How to Make Your 2025 Marketing Plan – Part 1 (Strategy)

Brandon Welch: 0:00
And when people hear that you have a conviction and a reason, man, that is way more than half the selling process. That trumps price by all reasonable standards. That trumps deliverability, that trumps, in some ways, credibility, because people go. Finally, somebody who’s standing up for me, or finally, somebody who sees the world the way I do. Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast.

Brandon Welch: 0:23
Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, brandon Welch, and I’m joined by Caleb string to my kite Agee, I’m the kite. Caleb is the string. That’s how dreams are made around here. We’ll tell you more about that later. But it is Monday, the third to last Monday of the year. The next four weeks, speaking of that big dream, we’re going to be teaching you how to eliminate wasting your advertising in 2025, speaking of that big dream, we’re going to be teaching you how to eliminate wasting your advertising in 2025, grow your business like you’ve never grown it before and achieve the big dream. And it all starts with this plan. The framework we’re about to share with you over the next three weeks and then there’s going to be a fourth week recap is the very essence the exact steps we’ve taken to grow family-owned companies from doing a couple million dollars to 15, 20, 50, some of them even $100 million in revenue. This exact process. Companies pay us on a one-to-one level to do this Really good money.

Brandon Welch: 1:14
And it is our favorite thing to do. I say it’s the job I would do for free and today, because we are trying to make the entire world of entrepreneurship better. We’re trying to make you more confident, trying to make you more balanced and, just overall, prepared and equipped to go out in the marketing world and make sense of all the noise, make sense of all of the random things you could be doing. We have a saying right here that I borrowed from Brendan Burchard your randomness is stealing from your greatness. We’re going to do things on purpose, and that all starts with today’s session of building your marketing plan for 2025. Is Strategy, strategy, yes.

Caleb Agee: 1:52
The beginning of all things, especially here at Frank and Maven. It should be the beginning of all things. It’s not always. Should be the beginning of all things in marriage. Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 1:59
I think the camera guy’s getting married, by the way. Hey, fist bump to the camera guy. Good job that getting married by the way, hey Fist bump to the camera guy. Good job. That’s not new new news, but it’s news.

Caleb Agee: 2:05
It’s happening.

Brandon Welch: 2:06
Yeah, marriage, friendships, business of all kind, and we know that that’s a cliche thing to say, but we sometimes jump right in, especially when we’re in the trenches and excitable. We’re excitable, we’re entrepreneurs, we are very influence, opportunity-driven people, and so we hear these things that can be shiny objects and we jump on them before we stop and go. Wait what’s going to happen. Is this reasonable?

Caleb Agee: 2:32
Yeah, what am I actually trying to make happen? So in the Maven Method we have what we call our order of operations. So it always starts with strategy first, which is what are we trying to make happen? The message who are we talking to? What do we need to say to them to offer a better life? And the media is where are we going to put that message in order to acquire new customers? Right, most marketing plans work backwards. The first time you think about marketing is when the media salesperson or the agency knocks on your door and says, hey, have you thought about buying radio? And you go now I am.

Brandon Welch: 3:09
Depending on how likable that media rep is. That may be your only criteria.

Caleb Agee: 3:13
Yeah, sounds like a good plan. And so you start with that media, right Radio in this case. Then you say, great, what should those radio ads say? The salesperson will probably ask you seven or eight bullet points about your company and send it to a producer who’s going to write nice local ad and one ad.

Brandon Welch: 3:34
That sounds like an ad, yeah, and then it’s not that guy’s fault, by the way. No, he’s tasked with writing 20 to 30 ads. A day probably and the only question that’s being asked of him is not are the ads working? It’s how fast can you get it done so I can get this on the radio or on TV or a billboard or even some digital marketing agency? Same process. Yes.

Caleb Agee: 3:53
And then the last thing six months, $60,000 down the road. People start at you. You inherently were like this is going to help my company grow. Right, that everybody understands that. But by how much, when, in what ways? And so then we start asking what did that do for me? And the strategy ends up being less. We flip it on its head. We say no strategy first. What are we trying to make happen? And then we move to message and finally we choose the media. So, um, today we’re digging into the strategy piece of this. We’re breaking this into three episodes and then a fourth for a recap. As Brandon mentioned, it’s chalked with practicability. Oh man, yeah, this is, this is going to be so good.

Brandon Welch: 4:33
You can take these immediately, put them in place for your business, and I think some of them will be self-evident. But we’ve also grabbed a real life example.

Caleb Agee: 4:42
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 4:42
We’re not going to give you exact names, but this is a literal profile of somebody we started with in the early phases of their business and over the next three weeks we’re going to tell you exactly how this marketing plan has worked for them In a medium-sized market. We’re going to use Springfield just our backyard because it’s a good representation of what you’ll find right in between big giant markets like Atlanta, which we have done this plan. Backyard, because it’s a good representation of what you’ll find right in between big giant markets like Atlanta, which we have done this plan in as well, and maybe Dallas or-.

Caleb Agee: 5:12
New York City.

Brandon Welch: 5:12
Houston, denver, all those markets we’ve played in and it’s a really medium representation of tiny small markets.

Brandon Welch: 5:20
If you can do this in a medium-sized market. You can apply the principles elsewhere. Yeah, we also picked a business that was probably more indicative of the phase that you may be in, if you’re listening, where things don’t there’s an abundance of funds and things are going well, like you’re in this like $2 million to $5 million phase. But this is where things get really complex, especially if you’re an owner operator and you have to literally change your skillset, your lens of how you look at growth, because before you were probably running a lot of the sales appointments or you were directly connected to that process, you could immediately feel what was working and it just is a different dynamic going from zero to like two and a half million versus going from two and a half to five and beyond like that phase. So we picked a not tiny, not big, but just kind of medium examples of all of where this stuff could apply and the business. We also chose an industry. It’s one we’re very familiar with, but we’re also trying to pick a mix between a service based business and a retail based business and for us that was like window and siding companies Could easily be an HVAC company, could easily be a roofing company, could easily be a law firm where there’s like a product to sell in a service, but the principles and the numbers we’re going to apply here should be able to pull out to you pretty quickly.

Brandon Welch: 6:48
Some of this would be slightly nuanced if you’re solely e-com or solely retail, just from a margin standpoint. So we’ll try to address those as we come through them. That’s enough setup. Yes, we’re just going to jump right into it. You’re sitting here going gosh. I know I need to do some sort of marketing advertising if I want to grow faster than I have been. Marketing only does one thing. You know that right Makes what was going to happen happen faster.

Brandon Welch: 7:15
Yep, if you’re a bad business with bad values and bad product positioning, it’s going to make you go out of business faster or make you lose profitability faster.

Caleb Agee: 7:23
Yep.

Brandon Welch: 7:23
But that’s not anybody listening to this show.

Caleb Agee: 7:25
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 7:25
Everybody’s got a wonderful business.

Caleb Agee: 7:27
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 7:27
They want to grow it.

Caleb Agee: 7:28
So one last setup thing we believe that you should actually have outside voices speaking into your business. Outside perspective is so valuable, and so this is the kind of process we would consult another business, we would walk them through these questions, this narrative and all of that. If you can find somebody who you respect to help you lead through this or maybe you are in advertising and you would like to use this for your clients this is a great formula to help you.

Caleb Agee: 8:04
Maybe you’re the marketing person in-house and you need to get clear business objectives from your leadership. You could help to guide this conversation and this could help you frame that. So I want to make sure you have enough outside perspective that you can call it, because sometimes you take your knowledge for granted. It’s really easy to glaze past really important things because you’re like, oh, we’ll just do that thing.

