The Small Business Safari
Have you ever sat there and wondered "What am I doing here stuck in the concrete zoo of the corporate world?" Are you itching to get out? Chris Lalomia and his co-host Alan Wyatt traverse the jungle of entrepreneurship. Together they share their stories and help you explore the wild world of SCALING your business. With many years of owning their own small businesses, they love to give insight to the aspiring entrepreneur. So, are you ready to make the jump?
The Small Business Safari
Unlocking Small Business Success: AI Innovations, Storytelling, and Marketing Strategies with Wes Gay
Unlock the secrets to small business triumphs with our expert guest, Wes Gay, as we explore the compelling world of storytelling and the groundbreaking influence of AI on entrepreneurship. Discover how positioning yourself as a "guide" can transform your marketing strategy, allowing your customers to shine as the true heroes of your business narrative. Alongside Wes, we pull back the curtain on powerful storytelling techniques, contrasting iconic strategies like Simon Sinek's "Start with Why" with real-world examples from the likes of Chick-fil-A.
In our journey through the "Small Business Safari," we bring AI into the spotlight, highlighting tools such as Elon Musk's Grok and assessing its potential to reshape business landscapes. Listen in as we share insights into overcoming common entrepreneurial challenges through effective communication, crafting customer avatars, and the art of solving problems. Our lively discussion touches on everything from strategic email marketing to humorous anecdotes about the chaos of Chick-fil-A in Manhattan, ensuring a comprehensive blend of education and entertainment.
Our episode isn't just about sharing knowledge—it's about empowering you with actionable strategies to enhance your business growth. From Wes Gay's invaluable marketing wisdom to engaging stories about Thanksgiving traditions and boxing match recaps, each segment is designed to leave you informed and inspired. Tune in to harness the power of customer stories, discover the nuances of crafting your business narrative, and learn how to turn potential pitfalls into stepping stones toward success.
From the Zoo to Wild is a book for entrepreneurs passionate about home services, looking to move away from corporate jobs. Chris Lalomia, a former executive, shares his path, discoveries, and tools to succeed as a small business owner in home improvement retail. The book provides the mindset, habits, leadership style, and customer-oriented processes necessary to succeed as a small business owner in home services.
And when we talk about telling your story, what we're actually talking about is let's take the principles and the elements that make good stories and then use those as a filter for how we communicate, because what ends up happening when you do that is it has a direct impact on sales, because you start to sell more. It has a direct impact on marketing, because marketing stops being a waste of money and becomes an investment that gets you a return on your money.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the Small Business Safari where I help guide you to avoid those traps, pitfalls and dangers that lurk when navigating the wild world of small business ownership. I'll share those gold nuggets of information and invite guests to help accelerate your ascent to that mountaintop of success. It's a jungle out there and I want to help you traverse through the levels of owning your own business that can get you bogged down and distract you from hitting your own personal and professional goals. So strap in adventure team and let's take a ride through the safari and get you to the mountaintop. Welcome back to the small business bar. Everybody. Alan, this has been a lot of fun getting this sucker launched, and we are launched and ready to rock and roll. You know, I think, one of the reasons that I'm a little slow on the uptake as it were, was that just in general being slow, but but even slower are you?
Speaker 3:not going to admit that we've been arguing for the last 10 minutes about technology you know.
Speaker 2:So I've added some new technology, everybody, and I'm telling you what uh, ai is coming and it's coming in a big way. And you want to know how I know it? It's because it hit me over the forehead two Fridays ago and people came in and started talking to me about AI and all the shit that's going to happen with it. Right, and we've had people come out and talk to us about AI. And if you go back and listen to some of these episodes, uzair's episode came on again Uzi, as we like to call him. Yeah, he's really big.
Speaker 2:So I had this group come in and they said what are you guys doing? I said you know, well, I think I'm going to use Claude to write my content, because we had heard about that already. And they said but we're going to bake off chat, gpt and Claude and see which one does better analysis of data for us so I can start seeing better trends in my company. He said said well, have you heard of grok? I said, nope, you're gonna slow down, man. I said I'm a football guy, um, so I know that he is a retired tight end who played with tom brady. He goes yeah, that's grok buddy. I'm like oops, yeah, grok g-r-o-k. So alan, yeah, do you know what that is?
Speaker 3:no, and I I can't wait to hear and just for the listeners who are maybe new, Chris is very excited about AI and I am terrified by it.
Speaker 2:So still excited and terrified all in the same breath. But I'm more on the excited side, you're right. So Grok, believe it or not, is another AI. Yes, we've said that. Guess who invented this one, or owns it, who? Yep, his name is Elonon musk, my friends, and it's part of the x platform. That's right. Grok is taking over the world. So then it probably is going to be pretty awesome. It probably someday is going to be pretty awesome. And if you head to bed on a horse, which one's going to horse us out, that's got to be the one, right, I think that's the one that's going to knock it down. So there you go. There's, there's my ding. So what do I do? I go to my masterpiece.
Speaker 2:Don't talk about your ding on the air, my ding-a-ling. So I take it to my mastermind group and I say, look, I want to process this issue about AI. And so I start explaining it to somebody, to my group. And in my group is one of the other groups came. We allow people to cross between our groups and visit and she kept looking at me saying, well, that's not new, that's not new. I said, oh, by the way, they're telling me I gotta have phraseology on my website because that's what's going to be researching. She's going that's not new.
Speaker 2:And I finally looked at one of the other guys. I said does she realize? Every time she tells me that's not new, she's basically saying, boy, you're a dumb idiot. I said I've already got that part figured. I didn't need somebody to constantly remind me when I'm bringing an issue to you, being vulnerable, saying, oh my God, this AI thing is coming. I don't even know what to do with it. Now I've heard this other thing named Croc. What a charming lady she is. She is a lot of fun. She's actually very interesting and a very good person.
Speaker 3:But she didn't realize she's good at negative reinforcement at negative reinforcement.
Speaker 2:He is definitely, which I get plenty of at home.
