Spiraling Up — Marketing For Professional Services

Firing Toxic Clients, Valuing Your Time, and Adapting to Change with Matt Tait

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In this episode, Matt Tait, Co-Founder of Decimal joins the show to play a game of 'Would You Rather?' with Austin, Joe, and Mary-Blanche. 

Spinning a digital wheel to decide the questions, Matt is given abominable choices across 5 various categories: people, growth levers, profit centers, leadership, and business killers. This fun, gameshow-style podcast interview showcases important business leadership lessons in an entertaining way. Then, the gang explores why CMOs have shifted their strategies from client acquisition to client retention.

CHAPTERS:
00:00 Introduction & Limited Banter
01:58 Would You Rather: Spin the Wheel Edition
06:42 Cash Flow Nightmares or AI Disruption?
09:43 Ignore Major Issues or Over-Flag Minor Concerns?
13:58 Sacrifice Margin for Fast Growth or Slow But Profitable?
19:58 Spend $100k On Brand or Outbound Sales?
25:54 Employee Happiness or Maximum Profits?
28:57 Hire Veterans or Young Talent?
33:21 Scale w Toxic Performer or Fire Them Now?
36:51 GTM Strategy: Go Deep or Broad?
39:28 Learn More About Decimal
40:03 Pivotal Story: CMOs Focus on Client Retention

Connect with Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mtait83/
Visit the Decimal Website: https://www.decimal.com/

Austin McNair:

In today's episode of Spiraling Up, we're gonna play a game of Would You Rather, with Matt Tate, the CEO of Decimal. And then what is one trend that CMOs are talking about? We're gonna find out and our team is gonna debate. Welcome everyone. This is spiraling up with Hinge. everyone to spiraling up the podcast for professional services marketers and business leaders. My name is Austin McNair, and as always, I'm joined by my colleagues and co-hosts, Mary Blanche Kramer. Hey, MB

Mary Blanche:

Hey, hey.

Austin McNair:

and Joe Pope. What's up Joe?

Joe Pope:

I love how the show notes say that I'm supposed to have dance and energy. When we come into this piece of this of the show,

Mary Blanche:

See or dance.

Joe Pope:

just not feeling dance and energy, guys. It's just like I was told we weren't allowed to have banter in this piece of the segment either. So.

Austin McNair:

We're, we're keeping the intro shorter today, uh, because we have a great interview here with Matt Tate, the CEO of Decimal. We're gonna introduce him in a minute. but first I just wanna say thanks to all of our listeners, all the subscribers. If you're watching on YouTube, please hit the like button. Leave us a comment. Let us know what you learned, what you'd like to see in future episodes. All of that engagement in the algorithm is helping us. It's helping the show grow. The more the show grows, the more interesting guests we can get. And that's our goal. Uh, we wanna provide value to you, our listeners. So, uh, leave us a rating, leave us a, like, engage. We wanna hear from you as we continue to make this podcast better. So guys, as I just said, Matt Tate is ready to, to talk and I am really excited to talk to this guy, uh, and put him through one of our favorite challenges. Would you rather, let's get into it. All right. Well, we're honored to welcome to today's podcast episode Matt Tate. Matt has spent his career as an entrepreneur having previously launched two technology companies. He's always focused on helping businesses, making it easier for them to operate. While creating great customer experiences, continuing a people first theme, driven by technology. Matt launched Decimal with his co-founder, Jacob Laurin, to solve financial operations, bookkeeping, and tax for small and medium sized businesses. Matt, thanks for joining us on Spiraling Up Today.

Matt Tait:

Hey, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to it.

Joe Pope:

Matt, uh, you heard Austin kind of do the official read, but I'd love to kind of just hear in some of your own words. Of the stuff you've been up to at Decimal these days. I know you're also a, a, a podcaster yourself too. Just, uh, give the audience a quick rundown.

Matt Tait:

You know, anytime somebody reads your bio, it makes you sound way cooler than you actually are. So, I will take it down a level. I mean, we started decimal like five years ago just to help people pay their bills, get paid in track at all. Pretty simple. We all have to do it. And. We all hate our bookkeepers, so, we try to make that a little bit easier. I think we've done a pretty good job of that. I, you know, for me, running business is hard. I've done it successfully. I've done it in a complete failure and now I'm doing it with decimal. And, um, a lot of what we do at Decimal is just try to try to ease that for people. And podcasting is my way to just talk to people. You know, I think that We make it sound super cool to run a business and it's, it is, and it's not. I mean, it's actually really freaking hard and, I think we need to normalize that a little bit more. And so, uh, I like to talk to people about kinda the hard parts, particularly after the startup phase. I think people idealize what it's like to go start a business and what it's like when you've reached a billion dollars and yet it's really freaking messy on your way There. this year I bought for my leadership team, uh, little thing to sit on their desk. It's a bunch of post-it notes and pencils in the shape of a dumpster fire. And, I just kind of figure that's a normal day that ends in a y at decimal and as well just kind of have fun with it and helping people talk about, it's a big way to do that. And, we're, we're in the middle of like a big addition slash pivot of we're gonna start franchising decimal. Like really moving on to, hey, we're gonna give people this whole operating system and help'em succeed. And so just, you know, all that crazy stuff that comes with, uh, being an entrepreneur and building a fast growing team.

Austin McNair:

if you have a link to that, uh, dumpster fire, uh, trinket, we'd, we, we might want to get our hands on some of those as well.