Brandon Welch: 8:28
Yeah, and that leads into our first question, going back to the world. You’re trying to create A couple of things here. Writing good ads and building good ad campaigns is easy when you have something to say, and the day before you opened doors to your business, you knew exactly what this was. It was so clear. It was the thing driving your passion. You had some sort of really big why. We break the why down into three things vision, values and vows. That’s our framework.

Brandon Welch: 9:01
We do it that way because it forces us to think big, um, medium and then granular to what the customer is actually going to get out of the deal. Uh, you may have mission and vision. You may be using a traction, uh, eos model, um, that’s all fine. Uh, we’re going to throw these questions in here. They may be added up to what you’re doing, yeah, but if you’re not doing that, you, you must have some sort of pause. Uh, but if you’re not doing that, you must have some sort of pause. Caleb and I this week actually took a minute to do nothing but go back to the basics of our business. Yeah, and we are doing that a handful of times over the next month, with outside partners pulling us through and we do this at a high level for a lot of companies.

Caleb Agee: 9:39
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 9:39
But in our own four walls here we stop and say why are we doing this? What’s working, what’s not working? And so part of that’s just good business strategy, but a really big part of it is, if you’re not face-to-face with the world you’re trying to create in your company, then it’s very, very likely and very easy to just start making marketing decisions that don’t really matter and connect with a human being that needs that type of service.

Caleb Agee: 10:06
Yes.

Brandon Welch: 10:06
So we start with what world you’re trying to create. This is the vision, that’s the big envelope. What world?

Brandon Welch: 10:11
you’re trying to create. But some things you might ask and contemplate why is this business existing? Why am I still doing it? What made you crazy enough to start it? Or the founder, maybe you bought this business. What made the founder crazy enough to start it? Easy things that come to mind would be well, I wanted to work for myself. I was tired of working for the man. But there’s usually something deeper. There’s usually. If working for the man quote unquote gave you a decent means of earning a living, with respect and with a product and process you could believe in and a sense of control, then you probably wouldn’t have started a business. But there was something working for the man, or something with the system of business, or something in corporate America, or something that you didn’t like, and I would urge you dig deep and find that. What did you think you could do better? Who were the big voices and influences making this happen? So who was suffering? Who was either saying you know, dang it, this old model sucks or there ought to be more options or something who?

Caleb Agee: 11:22
was that? Or was it maybe your spouse at home? You’re coming home complaining about the situation as you had it and they’re like why don’t you? Do this yourself. Yeah. A lot of times that’s how that looks. It’s like I don’t see why you wouldn’t do this. You are capable, and that influence causes you to jump right. Yes, to jump and start this entrepreneurial journey.

Brandon Welch: 11:42
Yeah, go Right to jump and start this entrepreneurial journey. Yeah, go back and have an imaginary conversation with that person, yeah, and that’s powerful because it’s going to lead you to what was driving your actions and what was the essence and the thing that you’ve naturally led your business to try to do. Now, maybe it’s changed a little bit since the beginning. Maybe you’ve learned. You didn’t want to make that widget, you wanted to do this one instead. But what was that conviction? And I would ask, pivot to the customer what’s at stake? If your company suddenly didn’t exist in the marketplace, who would suffer?

Caleb Agee: 12:14
Yeah, for our fake company here we’re talking about. We’re going to call the owners Steve and Sarah. Steve and Sarah Is that the names we went with Yep. We’re going to call it the Best Window Company of.

Brandon Welch: 12:27
Springfield Missouri. Yep Best Window Company of Springfield Missouri.

Caleb Agee: 12:30
Steve was working for. His origin story was that he was working for another window company and he saw he was crazy enough to start this thing because he saw that they were selling people stuff they didn’t need this thing. Because he saw that they were selling people stuff they didn’t need and it frustrated him to see how they were forcing people to buy things that maybe were beyond their means, beyond the necessary things.

Brandon Welch: 12:57
Overfinanced, overcharging. Yes, think big, high pressure. Come in to your living room, you know, nail you down for two hours until you say, yes, let me call my boss for a better price, sort of thing.

Caleb Agee: 13:10
Yeah, it feels like you’re selling timeshares in somebody’s living room. Yeah. Yeah, and he was. He was tired of that. He was tired of being held accountable to goals that were unreasonable, that forced him to be a bad salesman in his heart, right, yeah.

Brandon Welch: 13:28
And Sarah watched this happen to this great man, that she knew his heart, and to watch him come home defeated and even when the money was good, it was like man, there’s something missing, and so that’s what we call. We’re going to talk about this next episode, but that’s what we call a little bit of a pissed off moment.

Caleb Agee: 13:44
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 13:46
I’m tired of this. And it got to. There was just some you know some bad things that happened. He just knew he could do it better. He knew the world was begging for it to be better. He wasn’t proud of what his company was letting him do, and so that’s why they were so convicted. If you go back to those questions, so so convicted, if you go back to those questions so far, we’ve said what made you crazy enough to start it? What were the voices influencing you to make it happen? What was driving their actions? Why were you so convicted?

Brandon Welch: 14:15
And then he started this thing, and by the way we’re entering his business at this point, at like six years in. So, hey, man, the first few years, unless you’ve just got a pile of money, you’re just pulling the trigger and riding that bullet. You’re doing what you can. You’re knocking on doors, you’re sweeping floors, you’re answering phone calls, you’re showing up on Sundays. I mean, you’re just doing what you got to do I’ve done it.

Brandon Welch: 14:33
Anybody who started a business has done it. So what are we doing? We’re getting back to the world we’re trying to create, get back to that vision. Now what we know to be true of Steve’s business. Now we’re going to talk about this here in a second. But he has been the opposite of what he came from, that pissed off moment, that rocket fuel that pushed him into the vision for his business. And so ask yourself whether you’ve been doing it five or 25 years, what’s at stake if your business goes away?

Caleb Agee: 14:58
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 14:59
Tornado hits your business and you get hit by a bus on the same day and nobody takes it over, how does the world suffer? Like what would be the obituary. What would they be standing there saying about this poor little company that died? Or maybe poor big company? And you, as the leader, need to know that. Feel it, get back in touch with it so that you can start transferring it to your team first, your marketing people second, and then the world after that, and you get it in that order right. Yeah, great things happen. This after that. And you get it in that order right. Yeah, great things happen. This is it, yeah. Um, so you’re saying I mean steve’s case.

Brandon Welch: 15:29
He’s like well, those poor homeowners would have to, they’d have to settle for you know, pushy pete yeah that’s just, uh, you know, out there peddling and making a poor buying experience yeah and that’s what’s at stake, and then you could go, obviously to your family’s well-being. If you suddenly had to go back and work in that old place or for something you didn’t believe in, how would that affect your energy, your buy-in level, your ability to show up for your spouse, your family, your friends? Your community, your church, all those things, it’s like there’s a lot at stake.

Brandon Welch: 16:08
Like this is really, really important work. Yeah, we might be a little two and a half million dollar home service company, but, holy smokes, look at all the ripple effects that makes in all these places. So get face to face with that. I’m gonna throw some other questions at you. Go ahead, Caleb. What would happen if it fails?

Caleb Agee: 16:28
Who would suffer? Yeah, if you were a wild success.

Brandon Welch: 16:29
what would the world look like? Can you change the world with a little bitty home service company? Yeah, I think you can?

Caleb Agee: 16:34
I think you can.

Brandon Welch: 16:36
Matter of fact. We have examples we have I could name a dozen of them that we’ve worked with that have gone from this level to like being some of the most generous philanthropic influences in our community, in some cases in the nation. Think about if you were able to call the shots for the people that work for you and run a company the way that they deserve to work for.

Brandon Welch: 17:01
Think about how many marriages you could influence. Think about how many kids and families you could help live in productive values. That’s right. Think about what an example you could be for other young people in your industry, in your community, in your town. And so like like dream like that for a second, because that energy that’s your calling, yeah, Right, yeah.