Speaker 3:Didn't need that out. Did you let her know? I don't need any more of that, I got all I need.
Speaker 2:I got all you want to talk about negative reinforcement. Trust me, you don't want to be in my head. I got 50 other people in there right now as it is, and I'm all by myself, All right we got to get to our what you're driving around the truck.
Speaker 2:Listen up, man. If you're walking, doing a walk, you're doing something else. Uh, just listen up, because this is going to be a good one and I'm going to tease it, because that's what all good stories are, right, you have to tease it. Set it up like what I did with that. Thank you everybody. We got west gate on from the west gate. Actually, it's really easy to find him. Westgatecom. That's it. Westgatecom, simple and west.
Speaker 3:Thanks for joining you are a story. Look on his face. He's like what have I signed myself? Listen I.
Speaker 1:I had to keep it simple. When you, when you graduate from alabama public schools. You're not really good at complicated, so we just keep it. So he brought it up.
Speaker 2:He's from alabama, so he's from la right lower alabama? Yeah, actually I like how he said I'm from south alabama. Does that make it better than lower alabama? That's what I just say that's.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what the people it's funny when I, when I ever say south alabama from up here, you guys, y'all understand this people say where you're from. I tell them. They look at me and I say it's the last chick-fil-a between here and 38 and it's the last reliable bathroom. But he went here between here and 38 people go oh yeah, I've been there, I've been to that chick-fil-a there you go.
Speaker 2:It's a landmark, probably the busiest chick-fil-a in all the world, which I want to find out. Which one is the busiest chick-fil-a ever?
Speaker 3:because I swear to god, is the one in in p street corners I think the one they opened in manhattan set all the records the day it opened. What did it?
Speaker 1:yeah, time square the busiest one in the country, does almost 20 million a year in sales and the average chick-fil-a is about seven and a half million so is the busiest one, the manhattan one.
Speaker 2:20 million?
Speaker 1:I don't know, I don't know. I'd have to text a friend of mine to find out, but it's the. The top performing store is just under 20 million a year in sales you know?
Speaker 2:that reminds me of a great story about chick-fil-a when they opened the Manhattan store. Because you told me I know.
Speaker 3:I was going to say let's see Chris steal another one of my stories.
Speaker 2:That was good, but we're talking about a great story. Now they have a great story, but what we're going to talk about Wes is about the story brain and why story is so important for small businesses and what they've got to do. I mean, when you take a step back, what do we tell everybody? When you start a business, cash is king and you got to get sales up. So you got to get your leads, you got to get the sales converted. You got to get some cash in the books. You got to convert it. You got to have great customer service. But hey, oh, by the way, you need to spend some time and effort around your story. And that one doesn't sound as important as everything else we just said, because that was cash sales delivery. So obviously it's important. So tell us a little bit more about why it's so important.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think a lot of times people people hear they say, oh, we got to learn, tell our story and companies go. But why don't? We don't have time for that. We're trying to grow, we're in a cash crunch, we're in end of year. We're looking at Q1. We're trying to figure out you know how end of year, we're looking at Q1. We're trying to figure out how do we keep the lights on and keep our people paid.
Speaker 1:And when we talk about telling your story, what we're actually talking about is let's take the principles and the elements that make good stories and then use those as a filter for how we communicate. Because what ends up happening when you do that is it has a direct impact on sales, because you start to sell more. It has a direct impact on marketing, because marketing stops being a waste of money and becomes an investment to get you a return on your money. We're not necessarily looking to tell stories. What we're going to do is figure out as we walk through, what are the principles of a great story and how do we use that to filter our messaging.
Speaker 1:Whether we're in landscaping, hvac, commercial real estate I've worked in probably 60 plus industries at this point with all kinds of companies and organizations of all shapes and sizes. And it all comes down to how do we filter what we're trying to do and say to the people we're trying to reach in a way that they care about and that they understand? And that's really what we mean when we say telling the story. What we actually are doing is we're not even telling our company story. What we're doing is we're trying to tell the story of the people that we want to sell to and then show how we can insert ourselves in their story and make their lives better.
Speaker 2:So make them the hero of the story, and I put that as obviously that's a great point as well. Sometimes, we so often want to talk about ourselves and our company, you know, found it into easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, y'all know it. You go to. You go to a networking event and you go hey, my name is Wes, what do you do? And the person you ask that question to goes well, my grandfather started this HVAC business 75 years ago and the logo was blue because my grandmother loved her blue fountain pen and we want to honor her. And we're trying to increase our blessed places to work metric and we're trying to see a steady 20% year over year growth and you're going. That's great, but I don't care.
Speaker 2:Because what we?
Speaker 1:intuitively hear is like hey, you're a hero in your story and that's lovely and I hope you win, but I am subconsciously a hero. We're all heroes in our own story. So what we're listening for is will this person help me, or somebody I know? So if I, instead I, go to that same event, I say, hey, my name is Wes, what do you do? The same HVAC guy goes.
Speaker 1:You know how a lot of homes in the Atlanta Metro, you know a lot of homes in the Atlanta Metro area. The homeowners have no idea if their HVAC units are ready for summer. And instantly I'm going. I don't know if mine are ready. I don't even know how to know that.
Speaker 1:Well, what we do one of the things we do at at North Atlanta HVAC is we help people make sure their systems are running smoothly so they can keep them cool when they need to be and warm when they want to be. I hear that and I go hey, what does that look like? Tell me more about that. All of a sudden, we went from the HVAC guy that I don't care about to the HVAC guy that's probably going to get me as a customer, because he brought me in using a story. The hook of it was he started with a problem. So if you introduce a problem which is a key thing, like without problems, there's no stories. You introduce a problem now, all of a sudden, people are going to pay attention, but if you don't do that, nobody cares.
Speaker 3:So I always thought, when you were talking about telling your story, you're telling the story of your company, kind of your why You're saying I'm not telling my story, I'm telling your story you're.
Speaker 1:You're saying I'm not telling my story, I'm telling your story, or what? Yeah, I mean, there's probably a nicer way to say this, but I don't know no, no don't let it rip, please.
