Brandon Welch 0:00
When it’s pretty clear that the sales and marketing engine is dependent on a person or a couple of people, talent, the whole hit by a bus scenario,
Caleb Agee 0:07
yeah, key man situation, right? Yeah. Can this
Brandon Welch 0:10
operate? Can somebody come in and buy this business? And I would encourage anybody who’s listening that has a business or works in a business, or has a vested interest in making a business maximized in any way you need to be thinking about your business like if you were going to sell
it. Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I’m here with Caleb Agee, Mr. Sleeve rolled mcleverson, thank you. Two kinds of guys, people who can pull off rolled sleeves and people who can’t. And I’m just glad to be in your presence. I’m glad you think I pull it off. Do you have tall socks too? I can’t pull those off either. No tall socks, actually. Yeah, look like ham hocks when I put tall socks on. So this is the place where we answer your real life marketing questions to eliminate waste in advertising, grow your business and help you achieve the big dream. Do we have some real life marketing questions today?
Caleb Agee 1:09
Oh, we’ve got, we’ve actually got one very strong real life marketing question.
Brandon Welch 1:13
I think it’s the most relevant question we’ve ever had in the podcast. That’s strong,
Caleb Agee 1:18
that’s strong claim. So this first question is from clay. He works for a high end flooring and remodeling company. He asks, here’s what he’s he’s gonna say, I’ve been able to generate a consistent flow of business, but we don’t even have a website. We don’t even have business cards. Do we need marketing now,
Brandon Welch 1:41
why would a marketing podcast bother answering such a damaging question? Do I even need marketing? And contrary to what you might be expecting, the answer is not, of course, you need marketing, but we are going to answer a question with some questions, because this is underlying, really, what, what every successful business is, or should be asking in America, do I even need marketing? Yeah, and so we know clay. I did not know the the owner of this company, but it is a very good company, yeah, some friends that have used them think when you want it done, right? Use
Caleb Agee 2:21
this company beautiful remodels and tile and beautiful floors.
Brandon Welch 2:25
Yeah, they’re working on the nicest homes in the area. And what it sounds like is they’ve got a heck of a referral business. And if you’re listening now and you’re going, I built a great business on referral, this is absolutely the episode and the day for you. Yeah. So I love this question, and I’m going to say for just a second that you have already marketed and you just don’t realize it. One of my favorite thoughts on advertising is actually from Roy Williams and the Wizard of ads. We learned at wizard Academy that’s a great school, business school, advertising school. If you’ve never been there, you should check it out. Yeah, but it’s it goes like this, advertising is a tax we pay for being unremarkable.
Caleb Agee 3:15
Hit, hit me with it again. Yeah, one more time. Advertising
Brandon Welch 3:17
is a tax we pay for being unremarkable. Of course, the meaning implied there is that truly remarkable companies don’t need advertising to be in business and to grow customers find them because of the reputation, right, right? And I think that’s what these guys have going on. Everything about it looks and feels like that’s what’s going on here. And so it’s like, cool. We don’t have a logo, we don’t have any of those stupid websites. We don’t have to meet with those, you know, nerdy marketing guys. But I would ask that is a condition of your business now, and they’ve earned that over the last few years. Yeah, and we are coming out of a really big explosion in all things home remodeling, no secret that industry, really, at every corner, has soared, yeah, and so I’m not saying that’s the only reason they thrive, but I would point that out. And if I were sitting with this business owner, I would ask, what are you really trying to make happen? Not just today. Like your reality today is you probably have more projects than you can keep up with. Yeah, sounds like they’ve got, you know, maybe a dozen employees or so. They’re always busy. And so this is if you’re a marketer, or if you’re an agency, or if you’re a media salesperson, please listen, not as a means of combating and like overcoming the objection. But just as a means of any time somebody is saying, yes, marketing, no, marketing, what should I do? Your instant question should be, what are you trying to make happen? What is the goal? Yeah, and that is the problem with the marketing industry. What we call the broken system. Is that Yeah, as a, as a, as a. Nicety. Some people might start there, but I’m going No, tell me again. Tell me again. Tell me again. What really are you trying to make happen? Not just today. What do we do at Frank and Maven, we start with strategy first. Start with strategy first. The first question strategy is, what business objective Are you trying to achieve? Yeah, in the next one year, in the next three years, in the next five years, yep, it’s a bare minimum. We don’t ask for $1 or a minute of your time if you can’t answer those questions, yeah, and we will not work for you if you can’t answer those questions.