Matt Tait:

Absolutely, I'm gonna sign a sponsorship deal with them.'cause I've dropped that on a couple of podcasts and I'm pretty sure that sales have skyrocketed

Austin McNair:

Yeah, you gotta definitely get like a, a referral link for that or something.

Joe Pope:

There we go.

Matt Tait:

it. Let's just put it this way, I just typed Amazon into the, uh, browser and it immediately pulled up Dumpster fire. So, uh, I'll put it in the chat right now.

Joe Pope:

Amazon has your algorithm really tight. It's got you right where you need it.

Matt Tait:

Yes.

Austin McNair:

Well, Matt, that's kind of the, your introduction was perfect there.'cause I think that's right in the spirit of what we want to do in our conversation today, we wanna play a classic game of, would you rather, I mean, as you described, I think for business leaders, things aren't black and white. You know, sometimes there's these dilemmas that come up. Where there's two options and neither of them seem super appealing or you know, there's, you know, there's some tension. Right? Um, so what we'd like to do today is kind of run through some scenarios. We've got five categories of questions. Uh, in a moment here I'm gonna pull up, we've got kind of a fun wave that we're gonna do this. We're gonna let the hinge category wheel decide kind of. What is our conversation, what topics we'll focus on today, but we've got five categories. And Matt, really we want to give you these. Would you rather questions in here? What are your perspectives? Maybe you, you have really strong opinions about some of these answers. Maybe for some of'em they'll be tougher, but, uh, yeah, we really just want to dig into your perspectives as a business leader and as as an advisor. And, um, here are all the great things you gotta share today. How does that sound?

Matt Tait:

Awesome. I'm looking forward to it. I, I don't have any strong opinions.

Austin McNair:

I, I know that's not, I don't know you very well yet, but I know that's not true.

Joe Pope:

I, I've lifted, I, I've listened to enough of after the first million, uh, to know that that's definitely not true.

Matt Tait:

Might be the opposite.

Austin McNair:

all right, so I'm gonna pull up our, uh, what did I call it? The hinge category wheel here. Can you guys see that?

Joe Pope:

I, when you were talking about this in the background, Austin, it sounded like you, you, you'd attached things like fate, like the wheel of fate,

Austin McNair:

The wheel fate. Yeah. We gotta, we gotta workshop the same. So, I mean, we, we, we've got it here. We're not, you know, this is not a prepared list of questions. We did not send these to Matt ahead of time. He has no idea what's coming. That's kind of the fun of the challenge here. So, without further ado, why don't we dig in and see what our first, uh, what you rather questions gonna be.

Mary Blanche:

In that wheel.

Joe Pope:

Sound effects.

Matt Tait:

Oh.

Austin McNair:

We're going, right? I, I should have mentioned there's five categories of questions here. People, growth levers, leadership profit center, and then one that we're kind of calling like the Bowser Square business killers. So that's our first category for questions is business killers, and B, what's our first, uh, business killer question.

Mary Blanche:

All right, Matt, would you rather have consistent late client payments causing cashflow nightmares, or your most profitable service commoditized by ai? Forcing a business model overhaul.

Matt Tait:

Oh, I would easily do the, ar problem because you can automate the heck outta that. Like that's a solvable problem. with just a simple, like easy business and like system switch versus the AI thing is like an entire explosion. Like one's a dumpster fire, the others are grenade in the dumpster, and I prefer fires.

Joe Pope:

talk, talk a little bit about how you, like, if you come into a, a client that has that specific challenge, right? We are having AR issues. What, what are some quick. Quick thoughts immediately that you're trying to drill into their leadership's heads.

Matt Tait:

So, I mean, the number one thing is, and by the way, this is not a. Like unknown problem, I'm, you would not be, you would be surprised at how many businesses actually have like serious AR problems. So all jokes aside, it's not abnormal. I don't think it's a good idea. I mean, every time I've built a business, my number one priority was collecting money. And so like I built the business around the ability to collect money, and I think you should. But the first thing that that you need to do is it's kinda like put your big kid pants on and like go collect money. And the first thing we do with people don't need to put a good system in place. You don't need new technology. What you need is a weekly or monthly habit that says, Hey, I'm going to look at my outstanding AR once a week and I am going to schedule time to go minimize that list once a week. And like that's kind of some of the. Advice and parenting that we do with our clients is like, Hey, if you wanna be successful, if you want to continue to not fail, if you wanna even get better and get out of this, here is what you need to do. And, and that's step one that we run with all of our clients before we even look at process systems, like company changes. It's like just put good habits in place. Um, and, and that's the quickest and easiest way. And it's also something that people don't do. Like, there are just kind of boring, monotonous things about being a business and a business owner that you have to do. And this is one of those that, quite frankly, I'm shocked that people don't do better and more of.

Austin McNair:

All right, so second spin of the wheel. Matt. Let's see where we get this time. Almo. Oh my God. We're going back to back. Business killers. Let's go. I promise that this is not all business killers. been known to pull pranks on this show. It's not, this is not how I have to set up right now.

Mary Blanche:

All right, we're going back to the well. Okay Matt, so would you rather ignore a hot client issue or have a system that over flags minor concerns?