Speaker 2:Oh, there's no way you can.
Speaker 1:I mean the reality is, like your mamas are probably thrilled about your company's story, but they're probably the only one right as we're coming into the holiday season. Like your grandma, your, whatever, your favorite older relative is, they're very proud of everybody who's listening, of the company you have and you left corporate and started your own business. Whatever you're doing, but there are very few, if any, people in the world who are going to give you money that actually care about your story. What they care about is can you help me? And so what we want to do is reframe that story. So if I'm going to, if I'm trying to essentially sell to somebody and I'm in I don't know lawn care, I don't care that the lawn care company grew up on a sod farm and loves the smell of grass in the morning and cares deeply about every blade and got it, got three degrees in grass management or whatever. I don't care, I just want to care. Are they going to be on time? They're gonna keep my yard looking great and is the price makes sense, right? What we want to do is. What we want to do is we want to figure out how do we play in story language. We want to play what's called the guide character, that's the. That's the real one I play into.
Speaker 1:Right, this is yoda and star wars. This is uh haymitch and the hunger games. It's rafiki and the in Star Wars. This is Hamish in the Hunger Games. It's Rafiki in the Lion King. It's Iceman in Top Gun, maverick, right, I mean almost every movie, mr Miyagi and the Karate Kid.
Speaker 1:You can go on and on, because almost every movie has that character that comes along and says I understand what you're going through, I understand your challenges, I have the authority to help you. Let me help you, because every single person, whether you're selling to individuals or even to companies, everybody is trying to win or add something and overcome some kind of problem, and so we're looking for somebody who can help us do that. And so when we position ourselves as that, I mean think about Star Wars, was this juggernaut of a film franchise? For decades, before we ever knew really anything about Yoda's backstory, because nobody cared about yoda, like who he was before he met luke, it didn't matter, it was irrelevant, because the story was about luke right in the first trilogy. I also can't keep up with star wars now because there's like nine million hours of stuff to keep up with it's yeah, you've got my full attention.
Speaker 3:This might be the most interesting podcast we've ever had so we're talking about star wars.
Speaker 2:Interesting it. Interesting it is.
Speaker 1:We want to figure out how do we play Yoda and not Luke Skywalker? Because?
Speaker 2:that's what our customer is.
Speaker 1:They're the ones who are trying to solve a problem and we're the ones who want to come along and figure that out.
Speaker 3:So you're basically saying Simon Sinek, you're wrong, I'm loving it.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying Simon Sinek's wrong. I'm just saying it's not a marketing or sales play. It's not a great way to make money.
Speaker 2:Actually, that's going to be the title of the podcast. Why Cyber Boy is Wrong Says.
Speaker 3:Wes.
Speaker 2:Gay, I will say I mean.
Speaker 1:I read that book and it's fine. I think it's good to have a motivating reason why you do things. I will say we're talking about Chick-fil-A. At the top, I will say when you think about your why. What you're really saying is what is a problem in the world that we think should not exist? That our team and our company is going to wake up every single day to focus on solving that problem. Right? And stories like your favorite movies. They always have these life or death things, right? This underlying thing that's going to go on In the Hallmark movies. We're in the holiday season. It's not life or death. It's like Will Grandma's Bakery in Holly Hills, north Carolina, get foreclosed on or whatever. Right?
Speaker 1:But there's always, I think there's this fundamental problem they're trying to solve, or, chick-fil-a, we mentioned them. They're great at that right, one of the chick-fil-a's that's um not for. You know where we live now in north of atlanta, as of last, as of two weeks ago, there are eight chick-fil-a's within 20 minutes of my house because they open a new one not far up in buford, not far from here you guys like chicken and buford? There's so much man but never since they opened raising canes. We're big, raising're big.
Speaker 2:Raising Cane's people.
Speaker 1:Oh, very pro.
Speaker 2:Raising Cane's in our house. Whoa yeah, I'd say that's holy war right there, but we still like Chick-fil-A.
Speaker 1:We do both. We're like whatever the top, whatever the top status. We're like the Delta Platinum at Chick-fil-A, whatever the equivalent of that is On the little app, app anyways. But there was one time one of the chick-fil-a's used to be um, there was a chick-fil-a on one side, there's a taco bell on the other side, and then there was a kfc on the other side of the chick-fil-a. Chick goes in the middle. A few years ago, we went over there for lunch with our kids and you know, chick-fil-a's got a double drive-thru snaking to the parking lot. Taco bell had one person, kfc maybe had two at lunch rush.
Speaker 1:There's a clear reason why this is true. The reality is all three of those brands and every fast food restaurant serves the same kind of customer problem, which is I'm hungry. Chick-fil-a, though, goes a level deeper and says but we know how people feel about the fast food experience. I mean, there are certain fast food places you probably haven't been to in the last decade. You think about the last time you went in and it was like you walked in and you felt like the lights were flashing like a New York City detective show interrogation room. You know, you like walk in. The staff is a little surprised. You're there and you mutter to yourself it has come to this.
Speaker 3:The floor is a little slippery. There's a tank of grease that they should have changed two weeks ago Exactly, but you walk into Chick-fil-A it's bright, it's clean, they're moving fast.
Speaker 1:The drive-through is the model of efficiency. There's fresh flowers on the table, all that stuff Because Chick-fil-A has figured out their why. Quote, unquote is really this fundamental problem in the world that they think we think people should be taken care of and treated well when they come in our restaurants? Right, there's this fundamental belief they have. That drives their why, but nobody really cares about their why. Beyond that, you can go and look on their website Nobody cares. They're 20 something billion dollars right now. They hit 10 billion in 2018. They had almost 19 billion in 2021. Um, the average Chick-fil-A store is like 20 billion.
Speaker 3:Wise is what Chris is hearing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I got the wrong way.
Speaker 2:They're in the same way. 're in that way. They're way now that's what it's wrong way I get the wrong, no one I care.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I I think at the end of the day he's got to figure out. You could reframe it as what problem do we solve in the world? I mean, do you guys remember um elizabeth holmes and theranos?