Caleb Agee 5:29
Because you can’t, you can’t win if you don’t have a target, if you’re yes, if you’re at the range, you can’t hit a target that isn’t there, and that’s what we have to set up first is nobody’s gonna win if we don’t have anything to aim for. Yes,
Brandon Welch 5:43
so as a friend and somebody who thinks very highly of this business, just gonna ask a few questions, yeah, how big do you want your company to be? And I’m gonna take a wild guess and say that they’re in the two to 5 million range, just with this kind of volume and the amount of choice. The amount of employees, I think they have, sure, and maybe that’s all, maybe that’s going to fund your lifestyle, maybe that’s going to fund all the great things you want to do. Maybe you’ve got excess profit, and that is wonderful. I hope that’s the case. And maybe this is a really well run operation, yeah, but I would say, what about your employees? Employees have this tendency, like all other human beings, to want to grow. And so what is a what is a business that’s honoring its employees do? Um, how’s your profit margin? Are you working with the type of clients that you want to if the answer is yes, why and is that sustainable? Or how long has that been a thing? Yeah. And if you’re used to operating on that type of profit margin, a higher end profit margin, better quality, do you have enough in the pipeline to keep that going? And what are the indicators that, if that’s tapering off, that you’re going to look at, you know, beforehand, before you’re sitting, you know, wondering my I need some more business, right? Yeah,
Caleb Agee 7:02
you’re not gonna have to scrape and scrounge for that later on. So I can imagine
Brandon Welch 7:05
what’s happened here. He did a great job for some really nice home, and then all the other friends of nice home said, I want that, right? Yep. So How sustainable is that? Because if you’re completing your service in a three or four week time period, the amount of referrals you have to keep going for a long time after that honeymoon period of doing nice work for people is quite a bit, right? It’s quite a few. Here’s another thing. Do you want to sell your company? I’m going to guess the guy that owns this, or the person that’s in charge of the sales equation has a lot of really good relationships, yeah? And what is a business owner that comes in and says, or sorry, an investor that wants to buy a business? Do they say, Cool, I can do this without you, when it’s pretty clear that the sales and marketing engine is dependent on a person or a couple of people, talent, the whole hit by a bus scenario,
Caleb Agee 7:58
yeah, key man situation, yeah. Can this operate?
Brandon Welch 8:01
Can somebody come in and buy this business? And I would encourage anybody who’s listening that has a business or works in a business, or has a vested interest in making a business maximized in any way you need to be thinking about your business like if you were going to sell it, yeah, that
Caleb Agee 8:15
kind of goes back to the E Myth concept, right? You’re stuck working in it and you have a job? No, not a company.
Brandon Welch 8:23
Most people think they have a business, but in a lot of cases, you have a job, right? You just have a it’s a Michael Gerber E Myth thing. If you haven’t read that book, you got to read it. But yeah, so do you want to build a machine and something that’s constantly serving a profitable, growing organization without a key person or key relationship, or maybe even a key past set of customers, right? You want your people to earn more? Do you want them to be able to grow, retire, build their families? Yeah, I know Clay, who’s a who’s an operator inside this business. He’s he’s on the front lines. He’s putting the floors down. He’s one of the artisans, right? 10 years from now, clay is not going to want to do that work, right? Maybe five years from now, three years from now, right? Yep. And so do you want to have a company that’s grown to the level where you can support an ascension of resources and things like salaries and insurance and life balance? And that’s going to take growth at a different rate than you have now. Yeah, um, we talked about backup team members. What if clay gets hit by a bus? Love you, Clay, but yeah. What? What if that happens like, what if your talent said, Do you have the ability and the reputation and the network and the abundance to go out and hire the next rock star? So I get what I get what’s going on here, but far too often, we have this hand to mouth mentality. And I’m not saying that anybody in this particular scenario is running an unfound, you know, an un steady operation, sure, but we tend to, you know, think. Of money is good, customers are good. But what else could be a problem, and what’s about to be a problem? Sure, because the time you realize growth is a problem, it’s too late, really, to jump in and make marketing do something about it. You’re gonna have a dip. Yeah. So if you’re saying, Do I need marketing, let’s, let’s ask a different question. The question should be, is my business built the way it needs to be built, to fulfill the objectives and the life and the security and the mission that I want to be able to achieve? Yeah, and
Caleb Agee 10:34
the only way to do that is to look ahead, to know where you want it to go, and then to set up, you know, marketing, or at least a growth plan, whether it’s going to happen organically or with marketing, so that you can achieve that, so you can get there.
