the doer, the task doer who has maybe moved to being task manager, . This is the place where we need actually a real CEO . We need the head of the organization to form, because this is the, I don’t know where the revenue is, but it’s certainly when we’re gonna go north of a million in revenue.

(15:37): Obviously that’s an arbitrary figure because types of businesses are different, but this is the one to 10 to 50 million range where short of a leadership team, short of, uh, you being a CEO and no longer being the marketing manager or the marketing doer, has to happen. So what’s happening here, you know, we’re using, and the characteristics now are actually more positive because you’re using a CRM for sales. You’ve established some marketing KPIs. Maybe now you’re starting to get the room, the breathing room, to think, Hey, we can develop new products, new offerings. We’ve got online advertising working for us well enough. Maybe we’re starting to feel like, Hey, we’re a bigger player. We need to get more involved in the community, more involved in our industry. We need to start developing internal marketing roles. Now the challenge, of course, at this stage, the all those characteristics sound lovely, right?

(16:34): Profitability starts to vary. At this stage, we maybe we’re really pumping in expenses cause we’re buying advertising, we’re adding team. So expenses are increasing rapidly. It’s tough to maintain marketing momentum with the growth that’s coming and even harder to maintain fulfillment, it’s time to actually probably bring on a strategic marketing hire as well. And this is the point where a lot of founders actually have to start analyzing, am I the right person to be in this seat, to be the ceo? Do I need a coo? Do I need somebody who’s actually not only running marketing, but to somebody who’s actually running operations or at least creating the delegation and the systems and the processes for getting all the work done. So in many cases, this is where we’ll definitely go to work on trying to automate things in an elegant way. Again, not to just shield the, the business from ever having to talk to anyone.

(17:33): This is where we’ll make significant talk about making significant investments in both marketing spend, team spend, and then I guess a third one, operations spend. If in some cases this is the place, you know, for many of our consultants, for example, this is a place where they need to start adding account managers. They need to ac actually start adding managerial levels in, in, you know, several places because business is there, but if it’s going out the back door as fast as it’s coming in the front door, you’re not really gonna gain any traction. But the promise here, if we can get this done, if we can build systems for both marketing and for fulfillment here, we can start replicating what we’re doing. We start replicating what you used to be doing, maybe as the founder and the startup. And this is gonna actually lead to consist lead conversion, which certainly is going to lead to consistent growth.

(18:27): This is where word of mouth and referral generation just starts happening steadily. Your business really becomes start starting at this point to become an asset to the owner of the business because it’s not as dependent on you. And frankly, if you ever want to talk about, uh, exiting your business or selling your business, I mean, that’s certainly one of the criteria. Somebody has to be able to see how this would run without you. You know, there are many businesses that get found by an individual, get grown by an individual, and really a lot of the relationships are with that individual as opposed to the systems and the framework of the business. All right, the last one is we call scale. And really this one, probably this stage, you know, probably fits somebody that is maybe, maybe thinking in terms of exiting the business or certainly of maybe exiting their role as a, you know, day-to-day CEO or something, you know, kind of moving to a board type of role.

(19:24): So what’s going on here typically is that, again, more positive characteristics, but still same challenges. So lead flow is pretty consistent and predictable, starting to build an internal marketing team. You’re sales management driven, not just a couple salespeople out there, right? There’s an entire selling system starting to become recognized as a leader or in your industry or in your town. There’s a bit of financial mastery. So at this stage, while again, some people who are more financial oriented, you know, maybe start this in the first stage, but this is where profit and your cost of acquisition of new business, this is where you’re starting to have capital needs. I mean, so financial mastery is, has become a much bigger piece of the puzzle for success here. And you’ve really almost built and established, uh, uh, an internal org chart of roles of management roles. Now, the challenges here, of course, is anybody who’s grown to this, I mean, we might be talking about 20, 30 people or more here.

(20:27): We might be talking about 10, 20, $30 million or more here. And so all of a sudden culture, the thing that maybe was a great thing, not only for those people that work there, but for your customers, um, rapid growth sometimes really comes with a deterioration of culture. There’s staff turnover, there’s no emphasis on employee branding. There’s a challenge to innovate, to continue to grow that bring new products and service offering can add a lot of stress at this stage. So in terms of many of the things that, that I talked about as characteristics, I mean now you’re gonna go to work on you, you absolutely are gonna build team, you’re gonna build leadership team here. You’re going to formalize structure around people, operations. You’re going to need to give more and more focus to fulfillment and more and more focus to innovation. In fact, a lot of leaders in this stage of business, actually, their primary job is to innovate, becomes the, you know, you’ve got that operations higher in place that is, that are managing the people, that you’ve got somebody that’s focused on culture.

(21:35): You’ve got somebody that’s focused on sales. You’ve got the finance piece figured out. So in many cases, uh, the role of the leader at this stage is ideas. is innovation, is to figure out how you can get more market share. Again, the promise, the value of the business will continue to grow. Cash flow will be consistent if need be. You’re gonna be set up in now to raise significant capital. A lot of folks go out and raise a whole bunch of capital based on money , or I’m sorry, based on an idea, but a, a business that generates consistent cash flow can demonstrate an ability to grow is going to have a really easy, um, access to a lot of cash should they need it. And certainly this is that are seen as leaders have a much easier time attracting experienced talent to, to the organization as well.

(22:26): So all of that to say, you know, many companies, many businesses come to us say, I wanna grow, I want more business, I want more leads. And what we’ve discovered is certainly that’s, we’re gonna get there , but first we’re gonna develop more clarity. First, we’re gonna develop more confidence in the systems, more control over what works and what doesn’t work. And there is a linear process for this. But for us, having this roadmap is such a, you know, it becomes, the mission becomes taking folks from where they are to where they want to go in terms of training, in terms of hiring, in terms of even sales messaging, being able to demonstrate that you have a path to build on for many particularly service businesses is a pretty compelling differentiator and a compelling offer for somebody who has just had so many people selling them the tactic of the week.

(23:19): So while I just went through kind of our customer stages and I could do a whole nother show on every milestone involved in accomplishing, moving people through there, but my feeling is that just about any business, I’ve done marketing here, right? But just about any business that sells to other businesses, maybe even individuals, could develop this idea of staged growth, of staged evolution or maturity. So that’s what I wanted to share today. As I said, if you pick up the ultimate marketing engine, you can pick that up wherever books are sold, all the electronic book, if you’re listening to this in August of 2022, is on sale now for $2 and 99 cents. When you get the book, you’ll actually, the entire show that I went through has a, has this roadmap in a form. So when you get the book, you’ll actually get all the forms and tools that are shown in the book as well.

(24:11): So that’s it for today. Hopefully we’ll run into one of these days out there on the road. Hey, and one final thing before you go. You know how I talk about marketing strategy, strategy before tactics? Well, sometimes it can be hard to understand where you stand in that, what needs to be done with regard to creating a marketing strategy. So we created a free tool for you. It’s called the Marketing Strategy Assessment. You can find it @ marketingassessment.co. dot co. Check out our free marketing assessment and learn where you are with your strategy today. That’s just marketingassessment.co. I’d love to chat with you about the results that you get.