Speaker 2:I do, yeah that story for our listeners. So so I for the listeners. Why don't you?
Speaker 1:explain who that was yeah, so el.
Speaker 1:So Elizabeth Holmes is in jail now, so don't follow her lead. But she was about 10 or 12 years ago as this hotshot startup out of Silicon Valley and the premise was you could get a full blood work done in just a few drops of blood. And they had these little portable machines that looked like those old school Dell computer towers and the company was called Theranos and she flew all over the country, all over the world. And the company was called Theranos and she flew all over the country, all over the world. She was this hot shot. There's all the conferences, got all the accolades. I mean her board of directors was stacked. I mean it was like four-star generals and secretaries of state and billionaire investors. I mean it was crazy. They raised almost a billion dollars for a product that never came to market and she's in jail now for fraud out for fraud. The documentary is all very fascinating.
Speaker 1:Anyways, one of the things I think she actually did really well I think it's the HBO documentary that shows this is when she would go around and speak. She would say two things over and over and over to speak to. I think the fundamental why to that point of the company One of them was she would tell the story about an uncle that she was really close with who ended up getting cancer. She talked about watching him go through chemo and radiation and how difficult that was. And then she would.
Speaker 1:And when you say it in a room it kind of gut punches everybody and everybody goes, yeah, I do too, like that's a, that's a thing I want to solve. I want somebody to solve that. The other thing she would say is she would talk about how. She would say something along the lines of I just think it shouldn't be so painful to get your blood work done so you can get information on your own health. And as soon as she says it, everybody thinks yeah, because like, we all go get physicals, and it always feels like it's that person's first day drawing blood yeah, you're just hoping you get some veteran who knows what they're doing otherwise it's like pin the tail on the donkey and it's like why have?
Speaker 1:you seen a needle before. But then you think, now the promise of hey, I get a few drops and I can get my health data, and I could get it in english so I can understand what all this means. That's great, right. Even jim kramer said it was never going to work. But boy, we all wanted her to solve that problem.
Speaker 2:So bad we did, we all we all wanted and I did.
Speaker 2:I wanted her to solve that problem so you could go into a walgreens, a cvs uh, eckerds, you know I'm gonna date myself and you go in there. You get stuck. Once you put it in this machine, it spins up the blood and then it pops out with everything and all of your vitals, all the you know. How are you looking on your uh hemoglobin? How are you looking on your uh cholesterol? How are you looking on this, this, the blood sugar, all of it yeah, since I'm a pinnacle of health, I wasn't actually aware of this.
Speaker 3:I mean, what happened to her? So?
Speaker 2:here's what happened the machine didn't work and what she said basically at, at this point in our world with our evolution, is an unattainable goal, meaning you couldn't take your blood than my blood, stick it in some, uh, vending machine box and have it spin, spit out, hit the right litmus things and come back out and stay clean. And so the problem with the, with the idea, with the science behind it, was that the reason blood drawing is one thing and then, but the analysis and the scientific I think Elon could do this too.
Speaker 3:Well, honestly, and he could catch a rocket in a bathroom If he buys it.
Speaker 2:I'm buying it too because I mean he could do that. But God, what an asshole genius. He is so amazing, he's unbelievable. But back to this. So that's why I was fascinated, and I was really. I would tell you the way the story was put together. I'm not sure if she just totally believed it or she knew and um and and knew what, knowingly suppressed the information I don't know, we just become true crime, I know I know our ratings just went away.
Speaker 1:We are now listen, we are, yeah, true crime. Now I don't know, I think she, I think it's one of those things where she had she had created a story that was so strong and compelling and a vision for the business that I think she believed it. I think, if anything and you see this a lot with leaders and we could all, we all think of very visionary people, of all kinds of companies and organizations who fail pretty dramatically because they had a clear story that they deeply believe, no matter what and they might be, they just might bulldoze anybody else or any other fact or information that that counter to the story they believe, because stories are more powerful, more more powerful than facts.
Speaker 2:And so that is a big one that I want to talk about for a minute for our you're thinking about starting a business, you're trying to scale your business. I will tell you, as entrepreneurs, one of the things that we know about ourselves is that we tell ourselves a story day in, day out. Sometimes it's not a very good story, sometimes it's a little negative, alan, but a lot of times here's what we're really telling ourselves is that we're really, really sold on what we're doing and what we're going to deliver to the market, and I think I, I really do. I. I know she got put in jail. So clearly my thoughts were wrong, but based on the data I saw and the evidence I saw and the movies presented to me, I really felt like she's so, so much believed in her product and what she was doing that she was blinded by looking at the true facts and data yeah, because eventually that carries the day.
Speaker 3:But at some point she had to come to the grips with it. But we all have to do that sometimes as entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2:right, you got to believe your story so passionately that you're going to overcome some, because we hit obstacles every day, man, when we wake up. And Wes said that we're going to wake up every day and we're going to solve a problem. That's what we do as small business people, that's what we do as business owners. And Wes is a small business owner. He just happens to consult with people on the stories. But I mean, that's true, right, you just go into it.
Speaker 1:Well, that's one of the things, and now I hope none of our audience is thinking why I need to wake up today and raise a billion dollars because I want to go to jail too. Like that's not what we're talking about here.
Speaker 3:Or maybe I could raise a billion dollars and somehow skate getting going to jail.
Speaker 1:And not. You can't do both. You don't have to go to jail.
Speaker 2:How many years would I get? I mean not in how long would I get to?
Speaker 3:enjoy that billion If I buried it in a barrel, in a swamp and dug it up later.
Speaker 2:No, no, no, I'm asking how long would I get before I have to go to jail? Like, do I get a couple? Trips to Monaco. Do I get a couple private?
Speaker 3:I'd rather just party hard before you had to go to jail and pay for it later, rather than doing your penance and then digging up the money. We're doing. It all wrong people we're doing it all wrong.
Speaker 2:That's what I'm saying. Put me on that run. Right now I'm raising a billion. I'm jet-setting all over the place.