Caleb Agee: 17:23
And if that energy that’s your calling, right, yeah, and I think hopefully you feel this. But there’s this building energy that happens as you ask these questions. It should rise up this, it should relight the fire, that spark that was there in the beginning and it kind of makes it you’re like, oh okay.

Brandon Welch: 17:39
Yeah, I’m getting excited again.

Caleb Agee: 17:42
It’s like I’m starting it all over again, and you want that feeling and so you want to look around. Who else in the world was trying to solve this problem? How can you do better? Why could you do better? And then why will you be more committed? Right, we’re not. We’re not half in on some on this big dream. We just stated all the reasons why we’re so committed. It’s because I saw all of this, my whole origin story, and I’m committed to making this world better.

Brandon Welch: 18:12
These other jackwackons out here are probably just trying to turn a buck. I’m not saying they’re bad guys you don’t have to make villains out of your competitors but you’re going. They’re not stopping to think about this, or if they are, maybe that’s fine and they’ve got their people they serve. But I am going to serve the world this way. It is my calling. I believe it’s spiritual, I believe it’s a very true expression of love is to go do good work for the people that we’re supposed to do good work for. And yeah, it’s your calling, so you get in touch with that. Yeah, cool, I feel good right now.

Caleb Agee: 18:52
Yeah, you feel excited, and what we want to do is we’re going to channel this energy into describing the world we’re trying to create, yes, the world we’re trying to change, the world we’re trying to build. And so, in our little pocket of the world, how are we going to affect that? And so, in our little pocket of the world, how are we going to affect that?

Brandon Welch: 19:07
And so, there’s a little formula. Yeah, you want to boil that down to a transferable set of words, like where you can take it from all your big feels to like a tangible sentence, a way to transfer it to other stakeholders in the outcome.

Caleb Agee: 19:21
It’s your war cry.

Brandon Welch: 19:22
Yeah, is the outcome right? Yeah, it’s your war cry. Yeah, and you can do this a number of ways, but we developed a formula that if you’re not a wordsmith, or if you just don’t think it’s all that special, at least if you do it this way, you’ll have something to say okay, it will matter to somebody, and that is I’m trying to create a world where ideal customer-.

Caleb Agee: 19:39
Can achieve.

Brandon Welch: 19:40
Can achieve a need or hope. Can achieve. Can achieve a need or hope, so insert a need or hope in this little equation, without the pain or fear we’re solving for them. Okay, we’ll put that on the screen.

Brandon Welch: 19:54
Ideal customer can achieve need or hope without pain or fear, and you’re just describing what that need or hope they have is, without the pain or fear they might achieve. Okay, that’s right. This will force you to have some sort of proprietary, convicted nature, and this comes after you’ve contemplated. Oh yeah, that’s why I did this in the first place. Steve and Sarah this is what theirs is.

Caleb Agee: 20:11
They would say. We are trying to create a world where homeowners can upgrade to beautiful, efficient windows without being confused, abused or pressured to buy.

Brandon Welch: 20:24
That’s powerful to a homeowner, yeah. That has wanted to do that and confused, abused and pressured to buy. Those are all the things Steve like. That’s his big bad wolf, that’s what he’s pushing up against, and so he’s saying I don’t care anybody else does it, but dang it. This is the way I’m going to do it. Yep Homeowners can upgrade to beautiful, efficient windows. He described beautiful efficient windows without being confused, abused or pressured to buy.

Caleb Agee: 20:50
Yep, and that becomes so you don’t have to ask yourself 20 questions to get that fire going again. This becomes the shortcut to remembering that origin, to remembering why you are here and the world you’re trying to create. That origin, to remembering why you are here and the world you’re trying to create. It should be for you and for your team, and then it should be the spirit that goes out to your customers as well. Sometimes you say it, sometimes it’s just felt, but this is the heart, this is the beginning parts of all of this.

Brandon Welch: 21:23
Simon Sinek says people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. We’re going to put the Simon Sinek link in this episode. You should go watch that.

Brandon Welch: 21:34
It’s like a 15-minute TED Talk video, one of the most watched TED Talk videos of all time. Yeah, brilliant. And he just explains and it’s self-evident, you’ll start going yeah, that’s exactly right, that’s how I buy. And when people hear that you have a conviction and a reason, that man, that is way more than half the selling process. That trumps price by all reasonable standards. That trumps deliverability. That trumps, in some ways, credibility, because people go. Finally, somebody who’s standing up for me, or finally somebody who sees the world the way I do. Yes.

Caleb Agee: 22:06
Love it, the second half of that quote is what you do simply proves what you believe. What you do only proves what you believe. So when you believe it, it’s out of the heart. The mouth speaks. It’s out of the heart of your company, the belief of your hands will do. Yes, that is how it works.

Brandon Welch: 22:28
You will show up a certain way, you will smile a certain way. You will order products a certain way. You will follow up a certain way. You will hire a certain way, you will fire a certain way. You will put your business in a certain part of town a certain way. You will market a certain way. You will market a certain way. That’s right.

Brandon Welch: 22:47
So read the full quote again. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it. What you do simply proves what you believe. That’s right. Every human being right now, every human being in this country, wants a little more belief. They want a little more authenticity.

Brandon Welch: 23:04
They’re a little bit shorted on substance and values and we’re seeing that play out in so many ways different episode, different day but even in silly little things like home improvement companies or attorneys or doctors or whatever, like home improvement companies or attorneys or doctors or whatever, like just whatever you’re building your company can be that relief to everybody’s skepticism and void of something they can believe in. Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 23:32
That sounds really oversold, but I’m telling you what this all leads to and we will paint a full picture of what’s happened with this beautiful little business we’re talking about here. But what this leads to is you being the most preferred provider in your community or your market or your nation or your industry, wherever your playground is, and it sort of, over time, preempts any need to actually advertise for business. It makes a word on the street that and a magnet to the universe that you’re the people that do it the way I want it to be done. Yeah, and so it’s so important to do these things. Okay, Yep, I’m getting excited.

Brandon Welch: 24:13
We have a strong vision now. We have a strong vision. That is the first step in strategy. I’m creating a world where homeowners can upgrade beautiful, efficient windows without being confused of user pressure to buy. Next, we’re going to do values. What do you stand for and what do you stand against? What do you believe? Now, because of Simon Sinek’s beautiful, monumental TED talk he did and some work from our friend Roy Williams and a really good video we can also put on the screen. The best way to describe your values, I think, is to talk about what you believe, just simple belief statements and we’re going to give you some practical ones, but you need to go deeper than I. Believe in honesty and integrity, Good customer service.

Caleb Agee: 25:01
Yeah, everybody says they believe in those things, but you need to go deeper than I believe in honesty and integrity. Good customer service.

Brandon Welch: 25:02
Yeah, everybody says they believe in those things, but you need to build belief statements that actually prove they’re like a witnessable thing you’re doing, a witnessable action you’re taking, or a witnessable decision or standard you are upholding. That’s right. So here’s some questions you can ask, and let’s just ask Steve and Sarah. You’re Steve and Sarah. Deal. Sarah? What makes you pissed off?

Caleb Agee: 25:28
When he was selling for that slimy company. There was just no passion, there was no care, there was no partnership for the homeowner, it was just self-serving. How can we make the most money?

Brandon Welch: 25:41
Sarah hates those slimy people. Steve, what are you standing for?

Caleb Agee: 25:45
Um standing for. You know simplicity, I want comfort, I want um, I want quality, american made craftsmanship. I want good installs Um and I want those.

Brandon Welch: 25:59
Steve’s an America guy. He’s totally a USA.

Caleb Agee: 26:06
Yeah, you know, I don’t want cheap stuff shipped here. I want good stuff that’s made in factories one state over, and I want those all at a reasonable price. Obviously, I have a business, I want to make money, I want to do well, but I don’t have to screw people over to do that.