Matt Tait:

I would rather have a system that over flags. Minor concerns because you can easily filter that out. I mean, going back to the hot client issue, I am, I am known for having a bit of an odd take on like client escalations. Uh, anytime a client calls me and we've got about a thousand now, I send them to voicemail every time.'cause nobody calls me with good news and I'd rather just, uh, wait and hear their voicemail, text'em, Hey, I'm sorry I'm in a meeting. Gonna circle with the team. We'll get back to you. ASAP. You have to get on a client problem like somebody needs to. As a business owner, it shouldn't always be you. It can be a waste of your time to actually handle it. That phone call never goes well for you. Like. You're dealing with an angry client, you might get angry, like you have no context, like it's just not a good thing to deal with in time. Business issues that get highlighted every time, no matter how small a business issue gets highlighted, it's a problem that needs to be fixed. If it's too small of a problem to need like immediate fixing or all hands on deck, all you have to do is snooze that for there or. Remember it or like there are a million different things to kind of think of and consider and um, one of them is just filtering. And filtering is a solvable problem. It's like the AR problem we talked about before, like that's a solvable problem with good habits and good processes versus like the big client problem. Like nobody wants those, send'em to voicemail.

Mary Blanche:

How do you advise your clients? You know, when those minor, more minor problems do come up?'cause minor problems can eventually escalate into larger problems. So when you're engaging with a client and, and you're kind of evaluating what those problems are, large and small, how do you, how do you kind of advise them on. Making sure that they're, they're not getting so focused on those hot, hot button topics that they're able to, you know, look at some of those lesser concerns as well.

Matt Tait:

I've been married for 14 years. I've never found it to be a successful thing in my life, to tell my wife that's not a big deal. I think the same is true with clients. If it's a small deal, it could be big for them rubric that I put on it may not be the rubric they put on it. And so we, what we talk about with our team is number one, you should just always be a good person and use good manners. And listen, you do that stuff, you're 90% of the way through like a problem. 10% is figuring out what happened and not doing it again. But really where most people fail is like just doing the right thing and like what your grandma would say is like using good manners. Um, do all that stuff and listen, then am. You're well along the path to doing it. And so like that's, that's really where I would start is, is with that, as a problem solving solution and figure out the rest after that.

Mary Blanche:

Yeah, that's great.

Joe Pope:

Any other, any other marriage advice though? I mean, 14 years, it sounds like you've, you've got it locked down.

Matt Tait:

Uh, I do have a flower shop that has my credit card and automatically sends flowers four times a year.

Austin McNair:

The same four times or different four times.

Matt Tait:

Uh, mother's Day, our anniversary, uh, her birthday, and then one other random time because I'm usually in trouble. And so it helps.

Joe Pope:

That's right. It's like one of those buy three get one free deals or something like that.

Matt Tait:

Yep. I wouldn't say they're cheap, but man, is it worth it? And I have no idea what they're sending every time, and I just, they show up. I don't have to forget. I forgot Mother's Day one year and like, I gotta tell you that, um,

Joe Pope:

That's

Matt Tait:

was six years ago and she still reminds me of it.

Joe Pope:

Negative.

Austin McNair:

All right, let's give a spin again. Let's get something other than, uh, business killers. Rock and roll. Got profit center.

Mary Blanche:

Okay, so would you rather risk underpricing new services to attract clients and build market share or ensure a healthy profit margin from the onset, even if it means slower growth?

Matt Tait:

Oh, absolutely. The second one, are you kidding me? You see, so many businesses fail because they, they have this fallacy in mind of, oh, I'll be able to raise prices later. I just had this argument on this new thing we're doing, uh, in franchising, and my co-founder's like, oh, we'll be able to raise prices later. And I said, what if we can't? He goes, we will. And I'm like, that's not actually a, a reasonable. Answer an argument. And he is like, well, what if? What if people don't buy? And I'm like, then we sell it. Healthy margins less. I'll take the profit every time. And I think that that's the that most businesses have. Like the single business killer is running out of cash. You run outta cash because you do things and don't understand your business. You do dumb things or you think you're profiting and you're not. And to me, revenue should never be what you chase. Profit should be what you chase. And so I would always start with like good, healthy fundamentals and go slow. Well.

Austin McNair:

Do you feel like that's kind of like that there's a lot of cultural narratives to the. To the kind of the opposing end to that. Like I hear, you know, a lot of, it's kind of like joking about like, oh, our company is pre-revenue, all that kind of stuff. Like, do you feel like there's like a cultural expectation on business leaders and entrepreneurs to kind of try to go the more aggressive route and, you know, do that whole method of raising prices later or, I mean, what do you, I mean, you're a business leader, you're an entrepreneur, you've founded a couple of different companies. Like, do you feel that pressure is out there?

Matt Tait:

You know, I think that there are good things for Main Street businesses to take from tech companies and good things tech companies should take from Main Street businesses. I think the problem is, is when we screw up, which one we should take from where I. Tech companies are all built on the, we need growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. And so that's where that fallacy comes from is, gosh, all these billion dollar businesses, they're being built and they're not really profiting and their revenue is going up, but their profit's not, I can do that too. Well, the difference is, is number one, they're creating an intellectual property that has an astronomically higher value than a widget. Or then a consulting engagement, and so they've got some asset that you don't have. Number two, they have people willing to fund them to do that. Number three, I actually think it's stupid and I think that most tech companies should actually try to build a reasonable business model. And we've talked to venture funds, we are venture backed, and we had one business that was like, you guys should grow faster. And I'm like, I'm growing at three x. Like, no, I can't. They're like, well, you should grow at five x. And I'm like, no, I'm, that's a dumb idea and here's why. They're like, could you? And I'm like, I could, but I'm not stupid. Like I'd like to actually keep this business. I go back to the Dumpster fi fire versus a grenade in the dumpster. Like I'd much rather have the dumpster fire. And, um, and so I think that that's where that fallacy comes from. We've over idealized what it's like to be a tech entrepreneur when in reality like 50% of businesses fail before their fifth year. In tech, it's like 90,

Joe Pope:

Yeah. Yeah. They just don't talk about those ones, right? Because they're already on

Matt Tait:

no, no one wants to hear about that crap.