Speaker 1:It's suddenly going to have boxes at all the F1 Grand Prixs and I'm going to have a box at the F1 Grand Prixs.
Speaker 2:I'm going to go to all the air shows he's going to be Two could have been ringside disappointed by that.
Speaker 1:Jake Paul, Mike Tyson fight.
Speaker 2:I could have.
Speaker 3:Oh, that was so bad.
Speaker 2:I feel glad I didn't stay up for it. Number one I don't like women fighting.
Speaker 3:The fight before that, the Welterweight fight, was amazing. That's what Austin said.
Speaker 2:My son was into boxing and it was a short-lived career, but we won't go into that one. Oh, I didn't know that, yeah.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, that one, but he watched. Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, oh yeah, we're not doing.
Speaker 2:I can't imagine being a parent of a boxing kid uh, imagine, imagine, this was um, it was one and done my friends yeah, so yeah.
Speaker 3:No, the welterweight fight was amazing 12 rounds of them, uh, pounding each other. And my favorite line from the announcer was his face looks like a ransom note.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I am so glad I didn't stay up, but I got to watch all the memes the next morning, uh, and they're like if, if this was your business, and they show the the punch, and then it clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack, clack clack, clack, clack, clack, out of business.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so oh, and then you're sucking on. He's sucking on his glove the rest of the time uh huh, yeah, I heard it's weird.
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, it was really weird. He's 58 years old now.
Speaker 3:Hey, did you see his training videos? I mean that guy looked frightening. Absolutely everybody I knew said he is going to knock Jake Paul out the first three rounds.
Speaker 2:So it was obvious and he had kind of a couple of flurries in the first round.
Speaker 3:Second round a little bit of a flurry. Craig goes nuts and then the rest of the time he's sucking on his glove.
Speaker 2:Wes, look what you just did you just feed him.
Speaker 1:Sorry, I just derailed that thing, no bad.
Speaker 3:No bad, I know I get it. It's so interesting to hear Chris actually guess like me. But anyway go ahead.
Speaker 1:No, when I was going to say it, I think for our audience to go back. We're talking about this Elizabeth Holmes, theranos, a billion dollars, not go to jail. I mean, the reality is most small businesses and entrepreneurs struggle because they never identify one of the core issues that I think make companies of all sizes great, and that is what problem do we solve for our customers and how do we focus and obsess over the problem that we solve and you guys have probably seen it, been through it, I've done it too where you get in a sales conversation with some other company or some rep whether it's a personal thing or business thing and they just never seem to care at all about your story, what's going on in your life, what issue you're trying to overcome, any of that stuff, and so the sale becomes twice as long as it should and it becomes much more complicated. I go back to, like I said. Let's take lawn care, for example.
Speaker 1:If I got one lawn care company that just is all about how long they've been around and they're just just talking about what they offer, all the different services, okay, that's fine. But I get another one that says, uh, have the best looking yard in the neighborhood without lifting a finger. Okay, now, that's what I want. I don't actually want somebody to cut my grass, I just want a great looking yard, right. So we want to figure out what problem are we actually trying to solve for people, and then how do we solve it?
Speaker 2:how do we? We talk about solving it?
Speaker 1:I got a client that's in the financial services space and it's a very technical, a lot of spreadsheets, kind of boring B2B finance thing, and when we started working together, their kind of messaging, the way they talked about it, was all just about here's the thing we do, right, which is fine, but it was confusing, it was complicated, it required a ton of explanation in the sales process and we started working through it and I said you know, what I think people actually want is they just want to increase their profit margin. I said what if we just started saying like, keep more of the money you make? And I was in the room with their office up in Minneapolis and the CEO just kind of looked at me and was like that's actually what we do, that's what people want. They just want to keep more money than they make and we're the vehicle to have them get there.
Speaker 1:So the problem was in this case they're sending money out the door because they have uncontrolled expenses. This company comes in, helps you lower expenses, which means you raise profits, and so that's what we shifted everything to right, because we got really clear on what problem do we solve? And then what is the outcome of that problem being solved is the outcome of that problem being solved. I would say most businesses again, especially small businesses and startup folks never take the time to sit down and say what problem do we solve for our audience? If we can get clear on that, you're going to be ahead of everybody else, cause I guarantee your competitors are not trying to figure that out.
Speaker 2:I love that, and I'll tell you what. It's not what you take, it's what you keep.
Speaker 3:And I said take not, make right. You like how I did that? Okay, hey, hey, hey.
Speaker 2:If I'm taking a billion ellen, I'm taking a billion. I'm going to monaco at least twice. If you said, if you could lay it out and say I got five, do I get five years doing this west?
Speaker 3:you just after three years of working, you know chris on the podcast, all he hears from our guests is blah, blah, blah. What's in it for me? Blah, what's in it for me? Blah, blah, blah. What's in it for me?
Speaker 1:Blah, blah, blah. Does this get me to my boat quicker?
Speaker 2:We may have to Google what's the jail sentence for fraud, but it sounds like I'm going to look it up and I'm going to see how Is it worth it and what's it like. I've seen some of this. Are you thinking Club Fed? I'm thinking Club Fed all the way. I'm Italian. That's all I got to say. I'm just going to leave it right there.
Speaker 1:Google my name, my friends. If you're interesting enough, then you can sell your life rights to Netflix.
Speaker 3:You can make money again. Life after Club Fed for Chris.
Speaker 2:Do I hear Jordan?
Speaker 1:I hear a book. There's a book deal.
Speaker 3:I hear a book deal. We've just laid out a path for Chris.
Speaker 2:Become a handyman and screw everybody with your why.
Speaker 3:So I'm going to ask a dumb question. I'm listening to you and I hear a lot of people in marketing, branding and it's you know, how do we solve this problem? And I mean, everybody says that and you're saying that too, but what you're saying is what I'm kind of hearing is is you're actually developing a story that makes somebody actually pay attention to you enough so that you can get to the problem that you're going to solve for them? It's kind of a doop-de-doop, doop-de-doop-de-doop.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's the do doop-de-doop, doop-de-doop-de-doop. Yeah, doop-de-doop-de-doop, doop-de-doop is a technical marketing term.