Brandon Welch: 26:22
Yes, okay, love those things. That’s what he’s standing for. What do you stand against?

Caleb Agee: 26:28
We used to do these appointments and you could clock it. It had to take like 52 minutes and there was, like this perfect dialogue. We knew exactly what was going to happen. It was scripted. We had to practice it, we had to show our sales managers this is at your old company, this is at my old company, right? And I couldn’t stand how long it took and you can see the people squirming there but, it was on purpose.

Caleb Agee: 26:56
We would go to their house and we would have this whole thing. We’d show them all the different features of the windows and we we had little props and things and we would make them sit through the whole thing. And the culmination was truthfully, it would work in a lot of cases, but I felt like it was because we were holding their feet to this fire that we didn’t need to create.

Caleb Agee: 27:17
So I hate long home in-home appointments. I want to make sure we could say all of that in half the time. Yeah, I believe it. Yep and um. I feel like we need to be really clear with people not tucking information under the rug, talking about, you know, hiding things, um, yeah.

Brandon Welch: 27:38
Uh, steve also put down. I went back to this bad breath sales people with bad breath. Uh, opportunistic pricing, inconsistent quality, overpriced products, pushy closing tactics. Let me call my boss and see if I can get you a better deal if you sign right now. Yeah, uh, so he stands for simplicity, comfort. He hates long drawn-out appointments, holding information hostage. I’m not going to tell you what it costs until I get to the end of the presentation. All that stuff that we all hate, right? Yeah, steve’s just saying dang, it’s time. Drawing out appointments, holding information hostage. I’m not going to tell you what it costs until I get to the end of the presentation. All that stuff that we all hate, right? Yeah, steve’s just saying dang it, it’s time for somebody to do something about it Just give it yeah, what do you believe?

Caleb Agee: 28:11
It’s the golden rule Everybody should be treated the way they want to be treated.

Brandon Welch: 28:16
Yes, the way I would want to be treated. The golden rule is treat people how you want to be treated. But the new one is treat them how they want to be treated. Yes, love that. Hopefully these are strong coming back.

Caleb Agee: 28:27
I’m answering as if Steve, just keep the conversation flowing. But that’s kind of the point of having the outside perspective, is we can have a dynamic conversation. If you had somebody outside the business, they’d be like, okay, now tell me a little bit more about that thing. You just said, yes, had somebody outside the business.

Caleb Agee: 28:41
They’d be like okay, now tell me a little bit more about that thing. You just said yes Because it would help you to. You would brush past them, right? Yes, and so if this was like a worksheet I was just filling out, that’d be helpful. Yes, but somebody else might say, ooh, there’s something there. So, that’s special.

Brandon Welch: 28:54
Thank you for saying that. Steve is a well-spoken man and we kind of took some of the words that we’ve worked to describe his passion over the years. But the first thing that’s going to come to your mind what do you stand against? Poor customer service, and it’s like no, you need to go deeper.

Caleb Agee: 29:08
Yeah, specifically what? Tell me more?

Brandon Welch: 29:09
Yeah, and Steve’s specific was those long in-home appointments, holding information hostage, pushy tactics Like go to that level, go to define it. Yes. People that wear purple shirts I don’t care. What do you stand against? Yeah. People that hate dogs I don’t know.

Caleb Agee: 29:29
People that drink Pepsi you stand against that sort of thing, yeah.

Brandon Welch: 29:31
I do. Okay, coca-cola Okay. What are you willing to do in your category that others would never do in your category?

Caleb Agee: 29:41
Yeah, most people won’t give a price over the phone, but we will.

Brandon Welch: 29:44
That’s huge. If you know anything about the home service industry, it’s well we got to come out and we’re not going to even give you an idea. You call Steve and say, hey, I’ve got nine windows. What’s it going to replace? Next thing out of his mouth he goes probably six to $8,000.

Caleb Agee: 29:58
Yeah, you is probably six to $8,000.

Brandon Welch: 30:00
Yeah, you can give a range. Yeah, no problem. And then he gives the price first, and then the next thing goes is and that depends on how many energy features and color, all these things, he has- in his product. So he’s willing to give prizes on the phone. He’s willing. This is a big one.

Caleb Agee: 30:18
Talk to the homeowner, even if the spouse isn’t available.

Brandon Welch: 30:21
So many slimy home companies are like, well, we’re not coming out until we know you and your wife are there, because we don’t want that excuse of I got to talk to my wife about it. Yeah, yeah, what do they call it? A one-leg appointment. They call it one-leggers and I understand practical reasons if somebody is managing their business off a spreadsheet and going, oh, every time we went to one-legger, that was a low close rate. But, dude, that’s not how people want to be treated. Nope, that’s how you want to be treated.

Caleb Agee: 30:47
That’s not how they want to be treated. Yeah, and do you know?

Brandon Welch: 30:50
how awful.

Caleb Agee: 30:51
That makes your company sound when you’re talking to a husband. Well, is your wife going to be there or is your husband going to be there? That’s the worst. That’s the worst one. Well, is your husband going to be there? Because we’ve got to make sure both decision makers are in the house.

Brandon Welch: 31:05
So Steve’s like that’s not. Actually, steve and Sarah, both are like that’s not right. You want the information. We’ll give you the information. Great. So what makes you mad? What are you standing for? What are you standing against? What do you believe? What are you standing for? What are?

Caleb Agee: 31:24
you standing against? What do you believe? What are you willing to do that others in your category would never do? What will you always do, no matter what, We’ll keep consistent prices, high-quality installations, American-made products, and we’ll communicate a lot. That’s another thing that falls off the wayside is you kind of get sold and then you’re like when is this going to?

Brandon Welch: 31:40
happen? What’s going to happen next? Home service is the worst communicating industry there was, but these guys believe in calling you one week after you’ve ordered it, even if you already told them, hey, it’s going to be six weeks before it’s all here. They call just want to let you know it’s on track. Yeah, you gave me Just because right.

Caleb Agee: 31:56
You are going to give me $8,000. That are going to give me $8,000, that’s a lot of money and we don’t take that lightly. Yes, yes. So, good.

Brandon Welch: 32:04
A lot of companies will change their pricing based on how far ahead or behind they are on their sales goals. A lot of companies will just sell the product, that is, whatever that they can sell. And then craftsmanship. Here I happen to know he pays higher money for the guys who are prideful about their quality. You could hire a lot of goobers to come and do the installation part, but he hires the good ones. Oh yeah, and then what will you do, no matter what? Sorry, what will you never do, no matter what?

Caleb Agee: 32:34
Hire pushy people With bad breath. With bad breath, who have long sales appointments, will never compromise on the product quality right, it’s still got to be a great window and then sell something you don’t need or slow play the warranty calls right.

Brandon Welch: 32:53
When you’ve got a problem, yeah, stuff breaks. And it’s like my biggest pet peeve of this is when you call a company and they’re like for sales, press one. For accounting, press two. And then all the way at the bottom of the phone tree is for service, press five. It’s like no, put service first and and this, these guys they’ll. They will stop a new installation if they have to to take care of a past customer.

Caleb Agee: 33:13
Send those guys across town to go fix it.

Brandon Welch: 33:15
Yes, to make it right. So, real quick question uh, recap what makes you mad or what’s your pissed off moment? What are you standing for, what are you standing against? What do you believe? What are you willing to do that others in your category would never do? What will you always do, no matter what, and what will you never do, no matter what? We take those answers to those questions and we formulate Formulate, formulate, formulate. It’s technical, yeah, we formulate belief statements that might sound like this Go ahead, steve.