Brandon Welch 10:49
Yeah, what do people, what are the wealthiest people do? Do they wait till their 60s to start investing? No, no, early and often, early and often, and they’re constantly building this thing, right? And so the wealthiest, the most secure companies are constantly building and earning that next customer. Yeah, and I’m just gonna say that does not have to be on the back of advertising, and in a lot of cases it shouldn’t. It may never be. But how are you nurturing? What engine is there? What are we doing to reward, increase, maximize those referrals? Yeah, right. Which right now, it’s just Caleb. You got to use these.
Caleb Agee 11:30
Yeah, you got to try it. And you’re relying on your fans, your raving fans, which is amazing, fantastic, but we would actually call that. We have, we’ve declared what we call the three types of customers, today, tomorrow and yesterday. These referrals are in the bucket of yesterday customers. And it’s the most. It’s still marketing. It’s still, you know, it’s happening organically, but that word of mouth connecting with those yesterday customers is is one of the most profitable. It’s the most it’s probably the cheapest way to grow your business and to capitalize on it. And so that would actually be where I tell them to start, is just look at these referrals that you continuously get start there. Yeah, you have customers. You have a list of past customers, and some of them have already helped you out, but I bet they could help you out a little bit more. Your
Brandon Welch 12:25
marketing could be having a barbecue once a year and inviting all of your awesome customers. Yeah, your marketing could be around a golf writing handwritten notes to all your people, telling them how much they mean to you. Yeah, your marketing can be taken to a round of golf. Yeah. Your marketing could be bacon, fresh bread. There’s this guy, this has done our carpets for years. He’s expensive, holy smokes, like he is more than you think you should pay for carpet cleaning and then some. But he’s probably good. He’s very good. Yeah, I have four kids and, like, 87 animals. So, you know, dirt gets tracked in Okay, so this guy always brings a fresh loaf of bread. Oh, his wife makes the bread once, like, or twice a week, and always when he’s done fresh loaf of bread, and it’s like, cool, I’ll never hire another guy. Yeah, right. So it does not have to be on the on these big, expensive marketing plans you’re asking, Are my profit margins? Are my leadership and my operating procedures is my competitive advantage, staying true like these are the these are the plants in the garden, and you need to water that garden. Am I recession proof? That’s a big one in home improvement. Oh yeah. And even at the highest levels, is my insurance the way it should be, my health insurance, my liability insurance, and it takes money to fund those things and build, build this healthy operation. So do you need marketing of some sort? You do. It doesn’t have to look like advertising. Yeah,
Caleb Agee 13:49
I think, I think that’s the thing most people think about running, running ads, right? Buying TV ads or Facebook ads, or Google ads, or wherever, billboards. You might not need to do that, but there is a type of advertising you’re doing sometimes, and it looks untraditional, but sometimes that’s just you bought a really good piece of real estate, and you’re right next to the big street in town. Yes, that can be the best advertising you have.