Joe Pope:

I, I'm interested Matt, uh, as, as we spin the wheel of destiny or truth or whatever we want to call it, um, maybe it's something that can come up in one of these further questions, but you know, when somebody does or has already made that pricing problem. I'm interested for your thoughts on, you know, obviously trying to change that price can be a challenge, but frankly, if, if you can't turn other levers to adjust profitability, how do you even market that or talk to that or change pricing from your perspective?

Matt Tait:

Well, one important thing, and, and by the way, I've rationalized my entire client base about 18 months ago. We repriced everybody.

Joe Pope:

Yeah,

Matt Tait:

And, uh, we lost 22% of our client base, but revenue went up 27%. So like that, those are the hard decisions people are incapable or don't want to make is that type of a risk bet. And, not saying they work out every time, but if you're working it towards risk to a higher fundamental, then you can cut your way back to what you need. And people just aren't very good at making hard decisions and hard analyses. And if you can do that, you can be much, much better. and so like that's where I do think you can do that. Number two, I think you should build in inflation in the future to your pricing model. Give yourself the ability to increase prices at least on an annual basis because costs go up. Like it just inflation is a natural thing. It's how much inflation actually exists that changes. And so prices do go up. If in in accounting, it's a great example for like 15 years, everybody thought you could be a$500 a month client. Well, guess what? Number one, you weren't making good margins 15 years ago at$500 a month. Number two, 15 years later, you're. Big, deeply underwater. And so like to me, those are some of the fallacies that people have and they, you don't really hear about, but you just need to have the guts to reprice. But you also, you need to have the story like, why? How am I gonna do this? What's the talk track? What's the reasoning like? You can't just like flip it. What you can flip is the like 3% a year price increase. Great. Everybody does that. That fundamentally makes sense. Peg it to inflation. Whatever you wanna do. Like you can do some things easy. If you're gonna do the hard stuff, you have to have a good, uh, talk track.

Austin McNair:

Makes sense. All right. I pulled the trigger a little earlier, but in our, our next category here is, uh, for growth levers, I think a natural kind of, uh, segue into this, this topic, and b, what's our question?

Mary Blanche:

All right, so Matt, would you rather spend a hundred K on a brand campaign with no direct ROI or a hundred K on outbound sales with no long-term brand value?

Matt Tait:

It depends on the stage of company. So if I am a startup, I would a hundred percent do the outbound because nobody cares about your brand. Your brand is absolutely meaningless. If you are a more mature company, I would do the brand campaign because your brand is starting to need value and gain value, and so to me, it's entirely stage dependent.

Joe Pope:

Where do you typically see that stage switch over? Because I, I'm guessing industry just specific, I mean, you start to get into the real, uh, nitty gritty I guess, but in terms of when you, especially recognizing kind of your angle is where you come in with decimal, I'm interested kind of where you see that transition happening.

Matt Tait:

I think when you get out of founder and executive led sales. Is, is when you need to have a brand. Like if, if you have salespeople that are doing stuff for you or SDRs or BDRs or whatever you're calling them, I think that you, your brand needs to have weight because they're just not the type of person that has natural gravitas. It's cheating to win when you're selling as an owner. It's one of the reasons why we really like franchising is because you have a bunch of owner operators and that carries gravity when you're trying to sell things to a business and whatever professional service. Marketing, consulting, uh, accounting, legal, like the business owner sale is a great cheat to win. Executive is the next stage like, Hey, I hired a VP of sales or a CRO to do this stuff. that is also cheating to win and your brand starts to need more value but doesn't need as much. When you start to have lower level employees doing the sales and being that kind of talking point, they need the assets to be successful.

Austin McNair:

Matt, there's a lot of people in our audience who would love to go and invest in more of a brand awareness campaign, but anytime they bring that topic up to maybe firm leadership or. Founder, owner of the company. there's that skepticism right about the ROI like, well what are we gonna get out of this? what, what are your thoughts or what advice would you give those marketers out there that would like to do more on kind of the brand awareness stuff? Maybe as you said, they're in that phase where, um, they need to be doing more of that and they know that, you know, building the brand and Getting more eyeballs on the company is like kind of the stage that they're at. What, but, but there's always that objection, that ROI objection, that kind of, comes in. What, what advice would you give those marketers?

Matt Tait:

Start small and build. I think the problem is, and I've had this with marketers that I've worked with and hired, is they always want to sell you everything. Like, here's this big plan. We do all this stuff. Our brand is gonna be X, Y, and Z, and it's gonna be amazing. And like at that point, all I'm thinking about is dollar signs. If you have the, Hey Matt, your personality is directly tied to the personality that we have as decimal. It'd be great if you talked more. Why don't you hop on LinkedIn and do some posting? We'll help make it easy for you. We can give you some options, like to get you on a few podcasts every month or every quarter. We'll use the podcast to create video clips and stuff like that. Like we have some things that are gonna cost you some time, but they're not gonna cost you much money. As we start to see the value of your time creating an ROI, there are other things that we can do that cost money, that can amplify that further. That to me is the winning strategy. I also think it actually works in today's like overly AI world like that's what I don't hear from many marketers is marketers seem to wanna apply dollar signs to an ROI when. As an owner, I'm actually very willing to apply, do like ROI to my time and, and it's a cheap metric, so use that first. I don't know, does that make sense?