Caleb Agee: 33:49
We believe you should never be uncomfortable in your own home. Love it, I love it. That speaks to me on a lot of levels. Yes, right. The energy efficiency of a window.

Brandon Welch: 33:57
Yes.

Caleb Agee: 33:57
Right Draftiness or something like that. But then also the sales appointment. Yes, I don’t have to squirm in the sales appointment.

Brandon Welch: 34:04
In any way, shape or form. Your home is your sanctuary. You should never be uncomfortable in it. Yeah, and we’re on a mission to make sure that doesn’t happen.

Caleb Agee: 34:11
That’s right.

Brandon Welch: 34:13
Yeah, you want to do the next one. Yeah, we believe in saving where you can. We love that one.

Caleb Agee: 34:20
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 34:20
That. That that, instead of somebody saying we believe in good, guaranteed low prices it’s, like you know, we believe in that that speaks to somebody’s actual values. That that tells them you see the world the way they do and you are frugal and responsible in nature, and statements like that prove that you are that person. That’s right, and so, if you are that person, you will treat them like that person. Right? That’s right.

Caleb Agee: 34:44
We believe in treating your home better than we would treat our own.

Brandon Welch: 34:47
Yes, we’re not going to put booties on for little foot slip covers on our boots at our house, but we’ll do it for you. Yeah.

Caleb Agee: 34:58
When we’re done with the install, it’s going to look cleaner than before we showed up.

Brandon Welch: 35:02
Yeah, we’re going to walk quietly across your living room floor sort of freely right, yeah Cool. A lot of things could happen with that. So we believe in giving you the facts, not the hype. That’s good Boom. That says that somebody?

Caleb Agee: 35:16
these people are straight shooters, right we believe a window is only as good as the person who installed it.

Brandon Welch: 35:22
That speaks to both the craftsmanship of the person, and we’re not going to hire some roughneck to come put stuff in your home right. We’re not going to let goobers get in your front door. And the last one is we believe you are the customer. We are the guide that says you have the power. We’re not here to make you do something that you don’t believe in. And those six belief statements put them on their website and they put them in your ads. But also probably its most important use is to rally your team around. Guys, what do we believe here? Why are we here? What are we doing different? You used to work for a different company in this industry. Now you work for us different.

Caleb Agee: 36:00
You used to work for a different company in this industry.

Brandon Welch: 36:02
Now you work for us. This is what we believe, this is how we do it, and you look at the strongest companies in the world Disney, apple, southwest Airlines comes to mind. I mean, you look at the best cultured companies in the world.

Caleb Agee: 36:14
They know what the flip, they believe that’s right and why they’re doing it Every single person knows yes, yes, okay.

Brandon Welch: 36:19
So that was vision and values. Now we’re going to solidify what you’re going to do about it. What is your vow to the world? This is the end customer, this is the promise statement, this is the guarantee, this is the what happens if we mess up. This is the what you can count on and take to the bank. And I’m the owner, and I’m saying it and this is my word. So questions you want to ask here how does your product actually change people’s lives? How does it affect them financially? How does it affect them emotionally, socially? What do you guarantee will happen when people choose you over another competitor?

Caleb Agee: 36:52
That’s right.

Brandon Welch: 36:55
And it’s pretty self-evident. So a lot of people might call these guarantees or brand promises. We just call them vows.

Brandon Welch: 37:01
Yeah, so we vow that we will always give you pricing information up front without a pitch.

Brandon Welch: 37:08
Love that, yeah, it’s good. Imagine the confidence on a website of seeing that You’re picking a bunch of knuckleheads off a list and you go oh well, these are the people. They’re going to give me a price up front without a pitch. Probably my first call yeah, right, yep. What’s the next one?

Caleb Agee: 37:21
We vow that we will never let a product presentation last longer than 30 minutes, unless you want it to.

Brandon Welch: 37:27
Yes, imagine Sarah saying that in an ad. Would that be powerful? Mm-hmm, we vow that we will call you with status updates before you have the chance to wonder.

Caleb Agee: 37:40
We vow that we will never let someone into your home that we wouldn’t let into ours.

Brandon Welch: 37:45
And the last one is we vow that we will always tell you when we aren’t the best fit for your needs. Yeah, Powerful right. That’s really powerful. We’ll turn you away that says we’re not a sales organization way more than saying we’re not a sales organization.

Caleb Agee: 38:02
That sounds like customer service instead of sales service. Whatever you want to call it, I want to do business with these people right now and I don’t even need new windows.

Brandon Welch: 38:11
So just for fun, like for our agency, what are a couple from Frank and Maven?

Caleb Agee: 38:17
Yeah, we will always start with a business outcome-driven strategy.

Brandon Welch: 38:22
We vow we will never write an ad, make a graphic or write a line of code without obsessing over the humans that will see it.

Caleb Agee: 38:27
We will never create or spend money on advertising without obsessing over the results that will come.

Brandon Welch: 38:35
We vow that we will always give our best ideas away for free. Maybe we should do that on a podcast sometime.

Caleb Agee: 38:39
And we vow that if we can’t grow your business, we’ll fire ourselves. These are our vows to our clients, the people we serve.

Brandon Welch: 38:51
And it’s true, so it’s powerful. Just clarify and you’re thinking, well, I say all these things, but you need to say them in a way that proves it your values and your vow statements. Don’t show, sorry, don’t tell. Show and these specific things from Steve and Sarah, and maybe our company will help you.

Caleb Agee: 39:07
Yeah, you will see, I think somebody’s sitting out there saying, wow, that was a lot of work and I wanted a marketing plan. Right yeah, when are we going to talk about where I should spend my money, yeah when are we going to talk about you know it’s coming Media mix, yeah, revenue money. We didn’t talk about marketing at all yet did we no?

Brandon Welch: 39:31
Well, yes, but not advertising and marketing, as you know.

Caleb Agee: 39:33
You’re going to see how this plays into, not just this next section that we’re going to do today, but throughout the other sections of your marketing plan in the future. But if you don’t have this, you will be exactly Steve’s arch enemy those cold companies that are in it for a buck. If you jump to the business objectives that we’re talking to now, if you jump to those first, you will lose sight of all the reasons that you exist.

Brandon Welch: 39:59
This becomes important, extremely important, when you’re giving other people your money and counting on their either advertising platform or their marketing tactics to grow your business, because if they don’t know who you are, there will be immediate misalignment with your message and media that they choose for you. That’s right, and so you have to know these things before you can make the best choices with what you say and where you put your money after this.

Caleb Agee: 40:24
Yeah, and you have to be able to articulate them and share them with the people who are building your advertisement. Yes.

Caleb Agee: 40:31
So this is the part. This next part is the part that you actually probably thought of when we said strategy yes, Like business we’re going to call it business objectives is the next phase of your strategy plan building Um, so we’ve got the heart, but we’re going to. We’re going to start by actually talking about the business objectives that you’re wanting to achieve. Yes, Um, to know where we want to go, we’ve got to start by looking at where we’ve been Yep, and so we’re going to look backwards first and then we’re going to look forward next.

Brandon Welch: 41:03
What happened the last 12 months, steve, and what are some of your marketing and growth challenges that you’ve seen?

Caleb Agee: 41:08
Yeah, so, Steve, in this phase of his business he was having trouble really developing a sales team. We’ve got one or two salespeople on our team. I’m still running some calls, if I’m Steve he’s.

Brandon Welch: 41:27
Superman, he’s got the world on his shoulders.

Caleb Agee: 41:29
Yeah, I’m also trying to coordinate installers and-.

Brandon Welch: 41:32
He’s working on Saturdays.

Caleb Agee: 41:34
Orders and ordering product to install. All these things are happening.

Brandon Welch: 41:39
All of his friends are at the lake on their boats and he’s Hustling. He’s hustling right.