Brandon Welch 14:15
The premium you pay on that real estate is your advertising budget. McDonald’s does
Caleb Agee 14:19
it. Walgreens does it. They put it on the corner of the two biggest streets in town every single time, and that’s a big part of their advertising budget. Obviously they spend more
Brandon Welch 14:28
Maven, I mean, we’re on the highway or right here
Caleb Agee 14:31
on the highway, yeah,
Brandon Welch 14:34
yeah. So I would, I would encourage any business owner to be thinking deeper about that, not marketing, but what? What am I trying to build? What happens if I’m not here? What happens if this person isn’t here? Do I have the machine and the sustainability for this to be an asset? Because if you’re not building your business as an asset and you’re building it as just a cash flow machine, you’re missing an opportunity.
Caleb Agee 14:52
Yeah, I think, I think also you would want to look historically at your organic I’ll call it organic growth rate. So. Yes, let’s say we’re doing 10% 20% year over year growth, yes, without spending money on advertising, as he would say, it right, fantastic. But if you have a dream for that to be 25 30% growth, you’re going to need to put yourself in front of 10% more opportunities, and that without that’s where you’re going to have to probably invest in that or do something a little extra by another company. Or, yeah, yeah, you’re going to expand that base. Yeah. So
Brandon Welch 15:32
that’s, that’s really the last thing, man, if you are operating with this much success without doing that stuff, doesn’t it make you curious about what would happen if you poured some gas on that fire? And the companies we have, frankly, the companies we choose to work with, are companies that already have this type of reputation, yeah, and we look at them, we go, this is going to be easy, yep. Because I ain’t got to worry about your sales. I gotta worry about your follow through. I gotta worry about your reputation. All I have to do is pour gas on a fire, and you got great values and vision. And when you do that to a company like this, it’s gonna be a ten million company. Oh, yeah, I would love, love, love to work with these guys, not because it’s big dollar signs, but because, man, when you do that, when you pair maximum maximizing on a good story, yeah,
Caleb Agee 16:27
I something, watch out, something we throw around around around here, around around around here. A lot is advertising really just increases whatever fire was already there, yeah. And so if your company’s shrinking and you spend a bunch of money on advertising, if you have a failing trend of a company, good advertising won’t save a bad business, nope. But if you have a good business, and then you have good advertising on top of that, it’ll be world famous. Look out. Yeah, put your sunglasses on. It’s gonna be shining
Brandon Welch 17:01
clay. Thank you for the question. Yeah. And there’s a lot in there work on just the tangibles that you can sort of put arms around what you already have. Yeah. And so instead of people having your phone number saved, and I’m telling the owner, this dude, if you’re relying on your sales people’s relationships, and they got their phone number and, you know, your salesman’s phone number and their phone books. Yeah? Fee wants to go somewhere else for another dollar. That’s a liability. Yeah? So, so have people attach something, attach the meaning and the value to something, like a good name, a good logo, good website that you can control and, frankly, sell and transfer. So, yeah, awesome. Great question. Do you need advertising? Rewind and listen again? Yeah. What are you trying to make
Caleb Agee 17:47
happen? Thanks. Are you subscribed to our newsletter? We send out an email twice a week. Goes along with this podcast, and it’s a synopsis, a summary, little bits of wisdom that our team actually pours in there.
Brandon Welch 18:02
Maven, Monday, frankly, Friday, and coming soon, rolled up sleeve
Caleb Agee 18:05
Saturday, oh my gosh, that is not coming soon. Every Monday, we’re
Brandon Welch 18:10
answering real life questions, solving problems so you can walk away refreshed and empowered for your week. And every Friday, we’re just recapping those bits of wisdom on the frankly, Friday, those are like, three minutes long. Yeah, we won’t ramble here as long as we did today. Yeah, if you
Caleb Agee 18:24
do subscribe, if you do want to subscribe, you can go to our website, Frank and maven.com or if you just shoot us an email to Maven Monday at frankon, maven.com you can do that. If you have a question, we’ll get your question on the show. We’ll get it on the show. We’ll get it answered just like clay
Brandon Welch 18:37
today. Absolutely. Thank you so much for watching. Don’t forget to subscribe and like and reviews help tremendously. We will be here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions so you can grow your business, eliminate waste in advertising and achieve the big dream. Because
Caleb Agee 18:50
marketers who can’t teach you why are just a fancy lie. Thanks for watching