Joe Pope:

It made such good sense, honestly, Matt, the book that's over my, I guess, right shoulder, I, how does this work in terms of video? Uh, hinge wrote the visible Expert Revolution, and it is centered around this concept that you can not only create expertise through individuals to break through the noise of things like ai, but it's the type of thing that you could, then you take somebody's voice and then suddenly that voice becomes. Written word or it becomes clippable insights or it becomes something that somebody else might be interested in paying you to talk. And that type of explosion of visibility can come relatively cheap as long as you can dedicate some time to it. Uh, and it doesn't necessarily need to be founders. So you have your more mature companies who can bring that voice through practice leads, for example, or things along those lines. So yeah, you saw. All three of us. I think we're nodding along as you were saying this because we resonate with it completely.

Matt Tait:

that was something that about a year and a half ago my team approached me with. And I'm an introvert. I had never done podcasts until about a year and a half ago. I, um, had never posted on LinkedIn. And it turns out that like my irreverent personality has a tendency to resonate with people. much to my wife, chagrin.

Joe Pope:

You're up to 20,000 followers for somebody who's never posted on LinkedIn prior to last year. So I think you're a living proof example that this can work.

Matt Tait:

It does work. By the way, life hack. If you're the CEO getting into this, tell your wife big announcements before posting them on LinkedIn. I continually fail at that.

Joe Pope:

Or you end up, you end up on the best of LinkedIn feed right Where they just, they just show all the parodies.

Matt Tait:

Been there twice.

Joe Pope:

Alright, perfect.

Austin McNair:

All right. Next one. Let's, let's keep it rolling. All right. Another new category.

Mary Blanche:

Keep,

Austin McNair:

Let's talk about people.

Mary Blanche:

Okay, so Matt, would you rather prioritize employee happiness and work-life balance, even if it means slightly lower immediate profit margins or strictly optimize for profit and efficiency, potentially risking employee churn? I.

Matt Tait:

That's such a bullshit choice. I'm gonna go see all of the above. I wanna hire people that are willing to do great things and balance life. Like number one, I'm a huge proponent of like leading a balanced life because I think that makes you better at your job. I'm also a massive proponent of like, quality of work is not determined by button seat time, but by the output required of your role. So like that to me is, is. I feel like your question has a couple of assumptions built in that I think suck and I wanna challenge that. Like my first job, I'm a recovering attorney and I was in a big law firm and like if I wasn't there at eight and still there at six, like I got yelled at, even if I didn't have work to do, like I was just supposed to be there and wearing a suit and tie and like now I'm wearing basketball shorts and a t-shirt and a hat and I am. Very happy in my life. But I also think finding people that wanna work hard and be successful, I don't want people that like level out. I want people that are rocks. I don't need people that are all upside. I've got a big enough company and around a hundred people that like, I actually need people that don't continually want a promotion every like three months. I need people that are just really good at their job and really good at being good at their job. so like. I challenge your question more than the answer that I'm gonna give.

Mary Blanche:

I think that's fair. You bring up, um, and you know, as a business owner. Think there's like an underlying retention question in this too. So as a business owner, do you have any advice for, for other business leaders on, on retention in an organization?

Matt Tait:

Yeah. Look, I think to your question, if, if you are a lifestyle business. Then hire people that fit the personality of that business and the lifestyle method of that business. If you are a high growth business, don't hire those people. Hire people that want to be in a high growth, high performing business. If you are somebody like me that kind of tries to balance between the two, find people that fit that like the, problem with retention is a you problem. You made the mistake in hiring. made the mistake in finding the right match for your company. Like you may blame them, but it's a you problem. And that's actually the biggest thing that I find business owners struggle with is so often they feel like they should be looking at a window when they're really looking at a mirror. And the reality is the buck stops with us.

Mary Blanche:

I love that perspective. Yeah. Let's spin the wheel again.

Austin McNair:

Let's do it. I love that. I hope it lands on people again. Let's go.

Joe Pope:

People,

Austin McNair:

I got no control over that. That was good.

Joe Pope:

is fate. It is the wheel of fate.

Mary Blanche:

Okay, next people question then. Uh, would you rather hire experienced professionals who are resistant to new technologies and new processes, or hire eager early career professionals who require more training but are adaptable and oh, or, but are adaptable to innovation?

Matt Tait:

Uh, I'll take adaptable to innovation and younger, not younger. I prob HR would yell at me for that statement. I will take people who are more adaptable and willing to adapt every day. Um, and I find them at all age groups. Um, I think that that's always better for me. Uh, change management sucks. And the more you have to manage change, the more you're not doing other things. Training is part of a hiring process and a role, so I would totally take that. Now I'm gonna add a caveat, particularly as a remote company, I need people to have batteries included, so hiring directly outta college is not something we've found to be great. I need somebody that knows how to be a professional and. Realistically, like coming outta college, you shouldn't work at a remote company. Like you need to be in a place that gives you a culture and people and new friends and like you need all lunch and happy hours. And like, I, I wouldn't wanna work at a remote company right outta college. I wanna hire people in their second or third job. And I think that's perfect. I do want adaptable. Uh, young is not a category I care about. We've got old, young. Meddling. My COO is way older than me. I hope Michael hears this. And, um, but adaptable I think is the most important characteristic. Curious and adaptable creates a good employee.

Austin McNair:

So natural follow up question then, how do you screen for people that are adaptable? Like when you're maybe in an interview for a key position, key role, like how do you discover that or get people to, to show that in an interview?