Caleb Agee: 41:43
Yeah. So that’s his challenges, that’s the growth challenge is how do I make? I’m switching this from being my job and being scrappy from the first few years. Now it’s becoming a.

Brandon Welch: 41:55
It’s really maturing into a business, and I know I have to level up, and so my biggest challenge is stepping into that fully and acting like it and the first couple of salespeople he hired didn’t produce like he could, and so he’s going.

Brandon Welch: 42:09
Man, I have to have a really predictable amount of business to be able to hand these people who aren’t me. I’m the Steve show. Things just come to me my church friends and my neighbors, and my world knows that I’m the window guy and I can survive on that. But I got to grow bigger than that, and so this phase in Steve’s business was like, literally, how do I get enough business to where it’s enough to feed everybody and build a sales organization that I can optimize? So he was up from year to year. We’re going to go look at the major business metrics of your business. That’s the first step of business objectives. Revenue is obviously always one. You should be considering how many appointments you went on. What percentage of those appointments didn’t cancel on you? What percentage of those appointments or pitches or sales presentations?

Caleb Agee: 42:58
Close rates after that Close rates.

Brandon Welch: 43:00
Yeah, if you’re a website, it’s how many visitors did you have and how many did they buy? Whatever, your conversion rate metric is how many at-bats did I get, how many chances with customers did I get? And then how successful were those essentially? And then, of course, from there you’re applying that to what was the average customer worth. You’re looking could I potentially maximize and get more per customer?

Brandon Welch: 43:20
And then am I profitable? What did I have to? What were my cost of goods sold? What was my overhead or my commission? I had to pay to make that sale happen. And so those are the basics, like revenue, appointments, number of customers, value of a customer, net profit. And so if it was Steve, this particular year we were working on his business $2.9 million in revenue he was up. If you have multiple product lines that have way different profit margins, you’re going to want to do this for each sector of your business. In his case it’s pretty much windows. Pretty simple, yeah, pretty simple.

Caleb Agee: 44:00
But you may have, you know, you may have one product that’s really high margin but low volume and another product that’s low margin, high volume, and you want to split this up yeah, this was a big growth year for steve up from 1.7 yeah, big jump, and so that’s why it made it crazy, because I had to account for if I’m Steve, I had to account for all the sales volume staffing got from, you know, zero to 1.7 to 2.9, in like four or five years. Right.

Brandon Welch: 44:39
So, uh, we said how many customers are your top line revenues? 2.9 million. How many customers did you serve to reach this number? Uh, about 386 customers. The average value of those customers was roughly 7,500 bucks. Um, they were typically netting about 26, 25 in profit. It’s roughly a 35% profit margin. How many customers were brand new? This is really important If you’re in a business that has repeating customers. I’m talking about my service companies that have some sort of annual or repeatable factor. Roofers could be this Definitely HVAC electricians, definitely mechanics, definitely auto body service. In Steve’s category, virtually every customer was new. Yeah, almost every single one, because you buy this home improvement once every 30 years.

Caleb Agee: 45:28
Yeah, it’s a 30-year buying cycle. Unusual that you would get repeats.

Brandon Welch: 45:32
Now he has some commercial guys that repeat on him and home investors, but we’re going to say virtually all, virtually all of his customers especially at this phase of his business to um.

Brandon Welch: 45:41
the cycle wouldn’t have repeated as much Um so so real quick revenue, number of customers, value of each customer, uh, how much you’re netting for each customer, how many were new? Because you don’t really want to give for the sake of this exercise, you don’t want to give marketing dollar credit to customers who likely would repeat it anyway. Yeah, marketing always does improve your referral and repeat rate. It always always does. Let me disclaim that. But for the sake of this exercise, we’re just saying if none of them ever called us back, take your entire marketing budget, which he had spent $311,888 in marketing that year, and we divide that into the new customers, we get $808 per customer, $808 to get a $7,500 customer. Now I want to be very clear. Now I want to be very clear. In Steve’s industry he, on purpose, was pushing on the higher end of percentage of revenue back into marketing. He and.

Brandon Welch: 46:43
Sarah, very, very, very patient, long-term thinking, wise, wise, wise people. They set their lifestyle at a standard and every time their business grew they did not just take that lifestyle and go apply it right. They put reserves because they know every dollar they invest in their business is a bigger dollar next year and the five years after that. So if you do that math, they were spending about 12% of their budget, which, in this category, is on the higher end, but that’s also the end. You have to be on that 12%. Most of these guys are spending 5% to 8%. They’re 12% on purpose, okay.

Caleb Agee: 47:25
Yeah, remember the jump they had 1.7 to 2.9.

Brandon Welch: 47:28
Yeah, they started doing that at the year. They were like a million bucks, and that’s why doubled in in less than two years. Yeah, so a little bit of lesson there, um, but so they spent 311 000 in marketing. He believes in it, it’s paid off for him, he’s. It’s always worked. So then we ask let’s look forward. Uh, it’s december 31st. Your business is exactly where you hoped it would be. Uh, what had to happen in order for that to be true?

Caleb Agee: 47:57
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 47:57
That’s a really good way to frame that question, instead of saying what are your goals?

Caleb Agee: 48:00
Steve, what are your goals next?

Brandon Welch: 48:01
year. Yeah, we say imagine with me, look at all the pillars of life we might even bring up, like health, family relationships, vocation, hobbies we have some customers that are like a big, big part of their goals are I want to hunt and fish more. I want to go to the beach more. I want to take my family to these vacations. This is very, very important.

Caleb Agee: 48:25
Put the kids through college, so they don’t have a mortgage, basically, when they’re done with school.

Brandon Welch: 48:28
Fund a non-profit, Send family in need to Disney World or whatever right. So we say it’s December 31st. Your business is exactly where you hoped it would be. What had to happen in order for that to be true? Mm-hmm. Yeah, guys, we do not do any amount of marketing whatsoever until we understand this about a man or woman who wants to grow their business.

Caleb Agee: 48:52
Yeah, it’s the target on the wall you have to hang up, because if you are aiming at an invisible target, guess what You’re going to miss it. Yes, every single time it creates alignment for you and for you could be the same person you, the business leader, and you, the marketer, could be the same person. But you need to know that what your marketing is doing is aiming at the target. You are drawing right here.

Brandon Welch: 49:18
Yes, I’m going to talk to my media sales friends really quick. We are not trying to showboat for you in any way, shape or form, not trying to do any of that stuff. But I promise you that when you do these things as a person selling a media product and you go through this process, you exit the category of vendor trying to sell them a media and you enter the category of partner who’s trying to grow their business. And I know you’re trained to do the CNA and gosh golly, what would you like to do this year? But you got to go deeper, to do the CNA and gosh golly, what would you like to do this year? But you got to go deeper, you got to go. No, I want to know what your life needs to look like. Okay, it’s not a manipulation tactic. It’s saying I need to know this about you so that I can wire all the things messaging and media together here in just a moment.

Brandon Welch: 50:07
It’s not so I can bring back and read this back to you, so you feel confident, like I know you and I’m selling you something. You’ve got to get to that partnership level and that curiosity level in your head and heart.

Caleb Agee: 50:17
Okay, yeah, so and so you know that you’re signing up for a plan that will work Absolutely.

Brandon Welch: 50:24
Hopefully you want this to work for them Very important thing, because if Steve says I want to be $10 million business, you’re like hmm, oh, you’re at 2.9. Just ask yourself when’s the last time you grew a business by 400% in one year? That was at a mature phase of like five or six years in.

Brandon Welch: 50:40
Yeah. And you’re like hmm, I don’t think I’ve ever done that, never.

Brandon Welch: 50:43
Yeah, you’ve got to go out and say when has that ever happened? And can I duplicate those results? Because, yeah, it’s also an honesty and transparency check. God, I don’t know what’s got to happen in that and, to that point, the first answer Steve gave us in this equation yeah 4 million Was 4 million.