Speaker 3:It is I'm going to trademark that real, quick, real quick.
Speaker 2:Before this podcast drops. I'm going to get that taken out.
Speaker 3:I'm going to step away for a second here.
Speaker 1:It's funny because a lot of the marketing that I'm sure our audience gets hit with left, right and sideways from their LinkedIn DMs of people trying to sell marketing services and local outreach and all those kinds of things the reality is that all that really is is marketing is turning up the volume. The problem is you can't turn up the volume if you're just turning up the volume on noise and the way we cut through the noise is getting really clear, and we start by getting really clear when we say who are we trying to target and what is the problem we solve for. Otherwise, we're just going to take a lot of money and we may as well get on 85 in Atlanta, roll our windows down and throw $100 bills out, because that's about about as effective most of that marketing is going to be if we're just trying to crank up the volume, because if we just crank up the volume, the noise, there's going to be louder noise, but at some point we got the what we want to start with a problem and say here's the issue we solve for people, here's what we do, and just talk about it over and over and over again. If it's commercial real estate, like we're talking about before we started, uh, commercial real estate. You say, well, what is the core problem you solve for, whether you're on the, whether you're tenant, rep or buyer, sellers, whatever, what's the core problem that they have? But then, specifically, in all the situations, what problems might they have? Let's just talk about that, let's use that in our marketing and constantly speak to that. The more we speak to it, the more people pay attention. Uh, because and this is a this is not just a marketing, it's a movie, it's a storytelling thing.
Speaker 1:Think about any of your favorite movies. Every single one of them has a core problem that film is trying to solve. Right, let's go to Top Gun Maverick again. Like I think I said earlier, that movie is right at two hours long. About 10 minutes into that movie we figure out what it's not about, anything else, it's about that. The problem with that is he is now presented with the task of trying to train pilots, which he hates and doesn't feel like he's any good at and oh, by the way, goose's son is one of those pilots and it's a very dangerous mission and somebody could die. So, like we have the tension and that whole movie is about that problem, then, and how it's going to how it's going to resolve.
Speaker 2:We've all seen it, I've watched it twice and I agree with him. And then you remember what happens right.
Speaker 1:Hangman shoots the final enemy combatant down. They buzz the tower because Maverick has to buzz the tower.
Speaker 3:They come in on the Permission for a flyby.
Speaker 2:Yeah, permission for a flyby Buzzes the tower.
Speaker 1:It makes everybody remember the original Top Gun Lands on the deck of that aircraft carrier. They high-five all the nostalgia from the original Top Gun and within like three minutes of that, tom Cruise and Jennifer Connelly are in Tom Cruise's P-51 Mustang flying over the desert. The credits are rolling, the movie's done because the problem is solved. Every single movie is that way. So the reason we kind of bang the drum on the problem is that that's what gets people to pay attention, because people pay attention when there's tension. So if we speak to the problems they have and you talk about marketing and carry that through to sales, now they're going to lean in as opposed to just blow us off.
Speaker 2:I think you hit a big point for a lot of people. And why is the story so important? Because you got to break through that noise and, let's face it, none of us want to go back to the 70s Wes. I'm sure you do, I kind of do. Yeah well, you're a curmudgeon, but you really do? You really want to go back to no time? No, not the 70s you had three channels, three channels and we sign off at 11 o'clock at night and you watch Rocket night.
Speaker 3:You can watch it the bell bottoms, the hair, it was all bad and it came back anyway Did you see that I'm like that is the one decade that's never coming back. And that came back. That came back the 80s and 90s, not so much yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, that'll come back.
Speaker 3:You think so? Oh yeah, All right.
Speaker 2:You're kind of doing it now, I Right. So last night football game it was good, chargers, right, you know, not to Rams. You mean, I'm sorry it was the Rams and Philly playing, but I had no dog in that fight, you know. So I'm watching, but, and you know, lions had already won Go, lions, going to be out of here, baby. And Falcons didn't play this weekend, thank God we couldn't lose. So what couldn't lose? Uh so? So what I started doing? I started going insta, tiktok, facebook, insta all, tiktok, facebook, all all. I was sitting, all three platforms.
Speaker 2:But you want to talk about on just constant noise. We get constant noise. So back to wes's point. You got to have a good story. You got to find out where that story is going to be best be played, right. So I'm not talking about where to advertise, don't we talk about that in other episodes. But that's why the story is so important, because if you think about that story as a handyman, a remodeler, why am I not just beating that drum on? You want to get everything done in one day. Call us for handyman for a day that brings up a really good question.
Speaker 3:Wes what? So what? I'm like. I'm like I just hit it, baby. I'm like a normal person. Chris is the future. He's looking at all social media channels at the same time. He's got the attention span of a gnat on meth. How do you tell the story in a quarter of a second for somebody like Chris to actually pay attention?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So there's a couple things there. One, when we talk about telling stories, we've also got to figure out who we're trying to speak to. Um, one of the things I think is the most you one of the most useless activities in all of marketing and bigger companies love this, but they love to do a lot of useless things anyway is the is the idle client profile exercise, because what we end up creating is essentially corporate baseball cards, is like here's the stats and it's like are you saying avatars are useless?
Speaker 1:yeah, I've never seen anybody successfully use avatars. They all, they're all here's what I have I have done it.
Speaker 3:I believe my story.
Speaker 2:You know I'm tired of hearing chris talk about avatars. I love my avatar by four. Killing it, bro, it's a great movie you know what um yeah no'm telling you it's helped me spend a lot less money. I mean, you know what. I'm going to respectfully disagree, but I will listen because here's why have you ever listened, there are. No, I'm gonna get that billion and I'm going to monaco yeah, that's all I've been listening to as monaco, no, it doesn't work so oftentimes it's just, it's just bullet points and in data points.