Matt Tait:

So not successfully every time. But I try to prod for kind of creative answers, creative questions. Uh, my brother for almost a decade was a consultant at Accenture, and they're like the king of random questions and stuff. And like, I have no problem playing on some of those, like, why should you, should buy buttered popcorn and cook it? Or should you butter your popcorn afterwards? Which one's better? Why? Like no one actually thinks that through. It's an interesting question. I wanna hear how you think. I don't care about your answer, and then I wanna push back, and then when I push back, I want to hear how you push back against me.

Joe Pope:

Sure makes

Matt Tait:

that I, I'm looking for people. I'm, I. I like to talk. I like strong opinions. I like to push people. I like people that'll change their opinions. I like people that have strong opinions, like I am looking for that type of adaptability. And I'll create scenarios throughout an interview process that least highlight the opportunity for it. But I haven't been successful every time.

Austin McNair:

When I was interviewing at Hinge, the, uh, found the, the managing partner at the time, Lee Fredrickson. I had told, he asked me why I wanted to switch jobs. And I said, well, I'm working in a nonprofit right now. I'm the only marketer. I kind of feel like I'm in a silo. And his follow-up question was, have you ever been in a silo before? And I was like, uh, no.

Joe Pope:

Missile silo.

Austin McNair:

What kind of silo? And he, but I guess he had like.

Matt Tait:

Corn,

Austin McNair:

He had personally been stuck in a silo before, uh, and had that experience. You've been stuck in a silo.

Matt Tait:

I live in Indiana, man, drive 20 minutes, I'm gonna hit 10.

Austin McNair:

There you go.

Joe Pope:

I was just gonna ask, what was your answer to the popcorn question?

Matt Tait:

I would just buy it'cause I'm lazy and it's a waste of time to figure out how to like correctly butter it all over the popcorn. I think if you put butter, yeah, if you put butter on a hot thing of popcorn, like the top third layer's gonna be butter and the bottom two thirds is not gonna be.

Mary Blanche:

So I gotta do it in layers.

Joe Pope:

Oh boy.

Mary Blanche:

I'm a, I'm a butter after person.

Matt Tait:

I bought a grill because I can turn it on with my phone.

Austin McNair:

I think we got time for two more spins here.

Matt Tait:

Let's

Austin McNair:

what we get. I. Ooh, three for three.

Mary Blanche:

Close. Okay. Would you rather scale with a toxic high performer or fire them and take a major short term revenue hit?

Matt Tait:

Short term revenue. Hit fire them. Fire them. Fire them. I keep saying it, I'm on repeat here. I hate toxic performers. I've had them. I've hired them. I've been around them. I've worked with them. The minute you get them out, everybody else improves.

Mary Blanche:

Yeah.

Matt Tait:

Also, I have a feeling I've probably been one at some point, so.

Joe Pope:

this one felt like when we were prepping the questions, Matt, this one kind of felt like a layup. And, and I think a lot of the reasons is in professional services, we're selling expertise. We're selling tru uh, selling trust. We're selling selling, I can't say selling, selling relationships. And therefore, the minute you start to negatively affect the larger ecosystem with somebody who's truly toxic, those types of things get hurt. So. Rapidly, and, and this is not an impulse sale, right? So when those things go downhill, you're in trouble. You can't market your way around that. Uh, so I, I, I hear you loud and clear there, Matt.

Austin McNair:

Matt, how do you feel about toxic clients? Because

Matt Tait:

Fire them. I have, I love firing clients. because wanna know a great way to like shore up your culture. Fire a client everybody knows, sucks. It makes everybody in the company happier. We've got this fun story that, uh. We would tell, um, about when we first started and there were two clients that I fired within like a four month period. One was one of our biggest, I think three clients at the time, and he called, the head of accounting, uh, honey and Sweetheart. And, I was just like, dude, you can't do that. And he was like, man, things have changed. Like no one used to care about that stuff. And I was like, they cared. They just didn't say anything. And I'm like, you're still an asshole. You're fired. and then the better one was, uh, we had a group of pastors that advised pastors on how to run more profitable churches. They were clients and the head of this group was talking to his accounting manager. And he berated her. He went off on her, he belittled her like he made her feel terrible. She cried. Her boss uh, called me and was like, told me what happened. I was like, send me the call recording. We record everything. I watched it and I was just like, this is terrible. I emailed the guy and I was like, Hey, heard you had a tough call with so and so, like really sorry. I would love to hop on a call really quickly and make it right. Do you have a few minutes? He's like, sure, like, this guy's expecting me to give money back and all this stuff. I had the video queued up. I played it for him and I was just like. Your family and your church would be extremely disappointed in your behavior, and it's unacceptable. And if your kids saw this, every good piece of advice you ever gave them would be questioned like, you're a terrible human being and you need to go spend time on your knees in your church praying. And by the way, you're fired. By the way, that whole call was recorded. I didn't say anything to anybody. I posted that call on the General Slack channel and I with no, didn't say anything. I just posted that call. Nothing at all. And uh, it was one of the greatest things people still talk about. Oh yeah.

Austin McNair:

I love that. Matt, you got time for, uh, one more with us.

Matt Tait:

Yep. Let's do one more.

Austin McNair:

All right, let's do it. Last one, maybe we'll get leadership. We haven't had a leadership question yet, but Nope. No leadership for you, Matt. Just one more here on Growth Levers.

Matt Tait:

I'm bad at leadership anyway, so we're good.