Brandon Welch: 51:02
This is a few years ago. But he’s like I want to go from 2.9 to 4 million. We’re going okay. We’ve done that a time or two. We’ve done that kind of growth in a year’s time. I say a time or two. It can happen a lot actually. But when you look at the phases and you look at his trajectory of growth and what he had to spend to get there, there’s a quick gut check math equation you’re going to want to do. You want to take all of the money you spent and divide it by your amount of customers, or, sorry, divide that by your average job size. So if we were to do Four million.

Brandon Welch: 51:32
Four million and his most recent average job size at that point was $7,500 per job. That means he’d have to get 533 new customers. That’s 103 more than he had the previous year. And if I multiply that times the $808 that he had to spend per customer last year, I would get that his marketing budget needed to go from $311,000 to $430,000. Okay, and it’s not a big enough increase that it’s like way unrealistic. I think it could actually have happened in that time. Yeah, and there are a lot of other factors and it’s not always that linear. But as an immediate gut check, you’re just saying do the ratios work out and am.

Brandon Welch: 52:14
I comfortable Because growing is expensive. Yeah, growing fast is expensive.

Caleb Agee: 52:20
Yeah, so you’re thinking about $430,000 over the next 12 months. The best marketing plans are more steady than they are haphazard. Right, we talk about tomorrow marketing being the staple in a lot of this. We’ll talk about that when we get to media. But $430,000 divided by 12, you think about each month. You know Steve’s business is a $2.9 million business today. Yes. And we’re asking him in January are you willing to market like a $4 million business?

Brandon Welch: 52:53
Yes, and if he had the pile of money, and he had a pile of money at that point, but if he was willing to let go of it at that speed, hallelujah, let’s go, let’s pull the trigger, ride that bullet.

Caleb Agee: 53:02
But we have to ask, you have to bring that question forward, because as a marketer you’d be like great, let’s go yeah exactly.

Brandon Welch: 53:11
Let’s do it. And yeah, so it’s really. Are you prepared to cash flow that and do all of the other things operationally that it would take to start spinning up? Go from that gear shift, because that’s also adding probably four or five employees? Sure, and so it’s how fast you do it? Can you take it in stride? If I go take my car out on the freeway right now and I slam the pedal to the floor, I will get to highway speed faster, but I will use a lot more gas to do that than if I waited 10 seconds to get to highway speed Right.

Caleb Agee: 53:40
That’s right.

Brandon Welch: 53:41
So there’s a, there’s a ratio there, no real right or wrong answer. It’s just what are you up for? That’s right.

Caleb Agee: 53:47
Um, so we had to ask him do you want to spend $430,000 on marketing next year? If, if you’re looking for 4 million roundabouts based on the numbers we’ve seen, this is what you’ll have to spend next year, and are you ready to cash flow that up front?

Brandon Welch: 54:02
He was like whoo, sarah was like man, that’s a lot of money. That’s a lot of money.

Brandon Welch: 54:08
That’s dang near $30,000 a month. It’s more than that, that’s dang near $40,000 a month, yeah. Thousand dollars a month, it’s more than that. That’s dang near forty thousand dollars a month, yeah, and that’s a lot. That’s a lot to commit to. So he was like, hmm, and this is the question here, here’s the form what do you want to grow to? What are you willing to invest in your business next year? Now, there’s always a speed up to marketing and, by the way, the longer you’ve been doing tomorrow marketing, long you’ve been doing solid brand, the cheaper marketing gets overall.

Caleb Agee: 54:39
Yeah, more efficient.

Brandon Welch: 54:41
Yeah, the more efficient it gets.

Brandon Welch: 54:42
And so right now, like fast forward three or four years from these numbers. Steve doesn’t pay $808 per customer. He’s paying more, like $500. But his marketing has matured okay. So that is in play. But when you’re talking year to year, 12 months is actually a really low amount of time for a product like this that has a long-term buying cycle. So what you’re doing is you’re saying what am I willing to invest right now, knowing that it’s always going to get a little bit better and a little bit more juice for the squeeze? So he said you know what? Let’s take my $311,000 budget. I’m comfortable spending $350,000. $430,000 is a little steep. I don’t want to see the wings fly off my plane that fast. So that worked out to. He could expect 433 new customers. If we multiply that times $7,500, that got him to a $3.4 million goal.

Caleb Agee: 55:32
It’s a reasonable goal.

Brandon Welch: 55:34
What do you know? That’s actually about what he did. He did a little bit more than that that year Crazy, yeah, we’ll talk about that in just a second. He was comfortable with that goal. We always try for more. We’re always going to turn knobs and do things. That year actually had an economic headwind set in and he still grew with the same rate. That’s right. So that’s projecting for 17% growth. That’s a decent amount for a company that’s got Some maturity to it, some maturity to it.

Brandon Welch: 56:02
Yeah, so he spent $40,000 more marketing to get $500,000 more in sales, which equaled $175,000 in profit. Now, every person listening to this goes I’d trade FortiGrant for $175,000. And if you have spun your marketing up and if you’ve done these things the way Steve can, that is a reasonably expectable result. And it’s not overselling marketing or this plan at all, yeah, okay. Plus, as you know, if you’re doing any sort of supply-driven business, the more you buy, the better discounts you get on the product. You get better margins, which allows you to invest in more employees, maybe a nicer space, maybe nicer trucks, all of those things. You start building assets and that’s the beauty of a business that grows. It’s not a one-for-one, it starts to become a one-for-a 1.2 or 1. You get added efficiencies as you scale up here. Yeah, so read that back. Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 57:00
He’s comfortable spending $350. We then projected, like what do we expect to happen? Where are we going to hold this money and this plan and these message and media things accountable to? And it was somewhere in the neighborhood of turning towards a $3.4 million business. If it was in the neighborhood of $3.4,. Thumbs up, this is working. The money shakes out.

Caleb Agee: 57:23
And yeah, that’s what happened for him. Yeah, and I think it’s important to acknowledge those realistic goals, to put that on the wall. And so, beyond that practical or that very tangible goal right, we’re going to break 3.4 by end of next year we actually pursue, sometimes a couple more, what we would call tangible goals Intangible.

Caleb Agee: 57:52
Well, I’m actually talking about tangible goals just to help support that and help us keep track of that. So for him, it was that we would trend toward 433 customers and that we would keep our average order value at, or above, $7,500 per customer. Yes, and so those all point to the same thing. But it’s good to have a dashboard that you’re looking at it in three different ways, right, and so we tried to keep the average job value high. We tried to keep the total amount of customers that we were trending toward, and then, when you’re looking at it on a monthly basis, you can kind of see if we’re on track. Indeed.

Caleb Agee: 58:35
Next we move to intangible goals. So things you can’t see necessarily measure on a spreadsheet. And some of these you could argue maybe you could measure them on a spreadsheet, but they’re not typical business dashboard goals.

Brandon Welch: 58:49
It’s like I want to grow the size of my location, I want to move to a nicer part of town, I want to add locations. Those could be the more in-between type tandem goals, but give to community A lot of our clients and I believe that this is why they’re so successful and a lot of the blessings that come to their business come this way. They are very passionate about giving to their community.

Caleb Agee: 59:10
Hey check out last week’s episode about oh yeah, yeah, yes, Generosity.

Brandon Welch: 59:14
Hey check out last week’s episode about generosity. Absolutely Best marketing strategy of all is generosity. So improve the work-life balance. Maybe you’re burned at both ends, maybe you’re both a little tired. Maybe your wife or your kids need you a little more at home. That’s an intangible goal and I’m telling you, if you’re in my four walls and we’re consulting you on growth, you better believe. Every time we get together, we’re asking you how that’s going. How’s it going?