Speaker 1:The way, the way you actually make it work, is you turn it into a story by figuring out who is the actual person. Here especially, it's really funny to me when people create these avatars of people who are not their actual customers. I found it's much more successful and useful if we say who are the people in the last 12 to 24 months, that if all of our clients or customers were like them, we'd not only hit all of our goals consistently, but we'd all sleep really well at night because they'd be great fits for us. Who is that? And then you just find and figure out how to repeat success.
Speaker 2:So that's how you make it down I've done a lot of. I've been a lot of shit wrong, but that's one I feel like I've gotten pretty good yeah, that's what you do I mean, that's how I've been able to scale and get to the point I am now as uh, you are kind of a big deal now yeah, well, despite yourself, thank you, but despite myself.
Speaker 1:That's true, actually, that one could not be more true, the way you make the, you have to figure that out first. It's who you're actually talking to, because you don't need to talk to everybody, especially small businesses, these folks listening to remember. I mean, you can actually sit down and do the math. You don't need millions of customers, you don't need tens of thousands of customers. Most companies, especially small businesses, don't even need thousands of customers. With hundreds of customers, you'd be overwhelmed in a lot of cases. And so who are the people that are the right fit? And you, you get really specific on who that is, and so when you do that, you just think, well, if I was sitting down across the table from that person, what would I say to that person? And then you say that and you start talking about it. So if I'm going to figure out how do I stand out to a guy like Chris who's browsing all the social medias at one time, I would think, okay, well, here's the guy who's a business owner, football fan, right, start figuring that stuff out. And I'm going to speak to, I'm going to say things that speak to what he is interested in and cares about. I want to talk about the challenges, maybe how to increase sales as a business owner what I'm going to talk about, the three traps that maybe business owners have when it comes to marketing, or the five things every business owner should look at when choosing a marketing partner. I want to figure out how do I speak to, uh, somebody like chris, who is my audience, and I'll also say I won't jump on this very long.
Speaker 1:Everybody says that our attention spans are shrinking, and they might, I think, the reality. The reason they're shrinking, though, is because we just have options now. You know, you told me in the 70s you had three channels. Now I have hundreds of channels, and I have all the streaming platforms, and I have still nothing to watch other social media and you just can't find anything. That is the hard part, isn't that funny, right there's something.
Speaker 2:You guys, you guys feel my pain, bro. Right, my family has like seven million subscriptions. Yeah, we went to watch something last night and we're watching nothing because my wife does not like football as much as I do. So I said, yeah, I'll watch a couple games in between this before the sunday night and, uh, or a couple of episodes of something. We couldn't find anything. That's ridiculous, whereas back in the day, when we had three channels, you're like you were just forced to watch it but now?
Speaker 1:but now we binge watch stuff if we find something we like, and then netflix drops a whole season, we'll watch three episodes before we know what happened, like we started watching. Um, all the new ted danson thing. Oh man, man on the inside we.
Speaker 2:That's what we started watching last night is it. Good it is.
Speaker 1:You know he is 70 years old is he really I want to be like him.
Speaker 2:It still looks good, I mean after I get out of jail after I get get the billion dollar.
Speaker 3:You know you've got time I do To go big, go to jail and then be Ted Johnson.
Speaker 2:But there's no way I'm making $7.8 million not with my lifestyle, but that's a whole other story.
Speaker 3:I got a real question for you. So you're helping people with the story. Do you help them place it?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So the first thing I always say is there's kind of three big questions every company of every size has to answer. The first thing we have to figure out is what do we say? And this is obviously the messaging which comes from figuring out the story of our audience. And what is that foundational story? If we get those talking points down, the next thing becomes or one of the other questions we have is well, where do we put it? How do we, what do we do with this? And it's all the basics right. It's updating your website so your website becomes a great sales tool for you. It's updating, if you're running paid ads, making sure your paid ads are communicating the right messaging that we came up with that story.
Speaker 1:It's things like an email campaign no-transcript. We've got to put it there right. It's just getting the foundational things first and then you can look at okay, what campaigns do we need to run? Maybe seasonal campaigns or something like that? Or what do we need to do from an ongoing perspective? Where it's figuring out the right channels. Where should we show up? Too many companies try to be in too many places, especially small businesses, so we want to figure out where are the places. It's usually email. Email is still the number one channel to make money on, oddly enough. And then where else from there? Where do we need to focus on? To end on this? But we can go on and on and on.
Speaker 2:You know what we're going to do. I'm going to go up there, kidnap him in Beaufort and we'll bring him down.
Speaker 3:I'm going to feed him tick-to-tick. I'm going to tell him to spit him around so he doesn't know where he is. I'm going to throw out a Rosencain's box and we'll reel him in yeah, yeah, all right.
Speaker 2:So you said email, because I've talked about this a lot People, in fact. One of the calls I got three weeks ago was Chris man, how do I market? I'm like, well, how many people do you have? I mean, how many people do you work with? And literally it's in the hundreds. I said when's the last time you talked to them, when's the last time you emailed them? I said you've got-do list and if I know you're there and every month you send me something, I'll know that you're there and I can Google, I can search you and I come back. So why is email so important?
Speaker 1:Well, email is so important because it's the only one where there's no real algorithm. I mean, they just show up consistently and it's a communication platform and we're already used to kind of two-way communication. We're not that way with ads. We don't interact with ads or commercials or anything like that. Email is something we all use every day to communicate with people, and so I think it also is a way that when you do have an email list, it's people who have opted in in some kind of way. They have chosen to get some kind of free offer from you. They've already become a paying customer. They have done some kind of transaction, like they've downloaded or gotten access to something you've offered them, like. If it's commercial real estate, again they might be. Let's explain. Maybe there's some upcoming tax change that impacts commercial real estate owners. Let me explain that you can get the free guide to this. Well, now I have their email address. They have said they've raised their hand and said I'm interested in this. Or it's your customer list. Either way, they've raised their raised and they've paid you money. So these people have opted in and they've given you permission to engage with them. And it's funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think some people still think email marketing is this we only need to do it out of nowhere because we're low on sales. We're trying to push for year-end or push black friday, cyber monday, whatever, when in reality, email can and should be considered as a relational building tool. How do I show? Show up? Maybe not every, maybe not. I mean I maybe every week is a big goal, but twice a month, like if I'm in lawn care every month, twice a month at least I'm sending some kind of seasonally appropriate lawn care tip.