Mary Blanche:

All right, Matt, would you rather expand into new emerging markets or deepen expertise? In established, in established niches?

Matt Tait:

Once again, I don't like the assumption like yes to both. Depends on when in the stage of a company, the earlier you are, the more I think you should be good at few things. The bigger you are, the more I think you can expand your surface area and aperture. I think where companies struggle is when they're small and they decide, Hey, we're gonna keep trying new things, and then they become bad or mediocre at all of it.

Joe Pope:

Yeah.

Matt Tait:

I think the smaller you are like crush one thing and then when you're crushing that and it's repeatable in both, its execution and growth. Move on to another thing or test a few things to figure out what you should move on to is probably the better way to do it. And that's how I would play it. It depends on your stage. Yeah. a company and kind of where you are as a business. Both are good, but both can be bad if done at the wrong time.

Joe Pope:

Yeah, we're big proponents of research in that example too, Matt, right? Where you, you know, you use data, you use insights to test those types of assumptions instead of just the spaghetti at the wall approach, which unfortunately I think a lot of small and even mid-size companies, if in the marketing realm, uh, is their marketing approach, it's like, what's the flavor of the week? Let's just throw things at the wall. So I'm sure you run into that on the operational side as well.

Matt Tait:

Well, and I can tell you and, We can leave it to this, like we made the big decision to franchise this year. That's a huge decision that distracts away from the core business. And we tested it, we tried it, we researched it. You can't really test or try, you're more like market researching it. And we decided it was a big thing and we put all of our marbles in that bucket three weeks ago. We announced it at a big conference in front of 2200 accountants. And I have a wait list that's filled up all the way through 27. Like it's, we tested it, we tried it. We need to execute on it. It's still gonna be a dumpster fire, but I think we did it in the right way at the right time.

Joe Pope:

Well, Matt, we'll have to have you on to talk about the success, which it sounds like it's pretty much destiny for you at this point in a year or two. Uh, once you get through that, uh, wait list.

Matt Tait:

We'll see how it goes. I'm gonna fail at it a lot.

Austin McNair:

Failing upwards, spiraling up. That's what this podcast is all about. Um, Matt, man, thanks for your time. It's been, it's been awesome. Um, where can people learn more about you? Where can people learn more about decimal?

Matt Tait:

Yeah, I mean, feel free to just follow me on LinkedIn, Matt Tate decimal.com is the company and after the first million is, uh, our podcast would love to connect with people and, uh, anything I can ever do to help'em in,

Austin McNair:

Awesome. Well, thanks again so much for joining us for Mary Blanche, Joe, myself. This has been another great episode of Spiraling Up, and we'll see you on the next one.

Matt Tait:

Thanks guys.

Joe Pope:

Take care, Matt.

Austin McNair:

So we just got done playing. Would you Rather, and look, Joe Mary Blanche, there's a lot of people out there right now with a dilemma. Would they rather kind of continue to, Try to solve marketing problems on their own. Try to, take some of their toughest questions about marketing and branding and what they should do next. Their business development, their, their, their website. All of these big questions. Would they rather kind of just sit and, and, and maybe talk to chat GPT about this, or would they rather give us a call here at Hinge and maybe we can help?

Joe Pope:

Well, I'm just, praying that Chat, GPT is gonna just keep sending'em to us like it has been recently as we've watched those metrics go up. But no, I, what, what would I rather do? I'd rather be successful. I'd rather spiral up. And the way you can do that. is by giving Hinge a call and the fine folks here at Hinge are excited to talk with you all about your marketing challenges, your branding challenges, and your research challenges. That's all we do here. We're focused exclusively in the professional services space, working across all the core industries, and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Austin McNair:

Would you rather talk to Joe or talk to Austin or talk to Mary Blanche? We'll let you

Joe Pope:

but that's Mary Blanche is just gonna immediately forward your email to me anyway, so it's fine.

Austin McNair:

That works well. Head to hinge marketing.com. We're easy to find. We're easy to get in touch with. We'll see you there.

Mary Blanche:

All right guys, let's get into today's pivotal story. Is your marketing budget truly optimized, or could it be working harder? A recent viral LinkedIn post from Andrea Pelton, founder at CMO Growth Guide has sparked a lot of conversation about how firms are prioritizing their spend. According to her post, there is a perspective shift gaining significant traction, particularly among chief marketing officers. She says the days of acquisition at all costs are over. According to latest reports, 60% of CMOs are pumping more money into keeping customers while actually cutting their acquisition budget. It costs nearly double to acquire customers compared to just two years ago, and a 5% increase in customer retention can increase a company's profitability by 75%. One cmo, F1 CMO Friend put it perfectly. We finally realized we were just filling a leaky bucket often. What are your reactions to this perspective? Are you seeing this shift towards retention? Play out with clients that you work with?

Austin McNair:

Uh, I mean, I love the topic. Um, I think that as marketers we're probably, I think she's right about one thing. I think that the acquisition at of all, at all costs is normally what marketers are spending their time thinking about, right?

Joe Pope:

Mm-hmm.