Brandon Welch: 59:37
Are you hunting and fishing, more Certainly from an annual perspective? Have you been on a vacation lately? Are you flying the airplane? What are you doing? What are you doing that improves your life?

Caleb Agee: 59:49
These are the results of, hopefully, you growing a business that builds also the life as the owner or leader that you want and these things should be. We can’t scuba. What’s all this been for? What’s this all been about?

Brandon Welch: 1:00:04
Office reference yeah that’s right. So Steve, at this point in his business, just looking back at the notes, he wanted to cross train and hire more people for these positions. So if his you know office person had a family thing or a vacation or whatever, he had another body there that could jump in and save that. And part of that at this phase because Sarah was working in the business was getting her out of having to be there every day right.

Brandon Welch: 1:00:31
Because she’s got things going on. So better culture, improved sales process, more predictable close rates. That was a very big thing for Steve, half tangible, half intangible. But he wanted the low guy on his totem pole that was closing at 35% closing rate to match more, the guy that was at like 60% right, that’s right. So that was a really big deal. That was a really big deal for him. So take the time to write out your intangible goals. And then, because again there’s a certain point as the owner-operator, if these extra life things aren’t coming to fruition, that’s probably because too much of your energy is going into the business and you want marketing to take away that energy from a customer acquisition standpoint and ultimately a customer quality standpoint. So you have fewer problems, you have better employees when you are a well-branded company and you have these values out front and center we’re going to talk about that next week, like how to actually put them together. Guys, you start attracting the better customers, better people. You attract the better life.

Caleb Agee: 1:01:36
And more consistently. Right, so you’re not having this. Oh crap, business was down last week. I have no appointments next week, right? What you end up with is a much more consistent flow of business, and that was a big part of where Steve was here. That’s right.

Brandon Welch: 1:01:53
We’ve all been there.

Caleb Agee: 1:01:54
Yes.

Brandon Welch: 1:01:55
Okay. So this isn’t some rah-rah kumbaya like what do you want to have happen? What’s the unicorns and rainbows? What’s the pot of gold? Look like no, these play realities, because once you get this stuff figured out, then scaling just becomes a matter of rinse and repeat. And that’s where Steve is today, that’s right, yep, is today, that’s right, yep. Um, love you, steve. Okay, um, the, the. That was a lot.

Caleb Agee: 1:02:24
That was a lot, I hope you heard it the growth that Steve had, um, and it’s really important because we’re going to talk about message next week and media the week following, and I hope you will come back and check this out. If you’re listening to this later on, make sure you go watch the next episodes, because it all goes together. Steve would not have achieved the goals he actually. The goals we wrote out right here, that we did the math for, are literally what happened. This was a few years ago. We are telling you this actually happened.

Caleb Agee: 1:02:49
These things don’t just happen because you did marketing or because you had. They don’t just happen because you had good strategy. Yeah, you have to have a great message and media plan to go along with it. Yes, um, a lot of times it’s like I’m going to get, I’m going to get three point whatever million dollars, or I’m going to go get four or $10 million, and you do maybe have a reasonable goal, but haphazard and chaotic, the, the message is not clear, or or together and your media is haphazard and getting you mixed results At the very least, you’re costing yourself efficiency.

Brandon Welch: 1:03:25
So you cannot do good messaging until you’ve done what we did today Correct. You cannot do good media until you do what we’re going to do next week, which is messaging.

Brandon Welch: 1:03:33
That’s why they’re in that order, um, until you do what we’re going to do next week, which is messaging. That’s why they’re in that order. I’m going to recap it real quick and you can take notes or put it on slow speed or whatever. So, first step vision. What’s the world you’re trying to create? Values, what are you standing for and against? Vows, what are you going to do and promise your customers?

Brandon Welch: 1:03:55
Second step is business objectives. Look back at your wins, acknowledge what challenges you had, take special note of what it cost you to acquire customers, because that’s your most reliable, immediate math for the short term. If you do the things we’re talking about, it will get better and better math over time. But your minimum viable math like what did it cost me to get a customer? And if I did 20% more of that, would I be comfortable spending that to get 20% more customers?

Brandon Welch: 1:04:21
Yep, then you’re going to set tangible business objectives based on where you feel about that last year’s growth. And you’re going to take special note of intangible business objectives because you know, as an owner, if you’re not meeting those, there’s an imbalance and a misalignment between your actions, your energy and your effort and what will be sustainable for you to keep pushing this past in steve’s case, on, you know, on your way to five to ten million, and the equation changes at that point like if you’ve got all that stuff figured out, then you have the spirit and the energy and the tank to go do these other things, and so that’s ultimately where Frank and Maven takes companies, and wouldn’t it be so exciting if, by doing these things now, in a couple years, you were like flying higher than you ever thought.

Brandon Welch: 1:05:07
Yeah, last thing we didn’t mention share this with your stakeholders, which is your team. Yeah. Like be willing to break this down and let them see this part of the equation because they’ll feel ownership with team. Yeah, Like be willing to break this down and let them see this part of equation because they’ll feel ownership with that.

Caleb Agee: 1:05:19
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 1:05:19
And if they don’t feel ownership, then they’re. You know, there’s just a lot of energy loss because you’re holding it all.

Caleb Agee: 1:05:26
Yeah, leaders, it is, it is our job to um, take people like, hey, here’s where we are, we’re going up there, yes, and if they don’t know where the up there is, the hill we’re taking, they’re going to stand still and they’ll hold their defenses, they’ll wander around and just do the work, but they will not be aggressively hungry, chasing some thing.

Caleb Agee: 1:05:55
And so a lot of business owners are like why does nobody care about this as much as I do? The truth is, they won’t be able to care about it as much as you do. But if you can, if you can have clearly how you guys are changing the world and if you can have clearly what you’re hoping to do about it, about it in the next year, how you’re going to change people’s lives, that will rally your team together. And then, hopefully, there’s a very clear way when, if you have clear revenue projections and sales goals or new customer acquisition goals, hopefully they can translate that to how it changes their lives as well. And that is when you start getting a well-oiled machine as far as everybody having the same mind, the same marketing plan.

Brandon Welch: 1:06:40
Amen and hallelujah. Bring it on, bring it on, all right. Hey, that was a big episode. Please do all of those things. Next week we’re going to do probably more fun and creative stuff, but get your team together, do all these exercises and you’re going to be set up for success. That’s right. If you have any questions, uh, or want us to, like you know, help you figure out what’s a, what’s reasonable growth with your business, give us some, some nuances always nuances.

Brandon Welch: 1:07:09
there’s always what ifs and yeah, and how to’s and all that. Uh, I promise you we’ve heard them before. Yeah, and we’ll be. We will love to feature those as, like you know, in between stuff for these principles.

Caleb Agee: 1:07:19
Hey, if you send in your business objectives for 2025, we won’t share them.

Brandon Welch: 1:07:26
You can even give us a different business name or something.

Caleb Agee: 1:07:28
We would love for you to share those with us and we will give you a response via email. We’ll give you some feedback on those. We may have a couple of questions to clarify. If you send that, we’ll give you a hardback of the Maven marketer. Ooh, a hardback cover. Oh yeah, ooh.

Brandon Welch: 1:07:44
Maybe even have somebody sign it. That’s right. Send those questions to mavenmonday at frankandmavencom. Please share this episode. This is going to be one of the more important ones that we need to share and get in the world to fulfill our mission of making entrepreneurs lives better.

Brandon Welch: 1:07:57
That’s why we do this. There’s no ask, there’s no sales thing, there’s no money behind the mission we’re doing here. So send those to Maven Monday at frankandmaven.com. Hit like, subscribe all those fun things and we will be back here and every Monday answering your real life marketing questions, because marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. Have a great week.