Speaker 2:Like. Let me explain this.
Speaker 1:Let me. Let me tell you what it means to you know, starting when it gets cold. How to, how to? What do you do for your pipes?
Speaker 2:I'll tell you what I just did for Thanksgiving. We had a bunch of stuff about how to fix up your home. I also gave Chris's Thanksgiving treats. Did you send some recipes? I did. I sent recipes. You saw that, didn't you? From Nona? Yeah, of course I thought everybody had spaghetti at Thanksgiving. I didn't mention Italian. I've also learned the southern ways. In fact, this thanksgiving, my friends, I will be frying another turkey I am really enjoying it.
Speaker 3:Have you frozen?
Speaker 2:turkey. No, I know that, I've seen those. You know that, yeah, that's a huge, have you?
Speaker 1:have you? Have you seen the instructions on how to build a turkey derrick?
Speaker 2:no, no, alton brown who is on? The food network forever has videos on youtube of building a.
Speaker 1:you take an of building a, you take an A-frame ladder and like pulleys and rope and literally can build a derrick to kind of lower the turkey into the fryer and raise it out. If you want to look ridiculous, that's the way to do it, which I do. I'd say go for it. It'll look great in Monaco too, though.
Speaker 2:So what we do is so we're going to end on this. Here's we do is uh, so we're going to end on this. Uh, here's our favorite thanksgiving thing. So email guys. I can't express this enough. You don't need a fancy service, just take your contacts, send it out. Yeah, you're going to get some hate. Yeah, you're going to get some spam, but you know what you're going to get if somebody goes oh my god, I forgot about your business. And hey, you didn't just talk to me about a sale. You didn't talk to me about who you are. You talked to me about here's how I take care of my house. Here's how I take care of my lawn. You did something cool and something that they want to look at.
Speaker 3:Yeah, email with a direct call to action sucks right.
Speaker 2:Sucks, totally sucks.
Speaker 3:Just give me a little nugget and then I won't delete you, I won't report you to spam.
Speaker 2:I've been doing well. I've been doing email now for 13 years. This is after I told somebody, hey, what you need to do Email? And I went back and looked I hadn't emailed for a year. So I said, screw it. I started paying a lady to help me do it. She does a phenomenal job with our stuff. Touch Plus Marketing me and Hannah.
Speaker 3:When did that happen? Because I get emails from you all the time.
Speaker 2:Right, oh, I didn, and I put video in the front of it. Guess what Number one click thing the video.
Speaker 3:I always watch it to see if you screw up, but I do, of course, that's why I do it.
Speaker 2:But again, it's all these tips, you know, mud rooms, or man caves, or children's ideas, or how to convert a small space into something that's usable underneath a set of stairs. I mean, we've got all these things. Hey, I'm not pushing my products or services on you, I'm just giving you ideas. And oh, by the way, this month was about, hey, this is something that gives back to you in your life?
Speaker 3:Yeah, very much comes across.
Speaker 1:The easiest way to approach it is everybody sit down and think about what are the 10 or 12,? What are 10 or 12 questions that people ask you this time of year? Right? You can do it every season. Or think about what are the 10 or 12 most common questions you get. Write down those questions write the answers down, and then each one of those answers is an email.
Speaker 2:Write those 10 to 12 down. Get that blog going. You guys got to put this stuff on your website. However, here's my favorite, without fail, every year before the week before Thanksgiving hey, can you guys install a double oven? I have family coming in. Do you have one today? No, okay, no, we can't do that in a week, so you need to learn from your mistake and do better next time.
Speaker 2:If you guys haven't learned something from Wes today, man, that's on you, because I'm not taking notes today, because I introduced my new AI tool. Who's going to summarize everything Wes just said? Because he dropped some serious gold nuggets and I'm not talking Raisin Cane's, I'm talking Chick-fil-A nuggets, bro. You know what I'm saying? Huh, All right, because he hit the holy war on me on that one. But he is good. I mean, you can tell right, he's talking about the story.
Speaker 3:And you go and we started that conversation out this way. Why should I worry about a story? Why should I spend money on a story? Well, it's not your story, chris, it's the story of your customer. I know that's the biggest thing I learned. By the way, you know, I that was the biggest thing I learned but, I don't think you're going to take that to heart as much as you I am, hey, can I make money?
Speaker 2:can I go to monte carlo?
Speaker 3:can I just do five years in club fed? That's all.
Speaker 2:I want to make more money if I can get out if I can just do five, I you know, I I'm thinking I could spend blood up and I could make it. Uh, tell you, whatever you want, you make a little. I really I mean, oh my god, what a great story, wes. You're an amazing storyteller yourself, period. So, weskaycom, wes, I hope you had fun on this one. And, guys, if you didn't learn something, man, that's on you you got to go out there and check this guy out. So you're available. Will people contact you and talk to you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, find me on Instagram. I'm at Wes Gay LinkedIn, wes Gay. You can go to wesgaycom slash safari. Get a free resource there to help you guide you on your marketing plans as well.
Speaker 2:An offer, an offer, I think chris is going to do that, while he's doing six other things at the same time. Well, yeah, I don't know. Actually I'm gonna like west. Will you come back on? Will you come down here? Happy to?
Speaker 1:yeah, man, let's do it and next time you can. Uh, we can cover the four questions you told me you're gonna ask I know I want to, I want to.
Speaker 3:So bad ask because I think that's a good sign west. You were so good and we were talking so long we didn't have time to get to our questions.
Speaker 2:I know, oh my God, you know what Booked we're coming back on. You guys StoryBrand. Go figure it out. We didn't talk about the other guy who started this whole thing, because Wes Gay is the guy you want to talk to. On the StoryBrand we get.
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