Austin McNair:

thinking about brand awareness, we're thinking about acquisition. I know a lot of marketers, especially those that are not really involved in kind of product delivery or client delivery service delivery, a lot of them don't even really know what's happening on that side of the organization at all. Again, they're just outward focused. Um, I, I, so I think, yeah, I, I would agree that I, I, or I think it's an interesting trend that she's highlighting that yeah, CMOs are having this conversation that. Marketers need to start paying attention a little bit to what's going on on that side of the house and maybe there's some strategies to implement. I wanna share one piece of data with you guys. This actually comes not from our high growth study, but actually from a research project that we did with the Association for Accounting Marketing. It's similar to our high growth study and that we're trying to understand. What the fastest growing accounting firms are doing. We're actually looking at line items inside marketing budgets and measuring trends over time. And one interesting trend from this year's study that we just released with them is that the high growth firms are investing. More, especially specifically in client events and client engagement. so to me, our data kind of speaks to the data that she's saying, that, um, faster growing companies have recognized that, um, leaky buck we can plug some of those holes, that's gonna actually help boost, overall profitability. for our business and, boost performance. Joe, I'm in, I'm interested in what you think, you know, this dynamic between marketing and paying attention to like what's happening. I mean, do you have any specifics here in terms of, um, what marketing marketers can do to be more involved on that side of the, the business?

Joe Pope:

I know she referenced in her post a few different statistics and I, you know, I think. In general, anybody who's sitting out there and doing searching and looking at data, for example, which is good, you should look at data. And my answer to your question is going to go in that direction. Uh, she referenced all these different types of metrics, but they kind of tell a similar story, which is, if you are gonna spend your money, you should spend it wisely. And in a lot of circumstances, by spending it on keeping the types of clients you want more of, you're gonna put yourself in a highly. more profitable setup and, and I think what really it comes down to is if you're not a startup, if you're a company that's been marketing itself for some amount of time, you've developed a brand reputation, you've done all these types of things, the benefits of actually doing ongoing investigation into that type of audience, that ideal customer audience, allows you to start to develop strategies that can not only speak to. That key segment of your business, but it'll also speak to people that really resonate with those types of clients and resonate with their stories, their issues, their topics, things along those lines. A lot of times this is a way that Hinge starts our engagements with clients building that foundation, and it's just thinking about this from a more strategic perspective. Those voices can really educate what your marketing is, and you know, honestly speaking, when you give them a platform to talk. Most of them are gonna be very excited to talk. They're gonna be able to say what's bothering them, what's their thinking, and so forth. You can't help but take that data and inform your teams, uh, start changing how you think about something, how you word something. So it, I, I think the benefit of starting to angle marketing towards, maybe not towards all of your clients, so that's, that's probably a flip over here as well, but to a specific segment of your clients is, is brilliant and it should be something that every organization does.

Austin McNair:

I see this as like a really key component to like an account based marketing strategy, right? Which over and over again now. A lot of our clients are, are bringing this to the forefront and asking us questions about this and I mean, I think that we fully endorse an A BM strategy. The, the challenges with A BM though are that if you don't have like a tight feedback loop. Between the people that can help fulfill kind of more, some, some marketing, um, materials or nurturing campaigns or help, you know, put on like a great client appreciation event. Like if you don't have a feedback loop, um, that's connected to a strategy, right? Like, first of all, let's talk about the strategy, like the a BM layer of, you know, identifying the accounts that we're talking about and everybody being on the same page about those. But then beyond that, like are the account owners talking and communicating with marketing. With design, with people that can help fulfill these things, that takes a lot of coordination. And I think for a lot of professional services firms, those, that level of coordination is not sharp enough yet. Um, but you know, I think to the spirit of what Andrea was was saying, right? CMOs being at the kind of the highest, most strategic levels of these organizations, they're starting to think about that, right? They're starting to think about things like account-based marketing, and it's not just a fad or a trend. It is a mechanism for really, um. Securing, uh, more performance out of the organization.'cause as she mentions, it's way more expensive to go find new clients than it is to keep the ones that you have. Keeping them happy, upselling, cross-selling, all that stuff is super important. And as marketers. We're really good at that stuff. And so we want to have a role in that. So if you're, any advice I'd give is start to learn about this topic if you haven't already. Um, and, and, and look at your own marketing spending and ask yourselves, well, how much are, are we dedicating anything nurturing relationships with our current clients? Even if it's just like, Hey, it's holiday season. Let's send out some gifts. Let's out send out some thank you notes. Let's send out this. Like, if, if none of that is happening, there's probably an opportunity on the table.

Joe Pope:

I mean, we sent out bottle openers because Hinge is opening more than doors these days, and that was our holiday gift. But I mean, I had on top of that, Austin, I think that personalization piece really stands out to me. That in-person piece that you were referencing from the. Association of accounting marketing there. What came up in that research report, this idea is as we've come out of the COVID days, if you will, as we've start to, in a sense return to normal in terms of bringing in traditional business development and marketing tactics, clients are the perfect avenue of which to angle some of those types of efforts because they're happy clients, specifically ones that fit into a. Neat bucket. The types we want more of, they can very likely be your best referral sources, uh, as folks leave and go to another organization or additional, aspects are coming to play. Things like, mergers and acquisitions and things along those lines. If we are putting a lot of effort into this we are putting a strategic mind towards this, the benefits should be quickly apparent.

Austin McNair:

Mary Blanche,

Joe Pope:

I don't know Mary Blanche. How did we do, did we kill this? Like did we, did we, did we talk this out?

Mary Blanche:

you? Yeah. You killed it. Slay.

Austin McNair:

All right, so tell us in the comments, what's one way that you are focusing on your current clients? What kind of initiatives, marketing programs have you seen to be successful in improving client retentions? We wanna know. And on behalf of myself, Mary Blanche, Joe, this has been another great episode of Spiraling Up. Thanks for tuning in. Leave us a like, subscribe to the channel and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks everybody.